Hime

Our grandparents would be able to buy a house by selling a cow and a few chickens. Nowadays we cannot buy one even if we sell a kidney.

For a bit of context, my mother is French and my father is Portuguese. We visit France at least once a year, more often now that my sister moved there. Last time I stayed there for almost 3 months. Since I work remotely and make my own schedule I have the freedom to travel anywhere at any time of the year, as long as I have access to a computer and internet I can work.

Yes, her net salary is around 1500€, she works at Auchan and also has other benefits like extra money for grocery shopping there and such and in terms of government support she applied to be able to get an appartment for cheaper and while she is waiting she is staying at my uncle´s house. They live in Orléans in a ville called La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin so yes, the rents will be nowhere close to the ones in Paris. It has been a while since I last visited Paris but I can never forget that even many years ago, when I was like 13 years old, my aunt paid 12€ for 2 coffees and 2 hot chocolates. ^^'

From my past travelling experiences, I have noticed places like Paris, London, Toronto and such have extremely ridiculous prices. Back in 2016, a simple house in Toronto would cost about 1 million CAD. Not that Portugal is in a better situation right now. Portuguese people earning a minimum salary just cannot rent anything in big cities. They have to rent outside the city and then commute everyday to work.

So yeah, my sister is doing well and is able to save money, even bought a car and a trip to Sri Lanka ftom our uncle's workplace, because she does not live in Paris. She gives 300€ to my uncle to help with the rent, does all the grocery shopping and has some other expenses with the car, clothes and such but is still able to put aside about 600€ every month so saving up is not a problem.

About languages, I studied Japanese when I was still a teenager but life got in the way. I cannot really write and read but I can hold conversations and understand about 90% of what is spoken. Korean I studied for a few years but also had to stop (can read, write and speak since 한글 was pretty easy to learn). Chinese I attended classes but had to give up for an opportunity to do a 1 year intensive course in programming which is what I wanted to work with and it was through an internship from that same course that I got an opportunity to work for one of my teachers. I work independently but he has enough work for me that I do not need to look for work elsewhere and now that I have the freedom to make my own working schedule, I went back to studying Chinese. I think out of all Asian languages it will probably be the most useful one to learn and since I have been mostly watching Chinese dramas, I am not so dependent on subtitles. Other than these 3 languages I speak Portuguese (native), English (fluent) and Spanish and French (conversational). I understand almost everything in French but need to work on my speaking.

About sleep, yes, please get proper sleep. I know exactly what you are talking about and for us women sleep is even more necessary than for men. Even for weigth loss, at one point I was doing everything right, eating healthy, going to the gym 4 times a week and was stuck. Turns out sleep is extremely important for weight loss too. I was not getting enough sleep. And since the work I do needs a lot of logical thinking, creativity and attention to detail, I just cannot disregard my sleep. It was a hard lesson to learn.

True. Which is why I think if they had reserved less episodes for the present timeline they would not have wasted so much time with business stuff. I would have loved to see more of them in a relationship. I don´t think any of us went into this drama wanting to watch them work, we wanted romance.

I thought I would enjoy it less than I actually did. The romance is very slow paced due to how the ML is and we basically go through 16 episodes to see one kiss BUT I did find myself laughing at some of the things the ML says. He has no filter. I understand why the FL would fall for him but I could never. XD

With that said, this is not something I would recommed to just anyone and not for the romance. I would recommend this if you are looking for something a bit different from the usual drama, with the male lead being the center of the plot and are okay with slow (very slow) burn romance. I had this on my plan to watch list for a while and only picked it up now because I had nothing better to watch.

I'm glad you liked the ending. I wish there was more. Maybe if they had gotten together earlier we could have gotten a wedding or at least a proposal. The FL also deserved to be a mother, specially when she was almost one in the past. She would be a great mother and Li Wu would definitely be a caring and protective father too.

Where do you live? I'm guessing some European country. I live in Portugal and here 1000€ would also be above average salary. I work independently so I do not have a fixed salary. At the moment I am charging 15€/h for my web design/programming services. Soon will increase it to 20€/h since I would like to eventually move out. ^^'

My younger sister moved to France 2 years ago and is better of than me, earning about 1500€/month.

I was born in March of 1994 so I still consider myself more of a millenial than gen Z, tho I kinda was influenced by both generations. I had my first phone at the age of 13 because someone gifted it to me or I would only have one at 18. It was a Nokia.
I had the chance to live a normal life for at least until pretty much my late teenage years. Social media was not really a thing back then. Most kids did not use it and the ones who did would forget about it for months, nothing like these days with the need to take new pictures and share updates everyday. I played outside, rode a bike, went to sleepovers. I miss those days.

You used 加油 , do you know Chinese or are you learning (I am currently studying Chinese in my free time)?

P.S. - I read your profile and seems we have similar taste in dramas and criteria for ratings. I will not rewatch anything I rated less than 7, if I rated below 5 I will probably leave a rant and ratings of 9 are dramas I would defnitely recommend and rewatch several times. Dynamite Kiss also saved this year for me. Kdrama land has been really boring lately, been mostly sticking to Chinese historical dramas.

I would say it was more like his ego was hurt. That she is now happier than she was with him and is together with a younger and more handsome man.

This comment made me laugh. I am 31 years old and still living with my parents because as a single woman there is no way I can afford a regular apartment much less the sort of appartment the FL lives in.

I know this will be an unpopular opinion but to be completely honest: I was a bit disappointed. I liked half of it (mostly the scenes from the past and some from the present) and was bored to death while watching the other half (business stuff and relationships of the supporting characters).

I have watched other dramas that use this same strategy of showing both the past and the present in the same episode but for this particular drama I did not feel it worked, at least not for me.

I would have found this a lot more interesting if maybe in episode 1 they show the present but then go back to the past, to how they met, and spend a good chunk of the drama showing how they developed feelings for each other (I would not mind the slow burn at all for this sort of relationship where there is a big age gap and where the FL is sort of a parent figure at first). Then closer to the end they would show us how they eventually got to the present situation. Maybe spend the last 10 episodes or so fully in the present, showing how they build a life together. The business scenes would be kept minimal and so would the focus on the supporting characters relationships (which I did not care much about to be honest).

I also feel it deserved a better ending. Her friend got a "happier" ending than the main leads. This was supposed to be about Cen Jin and Li Wu.

With that said, this is not a bad drama at all. Maybe you will be like most people and really fall in love with it. Unfortunately, for me, it just wasn't what I expected when I first came across it. I was not as invested or entertained as I expected because of the way the story was told and the things they decided to focus on. I am not hating on the drama, just expressing how I honestly felt about it.

I think it was episode 1 or 2. I cannot remember what it was called but there was this guy sitting playing on his phone and the FL passes by and tells him to go for it and not miss his chance. I assume that was the scene you are talking about.

I hate gambling, it ruins so many lives. If that is what they were doing then it is yet another thing to dislike since I was not able to find the drama interesting even tho it was supposed to have a lot of potential.

I watched a Filipino drama a few years back but it was not my cup of tea. The acting was off and I could not stand the back and forth between English, Tagalog and whatever else they were speaking. I know this is supposed to be quite normal these days but it still felt weird to listen to.

With that said, after reading the summary, this seemed like the perfect drama to ease me into Filipino dramas since the plot seemed interesting. I though I should give them another try.

Unfortunately, after 3 episodes, I found myself skipping a lot and feeling bored. The language thing is still a issue for me, which is partially solved by the fact that in the past they did not really do that so it is mostly the modern day scenes that will have English thrown here and there. The storytelling is slow and weird, the acting is also not my cup of tea. The male actors look quite a bit older than the female lead and I cannot feel the chemistry. At this point I will just put it on hold until it finishes airing and then pick up from where I left. Maybe this is just not a great drama although it had the potential to be one.

If you guys have any other recommendations, let me know.

EDIT: Finally finished it, felt like a task. Definitely not my cup of tea and did not like how they decided to wrap up the drama.

I actually submitted this title more than 1 week ago and I don´t know if they have yet to review my submission or if there is a problem with their system and it did not save my edits.

If anyone else wants to try adding it, in the menu go to Explore-Add New Title (it is the last link) and add the info needed based on dramawiki and wetv. Hopefully if more people try to add the same drama they will finally review it? Or at least we can figure out if this functionality is still working.

Not feeling it. I think I will put it on hold until it finishes airing.

I tried watching for Park Seo Joon but the plot did not grab me. The actress playing the FL, for some reason, every drama she has been in I either did not watch or was not my cup of tea. I watched only the 1st episode so maybe it gets better but at this point I do not feel like investing my time without knowing that for sure. Will wait until all episodes are out to see what people are saying about it and decide if its worth giving another chance.

At the beginning, like the first few episodes, I also thought it was clever to do that. But it only made sense to do that in the beginning. When they kept doing it for the entire drama it just messed with the pace of an already slow paced drama. Even something good can become too much when overused, just like an overly sweet cake that tastes great but once you reach the 3rd bite you start feeling sick and want to stop eating.

Although slice of life and slow burn plots are not my cup of tea, I have watched a few dramas, anime, etc with this genre that were well executed and found myself invested in them but this one is just outright boring.

It is like they tried to serve us a fancy dish, took everything into consideration while preparing it but forgot to add salt to the food and served this bland dish that we have to force ourselves to finish.

My problem with the flashbacks was not the flashbacks themselves but the way they were edited in. And yes, their love story is so underwhelming, I did not feel much emotion from them.

This does not deserve a first chance, much less a second chance. Why? Here are just a "few" reasons why:

- The main leads barelly spend any time together for about the first half of the drama;
- The flashbacks to their younger days are thrown in out of nowhere at every moment in a way that does not feel natural;
- There is no chemistry, not between the leads nor between her and her child. It all feels so acted out, there is no emotion;
- The pacing of the drama is already pretty slow but they thrown in supporting characters and their relationships to drag things even further;
- All big reveals that should come with some drama (like the clearing up of past misunderstandings or the kid finding out she is his mother) are done in such an underwhelming way, even when we had to wait a long time for them to happen, that you just want to say: Wait, that's it?
- There is no climax. The drama ends as bland as it starts. You know it is the last episode because there are no more episodes after episode 28.
- Extra: No one is held accountable for the very serious things they did. Everything is swept under a rug, like the dirt you need to hide but are too lazy to actually clean up so you just sweep it under a rug because if you cannot see it, it does not exist.

There is so much more I could say but to sum it up: watching this will be a HUGE waste of your time.

They could have made this more tolerable if the leads had chemistry and actually spent time together or if they focused more on her getting close to her son and had given us a lot of heartwarming mother-son moments. I cannot recommend this at all, it fails at all genres and at whatever it was trying to accomplish.

The first half was decent but, about halfway, the cases and everything that was going on felt a bit boring and I started to skip scenes. Still not a bad drama if you like investigation and Chinese Republican Era dramas. Plus, a lot of dramas from this era end in tragedy, and without giving spoilers, this one has a decend ending.

By the end yes but I created this scenario in my mind early on. I thought she might get arrested and then sent to a mental institution or something. I mean, she was never even diagnosed.

This a great drama, at least until near the end, with amazing acting BUT if you want healing, you will not get it here.

The drama is dark, the female lead is an anti-hero who directly or indirectly causes the deaths and unhappiness of a lot of people.

The ending is open and pretty crappy in my opinion but if you watch it knowing that and do not get yourself too attached to any characters, I mean for real, don´t get attached to anyone because the only person who is "safe" in this sort of plot is the female lead, then it is still worth watching for the amazing acting and for how different it is from your regular kdrama.