Arca's Bucket List of Stuff To Do During the Quarantine

Alright guys, this is Arca, and today I'll be talking about my bucket list of things that I've wanted to do for a while that I could theoretically attempt during whatever spare time I get from this quarantine. It's only like two weeks, so in my opinion people are treating it as if it's longer than it actually is, but then again I am now going literally nowhere for the entirety of spring break, so... Today I finished my second day of virtual school, and I maintain my opinion from my previous post (http://www.arcabaran.com/2020/03/why-my-first-day-of-online-school-was.html) that I felt it to be better than regular school. My work literally ended at noon today (including any "homework"), about half-an-hour ahead of schedule, so that's how I'm blogging right now. Anyways, on to the topic of this post! This is in no particular order, just random based on whatever I can think of off the top of my head. Maybe sometimes I'll use a random number generator and generate a random number from 1 to 16 to choose which of these to do at the moment!

1. Finish writing and publish as many of my 28 unpublished blog post drafts as possible.

It's no secret if you've been following my blog over time that I've promised posts numerous times in the past that I've never gotten to complete. Or at least, I've started working on them but never completed and published. As of me typing this right now, there are 28 unfinished drafts on my Blogger dashboard for the TTHT blog (not including this one, which is obviously a draft as I'm writing it, but by the time you're reading this it'll have been published). I may as well list them here and determine if any of them are still relevant at this point. Many of these are just titles and are blank, so I haven't poured any work into them besides coming up with them as concepts.

"THE AABO SHOW: ENDGAME" was going to be a cool idea I had to do like three years down the line, but that's not something I'll talk about anytime soon, and would probably be better served as a surprise. So, I guess I'll click, "delete". "My DREAM Fighter's Pass Vol. 2 Roster- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate" is also blank, but a great idea and quite relevant, so I'll keep it. "SHREK WARS- Episode VII: The Memes Awaken (full script leak)" is somewhat irrelevant now, but I wrote a page of it in a Google Doc and it was pretty decent satire that I don't think anyone but me would really understand, so I'll delete it. "PlayStation 4 Review- An Ode to An Almost-Dead, Victorious Console" is also blank and I don't feel like it right now (and gets less relevant by the day), so I'll delete it and maybe write it once the PS5 is out as sort of a "still worth it" thing to attract readers. "Beat Saber (PSVR)- Game Review" is great and I already wrote most of it back in January, so I think I'll finish it sometime.

"Star Wars- Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (Spoiler-Free) Movie Review " is somewhat irrelevant now as I think my mini-review got the job done but once I can rewatch it again somehow like on a plane flight (which won't happen soon), I might talk more in-depth with actual spoilers. "New Year's 2020 Blogging Resolutions!" is mega-late and will never be able to happen right now, so that's another thing for me to delete. "The Mandalorian- Season 1 Review" is something I still want to do and is relevant again since Disney+ will be releasing in Europe and the UK for the first time this month, so that's a keeper. I wrote quite a bit and had a nice thumbnail for "Will COPPA destroy YouTube as we know it?" but that's old news and no longer a hypothetical and we know how it played out. I will transfer it to a Google Doc and keep it for memories.

"Waluigi Tales Chapter 3- THE ULTIMATE SHOWDOWN" still needs to happen, even though its blank, but now I'm more certain that Xiang will be able to return as Wario and we can both write equally in this one. "Nintendo Direct E3 2019- My Thoughts & Reaction", although I wrote quite a bit, is so outdated that it's insane, so straight to the Google Docs archive for that one. "Gravity Falls: Lost Legends- Graphic Novel Review" is also quite late, but I already wrote a paragraph and still want to make it happen, so that's a temporary keep. "JOY-CONS: The story of Nintendo's biggest scam" was right in the midst of the Joy-Con drift public uproar, but it's been talked about to death and I've already complained about it here a bit, so I'll delete that. Alright, you get the idea, I have lots of drafts, but after reducing them down to only 19 in the course of making this post, I feel more accomplished already. The rest consists of mainly unfinished stories or collabs that I'm probably going to archive, and 90% reviews of old stuff that could have been relevant when I wrote it but was a bit late, but things like games and movies and books can be timeless, so I'll keep them until I get the chance.

2. Finish building the old, unfinished LEGO sets I have lying around in a closet.

This one's a big one in terms of my guiltiness but not in terms of the task itself. For the like two unfinished LEGO Star Wars sets I have, they're both quite small in task (one of them was Rogue One-themed if I remember correctly, and featured Chirrut Imwe and some sort of street vehicle that the movie showed on the planet Jedha). Just that it's been like three or four years since I received each of them for my birthday, and I actually like LEGOs quite a bit despite not owning that many sets overall, and they're fun and soothing pastimes to build and complete. So I think that doing this is inevitable. I always pushed it off in favor of more exciting tasks, but that "later" is now, as our guidance counselor told us in an email about things to do over quarantine (unrelated to LEGOs, however)!

3. Beat as many of the unfinished games I have that I care to complete. 

They stare at me on my home screen, on my shelf. A big one is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild which is literally the best game I have and one of the best games of all time that has been around since the Switch's launch and I've owned for almost 3 years yet only beat one out of the four divine beasts despite playing for nearly 45 hours total. So maybe I'll get one or two more divine beasts out of the way?

Other ones are just miscellanious. Story modes in Splatoon 2 (both the main one which I'm near the final boss on but that hub world is so annoying in my opinion to even get to the levels, as well as the awesome but difficult Octo Expansion). Numerous indie games, the Ender Dragon in Minecraft, Luigi's Mansion 3, the list goes on and on. Ultimately, just because I have a game, there's nothing requiring me to beat a story mode, since as long as I enjoyed it I got my (or my gift-giver's) money's worth, which is almost every game I have. But if it's worthwhile, I'd still like to complete them at some point. Like, for instance, LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens on my 2DS that I got along with the 2DS back after I graduated elementary school. It's been a while, and that's a good game on an otherwise no-longer-relevant handheld console, and with a brand new LEGO Star Wars collection coming out this year, I think it's time I take the barely any time at all required to beat it. After all, as I explained in a post from literally almost four years ago, my then-seven-year-old little brother sat down and beat it in just two days (with some occasional help from YouTube tutorials)! Then again, I've always suspected he was just more of a "gamer" than I was. That's before even getting into the PS4 stuff, which isn't that much, but does notably include Astro Bot Rescue Mission (which is only a few hours long, anyway), Rachet & Clank, and of course, Jedi: Fallen Order. Then, can we please address the fact that Nintendo Labo is literally perfect for this situation? It's literally a DIY arts and crafts kit!

4. Finish reading unfinished books.

This list isn't as massive as my games list, fortunately. There's only a handful of unfinished books I started reading in the past that I'd still like to complete. Typically, if I don't finish a book that means I don't intend to finish it due to not enjoying it. The only books I still care about that I haven't finished yet are probably only like five or less than five. Off the top of my head, that would be Warcross by Marie Lu and Exo by Fonda Lee. The former, I prefer over the latter. Actually, I guess my unfinished book list isn't as much as I once thought, even though it already was nothing! I  know that Warcross is apparently a two-book series, so that'll give me something to read once I'm done with the first. Plus, book reviews are good blog post ideas that I like making (if they even fit into the mess that is Bucket List Item #1).

5. Attempt some challenging origami (again). 

I used to be obsessed with origami. I wasn't an expert at it, but after reading the Origami Yoda fiction series in my elementary school years, I just found making simple finger puppet variations of any character I wanted was fun. I experimented with it and produced lots of different, interesting results. So naturally, I digged deeper in tutorial library books, YouTube videos, and websites. I got lots of square-shaped, thin and dual-toned origami paper specially made for it (since printer paper can be too thick). I became a member of the Origami USA organization, and attended some free events at a museum in New York City, and even got monthly publications of their magazine. The most complicated thing I ever folded was at a workshop for a Jo Nakashima Origami Yoda. This wasn't a simple finger puppet, or even what is shown on the cover of one of those books. Jo Nakashima is renowned figure in the origami community apparently, and I discovered his YouTube channel where he posted tutorials on hundreds of original designs and creations by him, including a mega-cool looking Yoda that I never was able to get quite right with printer paper but after going to that one workshop lesson, I made a not-that-perfect version of it. I don't know if I still have it, but the flawless one made by my instructor is the one that still sits atop my desk. I haven't done any origami (besides paper swans if I was bored) for literal years, so I'd very much like to get back into it. It is very fun to make things with your hands, can take a lot more effort than you'd expect, and can give you a sense of accomplishment. It is a very geometric and perfect form of art.

6. 100% finish an online course on Python. 

This one has been haunting me for some time, although for less time than the others by several years. It's only haunted me for about two years or so, ever since I first started coding anything in Python. I find it cool and often fun and all, and I enjoy the language, but the problem is that I'm not very fluent in it. At all. I've attempted SoloLearn and have been just sauntering over simple stuff that I already know and trying to grind my way to brand-new information like deeper algorithms and all the types of data structures (I haven't memorized them all yet in the slightest and still have to Google the differences between them, embarrassing, I know). When literally all of my peers have long bested me in this category, I think it's time that I hop onto Code Academy and do a free course from start to finish, the way it was intended. Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't, but I'd at least like to try.

7. Watch numerous Turkish movies and YouTube vloggers to improve my pronunciation and fluidity.

I am overall proud of my fluency in Turkish. Having heard my family speak it and also speak it since I was an infant, I am innately able to understand it and read it and speak it (which isn't very difficult when the alphabet is literally the same as the Latin alphabet with some additional accented or squiggly letters and then just one pronunciation difference, which is of course C = J which I know too well). I passed a Turkish language proficiency test at a weekend Turkish School I went to three years ago in NYC, and I'm pretty sure I got some sort of college credit or just credit of some kind for getting every single question correct on that. However, I'm not bragging at all, since I still have a long ways to go to get to where I want to be in my lifetime if I am to be able to frequently visit and possibly retire in Turkey without sounding like a very-skilled tourist. I could improve my vocabulary slightly, but the biggest thing irking me is my pronunciation. Even my little brother can pronounce some letters (like the Ö and Ü versus the O and U) that I still can't 100% get right every single time. It's pretty tough trying to change my habits for how I speak Turkish. Overall, my cousins and such have described my Turkish as sounding like it has an American accent to it (some of them find it quite amusing and like to hear me speak). I'd still like to be able to get as good of an accent as possible despite living in the U.S. for 99% of my life (I was born in NJ, but I moved to Istanbul for a year between the ages of 1 and 2 years old, of which I don't remember anything about). After all, I am both a U.S. Citizen and a Turkish Citizen due to my parents being Turkish citizens.

My solution to that? Well, I think I'm quite past Duolingo at this point, but other than just moving to Turkey and living and speaking there for literal months, I think watching some Turkish movies would help. Other than dizis (the term for "show" in Turkish, which non-Turkish people still use to refer to famous Turkish drama shows as a genre), which I'd have no interest in, there's lots of good comedy in Turkish. Recep Ivedik is a very popular, semi-vulgar comedy movie series about a walking, breathing Turkish stereotype, and I've watched one of the movies on Netflix before and found it mildly entertaining. G.O.R.A is also very famous and is a sci-fi spoof comedy that even got a sequel. Or, if I want to head into the so-bad-its-good meme territory, there is of course the bootleg "Turkish Star Wars", or Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam (which directly translates to "The Man Who Saved the World"), the entirety of which I believe can probably be found somewhere on YouTube.

As for Turkish YouTubers, well, many of the most popular ones (with like dozens of millions of subscribers) are bootleg versions of the worst YouTubers on the platform, like Logan and Jake Paul. But apparently there's some other decent ones out there. 

8. Finish editing all of my old vacation footage, starting from 2016!

This one has literally haunted me for ages. Even as I've found a video editor to replace iMovie (Adobe Premiere Elements, their "budget" option, which has a super-ugly interface but actually is not difficult to use and can get a lot accomplished), I still haven't made vlogs out of footage I've taken ever since 2016! What about 2017, when my pal Ege and I visited the Dominican Republic and got some good, scenic footage? Or 2018, when I went to Acadia National Park in Maine! Or last year, 2019, when I literally toured all of Italy (Venice, Rome, Florence, everything) and recorded just about all of it, but the perfect footage is just there, waiting for me to put together? For most of these, iMovie could suffice but downloading GoPro footage via Bluetooth and the amount of crashes whilst staring at my tiny phone screen would be a horrendous experience, so I think I'd have to suck it up and use my ugly-looking editor after watching some tutorials on how to use it first and just inserting all my footage instantly from my laptop's SD card slot.

9. Make an actual AABO Blog. For real. 

I don't feel strongly about this one. The one time that we made a blog for The AABO Show, only others posted and they are pretty short and having numerous spelling mistakes (no offense to them, they were literally in like third grade at the time). The layout isn't appealing, we haven't updated it in forever, and this screams out "bucket list project!" if I ever feel initiated to do so.

10. Watch all of The Clone Wars, or Rebels.

Again, not a big deal. I've watched at least the 20 "essentials" of TCW and then some, and Season 7 episodes keep coming every Friday, but I do want to check out some of the other great arcs I haven't seen at some point. Rebels doesn't start out that great, but I've heard that the stuff near the end and later gets quite better, so I could also check it out at some point. Watching all of both series (when each one has plenty of duds and bad episodes not even worth watching) within my quarantine time sounds like a bit of a stretch, but hey, it's an option.

11.  Watch some terrible old Star Wars stuff (like the Holiday Special) and torture myself with boredom to make posts about them.

Actually, no! Please no! Forget I ever said anything, please. Let the garbage stay in the garbage!

12. Make more (cringe) mashup fan art.

Wait, what? I never said anything. Nothing worth investigating here. Seriously though, if I ever wanted to make more drawings to post here, I could with the abundance of art supplies I have. It'd possibly be quite fun. Just so you know, I am strictly a cartoonist, and do realistic stuff never. Also, it's usually based on something else. This could be a fun pastime and I'm personally up for it.

13. Finish writing a short novel.

This is the one that I've probably been attempting for the longest time. Ever since like the third grade, I've been trying to write fictional novels with multiple chapters. Each have started out where I'm having fun, but I eventually no longer feel motivated to write them. I don't think I'll want to pick up anything I left off from like fifth or sixth grade, but if I get a spark of genius that can't be concluded within the confines of a much more reasonable short story, I'll let you guys know.

14. Perform a DIY shell-kit mod on my Joy-Cons (or not)!

(Looks at the custom, transparent or colorful DIY electronic mod kits I've seen YouTubers do.) Wow! That's not only something that looks cool, but it'll let me practice taking apart and putting back together complicated electronics! (Actually sees the amount of effort required to do it and the chances that I will just end up with broken controllers.) The chances of failure, actually, as K-2SO would say, are high. Very high.

15. Enter a USACO contest. 

This one goes hand-in-hand with my Bucket List Item #6. Once I do that item, then I'll be more well-equipped for this one. My close friends have already done multiple, and I still haven't even done one!

16. Learn how to meditate. 

You'd probably think of this one as the most unusual or unexpected from me. But it's true that I'd legitimately want to, in my lifetime, be able to master the art of controlling my thoughts and emotions like a Jedi master would. With the abundance on free content helping me to achieve just this, and empty time on my hands, it might be time to finally attempt this again.

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Anyways, that's it for this post! What do you guys think of this whole quarantine situation? What are you guys doing to keep yourselves busy? What are some bucket-list items that you think you can get done in the weeks that you will be stuck indoors? You can leave all of that in the comments below, and I'd like to be able to converse with you guys (and be able to maintain social distancing!).

Until my next post tomorrow, this is Arca, signing off. Be healthy and safe, and have a good one.

My little brother, Onur, finally made his first new blog post in half a year! (I guess his post drought was shorter than the Nintendo Direct drought right now, lol): https://omegaonix.blogspot.com/2020/03/my-moms-elephant-is-finally-gone-ft.html