Under the current COVID lock-down, a lot of people depend on Netflix, Youtube, and social media. Some people may also read newspapers, magazines, and books to limit their daily screen time. However, all the mentioned ones are visual mediums that have your eyes and bodies tied around. For a housewife like me, putting a chuck of time off for those activities is a luxury itself because I always have endless small tasks to do right next to me. Plus, a new task of caring locked-down family members 24/7 has been added to them. Thus, I tend to go for auditory mediums such as radio, audio-books, and Youtube-lectures that can free my eyes and hands. I am quite happy with these media because I can combine work and fun at the same time. Nevertheless, too much language exhausts my mind at the end of the day, and I couldn’t listen to them all day long.  

          However, I recently found a very pleasing and useful medium: ASMR! It is a whole new world to me. It plays familiar and soothing sounds for quite a long time. Whenever I get tired of language, music, or intense contents, I go for ASMR. It is quite relaxing and pleasing to hear ASMR sounds. Some are just composed of natural sounds, and the others are composed of sounds and music. There are ASMRs that even have sounds, music, and video altogether. Personally, I don’t prefer that much. The reason I like ASMR is that I can play that endlessly because it is not stimulating at all. 

          One of my favorite creators is “asmr soupe.” She uploads various themed ASMRs. Among them, I like cafe noise, movie-themed ones, and location-themed ones. My 5 favorite lists are as follows:

ASMR A Night in Paris Ambience and Music (Good for studying. It has conversation noise from the street with soft jazz music)

ASMR Home Alone OST Somewhere in My Memory with Snowy Winter, Christmas Ambience (Who doesn’t like Home Alone movies? It brings happy memories of Christmas)

ASMR A Silent Christmas Night Carols & Fireplace, Night Ambience (Christmas music is even more soothing in Summer!)

ASMR Crayon Shin-Chan’s House Ambience Korean Ver  (It is themed with a cheerful Japanese cartoon for children: the mischievous child gets sleepy in mid-day with baseball broadcasting noise on TV and bird’s chirping sound outside)  

ASMR Korean Traditional Ambience and Music (It is themed with an old folk painting of Korea. It goes back in time to the Choseon dynasty, to somewhere in the mountains. It has traditional string- instrument music, combined with water sound and birds chirping. Very peaceful and exotic.)