Short post is short. Hopefully.

Hello everyone, long time no see.

I’ve been a bit caught up with various things lately – I did write up a draft post which is in its progress and I will publish it eventually when I have some time to actually sit down and type.

Things have been a bit difficult as of late due to a variety of factors. I’ve sorted out most of what I needed to do in regards to my late father’s remains, which is a breather. I have lots left to do but haven’t even had the chance to start to deal with such matters. I’ve also tried to direct most of my time and attention to homewares and things related to home in order to make home more comfortable for us. I’m currently looking forward to having a really long holiday and being able to paint the entire apartment and replacing door handles. Not too sure if I will be able to manage it all on my own, but I think I can do it. I’ve been cleaning out my room and organising my wardrobe… next time I will need to clear out our storeroom as it’s just a bunch of stuff stacked in a huge pile. New furniture to come… probably within the next two years or so.

I’ve been really busy at work because I’ve suddenly got a whole lot of work to do. A lot of new responsibilities and it’s difficult trying to manage everything at once. I’m trying to take it slowly one step at a time though, and hopefully things will work out for the better. There’s just a lot of instability and uncertainty going on around in my workplace – with people taking leave and leaving more burden for me, I’ll eventually end up with way too much on my plate I can’t handle.

I’ve been trying to meet up with old friends, new friends – but sadly, two days off a week isn’t enough. I am finding it hard to juggle time for friends, my mum, and surprisingly – myself. There are days when I just want to stay home and see nobody. I enjoy the company of others because it reminds me that I have a social life and a life outside mine to live – but I get so tired since I’m already tired from work.

I tried to make plans for a short trip but that fell through for reasons… that weren’t even valid. Let’s just say that’s another story to tell when I feel like ranting. For now, I don’t really want to rant; I have no energy to even have a strong opinion on anything.

Long story short, I’m still around – just busy and finding it hard to manage my time. Unfortunately there’s only one of me and lots many of “you” – I really try to distribute myself amongst you all but for now I’m just trying my best without tiring myself out mentally and physically.

I’m really looking forward to a long rest… that is all.

Hopefully the next time I update I will have something fancy with pictures and all.

Experiencing the loss of a loved one.

I don’t think it has been all that long since I’ve updated this blog and I deliberated over writing this post. I think it’s probably a bit easier for me this way, yet it will be a difficult post to write. I kept rewording and rewording what I wanted to say in my mind, and every time it just broke my heart and brought tears to my eyes.

If you want the short version of what I am about to say then - I won’t be attending any parties this year (this is a personal decision, and I am obligated to do so as it’s something prohibited whilst mourning), and I will be harder to contact because I want some time to myself this year. If you need to contact me though, it’s the same. I might just take a bit longer to respond. You don’t need to read any further. If you like, you may continue reading.

A lot of people who know me in person probably get a very cool or cold vibe from me. I know I can come across as stern, unfriendly, and even unapproachable. I seem moody (though most of the time I am normal – just slightly introverted) and you could even describe me as depressed when I sometimes just sit there and not say a word. A lot of the time I reason my strange behaviour with the messy break up I had back in 2009 or whenever it was. There was another reason why it hit me so hard, and it was one I never really spoke about.

I tried to hide it and keep it to myself because I didn’t want people to feel disturbed or concerned about it. I didn’t want people questioning me over it either because if the topic was brought up, it’d make me feel uncomfortable and I wouldn’t know how to respond. I only told a few people who I felt I trusted the most, and a few people who picked up along the way because I had to suddenly do strange things like leave in the middle of my work shift or quit a university elective altogether.

For those who did pick up on it, my father was in a state of constant illness. He was a healthy, strong and intelligent man who was feared by many, but respected by most. Long story short, he was awesome because he was so intelligent and accomplished a lot within a short period of time.

When he got sick, the doctors told him that he would be fine and could continue work after treatment. We all thought that was the case – but he never recovered. Things just went downhill from that point on. Although unwell, he was still able to do things for us, which included home renovations even though he was in no physical state to do so. There were times when I just wish he rested, did nothing, and had more energy that way.

The main turning point in this whole story was back in 2009 which was probably one of the worst and darkest years I had. This was the time when my father was hospitalised and required surgery – the operation was a success, until they tried to wake up him – to which at that point he didn’t. He was resuscitated, but just a few nights later, he almost stopped breathing. It took him weeks to get back on his feet because he was bedridden for so long. We thought we were about to lose him, but thankfully we didn’t. It was this moment that I resented how I had to face all this after having to experience a break up because I thought that I would have had someone by my side to help me get through the hard time. In that respect I was, and still am very bitter about it.

From then on the story was about the same – in and out of hospital. I resented myself for thinking that it was a nuisance at first – eventually I grew used to it and it no longer surprised me if I had to find myself in the emergency room in the early hours of the morning, or perhaps even overnight. I had to take time off work, but everything was alright – we were prepared for it, and we knew that it was going to be increasingly difficult for us, but we could get by.

Perhaps he knew that his time was coming to an end – he started to do strange things in the recent months. He kept on telling us to do things that weren’t important (in our opinion) but in hindsight, he wanted us to do these things so that he could be able to leave us knowing we had resolved all the little problems we had around our home.

I guess the thing that hurts most is that all of this feels so unreal to me – it was just only a moment ago when he was still breathing and trying to tell us things. What I’m glad about is that I managed to see him during his last minutes while he was still with us, although he wouldn’t wake up even though we called desperately for him to respond to us. He seemed to be asleep. Probably he was worried that he would scare us, so he left when we turned our backs away, and the next thing we knew when we saw him again, he was already gone.

I wasn’t able to tell him stories that I wanted to tell him about, stories that he probably wanted to hear about. It was too late already. He saved his last breath to hear me call him dad when I got home from work before he decided to leave us for good.

My dad was in all honesty a good man. He didn’t deserve to be so sick for so long, and at such a young age. But dwelling on these thoughts won’t do much, as all I hope now is that he can be at rest peacefully. Although we miss him a lot and still have a lot of trouble adapting without him since we are just only a family of three – now two – I sincerely hope that he is now in a better place where there is no sickness, pain, anxiety, stress or worries.

The first week or so was especially tough on us – that is, on mum and me. I took 2 weeks off work (well it was one week but stretched over) and every single day was long, tedious and emotionally draining. Suddenly our home was so empty and quiet. Our meals were eaten in tears. Now it’s a lot better, but once I start to cue on memories of my dad and his last moments, I feel bad all over again.

Dad, I hope that you are happy wherever you are now. We didn’t really talk much because we were conflicted at times, but it doesn’t mean much – I simply resembled you too much because I inherited your personality. I probably regret not telling you how much I love you, but I really do, because you’re my dad and I was proud of that fact – but hopefully you understand because my actions may suggest otherwise. You taught me a lot, and you were my idol. You were brave, and you did a lot for us. May you rest in peace – we will think of you every day and miss you dearly.

Interlude

Well, happy Chinese/ Lunar New Year to all those who celebrate it. It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, and I realised I made a mistake with the Canberra post because it was meant to be 2 days 1 night (I wrote 1 day 2 nights LOL HOW DOES THAT EVEN CALCULATE CORRECTLY UNLESS I ARRIVE THERE AT NIGHT AND THEN LEAVE AT THE FOLLOWING).

What have I been up to lately? Well I had a consumerism post in the drafts but abandoned it because I’ve been so busy torrenting stuff to the point it makes my Internet unusable while I am downloading. 

Time out – exercise. Relax and ease your mind.

I’ve also decided to take some time out for myself every night – instead of 9gagging or doing nothing in front of my computer, I’ve taken the liberty of camping out on a yoga mat in the living room. At first it was just stretching (because I am the most unflexible person ever) and some lame attempts at doing push ups. 

I used to be able to do most things in high school – minus the stretching and doing splits or cartwheels or flips. I am just surprised that even though I feel like my body is stronger, I can’t do half as many push ups or whatever as I used to. Before yes, they were hard, but doing 20 or 30 wasn’t too difficult. Perhaps it was peer pressure because everyone in the room was doing it and you were determined to not be the weakest one. Now when I try doing it again, damn, it’s hard.

It’s a bit like that in every day life – if you don’t keep up with something, it’s hard to catch up, especially if it requires effort. Just because you did it before, doesn’t mean that you can do it again now or later. Just like how bodies grow old and incapable of performing certain tasks, people change and some things can’t come back or can be redone.

To my utter displeasure I was saddened that I was unable to do a candlestick (used to do them perfectly with ease), but on the 2nd night I tried, I was able to do it – along with sore arms. 

It has been a really long time since I’ve had my body ache (the last time was when I went out for a jog and that was a really long time ago – or perhaps the time I jogged on the spot for an hour. Hmm.). Yes, it’s painful and uncomfortable but I think when I was younger, I never fully appreciated the positive things associated with overstrained muscles lol – I’m starting to appreciate it now because I never embraced those things when I was young.

When I was younger I never appreciated these muscle pains – or how I could fit my feet into small shoe sizes – or how long I could grow my hair. I never thought of working towards a healthier body and always assumed for some reason that it really had to do with genetics. I never appreciated a hard workout that would make my face flaming red and leave me soaking wet in sweat – I found that so unattractive and a nuisance. I never really cared much about a lot things that I thought didn’t matter, but actually did.

Anyway, it sounds really silly in a way but I youtubed some pilates workouts (not following them that intensely or closely, but just noting the positions and the movements via le doodles) to give myself an idea of what I could do in a stretching routine. So far, the move that is killing me the most is the plank (which consists of your entire body being supported by just your elbows and your toes) because it really works out my arms. After my successful candlestick, the next move that is working me the most is doing several of these “candlesticks” by slowly rolling my legs/feet over my head and then slowly lowering them onto the ground. This actually puts a lot of stress onto my arms (which is surprising because you wouldn’t expect that). I’ve also managed to touch the ground with my toes now, so tomorrow night will be super fun.

Although this is just night number 2 trying out these moves, I must say, I am having fun and I think I have improved and grown stronger. The first night I literally couldn’t do anything – I’d simply fail, topple over and then laugh at how much I sucked. Now I’m actually sort of doing something that vaguely resembles what I am supposed to do – and hey, that is a start.

Honestly, I am having fun. Stretching and working on building my strength takes my mind off things – so much that I am concentrating more on what I am doing than what I am playing on the television screen. I feel more energised, and I feel like I’ve accomplished something in the respect that I haven’t been wasting my time after work which I usually waste on doing useless things.

Last but not least, I think I am sleeping better – and this started when I was just starting to do my stretches. I am a very light sleeper and if I am anxious, I can hardly fall asleep. I stir a lot in my sleep and I can wake up to any slight movement or sound. If I am sharing a room with someone, the sound of their breathing (not even talking about snoring) is enough to keep me awake – and I’m able to report the next morning how many times they have turned or started to snore; that’s how shallow my sleep is. Lately though, I think my sleep is deeper and perhaps I just stir about once per night, which is an improvement to maybe 3 times or whatever it was before. 

Corny as it sounds, I’m excited to continue what I’m doing now and I’ll be searching up more movements I can do. I think I should also buy a book perhaps – that can help. Either way, it’s something I’m ready to invest in, and it’s probably the next best thing I’ve been excited over since I bought my hula hoop. WOOP. LONG BLOCK OF TEXT IS LONG.

Last but not least I’ve been seeing the influx of posts on 9gag and meme sites about skipping leg day – which is saying how some people have a muscular upper body but skinny legs since they’ve neglected their lower body training. Just saw a parallel universe post about someone skipping torso day - well guess what I am in that parallel universe >_> Not that I super muscular legs or whatever, but I must say my legs are at a level where I am satisfied with them. My upper body however, OMG FLAIL ARMS.

Seriously considering buying a wii and getting the balance board so I have something to force me into doing exercise :3

Meet up with ALL your friends!

The second half of January and first half of February was important to me because it meant that I was able to see friends that I haven’t seen in a while. It was great catching up with everyone. Although I like to whinge and complain and be a complete bitch about things, I really do appreciate it deep down. Whether it be “I’ll see you soon!” and then turn up hours later *shakes fist* or not replying my questions – I am glad to have you all in my life. So I thank you all for the things you’ve done – some of you have made a trip out to travel and see me, others have actually made the extra trip and came over to MY suburb to see me. I am also touched for friends who have taken time off work to see me – using a precious day off and letting me er waste most of it is pretty awesome in some respects.

I had a few different variations of the above the past month, and it was pretty different to the boring lifestyle I was so bitter about. It’s a good thing in a way. Be it the spontaneous dinner or random phone call saying “hey I’m downstairs at your place, come out now” – as long as it brightens up my social life I WELCOME YOU.

I can’t pinpoint any one encounter that was more important than another – I just had a good time each time. Outings designed to just simply relax and think about nothing? That’s exactly what I did. Catch up? Did that definitely. Hopefully I can keep this up for this year – it’ll make life a lot better.

The past week I’ve been pretty busy with the company’s new year’s dinner (I would list all the food I ate, but I shall refrain or else it will make me sound like a fatty fat fatty) – Friday was a blockbuster since I was out all day and only got home at about 11pm (that night I was out with friends and then bumped into MORE friends).

Beauty matters.

So I’ve ended my clothes shopping and I’ve ended my beauty hauls for this entire year. Recently I’ve been breaking out with pimples I usually don’t get… it’s really burdensome because it’s rare for me and I don’t really know what to do to fix it lol. The most common solution is to simply buy more shit I don’t need and hope that it fixes it. WELL NOT THIS TIME ROUND.

Will do more beauty posts. Hopefully I will also take more photos of myself. Go out and go crazy. I want to do a lot of things I didn’t manage to do when I was younger – still can be considered young now, but if I do anything crazy later on I will be too old to do so. Maybe one day I’ll do my makeup so crazy nobody can recognise me one day. I always wanted to do that once for uni (just turn up looking super different), but never did

Holidays holidays

So I am hopefully able to go overseas at the end of March/beginning of April. In the talks of going overseas with a friend… it was Fiji but then it was somehow mutated into a place named Singapore. Not that Singapore is bad, I want to go to Singapore (probably more than Fiji), but the main reason why I wanted Fiji was because I was in the mood to go somewhere super quiet and different. I really wanted to just sit in front of the sea all day, which is totally not me.

Singapore’s good because it’s easy to get around. Their dollar is very similar to ours and it’s clean and safe. Probably my biggest question is what to do there – I’m not sure if I want to go shopping because I haven’t quite saved up enough for it. Well correction – last year I moved the majority of my savings somewhere I wouldn’t be able to touch, which was probably the smartest thing I’ve done considering how much I spend on stupid things. 

Hopefully it goes through and I get to go on my holiday. If said friend doesn’t go, I will genuinely consider going myself, so I have about a month to decide on whether or not I want to go, where to stay and what to do there. 

I’ll be going for just a very short trip – I was contemplating on doing a stop at Hong Kong somewhere along the way but it wasn’t very economical. Not sure if there is something wrong with their computer system… but the prices look shocking for now lol.

Anyway it is getting late. That’s just a small update on where I’m at and I’m happy for now. Hopefully I will have an awesome year this year – if not I will MAKE it so Later!

 

K is for Karl. And err, Misa.

Hello all, this is probably going to be one of my very rare fashion related posts that I am going to present to you very shortly if you scroll down

As some of you may or may not know, I do have a prevailing interest in fashion though it is very broad, rarely talked about, and highly inconsistent. A lot of my effort goes right into work clothes (I have an all black attire dress code, which means the majority of my clothes are unsurprisingly black), which leaves me very little clothing that is colourful for the days that I don’t need to work. I do wear black on my days out, but again my clothing selection is fairly limited because I would most likely look at a piece of clothing and go “eurgh, I can’t wear that. I wear that to work!” even though it is fine for going out.

Recently I’ve been trying to purchase clothing with more colour (in particular I am obsessed with minty pastel blue – so far I’ve scored one tshirt and one colour block dress) and I’ve been trying to buy dresses that actually fit me, rather than hang around loosely. A lot of the clothing I purchase is from online, so I tend to size up rather than size down in case if it doesn’t fit. This means consistently choosing size 10 dresses even though I’m supposed to be a size 8, or purchasing a size small instead of an XS. One tip for online shopping is to look at the item measurements and choosing one which fits your shoulders well, regardless of the size as to me, size is just a number. Measurements mean much more and help more in the long run – and this is what I have tried to do lately.

I’ve had a bit of an interest in a brand named Karl for quite some time now (pretty much ever since its launch, actually). Karl is the label of Karl Lagerfeld, Chanel’s creative director. At first I was a bit worried that the pricing would be way too much for me to afford in bulk (perhaps the piece or so), but to my surprise the label is a very different approach than what I had expected. Karl has its own unique style which combines the elegance and simplicity of a largely monotone palette, slight rocker influences and in the office out to dinner chic. At times formal, though mostly in the “can dress up or down” category, I think it’s so fun. In some ways it totally reminds me why I really liked BAPE – it’s like street wear, but not really casual – it’s awesome. I won’t go on too much about it – you can see the designs for yourself at the official website, www.karl.com. (Try their timewarp thing… and the other interactive things they have on their website!)

I think one of the things I like most about the brand is the approach to marketing. How can you launch your own brand and make it an instant success? Is it the designer itself, or the label? In this case, the designer himself (along with the label) is so iconic that you can instantly recognise a piece by… the designer himself. Literally. And this is the fun part, because I think that this is the most creative monogram probably invented so far.

All my labels. In total I purchased 3 jackets, 1 collar, 1 jumper and a pair of pants. I don’t think I’ve bought this much in one go from the one brand – ever, in terms of quantity.

 

 

I purchased an asymmetric jacket that kind of looks like a motorcycle jacket. To my surprise, it was padded (inside there was the Karl monogram lining) and there were these little stud details with Karl himself. I am really digging the attention to detail on these items because it makes fashion actually fun! I know it might be a bit strange having an image of someone on your clothing (this is why I tend to avoid clothes with people on them), but this is really an icon now. I actually don’t mind it at all – it’s subtle enough so that it’s not in your face, and even if it is, so what?

My mum really doesn’t like this jumper much because of the plastic sleeves, but I’ve been searching everywhere for a jacket or a jumper with a massive K on it since my name also starts with a K. I’ve noticed that Karl also does baseball/ fraternity jackets with the K as well, but it’s not currently available. I just hope that they will launch a similar design later on the track so I will be able to get one! I personally like this jumper a lot and I’ve been eyeing it for a while, so whatever!

All of the labels are on the inside of the jacket rather than at the base of the neck. It’s a pretty different approach.

This is the inside of jacket#2, which is a wool blend blazer. The blazer doesn’t feel like wool at all (which is probably a good thing) and is a boxy fit yet is good enough for formal occasions. The sleeves were also intentionally done long and had splits in them to encourage you to either bunch up the sleeves or fold them. Detail, detail.

This is jacket#3, which is a parka/anorak/ raincoat with a hood. You’d be surprised, but I don’t own any waterproof jackets that are appropriate for a spring/summer type of weather when it’s pouring down rain. I’ve been saving up/ meaning to buy a Burberry trench but never really justified it because I’m very particular about what I want. I’m also not quite prepared to spend that much on a trench coat (I’ve been buying other items like padded trench coats, wool capes and fitted jackets because I think they are more bang for my buck – probably not if I add up the total now, but…) – AND it’s not casual enough (unless we’re talking Burberry Brit) for me to want to wear it on a daily basis or just to catch up with friends since I’m usually overdressed (depending on who I meet up with) already. This anorak is pretty awesome since it is long so it is casual, has plenty of pockets and zippers to carry any valuables, is lightweight and has the entire Karl monogram over it without being too out there. At a distance, it looks like a camo print, and I’m okay with camo. I mean, camo is not really me, but I’m open to trying new things. Having said camo, this is a black jacket, not a green jacket.

I made a gamble and went for these skinny pants. They fit on just perfectly – slightly tight (various factors – I am not as slim as I could be right now, the pants are a high rise fit, which is something I’m massively not used to since all the pants I own are low rise), but not uncomfortable. I think they will stretch or I will save it for an occasion where I don’t require much bending or binge eating (so not work, and not dinner). The length is pretty good (surprisingly since I am well, not short, but compared to Western girls, I am) and is perfect. It’s a pretty smooth fit.

 

Extra button included if you lose your button. There are many more details but I couldn’t take photos of every single one, as I kept discovering more and more as I went through my stuff.

You can see my beaded collar here. It’s surprisingly versatile and makes any crappy tshirt look decent.

Well, everything I bought in this haul was monotone (grey or black) so that sort of defeated the purpose of having a colourful wardrobe. Having said that though, I bought 3 jackets that I didn’t have to begin with in the sense that I didn’t have jackets that were similar already (except the asymmetric one – I bought that with the intention of throwing out the one I have now which is err faux leather and gross). I think the highlight of this was actually the collar, because I went crazy and bought the other 2 collars available (well there are actually 3 more, but I didn’t want the lace one), I will be receiving those soon. I never thought that collars would be so handy because I thought that they looked unnatural and added on/awkward. But surprisingly, I think it’s suitable and matches what I think is in line with my style.

For the jackets I purchased larger than what I required because my size was sold out *cries* (the anorak is a size S/M which is the smallest size available and fits loose). Having said that though, it’s really just the shoulder and sleeve area that’s a little loose and the sleeves a wee bit long. Otherwise, they fit pretty snugly around my waist and seem to fit quite well when zipped or buttoned up. I didn’t try on the jumper, but it is meant to fit loose anyway.

Karl’s pricing isn’t too bad, their prices are really reasonable considering the design and thought that has gone into the clothing. The fabric quality is also pretty good. Probably one bad thing was the blazer I bought had quite a few loose threads hanging about (had nothing to do with the stitching quality though!) which probably wasn’t a big deal, but was unexpected. Good for your money’s worth, especially since I grabbed these on sale.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this. I am waiting for my collars and I also ordered a dress and a tshirt also by Karl (I know, this is borderline madness, but I promise, that will be IT for this year!). I haven’t really done much clothes shopping in the past year, so that’s the end for me now. I won’t expect to buy anything else for the next half year or so.

For leggy Sydneysiders, TOPSHOP has their MOTO Leigh supersoft jeans (in select colours) on sale down to a bargain $36 or $38 which is half price. They are super comfortable, and very nice fitting jeans, so go grab yourself a bargain before they are gone. The reason why I didn’t buy was because they only had 34″ long jeans in my size left, and unfortunately I am a 32″ in length, so the 34″s will be too long on me. They also have some 30″ long, but that’s too short for me!

That’s it from me now. I will most likely update in a few days’ time – I don’t get to work much this week (days in lieu awwww yeahhhh) so I will have time to blog about random crap.

Canberra 1 Day 2 Nights 2013

Firstly – I HATE THIS NEW WORDPRESS FORMAT THING. The whole interface is small AS and although I know Internet Explorer is a piece of shit, I actually DO USE IT and it is NOT compatible with IE. /rant

So surprise – I am actually in a blogging mood because I had a good Italian dinner with the colleagues tonight and it’s actually early enough for me to blog. I am also bored out of my mind because well, various reasons.

I’ve actually accomplished my “go interstate” resolution – which is actually a lot sooner than I had expected considering I didn’t want to go anywhere at all. I did cheat because Canberra is just so close, boring and unspectacular that it’s probably better off being called New South Wales, but technically whilst driving there, you do end up in bits of Victoria and eventually the Australian Capitol Territories.

For those who aren’t Australian, Canberra is the capitol city of Australia. It was constructed as a city that is equidistant from Sydney and Melbourne (that is, it’s smack bang in the middle, probably give or take a few metres ) because nobody could make up their minds as to which city would be better or appropriate as the nation’s capitol. It is a highly planned city (in the centre at the very least) so you will see a very neat road plan which is easy to get around.

I think the most important things to note about Canberra is that it is either Government orientated, if not tourist orientated. Everything is quite spread out so you do need to either drive or sit in a tour bus. If you were expecting something spectacular, this is not the place. Well, funnily enough though, I did find something different about Canberra which I wasn’t really expecting.

This is not the first time I’ve been to Canberra – in fact, it’s my third. The two previous times were during school excursions (once in primary, then in high school) and nothing about Canberra was fun except for Questicon in my humble opinion.

I had a day off on Thursday which allowed me to slowly pack my bags during whenever I could be bothered during the day. I probably packed too much because I realised that overnight stays actually don’t require much; for instance, slippers. *shrugs*

Why did I go to Canberra? That’s a pretty good question but the answer was to visit a friend. Sounds like a far stretch to go just to visit a friend, but I’ve done it before and that was to go to Hong Kong. It’s just one of the on-the-way things to do. Probably my strongest motivation was not friend-visiting for the Hong Kong trip, but I suppose it was the strongest factor for this trip. Given that, Canberra has nothing else apart from that which is what triggered the extremely short stay. That and I had work on Sunday.

I took a coach with Murrays on Friday morning . Murrays has pretty reasonable prices, are very frequent as they leave by the hour, and they are extremely punctual and leave on the dot.

To prepare myself fully, I took a Travacalm tablet before boarding since I do get motion sickness. I don’t know why I get it, because usually I’m okay. I guess if the driver is really bad, or if the road is super bumpy and the vehicle is stuffy I have a higher tendency to feel sick. The most recent (serious) precedent was my Melbourne 2010 trip on the way back to Sydney. I felt like I wanted to vomit, I was also dizzy and I could barely keep my eyes open.

To my surprise though as you can see from the photograph above, the coach was actually quite nice. Didn’t have a funky smell, had clean leather seats which were comfortable, and had good air conditioning and ventilation. This was nothing like those crappy smelly old coaches we had during primary or high school.

Basically the tablet knocked me out for a damn good 3 hours and extra 2 after I arrived at Canberra. I was drifting in and out of “sleep” (by this I mean I couldn’t keep my eyes open, but I didn’t sleep either – because I was listening to 3.5 hours of quality Big Bang music) and just couldn’t open my eyes much. I was also super dehydrated because the medicine probably asks you swig down dam [sic] loads of water (lol pun). I didn’t want to use the toilet on board so I kept the water volume to a minimum whilst riding to Canberra. I was also on a very full bus (all seats taken) given that a lot of people were travelling down for the weekend.

I arrived at Canberra at about 1:30pm where my friend picked me up from the Jolimont Tourist Centre. From there we went to the National Art Gallery of Australia which was about a 10-15 minute drive from the city centre.

I did not plan this trip at all. Yes I booked the coach tickets and hotel room, but I did not have a clue where I wanted to go. I figured if I didn’t know where to go, I would just stay in my room.

Thank God I did not walk from my hotel to the art gallery – on Google maps the distance looks walkable, but we were probably driving anywhere from 60-80km/h and it was a 35 degree day with pretty high UV levels (I was wearing a dress and my uncovered knees went red from being scorched under the dashboard – GG).

We had lunch at the cafe which has really good fries. Get those.

Wandered around the gallery for about 40 minutes. There were some really great pieces there. Probably not worth walking all the way from my hotel to there (would have taken me an hour I reckon) under the scorching sun.

We then drove to Cockington Gardens which I had no idea what it was. Actually it was pretty cute because it’s a miniature/ scale garden of some pretty cute things. I didn’t take many photos because I couldn’t see what I was doing (my phone brightness is always low so I have no idea what the heck I’m taking a photo of). The gardens close at 5pm (most things close 5pm) and we arrived at about 3. Paid the entry fee ($17.50/adults) and probably stayed there 40minutes max. At this point I was getting a bit red from the sun, but still, bearable.

If you press the button the train goes!

There were a few more photos (actually I took the most there out of all the places I went) but I shall not bore you all. It’s pretty cute, you could check it out but it doesn’t take too long to complete the whole place. Or rather, we were probably too lazy to check it all out.

After that we drove up to Mount Ainslie, which I presume is the highest point in Canberra. It was pretty spectacular – probably even better at night when you can see the lights. However when I got there, I remarked how much it looked like the perfect place to shoot a crime scene for a movie or something.

SEE WHAT I MEAN?

Anyway I am pretty scared of heights unless there is a balustrade and I’m sure it’s structurally stable to lean on. This was actually pretty scary and I was too chickenshit to go anywhere near the edge. I mean, what if some crazy person decided to push you, or a gust of strong wind were to give you a nudge?! Paranoia at its finest.

This view was pretty cool. You can see Parliament house somewhere along the main axis of the city, which was pretty neat.

I made Mount Ainslie look pretty hardcore, but there are viewing decks and stuff available, so do not fret!

Literally after taking these 3 photos (took a lazyass total of 2 minutes) we decided to leave. Yes. ………..

Yeah.

I don’t have any photos for what happened next. And no, I safely left the mountain in one piece. In a super condensed nutshell, found out/saw the place my friend was staying at and was flabbergasted  met a friend of a friend for the first time, board game building trains and stuff, got the longest route but failed to collect many points and consequently came last, had Spanish tapas and drank ridiculously weak Sangria.

Now for Spanish tapas we went south to a suburb named Manuka (pronounced Maaah-newka, NOT manoooka as in rhyming with bazooka, though the honey Manuka honey is manooka honey) which is a small eating district so to speak. There was just a small centre of restaurants and the tapas we had wasn’t bad.

From then on we went to the city centre for drinks (though I didn’t really drink anything – tried cider for the first time in my life and it just tasted like unsweetened apple juice with a 20% composition of apple cider vinegar, which is a familiar taste to me as I had to take it lots when I came down with food poisoning – so in a nutshell, cider is gross because it brings back food poisoning memories). There are quite a few boutique bars so to speak in the centre. Not many people around, but then again there weren’t many people around to start with.

I finally checked in at about 10:30pm (check in is until 11pm, so it’s NOT 24 hours since it’s Canberra – GG) and dropped my bag into my room. After sitting in the trunk for about 10 hours, everything in my bag was warm. Yes. WARM. My shoes in there were WARM. I actually bothered to pack a pair of spare shoes because I wasn’t sure of where I was going and thought I possibly needed something more formal in case.

We then attempted to go “clubbing” which is actually the term for a bar playing loud music and has an atmosphere somewhat appropriate for some light dancing. Yes, I think that’s a pretty accurate description. The most common name that popped up was “Mooseheads” which is a bar/club whatever you wanted to call it which seemed to be popular with *cough* 18 year old high school kids going into university and trying to be dope and all. We didn’t really want to go, but decided to go just to laugh it off – and I kid you not, I entered laughing and left laughing. That place, no offence, is a joke. The floor was sticky, the “dancing” was like lifting imaginary weights into the air and well yeah, there were just teenagers hanging around trying to chug down alcohol SO HARDCORE but it was just beer.

We couldn’t get into anywhere we thought looked somewhat nice because the guys were wearing joggers so we couldn’t get in. At around 12:30am we walked somewhere behind I was staying but called it quits when we noticed there was a line to get in.

So yeah. Back to the hotel (well technically I booked a one bedroom apartment). Was disappointed because the spa looked grotty so I didn’t use it. Was tired as but still showered, cleaned my face – the works. I REALLY WANTED TO SLEEP BUT I COULDN’T. I was still wide awake at 4am and barely got 2 hours sleep. Got up at 7:30 to pee. Thought to myself, screw this, let’s try sleep a bit more. Couldn’t really and got up at 8:30 to groom myself and have a light breakfast consisting of warm boiled water and 2 grainy muesli bars.

The next day we went to play mini golf called Pitch n Putt which is a form of mini golf where you are on the mini gold course with 2 options – to pitch or to putt. Therefore you are given 2 different types of golf clubs. It’s actually pretty fun because you need to decide when you need to pitch or putt, and well, yeah.

I’ve never played golf before so this was completely new to me. I really wanted to rage/quit after my first few failed hits, but after that I could actually get the ball in after 4 shots (yeah, it’s still crap but hey it’s something!) I was actually having fun. This was the only photo I took because it was SUPER SUNNY and we were constantly on the go.

The UV levels there were so strong my feet were burning. I was wearing flats because I didn’t know we were going to play golf, and I really got quite burnt. I mean, I didn’t have a hat but I left my hair down and applied SPF 50 sunscreen. Admittedly it’s not that bad, but I’m still red now after a good 36 hours.

Somewhere in the middle the sky got cloudy so I stopped burning, but we only made it to 9 holes (paid for 18 but I was burning and it was lunch time – took a while because we had 4 people so yeah). Then we went to Questacon but I was only able to have lunch and then look at about 3 exhibits within an hour and then I had to leave.

I was not expecting to do all the above mentioned. The most I thought I would do was visit the art gallery, probably do window shopping at Canberra Centre (which I didn’t go to at all) and bludge in my apartment room. That’s how anti-social and boring I am. I didn’t expect to be dragged out and have to actually interact with people I did not know but had to meet while I was there. It wasn’t a bad thing because it was actually kind of fun and I was actually making the most out of my time.

Probably the thing that I got out of the Canberra trip was that even in a place which is seemingly boring, you need to make friends to survive. I mean, even here in Sydney with plenty to do, I am not making friends or seeing my friends often enough. No wonder I am going crazy and out of my mind. Everyone in Canberra was really friendly so it was a good change from the pace in Sydney where people are rude, rushed and push/shove you around. There is pretty much no traffic on the roads. Traffic is like, having 8 cars in front of you at a red traffic light. Driving to places is a stretch so it felt like it was in the bushes even though it’s technically a city.

Of course, nothing is perfect and my trip wasn’t amazeballs and perfect; I did have some gripes with this trip.

My favourite lipgloss by Etude House was leaking in my bag. I was wondering why my earphones were sticky and glittery and thought that I didn’t screw the cap on properly. In the morning at the hotel I noticed the lid cracked!! It was such a pity but I just had to throw it out… it was either the lip gloss or the bag, and I definitely would choose to save my bag instead.

At approximately the third hole at pitch n putt I managed to make a deep gash on the joint of my thumb (the most useful part) whilst taking a shot because the bracelet I was wearing on my right wrist decided to be cute and rip open the flesh on my left thumb. It was bleeding a bit and I was kindly sponsored an antiseptic handwipe one of the guys had, and I managed to dig out a tiny bandaid from my bag. I lost the bandaid about 3 holes later and had to play without. It wasn’t too bad because I was more distracted by say, the UV levels and getting my golf ball where I wanted it, but at Questacon when I was trying to clean my hands with Dettol hand sanitiser it stung like a bitch. Now, it still hurts and it’s annoying because I can’t bend my thumb. SUCKS.

Probably the biggest problem I have with the Canberra trip is that it was actually another self reflective journey. There were actually a few questions I wanted answered, which is why I made the trip in the first place. I left feeling more confused and probably more depressed than I was to begin with. It’s a complicated thing and it’s probably nothing worth thinking/brooding/worrying over, but I can’t help it because it is genuinely bothering me in some way.

I didn’t take a motion sickness pill on the way back and I had no troubles at all. I continued to listen to my music and I enjoyed the scenery all the way back to Sydney.

I used to think that Sydney’s bush areas were pretty creepy because I get weirded out by secluded areas since I so used to the city. But in a way, the Australian scenery is so unique it is beautiful in its own way. I can understand why people paint these landscapes or write about them so often. It was a type of beauty I never thought I’d learn to appreciate. There are more beautiful places in Australia so hopefully I will be able to explore them – I used to think “psh forget the other places cbb” but now I genuinely am interested in seeing them.

Either way, it was good to be back in Sydney. As for my troubles, I’ll let them iron out over time. For now I should be less depressed and try to live my life to the fullest because I get too old to do so. Everyone I met in Canberra was so young (younger than me, pretty much – most people anyway). After just going for 2 days it felt like I went somewhere super far and came back. I’m a bit out of step because the pace was so chill there.

Well, hopefully I will be back soon with a post. Hope you enjoyed this post and I genuinely encourage you to visit Canberra anyway if you have the chance to. You do need to travel by car or tour bus as mentioned previously, but it’s probably best explored with friends – I guess that’s what made my trip, and unexpectedly so.

2012 in retrospect and 2013 resolutions

… well that escalated quickly.

I’m sorry for not updating – actually, I’m not really sorry, I write sorry but don’t really mean it. I had a post up in the drafts as a progress thing but I never published it because… well, it was lacklustre, boring and meaningless. So I’d rather post up something that isn’t so blah and would actually look like something decent when I look back upon it in several years’ time to spare myself any delayed first  hand embarassment.

My day before Christmas, Christmas Day AND Boxing Day was spent working so 2012 tired me out like no other. I was lucky to not work the first day of the year, but I worked on the 31st December 2012. My New Year’s Eve was spent at home, lonely, watching the MBC Gayo Daejun and then sleeping after the first few fireworks were in the sky.

Strangely enough I didn’t set myself any targets for 2012 so I have no idea if I achieved anything.

In a nutshell, what I did for this year wasn’t that much, but it was an improvement to 2011 in some ways!

• Went to Melbourne in January 2012. Spent a reasonable amount of money and had reasonable amount of fun.
• Did attempt to go out (not as often as every week or two weeks), and did go out to dinner – shock horror – something I rarely do. I’m making an effort, okay.
• Spontaneously got pulled out to have dinner on several occasions – WHICH IS AMAZING BECAUSE IT NEVER HAS HAPPENED MUCH BEFORE D: It’s super awesome when you’re just at work or wherever and a random friend pops up and goes “hey, doing anything later? Let’s eat” – woahhhhhh mindblown.
• Went to Hong Kong/ Macau May 2012. Spent a reasonable amount of money but had a really boring time since I stayed way too long. Did not get wasted. Did not lose myself and go crazy. Will make note to do so next time I visit – which is probably some time this year.
• Went to the movies more often, surprisingly. I’m not a cinema person.
• Did sort of reach my savings target – just shy by a bit, but I already tucked it away into a good savings account where I can’t  touch it.

There is still a lot of room for improvement though. I realised that in 2011 I was so fixed on work I was too busy to do other things. In 2012 I had a lot more time for myself and took out time to do things that were self-reflective in a way. Went out more, enjoyed life a little bit more – gave myself some more fresh air and opportunities in a sense.

Of course not everything went well in 2012:

• Got food poisoning and didn’t eat for a whole week. Only got back to normal after 10 days – EEP. That was the worst thing that happened – probably next to encountering the dumbest customers I’ve encountered thus far (seriously, stupidity is a bottomless, mysterious pit of doom).
• Found out that my teeth and health was appalling, but apparently my health wasn’t too bad, and I found myself a good dentist I shall continue to visit.
• Extra workload and stress because of the economy and general increased workloads due to colleagues.

2013 resolutions

For this year, what I really want to aim to do this year is fairly simple – I keep saying it again and again though.

1. Save up half of my annual salary at the very least and be wiser with money. Maybe for this year I will only buy one expensive item only and just have that only for the entire year. As for what that one expensive item will be, I still don’t know yet. It could be a diamond, or it could be a handbag (tossing between Chanel or Dior – most likely Chanel, but eeeeep MONIES and not enough for it) or perhaps a watch (though most probably it won’t be a watch, because I don’t really need another watch). If not -
2. Go interstate once, go overseas once. At least And perhaps a road trip. Who knows?
3. Get a pay rise. Again.  And it’d better be a good one lololol.
4. Meet more people, perhaps get myself back into the rhythm of things and start seeing people. This also includes just meeting up with friends on a more regular basis. I really lost touch with people in general and have a trust tolerance of barely zero. Back then in the days I would stand and wait ages even if the person I was about to see was running terribly late – these days I just rage/quit, turn around and just leave. After a set of more than unpleasant experiences in recent years I’ve really just learned to get rid of my feelings and hardened up to the point my sarcasm levels are an all time high. Don’t know how to be cute any more, nor do I know how to maintain a friendship without coming off as a stuck up bitch.
   Somewhere in 2012 I actually told myself to stay single forever since I have a job that would be good enough to take me into the latter years of life. I am financially stable (for now at least) and in no debt whatsoever with plenty to keep myself happy. It’s a really negative way of thinking considering now I’m only 24. In 2013 I will be 25. Now 25 really is a quarter life crisis – it has only really struck me just about now that I only really have about 3-6 years because I hit my 30s and suddenly turn into a super unattractive candidate for anything, really. I don’t want to calculate my life like this, but if you think about it rationally, getting married and having kids when you’re about 30 or just before 30 is probably the most ideal scenario because it makes the most sense. I don’t really have much time left, and I don’t have many chances to be honest. But at least if I try so see how it goes, it’s probably better than not trying at all. By then if I’m still single, that’s fine, I will stay that way and just let it be.
   At least for now, I’m enjoying being single (which is something people can’t do!) – if I were to suddenly not be single it’d be hard for me to adapt, I think. But for now, let’s just concentrate on meeting more people/ hanging out with more people and enjoying life as it is.
5. Do more beauty posts. I used to really enjoy doing these – what happened?! Queue ‘em on, I’ll definitely work on these in my spare time in the upcoming weeks!
6. Stress less, be healthy, be stronger. I promise I will do stretches, do the occasional hula hoop routine and start doing push ups. I have weakened too much!
7. Start looking for investment opportunities this year.
8. Visit a beach at least once (because I never go to the beach).
9. Get a massage. (Resort, anyone?)
10. Spend more on home improvements, rather than the usual stuff I buy.

That’s it. A lot of it is fairly simple and straight forward. 10 relatively easy things to achieve by the end of the year, which seems pretty reasonable.

I think I will be able to achieve a majority of those, because my January is already seemingly packed with a lot of stuff to do. I’ve already booked coach tickets and an apartment for Canberra next week (yeah, it was a super last minute decision – wasn’t expecting to go that soon, but since I have an extra day next week to rest, why not-) so that counts as being interstate, since Canberra is in the A.C.T (Australian Capitol Territories) and is not in NSW It’s a bit of a pity because I want to visit Melbourne again to satisfy my shopping monster inside, but I think I will leave that for next year. I’m only going to be in Canberra for one night – or 27 hours total, so I kind of cheated, but hey at least I tried. I know there’s nothing to do there, but I’ll be visiting a friend (I think I should change my name to “friend-visit-er”, yes I  know it’s visitor, but I visit then er) and I do want to go to the National Art Gallery or whatever it is. It will be my THIRD visit to Canberra in my life thus far, which is a lot considering how boring the place is, but hopefully this time it will be more interesting than the other visits I had, which were high school/ primary school excursions that were damn boring with the exception of Questicon. Now that I’m much older and can do whatever I want there since I am free to go wherever I wish to go, hopefully it’ll be a much more enjoyable experience. But yes, I do want to visit the Art Gallery, because I can’t say no to art galleries.

At the end of this month a friend will be coming back from Hong Kong for a few days or so, so I guess that will count as a catch up or whatever. ANYTHING THAT CONTRIBUTES TO HAVING A SOCIAL LIFE, I WELCOME YOU.

Possible road trip this month. By that I mean just a drive to somewhere and drive back lol.

Colleague is leaving to have her baby, so we will have a farewell dinner.

I’m still thinking about where I want to go overseas this year – Hong Kong is a given. I still kind of want to go to Fiji or Hawaii, but I’m not a person who likes to travel alone (unless if it’s Hong Kong, then I don’t really have a choice).

Didn’t have an exceptionally great 2012 considering it was supposed to be a shitty year for me, but I got through most of it in one piece. Waiting for Chinese New Year now so I can stop wearing my red leather bracelet which I’ve been wearing every day without fail for the past lunar year. Hopefully 2013 has bigger and better things to offer me, so let this be the start of a fabulous beginning of something irresistibly awesome.

Happy new year to all of my friends or subscribers who are reading this post – I will be back fairly soon with a beauty related post (or fashion, I need to find my camera, it’s somewhere in my wardrobe) – hope we all have a good one this year with many more good years to come!

Hong Kong 2012 Part 3

Sorry it took so long. It has been so long since my trip or since I updated about Hong Kong, I actually can’t remember what I actually did there LOL. Well, more or less I remember, but the reason why it took me so long to write this apart from bring lazy was because I didn’t really want to bore you guys.

Part 1 of Hong Kong for me was the most extravagant and craziest I’ve lived whilst during on a holiday. I felt like Kang Kyung Joon (drama: BIG) walking into the bank in a fricken suit and sunglasses wherever I went because for some stupid reason I felt that I had plenty of money to spend and didn’t care how I spent it because I wriggled myself into the mindset that everything was cheap. That very weekend I arrived I spent all my money LOL. Part 2 was just weird because Macau was so not what I was expecting… maybe because I was there during the day and didn’t really experience the whole “casino-ness” that I stereotyped it as. Part 3 is mostly about me being povo and scraping up whatever loose ends I have. But that’s okay, because I’m just here to share the experience.

Luckily for me, I didn’t have zero dollars on me, I did have Australian dollars to exchange, which I did at a HSBC branch I vaguely remembered located on Nathan Road, thanks to Google map’s streetview. Exchange on a Tuesday, because the rate tends to be a big higher. They charged me $100HKD in bank fees (to do the exchange and stuff) and you NEED I.D to process the money exchange. So on Tuesday, I was suddenly “rich” again, well, for a brief while anyway. TIP: Avoid exchange booths, they have really low exchange rates, less bang for your buck.

As a recap, I stopped updating after Sunday which was my Macau trip.

I might have gotten my days mixed up by the way, because I no longer remember the order in which I did stuff. The only hint I have is from my photographs – but either way, if I can’t remember which day it was, I won’t say which day it was.

Monday- Wednesday. Yes, in a clump.

On Monday-Wednesday I tried to do things that cost little to no money. After spending most of my money on stuff I didn’t expect to buy whilst outlet shopping, and having an extremely frugal experience in Macau spending literally under $500HKD all up for the day, it was time to continue to save. At this point in time, I felt guilty for spending my money like it was crap (it took me that fast to forget how long I saved up trololol), and did some pretty stupid things to save money. I really wanted to go home even though I’ve just arrived for like 4 days, and there was still another 5-6 days to go. I really didn’t want to exchange money and if I could, I would survive off the remaining money I had. I mean, it was possible, but it meant cooking my own meals or something (I forgot but I worked out the sum and it totally wasn’t worth it considering I’m on holidays and not on boot camp).

Most of my days during the week were the same – stayed at the hotel, watched TV and abused my $28HKD/day unlimited wifi usage. Got out of the hotel to eat lunch so that my room could be cleaned, arrived back at around 4pm or so – and mostly skipped dinner – which was a very very bad decision to make. Some nights I would make a trip to the supermarket to top up my Evian mineral water. Some nights I decided to go have McDonald’s (which is super cheap – a meal costs only $20HKD over there – the equivalent of less than $3AUD – I know however they did put up their prices so it should be $21HKD now). If I chose to skip dinner I tried to eat snacks that I had in my room, though very few. My worst night (which I forgot which day) was skipping dinner because I was feeling super depressed and it consisted of a children’s sized tetra pack of Vitasoy milk and 4 wheat biscuits with one side covered in chocolate. Yes. That was my dinner. I was counting how many calories would suffice for a dinner… but I think I did the calculations wrong. All I remember was having this miserable “dinner”, forcing myself to sleep quite early at around 11pm and having trouble sleeping. Then I got a phone call from my friend which lifted my mood… and then after that, back to square one.

Vitasoy milk. 125ml or something ridiculously tiny from memory. Cute, but not enough to feed an adult as a meal substitute.

At this point of time I was questioning why I bothered to stay in Hong Kong for a long and weird period of 9 nights, because I was bored out of my mind. I honestly played my entire trip way too safe and didn’t go out and do anything crazy enough to make my stay worthwhile. If you planned on going to Hong Kong and hoped that you’d meet some random attractive stranger and have a few drinks all night long, or miraculously be friends with a clique of people you find amazingly compatible, snap out of it. Yes, we all daydream, but at the end of the day it’s not going to happen (I mean okay, it might, but hey, the probability is low). Out of the 9 nights I was there in Hong Kong, only 5 nights or days did I see friends and have dinner with someone else. I mean, how easy it is to be discouraged from going out at all for the remaining 4 nights? It sounds like a short period of time, but when you take into account that 4 nights actually probably is 4 nights and 6 days (since you don’t need to see someone during the day to have dinner at night), then you’ll understand why I felt so lonely and bored.

Either way, next time I go to Hong Kong, I’m only staying there max 7 nights – most likely 6, because I will go crazy. I knew that going solo was going to be tough, but I didn’t know that it was going to be that mentally challenging. Unless I’m going with a friend or someone else – that’s a different story.

On that note of saving money, I did do my part in buying cup noodles which I would have for breakfast (what, they only sell for $7HKD there… which is less than a dollar D:…).

I didn’t even bother buying a pair of chopsticks to use. I just simply used the two spoons provided in my room to eat, whilst folding the lid of the ramen bowl into quarters and using it as a big spoon. This was an average breakfast that I had – not all days, but probably 6 days I was there.

Went to Avenue of the Stars, Tsim Sha Tsui

My hotel is very very close to Victoria Harbour, which is a surprise because I probably mentioned before – the hotel is a lot more affordable than I had expected (one factor is that I don’t have a nice view at all, but that doesn’t matter because I care more about its location more than anything else). It is within walking distance to this popular tourist destination, which is where Running Man played the Cantonese singing game by the water in their Hong Kong special. To get the the Avenue of Stars, you actually need to walk in a subway to get there, which is pretty self explanatory. If you think you can skip doing so, forget it, because there’s nowhere for you to cross the road, you must take the underground route.

This is a strip along Victoria Harbour with awesome views and lots of open space where you can just walk and relax. There’s a Starbucks at the endish of the trail (with free wifi may I also add) but with disgusting public toilets (for the reasons I listed in my previous Hong Kong for noobs post – a result of attempting to flush excessive amounts of toilet paper simultaneously down a toilet which is not designed to take more than say, a square of toilet paper).

I sat at their Starbucks with a drink, chilling in their aircon in the 30 degree weather and leeched their free wi-fi.

The Starbucks is probably one of the highlights of this place, the rest is just walking and chillaxing.

You will find the trail interesting because there are handprints and signatures of some of the top stars from Hong Kong and other Asian countries, and there are little carts along the way which sell stuff like snacks though I can’t pinpoint what (I remember it being “Korean styled dried squid” but that’s a really bad translation lol).

A prime example of a famous Hong Kong movie star – Jackie Chan.

And I shall reiterate, the view is stunning. But that’s because I’ve always been fascinated with Hong Kong’s view – it’s just so different to what I’ve grown up with.

Victoria Harbour

Worth a visit, but not for long. It’s only somewhere you can hang around for about 2 hours max. Really, MAX.

K12 was boring, and you must visit an agnés b cafe

There are a lot of shopping centres around Tsim Sha Tsui, one called K12. It’s a super boring shopping centre with nothing attractive other than the mass of jewellery stores around it, and a super big agnés b clothing store as well as an agnés b cafe.

Boring.

I guess the best part about the shopping complex is that there is a large outdoor area (which is where the photo was taken) with plenty of seating so you can wait for friends. There’s wi-fi, and the whole place is actually undercover as you’re under a large glass roof. It looks cool and relaxing, but it was actually pretty hot sitting there :\

For those who don’t know agnés b (I didn’t know what it was and still don’t really know LOL), it is a “high end” designer label that sells bags, clothing, accessories and also has a cafe under the same label. It’s more popular in Asia (though it’s a French based label), such as Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore - otherwise I don’t really know much about the brand, nor do I care much for it either. I should have ideally had all my Starbucks meals at the agnés b cafes instead (it is only slightly more dearer than Starbucks maybe by about $10HKD) but they only seem to do cakes, they don’t really do bread. I say “high end” in inverted commas because in my opinion, it’s not really on the level I consider it to be called high end.

This was an ice cappuccino and cake by the name of “jasmine”. It’s actually a really yummy and moist cake which was surprisingly good. They had a lot of other cakes, pink, purple – all colours you could imagine. I should have tried more. The cappuccino was only so-so though. This “meal” cost me about $80-$90HKD. I can’t remember.

And on the note about recharge cards, SmarTone are a bitch to find. I had to sit at K12, leech wi-fi and google search where the hell they are sold because SmarTone recharge cards are ONLY sold at SmarTone stores. There’s only ONE in the whole of Tsim Sha Tsui, which thankfully was only about a 7 minute walk away.

iSQUARE

iSQUARE on the other hand is a shopping centre that is much closer to my hotel and can be reached just by crossing one street (okay maybe two depending on which way I walk around the block) or via the underground subway MTR tunnels. I usually went underground because NO UV RAYS. You feel like burning under the sun.

And yes, wi-fi available.

I came across this place called Hey yo! which does frozen yoghurt which you pay depending on the weight of your froyo tub. Their flavours are pretty limited (original, vanilla, strawberry, chocolate) and their toppings were so-so. I chose an original and vanilla froyo base (you just need to self serve and get it out of the yoghurt dispenser), strawberries, mango, dragonfuit, and various jellies you find in milk tea.

This cost about $70HKD and it was about 70g or so. (I think it’s $100HKD for 100g) Wasn’t really worth it LOL. Should have got more toppings than yoghurt so it would have been lighter, but I wanted to have a more filling experience. Let’s say – after I finished eating this, I WAS FREEZING. It was COLD.

I felt like a slow eater because everyone eats so damn fast. But oh well.

We’ve all seen this photo because I posted it up before, but iSQUARE is home to a lot of brands that may otherwise be hard to find, one of which is SKINFOOD. They also have The Saem (another Korean brand) which is surprising. I wasn’t expecting to buy from Skinfood, but it’s really hard to buy those nail essences as I can’t find them anywhere online anymore. They were only $30HKD each (bought all three that were in stock) and I got a skin exfoliator which was about $155HKD. The Apple line is brand new and it smells pretty good. A good alternative to Missha’s Detoxifying Peeling Gel at a fraction of the price, and smells like heaven compared to the wreck that is Etude House’s moistfull peeling gel which smells like a dead animal made from plastic. Prices in Skinfood are pricey considering they would be slightly cheaper in Korea, but probably only by $3 max (for example, if a product is $23, it could be $21 in Korea…? Or at least that’s the feeling I got). Stock is limited and the store is quite small. If you spend $600HKD you get VIP membership which means you get discounts and extra freebies – but I didn’t go for it because I was short on cash.

Harbour City

Probably the largest shopping centre in Tsim Sha Tsui which is also walking distance from where I stayed. This is where all the big brands are, and the complex is HUGE you actually need to rely on a map or else you will never find what you are after.

Looks shabby from this entry, but damn this place is amazing. If you’re after all the big labels, they’re all here, if not within walking distance from here. Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Salvatore Ferragamo, Fendi, Dior, Miu Miu, Prada, Celine, Marc by Marc Jacobs (even) - it’s all in or near here. Although it’s called Harbour City, it’s actually divided into several different sections and they all have different names. I just will refer to the whole complex as Harbour City as I can’t tell which is what anyway. You will know when you’re inside because the colour scheme and materials change when you’re in a different section.

If the big names are intimidating, they have a lot of other stuff like UNIQLO, Muji, Zara and there’s a H&M across the road. Probably one of the coolest places which I didn’t explore fully enough was Citi Super – that place is freaking huge – goes on for about 20 stores long and they have a section for everything – magazine and books, cosmetics, fresh food/ groceries – holy crap, I didn’t go in because I was scared I’d go nuts with my spending.

Make sure you plan where you want to go first and second etc and map it out, because I walked back and forth a lot trying to find what I wanted.

And at times you are greeted with a beautiful view like this.

If I remember correctly this was just outside of Muji.

Go nuts and get lost in Harbour City, you will have a good night’s sleep. The place is huge.

Other stuff you can do which you need to do, that doesn’t cost money

Wash your clothes. I mentioned this before, but it’s best to wash all your clothes. Don’t worry if they’re not 100% spanking clean, just do it because if you go to Hong Kong during its warmer seasons like I did, you will end up with a load of pretty smelly clothes. Just wash them again when you get back home – but don’t put them into a stuffy plastic bag, it is super gross since you’ll be sweating all the time.

Clean your room and pack regularly. I was going to put up a photo of my messy room and then I realised that there was something on the chair I forgot to blur out -_-

I wanted to talk about these two items I got from SaSa when I discovered my bb cream was running out. I used the sunscreen mostly for my arms and the Dr Jart BB cream is horrible. I’ve never had bb cream melt off my face before, but this sure did. Completely wrecked my skin and I’m too scared to use it again. Maybe it’s more suitable for the Sydney weather than it is for Hong Kong, but it made my face blotchy and bumpy. I was so scared and depressed about the state of my skin I had to go to SaSa again to buy something to calm my skin down. Luckily for me the sales did a skin test for me, recommended me a product (tried to sell me a whole set, but I refused since it was over $1000HKD and I only had like 3 days left in HK) and gave me a bunch of samples to take back. I did buy the moisturiser she recommended and it’s been working so well for me I’ve now stocked about 5 jars at home at this moment.

Hopefully that will give you a few ideas of where you can go and what you can do without actually really spending money. Great places to hang, leech wi-fi or window shop. Or spend money if you still have lots to blow

Thursday and Friday

Causeway Bay

On Thursday I went to Causeway Bay.

Again, Causeway Bay is something completely different to me. Apparently I was there when I was younger, but I have absolutely no memory of it. You basically get around the place via a lot of overhead pedestrian bridges/ walkways which is very common in the Hong Kong Island area.

Wire sculpture(s) outside Times Square – this was only one of them.

I got out the wrong entrance and walked all the way to Times Square, which was alright – I picked up a pair of earrings from Lane Crawford since the earrings I wore to Hong Kong tarnished in the humid weather and got exposed to hair dye and stuff lolol. I was that particular I just had to get a pair of earrings that I felt I could actually wear out without feeling they looked gross.

I followed my self drawn map and ended up at SOGO where I bought 2 Juicy Couture hair ties… pretty expensive… they were like $30AUD for a set of 3 (times that by 2 that’s $60…). Don’t know what I was thinking… but they do make good presents.

I visited the new Forever 21 store, which made me really happy, though most of their stuff wasn’t really my style. Most of the items were more affordable than H&M in my opinion, it was less packed and there wasn’t much of a waiting line for the change rooms. I loved how there were like 4 floors or so of just stuff you could buy. Everything was well organised with different sections for different things, like the casual stuff being on the first two floors, a section for clubbing dresses and another section for lingerie. The top floor was really fun as it was full of jewellery and gifts – the jewellery was so cheap – like $21HKD for a necklace (about $3) which actually looked pretty nice. There was a lot of stuff and I picked up a bunch of hairties for just $10HKD. And by a bunch I mean like, 15 LOL. Forever 21 is a super fun place – I should have originally stuck to my original plan to visit the store as soon as I got to  Hong Kong, as they close their doors at 1am in the morning. 1am!!

Either way, I picked up 2 dresses, an umbrella, phone case, hair ties and hair clips.

THE PEAK, Victoria’s Peak

On Friday I visited THE PEAK, which is the highest point in Hong Kong where you can see all of Hong Kong (sort of).

The Peak is located at Victoria’s Peak, which is a ride away from Admiralty.

To get to The Peak you either catch a tram or a bus from Admiralty. To my luck, there were a lot of signs (and tourists who seemed to know where they were going) and using common sense you just need to take the overhead pedestrian bridges to cross the roads. I decided to take the Peak Tram as that’s what they took in Running Man’s Hong Kong special. You can buy a single way or a return ticket, and you can also choose to pay extra to allow entry to the Sky Terrace. I bought a return ticket ($65HKD return) which included entry to the Sky Terrace, which is the top floor of the Peak building where you can take photos and stuff.

Sorry for the blurry photo.

As you can see the tram station is actually quite some walk from the train station (entrances are in the boxes as drawn above) – I actually ended up taking the purple dotted line because I couldn’t find the J2 exit. The tram was  pretty cool and it goes up really steep!

Take my advice, sit on the right of the tram (right as in the side you enter the tram as it is in the photo above). You’ll take better pictures than me.

I sat on the wrong side of the tram and there were no more seats on the right!!!!

There’s a mini balcony that’s free entry before you reach the Sky Terrace – I went there too. To be honest I am kind of scared of heights, and going alone going up so many escalators and standing on the rooftop without a friend or someone I could temporarily embrace was actually kinda freaky. I’m not sure if I should be calling myself brave or chicken shit… but I did make it up there, even though I was weak at the knees.

When I got to the top I was slightly disappointed because it was a cloudy day so it was super hard to take photos and see what I was doing. I tried to take self shots of myself but I could barely keep my eyes open since it was so bright even though it was overcast. Everything was also a whitish fog.

You can see the tram tracks… that’s how far up I was! But then again, I was 428m above sea level, the highest point in Hong Kong :O

See the criss crossed building in the middle? (It’s either the HSBC or Bank of China but I keep forgetting which one it is LOL) That was the building several photos up of the view I got when I got off Admiralty Such a long way away, felt like I hiked this far. The body of water is Victoria Harbour, and my hotel is on the other side.

This is a view that people usually neglect – this is facing south/westish. This was so different as it was lush and green without any buildings.

There was an attraction there which most people would have heard of – Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. I wasn’t really going to go to it, but when I stumbled across it by accident, I decided to pay the (very expensive) entry fee and go through it since I was there. It was pretty cool, and they looked really close to the real people! Probably wouldn’t do it again though

The entry was like $130HKD or something like that and I had no idea what was inside. I don’t want to post up my photos as such, but there are like 3 major sections and about 50-70 celebrities/ famous people inside. I lined up forever to take a photo of Louis Koo and Leon Lai – FOREVER. But as you enter you get greeted by Yong-sama (Bae Yong Joon) – the only Korean celebrity in the whole exhibit.

This is what The Peak looks like from outside. This is a building we actually came across during uni days because the architect whose firm that did this building came to our university to scout students to work for them after graduation. Well, it’s an interesting building, but the inside is actually pretty small and there’s not much to do in there. There are a lot of souvenir stores and a few restaurants, but nothing spectacular. The best attraction really is the Sky Terrace and that’s about it really.

Friday night dinner and drinks

Met up with my friend and we had dinner at a ramen place in Central. I think it was called Ippudou or something like that. Food was so-so. We ended up sitting across a super awkward couple who weren’t talking. I felt super bad because we were speaking in English about them (so they probably didn’t understand us) the entire time and he was giving them weird looks and typed messages on his phone to show me what he was thinking.

We then aimlessly wandered around and he took me to the famous(?) LKF, Lan Kwai Fong – the clubbing heart of Hong Kong. My disappointment though – it was empty, but it was about 9pm then. Apparently the partying starts at like 2am – I’ll go there next time I visit Hong Kong. Too bad I had a plane to catch the next day.

After that he called out another of our uni classmates to come out for a drink. We went to Landmark Hotel’s Zuma Bar which is located on level 7.

I forgot what this cocktail was called but it was gross. The orange juice in it was foul. This wasn’t a cheap cocktail either and just omg yuck.

The bar’s cocktail menu largely features oriental fusions so you get a lot of orange, lychee and weird things. Well, this wasn’t nice. I ordered it for the “peach” that was supposed to be in it, but all I could taste was orange. Eurgh.

The boys had a great time there, they were just checking out girls the entire night and saying how “the standard here is higher than other places”. I don’t know, because I’m not a guy, but to me they were all so-so. I thought this way because the way they dressed screamed out that they came after work, which I kind of think is sloppy – I think there’s a way to wear something work and drink friendly. But anyway who cares, I hated the place and didn’t like it. Barely got to talk to my friends and I basically had my face in my palms for the majority of the time because the cocktails were strong.

I finished the night with 3 drinks, the last being a cocktail I remember because its name was Bishounen (now that one was okay, though I spilled it because the alcohol was really getting to me -_- I suck). Friend asked if I was okay and told me 3 drinks was enough. Then I was like “did you know my second drink was a non-alcoholic one??” – he didn’t. So I cheated. I tricked them all. I have zero alcohol tolerance. Daaaaammmnnn.

The interior of Zuma was really nice though. The toilets were great, though the ladie’s toilets are located far far away from the men’s toilets. I almost walked in to the men’s toilets because I naturally assumed the women’s toilets would be opposite those… then a staff member was like “I’ll take you to the women’s toilets”. How embarassing.

I’ll probably go again, but I just didn’t like the super mature atmosphere of the bar (and by mature I don’t mean classy either, which makes it super awkward). All you see is people picking up random people, if not sticking to their own groups. Boring. The highlight of my night was accidentally blowing out the candle that was on our table. I thought that if I blew it, the flame wouldn’t go out. Lol, wut.

Then I went home. And couldn’t sleep much.

Saturday, and it’s time to leave.

Had brunch at a Japanese ramen place in another shopping centre named Mirador which is errr opposite Park Lane Boulevard (photo below) and in the direction of K12.

Browsed Harbour City for the last time. Under the recommendation of my friend’s friend we trekked to catch a bus to the airport. Probably a bad decision because my bag was freaking heavy and I wasn’t wearing any makeup since I didn’t want to bother with it on the plane – hence that’s how I got all my freckles (rageee). Basically I got fried under the sun, and we walked super far to find a bus stop which was for the NIGHT bus only. We had to walk all the way back omfg. Well, it was okay though, but probably next time I’ll take the MTR. The bus is really cheap (like $20 something HKD) but there was traffic along the way and I didn’t have much time left over at the airport. By the time I got to my terminal, I literally had to rush to go to the toilet for a last minute toilet break and then I was already lining up to get on the plane. I had no time to do any last minute airport shopping :\ Except for a pen, because I needed one to fill out customs forms on the plane.

My “heavy” bags only weighed a total of 15kg when my allowance was like what, 25kg. -_-

It’s really hard to guess how heavy your bags are, especially since I have to really pay for the excess weight if I had any. My friend was super nice and came with me all the way to the airport! So if I did have anything extra she could mail it to me… but in this case it was not necessary.

On the way back I also had a lady lean towards me the entire trip even though the seat on her other side was empty. WTF. And she snored. WTF. LOUDLY. WTF.

I have enough points to upgrade myself to business class so next time I fly, I’ll DEFINITELY fly business class on the way back – more space, privacy, and also 40kg baggage allowance. Economy is good enough to get there, but the way back was pretty much hell. Lots of people, packed plane, and I got literally no sleep. I LIED. I DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH POINTS, INSERT MEGASADFACE HERE. I need many many more points Wasted my entire hotel stay, I COULD HAVE EARNED POINTS THERE BUT I DIDN’T KNOW.

So after 4 months I have FINALLY completed my entries about Hong Kong. Took me forever to do it and this post was really rushed (literally 80% was done today), but I got distracted along the way. I am feeling a lot better now, I can eat toast now (omfg yay) but I literally have no strength in my arms – I’ve weakened a lot :\

Now that I have nothing to blog about I’ll have to seriously plan what to blog about next time. I have no idea because I don’t really have anything to write about. Meh, I’ll find something… later.

Food poisoning sucks the ugliest balls known to mankind

Just a short update because I figured I’ve not updated for way too long. My Hong Kong Part 3 post has been in progress for the past few weeks (with no signal of where it will end) so I’m procrastinating on it.

I decided to take annual leave for the first 2 weeks of October, and then after meeting with a friend on Thursday I ended up with food poisoning since Saturday. So yes, do the maths, I’ve been sick for six days already, when usually cases like these end in like 2-3 days.

(For those who were curious, it was a place that is 4 letters long, starts with M, ends with O and looks vaguely like my wordpress username in the city)

At the moment I still feel crappy and I haven’t had much to eat. I’m tired, grumpy, irritable and hate my annual leave so much because it was probably better off spent working instead. Why I bothered to take leave in the first place (which was to apparently “rest, recouperate, get healthy”) is a complete question mark because my whole situation right now spells out bullshit.

I’ve never had food poisoning in my life, and this is the first time and I can say it’s horrible. I’m sure there are worse feelings in the world, but for the meantime, I really really hate it and will continue to hate it.

On the brighter side though, since I did have some problems with digestion and whatnot before, hopefully this can be seen as a cleansing experience and I will encounter less problems later on. After losing a hell of a lot of sleep, water, and at least 2 freaking kilos, I sure hope that in the next few days I can well and truly “rest, recouperate and get healthy”.

Take care everyone, and beware of what you eat – it was the worst feeling ever (seriously) – in comparison to this, the flu is nothing!

I’ll be back when the time is right.

So, I kinda tuned out of it for a while.

My last update was a very long time ago, and I kind of just fell into a slump. I’m forever tired (still am), blood test results came back (nothing major, but I’m on vitamins now) and I’m just looking forward to lots and lots of rest. A lot has happened since… May basically, which is where I left off with my Hong Kong part 2 trip. I will post up part 3 in the weeks to come, but to stop myself from delaying posting anything at all from then until now, here is just basically what I called a rapidfire vomit list of stuff I did/ that happened in the past few months which I never bothered to talk about. I’ve been in an eternally bad mood lately because I have so many things to worry about (which I shouldn’t). It’s starting to even reflect in my sleep because I dream of things that infuriate me so much. Can’t wait til my annual leave.

If it’s rushed and basic, I apologise. I actually need to get ready to go out… and I haven’t moved an inch, which is pretty typical of me these days. I’m trying to type as fast as I can already D:

My friend graduated.

Not too sure which abbreviation/ initial to refer you as But you know who you are Girl got a USYD medallion too, which is really cool considering that where I went (UNSW) didn’t do anything like that at all. Belated congratulations! (Though I think I did say it on the day – but then again, I don’t remember…)

FREE FOOD.

We went to a place called Sunflower and ordered these green tea lattes which were more latte than green tea.

I ordered a crepe, which was super super cheesy on the inside. Not bad, though it really reminds me of “The Ultimate” pancake from Pancakes on the Rocks.

We then went to an art gallery named White Rabbit. This is le Nokia 3210 that we spotted.

This was my favourite work. It’s on the top floor and it’s just pretty. All the chairs are numbered though, in case if you really couldn’t figure how to put everything back.

Thanks for inviting me! I had fun that day just unwinding myself and taking a breath of fresh air

My male colleague is more of a housewife than I am.

Tom Yum Gung soup courtesy of workmate who made this by himself from scratch (yes, using lemongrass, limes and what not – whatever a Tom Yum Gung is made of) and brought it to work for us to share. All I can say was several hours down the track, my stomach was still burning and I was sweating. Yes, it’s spicy, but it was good for the winter.

I owned a Christian Louboutin for 1.5 weeks.

I know it sounds so weird saying that I had it for such a short period of time, but the story was kind of long, complicated and frustrating.

I snapped up this baby because it was… well impulsive. I generally buy myself a bag every 6 months, but considering I had nothing on mind and I’m not considering anything for Christmas, I decided to get this in advance as a work bag. It was such a beautiful bag, I really loved the red interior and the magnetic studded bow clasp. It was okay made (not super well made considering it was made in Italy), but the thing was it wasn’t particularly cheap and it wasn’t even majority leather. Whoever sent out my order screwed up by not giving me the long strap it was supposed to come with, and I wasn’t going to let them get away with it, because it wasn’t what I paid for.

I returned the bag and got a refund. It’s the first time I’ve ever done that – even if I receive something and it has a small manufacturer’s fault, I’m still okay with it as long as it’s resolved properly. I couldn’t stand it this time round and just asked for a refund. The main reason being that without its strap it looks like a briefcase/ laptop case. I’m still fine if I had to resort to using it as a laptop bag, but it’s not even designed to fit my laptop! I’m going to be cautious because I don’t want to buy anything from there again even though I’ve bought loads of stuff from them before.

So instead I went and spent a tiny fraction of the refund on Juicy Couture instead. Loads happier even though they’re of a different calibre.

Why thank you, too, Juicy Couture.

Went and saw Batman in Gold Class. Alone. And was underwhelmed.

I have never gone and seen a movie by myself, but this time round I had to because I kind of rage/quitted on a friend of mine who I usually go see movies with. I was pretty underwhelmed with the movie, and kind of walked out thinking “da hell did I just watch?” – I even forgot to pull out the foot rest on my chair so I kind of wasted my gold class ticket without really sitting as comfortably as I could have.

I ordered a spicy ham pizetta as well ($19) which was surprisingly pretty yummy. That was my lunch though, so yeah.

Went to the Biennale with the Lovigans.

I can’t believe it has been 2 years already. I went to the Biennale 2 years ago… and here I am again. Time surely flies.

I won’t bore everyone with photos of the art works… I’m sure you’ve all seen them so I’ll skip those.

Green tea cake roll from Azuma Lumiere.

This was dessert after Pepper Lunch… and this the best green tea flavoured bread/ cake/ pastry thing I’ve tried to date. Super yummy.

My work place celebrated its 7th year anniversary.

This was a portion of the food that we had in celebration at Encasa. Food these as usual was good and although we were so hungry going in, we were soon full because the food was so quick at coming out!

A banana milk chocolate shake (?) from Max Brenner, Broadway. I can’t remember the exact name of this LOL. It wasn’t bad, it was only slightly banana flavoured but you can tell there are actual bananas in it. This was dessert after the anniversary dinner. It was enjoyable because it’s been such a long time going for a late night snack thing… reminded me of uni days.

Rediscovered Nutella.

How many of you know how to actually eat this correctly?

If you answered “spreading it on bread” you get a massive thumbs down.

I found these at the supermarket after talking to my colleagues about eating Nutella with a plastic spatula (that’s how we all did it in Primary School) – and voila, here it is. And I’ve been eating these via the spatula. And with ice cream.

My former work colleague came back to visit from Hong Kong

My friend J who I saw in Hong Kong and went to Macau with came back to Sydney for a few days since she had a graduation ceremony on. On my day off work, we all went to have lunch at this place near King St wharf named Vessel Italian. Food was okay, but the service – UGH. Let’s replace the word service with “attitude” – not going back ever again. Not recommended, unprofessional.

We then went to browse Westfield and then had tea at the Tea Salon thingy on the 3rd floor.

Started my second Pandora bracelet – err filled it.

The new collection is really stunning. I’m not trying to sell it or anything but I haven’t been this excited about Pandora in a long time. I filled up my bracelet a long time ago, but I was actually not satisfied with several charms I had (for instance, I had a three tier cake on my bracelet, which I thought was pretty cute, until I discovered it was actually more of a wedding cake – obviously, I am not married, so I felt that it wasn’t right for me to have it on my bracelet – though it sells if I wear it, but still…).

I renovated my bracelet by firstly buying a shorter one (my bracelet stretched and is too big), and put all the ones I liked on the one bracelet. I still had some left over for my old one and so bang, I have 1.5 bracelets  now. I’m going to probably start my third bracelet next week because this time I want one that’s not so full and it will have a different colour scheme. We shall see.

And the 25/8/12 wasn’t important lol. It just happened to be there on my diary page when I took the photo D:

After all that crap, hello spring!

If you look harder, I’ve got stuff actually written on my September page of my calendar. I’ve got days off, stuff to do. I’m actually kind of excited for September, because I finally get a  break from everything. My annual leave is due to be the first two weeks of October, so REST HERE I COME.

I’m currently watching “Answer 1997″ which is flawless. Drama of the year. It really reminded me of my high school days, which is why I enjoy it so much. It also sometimes makes me wonder why I didn’t have friends like that when I was in high school – it’s so hard to have close knit friends (both guys and girls) who just live a street away from you. I never mananged to experience that. The other night however, I bumped into a uni friend on the bus, and after chatting and needing to get off the bus I realised that we both lived in the same complex for the past 6 months! He’s going to move out though (probably) soon, but that was super weird/cool because I never knew anyone who lived in my complex after living here for like 12 years.

I’m also watching “To the beautiful you” (which my mum is hooked on -_-) – not bad. We’ll wait for the rest of the episodes to see.

I still watch Running Man, Chubal! Dream Team Season 2 and I’m going to get into Kangyoon couple on We Got Married (which they’re going to call We Got Married Village since they are going to live with each other *gasp*). Currently waiting for GDragon’s album to drop.

So writing this post took longer than expected – took me an hour, consists of almost 2000 words and I have less than an hour to get ready and eat lunch before I take a 30 min ride to the city (it’s the weekend). Eurgh, I manage my time so poorly these days.

Will be back – next time will be Hong Kong part 3… then I can get that over and done with – geeeeeez how long does it take for me to do things D: LATERS.

A mere check-up can reveal all your dark secrets.

I’ve been really busy and tired as of late (legit tired – struggling to stay awake since we’re low on staff – colleague is still away on leave and I get to train not one, but two people, so it’s LEGIT busy and tired, not bullshit “lolz let’s bum around instead of blogging” busy).

I hesitated to write this blog entry because I’m not really sure about what to say since it’s kind of a sensitive thing. All I can say is that I’m shocked, and I’m scared.

The whole story starts when I last visited my “dentist” about a year and a half ago. Without knowing who my dentist was, I rocked up, got super annoyed to find that the stupid receptionist cancelled my appointment and rescheduled it to Sunday (which by the way, I CANNOT make because I work on Sundays). I was furious. I called the mobile phone number slapped on the glass door of the suite and I demanded that whoever it was who was working that day, come immediately – lunch break or not – to fulfill the appointment I had set but got wrongfully cancelled.

Upon closer inspection I realised that my regular dentist has apparently moved out of the suite – possibly to set up his own dental clinic – and he was replaced by two inexperienced, totally fresh dentists who I (and other people I talked to) found utterly useless. She was unprofessional, wouldn’t answer me when I asked how much a filling was (she kept telling me it depended… but she was looking AT the tooth so I don’t understand why she just can’t tell me how much it was) and didn’t do a good job.

After telling me which days she worked, with a forced smile on her face, I told her simply, “I’ll make an appointment when I get my work roster.” I LIED. I NEVER WENT BACK.

I delayed going to a dentist because I couldn’t find a good dentist that I was willing to trust. I went to Hong Kong and went to ease my mind as there were lots of things troubling me. Although I never really worded it that way in my previous posts, that was really what I mean – or else why would I go somewhere so far all by myself?

Through a colleague I finally got details of a dentist that she found to be very good. I got busy with work since we’ve been understaffed, and so I put it off. My days off never matched the days the dentist worked, until last week I noticed that my day off the next week was in sync with the dentist’s day at work.

I quickly made an appointment a week in advance, and I was able to make an appointment quite easily. I was satisfied until then – my main problem was really my bottom wisdom tooth which has been lurking under a flap of gum for the past several months, as well as the tooth that I was supposed to fill yonks ago.

I anxiously waited for my appointment, the day finally came. I planned to see the dentist, get the filling (if required) and to just get a general check up and a clean. Then I would go and do something totally anti-social, which was to go and watch a movie by myself. That was my day off, and I was going to take it off comfortably, in style, and wasting a lot of money in the process. But that’s okay.  Because I don’t do it all the time.

The dentist was super friendly and asked me why I came – I told him what was bothering me, and then he did a check up of my teeth.

“There seems to be an excessive loss of calcium in your teeth. Do you drink lots of fizzy drinks like Coke?”

“No, I very rarely drink any soft drinks.”

This is true. I rarely ever drink soft drinks – to most of the people who know me, I’m a health food junkie in the respect that I don’t eat sweets, don’t eat much junk at all, and don’t drink soft drinks. My diet is pretty much 99% healthy, with just that 1% occasional junk.

“Do you have stomach acid or gastric reflux?”

“…. yes.”

“Do you vomit?”

“No… I don’t vomit. Just after eating I feel like I get gastric reflux.”

“Well it appears that you may have a problem with your stomach. What medical condition do you have?”

At this point of time I was super scared and didn’t really know how to react.

“… I don’t… have a medical condition.”

“Well, sometimes young girls diet and because they try to lose weight they end up skipping meals. Let’s hope that you’re not one of them.”

“No… I don’t think I am.”

“Well, I recommend that you go seeing a medical doctor and getting your stomach checked out. See what’s causing the problem and then we can do some treatments for your teeth to get them strong again.”

Look, at this point of time, I must say I was super super sad. It just only took this dentist one look at my teeth to tell me what was wrong with my health and I must admit, I screwed up. I never really gave a rat’s ass about my health – ever. If there was anything wrong with my health, I’d try to solve it myself without seeing a doctor. I hate seeing doctors. When I was young I absolutely hated exercise. Was my dentist wrong? No, he wasn’t.

After completing a series of X-rays and cleaning my teeth, it appeared that the things that seemed to be bothering me the most like my buried wisdom teeth and the fillings I asked about – weren’t the things that mattered the most at all. It was my overall health.

I continued my day off by visiting the cinema and bought myself a ticket to see The Dark Knight Rises in Gold Class in an hours’ time when I could eat food. I browsed my favourite bookstore to kill time. I bought myself a small popcorn and a bottle of water, and ordered a Pizzetta from the Gold Class bar and had it delivered to me at the start of the movie. But I couldn’t watch the movie in peace. My mind was drifting far far away thinking other thoughts because I was still upset.

Am I suffering from anorexia? Of course not. Though I must admit that I do stupid things that could sooner or later lead me to that path. I have little interest in food. If I had to chance to, I do skip meals, especially if nobody sees it. By this, I mean that if there’s nobody to cook for me, or eat with me, I will choose to skip meals, usually by substituting a wholesome meal with something ridiculous like a Boost smoothie, or in one case in the comfort of my hotel room in Hong Kong, my dinner consisted of three biscuits and a children’s sized tetra pack of soybean milk.

I eat only about 75% of my lunch that’s packed for me. At times I leave behind 50%. When my mum sees that I’m not eating my lunch, she gradually decreases the portion for me because she thinks that perhaps, just maybe, she packed too much by accident. Once the portion decreases, I still leave behind 75% anyway.

While shopping in Hong Kong, I fit into jeans that I never actually fit into before – I’d probably fit into a size smaller, but I wouldn’t know because I haven’t tried. I fit into all the size small dresses and tops in Forever21 with plenty of space to spare, but they didn’t stock XS so I went with it anyway. I brushed it off thinking that their sizes were more generous since they were an American based company based on American sizing. I fit into size 36 (a size 6 in AU) tops in H&M… but again I thought it was an error in their sizing. And all this happened, while I felt the fattest I could possibly be, when I travelled to Hong Kong.

A new trainee noticed that we had photographs in the office, pointed to one of the photographs and asked mym colleague, “who’s this?”. My colleague said it was me, and the trainee replied, “she’s so much thinner now” - again I dismissed it because photographs look different to the real person.

So was there REALLY a mistake in all the clothing sizing? I still don’t think so. Yes, I lost weight, but no, I’m not a skeleton, I still have fat. I ideally wanted to aim for something healthy and toned, but I guess I need to stop thinking about that now and rectify all the problems I really have at the moment. Am I healthy? In a way, yes, because I know I am healthier than I was before. Do I have a stomach problem? Yes, I think I possibly do, because this reflux thing has been going on for too long without me doing anything about it. Do I vomit? No, I don’t, but there are the instances when I do so accidentally, but that’s really uncommon.

I really want to get real about this issue because it can happen to anyone. At the very least, I never expected that it’d happen to me. How did my stomach get so bad? It must have begun a very long time ago when I was still in uni, because I never had regular meals since I was too busy meeting deadlines. I never really ate well whenever I went on holidays, even though I stressed that I needed to eat on time or else I’d get massive stomach pains if I ate too late.

Yes, I dieted. Yes, I skip meals – at times.

There are just sometimes when I feel super down, very lonely, or just so sad or feel so fat that I feel that I didn’t really deserve to eat much. I never was the type to spend money on holidays, or food because I felt that they were wishy washy items that are unattainable in the respect that you can’t grab onto it and keep it in your pocket – forever.

There are many factors as to why this is happening – I work a job with long hours and yes, I am constantly stressed. I have little time to myself, let alone time to go out, meet new people and have fun. Probably I am also depressed, but I don’t know because I don’t feel sad every single day, I feel miserable probably every other.

To anyone, absolutely anyone, don’t do what I did. I am regretting it slightly, but for now I’m scheduling a doctor’s appointment next week to get my blood tested out – just to get myself back to normal. I’ll probably ask to do a scan of my stomach as well, which I’ll probably need to get done in the next two weeks.

As much as I am feeling scared and super worried (considering that my worry was originally just like, two teeth – now it’s like my gastroenterologicalllllllllllspelling/word-is-that-even-right system we’re talking about), I really want to fix this problem for once and for all.

Perhaps my problem is just as minor as not getting enough calories in as I expend a lot of energy every day since I do a lot of active work (standing, running – occasionally). If only it were that simple.

Cheesy, but sometimes your dentist can be an important person – it’s not just some dude who cleans your teeth and tells you to do fillings. He/she can actually tell you what’s wrong with your health, and you’d be surprised how it shows even though you look healthy on the outside.

I haven’t told my parents about what he said about my stomach… all I could tell them was that I needed treatments because I was lacking calcium. That’s how disappointed I am in myself.

Girls (and boys, if any), treasure your health. You were only given one body, and you will stay in this body for many many years for the entirety of your life. Regardless of size, shape or colour, love your body as much as you can, keep it healthy, and it will love you back.

EDIT/ I’m not in denial. I know how much I weigh. To most people I probably look healthy. Yes, my BMI falls in the healthy range. It’s probably in the lower part of the healthy range, but it’s still within the healthy range and not in the underweight range. I’m still the same – I still just buy size 10 clothes (even if size 8 fits sometimes, whatever) and my pant size has more or less stayed the same though I’ve started to buy an inch smaller. I’m in no way thin, I wear size/ 28″ jeans. But unfortunately I do have a stomach problem. I knew about it a while ago, but it’s only now that I’ve decided to do something about it. I can just only hope that it’s nothing major and that it’s not too late. I just thought I’d add this because I don’t want this post to sound completely wrong. In my opinion, I’m a good size (better than before), and I weigh normal. I’ve just got poor eating habits and a lot of work to do health-wise. Hopefully after seeing a doctor, I will be able to be healthier mentally as well.