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!

Okay, take 3.

These days I start writing a post, and then I keep deleting it because I think it’s inappropriate to post up. Maybe it’s because I’ve just grown way too sensitive in regards to what I can and can’t post up on the Internet since people will either get offended or whatever just because I am merely trying to get my thoughts out. I’ve started this blog as a way of sharing experiences (be it crap that I buy, or things that I encounter) that appeal to a lot of people so that readers can actually relate to what I am experiences as most of the stuff I write about tends to apply to most people. Since I can’t go into too much detail, then I guess I can only list it out in point form.

Sorry for this super sloppy post in advance – I’ve tried numerous times (I swear, this is not just take 3, this must be at least take 5) to post, but I never hit the Publish button because I never felt that it was “the post”. I will post about Melbourne (though the photos in question are not here yet – I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get them, to be honest… if that’s the case I’ll just have to make do with what I have) and I will post about my new year’s resolutions as well as a review of the past year’s resolutions (whether or not I achieved them).

To make up for the lack of photographs I have, I present to you le doodles with the nearest felt pen I have – a blue coloured permanent marker. Geez, it’s been ages since I’ve last drawn. Though it seems I haven’t lost my drawing style – I like to describe it as “ridiculous”. Or “#WTF” will also do. Meh.

Happy Chinese/ Lunar New Year

Lol, that’s totally a classy dragon. Le doodle.

Yes, very late, but I did celebrate it (sort of) – I have a company dinner coming up very soon so I guess that’s where the real celebration kicks in.

This year is the year of the dragon, and I was born in the year of the dragon. Apparently since it’s my zodiac year, I need to be really careful, and in order to do that I need to wear red and stuff. It’s my very first time hearing that I need to wear red because it’s a year I actually need to be careful in so I have started to prepare all my red accessories so I could wear them to work.

I kid, I had NONE. Either that or they were so negligible, it equalled to none.

I absolutely hate the colour red, simply because I think that the colour is too sharp. I like colours like purple, pink, corals – but I don’t like red.  Like, #FF0000 red.

Either way I solved that by buying myself a leather bracelet… but I realised that when I was buying it, it was too dark inside the store to see what colour it actually was. Turns out to be a tangerine red (but hey, red nonetheless). SIGH.

This wasn’t the bracelet I bought (I got the double stranded slipknot one), but it was the same colour as above, with a fancy designer colour named “FIRE”. Red enough, I guess.

You can buy this bracelet from Bottega Veneta.

I’m generally not a superstitious person, but being careful is better than being lazy. But overall I still reckon that this year will most likely be an awesome year.

Opportunity or deathly trap?

Not much earlier than the new year, I got a job offer from a “friend” I’ll name X.

Can you keep a secret?

 

 

The job offer was to be a store manager at a retail chain store which I can only describe as fashion related, for privacy/ censorship reasons.

Those who have followed my Twitter probably have guessed what the situation was – yes, that’s right. Bullshit.

Look, I’m terribly sorry if I offend anyone, especially since I know that in economic times such as these, it’s really hard to get work opportunities, and I should be beaming like I’ve hit a gold mine when I’m offered a job (especially since it was a PROMOTION too) when I wasn’t even looking for one. Instead I look like I’ve received a phone call from a grim reaper and treated this situation like it was a burden. Well, guess again – yes, it was and would have been a burden had I said yes.

Without going much into detail, please, please assess your working conditions before you accept a job offer. Sometimes we get blinded temporarily by money and the prospect of a prestigious work position, but what good is that if you feel that it’s only short term glorification? ANY job offer is tempting, if it seems to be better than what you have now.

I don’t want to scare anyone, but honestly speaking, any business these days is hard. Major corporations continue to cut down on their numbers, larger companies are cutting down hours of their part time and casual workers, it’s the end of January and there are still major sales going on. These are all indicators telling you, “oh, that’s kinda abnormal.” It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out, and I can assure you, it’s not a smart move to change jobs at THIS current point in time. Especially if it’s to something you have very little confidence in.

I on the other hand, have confidence in what I am selling at the moment. I believe there’s a market niche somewhere, and there is still potential to grow. The offer I received, on the other hand, I saw limitations. With the Australian dollar so high right now, everyone is more than happy to spend their dollars overseas to milk every single bit their dollar can go. I just blew $50 on ebay just today on craft supplies, but I saved money in the process because I paid less than I would have if I bought it 2 weeks ago.

The moral of the story is that you MUST think about the long term, and also just beware of what you might sign up for. The situation I was in was damn complicated, and to say the least, I was not, and still am not impressed with why it even happened in the first place. Again, it was just BULLSHIT. It just made me even more annoyed that I had to keep quiet about this because under no circumstances should I have to abide by such a condition.

Thank you, but freaking NO THANK YOU.

Not every single opportunity has a pot of gold on the end – beware as sometimes there’s a little time bomb waiting for you on the other side. Then, it’s game over.

All I can say is that I’m super lucky as it is that I made the right decision – if I was blinded by that split second of glitter, no red leather bracelet/ string would be enough to save my ass. Seriously.

Either way, I’ve done everything I could to keep everyone’s privacy and I have omitted a lot of major details which would be enough to tick off anyone. If you were in my position and knew everything in detail, you’d probably end up doing this too:

Lol, of course I kid. I obviously have more than just like 3 friends to list >_> But I hope I got my point through.

So, what IS up these days?

Well, it’s currently 12:05am and I have work like, today.

Most of my time is consumed by work, and it has been draining my energy – fast. I have pretty much zero social life at the moment, and I’m still training (omg). Lol. I honestly don’t mind training (it’s a given since we have so many new people), and recently, work has been pretty awesome. From the coffee machine, random chocolate pig outs and workplace gossip (nothing nasty though, just prying into people’s personal lives, tis all) – all I have at the moment is just stuff to look forward to.

I think I am starting to enjoy my work more than I used to because I’ve just gotten so routine about it. I’m just so used to how I’m supposed to do things that it’s getting pretty efficient. I still have plenty of room to improve of course, but I’m starting to feel the joys of what I’m doing. I feel that I am actually doing something meaningful – the same rings I sell will last couples through their relationships, weddings, perhaps for many decades to come – and that’s what makes me feel happy. The various presents that are for friends and loved ones which can make a difference and can make an average day into a wonderful one – this is something that I have never been able to do.

It sounds pretty farfetched perhaps, but I do feel that I have a job which can make people a whole lot happier in some respects. I never felt this before when I was designing to be quite honest. I never felt that my designs could actually touch or move people, especially when it’s something that can be put under scrutiny. At least I know for now, I can, and am doing something meaningful.

My new years’ resolutions will be coming up within the next week or so – and I really hope that I can make more time for myself and go out more often. If I remember correctly one of the things I told myself to do was to go out on three dates (with guys, obviously) – I think I did make it to three (more than three if you count group outings with friends), but unfortunately they weren’t with people I have just met… they were all really good/ close friends… or boyfriends/ fiancés of friends… :\ That’s even worse than 2010… I at least went out with someone whom I met by chance at a social gathering… Anyway, I don’t really feel like going into detail about it – I’ll just continue to just be myself. Whatever happens shall happen.

I guess for mself, my first priority at the moment will be work and family. I’m doing fairly well, and for once I feel like I’m doing something where I am actually needed, and not just mechanically churning out “good grades”, which is what I did for 16 years.

Hope everyone had a great week and I will be back fairly soon. My days off now really just consist of catching up on Running Man, Dream Team, threading pearl necklaces for my mum and doing exercise. I need to stop thinking too much though, I don’t want to grow old too soon. I’m already mature enough as it is now – although I’m the youngest at work, sometimes I feel that I am the adult at times, lol.

All the best to you all for this year – hope to see you all soon!

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!

I’ve been… tired.

I’m sorry for not putting up a proper post. A Gmarket haul post will definitely be up sometime this upcoming week – I just don’t really have the time and I’m not in the mood to do it. Something bad has come up – as much as I’d like to be positive about it, I’ve just had people telling me some really bad things. I’m at risk at losing a loved one, and all I can do now is hope that things turn for the better and that things can be a bit back to normal.

I find it really hard to make my decisions nowadays because I’ve only just started my new “career” (if you would like to call it that) and I really wanted to have a stable lifestyle. It was never really stable to begin with, but usually I just tried to ignore it and pretend that things weren’t so bad. As some of my friends know, I’ve actually dropped everything before – study, holidays, promises with friends – just so that I could be there. Unfortunately I have a bad feeling that I can’t do that anymore – I have to earn a living and life must go on – I can’t stop and drop everything. I could do it before, but I can’t now. I have too many responsibilities that I need to attend to.

Having said that, it doesn’t mean I’ll let go. As long as there’s hope I’ll grab onto it, I’ll work harder every day, but I can’t let it affect my work.

I’m really grateful for my job because I really like my workplace and my colleagues – thanks to their kind words of support and late night text messages I feel that I’m not so alone. I’m also lucky because I feel that if I had worked anywhere else, I wouldn’t be getting this much support.

I will have my fingers crossed and hope for the better.

—

As a side note, I’ve just been really tired lately. I had a late night tutoring session (it’s hard to describe but it was kinda awesome), and then the next day I was called at work to leave early. I spent a lot of the late hours at night then at the hospital so now I’m just dazed. This was a really packed week - I’m not sure… maybe you gain some and then you lose some. I don’t really know…

I’ll make this 500 words or less, to spare your eyes…

OOOFT.

I didn’t realise how long it has been since I last blogged and I was talking about blogging twice a week? Pffft shame on me. I’ll probably do an actual post later on this week – I’ve just been completely bogged down from work – I get pretty tired so once I get home I pretty much don’t want to do much, let alone type. Full time work is energy draining  – I didn’t realise how sleep deprived I was until the last few days when I really felt so tired that I didn’t even know how to position myself because even resting was tiring :\

Anyway, apart from that mostly everything in life is pretty fine.

The hottest topic at the moment in my life is a round of graduation ceremonies taking place this week. I must say this (though unintentionally, because it was so long ago) that I did once feel bitter about my own graduation – I sent out a round of emails to friends but they were mostly ignored. I had an early graduation (after 3 years of uni) but very few people turned up – for those who did I really appreciated it. Now that I see friends posting up their graduation invitations and congratulating each other I can’t help but think “wow, to you it was a great deal, but when it comes to me it’s not” sort of thing. Mind you, I didn’t go around openly inviting people, I sent personal emails so I didn’t make a huge fuss out of it – but still, really? I don’t really get why people make a big deal out of graduations. I understand why people feel like they’ve accomplished something or feel like they deserve a huge “congrats” from friends and family, but I’m just in the stage where I’m so over these things. I mean, alright – feel proud, invite a few people – but don’t go around making it seem like such a huge deal. I dunno, am I making much sense here, or is it because I’m indifferent because of what happened before? But okay, fair enough, since it’s their first graduation I’ll cut some slack

My Masters graduation ceremony is actually on this Friday but I opted out of it since I figured there was no point in a second graduation ceremony. Nothing changes – only the colour of the scarf – I don’t even get a different hat, and it’s pricey to hire graduation gear since you’re on the stage for about 30 seconds flat. Usually I don’t care about expenses like that but after I started working I feel that earning money is quite difficult – I find it hard to save up, and no matter how long I save for it’s still so hard to accumulate enough money to buy the things I want. Anyway, I digressed – the main point is that it is my ceremony – I’m just not going to it – yet people ask me “hey are you coming to my ceremony/ graduation?” – shouldn’t it be our graduation?

Either way, I’ve been working and slowly the things that are necessary in life have pretty much stood out to me – academic qualifications are a part of life, but aren’t necessary – what’s necessary is the ability to be able to achieve a balance in life – to be able to earn enough to buy the things you want and to stay happy and healthy. Other than that, graduation ceremonies or schmeremonies – whatever. For those who haven’t reached ceremonies, you’ll probably understand what I mean a few years down the track, long after you’ve already graduated lol.

Anyway, same drill – anything interesting or amusing will be linked on my Twitter, so you can stalk that while I’m not really posting. I’ll churn out something in the next few days. I’ve just been tired for the past week – I was pretty much staring at opals for 3 days in a row to the point it made me really hate looking at them lol. Until next blog!

Back from the dead

Hi everyone!

Just a post to say that I’ve finally finished my final project. The presentation didn’t go as well as I’d hoped, because the jurors kept asking me questions about things that I thought I had already explained. It was a bit like they weren’t really interested in what I had to say, and then when they realised how interesting it actually was, they started to ask me questions. I also got one or two really stupid questions because the questions weren’t valid in the first place (for example, why would you divide up a space parallel to a corridor? You divide spaces perpendicularly to a corridor… I mean, duh?). I got cut off quite early even though and I didn’t get to talk much about perhaps 70% of the things in my project. It was overall positive I suppose, so it wasn’t too bad. I just wished that it could have been better? I worked quite hard and put absolutely everything I needed on my panels. I was lucky that some other jurors came to my defence and pointed out like “oh wait, this image shows it”.

In the end though, I think everyone in my class did quite well so I think it’s safe to assume that this is indeed our last project? I’d cringe if I had to go through it again.

A few other studio groups had a lot of harsh comments. I’d prefer not to write them down, so yeah, maybe if I see you and we’re talking I’ll be able to tell you what they were.

I got scammed by my studio friends and ended up going out to dinner with them. Lol.

We ate at a bar named Mr B’s on Pitt Street, which was alright. Wish I ordered something else (I ordered 2 entrees), because the mains looked huge! I was hungry because it was already 9pm…

For now I still have an essay and I need to do my portfolio after that. I will definitely be back in a week and a half. Just a little bit longer and I can write more random crap for people to read

PS: I’m in the process of testing out Etude House’s Collagen Moistfull and generally it’s good. I will review that in depth later.

Long time no see

I swear, whenever I see the expression “long time no see” it sounds like a direct English translation of the Asian equivalent when you say that to someone you haven’t seen for a while.

Anywho, I disappeared off the face of the Internet for several days in case if you haven’t noticed. This is very rare because I’m alwaysss on the Internet. Goes to show how much of a social life I have OTL

What happened basically was that I had my final design submission due. For those who don’t know how hectic these submissions are, let me sum it up for you in a few simple bits: lots of drawings, renders, presentation  panel (REALLY BIG), physical cardboard models (not the card you know it as like cereal box or whatever, but actual hard thick card like the stuff you’d mount a drawing onto), printing it all, paying a lot of money for it, and not sleeping – in some instances 60 hours straight (I’ve never tried this – I’ve tried about 40 hours, but one of my classmates did 60 hours without sleep).

In case if you don’t read everything I type…

We sometimes don’t sleep for 60 hours when design is due! We could actually DIE you know!

Big font is big. I like it.

I started working on design on Saturday – I continued on Sunday but I had another submission to hand in.

I then worked all day Monday, Tuesday – and then on Wednesday I went to Uni at 11:30pm/ midnight to use the computers because my machine was too slow when it comes to rendering.

I had a feeling that I wasn’t going to finish on time so I sent an emergency plea for help.

Good thing – I left uni when it was like, 9am the next day – and I rendered about 30 images. If I was at home I’d probably only render about 5 the entire night.

I was doing my drawings the same time while I was rendering the images, and it was a rush to get the panels done.

I was playing this song, alternating with After School’s “Because of you” (because I love the MV since it’s full of oozing UEE giddiness) – I quite liked it. Possibly the song didn’t end as strongly as I hoped – it also sounded familiar, but it’s such a good song.

I slept for two hours before waking up, panicking and then working like crazy. Before I knew it, it was 4:30pm on a Thursday afternoon, and P kindly offered his assistance to help me make my non existent model.

So I was a mess – no  model, no panels – even my plans were half done.

My sections were only about 70% done and needed colouring – I needed to photoshop my renders and not only that, I still had diagrams to do. How to print?

P left me at about 10pm to go home, so I was scared late at night being alone on the very top floor freezing my ass off, but too stressed to move since I needed to get it done.

I finally finished my panels at midnight, made a call to my mum to ask her to bring some cash for printing (I was short about $30, and it was late and there aren’t ATMs at uni nearby anyway). She came, and while she waited for me, I was running around uni at 1am freaking out at why my file wasn’t printing. Luckily the others suggested I reduce the file size. I checked my laptop and my USB and harddrive and my latest InDesign file was NOT saved!

I had a brilliant idea to print my PDF as another PDF and it worked. From 60MB, it went down to less than 8MB. And it printed. Thank God.

I slept at 2:30am, woke up at 7:30am and was planning to make a model but realised I could just edit my previous model since there was a slight massing problem.

I suddenly realised there were things missing from my plan and that I forgot quite a bit of stuff – so I was trying to figure out what to do. I also had an odd panel (the one on the far left) as it was landscape while the others were portrait.

I got to uni, freaked out at the crits, and the clock slowly ticked away.

Then around noon, P appeared miraculously with a model. I feel super bad because he didn’t sleep (and he just sat a 6 hour exam the previous day, with little sleep the night before that – and no sleep before that x_x) and travelled and hour just to deliver it Dx – You all seriously don’t know how bad I feel because of that, but I didn’t know what to say… and ended up saying nothing. I just had major brain blockage.

I didn’t really need to cross out my face, but the photo was actually blurry, which made my face looked deformed lol. I’d better cross it out anyway or else it’d be weird. I was also crouching/ bent over because I wanted to get the panels in the back into the image lol.

As you can see, I was quite lucky that the room was set up in that way – I didn’t have to worry about the landscape sheet after all – it looked okay even though it was the odd panel out.

One thing I hate about large  panel design is that on the computer my presentation looked really awesome. Then when it printed it looked HUGE. Then when I pinned it, it looked okay. Now when you take a photo of it, it looks big OTL

There’s me with my panels! I had 6 A0 sheets. Big drawings are big! Each drawing is over a meter tall!

The tall looking models on the table were my models whilst the lower one to the left was the very nicely made one by P. I’m always fascinated when I see models with no glue marks whatsoever. We were talking about this during class and the majority of girls agreed that us girls were generally more rougher with models – just chop it up and glue it! But yes, it was a lovely model – seriously, all I was hoping for was just a quick and dirty model – cut and chop! But it was so nicely glued and everything was accurate >_>

You’d never read this anyway, but dinner’s on me next time!

Cannot thank you enough.

The crit went okay – I could answer all questions well, but at the end I realised I forgot to talk about other aspects of my program. T_T

I think that the tutors were more fascinated with the other part of my masterplan that wasn’t due in for this submission though >_< Well, I can always just include it with the portfolio

This is the amount of work we all did! Well some models are missing still – but you get the idea. The model at the very front belongs to N, my (previously a few months ago) design partner! The model was made by her boyfriend – she didn’t sleep for 2 days, and he stayed up with her for 2 entire days! That’s love/ dedication right there!

He has a lot of respect from me lol. I’m glad she has someone who is looking after her so well!

Apparently a few of us got some assistance from others lol – but my goodness. It was one hectic submission – I can tell you that.

In case if you haven’t realised, our project is a tall tower project.

The guys amazingly somehow stacked their removable towers together to make a supertall! This beats Dubai’s tallest tower and we’re plonking it at the water’s edge in Sydney LOL. It was pure gold!

At the end of the presentations the beer, wine, coke and finger food were brought out and we all had a celebration drink. No alcohol for me! There was wine (but the bottles were almost empty by the time I got there), and the other alcohol was just beer. I had a coke zero instead – non alcoholic and sugar free

Went home, did my 3 minute animation for my other elective (had a lot of fun doing it by the way) and then handed it in on time

By the way – I feel like I’ve aged like 2 years because I’ve been staying up and having such a bad lifestyle the past week. I feel like I’m getting dark eye circles (I mean of course I have them, but they’re not that strong) – my skin was dry to begin with due to this weather, and I was severely dehydrated. I drank at least 2 litres of water on Friday, but I was still thirsty. I still sort of am even now. My lips were super parched (they’re better now but still very bad) – I was constantly applying lip balm the whole day! How do guys survive without lip balm?! I gotta ask a guy one day how they do it. My legs were extremely swollen because I had to sit prolonged hours just doing computer work. Even my eyes were red, and they’re rarely red!

Went to sleep relatively early around midnight, and then woke up late-ish this morning. My legs were still swollen because when I tried to give it a rub they hurt Dx I don’t know how long it’ll take for me to get rid of the water in my legs  Went to uni and met up with A to work on specs. Time flies! We got it done though.

I’ve got a lot of new music: I can’t even remember who or what I have, but Orange Caramel are awesome so far. The “Tell me Goodbye” remix is quite good – it has a really club feeling, and it’s a song that I never imagined in a club, which is pretty cool! “”HANDS UP” is also cool Dx Crap… it’s catchy! AND WUT – T.O.P RAPPING IN JAPANESE? THAT’S RIDICUMAZING. I’ve never heard him speak any Japanese – PHWOAR!

I’m listening to DN-A and they’re pretty good. I really like their songs so far. I just checked and I’ll be writing about T-Blue and T-Max – why are their names so similar? OTL

I’m most excited about T.O.P’s new single – comes out on MONDAY – like just another 2 sleeps until it’s released. I’ll be fangasming (is that even a word? I think I read/ talk to M too much and I am starting to ingest her awesome vocabulary) so hard!

What part of this image does NOT ooze SEXY?! PS: T.O.P’s lap looks comfy. Also his chair has room for two people. Just sayin’.
On another note, I have to nitpick – that’s some bad hair extraction there.
Img cr: www.teambigbang.blogspot.com courtesy of YG Entertainment

There’s a really large resolution image of this iamge (with a white background) – I was seriously contemplating printing it out A0 size and putting it on my wall. But then again I don’t think I will. Ít’s a bit creepy to have just ONE person on the wall that big.

Another thing I wanted to rant about was how I hate dyeing hair. It felt like just yesterday that my hair was nice and brown from the awesome job C did with the Palty – and now it’s been 2 months and I can see regrowth Dx Dyed hair is too high maintenance! And I wanted my hair to be even lighter… sigh

 I’m so relieved that now I’m semi-one step closer to a healthy lifestyle. Everything should be back to normal by about Monday and I can start hula hooping again (I’ll be doing 2 hour sessions, seriously) and I can actually leave the house! Glad that the semester is almost over – I’m excited and giddy. Hope that these holidays will be a blast!

Hope this wasn’t too much of a mess of a post. I just had a lot going on this week and well – yeah, I think you all know how tired I am right now. I’m off to sleep

Until next post!

Nails and lots of random stuff

Hello my furry little friends – HAHAHA NO I KID – (that was fairly out of character from me)…

I realised that my last blog was almost a week ago. So I guess this files under “I’m alive not dead”.

Sorry to those who get my blog entries via email subscription – I tend to rarely edit my posts until I hit the Publish button, so if there are any mistakes, you’ll just have to come to my blog and see the mistakes edited I generally fix up typos, grammatical errors and anything else weird within 2 minutes of posting >_> But just yeah. I don’t like proofreading so sorry! ;_;

What happened after the submission and the little shoot at USYD? Well, let me just briefly categorise and break down this post in order during the week so that I don’t get myself confused. I’ve been lacking sleep (or rather, lacking energy – or both, I’ve been sleeping at like 1am-3am these days) so there’s something wrong. But anyway, let’s start! I still have design to do, though I have a few hours until class. I love actually doing my work.

Sunday

I slept in and I didn’t do anything productive. In fact it was so unproductive I can’t remember what happened.

Monday

Went to uni, printed off whatever else I needed to print off, and started reading like mad that night. C posted off some notes (haha ‘some’ is such an inaccurate word to use to describe the notes) for me and it was like all smiles around

Tuesday

Went to uni, because I had to start working on design. What happened was our tutor thought that graduation project ran for one semester only, and crammed the schedule so that there was something due every week. When I read through the brief I thought it was a bit hectic, but what do you expect, it’s graduation – then he realised after L  pointed out that by the end of this semester we would have finished everything including the design, so what was going to happen next semester? So yeah, he’s going to reschedule the work so it runs over a year – but he didn’t change the submission date for this week. So in pairs, we had a week (or well, in this case, slightly less) to read over 200 (if you include the council meetings, then maybe 450) pages of council documents and make it into a powerpoint. And a report.

We’ve almost finished the powerpoint and we have a bit of the report to go. And when I type that, I mean that’s where we stand now as I am typing this post >_< But we’ll get through it. I have a few hours to kill, and we have tonight and tomorrow morning. It’ll be ok. And it shouldn’t be assessed, either. Fingers crossed – if it is, I hope he gives us some time to patch it up, considering we’ve only gotten a week.

I got C’s parcel in the mail Yay for Express Post - though it must have cost a bit ._. 3kg satchel… omona :\

This is why I have not been blogging. I am not exaggerating when I say I literally have 600 pages to read.

HOLY?! When I got the parcel my mum was like going to me (when we were driving home from uni), “was that all? 600 pages? Seemed like it wasn’t 600 pages.” I was like “no way, it must have been” – I get home and it was HUGE. My mum was like “ORLY?” =_= I still have yet to bind this thing. I PROMISE, NEXT MONDAY. And lookie – nail tips! Also from C Thanks times a gazillion! I’ll play around with them on Friday night after design – ho ho ho ho. Not sure what to do with them, though. I don’t wear false nails.

I was tired and I was supposed to start another essay due for Thursday (that is, today), but I did my nails instead.

Nails of the week!

Do NOT buy the Konad pink special polish. I’ve said this before, but I’ve just gotten even more proof that it’s crapsauce.

(1) The stamp cannot pick up the entire stamp because the formula for this is WEAK. The colour does not show up as vibrant as the others.
(2) The stamp is pink too.  You can’t tell if the stamp is imperfect until you stamp it onto your nail. It was extremely frustrating finding that half a strawberry was missing.

So, I gave up the strawberries, and I used the template I got last time – m71 (lace) and polka dots from m79. I said that this was an absolute fail and that I wanted to get rid of this set ASAP but it’s not so bad any more. I think everything looks better in daylight – including photos of things. Sorry for the slight blur – I was lazy and didn’t want to use super macro. However, I now Photoshop my photos beyond a clone stamp tool to clean up my messy polish hehehe. And I was just playing around with the sig to trick you all.

Click for a larger image!

I know, the photos are washed out, but that’s the feeling I was trying to aim for. I used Konad’s Light Beige polish as the base colour, the plates as I mentioned before, pink and purple special polish (only the polka dots were pink, everything else was purple) – for the polka dots I used pink Konad rhinestones (really pretty and they are staying on quite well – I love how they were freebies too. YUS), and also these pastel purple hearts that C gave me in this Korean Cute Art Nail kit.

The biggest fail about this set was that for some reason I thought that the nail kit had purple hearts that were 3D, but they didn’t lololol. I don’t know why I thought they had it >_> But anyway.

Love it? Hate it? Let me know.

Everyone’s getting engaged these days – I found out that a fellow student L recently got engaged – CONGRATS! I feel so behind. She’s only 2 years older and she’s already engaged – I’m still single D:

Wednesday

Went to uni. Continuation of design. We then went to the city to take some photos for our powerpoint. On the way of course I couldn’t help but snap some random stuff.

This is the set I’m putting together. Not for design or anything. Just for myself lol. I quite liked these photos in particular. And yes, I’m no longer going to post in standard photo size if I don’t want to. I think it’s rather silly to keep it at that size, to be honest. I don’t print these anyway, so I’ll just let it be like this. I should start saving my photos larger. I don’t actually save the base file when I edit the colours lololol – oh well.

Jelly Belly!

L went to buy some at a convenience store and the guy was nice – he asked her how many friends she had waiting outside and she said 3 – so we each got a packet! These make me nostalgic. I think one of the first ever birthday presents I got was a jar of Jelly Belly <3

I then saw a few photos of me from USYD flying around tumblr - yay for the polaroid one that L took of me in the airy room! However one thing I noticed was how incredibly fat I’m starting to look :\ I don’t remember looking as fat just the week before at Cockatoo Island – was it uni?! Either way I’m quite depressed seeing the photos – they are lovely, but they are also telling me to start exercising like mad. The thing is half the time I’m in denial because in real life/ person, I don’t appear to be chunky or as chunky as I believe I am. Then photos… IN MY FACE Dx

Actually, it must have been. Just last week I was staying up late, having poor sleeping patterns and not to mention I had a bout of crazy metabolism. I need to do something :\

MY ASSIGNMENT GOT AN EXTENSION! Originally I had a computer thing due in for Monday, but since it’s been extended, I can go out on the weekend. YAY! I better lose weight and be more active :\ Imma play that basketball thingo every week from now on >:\

Thursday

So I decided to start exercising. I did some jogging this morning and to help me I charged up my very dead Nano.

Yes, I have an iPod, and it’s an old Generation 2 Nano. (You can tell I quite like green since my folder is also green on the lower left, though I didn’t buy this, this was a Christmas present I received a few years ago)

It’s ALIVE! I generally rarely use this. I used it when I would walk to uni and back home, but ever since I stopped charging it, I guess I just stopped doing it. I am planning on bringing this with me and updating it with good music so I’m motivated to walk.

I’ll also be lifting some weights maybe after lunch or something so yeah.

It might sound like I’m making excuses, but recently the new neighbours next door moved in and they are smokers. I used to walk off my meals in the living room, but ever since they moved in, I can’t hang around there any more. It gives me a headache.

I didn’t take the Nano with me this morning, but even though I was only out for 15 minutes, I covered quite some distance. My biggest flaw is that I do not jog – I end up running. Eurgh.

—–

So, that’s my week from Sunday up until now. I’ll blog again most likely Saturday morning and/ or night (I’ll blog in the morning if I end up doing any nail sets on those nail tips, at night if I am still awake by then).

For now I’ll be making a pot of green tea every day and hope that it’ll boost my metabolism.

Until next blog!

Busy busy busy busy busy busy

For those who I’ve been talking to recently, I have a lot of my plate for this week:

Monday

Design esquisse (FINAL)
History (1200 essay)

Tuesday

Environment Presentation (FINAL)
History (1200 essay inc about 60 images)

Wednesday

Q+A presentation answering the questions from 2 weeks ago.

Last night I handed in one of the history things, and design is now out of the way (temporarily). Apparently she thought that we have finished with the other subjects, so she was hoping for the final esquisse, but since we haven’t finished she’s been pretty understanding. I made an attempt to get as much as I could onto the sheets, and I was told that some of them are really good, but I need to work a bit harder for the relational aspects of the presentation, which I have absolutely no problem with (totally understood!)

So now I’m stuck with just that one history thingy. Ugh, and to think I haven’t really started on it -_-

I’ve been asked to design a company logo for a website. We’ll see how that goes down – I’ll keep y’all posted.

Until next youtube video…!

 

haha, I kid

/Random/

Rapidfire Mon—oh shit it’s Tues already

- Went photoshooting. Madang is really yummy and it’s a hidden treasure… it’s packed and for a good reason!
- Hobogans without manners really annoy me! (then again since when have you seen a hobo/ bogan have manners?)
- Photoshooting was really fun! Wish we had more time… or rather *I* had more time.
- Walked past the lego competition thingy and saw S but she was busy and didn’t see me XD
- Many thanks to C and R’s random birthday present. I love the nail polish colour (blue!)
- The power of 2 people’s work combined: a 98page report. NINETY EIGHT I SHITCHU NOT (I like using that term by TOP hehe “shitchu not”)
- And alas it’s almost 1am.