Stuff I did/ that happened in 2011

2011 was a year of change for me. Change in my pace of lifestyle and complete change in what I was going to do. I went from graduating from a Masters Degree in Architecture to working in a designer fashion jewellery/ fine jewellery boutique in the city. I met a lot of people who I would have never met otherwise, and they were surprisingly, types of people I’ve never encountered before.

There’s little to reflect on because 2011 was a year of what I would like to call “steadiness”. There were no major ups or downs, and there wasn’t anything amazing that I accomplished. But I will go and reflect upon my resolutions I set for 2011 and whether or not I achieved them.

Things I achieved:

Do well in my work, make some friends in my workplace (not some, more like, all) and get at least one payrise during 2011.
I achieved this several times during the year which made me happy. That’s as much as there is to it, really.

Go overseas or interstate.
I went to Melbourne, so I finally did do something

Things I did not achieve:

Save up 75% of my pay. 25% of pay goes to bills and online shopping. If there is spare money, it will go to my parents.
This failed pretty miserably because I ended up more like saving 25% of my pay and spending 75% of it LOL. I did however, did buy a lot of stuff for my parents and looked out for them in that respect. 50-50. Close enough.

Lose that final kilo to hit the 5kg target weight loss. Then lose another 4.
Damn it, I didn’t even have that “extra kilo” to lose because I already gained several that made me far far off my original target. OTL Close enough.

Go out at least once a week.
I really, really tried. But I work long hours, full time, deal with all sorts of weird situations, and I have to keep an eye on everyone, everything. Eurgh. But I probably did go out once every two weeks or so – okay I lie, more like once every three and a half. Close enough.

Meet more people.
Errr like who? >_> Well to be fair I did meet new people – aka colleagues, but nothing to fangirl over. 50-50. Close enough.

Start those blasted dance lessons. Drag a friend along in the process.
This resolution was made one year too early. I only recently discovered that my workmate wanted to do lessons too. Y U NO WORK EARLIER.

Blog better, keep winning gift certificates and getting more comments from readers
Oh, I did achieve the latter half. I didn’t achieve the gift certificate thing though because I completely abandoned Gmarket – just got too expensive to play around with, and it was just too tedious to navigate. Ended up trying out ASOS instead. Worked out okay in the end.

Start posting on my Lookbook. Poor, poor neglected baby.
I don’t even think I logged in to be honest. Perhaps once.  But I don’t have a photographer to follow me around and snap pics of me unfortunately… and a self held camera will sadly not suffice.

Dyeing my hair a shade that is not dark ashy tobacco brown.
50-50. I went for something that wasn’t ashy, but it ended up not being much lighter.

Go on at least 3 dates. If it’s even humanly possible. There is nobody in my life atm. Or at least go to 3 outings where I meet new people.
So I tried. Zero potential each time. If it wasn’t meeting up with really close friends (like friends who you know so well they could still be smiling even if you give them the death glare), it was meeting up with people who had fiances or boyfriends. BO-RING.

Write up a fixed skincare routine timetable and post it up here.
Obviously not – so I’ll try to do that soon.

Blog twice a week and do a 30 day challenge, so I continuously post for 30 days in a row during one of the months in 2011.
I just never found time to queue up drafts… I know it sounds like an excuse, but I really have been really tired. Did you know, I also ended up typing so little that my keyboard battery lasted a whopping entire year?! That’s insane… usually I change batteries within 6 months. W-O-W.

Add bohemian/ gyaru style to my wardrobe.
I kinda scratched this off my list because I’m no longer interested in the style. Ie. I’m growing old, fast.

Shoot more in film, and experiment with film photography.
The most I did was develop a roll of film… already forgot how to insert a film roll into a camera. Oh, shame.

Result: Credit

I give myself a credit for trying, but not hard enough. I’ll post my new resolutions up soon and well guess what, still no photos from Melbourne… guess she either forgot about them or just couldn’t be bothered emailing me lol. Oh well, I’ll make do with whatever I have then, in that case. I wonder how many resolutions we usually achieve on average per year? Perhaps I put all my effort into the two that I thought mattered most, so I prioritised those. I don’t know – but it seems like it could very well be the case.

Stuff I did/ that happened in 2010.

2010 was a year of more downs than ups. A lot of the time I was thinking to myself, “what do I really want to do in life?” and realised that there was a lot of stuff happening in my life and it didn’t make me happy. Yes, I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t happy with the quality of my life – all I did was study, rarely touched housework, barely saw my friends and felt awful for gaining weight. There are other things that made me unhappy as well, such as the idea of having to possibly work the rest of my life in an office for long hours and overtime possibly without pay.

I don’t mind working overtime – but when it’s possibly overnight I won’t be able to handle it. My health isn’t as good as it was 5 years ago for that matter – I used to be able to pull all nighters without feeling sleepy until much later. Nowadays I can barely stay awake. I’ve lost my passion because I didn’t know what I was trying to achieve. If anything, I think I was trying to achieve too much, and it wasn’t going to be long term – it was merely short term glory.

Thinking about life in a more practical light, I’d prefer to be clear on my working hours, working conditions and live life without having to worry about work.

You are only given one life, and have one chance to live the life – therefore live it comfortably and happily. Don’t put yourself through more stress than is needed just for a bit of extra money – money is important, but it’s not your life. You can live life comfortably just the same even if you earned a bit less.

It’s hard to get work no matter what qualifications you have, because there’s always that someone who will think that you’re not happy to work for less, or think “why should I hire someone with higher qualifications than I have?” – just keep going. So I decided to end 2010 on a high note, as I really am quite happy now. I’ve made a decision to not go into architecture, and I’ve worked towards that.

But let’s just detail through my 2010 – you don’t have to read everything, just read the bolded headings since they summarise everything. And of course, you don’t have to read this at all if you didn’t want to It’s just my way of looking back this past year and to see how much I’ve changed.

Got into the studio of my choice. YABBA DABBA DOO.

Which is briefly mentioned here. I felt that a lot of it had to do with pure luck, since I was lucky to get into my first choice, and as you probably all gathered from my posts, it was the best studio ever. It wasn’t the best because of the program (though a lot of it was great and I enjoyed it), it was the people in the studio – this was the first studio ever I had where everyone knew each other, talked to each other and stuck together even after class to go have dinner, eat lunch (during class) and go out to hand our assignments together and then later go out.

Of course, not everyone came every time and not everyone was superglue close, but everyone was just so awesome. My 2010 would have been really crap otherwise, so for getting into that studio, I’m very grateful.

Held the Minitokyo Knockout Competition 2010.

And to refresh your memory, the competition link is here.

I’m actually quite proud yet a bit sad about the competition because I think I could have done better. But overall I think everyone enjoyed it, learned a thing or two, had an excuse to make wallpapers – and biggest achievement was actually having wallers who have disappeared completely from the walling scene (or cyberspace for that matter) to come back and shine once more. I reunited lost friends and I inspired the AP Clash competition so I’m so stoked!

I think I’ve been demoted back to Retired Mod at Minitokyo lololol – but oh well. It’s alright. I hope that maybe I can do another comp in 2011 – perhaps that’d be another exciting thing to look forward to

Went clubbing for the first time in my life and timely had my room raided at home/ I was burgled.

Sigh. They took my laptop which contained some work I hadn’t backed up (it was work that I did on my laptop) – and even bothered to take away the adapter too. They took my beloved Sony Cybershot and even worse, my mum’s watch. That was the worst part of the burgle I suppose – she worked hard to buy that watch and these asses just took it. She has back problems and did a waitressing job for a while to save up for it I hope those guys end up sucking up crap!

Went interstate and visited Melbourne over the span of 4 days, nights.

For epicness, click here. Lala. It was my first ever adventure interstate (!). I’ve only ever been in NSW and the furthest I’ve been is probably just Canberra or the Blue Mountains. Possibly Snowy Mountains >_> but yeah, Melbourne is the furthest!

It was pretty cool, but I think people overhyped it for me – in my heart, I still prefer Sydney – we have a lot more stuff to buy, a better nightlife (I think), and our stuff surprisingly is cheaper – this goes for food and clothes at restaurants/ shops. Go Sydney!

Played on Steam for the very first  time in my life. Bought my first ever computer game, that being Left4Dead2. I killed one special zombie, whatever that was, and got incapacitated more than once. All in the same game. Then I tried to play Alien Attack and failed miserably. Do not ask.

And for an epic recap where I got “helping” and “shooting” mixed up – I lagged, helped my friend up and then was like NAH *BAMBAMBAMBAMBAM* and killed him :\.

It was actually REALLY fun though even though I really sucked. I paid $30 for it and I’ve only played once… I think I need to play it more often to get more bang out of my buck…

Survived my graduation project.

Graduation Exhibition post here.

SEE: Honey and Clover.

All the wtf in that anime aside, the way they depicted the rush to complete their final projects is pretty accurate. You don’t do much for most of the year, but then you completely go all out on the final. You get barely any sleep and you actually do literally camp by your work (a lot of people at my uni brought sleeping bags and stayed overnight). How I even survived it with my eyeballs rolling around unable to focus and getting sleep every 24 hours is a miracle.

Finished study. But probably not for good.

I do have plans to go back and study, but that’s for consideration at another stage. Anyhow, I wouldn’t go back to uni, I’d probably go study at TAFE, but I shall wait and see. That’ll be something for me to think about much later – maybe in the next year or two.

Started exercise – it’s an on and off relationship, but I managed to still keep like 4kg off. I just need to keep going and finally hit my target 5kg. Actually went out almost every week at least once. I started to have a social life again.

I still haven’t started dance lessons (because of lack of income – which I’ll get to in a moment), but losing 4kg is pretty damn good since it’s just excess water. Never realised I was actually a size 8 – life can be strange.

I managed to go out almost every week which was amazing. I sacrificed my uni work for it, but it felt so much more satisfying knowing that I’m human again.

Won Gmarket Top blogger a grand total of 4? 5? times.

Yay. No seriously, YAY \o/ A lot of my shopping kinda relied on winning for these blog entries – I managed to expand my shoe collection but there were a lot of things I bought for no reason. Kinda regretting some of my purchases, but I just have to persevere and keep buying more. Then I’ll keep writing more. And spend more. Viscious cycle, but I need it.

Had my first ever telephone interview without knowing it was an interview. Did not do well, of course.

Which was brushed upon here. That was pretty damn sneaky if you ask me – usually they would reschedule it? I was so confused and I answered a lot of the questions pretty badly.

So please people, if you’re applying for jobs and haven’t really been preparing for an interview all that well and see an unknown number calling your mobile, don’t pick it up – or at least reschedule! Ring them back when you’re ready >_>

Completed all 50 levels in adventure mode in “Plants Vs. Zombies.”

First game I’ve ever finished from start to finish - and that’s saying something. Prior to this I kinda didn’t even know that games could be finished :\ Most of the games I’ve been playing were never ending I suppose and maybe that’s why…

But no, this was a bit accomplishment even though it sounds like I’m being stupid. I KILLED ZOMBIES. HOW AWESOME AM I?

Brb – feel like playing it

And for the grand finale: 31st December 2010 – Scored my first face to face interview knowing it was an interview. Did well, of course.

After a grand total of one month and 2 weeks, I’ve finally landed myself a job *pats self*.

“Finally” is probably a bad word to use because I know how long people have taken to find jobs. I on the other hand am just super paranoid – do you know how slow time goes by when you’re at home almost every day hoping that someone will call you to come to work? Being unemployed for less than 2 months is actually pretty damn fast and I don’t even know how I achieved it. I was dreading the possibility that I couldn’t get the job so I wasn’t too confident when I turned up – but things will change once I start working

I’m actually really lucky because I just happened to mysteriously hit the jackpot without actually realising that was the case. Apparently my CV happened to come at the right time and it caught their attention, so I got an interview really quickly. The boss is super friendly and I’ve got a lot of research and shopping to do – I have plenty to learn so I’m going to write a whole list of questions and stuff to avoid any slip ups – so if there are catchups and what not, they’d have to all slot in within the next two weeks, because after that I’ll be working quite regularly – I get weekends off so far though, as I’ll be in training

Very excited to start the job because it’s something I’m quite interested in, and I’m sure I’ll enjoy it. The work environment is also excellent so I’m internally squeeing. Fingers crossed I’ll get along with my work mates (all girls) so we’ll just have to wait and see

Of course, I’m not going to say where my workplace is, but let’s just say it ticks off all my boxes – newly renovated, in the city, great dress code, great products to sell. Can’t wait to see my friends and let them know – they’ll be surprised! \o/ Even I’m surprised myself – omgomgomg yay. >:3

So, that’s my 2010 in summary, noting all the ups and downs as well as new things I’ve tried.

I can’t find my post with the New Year’s Resolutions, but I think I’ve achieved most of them or nearly most of them (eg instead of losing 5kg I lost 4) except for saving up money (which I kinda did end up achieving somehow by luck).

I’ll be back tomorrow with my New Year’s Resolutions. Sorry for the influx of blog posts – but I think most of you will be out celebrating to notice, yes/yes?

Thanks to readers who subscribe, bookmark or read me on a regular basis. I’ll definitely have better blog posts next year so I can’t wait for it start! I can’t believe this year will be over in less than 9 hours

Until then, be safe, wear your seatbelts and beware of double demerit points!

- Misa