February 2020 – GUREZU

How Did I Start My Bullet Journal (Bujo)?

Published on February 23, 2020February 23, 2020 by Gurezu16 Comments

What spark me to do Bujo?

One of my friends in Instagram has been posting her pages in her journal. And for the longest time last year, I only see only one hashtag which is #bujo. I dismissed it before. Uninterested to know what it means. But I do love reading the pages she shares in her Instagram every week. She put doodles in it and her handwriting is clear and divine. So just after the new year, I decided to finally explore the contents in hashtag bujo.

Blog content:

A. Introduction: About Bujo
B. Buying Bujo Supplies
C. Inside Bujo Set-up

What is BUJO?

Exploring that hashtag opened a whole and exciting world for me. Bujo is short for Bullet Journaling. At first I thought that the reason it was called Bullet Journaling was it mostly utilizes “Bullet listing”. Most bujo that I’ve seen uses these technique in writing daily happenings in this form rather than spontaneous long paragraphs. So I thought it came from that concept.

But digging more in the interwebs, I learned that Bullet Journal was coined and invented by Ryder Carroll. And it is actually a method to improve productivity and achieving goals. I was surprised that there are actually definite terms to know and sections in applying Bujo system. I will not discuss those since I did not apply most of them yet. But if you are interested to study the whole Bujo system. I think this site tackles it in simplest way. I will apply this on March.

For most people, Bujo is a customized planner and diary. I just love the way it also serves as creative expression. Unlike planners you can buy anywhere, bujo gives you freedom. It can be as minimal as you want or as colorful as you want it to be, or both.

Here’s how I start my January Bujo:

First, I went to Greenbelt and Glorietta to buy the essentials.

I. BUYING BUJO SUPPLIES

Hunting the notebook: Most notebook popular for bullet journalist is the dotted notebook. It has pages with small and equally spaced dots which helps in making straight lines and spacing when writing. And it’s not noticeable unlike the usual lined notebooks. My choice,however, was blank pages. I also wanted the cover to have vintage feel but gives me freedom to design it. So when I saw this notebook in MUJI, I knew I found what I am looking for.

Here is my notebook. I put a minimalistic design on it.

Well you have to know that this is not the actual color of the pages. I was using ambient light from the window when I took this photo. It was a cloudy day. The coffee designs here was stickers I bought from “The Craft Central”, Greenbelt Branch in Makati.

Verdict for this notebook: I am already using this notebook for more than a month and I would say I kind of regret choosing this. Don’t get me wrong it’s an amazing notebook. Not just for bullet journaling. I advised to stick with the popular choice: the dotted kind of notebook. I should have chosen Limelight brand. Or bought a dotted noteboook in Craft Central. But thankfully, Craft Central has this dotted paper pad. When I am tired and have no energy for straight lines, I paste a dotted paper into the notebook page. It also adds thickness to my pages. And yes, I have to tell that small dots in dotted pages will make your life easier in bullet journaling. So stick with that! In addition, choose a notebook with thick pages.

2. HUNTING FOR THE PEN and PENCIL. Another important thing I bought was the ballpen and pencil I would use. I also bought them at MUJI. I have no high standard with pencils so I bought what was available. It was the pen that I am quite picky about since the gel pen I have smears a lot and makes my writings messy. Thankfully, Muji has amazing retractable gel pen. I have put this pen in to smear tests before I bought it and I love the results. I have seen it featured in a lot bullet journalists IG’s too. Here’s how it looks like. It’s called “Smooth Gel Ink Ballpoint Pen Knock Type 0.5 Black”

“Smooth Gel Ink Ballpoint Pen Knock Type 0.5 Black”

This is how it looks like. It is called Smooth Gel Ink Ballpoint Knock Type 0.5

3. RULER: I bought two rulers. One is the ordinary transparent ruler. The other one was a wooden ruler that shaped like a giraffe. I bought the latter simply because it was cute. But I have to say I mostly use the transparent one the most.

4. CALLIGRAPHY PENS, WASHI TAPES, STICKERS, GLUE STICK. These are just optional. Before I went shopping for my supplies, I already knew the color scheme I want. I am leaning more these days to vintage feel of brown color. And for the first month I chose a coffee and pastry as a theme. So I bought stickers and washi tapes that aligns to my theme. I also bought a brown calligraphy pen.

This is where I bought my haul:

Stickers: The Craft Central, Greenbelt Branch.
https://thecraftcentral.com/
Washi Tapes: National Bookstore, Glorietta Branch
Zig Fudebiyori Calligraphy Pen: National Bookstore, Glorietta Branch
Glue stick:National Bookstore, Glorietta Branch
Pens and Pencil: Muji, Greenbelt Branch

If you are not familiar, Greenbelt and Glorietta are two adjacent malls in Makati City, Philippines. Actually there are four neighbor malls in this area. Landmark, Greenbelt, Glorietta and SM Makati. They are even interconnected to each other by bridges so it was not hard to go from one to another. Landmark has amazing dotted notebooks and planners too. Not popular brands but they have adorable cute designs. It just so happens I want a clean slate, no design notebook. So if this area is accessible to you, I recommend for you to shop here but only in weekends. You’ll probably be traumatized to go here in weekdays. The traffic in Makati is terrible.

II. Bujo Set-up.

I get inspiration and format mostly from the bullet journalist I followed in Instagram. From super minimalist to colorful bujo. Mine was kind of in a middle. I am not good in drawing so I compensate it with cute stickers. I also pick the parts of bujo mostly from instagram. I was mesmerized by the different section that make-up their bujo so I pick those that I’ll find useful for me.

Section I: Just some general cover page stating my name and my theme.

Section II: Meaning of the Theme of the Year

Section III and IV: Washi Tape Swatches and cover page of my lists. In this section I am planning to include my bucket list, movie list and other list related to my plans.

I am not yet done working on my list so I’ll skip those pages in this section for the meantime.

Section V: TRACKERS

One of my favorites. Trackers are like touchpoint monitoring of the goals you want to achieved. Here I created a tracker for my Workout Progress, word count for my novel and social media tracker. All are related to the goals I wanted to achieve this year.

A close up on my Weekly Exercise Result tracker.

Section 6: Monthly Cover. Keeping it simple with the calendar and my goals for this month. Other monthly covers include future logs which could be birthdays, anticipated events and other scheduled activities.

Section 7: Habit Tracker. This month I wish to develop the following ten habits. Every habit has a badge and the goal is to at least earn at least 5 each day. This is one of the section that I feel very useful.

Section 8: Weekly Diary Spread. This is my most favorite because first of all, this is the reason why started bujo. I used to have a diary before but I am not chatty in paper these days. I am not as comfortable to blank pages unlike before. I just want to write down the highlights or things to be grateful for everyday. So a weekly spread diary is perfect for me. There is no pressure to write long paragraphs when I don’t usually have the mood to do so.

For the first week, my weekly spread has priority of the week checklist, productivity tracker and mood tracker.

Some details.

Second Week: This time I tried a horizontal lay-out. I am not fond of making straight lines so I let myself not to do it.

I added phone usage tracker. I was able to know my exact hours of usage by a free application I downloaded in Google Playstore. It’s name is YouHour. It’s an amazing app. I added this because I recognize my social media addiction specially Facebook. You could scroll for hours, endlessly and I felt like it really rots your brain.

Third Week: This time, it was still a horizontal layout. I went crazy with calligraphy but I like it. I love the stickers.

Fourth Week. This time I added a daily tiny calligraphy doodles. I still have a productivity tracker, mood tracker, and the list of my weekly goals. This time I tried the vertical layout.

You are capable of so much more!

Push! Push! Push!

Section 9: Payday Tracker!

I decided to do this so I could consciously divide my payday and track where it goes. I followed Truly Rich Club principles in dividing the salary.
50%. Monthly expenses and bills.
20% Savings and investments. This will go to savings account. Or buying stocks and other investments.
10% Tithe/ charity. Support your church or donate in a charity.
5% Emergency Fund. They say you must have at least 6 month-worth of salary to have a reliable emergency fund. This will serve as your fund just in case there are emergencies like work termination, accidents or calamities.
5% Enjoyment Fund. Fund for watching movies, eating-out with friends and family.
5% Educational Fund. Continue to grow by enrolling to a course that will help you improve or attain new skills.
5% Empower fund/ Luxury fund. This is the fund to buy gadgets or any luxuries.

I think this tracker would be a regular from now on. I really need it because I tend to forget my budget for particular area. By the way I haven’t seen this tracker to other bullet journalists so far. But I’m pretty sure others have their own versions of it.

Section 10: Month-End Evaluation. Wrapping this month with my accomplishments and areas to improve.

That’s it for my January Set-up. I am inviting you to watch a 1-minute flip-through of my coffee-themed January bujo. Please also subscribe as I will create more bujo related contents soon!

My Bujo is not actually the best out there but I hope this will inspire you to have your own bujo and make it as your tool to achieve your goals this year.

Before I end this blog I would also like to invite you to be my International Blogger Friend. The idea is to invite everyone in blogosphere and have at least one friend in each country so that means at least 195 blogger friends. It’s not limited to wordpress blogger, or to blogsite platforms. If you are a instagram blogger, facebook or youtuber, you are welcome! For more details, you can check out my About Page here.

I hope you accept my invitation and help me build my list 😉

Thank you in advance,

Remember, you are awesome and wonderfully made,

GUREZU

❤ ❤ ❤

For inquiries and collaborations, LET’s CONNECT!!!!!!

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Inviting You to be My International Blogger Friend (Please accept :D)

Published on February 17, 2020March 14, 2020 by Gurezu36 Comments

Hi Everyone!

I hope you are doing well! This year I would like to use internet and my blog to really connect into the world. I would love to travel to achieve that and as much as I wanted to, I have limited resources. But Internet is here so I had this idea to create International Blogger Friend Directory. The idea is to invite everyone in blogosphere and have at least one friend in each country so that means at least 195 blogger friends.

I want to diversify the blogs I follow. I am so curious to hear and learn more base on more personal perspective and not just on news/ wikis. I believe blogs reflects much of the writer’s soul and through this I am hoping to have meaningful interactions with people around the globe.

If you’re accepting my invitation, we could do at least one of the following:

Simply follow each other’s blog links and blog platforms.
Give me your three current favorite blog posts (own writing) and I would put my thoughts in the comment. Similarly, I would also send you my own fave blogs post in my blog and your would put your thoughts as well.
Do a blog collaboration (Suggestions below)
- be my guest blogger
- Exchange favorite book, tv series, movie , netflix and we’ll have an exchange of reviews.
- Or we can read book or watch film we both never seen before and let’s have a review about it.
- These are just my suggestions. We can talk and agree on topics 😉
Send each other letters or postcards or stickers! (I would love to add this in my bullet journal)
Bond over music! Let’s sing a song as duet in Smule or WeSing.
Duet over Tiktok! Yes I have tiktok account (gurezu). It’s fun. It’s my guilty pleasure. Let’s duet!
Or others we can think of. We could even meet up and bond over coffee,books , movies etc if its possible.

I have actually forget this idea in a while but the invitation and list has been sitting around in my “About Me” page. Empty. Until one day, I received an email from Libera Tarts (https://liberatarts.com/) accepting my invitation. She is a British Filipino ESL teacher currently based in China. It took me awhile to think on what country I will list her. But decided to stick with the location where she is at the moment. At last the list is not empty anymore! By the way, we also agreed to have blog collaboration too. So excited that this is now rolling. Thanks Libera for accepting my invitation and listing me also in your list!

My list of countries as well as the International Blogger Friends Directory is on my About Me Page. The countries in the list are 195 starting from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. If you think I missed your county, let me know.

If you are already in the Philippines, I am also building another list which is ” BLOGGER FRIENDS PER PH REGION” . I know most of circle here are in wordpress are in the Philippines. If I have more time, I’ll do inventory of my blogger friends so it won’t be empty anymore. ;D

But of course, you can build your own International Blogger Friends Directory too! Let’s help each other build our list! Who knows, at the end of this year we could have at least 195 blogger friends. The thought excites me.

I hope you take my invitation. Just let me know in the comments. Also if you are more active in Instagram or other blogging platforms, just let me know. This list would include bloggers in all platforms.

Have a good day! And remember that you are awesome. Don’t let others make you think otherwise!

Your Friend From the Philippines,

Gurezu ❤

Why Parasite Deserves the Best Picture Awards?

Published on February 10, 2020February 10, 2020 by Gurezu6 Comments

It made history! “Parasite” won the Oscar Best Picture Award! It is the very first non-English film to win in the academy. And having personally enjoyed the film immensely, I felt proud and joyous as well that I brought my lazy ass to sit and write a blog about it.

“It’s so metaphorical!”

These are the points that I feel made Parasite appealing to Global audience, even successfully seeping through the audience who who does not like “reading subtitles”. This is purely my opinions. I am no serious film critic. And I won’t be comparing this film on it’s competitors in this year’s Oscars because I haven’t watch all of them yet. My sole credential was I love watching films too and I do recognize a good story.

Most of all, this is a spoiler-free review. I would discuss only the part of the film that you will also see in the official trailer itself. So you don’t have to worry.

Universal theme but unique story. You don’t need to have an experience living in a particular country or living in a different time to immerse yourself in the premise of the movie. It is a story of two families in contrasting financial condition, the rich and poor. Simple as that. This simplicity, however, was enamored with such a unique storyline.

2. No clean-cut good or bad characters. It is easy to tell that the protagonist of this movie was the poor family. The movie deals with their journey the most. Even if the rich family seems to be the antagonist, they are not villainy in characters. Actually they are nice people. They could be entitled people but that’s because of their lack of exposure from how poor people lives. But they are certainly not entirely depicted as bad. However, I could not tell the same with our protagonist poor family. From the trailer it self, you will see they began to take advantage of the rich family by lying. But then you will understand where they come from. They just want to have a good life. I love this kind of dynamic in characters. In most movies, it’s easy to root for a particular party when there was a clean cut bad or good. And in real life, it was not like that. People can be both bad and good and it depends on our perspective in life on whose side would we root for. I love these kind of movies.

3. Genre-bending movie. As people have said, this movie is a hella ride of emotions. It made me laugh, sad,excited and scared. They say films that try to mix two or more genres together will likely feel scattered. Well this movie did it with flying colors. It made me confused along the way but in a very good and exciting manner.

4. Technically flawless. The classical music inspired soundtrack. The cinematography. The acting. Everyone in this movie was great. No scene was wasted. I have watched a behind the scene of this movie and I am really amazed that even the architecture of the houses of both families were made from scratch to fulfill the director’s vision of inserting a deeper meaning on the contrast of each lives. Moreover, the director wanted to illustrate the class division by using staircases and windows. So the architecture of the house and how it responds to sun movements was design with intention. The director even have a comic-book like sketches of each frame. I just love this particular detail of the behind the scenes . The director put so much heart and art on it.

For the actors, I can’t seem to pick a favorite character actor/actress here because in one way or another they have a spotlight in this movie. Even those with little screen time were essential.

To sum my points, the movie is both super entertaining and deep. The balance of these two characteristics made it a modern masterpiece.

It’s a milestone for South Korean film industry but also in the award giving body that recognized it. It just means they are ready to embrace wider ideas and concepts. I always felt Oscar were just for Hollywood movies before. It is only now I felt they are ready to go “international” as it should be. It is a win for Asian countries too. Maybe a film in my country Philippines would also break barriers someday. I am positive with that. We have talents here but seemingly lacks courage.

How about you? Did you also enjoy this movie? Who do you think is/are the parasites in this movie?