Dinara Tengri

I'm back! Last Saturday, I attended the Montreal Comic Con with a friend of mine. I left for Canada on Friday and I came back last Wednesday. This was my first trip across the Atlantic Ocean, and my first vacation abroad in several years. First things first, Montreal is a beautiful city that looks very European which helped me a great deal with my homesickness. My friend and I stayed there for four days, and after the Con, all we did was roam the city, see the sights, and eat poutiné. And what trip to a new city would be complete without a visit to a bookstore? Montreal has an abundance of bookstores, and we chose Indigo, Canada's biggest book and gift store. My main mission was to find a French copy of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 . Well, mission accomplished and I now have this book is five languages, thank you very much. I may also have gone on a little shopping spree (the books were on sale, though). But what I liked the most about Montreal was ...

On April 21st 2017, I went to a party dedicated to the 20th anniversary of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This account of that very special night was written under the assumption that the reader is familiar with the world of Buffy and its many awesome characters. If you haven't seen Buffy, I posted a few links for you as well so that you can take your time and catch up on this pop culture powerhouse. I mean, seriously, you should watch Buffy. This account was written with the help of No Time for Us , who organised the whole thing, and whose photos I will be using here. A special thanks to Too Cute to Puke , as well as to Babel , the nightclub that hosted the event. As someone who had only discovered Buffy a year ago, I didn't even imagine that I would be a part of something as amazing, and inclusive as the Buffy fandom. Imagine then my reaction when, as I was scrolling down my Facebook feed I saw this A Buffy fan party? A dress-up Buffy fan party? And within walking dis...

No sooner had I declared my writing hiatus than I was encouraged by Arhaus to share my idea of a dream reading nook . I would have complete creative freedom, and I was more than welcome to use pictures of their products for inspiration in exchange for some endorsement. Naturally, I got curious. What is this company that has taken interest in my blog?   After a short Google search, I learnt that Arhaus is a furniture manufacturer that was founded in 1986 in Cleveland, by Jack Reed and his son, John. The name itself – Arhaus - is a cross between Århus, which is a city in Denmark, and the term “our house”. The company claims to adhere to a policy of using recycled material, and abstaining from using wood from the endangered rain forests.  I got interested in this project for several reasons. One being that it would give me an opportunity to branch out, and try something new. But it would also give me an opportunity to talk about something that I actu...

NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month and it was founded by Chris Baty in 1999 (check out this link for full history of NaNo) The term "national" is a bit misleading, since the project is very much international with volunteers and participants from many different countries around the world. Each country is divided into different regions. My home region is called "Europe-Sweden-Elsewhere", where the "Elsewhere" stands for any region that is not Stockholm or Gothenburg. Every region has its own Municipal Liaisons, and these are the volunteers who help run the show and make the whole NaNo experience easier and more fun for the rest of us. They are in charge of organising the so-called write-ins, where people from the same region gather to write and converse about... well, writing. Although, anybody can organise a write-in, provided there's enough interest and time.  I did NaNo two times before. I never won, but I still had a blast...

I love Dana Scully of the X-files.  I can't help being drawn to this character like a moth to a very bright light. She's awesome . In short, this post is a loud and self-satisfying rant about the awesomeness and badassery of Dana Scully. More specifically, it's an essay about how Scully's skeptical and scientific viewpoint helps Mulder fight the supernatural. In the future, I'm going to write a more in-depth analysis of the role that Scully's science plays on the X-files. For now, I'm going to settle on listing five episodes, in which lives were saved thanks to Scully and her science. I always get so annoyed when people are saying, "Why can't Scully just believe in the paranormal? The evidence is right in front of her!" To those people I say, "What evidence?" You can loose your mind trying to count the times when Scully and Mulder fail to solve a case, and to present any substantial evidence to the FBI (somet...