From my hotel room, lazily.

Hello all, I never thought that I would have enough time to actually sit in my hotel room and blog because I expected myself to go out constantly every day. Basically I overestimated the amount of time I actually needed, which is actually not all that much. I have over 2 ish days till I go back home, and I kind of wished that there was just one more day instead. The past two days have been really boring since my friends need to work. It meant trips to the supermarket for me, and wanting to skip meals since eating alone is kinda sad.

Hong Kong itself is actually quite a lonely city; there are lots of people who eat, shop or travel alone. I admit it’s the same in Sydney, but I guess since family and friends make it so much better. This place is quite alien to me. I know the language and all but there is still that barrier- I never grew up here, I grew up in Sydney – raised and born there. My first language is English; I read Chinese slowly and pronounce things wrong. Well, just a bit more and I can go home.

The weather here is ridiculous, UV levels are 11-12 (meaning extremely high) and temperatures hover around the 30 degree mark. Humidity is usually 70-90 something percent, so when you walk outside you are drenched in either water vapour or sweat – you cannot tell which is which, nor does it even matter. The weather means you need some pretty badass makeup that does not melt off your face, and you want to take a shower, always.

Anyway the point of this post was not to go into too much detail about my trip, I will do that when I get back. For now, I am still having fun. Hong Kong is a really beautiful and captivating city – I always felt that way. This time, I am staying at a hotel which makes my experience a million times better (unlimited free bottled water ftw!), only I am travelling alone, which kinda sucks. But I got to see my friends I thought I would not be able to see again, and there are a lot of awesome things here that are ridiculously cheap.

The turning point in my trip was Sunday, when I went to Macau… I spent most if my money the day before (can you believe it… After just 3 days) so I was stressed and unhappy. I was doing stupid things like calculating how much money I could spend each day, and what I could or could not buy. It was so so so very stupid. Luckily for me I did bring money to exchange… And then things went back to normal. Even so, I feel guilty for spending so much money and not knowing where it went. Things are not as cheap as you would expect – that was a bit of a shock. I will go into detail later… But yes, some things really are not cheap lol, namely clothes and shoes. I had no idea they would be so expensive; cheaper than Sydney in a way, but really not worth the price D:

I think the problem with going on a holiday is that you are pressed for time not to buy the things that you want to wear, but more things that you NEED to wear or else you do not have a change of clothes for later. Which reminds me I should buy something for the next two days…. fuuuuuuuuu.

I would like to add that I am talking about Hong Kong shopping from the perspective of someone who is shopping at boutiques or shopping centres. If I shopped entirely at boutiques I would be broke within minutes. You might wonder why I do not shop at small shops or stalls… it is because they can be quite expensive :/ they are like the same price as upper boutiques for no reason. I am probably hanging around the wrong area to shop, but I feel safer shopping at large chain stores with fixed retail prices rather than small shops and getting ripped off for something that is not particularly well made. To give a good example, there are many boutique stores selling clothes around $500 hkd which is pretty damn expensive ($63 aud or usd)… If I add another $300 hkd ($35) I can get something with a fancy European label. Sooooo yeah. Millie’s shoes retail for about $1000hkd, yet I picked up a pair of Miu Miu shoes for just $1400. To be fair I had to travel to an outlet to get them and they were 50% off with an extra 30% off, but at least I won’t feel like I spent my money in a way which was not very wise.

Do not shop at 7/11 unless you are in a hurry; supermarkets can be 25-35% cheaper! Cafes are the most expensive to eat at- like Starbucks, I don’t mean the HK style cafes. I learned the hard way. Either way, be smart – that’s all.

My next blog post will come on Sunday afternoon if I can still keep my eyes open after hopping off the plane. It will be titled “a noob’s guide to Hong Kong, for noobs”. Stay tuned!

A meme post, sincerely, about going to Hong Kong.

If you can’t see this post… it’s because you aren’t loading the images. Enjoy my first ever image post. Or well, majority image, anyway.

I’m quite excited because this is my first trip anywhere by myself which is outside of a 100km radius of my home, lol. I haven’t visited Hong Kong in almost 10 years (to be precise, about 8 years) and I’ve never used my passport ever since renewing it 5 years ago (I was excited to go to Melbourne thinking “FINALLY I CAN USE MY PASSPORT”… turns out all I needed was my driver’s licence). This entire trip has been entirely funded solely by myself… not that my other trips weren’t, but it’s a significant amount of money considering I’m a super cheapass when it comes to travelling. Tell me to spend money on a bag or something and I’d do it, but I wouldn’t spend it on a holiday. To me, holidays aren’t things I can actually physically grasp, which is why I find it hard to take money out towards it.

I’ll be away in the first half of May this year, so it’s quite a while away, but I hope that it’ll be worth the trip. I get to have my own hotel room (pretty expensive – should have bargained for a better price for a better room – but oh well, I’m only there for 9 nights and I was literally rushing since I was paranoid there would be no more rooms or tickets left and I did get an earlybird discount), which is pretty badass. I chose my hotel half on its price and 90% on its location. The MTR stop is literally just around the corner (and the hotel is like, ON the corner) – you’d be surprised how hard it is to find a hotel in Hong Kong that is within reasonable walking distance of a MTR station, isn’t overpriced, and is rated 4 stars or more.  Apart from hearing that the rooms are like shoeboxes (which doesn’t bother me, because again, I’m only there for just over a week) it sounds pretty good. The guy over the phone was pretty helpful and  they do speak good English. Though I was just trolling them because I can speak fluent Cantonese – touché.

For those who were wondering, I ended up paying less than the stupid Qantas package because for some reason, Cathay Pacific was cheaper AND they had direct flights. Hotel earlybird discount also helped. But guess what, today the air tickets went up $4. LOL. It was a good idea to book now… I had no idea they would get expensive so quickly. I’m too noob to know these things :\

Also, Cathay Pacific has no card charges… Qantas charged a $30 card fee. AND Qantas does have direct flights, but they force you to choose at least one way that is not direct. Sneaky.

For now I have a lot of saving up, and a lot of research to do. I really want to spend little to no time figuring out transport, so I need to know exactly which bus I can take, and how much it’ll cost – stuff like that, just like what I did for Melbourne. The reason why Melbourne was smooth was largely due to the fact that I knew where everything kind of was, and I planned it out so we didn’t waste any time. I don’t really mind wasting time in Hong Kong because there will be a point where I’ll sadly run out of money, but I do have plans which kind of get in the way – I have to visit relatives (even if it’s just an hour) and I need to get my hair done, which typically takes about half a day. One out of the two days of my only weekend there will be a day trip with le friend to Macau (I AM SO EXCITED, SHOULD I BOOK FERRY TICKETS NOW), and I will need to contact other elusive friend and see if any hello/bye contact is possible.

This time if I take my camera I promise I will take my battery with me. If not, I now have Instagram so I’ll be constantly uploading segments of my trip most likely to my Twitter – once I figure out how to get a prepaid mobile card over there. Worst comes to worst, I’ll document my entire trip with Fujifilm Instax Minis.

YAY! I’m excited!

My next blog post will be on Melbourne Day 3 (I promise – err, I mean, I’ll try). Sorry about the random posts inserted here and there – I felt gloomy and added in a rant post… then I had to write something for Gmarket because I cannot resist a potential 50,000W voucher *fingers crossed*. Then this came along because I’ve been so addicted to 9gag and wanted to do a meme post myself.

PS: All images were found on the net… I edited them using Photoshop. For rage faces the best site I’ve found is http://alltheragefaces.com

PPS: I spent literally over an hour editing those images… and it took me less than 1 minute to read through them all… I don’t think I’ll do meme posts again LOL

Short, consumeristic, materialistic post

I know I’ve disappeared for a while – there’s a bit to write about. I actually did write a long draft (around 950 words) but decided that it was full of crap going on in my life. In a nutshell, the points I covered were:

There is a better tomorrow

Thank God, my dad is now back at home and “okay”. By okay I mean he’s not in a life-threatening situation, but the doctors have done little to nothing in consideration for long term treatment. I constantly got really gloomy and important sounding voicemail messages, making me worry to no end. After being happy and finding out that things weren’t as serious I put my heart aside and concentrated on work. Now that he’s home I find out that none of the things they’ve promised me were going to happen. None. It’s not even an understatement. I can’t even find words to describe how upset I am, since all our medical bills are paid for yet this is the treatment we get. This isn’t a problem with our health system, it’s a problem regarding the so-called “health professionals” who are working stable jobs, getting stable incomes for basically doing nothing. I could never understand why people would go into such a field if they didn’t want to look after or help people – people are unfortunate enough as they are, yet they don’t do anything to make the situation any better. Is it because they feel that their jobs aren’t at risk? Or is it because there’s no room for people to complain at all, since we are short of these “professionals”?

Heck, screw that. Imagine if I was stupid enough to listen to these “professionals”, actually take a day off work, meet up with them, discuss for maybe half an hour (just them updating me on stuff – NONE OF WHICH IS NEW) and making a bunch of empty promises. I lose a day’s worth of income and later I find out that none of it is going to happen. These people are such wretches! I can’t believe how conceited their attitude is thinking that I should work around THEIR schedule and intending to waste my time. Don’t even mention about taking a day off – even meeting them on my day off was a pure waste of time! If you’re not going to do it, don’t promise to do so.

Not even – let’s just take a step back and look at this from a different viewpoint. I personally don’t really have any loss losing a day’s income since I don’t really technically have any economic burderns/ responsibilities (ie. I don’t pay rent, I don’t have a boyfriend or a notable social life which requires money, nor do I own a car) – imagine if the same situation happened to someone who had severe financial difficulties – taking time off work could seriously be the boundary between being able to pay for bills and NOT being able to pay for bills. I should stop now, because I’m just going to get mad if I keep talking about it. In conclusion, I hate these self-proclaimed “professionals”. I’m not saying everyone in the medical field is like that, but the majority of the ones I encountered this time round really make me angry because tax-payers’ money is used to pay people who just don’t do anything and mistreat their patients. It disgusts me. I’m just thankful at the moment that my dad is alright. If he wasn’t, I’d be more irritated.

Architecture Blues.

My architecture  friends still find it difficult to land a job in the architectural profession, as employment opportunities are not in Sydney (ie. they are interstate, and we’re not even talking Brisbane or Melbourne). I hope they all find a source of income be it a casual or part time job very soon, if they haven’t already!

Call me teacher.

So out of nowhere I’ve somehow ended up with another student to tutor, starting in a fortnight. I somehow sense that my social life is slowly dwindling, but income is income. I’ll be trying my best to use my youthful years to get the most out of my time. I wasted the previous 21 years without having  really worked a “real” job (though I did get commissioned before, which is amazing enough as it is already) so it’s time to earn money. There’s a certain level of satisfaction that comes from earning your own money and spending it on whatever the heck you want.

Speaking of which, my Masters of Architecture certificate came in the mail recently – finally. Not really sure what to really think of my “accomplishment”. For many, even a Bachelor in Architecture (or specifically, Architectural Studies is what it’s called now) was difficult, let alone a Masters certificate. I think I really did work quite hard and pulled a “Die Hard”, put my foot down and earned it. Now looking back, it wasn’t really that difficult. I just didn’t manage my time or life properly. If I managed it better, I would be in a different situation now – even so, my situation now isn’t all too bad. As I’ve been writing, I’m grateful for my full time job because I’ve really grown to like the people I work with. We have really horrible customers every now and then which spoil the mood though, but that’s normal in any working environment.

P to the rada.

Along with my Masters certificate, I also received my first ever package from FedEx which has actually pleased me more than it should. Australia Post can pretty much go and keel in a corner, because FedEx is just so much better D: I was really worried that they wouldn’t be able to find my address (trust me, a lot of people lack common sense and can’t find us even though it’s so obvious with an address number as such we’d probably be in a tall building), but they found us easily and even managed to ring the intercom. That’s AMAZING. Basically I felt like shopping for some super early birthday presents for myself, since it has been a very long time since I bought anything of substantial value (minus Gmarket).

Excuse my horrible table surface… This is a stainless steel (?) in a gold colour, with hardware stamped with the logo. Also comes with a red Nappa leather bow.I’m not sure if I want to use it since it seems too precious to get scratched! I’m also not sure if I should migrate the keyring to go through the thicker centre link so that it doesn’t cover the tag… too many things to think about. I would use it as a bag decoration while I make up my mind, but it’s kinda weird to use this since I don’t own a Prada bag. I’ll take the next week to think about it…

Burberry has been raided. I am dissapoint.

I saw Ramille last weekend but regrettably couldn’t make it to their epic boat birthday party – I was planning to actually go designer shopping at a particular store cough Burberry cough- their new store is a nightmare to find because their designer (no offence) sucks balls. There’s no signage that actually makes you know you’re walking past Burberry when you’re standing outside the damn store. I actually walked past it TWICE and only managed to see it on my third attempt when I was on the opposite side of the street. Yep, that’s only then when I managed to see the sign, which is placed flat on the surface of the building. WTH.Either way I was pretty disappointed at their lack of stock, so I left with a broken heart. And then I ended up with this-

I only lined up outside Zara for about 10minutes and I got in! YUS!! It was 4:30pm and I felt that the line wasn’t too long and that people were actually being let in, so I felt that there was a good chance I’d be able to make it. To say the very least, it was hectic inside – they had people at the tables continuously folding up stuff that would be messed up instantaneously. I didn’t bother with the changerooms because I saw about 15 people in line trololololol. I just grabbed a cheap knitwear sweater for my mum to wear on top of a collared shirt and a felt coat for myself, which I just tried over my clothes. I probably bought a size too large (I bought a medium) but considering it was either a medium or an XS (which I possibly had a very high chance of fitting into) I just chose the medium anyway as it was a mix between a coat/cape/poncho/trench and seemed to be worn loose to begin with. Currently I am really loving the coat – I wear it on all the rainy days and it’s been really warm. The price of the coat was $139.95 which is actually pretty good as most local brands here actually sell their coats for even more than that when they’re on sale D:As for the Louis Vuitton shopping bag – lol – I’ll leave that to talk about another day.

Yes, you’ve reached the end!

That’s about it for now. To describe my current situation, I’m relieved (yet frustrated), very eager to earn money, and also very stingy currently after spending ridiculous amounts of money in the past week or so. I’m sure everyone is tired of the copious amounts of text and very few images amongst my text crap. I shall leave you all with this video of the flawless, gorgeous, amazing BBs otherwise known as After School.

WordPress has screwed up post formatting now – it wasn’t like this before, so meh. Until next blog!

Gmarket Haulage 13

I’ll keep this as condensed as possible – I paid around $300 for my items and $60 in shipping. I was refunded about $15-$20 back (estimated weight was over 10kg, actual weight was less than 6.5kg). I had one cancellation (out of stock item – which I realised was the cute Nordic knit jumper I wanted *cries*) and I cancelled two items myself.

Freebies? There were none. Mistakes? There were truthfully quite a few – so here’s the haul. Anything separated by the white lines are from different sellers. Those bounded within the white lines together as a group were purchased from the same seller. I mostly ordered so long sleeved clothes for winter (I think my job is fairly stable at the moment – so I can go ahead and order more black clothes for my wardrobe to weep and house-) and some random stuff that I really wanted to wear/ wanted to have.

1 Jumper
2 Long Sleeved Blouse
3 Etude House
4 Laneige Water Sleeping Pack
5 3x concentrated serums
6 3/4 sleeved chiffon dress
7 Skirts and shorts
8 Cardigans
9 Dresses and a wrong item
10 Simple Black elastic belt
11 Two pairs of jeans, one which is the wrong colour.

1 Jumper

Sorry for the blurry photo. I might update it later (usually I take more than one photograph but for some reason I didn’t do that this time >_>) – anyway this seller was the one who did the cancellation. I originally ordered a Nordic knit jumper which I thought was super adorable… but it was probably out of stock so I didn’t get it I’m sad because I prefer that jumper over this one any day.

Anyway, this was just a simple long sleeved jumper which I thought was appropriate for work – having said that, I paid perhaps around $15 for this and I’m a bit disappointed. The material is a bit thin and flimsy, but it’s still okay quality (the stuff that jerseys are made out of, just really thin). There’s no label or tag on it either, which was a bit of a disapointment. Otherwise this shouldn’t be bad on casual days – I haven’t tried it, but I’m assuming it’s quite comfortable.

2 Long Sleeved Blouse

 

The material of this shirt is actually better than what it looks like in the photo.  Basically it’s a long sleeved blouse made of something like polyester. It comes with a tie and also a bit of a cape for the shoulder area. There’s also a tag and a label. I paid around $17 for this, so this is on the slightly “pricier” side, but I thought it was worth getting for its uniqueness. I guess it’s a bit pointless since I wear a jacket at work to cover the shoulders anyway, but I think it’s not bad for autumn. Probably a bit too little for winter, but we’ll see.

I’ve worn this already and I must say it’s fairly comfortable, but the way that the sleeves are proportioned makes it seem a bit tight (though it’s not since the material is stretchy). Also since most blouses will probably have gaps (or at least I notice I get them) where you button your chest area, the tie is pretty much compulsory if you don’t want to flash yourself. Or, you can opt to wear something else underneath like a singlet.

3 Etude House

Again, these came in ridiculous amounts of bubble wrap, but altogether I spent around $32 to get the freebie, which was a cosmetics purse (pictured on the far left). Apart from being awed by the extremely large imitation pearl on the zipper, I was pretty disappointed to see that that was the ONLY freebie I got. No samples, nothing. But I really wanted the cosmetics purse because I found it so incredibly cute. I am a girly girl at heart

If you also haven’t realised, I didn’t get an awful lot of stuff for $32… I ordered a lip gloss ($7), sleeping pack ($7), two nail essences (around $3 each), two lip balms – one in strawberry and the other peach ($6 each) and two eyebrow drawing pencils ($3 each). I honestly don’t think I’ll be buying Etude House any time soon because it’s really getting quite expensive (and not to mention its novelty is starting to wear off on me since I have so much Etude House stuff to use now) – but the lip balms are really good! So far they’re doing a better job than Khiel’s Lip Balm #1, which is surprising me a lot. They are really highly fragranced but they last a while, and the best part is that they don’t taste like anything. The worst thing about a lip balm that is  flavoured is that there’s a high chance of it tasting disgusting - with these they’re just fragranced lip balms so I’m really happy with that. I have yet to try the elip gloss, but that’ll be for later I gave one nail essence and one eyebrow pencil to my mum to use – so far she’s digging the brow pencil because she doesn’t need to sharpen it. Lolz.

4 Laneige Water Sleeping Pack

As I mentioned from the last haul, these sleeping mask packs are super cheap considering I get the same amount as the “official” jar but at half the price it retails for. Totally worth it! Gmarket sells the 80ml jar for $17 – Sasa sells the same thing for $27!!! These just go for $9. Honestly, I’d buy these without any hesitation at all! Why pay so much more for the same thing >_<

5 3x concentrated serums

I think I found the link to these from another Gmarket blog post from the March issue, and I was pretty sold on these. These 3 serum jars are HUGE! There are quite a few to choose from, and these were just under $10 for all three of them. Serums can be extremely pricey, and since these were so cheap I had to give them a go. Trust me, go for serums because they’re going to be the next big thing in skincare trends. I’ve been seeing people use serums here and there lately – it’s just because they’re so thin and easy on the skin but provided concentrated amounts of goodies for your skin.

I ordered collagen, Q10 and Hyaluronic Acid, which are all good for the skin. Ever since I started working I started to get a bit paranoid with dry skin and all – these will definitely help me in the long run.

6 3/4 sleeved chiffon dress

The coathanger you’ve been seeing in most of the photos in this post actually came free with this item. I was really surprised at the packaging for this item because it came with the coathanger and a large plastic bag around it like you were going to take this dress to the dry cleaners. It comes with a tag and a label and the quality is overall quite good. It’s a bit too loose (and the style probably isn’t right for a waist belt), but I think this was a quality item from this order. I think it was around $15 or so for this dress or possibly more, but I bought it because I really liked its collar. Not a bad buy – the dress length is also pretty good for me too.

7 Skirts and shorts

 

Well, this was a pretty good quality skirt – has a lining and it’s a bit different. I was going to wear this as an underskirt thing, and I think it’ll do the trick quite well. It’s also good enough to be a skirt (which can be worn alone) but I have a feeling it’s a bit too short for that. This was pretty cheap, I think it was like $8 or something, so I’m happy with it. No labels though or anything – which I am not fussed about to be honest. The elastic is really strong and tight though, so the sizing is a wee bit on the small side, but I actually prefer it since it  means that the skirt will stay where it should be

I ordered this beige skirt – looked amazing in the photos, but is awful in real life. This was the same price as the black polkadot skirt but it’s better off used as a curtain :\ It has a lining but it’s not opaque – it’s still really transparent D: I can also see the overlocking in the underlining and the skirt is sooooo long that I can pull it up over my chest, add a belt and it’ll be a dress. Even when I do that it makes me look so fat :\ Either way, this is really not my style and I won’t ever really get a chance to wear it – pretty much a shame

Two shorts which I added to my order for around $4 each. These are just for under a dress or skirt as safety shorts – they’re okay in quality as they’re made of cotton. I have a feeling the white shorts are still going to be translucent, but then again, they’re white lol. Fairly cheap for safety shorts ^.^

8 Cardigans

I ordered 2 of the same cardigan ($17ea) in pink and a blue. The pink cardigan isn’t really well made as there is a bit of string popping out of the pocket, and one of the pockets isn’t sewn on all that nicely which is a bit of a shame. The blueish green cardigan however is really well made and I really like it. I think it looks better on me than the pink one.

The size is fairly large (boxy, to be precise) but it’s really quite warm and it’s thick enough even for colder weather. I really like these cardigans a lot – but yes, no tags or labels – and the pink cardigan definitely isn’t so great in quality. Other than that, I’m happy with the price and how warm these are!

9 Dresses and a wrong item

This is a really nice tight hugging dress and it’s really flattering when worn. It’s a bit on the short side (this is an understatement – it’s really a minidress on me) but I really like the vintagey style. In other words, it’s amazing when worn – great for work (well, not really actually – it’s okay for work as a top but not as a dress), really chic, belt isn’t required, and you can even wear it out to an evening party. There are actually little sequins sewn on here and there as a detail, which is pretty cute and overall I really like the piece. There were some problems though – as you can see there’s no label or tag, there are bits of string and fluff coming off the dress (because of the sequins/ material – you need to be careful because they do pull and get longer and longer…) and I actually paid quite a bit for this dress (somewhere between $15-$20) so I was expecting at least a tag.

Last haul (or the one before, I can’t remember) I purchased a vintagey short sleeved dress from this seller which was excellent quality, so I decided to purchase again. Well, the style is beautiful, but the quality is a bit lacking.

Oh, it’s a bit thin as well, but nothing to worry about, this dress comes with a lining, so it’s all good

This was one of my highlights in this order – this top is gorgeous. I really love it even though I haven’t tried it on yet. Just only one irk – the label is definitely not sewn in the middle – it’s off-centre. It’s a very minor thing, but it’s just something I happened to notice.

I didn’t order this LOL. I distinctively remembered ordering a babydollish beige dress, but for some reason I received this!!!

Well, the style is really nice and it comes with a label and it’s actually fairly warm, but I’m a bit disappointed because this is honestly not really my style and I didn’t order this. Oh well, it’s alright -it’ll look pretty cute worn over a dress or something, so it’s okay.

Another work top – this one when worn is also pretty nice – it’s really nicely fitted and the top part is poofy with a layer of chiffon. It’s just a really unique piece and I really like it. Again, no label or tag though, which makes this seller pretty inconsistent. But what can I say? I really like the vintagey style that this seller has to offer, so there’s not really all that much to complain about – could be a bit cheaper, though. But then again, for getting such unique pieces, it’s probably worth paying that much. These items just look really nice and flattering when worn, so I’m happy. The biggest problem with this top is that the material used for the “stomach” area tends to ride up during the day :\ Every time I reach for something or I find myself walking really fast, the top will just ride up. I recommend wearing something underneath like a singlet, or wearing this with a highwaisted bottom garment to avoid any embarassment during the day (which I experienced), since I had to keep pulling this top down.

10 Simple Black elastic belt

This came in a plastic ziplock bag (a very small one) and that’s about it. I paid $4 or so for this, and the quality is surprisingly quite nice. I bought it because it was so cheap and I needed a plain black belt for work.

Well, I remember that it was possible to get a freebie, but apparently it didn’t happen. Possibly I remember it wrong since it was such a long time ago, but either way, whatever – this was well worth the money. You wouldn’t be able to buy anything similar here for $4. Belts here go for at least $10 and they’re nothing like this.

11 Two pairs of jeans, one which is the wrong colour.

Okay, so these jeans look pretty fat and gross, but they’re actually both skinny jeans and when worn, they actually fit really nicely – the black one is a bit tight around the hips (the design is a bit iffy because it goes in suddenly and squeezes the top part in a really unnecessary way – or rather, the workmanship isn’t good, because my left hip hurt whereas my right hip felt comfortable) and the material is thick, stiff and coarse. But the blue jeans are really comfortable and are really nice and soft – the material is comparable to some expensive jeans I’ve seen in my lifetime that go for around $70 or more so I’m happy with them.

I actually ordered two pairs of BLACK jeans, but I didn’t expect that one pair was going to be blue. Or at least, I saw that they were black in the photos. Either way, all is forgiven because the blue ones are so damn comfy

The blue jeans were from a brand named “Yong” and the black jeans were from a brand named “Mir”. The blue jeans however had a really gross strong smell to them when I took them out of the packaging – it’ll take a few washes to get it out, but like I said, bad smell and wrong colour aside, they are such a perfect fit I can’t really complain.

The best part is that one of these pairs was like $7 and the other pair was $10. Super cheap – jeans are definitely worth buying from Gmarket. I was going to get some more acid wash  jeans but I stopped myself since I only have two days off a week to wear my own clothes.

Overall

So there were a few unexpected hiccups in this order – but overall I still feel like I got a good amount of stuff for how much I spent. Basically after unwrapping everything I ended up with a mini mountain of clothes which would fill up a quarter of a wardrobe easily.

I also ordered one other thing (it is for a friend’s present, so I won’t post it up here since it should be a surprise), and everything came in good order. I guess it’s just not the season to have big sales or to give away freebies, but the overall quality is pretty good. In general the pricier items were better in quality but it’s hard to tell since the quality of my cardigans  were so different even though they were the same style and same price.

Gmarket Haulage 12: Night and Day, Australia Post fails once again.

I know, I shouldn’t be ordering, but I finally accumulated enough monies and decided I was running out of eyeliner (since liquid eyeliner is now my new love and I use it 5/7 days if not more because of work) and a warm winter jacket so I went ahead and ordered. Oh, and I also managed to rip both pairs of my black stockings from the previous Gmarket order – serves me right for ordering like $1.50 stockings – but oh well, such is life.

The ordering process was fast and I received my items pretty much within a week from ordering – with the exception of dun dun dun Australia Post. Seriously, this EMS guy – I don’t even know why he even bothers. He “left us a card” and wrote 24/2 (24th February) on the box – (1) We didn’t get carded (2) Parcel was still in Korea on the 24th. It was just a blatant lie. My mum had to pick it up from the Post Office for me (I gave her the details of the parcel) without a card, and the post office worker was like “oh no it says that…”  HOW ABOUT NO. We picked up the parcel on the 1st of March (tracking website says it arrived at the post office on the 28th of February). IF we were carded on the 24th February, please do the math – that’s NOT express messenger service by ANY means. Seriously. The stupidest thing was I got the card in my mailbox on the 2nd of March AFTER we picked it up (at least CHECK the parcel is still in the Post Office instead of lazily writing a card, forgetting to put it into our mailbox – or is it because you can’t even find our mailbox to begin with???). I pay money to have EMS parcels at MY place either via card or manual delivery one or two days the parcel actually arrives in Australia, NOT several days afterwards – if that was what I wanted I could have paid for registered instead. REALLY? REALLLY?!

That aside I’m fairly pleased with my items, with the exception of maybe one or two items. I’ll write why.

Firstly – I apologise for some of the photos – I had taken a few during nighttime because that’s the time I can take photos since I get home lateish because of work. I managed to retake some photographs, but nothing too detailed. Just bear with me (people, it’s bear not bare which means to remove clothing) and I hope these photos shall suffice

1. Stockings and pants (as in, legging pants)
2. Wool trench coat
3. Etude House
4. Black flats
5. Laneige sleeping pack samples

1. Stockings and Legging pants

Well, as I already said, I ripped my cheap stockings and decided that black legging pants weren’t bad (since they’re relatively cheap, opaque and are really nice fit – of course I wear them under a dress, and not really as pants) so I tried this seller since they were really cheap and had a lot to choose from. Everything was around $4 or $5 so I ordered a bunch of stuff.

As you can tell, the packaging for various things actually varied a lot to looking decent, to looking plain cheap. I think the quality should be alright – but as you can probably see the second pair from the right is grey – it was meant to be a sparkly black but I guess that was a slight unfortunate miscommunication in colour. The purple leggings are for fun (ie. everything black in this photo is obviously meant for my work uniform dress code – sad sad sad – but work is not equal to life! Therefore you should buy stuff you want to wear on your rare days off ;D) and that’s really about it. I haven’t taken anything out of the packaging, but I’m just having my fingers crossed that it’s alright. So far, it looks decent.

2. Wool trenchcoat

I was really really really really really looking forward to this because the coat is absolutely gorgeous. I knew that if I was going to pay around $30, it was going to be stunning, amazing etc. And it is. It comes with a belt and another thing you can attach to the back of the coat to cover your shoulders. There is some weight to this coat and it’s fairly heavy and thick, but the lining is excellent, the cut is excellent and the buttons aren’t cheap at all.

My biggest problem is that I accidentally ordered the wrong size

I’m a size 66 in Korean tops (and bottoms for that matter) and I accidentally chose size 55 instead I think it was mainly to do with the fact that it was late, I got home from work and had to push the order through – possibly the sizes were in alphabetical order rather than size order, so I picked the latter option by mistake. This is a lesson to all of you – please choose the right item - I chose the right item but the wrong size! I’m so gutted but I know there’s no way I can return this to Gmarket since it’ll cost way too much to return. My only choice is to either suck it up and wear it anyway (which I can, but it’s tight since I have broad shoulders), or to sell it off.

It’s honestly a beautiful coat and you can’t buy this here in Australia without spending close to $200, I can promise you all on that. For now, I’ll just have to keep losing weight and hope my arms turn into sticks so I can wear this lovely thing. This was the saddest yet happiest thing I received in this order – how unfortunate

3. Etude House haul

Etude House changes their freebies every month and offer different gifts with purchase depending on how much money you spend. This month there was an option whereby you spend between 30,000- 50,000 Won and get a free Miss Tangerine cup (Miss Tangerine is the new line of orange cosmetics which Dara of 2NE1 is currently endorsing). I didn’t like any of the other gifts, and if I spent over 50,000Won I would have received something else. I truly had a difficult time cutting down the cost of items just to get the free cup D: But the cup is really nice

I ordered an AC pink powder spot treatment – I watched a Youtube video on a similar product (you dip a cotton tip into the solution, get a bit of the powder on the bottom and apply it to pimples – apparently it’s very effective) and hoped that this has the same effect. I was surprised to see that it comes in a pack with cotton tips and an acne cleanser included. I think this was around $12 or something, so I’m pleasantly surprised, but I thought the bottle would have been larger. Oh well.

I also stocked up on the Proof 10 eye primer (it’s a must if you don’t want flakey eyeliner), and ordered an Etude House Aqua Tint, which is a red tint (also comes in a hot pinkish colour) which can be used on the lips. I was planning on using it as a liquid blusher to speed up my morning routine, so I’m looking forward to using it. I also ordered a moistfull collagen eyecream since my mum keeps raving on about it – so I decided to complete my set (if you remember last time I hoarded the emulsion and toner sets XD).

Last but not least, Code B Cream eyeliner. Comes in a small frosted glass (?) pot and a brush. The brush has a cap and the cap can be attached to the lid of the eyeliner pot, so you don’t lose the brush. Handy! I hope that it’s really good and all, because I wanted to order the Oh m’eye Line liquid liner in black, but Etude House was out of stock :\

Overall I’m happy with Etude House, except they really do bundle everything in so much bubble wrap it’s ridiculous – like the eye primer already has a box but the bubble wrap was like 5-6 layers thick! Another thing if you haven’t realised is that they’re being a bit stingy on the freebies – they used to include lots, but now there are no samples at all – just the gift with purchase. That’s alright still, but I thought that they would have included at least one sample, but they didn’t.

4. Black flats

This time I tried a different seller (since the last seller refused to sell me a pair of $3.50 shoes with free domestic shipping ) – these flats equated to approximately $6 but I paid the 2,500Won domestic shipping fee. The gift was a pair of shoe inserts, which are really really bad quality. >_> The shoes came wrapped in a fibre bag each which was nice, and they were nicely stuffed with tissue paper which was held by those wire rods shoes have these days. The faux leather is really soft and excellent quality – it doesn’t give you blisters and they are really nicely sized, and it also has a non slip sole which is really surprising to see - however there were a few problems.

The back part of the shoe is too low so the elastic doesn’t hold onto your foot enough – it slips off your foot easily. My right foot is considerably smaller than my left, and my right shoe slips off once pretty much every 15 steps I take. I tried to put an insole in to fix the problem, but it didn’t do much for me at all. The design of the shoe was just not right to begin with :\

In the second image you can also tell that the decoration is already off centre and you can see a white patch – that white patch is something like glue. The extra strings you see are on both shoes – in other words, after wearing them to work (approximately 12 hours) both shoes have the strings loosened, and the decoration on my right shoe is already off. Pretty shoddy workmanship, but the synthetic leather softness really makes up for it. Too bad I can’t really wear them unless I wear like thick socks or something…

I’ll have to fix the right shoe once I have some free time, and to actually wear these shoes I’ll have to also think of a way to wear them so that they don’t slip off my heel. It’s unfortunate because they’re nice and soft… but the design really let this one down.

5. Laneige Sleeping Pack Samples

I ordered 4x20ml Laneige Water Sleeping Pack sample jars because I was having some trouble with my skin’s moisture levels. I usually do a sheet mask maybe once every 2 weeks, but because I’m tired, I usually skip any long skincare routines. I hoped that this would at least be a good substitute and because I haven’t tried Laneige before, I was hoping it’d be good.

It’s actually pretty good – it actually smells like the liquid you get in a sheet mask. It absorbs quickly and has a nice cooling effect – moisturises okay – but I’ll write more on this in another post (an actual review).

Anyway, Laneige samples are a lot cheaper than the actual product – if you do the math, there’s 80ml worth of mask, and I paid $9 for it. The 80ml jar sold by Laneige retails at around $17 – it’s not rocket science to figure that you can get the same amount of stuff for about half the price, so I was fairly pleased and looking forward to this.

Overall

I was pleased with my items. Even though my shoe decorations are pretty much falling off, I still like them aside from the fact I can’t really wear them without wearing them like slippers. I also am in love with my wool trench but I’m really sad that I ordered the wrong size… if it was a size 66 everything would have been perfect, but that was my own fault and I have nobody to blame for it.

I ordered in total 166, 000Won ish of stuff incuding shipping, which is not bad at all. The shipping estimate was 3.84kg, but the actual weight was 3.91kg which was pretty accurate so I didn’t have to pay any extra. Shipping and everything was fast – just some external factors were negative, but I’m really pleased with this order regardless.

10 minute post

Yes, I’m giving myself 10 minutes to just quickly brief any readers on what crap I’ve been up to the past week.

Finally got a haircut – OMG. Best haircut ever. And I mean this because I’ve been stuck with horrible hair for the past 6-8 months since I got a super sloppy and inexperienced hairdresser from hairdresser N (no secret, just go through my old posts to know which one I mean). Enough is enough! I went back to Kim Sun Young since they were my essentially my hair headquarters. Yeah, the hairwash was really sloppy – it was like a quick lather, rinse, half assed attempt to wash, but not and then a condition. The hairwash literally took 5 minutes and it was the worst hairwash I’ve ever had in my life. But the cut was good! The hairdresser spent a good amount of time cutting and then thinning it out. I was super satisfied with the styling and all in all it was a pleasant haircut, minus the wash. I’d rather a bad wash than a bad haircut any day, so need I say more? I shall never betray KSY ever again and leave it for something else.

Speaking of haircuts – OMG YAY – washed my hair, it’s super sleek, soft, feels healthy/ alive and I actually didn’t shed any hair when I washed it. This was NOT the case with my previous hair cut! Anyway, I just realised that each time I cut my hair, the darker it appears. Never mind that, I’ll be dyeing it this upcoming weekend (I think), as I was supposed to do it the weekend before, but since I delayed my haircut, I couldn’t squeeze in two hair related things in one day. On that note, Solfine Crema Colour was on sale (it might still be, I don’t know) – I stocked up on two colours. Two very excitingly scary sounding colours – medium blonde and hazel blonde. And just to make it a bit better, they’re actually a medium shade of brown, not blonde at all.

At work I was also given a bottle of Repair and Shine serum by a really really sweet customer (she bought something the day before and then she started going around the city doing a promo thing) – well we all got a free bottle. That stuff is amazing. Makes your hair really soft and sleek without making it oily. I’ll probably write about it in more detail in another post just to give them some free advertising for being so nice P:

Enough about hair -

On Sunday after getting my haircut I met up with friend P whom I haven’t seen in perhaps 6-8 months. We occasionally meet up, which is pretty rare and amazing considering we are in completely different subjects and different years (in terms of education and age – obviously I’m the old fart here). P is one of those few kind souls who actually bother to catch up, so I give kudos for that. We just had a modest lunch at one of my favourite Japanese restaurants, Musashi. I ordered a sushi nigiri set (it was yummmm) and the (crap I forgot the name) – berry concoction drink that they had. That was nice too. After that we went to have a look at the new Galaxy World at Market City – HOLY CRAP THEY HAVE DODGEM CARS – WHAT THE HECK.

According to the game Rambo, my shooting skills were  terrible (they are, because it wasn’t until about 3 missions later that I realised that the red shots were mine – and they were nowhere near where they should be… lolol…). My air hockey skills are clearly lacking (both arms are now achinng immensely – I NEED TO EXERCISE), and my DDR skillz are deteriorating. I also suck at Daytona too, though I caught up amazingly – I couldn’t steer properly at the  beginning because I forgot how to drive – trolololol. Then I flunked the next round because my bag on my lap was falling off – and I messed up. No need to say more.

Chatime ensued, a quick visit to Missha for some Anti-Trouble patches (btw, buy 10, get 1 free), and then some $1 pool at the Shark Hotel. I suck at pool – it’s just been too long. Though I won 2 games vs 3 games, so that wasn’t too terrible, considering I have literally no aiming skills.

Won the long awaited February Top Bloggers February and promptly had to spend it all in a largeish haul since there was a bazillion things I needed desperately, but couldn’t bear to spend real money on :S. So more black things to add to my wardrobe; life is pretty depressing. I need to dedicate a day or several hours of a day to cleaning up my wardrobe – all I see is a huge pile of work clothes thrown in the centre. The sad thing is that I tend to keep wearing the same few pieces over and over because I lack the bravery to wear some pieces. Said haul will include a wool trenchcoat (I know I already have several trenches, but I stupidly bought a size 12 Witchery coat – SIGH – it’s way too big, not to mention pricey. IT LOOKS GOOD THOUGH), a multitude of leggings (guess what? The Hello Kitty Stockings from Haul 10[?] have all imploded on themselves – with less than 20 wears combined, both stockings ripped and have made their way to trash lalaland), a pair of shoes (I HOPE THEY GIVE THEM TO ME THIS TIME), a bunch of Etude House (because EH is cheap, and I need to stock up), some Laneige sleeping pack samples (because samples equating to the full sized amount is half price… HALF PRICE. I’ll do with half price even without English instructions or the box!!) to help improve my horrible skin, and that’s it. Really, that’s really it. I shall facepalm in retrospect because that’s not a lot of stuff I wanted to get a dress as well (for work, le duh) but alas the funds in my cash balance were limited. Somehow I managed to ace this order and used up all but 140 odd Won in my Cash Balance. LAWLS – 10c; that’s pretty damn good.

I also have a load of crap coming for me in the mail – all totalling to less than probably $6AUD – I think I’m going to give false eyelashes a try – so I ordered a pack of 10 pairs of false eyelashes (just for the cheap factor), some Koji eyelash glue and something to make my hair look funky. eBay sometimes works wonders – and this time, it’s pretty good, surprisingly enough. It needs to come in now! But it won’t, so I shall just wait patiently.

I think I’ve raced through and talked about all the stuff that needs to be talked about. I’ve given up on watching My Princess temporarily – started watching The Duo which is actually pretty good – hope it’s not just the first few episodes – the concept isn’t too bad and it has some good potential for some medieval angst. Obviously this post didn’t take 10 minutes – more like 30 (but hey I wasn’t here for the full 30 minutes, I had to do other stuff in the meantime too you know).

Oh, and the latest nail craze I have at the moment is buffing them – I have yet to buy the implement myself (I’ve been using the “public” one at work – spare time, we haz it), so once I buy it I’ll be able to blog about it and then fill up this dull page with some pretty useless photos and use your precious bandwidth up. SCHWEEET.

I’ll be back soon – probably Friday night! Until next blog

Frustrating weekend, hello friend, and Pandora bracelet.

Seriously, apologies for the close posts, but I guess since this is sort of a review in the second half, it’ll make up for it, yes?

I was wondering, do people actually like jewellery/ accessory reviews? I have other jewellery/ accessories (branded) that I can review if that’s what people want. It’s just that I never thought about reviewing jewellery – let me know if that’s what you’re interested in anyway.

Saturday

Saturday was the famous 42 degree day. I decided to risk getting a tan to go and meet up with a uni friend whom I haven’t seen in ages – like seriously, ages. I think it was something like over 2.5 months since we last saw each other??? The meeting was fairly brief though and consisted of cold Japanese noodles for lunch, Chatime (funny thing was that they gave me the large size instead of regular for the price of a regular – ho ho ho) and pool (as in the cue stick type, not the swimming type).

We had cold noodles at Ichiban Boshi – the most commonly spoken line by me that day was “this is what it’s like to eat at Ichiban Boshi” – namely because the staff were so disorganised, it took them too long to either take our order or give us a seat (note: there are empty tables and a lot of people waiting). I ordered a tantan tsukemen and do not ask me why – there were two tomatoes in my tantan soup. WUT. Not only that, when I spooned the  bottom for the pork mince, it was hella salty. Like you’re eating a mouthful of sea salt. So I skipped the meat even though that’s what you’re supposed to eat as a number one priority. Friend ordered a cold noodle salad and that came even later than my tsukemen – trololololol - seriously, this is what it’s like to eat at Ichiban Boshi. Maybe that’s why I haven’t eaten there in like over 2 years, for the QVG one anyway.

I was just starting to actually enjoy my weekend when I suddenly got a call and I had to go home. I felt seriously really bad because he travelled all the way to the city just for a few hours without any other plans for the rest of the day We were supposed to see a movie too so you can imagine how long I was supposed to stay out for – IMO it’s only fair that a meetup after a while should last more than like 3 hours >_> Sigh – but alas, that’s what happened, and I left.

I was also supposed to drop by work and say hello – but that didn’t work out in the end for obvious reasons :\

Things up until that phone call were actually great (I mean, a free upgrade from Chatime – HELLS YEAH – AND I won a game of pool!!1one) but then something crap happened (not uni friend related, but other people related) which dampened my mood whilst I was riding the bus home.

After that, things were hectic – my dad made a ridiculous request for me to go out and buy an air-conditioner for him. Considering that we don’t have any small windows, portable air-conditioners (from now on I’ll refer to these as AC) were a no-no since the hot air will come back in and make the temperature EVEN HOTTER than it is outside. Our local electronics shopping centre was pretty much completely SOLD OUT on their portable AC units and the best part? They were all around a thousand dollars each. WHAT. SINCE WHEN/WHY IDEK.

Needless to say, we returned home without an AC – it was pointless to get one. I felt like the useless and resultless hunt for a stupid AC unit was such a waste of my time and inconvenienced my whole day. Absolutely speechless.

Sunday

Visited our local markets for some plumbing supplies, namely a professional plumbing spanner which we have yet to find. They didn’t sell it, but the couple who was running the stall were super nice and told us what we could use. We ended up buying stuff from them anyway, which included a funny looking washer which allows you to turn off the water without having to turn the tap too tightly. It’s hard to explain, but we’ve been having 2 problems with our tap: it leaks, and the handle can get detached if you turn it too tight (to lessen the leak).

After getting home, I tried a regular spanner and could not believe that it worked lololol. I have been putting off repairing the tap for a very long time, so it was pretty amazing. Now, no leaking tap. Super awesome, very satisfied and very content.

Then I caught up on 3 episodes of the latest Korean dramas (ie. last week’s episodes) – I still have another to go which I’m saving for tonight. I have work tomorrow, which is why I don’t have a lot of free time at the moment – up until this point I had a 3 day break, but now it’s just a 2 day break D: Hopefully things aren’t too quiet tomorrow.

Pandora

Well, I’m sure everyone has heard of Pandora before. I first knew about it about 2 years ago but I never really bothered with it because the person who told me about it made it sound really expensive – and it is expensive haha. His words were “first you buy a necklace, then you buy the beads separately, and they’re like, a hundred dollars each.” Well no, they’re not a hundred dollars each – not all of them, anyway.

Pandora actually has been around for 10 years or so. The general premise is that you buy a bracelet or necklace and you can customise it by choosing the beads (aka charms) you want, and arranging them however you want. You choose what colours, what designs you want, and you can add as many or as few as you like. There are a few pointers though: string bracelets are the cheapest but could probably only hold 4 charms, leather bracelets hold a maximum of about 6, silver/ gold – as many as you want (ie. you can fill the entire thing up).

The whole point of Pandora is that it uses a pretty innovative beading system which ensures that beads don’t slide around too much, or fall out if the bracelet falls – you screw the beads on.

Pandora also does necklaces, earrings and rings – obviously the necklaces and earrings are also customisable – the rings aren’t, but are to the degree where you can mix and match more than one ring on your finger (if that’s how you float your rings).

Charms actually only start from $30AUD each for solid sterling silver beads. Spacers (ie. beads that separate beads or fill up gaps) start from $16 each, so it’s admittedly not too expensive for branded jewellery. Beads that have colours (for instance the murano glass beads) are $43 and go up depending on what the colour is (ie. glass is cheapest, then enamel/ semi-precious stones cubic zironia, then precious stones).

Amongst the price of coloured beads, there are some two-toned beads which are fairly well priced. Two-toned beads are beads that are part solid sterling silver and part solid 14ct yellow gold. Yes, the gold is solid – that is why most gold beads (as in a decently sized charm) are priced at $303AUD each – because they reflect the price of gold. Therefore, you could probably melt one of these gold beads and turn it into something else – not really recommending this, but I’m just saying that some people do see gold as an investment in this respect. Still want gold without the high price tag? No worries, a gold spacer will set you back at around $135AUD. Some “lattice” type gold beads (ie. they’re not a solid chunk, but like a shell with perforations) can be bought for around $195 (note, this is better than $303, if that’s what you’re after). Gold is possible and it can be affordable – you just have to look out for the beads you think are best value.

You don’t need to buy expensive beads if you don’t want to – all of them can be silver, all coloured, all gold – it’s up to you. But I must admit, a completely filled bracelet is actually quite pretty in its own personalised, rugged, uneven way and because you can arrange and choose your own charms, nobody will have the same bracelet as you, ever.

Here’s my bracelet – it’s a bit different to the one I designed on the Pandora website because I wasn’t allowed to buy some items since they were the last one in stock – I was only allowed to buy charms that we had at least 2 of ^^;;

My mum prefers to look at the above photo of my bracelet than at the real thing – her excuse is “but it’s so much bigger on screen!”. I digressed.

My theme for my bracelet is hearts, flowers, pink (I can do light pink, some red and possibly white). I actually don’t like red all that much, but I had to make a sacrifice for the glass bead – we ran out of the one I wanted. I also wanted another heart but I couldn’t buy it since there was only one in stock, so I settled for the red enamel heart. Aside from that, everything else is pink, including the cubic zirconia on the handbag. A pumpkin isn’t exactly a flower or anything (it’s more to do with that I didn’t like any of the other fixed beads and I was iffy about buying an expensive fixed bead), but I went for it anyway lol – I thought it was cute. I’m just trying to keep the whole thing girly with things I like lol.

I only have one item that has gold on it – the safety chain, so at the moment it’s really white looking since there’s no gold amongst my charms. I’m in need of two tone beads or cheaper gold beads just to break up the colours. Of course, I’ll only be picking items with flowers, the colour pink, or with hearts (that’s why I have a baby pram – there’s a heart on it – but I also picked it because I thought it was pretty cute and it’s a slightly larger charm).

I have a few beads in mind but I won’t be buying any more beads any time soon. I did the calculations and the beads I want – only 7 of them – will amount to $727AUD. Noooo. But on the other hand, I actually only need about 9 or 10 more beads to fill up the bracelet – so that’s not too bad because I am seriously intending on filling the bracelet.

My bracelet currently as it is costs retail $520AUD – and believe me I’m not writing this calmly, I’m more like EEK. Is it worth it? All my items are solid sterling silver and there’s quite a lot to look at. Overall I think it’s generally good value for money (compared to some other people’s choices of beads), especially since I do have a two-toned item (which actually counts as 2 beads – since there are two ends – in my eyes, anyway) and 4 coloured beads. It’s generally a good investment since everything is solid silver and there are bits of valuable things included in the bracelet. It just depends on what people like and what priorities you have – this is $20 more than my Chanel sunglasses, but I can wear this at day or night, however it doesn’t do anything useful like protect my eyes; however it looks quite nice on my wrist.

I genuinely think these are really pretty because I see my coworkers wear them – everyone has a different one, but I think everyone’s bracelet is really really nice. It shows a person’s interests (eg. if it’s full of formalised two-toned beads it’s not so much for personalisation, but for professionalism and value for money) and allows for a mass produced consumerist product to actually differ – unlike say, Tiffany and Co – everyone will have the same looking thing since it’s from a set menu (this doesn’t mean I don’t like Tiffany and Co, by the way). It’s just a really nice way to collect memories. For instance, I can tell you that I bought this bracelet just before Chinese New Year’s and bought it with my second pay check. Pretty memorable, I think lol.

If you like accessories I think it’s worthwhile – it’ll take you a while to fill up a bracelet (if that’s what you want) – just to give you an extra idea, wearing two of these bracelets with something else on the same arm actually looks pretty good.

How easy/ hard is it to maintain one of these bracelets? Well as you can probably tell from my photo everything is more or less still very silver, shiny and white – with the exception of the handbag, which is slightly yellow (it’s not now, I just polished it – but it’s a bit antique-looking  to begin with). Sterling silver tarnishes. The reason why my bracelet is so clean is because I polish it every night when I am home with a polishing cloth. I also polish it at least once when I’m at work (and it’s quiet). I even threw this for an ultrasonic clean on my second day of wear. If I didn’t clean it at all, everything would be yellow already and this is just after a few days of wear (about 5).

If your bracelet is starting to darken or look grey or dull and it’s a recent thing, you should invest in a polishing cloth. If it’s been dull and dirty for quite a while, you should give it an ultrasonic clean (which costs ~$10) – it’ll make your jewellery look new. Other than that, it’s quite easy to maintain – just polish it, look after it, and it’s just common sense that it’ll look brand new every day. You only need to polish it with a cloth for maybe 5 minutes, so that’s not a lot to ask for.

Some people are very lucky and silver does not change colour on them or at least not much – this was the case when I was younger (I used to wear a silver necklace), but I stopped once silver started tarnishing (then again I wear my necklace in the shower and all, so I’m not surprised it tarnished lololol).

For now, I’m going to keep my bracelet as it is. I don’t want any more silver beads, because the last thing I want is for the whole thing to be silver >_> I’ll be buying two more glass beads (pink) and the rest I’m looking for will either be two-toned or gold. Expensive yes, but you might as well buy the beads that you like the best and put them on the bracelet – I won’t be compromising quality because of price (within limit)! Think about it, it’s probably more expensive to buy a cheaper charm you don’t really like, just to replace it with the one you like later on – you might as well spend your money on something you really like so you only need to buy it once.

Silver bracelets from Pandora start at $69 (different lock) but the one I have is $89. Gold bracelets start at around $1400, but I recommend getting the silver bracelet with the gold lock (slightly less than $600) since you won’t see the bracelet if you intend to fill it up. Therefore, the price of the bracelet is therefore almost infinite, depending on what you want (to be honest though, Pandora’s most expensive bead is something like $900 odd – so if you’re really crazy you multiply that by 20 and add the cost of 2 gold fixed beads and a gold safety chain – trolololol – so no, the price is not infinite) so it can get pricey. Very pricey. Even though I just started I think it’s already pricey.

But anyway, just to brush up in case if tl;dr – I intend to continue filling this bracelet up with some two-toned and gold coloured things. No more silver for me. Pandora prices do increase, by the way, so grab it now if you’re intending on getting one (I’m trying to be subtle about this – hopefully you know what I am trying to say).

Just on a side note/ suggestion to those reading this: if you’re buying beads as a present for a friend who already has an existing bracelet and happen to take a photo of it so you know what beads they have, please buy beads they don’t have or beads that will go with the bracelet they already have. If they don’t have a glass bead it might be a good idea to get them one – it’s standard for a bracelet to have a glass bead, if not more – a lot of the Pandora “samples” in their brochures feature their models with 6 glass beads. If you have a high budget of around $60, please get them something nice like a two-toned bead – it’s possible with $60. Also, match the colours they already have or any theme they have. If all else fails, get them a bead that reflects the occasion you’re buying the bead for (eg. bday will have certain connotations – weddings have other connotations, Valentines is something different, and so is Christmas).

Anyway, I hope that my mini-review on Pandora was interesting or at least educational. Pandora is slowly expanding overseas, so it’s not uncommon to find Pandora overseas – final reminder, buy your bracelet and cheaper charms now – the prices will go up.

So now, I will need to rest and finish up whatever I’m doing now since I have work tomorrow. Until next blog!

End of the week rambling, not very happy with life yet happy.

Thieves, not customers, gossip – good times.

Work has been quite interesting. I worked on Australia Day which is a public holiday – but apart from that, it was actually a really quiet day. I believe it’s quiet everywhere else, but this was the highlight of that day: I noticed a bit of a ruckus outside and it turns out that a lady stole an entire cardboard box of merchandise from a store. It was just a box and I gather she went in stuffing things into the box. She was caught, but I have no idea what happened to her afterwards. I just really couldn’t believe it because she got caught outside where I work at, which is an entire level below from where she was stealing :O

I was like “OMG SOMEONE STOLE SOMETHING” – both of my bosses who were inside came out going “what’s going on?!” and were fully into it LOL I tried to take a photo with my phone camera with zoom from where I was but they told me to go outside and take it LOLOLOL. FYI I do have a photo, but for confidentiality reasons I won’t post it. I admit though, I took it for the purpose of blogging about it, but I shall steer away from anything too crazy – and that’s classified as crazy IMO

Speaking of thieves, today I came across one, but he stood no chance. He used a really lame tactic to make us believe he was a consumer – he really wasn’t. He was flustered, eyes darting everywhere. I mean, seriously? Come on. I could tell as soon as he walked into the store and I’m a newbie in retail :\ Hope thieves stay away while I’m working there – I don’t want to have to deal with them! I feel so sorry for the SA yet feel so *worship* for her catching the lady with the cardboard box! SAs shouldn’t have to go through that crap! Luckily we weren’t busy and we all dealt with him.

Another type of customer comes in just to enjoy the air con. I find the best way to get rid of them is to simply stand nearby (or you don’t have to if they’re walking around, but you have to stand near if they’re like standing and texting or something stupid which shows they have no intention to buy), stare at them, and smile. They’ll automatically leave. I think I learned this skill in about a day

Work is pretty cool because I’m settling in alright I’m getting along with my colleagues after a pretty quiet and awkward first two days of work lol.

What do we do when it’s really quiet? We fix the displays, clean some jewellery, and if there’s really nothing to do, we just sit and chat hehe. We talk about everything and it’s sometimes super funny – ahhh well. If only we knew the workers from other stores around us – I wonder if the shopping centre has an end of year get together party thing – I guess not though lol. That would be a pretty fun idea I think.

Some funny quotes from our customers:

“Cubic Zirconia is harder than CZ. But CZ is shinier than Cubic.”
I hope you all can tell that there’s something terribly wrong with this statement. If not, leave a comment, I’ll reply explaining this :S

“Our daughter needs an analogue watch, it can’t be digital; if it’s digital and the alarm sets off she’ll be forced to leave the examination room.”
A family came in looking for a watch but the one they were looking at was way over their budget. We suggested some trusty Japanese digital watches (okay, I’ll stop beating around the bush – I’m obviously talking about Casio Baby G here) but they used that excuse to not buy it. They were like “our daughter is going to sit exams” – my colleague was like “she (NB: meaning me, Misa) went to high school/ grew up here”. “…our daughter is in a selective school”; Colleague” “she (NB: Misa) went to a selective school >_>” – I got so frustrated and because I was speaking in pretty much my THIRD language (meaning I’m really crap at it, but I can be really good at times if I wanted to be) I was half shocked, half delirious. Why? My general reaction was “OMG if you don’t set the alarm, how would the watch even go off?!” so I said a bunch of nonsense because I was just shocked beyond words. What I really meant to say was, “if you don’t set the alarm, how would it sound?” – and in my head I also was thinking “even if the watch went off, how would they know it was you?” – surely in an exam room unless it’s just a subject exam, there is about 150 students. Honestly now, is your daughter really in a selective high school or not?! She looked so young I had doubts she was in high school…

My point is, if you don’t want to buy the item, please don’t make up weird excuses or say strange things like that that don’t make sense. It doesn’t make either party look good, nor does it leave anyone with a positive experience. If you’re not going to come back, please don’t say you’ll come back. Just say “I’ll think about it”, smile, nod, and possibly say thanks or bye – we’ll appreciate it. Just don’t be rude and walk out the door without saying anything after we’ve served you – at least smile as you leave or something. It just looks awkward if you head out like that :\

But aside from that, one of the highlights of this week was getting my stuff from Thomas Sabo! I waited an entire week for it, so I was super excite for these even though I had to pay for them

Night time, crap interior light photos will always be crap – get used to it :\

I honestly I can’t say how much I paid for these because I get discounts because it should be a secret and will always be a secret, but they all came with their original tags. No packaging cept for the plastic you can see, but meh – it was expected (boxes and stuff cost money to order :\). I actually ordered 3 items, but my charm for my bracelet is on backorder. *Mumbles* SERIOUSLY? BACKORDER? I want my charm I didn’t wait a whole week to get this… this was not the reality that I wanted

But as you can see from the above images, I ordered a rose quartz bracelet (because my existing rose quartz bracelet needs to be rethreaded, but I’m too lazy so I just bought one of these – plus these are really nice rose quartz beads, they’re really rosy in colour and they’re big. I should have gotten the pearl one instead though, I kinda really want one now because the size is better than this – but oh well) – $57, and a pair of earrings (sterling silver with cubic zirconia) – $99. I was hoping the earrings would be shinier but for some reason they’re not as shiny as I had expected. Maybe I’ve been staring at diamonds for too long or something lol (that was not a joke btw, it’s true – especially if you look at them for several days in a row for about 9 hours each day). I’m thinking I possibly should have ordered more from Thomas Sabo, but money is extremely tight for me at the moment. Mostly because of this:

Yes, you are not seeing it wrong. $457 AUD. And the safety chain isn’t even in this image. OMG MY POOR MONIES.

I need to get one of these. It’s not a must must and there’s no real pressure to buy one, but everyone else has one and I feel obliged to buy one, and I think I should get one because it’ll make my life a lot easier.

Therefore, I am/ will be trying very hard to consistently save up each week to buy this. I have been doing calculations all night but it doesn’t matter how I look at it, it’s still really expensive even with my discount. I feel so sad because this time last year I’d pull out $500 no questions asked for a pair of Chanel sunglasses, but I’m now feeling very sad and poor even though I’m earning my own money. At the moment I feel that I need to either be paid more, or find some other work or ways on top of work to earn money :\ I need more income

Speaking of which, I’ll probably need to buy some more work clothes, but I won’t be buying from Gmarket because I have an ongoing dispute going on with Gmarket at the moment. I combined an order last time (paid with Gaccount cash balance) but I had to cancel it because it was taking too long. Yeah, if you remember my Black Thursday post – or not – you probably can’t remember it – why? Because it was ages ago. And up until now, no refund. Customer service is completely useless and I can’t get anything out of them. How hard is it to push through a refund??? Why do they even need to ask the seller? I cancelled the order, seller didn’t give me anything, I need to get my money back. It’s as simple as that!

As you can tell anyway, until that refund sorts itself out I’m definitely 11000% sure I’m not going to be ordering from Gmarket any time soon and this time I really mean it. Even though the money from that money was “free”, I did work for hours unpacking items, photographing them, editing the photos, writing stuff about them (those posts are seriously around 2000 words each, and that’s an essay there) – I deserve to get that money and I should be getting it back. So why is it taking so long? I am disappoint.

Aside from that I have a crapload of stuff to buy for work – for those who were smart and noticed the title of my last blog post, my work shoes are actually too small and it numbed the nerves on my small toe on my left foot. Not kidding, my toe swelled up, and it has been numb for about a week and a half. My biggest problem is that it’s actually because one foot is a size larger than the other (yes, not half a size but one entire size) so it really screws things up If I buy shoes too big or too small it’s a lose-lose situation. So I need to save for a pair of good quality shoes… and at this point of time I’m not interested in cheap shoes… I’m interested in investing in a quality pair that I’ll be able to wear for a long time.

If anyone knows a brand with good/ comfortable flats (by flats I mean anything up to perhaps a 3cm heel is okay), please let me know. At the moment I’m wearing Nine West flats and whilst they are kinda comfy, the sizing and support I’d rate probably like a 2/10. At the moment I’m googling but I’ll have to buy them soon :\ Else my toe nails are going to split – so it’s not just a numb/ swollen toe problem here :<

Anyway, it’s getting quite late and I need my rest. I have a long day ahead of me and well, yeah I’m tired lol. I’ll be back next week with actual photos (do not worry, I’ll manage to take some even if they’re really uninteresting) and write a decent post. This was just a quick brush up on random stuff for the past week

Until next blog!

====

EDIT 29/1/11

Holy moly – I just realised that my licence can be renewed and that’ll cost me a whopping $114 – then, I’ll also need to deposit money into my account because of monthly bills. WHY MUST YOU DO THIS TO ME. I NEED MY MONIES. In March I’ll be buying out private health insurance for myself – argh. ‘Tis not easy paying bills, but then again it’s just something in life that I’ll need to get used to I suppose. It’s all part of growing up ^^;;;

Chilling.

Met up with uni friend A during her short working break a few days ago.

We had a look around Myer and some post Boxing Day sales but nothing was really all that great. Seemed like most of the good stuff is gone (sizes and styles) so we headed off to the Lincraft 30% off everything except for gift cards, sewing machines and a bunch of other terms and conditions sale – out of fluke I managed to spot it. I honestly still thought it was still at the QVB :S

Bought various things, mostly elastic for my mum – when I paid I felt it was a bit too expensive – checked the docket – found that all my elastic hadn’t been discounted – went back – requeued at another counter – waited eons for sales assistant with attitude to serve me – got refunded – had my entire order paid for again – and got my money back for the undiscounted items.

It sounds somewhat petty – you’d all think “heh, elastic doesn’t actually cost that much” – but to be honest, if I knew it wasn’t going to be discounted, why would I buy it? Elastic has gotten quite expensive actually – at least a dollar up from what I remember this time last year.

I was refunded a grand total of six dollars and thirty cents ($6.30) which is actually quite a lot considering that’s enough for a drink at a café or drink place and some spare change :O

The thing that sucks most was because we were in a bit of a hurry to get to lunch, I realised that I forgot to give them my membership card – so I was ripped of 38 odd points for my membership (I swiped it when I paid for my overcharged order, but I didn’t get to swipe it when I paid again for the corrected bill) – TOTALLY DEFEATS THE PURPOSE. I really like Lincraft because they have a lot of stuff, but it really sucks because I hate how disorganised the place is. A whole bunch of stuff doesn’t have price tags attached, and the stuff is getting expensive. Eurgh.

Had lunch at QVB at the top floor. It was a restaurant/ café at one end named Yama’s which serves Japanese food. I ordered a Green Tea Seafood Pancake ($14.90) which didn’t taste a hint of green tea lol. It was nice though. My biggest iff (noun for iffy) about the place is how expensive their menu is. Most of the food is around $20+, so to get a decent meal you need to pay $20. There’s nothing much in between the $15 and $20 mark, which leads to the biggest sadface emote I would ever insert into a post. Seriously, there’s nothing to choose – it’s either you go all out, or you don’t at all.

All photos were taken by A with A’s Canon DSLR – this shot was taken by me, but for the sake of her camera, I’m watermarking all of these photos differently. Was too lazy to take out my camera – A was wearing a handbag and still lugged her DSLR – skill/ dedication. I think I should start doing it and my camera’s nowhere near as big or heavy :S

Normally I wouldn’t really care, but since money is short for me, I must say it’s not great value. If I compare this to a Korean seafood pancake, the difference is huge – this probably has less seafood in it, the sauce doesn’t have sesame seeds in it, and the Korean pancakes I think are larger, if not thicker and more filling.

Besides that, the food is good, but just because it’s at the QVB it doesn’t mean it’s worth the money. I paid $25 at The Tea Room for a pot of tea and a few bites of cake, but that’s because you get the whole Victorian interior setting and service. At Yama’s, there’s no view, special interior or anything. You get good food, but it’s not worth it. Would I visit again? Maybe, but probably not any time soon.

Girl power! We can take photographs >:3

We took quite a few at QVB but soon we headed down to Circular Quay (A’s idea) to take photos. Admittedly we didn’t actually take many photos in total that day – we were mostly mucking around with the camera more than anything else, but it was fun

We walked all the way down to Circular Quay, by the way, and ended up at this lovely destination -

The highly tinted glass of the Opera House is creepy, and I must say it’s quite gross looking front on. It’s really beautiful when you see it on a ferry as you approach or leave the terminal though.

We went through that and ended up at the Botanic Gardens – or at least, a strip of it outside the actual gardens.

Because girls love shoes.

We walked through the Botanic Gardens – and – well – all the way down George Street back to George Street cinemas :O We did a lot of walking hahaha. I actually wasn’t tired, but I complained anyway because my feet hurt – not from walking, but because the narrow front of my shoes seemed to be rubbing on my foot >:\ Even with the stockings on D: LE WUT.

We had Chatime and coincidentally ordered the exact same thing – and I decided that Chatime is infinitely better than EasyWay – because it’s not watery and there’s good flavour in it. There are more things in Chatime drinks that are actually GOOD for you than in EasyWay drinks – better value for money too, I think. I am also going to abandon my love for Starbucks’ Green Tea frappucino and I’m going to replace that with Chatime’s Matcha red bean milk tea with pearls. Hmmm. Red beans.

So that marks the end of a soulful(?) journey trekking Sydney’s overcrowded post-Boxing Day sales consumer fanatic streets. Within the business we found some inner peace and a bit of prettiness within the city.

I know I haven’t been updating much or as much as I should be – this post would have been up ages ago but I was waiting on a photo I’m also currently capped so my Internet has been really slow Other than that I wake up every morning and cringe at pimples popping up (weather changes this time of the year are always detrimental to my skin), praying that my phone will ring, and battling allergies (WHICH I THOUGHT I CONQUERED?!?) ie. turning into a snot machine.

Tomorrow’s a pretty important day for me – and it’s also the last day of 2010! Wish me luck for tomorrow, and I hope you all enjoy New Year/ New Year’s Eve with family/ friends I shall write more about tomorrow at a later time

Until then, adios amigas and take care!

Meow – I’m a panda.

YO, SUP?

You can call my time of “freedom” eventful or uneventful – it’s really just been a mix of both. It’s nothing that I particularly find pant jizzing though, and sadly I don’t even want to go outside my room. There’s nothing out there that really captivates me.

Onto other brighter things, I’ve started my daily one hour hula hoop routines again, because I knew I was seriously getting fat (read: watching dramas all day all night long).

I’ve also received my results for the semester, and I get to finally graduate with my Masters in March 2011. With a distinction average. Oh yay the joys. I’m feeling slightly bitter because I hate it how when people start to graduate they make such a big deal out of it – “I’M GONNA GRADUATE – INVITE EVERYONE EVEN THOUGH I DO NOT KNOW YOU”. When I had my graduation, I didn’t make a Facebook event like most people – I wrote a personalised email to a select group of contacts, but sadly, most people didn’t even bother to reply. To those who did, I thank you for it – better still to those who came – I cannot thank you enough; I’ll reserve my disappointed thoughts to myself.

All I can say is that my graduation ceremony (if you’re confused, I’m talking about my Bachelor’s one) left me with a pile of really sad memories. As much as I want to share your joys in your graduation, to be completely honest I don’t really give a crap >_> Try to graduate in architecture. If you can get as far as I possibly did then I’ll applaud you, because studying late nights for tests and writing essays is nothing compared to what we had to go through. I’m not really sure if I’m going to attend my Master’s ceremony. So bleh.

Applying for jobs is tedious and disappointing

I find it a big problem that nobody is taking my job applications seriously because I appear to be too educated for their liking. I’m not kidding – you’re not reading it incorrectly.

Initially I thought it was due to my little experience in the workforce, but it’s got nothing to do with that – people seem to be judging me to be someone who can sit a comfortable money racking office job so they don’t offer me anything, thinking that I’m not suited for it. The reason they provide is “it takes a lot of money to train someone” ie. we’re afraid you won’t stay for long – ie. you’re overqualified for this job.

I think there’s just a high misconception with university courses and people don’t fully understand what it’s life to be in the shoes of an architecture student – I think most people assume we complete projects, hand them in, and anxiously wait for marks. It’s not like that. We work continuously all semester, are self-directed in our work, and also make presentations to people we don’t know, who judge your work. There are a lot of skills to be obtained from that, yet it seems that most people think that we’re probably better for office work or something.

Needless to say, I had my first phone interview today and well, I didn’t get the job. I was caught off guard and fairly surprised I was called, since I have been applying for about 2-3 weeks and received nothing but automated emails. The interviewer asked a bunch of very strange questions which I wasn’t even too sure were too related or allowed. She even went far enough to suggest other possible work places she thought were more suited for me – which in reality probably paid a lot more than probably what she was receiving >_> From that I could already tell they were hesitant. But it’s okay, because that job vacancy actually never existed to begin with – it was more of a tentative vacancy which may or may not happen. Kinda pointless, but I appreciate the thought.

Regardless of that, I’m still happy to have received a phone call, which half-unravels my curiosity as to why I haven’t been contacted much lately. I need practise, and that’s what that gave me. I’ll be able to respond better next time when I am called like that. It’s a start – not a fantastic one, but it’s better than nothing. From this I think I’ll be able to get more calls in the future and so forth.

Think on the positive side – there are lots of vacancies, and I’m sure that there’s a place for me somewhere. I just haven’t found it yet. Note that I haven’t been applying in store and handing in my resume yet – everything I’ve done so far is online, so hey, it’s not that bad. FINGERS CROSSED – I’m putting all my qi into getting a job within the next few months – I don’t want anything for Christmas >_> I want a job >_> Let me know if there are any vacancies that you know of please ._.

Aside from that, I have a lot of stuff I wanted to write about but never found the time or energy to do so. I have a haircut and I got the same hairdresser as last time – I can’t say I’m happy but I can’t say I’m really sad either. My belly is filled with Madang goodness though, so that’s a plus.

Onto real music – Japanese music, actually.

The amazing Utada came back from her “indefinite” absence from the music scene with this song, as well as a 2 CD volume of all her major hits. While I really like Utada, there are some songs I really don’t like by her (this includes the entire album “Ultra Blue” which I personally dubbed “Ultra … (I won’t say what hehe)” – sorry, just a personal preference thing) and I’m unsure of how to describe her live performances – but she is very talented. Double volume CD isn’t really essiting me all that much, but well, exciting for her fans. She writes lyrics, melodies – tis all I need to say. She comes back with this awesome song that is highly catchy and lovely, but presents to you a random MV shot in one long take. Welcome back Utada!

And of course, zombies are forever relevant.

Na neun rap zombie zombie na neun rap rap Dx

Nassun is awesome. The song itself pretty much from what I understand has little to do with a zombie apocalypse, but rather the fact that hip hop is dead, and since he’s rapping, he’s a rap zombie since he technically shouldn’t really exist. Poor bb, don’t be too harsh. I hope you do well, because your first Nassunova album was joyful music to my ears.

Skin, oh skin.

I finished studies about three weeks ago, and did you know that I still sleep at 1am or 2am still?! I need to quit that and start sleeping early, because it’s taking a toll on my skin. Pimples popping up, just argh.

Going through a process of *fingers crossed* routinely doing my exfoliation and masks – I need to draw up a schedule >_> Will update on this once I do. I get those small whitehead pimples popping up (like the tiny tiny ones that you sort of scratch off and then they disappear – scratching not recommended).

For the meantime, I’m in the process of trying to fix my sleep pattern, hoping that I find a job, and dwindling my days with Running Man because Joong Ki’s in it *yay* – well, not just that though – it’s a really funny show [at the time of you reading this, I would have already watched all the episodes - WHY SO MUCH TIME]. During the time from starting this draft up until the time of publishing, I’ve probably finished watching a grand total of one anime series and three Japanese dramas. My life, sadly, is becoming tragic.

Here’s a list of what’s to come. They will more or less appear on this blog in this order, unless something so ridiculously exciting happens in my life and warrants an instant delirious post. This is just a rough order – could be jumbled up a bit, but oh wells.

• Etude House Proof10 Eyeliners
• Gmarket Haulage 10 [insert a subtitle here]
• [Mysterious nail review]
• Etude House LuciDARLING Eyeshadow
• [Long overdue] Shiseido Benefiance

… well I’m hoping that’s what will go down. I’m just not very motivated; my spirits have been down pretty much for the past few months so even if I try to write something witty, more often than not it won’t be witty at all. Not a single bit.

Sorry this is such a bland update – I really wanted to spice it up with pictures and all but nothing interesting has been going on. At least y’all have the comfort of knowing that next post is going to be a beauty post (or something consumer related) - so that’s not too bad, huh?