aoisora;

Nendoroid 170: Hatsune Miku Support version

2012-02-05T19:48:00.000+08:00

As mentioned, all my figure posts are months delayed thanks to the whole mess up on my study table. Even now, it hasn't been fixed properly, but I finally have a table I can use (and customize :3). It's looking pretty empty right now though.

Sorry for the crappy photo.

Just my old green lamp light in a corner, my bulletin board of random stuff, my Barnaby Brooks mug and Zack-kun peeping out from a box file of magazines containing an ancient issue of the official Playstation magazine, two Popteen issues and the fashion magazine More I bought from Japan. Speaking of which, it came with a really pretty Gelato Pique calender which I seem to have misplaced. T__T

So onto the main topic of this post:

It was a Good Smile Company exclusive figure that was sold through the website, but because the shipping was expensive, I bought it through Kuroneko Toys on LYN for RM170 and received it in September last year. A bit steep, I know, but it IS an exclusive, and 1000 yen was donated to the Red Cross Society of Japan, and Kuroneko Toys donated RM10 to the Japan Relief Fund, so I don't feel so bad. ^^ At the same time, displaying Luka on my table was really lonely, so here's Miku to join her!

To be really honest, another reason I bought it was because I hoped it would become rare, being an exclusive and all. :3 And then I can make moolah! Hur hur hur! I bet I could sell it for a super high price next time if I kept it sealed in the box, but I'm not as money-faced as Jo. I really don't see the point of keeping figures locked up in their boxes. Poor Nendoroid Homura will never get to see the daylight unless I strike the lottery and buy her from Jo. )':

Still, after all these months I'm starting to dislike Miku. The whole Miku hype is starting to get under my nerves. :\ At the time I ordered her, I still loved everything Vocaloid related but now I'm regretting a little... this is probably my first time owning a figure or a character I don't really like. Damn, I'm like breaking my own rules. Oh well, onward with the photos! All of them are quite crappy, still can't use the camera well. D:

The tagline should be an Evangelion copyright thing! :o

Stickers of Miku submitted by fans if I'm not mistaken.

Epic twintail powers don't need a stand. I hate this face btw. Makes me want to give her a slap lol.

"Isshouni ganbaru!" Yay I can read it :)

Hachune face.

How she's displayed on my table right now (except in the last five minutes, a wild Tako Luka has appeared!)

That's about it. I'll get around to unboxing Tutturu-Mayushi-desu and Deer-Eye Madoka soon.

My skin's been quite a bitch after the two visits to the dermatologist. Sometimes I think it's clearing up and sometimes I think it's getting worse. Some parts of my face seem to be peeling (not from the chemical peel I did a month ago too) but they seem to be healing. I'm still nomming the purple pills I was given and using the expensive cleanser and toner, hoping that this is just an awful phase I have to go through to clear up my horrible acne. ): Been looking pretty ugly for a while now, but hopefully with my new-found willpower to DRINK MORE WATER and EAT VEGETABLES will help me get through this. ;___;

I really hope my skin gets better before end February because I've got a group cosplay photoshoot to look forward to. I'm pretty nervous about it, worried I'll screw up or forget something, and also because I'm facing some transport problems getting to Taylor's Lakeside early in the morning, lugging along a guitar. Really sucks not being able to drive, or have a driver. D: I'm still looking forward to it though, because I'm a huge admirer of the work of both photographers whom we'll be working with. xD

Heart sticky piece happy!

2012-01-24T18:09:00.000+08:00

心粘块乐 = 新年快乐 = Happy New Year! Geddit?! Geddit?! Okay sorry I just feel really lame. At least I still remember Chinese right?

It's pretty sad to think I used to take celebrating Chinese New Year down in Johor for granted. Ah, the good old days where we bought satay and drove all the way down to Kluang, reluctantly changing into new clothes at Anika Inn (which was probably the only crappy hotel we didn't complain about) where we were loyal customers of, driving down the weird-feeling-in-your-stomach hill to my paternal grandparents' house and acting shy in front of all the relatives with evil intentions to loot as much money as possible. Drinking Coke, BBQ-ing satay, playing in the room with all the guns, toy cars and books, and then driving to the nearby stall to buy Pop Pop and sparklers. Having breakfast at the authentic Kluang Station the next morning and driving back with about RM400 (RM500 on a good year), though we didn't spend the money then and deposited it like good kids instead. To think I used to complain that RM400 was pathetic compared to what my friends got.

After all the family drama, my Chinese New Year is now spent rotting at home doing nothing. So that actually gave me plenty of time to finish off...

Kingdom Hearts

The original game of the super awesome series I love so much ~~even though I'm still confused about the story~~, I'm so glad I got the chance to play it sooner than expected. Since this game was released in like, blardy 2002, naturally the graphics are pretty terrible (FFX was worse though) and certain parts of the gameplay annoys me. I really enjoyed playing it the same way I enjoyed playing 358/2 Days, Birth By Sleep and maybe Re: Coded, albeit the fact that I absolutely HATE Sora who's constantly giving cheesy speeches on the strength of his heart. At least, Riku's hotness keeps it bearable. :) If young Riku can keep me fangirling, I can't wait to see him in Kingdom Hearts 2 omg.

For a 2002 game, the opening and ending scenes with the awesome quality really impressed me, and okay fine, the graphics weren't THAT terrible. Aside from the fact that holding the DualShock controller in the wrong position made my hands ache, controlling Sora wasn't difficult and the camera wasn't too bitchy. Though a pain in the ass was the lack of a map, and the stupid Gummi Ship system. Oh yeah I really hated Hollow Bastion. They just had to use the Radiant Garden background music to make it even worse too.

I don't really know what to say about the story lol. The Kingdom Hearts plot always confuses me and sometimes a lot of stuff just sounds like their trying to act cool, so I don't know why I love the series so much. I just do. But then, accepting it for its flaws and continuing to love it is like true love! :D

Even though I love this game, I don't really understand how people can play 358/2 Days and Birth By Sleep and still say "the original game is the best". Those two still top the rankings on MY list.

Ones born of the Heart and darkness, devoid of hearts, ravage all worlds and bring desolation.
Seize all Hearts and consummate the great heart.
All hearts to be one, one heart to encompass all
Realize the destiny: the realm of Kingdom Hearts
The great darkness sealed within the great heart.
Progeny of darkness, come back to the eternal darkness.
For the heart of light shall unseal the path.
Seven hearts, one keyhole, one key to the door.
The door of darkness, tied by two keys
The door to darkness to seal the light.
None shall pass but shadows, returning to the darkness
Ones born of the Heart and darkness, hunger for every heart until the dark door opens.

Rating: 8/10

Onwards to Re: Chain of Memories next! ^__^

This blardy future studies thingy

2012-01-18T20:39:00.003+08:00

Little bits of things have been happening recently but I never found the time to blog. Form 5, y u no give me free time! ;___;

I can't believe how swamped up in homework I am right now, and it's still January. Months and months away from SPM. Well to start off, I made a rather shocking and unexpected decision regarding my SPM subjects yesterday - I'm dropping Biology. Fuelled by my hatred with the subject from four years of studying it, I asked permissions from my parents to drop it. Out of the three science subjects, I like Physics the best and hate Biology the most. I know everybody says Bio is their favourite subject and it's easy and all that, and they all get so enthusiastic at the prospect of dissecting a frog (HAVE THEY NO HEARTS???) but I'm the complete opposite of all these people. I hate Bio, I find it difficult, I can't memorize a single thing from it, and I think dissection is boring and disgusting. I never knew I had the choice to drop it, so when I was told I could... I decided to.

Me: Hey dad, should I drop Bio? I don't really need it anyway.
Dad: Since you're studying it already, why don't just take it for fun?
Me: It's not fun at all! And I find it so hard.
Dad: -shrugs- Ask mum la.

Conveniently, in situations like this one, mum is the boss.

Me: Hey mum, can I drop Bio?
Mum: YOU CRAZY AH???!!!
Me: ... I don't need it ma. And if I drop it I got extra time to study other stuff. :D
Jo: I think you should let her drop, she doesn't need it anyway.
Mum: You sure you will study with the spare time or not?
Me: Of course la I can totally focus on my Physics and Chem with the extra time!
Mum: Fine, but you better improve in Chemistry.

Yeah that's really all she cares about, Chem. Le sigh.

Me: I'm dropping Bio!
Rachel: Omg what a waste! Bio is awesome!
Me: No it's not! Bye suckers, I've got free periods to do my homework now!
Rachel: Fine! Our lab table has no space for you anyway!

She jelly. XD

So I wrote a very professional-sounding letter, got it signed by my headmistress (who was so nice and didn't ask any questions), and voila, no more Bio for ever. The mere thought that I now spend Bio classes (especially the double ones!) in the library with Jia Hui (who dropped it too because she's taking Chinese and Accounts) now is still a bit overwhelming. I really can't believe that after four years all this shit, I don't have to face it anymore. I can like, burn all my Bio notes now WOOHOO.

The only thing now is I don't dare to see my Bio teacher ever again. I think she's a great teacher, but she's really scary and I didn't exactly get her permissions... I hope she doesn't assume that I dropped the subject because I don't like her or something.

Also regarding future studies, I've been getting kind of stressed out lately about what I'm going to do next year. The realization that I seem to enjoy every single computer class (and I don't mean to be a narcissist, but I'm not bad in it either hohoho), no matter whether it was in Puay Chai 2, Damansara, Kuen Cheng or Wesley, and the fact that I actually preferred the iOS programming workshop last year over the user-friendly Android one, has steered me to the decision that I definitely want to study IT in the future. The dream ambition of being a game programmer for Square Enix is a bit bizarre and probably unattainable, but it's a rough idea of what I want.

But even though I know what career path I want, I can't really live my dreams of studying in Japan or simply anywhere but Malaysia because my parents can't afford it (or can, but choose to spend the money on Jo instead wtf). I initially thought I had reached a decision about studying in Singapore, but now I realize that a diploma seems inferior to a degree, and even though my dad insists it's "good enough", I don't think so. So it looks like my plans have changed again. Since I can't study overseas, right now my plan is to do the MUFY (Monash Uni Foundation Year) program at Sunway College and then get into the Sunway campus of Monash.

I've always dreamt of studying in a university overseas but now I see I can't anymore. It really sucks that I have friends already planning to go to Australia and UK next year, while the only chance of getting to study abroad is when I do my Masters later. When I went to the education fair last year I could only stare at all the Study In Japan booths knowing I couldn't really go there. But screw it - I can't have everything right? I do think Monash is a decent university, I just hate the fact I'm still stuck in this country. But something that convinces me that it isn't all bad is that the instructor at the workshop last year, Jason Khong, studied there and now has such an awesome job as an app developer.

Okay anyway I shall stop blabbling about my its-still-a-long-way-to-go future. I should note that the figure posts I owe are adding up like crazy - Nendoroid ~~Headless~~ Tomoe Mami is currently sitting in a corner of the Pejabat Pos Besar and I'm going to pick her up soon. I actually used unregistered SAL, but because the postman can't exactly leave the box lying outside my unit, it sort of turned into registered SAL without tracking hoho, good enough for me.

Also been spamming Kingdom Hearts lately, I'll be finishing it soon and writing another wall of text on the game and how much I disliked seeing Sora as a mer-man/mer-boy in Atlantica because he has no abs.

Hard Rocking

2012-01-07T01:22:00.001+08:00

Since 2011 was another one of my family's "leap year" of not going overseas for a holiday (except for me, fufufufu), we ended up going to Singapore for a short trip on New Year's Day. My mum randomly spotted an advertisement in the newspapers for a package quite reasonably priced, so we booked it and went. This was probably one of the best trips down to Singapore, because said package was super awesome and included a night in Hard Rock Hotel at Resort World Sentosa, Universal Studio tickets, Express Passes for the one-month-old Transformers ride, tickets for the Sentosa Express, tickets to the Maritime Museum, SGD40 (SGD10 per person) food voucher to be used in USS, and four Transformers souvenirs from USS. What a mouthful lol. Being from a middle-class family (or lower middle?), it's rare getting the chance to stay in five-star hotels, so getting to stay in one of Resort World Sentosa's hotels was a first for us.

Warning: Lousy photos ahead, even for my fail standard. I forgot the rules of ISO and caused a lot of blurriness, and I'm not very used to this new camera either. :\ I myself didn't want to have any photos taken because my face was still prickling and uncomfortable from the recent visit to the dermatologist.

We actually spent a night in Johor Bahru as usual, had an awesome dinner at our favourite place there, and went to KSL for a while. We left for Singapore the next morning, reaching Hard Rock Hotel and leaving our luggage in the car because we couldn't check in yet.

After that, we headed straight for Universal Studios, which was within walking distance of the hotel and was very convenient. I didn't take much photos there because this was my second time there already and I'd already spammed photos of everything I want back in February last year. Come to think of it, I just went to two different Universal Studios parks in a span of three months...

Parents' first time there!

The last time I went there in February, my mum chose shopping over USS (wtf!) and my dad didn't even want to go down to Singapore at all. This time, I guess he wants to check out USS because me and Jo claimed that we found it more fun than the original Universal Studios Hollywood. I swear that's really how I felt, though in theory it's ridiculous. However, I think this judgement is flawed because I was like eleven years old when I went to USH and for some reasons we didn't watch any of the shows and missed out on a lot.

So anyway... we went for the usual stuff there, but this time I was determined to take three rides I'd missed before: Jurassic Park Rapids Adventure, Revenge of the Mummy, and Battlestar Galactica. I didn't take Jurassic Park the previous trip because Jo is a coward, but this time armed with my Jurassic Park-fanatic dad, we marched to the ride only to find it closed for maintenance. OTL

I chickened out at the Mummy ride last time after I'd heard about the backwards drop. I was imagining horrifying thoughts of a Hollywood Dream-ish steep drop backwards, but Mei Jun went to USS right after our Japan Trip too and reassured me that the backwards thing was nothing, and that so far nothing at USS could be scarier than Hollywood Dream, which I conquered.

I never like taking rides alone, so I persuaded my dad into joining me for this one. He nearly chickened out too but in the end we went for it. The walk to the loading bay itself was ridiculously long, and when we finally reached I was starting to regret already. But surprisingly, it wasn't too bad! The effects were spectacular, and because of the YouTube videos I've been watching beforehand, I knew exactly where it was going to go backwards. Mei Jun was right too - it can't even be considered a drop. There were about three real drops though - in total darkness too, but they were short ones. I especially loved the part where the voice over shouts "YOUR SOULS ARE MINEEEE!!" and the car climbs up REALLY fast. I'm so used to roller coasters taking their own sweet time climbing up to the top to get your nerves in a wreck, so this was kind of different.

Contrary to other people's opinions, I also prefer roller coasters in the dark as long as I know that there aren't any crazy 360 degree loops or long drops to fear. In the dark, I can't see how steep the track is, so feeling the weird feeling in my stomach is enough for me, I don't WANT to see the track.

My dad concluded the ride as "very scary" hahaha. He liked the special effects too though.

Epic cosplay haha. Seriously looks like a robot, but it's not.

This one's really just a prop though.

Oh that sexy car. :3

The new Transformers ride had a one hour queue when we reached it, so we were pretty thankful for the Express Passes we got. Besides Disneyland's Fastpass, I've never gotten to use an Express Pass before because it's so expensive, so it felt really awesome going for the shortcut queue and passing by everyone else. Evil max!

Thanks to research before the trip, I knew what to expect from the ride - it was almost exactly the same as USJ's Spiderman ride. 3D effects and simulations of falling and zooming around, though I think this one is better than Spiderman.

We used up our meal vouchers at the pizza restaurant there.

It was seriously the biggest pizza I have ever seen in my life. 20 inches in diameter if I'm not mistaken, and it took up the entire table. *___*

After lunch we watched some of the shows like Waterworld (I love watching people get dumped with water), then left the park, making plans to come back at night before the closing time. One of Jo's friend had said that the best time to go for the rides there without any queue is from 8pm to 9pm, because the park closes at 9pm and everyone leaves around that time, so we decided to test his theory out.

Unfortunately I didn't get to take Battlestar Galactica, partly because I didn't want to go alone (even my dad wouldn't teman me D:) and my mum was like "Don't la! So scary! Dangerous leh!". I admit I was a bit scared too, but it seems such a waste! Guess I just have to wait till I go to USS with my friends one day, because they will definitely force me on. The Human track doesn't look very scary - what concerns me is that there is nothing you can grip while you're falling, the way Hollywood Dream and the Mummy ride does.

Dad proclaimed the rides at USS as "made into compact size", complaining that the rides were all too short. He's got a point there, some of the rides are indeed really short... I don't think my mum enjoyed herself much at USS, because she's even worse than Jo and won't even take the mildest rides like the Canopy Flyer, and didn't seem to pay much attention to the shows either. :o

We checked into our hotel room after that. Me and Jo actually got our own room but it wasn't ready then, so we dumped our stuff in our parents' room first, then took the Sentosa Express to HarbourFront, and then to Orchard Road. We didn't have much time there after spending half the day at USS, and I wasn't in the mood to look for clothes which I can't seem to afford. In the end, all I accomplished was to take the MRT to City Hall, drop by Funan Centre and bought a new pair of Audio Technica Bijoue headphones because one side of my Onto headphones died. Wanted the Button ones but they were SGD58.

Also forced Jo to get me my Christmas present:

Everyone seems to prefer this Canmake Shading Powder in 02 but I tested it and it just looked too reddish-brown. Hope I made the right choice here...

We rushed back to Sentosa and met up with my parents outside the Mummy ride at 8.30pm. Me and my dad went for it again (I thought he said it was scary rofl!), and this time, it seemed much scarier. Mostly because the theory turned out to be right - the walk to the loading bay was absolutely deserted and there was no sign of anybody. Because the whole attraction is designed like a tomb, it was really like walking in a tomb in the dead of the night, with NOBODY THERE. The lights were really dim too, and if I thought the walk there was incredulously long before, it felt even longer then. We walked for ages and ages, taking so many turns that I thought we'd gotten lost. Eventually we reached the loading bay and saw the car in front of us leaving with about three or four people inside.

Since we didn't make that car in time, me and my dad were alone in ours, having the entire vehicle to ourselves.

Staff: Two people? First row please.
Dad: I think we'll take the third row instead. ^^"
Staff: Are you scared sir? xD
Dad: Yeah.
Staff: You're all alone in the dark... God bless you... -evil grin-

I swear, if I knew it was possible to have the entire ride to ourselves at night (in the Mummy ride, no less), I would have put this on my bucket list. It was a crazy experience to be taking such a scary ride alone. I could only hear my own screams in the dark, and could talk loudly all I wanted (during the slow bits). Damn, that was one hell of an awesome experience.

After this terrifying Mummy ride, we went for one more round of the Transformers ride. The theory didn't fully apply to this one because there was still a short queue, even at that hour.

We finally exited the park before it closed. Which reminds me, this is the second time I got to stay until the closing time of a theme park, the first being Disneyland Hong Kong with my aunt, uncle and cousin because we stayed back to watch the Christmas fireworks.

Because we were such in a rush at Orchard, we didn't have dinner, so we walked to a KFC near the Merlion to have dinner.

Scary Merlion is scary.

The KFC was closed though, so we detoured to a random restaurant for ridiculously overpriced noodles, at about SGD12 for a bowl. Didn't have much of a choice because all the restaurants at Sentosa are like so frickin' high class. Dropped by a 7-Eleven to buy a bottle of chocolate milk, then got back to our hotel room.

Ah, the one-day-only luxury of staying at Hard Rock.

Equipped with MTV too.

Even the teabags they gave was pro. No Lipton stapled-on labels for you, it's Twining teabags with sewed-on labels.

Trying and failing to be artistic with the focus.

As all good things must come to an end, we left the hotel after a posh buffet breakfast there, and school started the next day. My skin was still in the healing process then, and I got a lot of funny questions about what was wrong with my face. FML

Oh well, back to school. SPM year. Stress. Work started on the very first day of school already, and now our seats are going to be changed again because my homeroom teacher demands so. I am given a choice between sitting next to an extra seat foreveralone.jpeg style or sitting with Tzy Yang, so I chose the latter (sitting alone is pathetic, been there done that in primary school). Hope he doesn't mind. I think my Shouko Gashapon on my pencil case is in great trouble of being beheaded or something by him though...

2011 has levelled up! Congratulations!

2011-12-31T00:47:00.001+08:00

Time for some self reflection on what I've been through, accomplished, and failed this year. :)

This year, I... -drumrolls-
- Escaped KC! When I see Jacklyn and Ken complaining on Twitter, I feel so lucky. And bad, at the same time, because the fees here are so expensive. ;__;
- Fell into the Kingdom Hearts hype.
- Joined Uchikazoku as the fairy-godmeido and started going for Tweet-ups. :)
- Finally learnt to ride a bike lol.
- Went to Singapore three times. Wanted to make it four, but we're only going there this Sunday so it's considered 2012, what a waste. D:
- Bought my first authentic Square Enix merchandise - Kuplu Kopo! :3
- Bought my first Nendoroid Petit set from HLJ!
- Got four pairs of shoes stolen FML
- Bought my first two scale figures, Mugi and Miku! :D
- Played laser tag for the first time!
- Started Japanese classes and ended after three levels because of transport and financial problems. At least I have some basic knowledge now~
- Went for the AFS Interview and had a good experience but failed anyway xD
- Took my Grade 7 practical exam and failed for the first time ):
- Slept in school overnight D8
- Got an Android phone! It's been a great companion for boring waits and train journeys.
- Cosplayed as Shimizu Megumi! Wasn't a very good attempt though...
- Watched my first musical - The Lion King at Marina Bay Sands. :P
- Went for a very interesting workshop at Monash (even though I was like foreveralone.jpeg there)
- Bought FIVE Nendoroids omg what the hell was I thinking...
- Got a PS2! Thank you Tzy Yang! If you were a girl I would have said I LOVE YOU but since you're not, lol thanks very much :D
- Did a batch order for the first time
- Sold some unused junk online
- "Worked" at Taylor's (yeah right)
- Got a small writing job to earn some extra cash
- WENT TO JAPAN OMG OMG. Wait, this is much too awesome to only have one line.
- I WENT TO JAPAN!!!
- I SERIOUSLY WENT TO JAPAN AS AN EXCHANGE STUDENT!! There, that's better. :D Love my super awesome host family! Planning to send them some stuff next year.
- Cosplayed as Yurippe and Luka!

2011 was a pretty good year, with its normal ups and downs. Problems I'd expected, like fitting in a new school, but great times with good friends like my un-biological family Uchikazoku. No matter what crap I went through, it was still one of my best years.

Last year's resolutions:

~~1. Make new friends in my new school.~~
Thankfully, I did. Perhaps not as many as I'd hoped, and not as close as I'd wanted, but still, at least I've got friends here. And no matter how bad it is, it's just one more year to get through with!
~~2. Be a more successful cosplayer.~~
I gave my own self permissions to cross this off. :)
~~3. Do my own make-up for cosplay.~~
Definitely done (and happily too), and turned out falling into make-up addiction at the same time, ohnoes.
4. Buy more clothes.
Sigh... I have to stop spending so much money on cosplay, figures and make-up.
5. Study harder, because my parents are making me feel so guilty.
This failed hopelessly, I'm so sorry dad and mum ;___; I'm just such a lazy person.
6. Be more mature.
.... hur.
~~7. Own a scale PVC figure.~~
DONEEEE HOHOHOHO TWO SOMEMORE XD
8. Improve my appearance but don't jump into the "fa qiao" boat.
No progress whatsoever. ):
~~9. Go to Japan as an exchange student.~~
AAAHHHHH SO HAPPY I CAN CROSS THIS OFF!!!!

This year's resolutions!

1. Get 7As for SPM. I'm actually much more comfortable aiming for 6As, which is pretty tough already, but because of this odd pattern of getting 5As for UPSR and 6As for PMR, I want to get 7As for SPM lol.
2. Improve further in cosplay.
3. Improve further in make-up skills.
4. Spend some money on lunch once in a while.
5. Drink more water and take care of my skin OTL. *To be explained further down.
6. Have a clearer goal for my future. This means making sure that I want to learn programming and learning some basic stuff about C++ on my own.
7. Improve my appearance..? -puppydog eyes-
8. Cross more stuff off my bucket list.

That's about it I guess.

Oh, today I went to see a dermatologist at one of the skin clinics at Uptown, Dermlaze. Been suffering from pretty serious acne problems for about two years already, mostly on my forehead (which is why I wanted a fringe so badly). A few months ago my parents suddenly noticed it and suggested bringing me to a dermatologist, so I thought, okay o_o.

The doctor suggested this random procedure that had something to do with peeling or whatever, which I only found out later was a chemical peel and a comedo extraction. So my dad gave the green light and I went for it. The assistants there (they were really nice too) applied some solution, then proceeded to poke at all my pimples. Poke is an understatement - SHE STABBED THEM ALL WITH A KNIFE AAHHHH. Fine it was just a really sharp tool, but it hurt like hell. It was like having a really big needle stabbed into my face repeatedly and it felt like it would pierce through my skin and kill me. Then they applied another two layers of solution that gave a horrible burning sensation, and yet another that didn't.

So while paying...

Assistant: -takes calculator- So the treatment is... three.. zero...
Me: [thinking] Thirty only? So cheap meh?
Assistant: ... zero.
Me: Three hundred?!
Assistant: The cleanser is RM140, the toner is....omnomnom.... -shows total- Seven hundred.
Me: Ouch. MIND. BLOWN.

Now I feel so guilty. Had no idea it would be so expensive... I didn't get scolded because it was my dad paying, but if my mum was there I would have been lying dead on the ground outside the clinic. Stupid acne better clear up or I'm going to beat up the dermatologist for scamming so much money. My face was stinging the whole day and all the stabbed parts were red, but after using the cleanser and the lotion it feels fine now.

I swear I will drink more water and eat more fruits wtf. ;___;

The self-proclaimed gamer

2011-12-28T21:45:00.003+08:00

As you can see, I've made some minor tweaks to my layout, using a new banner (credits to Firebomb9) and a new background. New year new stuff right? Originally planned to take a nice photo of a few Nendoroids, but my camera is currently on a holiday with my mum in China and I am currently in a very Kingdom Hearts-y mood anyway. Added a slight opacity to the table to differentiate it from the distracting background, so yeah that's about it. I wanted to change some of the font design and colours too, but the codes went a bit haywire and screwed up everything else, so I just kept it this way.

Thanks to Tzy Yang giving me is old but not yet busted PS2, I suddenly have the opportunity to play all the games I missed during my sad childhood of no consoles at all, with no time limit (unless the PS2 dies lah). It's almost a decade late, and I'm sure somewhere someone is laughing at me for lagging behind while everyone has shiny PS3s and Xboxes.

There's just something about the PS2 that I don't like as much as I like the PSP, and maybe even the Nintendo DS. The controller feels so clunky and big in my hands, and if I don't position or hold it properly, my fingers ache very easily after just a few rounds of Heartless slaughter. Also, my game progress is displayed on a 40 inch TV as if telling the whole world "Hey! Come and watch me play! Oops, I can't seem to hit 20 barrels in 30 seconds. Do come and watch me fail and fail and fail again~". Now that my house is so small, my dad is forever using the TV so when I get his permissions to hog it for a while, he's always there watching me play and making occasional comments ("Disney can sue them for using their characters ma!" rofl) There really isn't anything wrong with that, but I kinda miss the privacy that the PSP and NDS gives. ;___; Guess I'm just not very used to it.

Graphics are not very good either, even though I thought it was supposed to be on par with the PSP's system. I've forgiven the PS2 for that though, because it's so old. ^^

Anyway I haven't finished any of the below because I'm slow and such a lousy gamer who even have trouble on the Easy selection, but here's a short review on what I have tried so far...

Final Fantasy X

AHHH SQUARE ENIX (or SquareSoft wtf) I AM SO SORRY. Because of all the awesome stuff I've heard of the game over the years, naturally I started it with high hopes. In fact, it was the first game I tried on the PS2. But then... OTL the graphics were just.... the controls were like... AHH AND IT WAS TURN-BASED TOO how ancient in this game?! My dad was watching me play it and he too was giving the =__=" face and said "Aiyoh try a different game lah!" Still, there's going to be a re-release for the PS Vita next year, so maybe if I can get my hands on the Vita... :3

Rating: N/A :X

Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus

Great game, not the biggest fan of Vincent but it's fun to play (but why hold 4 potions at a time only?!). Tzy Yang said this was one of his favourites, and I can totally see why. Unlike your normal Buster Sword-bashing games, DoC is all about shooting with bad-ass guns, so it feels a bit like Time Crisis or The Third Birthday. Can't remember why I put this on hold, but I'll finish it when I can.

Rating: 7.5/10

Final Fantasy XII

Oddly, I have never heard much of Final Fantasy XII (except that Vaan is in Dissidia) even though Wiki stated that it got really impressive ratings. The graphics are much better than Final Fantasy X, and it has a very AikaSEA-like setting. Fighting is also turned-based, but it's slightly different than your typical FF7 lets-take-turns-fighting system. I don't know how to explain this, just assume it's sort of different. I'm currently putting this on hold because I got stuck at the palace and no walkthrough has proven helpful so far. ;___; See what I mean about being a really lousy gamer?

Rating: 7/10

Devil May Cry 3

Heard plenty about it, so I tried it out. The story sounds cool and all and it's pretty bad-ass, but it just feels like Tekken, kicking people's asses. Nothing I should be complaining about, but I only played one mission and never tried it again. :\ Maybe I'll play it again once I finish my other priorities...

Rating: 6/10 at the moment, subject to change.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

There's something about the controls of this game I can't seem to master, and I couldn't even finish my first mission. OTL I really suck. But anyway, I don't expect to finish this game because I got stuck on all three Chinatown Wars, Liberty City and Vice City.

Rating: N/A

Persona 4

People like my dad who don't see the appeal of the game just think its boring, but it's not bad. It gets a bit repetitive at times and I HATE THE SUPER LONG DIALOGUES where they talk and talk and talk and I just feel like saying "SHUT UP AND MOVE ON!!!" Again, because I'm a fail gamer, I don't know how to use the Personas well and I end up dying a lot. I find the game kind of difficult (even though people say P3 was harder), and I temporarily stopped playing it because I can't beat one of the early bosses. ;___; By the way, I never got to finish Persona 3 because it got stuck on July 15th for ever, sigh.

Rating: 7/10

Call of Duty: World at War

Not bad, found it better than the PSP one but it doesn't have that strong, mysterious force that pulls me the way Final Fantasy, Parasite Eve or Kingdom Hearts do. Your typical shoot-and-bomb-everything game, this was actually picked up by my dad but in the end he couldn't be bothered to learn the controls and I ended up playing it instead.

Rating: 6.5/10

Kingdom Hearts

THIS, people, is the main reason why I even wanted a PS2 in the first place. I'm an absolutely crazy Kingdom Hearts fan (look at my new blog design wtf) and I have been dying to play this game since FOREVER. Sora's a goody goody bastard who has a super big ego, but his Nobody Roxas is cute and damn hot. XD Anyway, the game has been pretty good so far. I hate flying the Gummi Ship (no wonder they removed it in the other games), but everything else has been the normal Kingdom Hearts gameplay I am so used to.

This is one game that I am very determined to finish, so I'll rate it later unless I get stuck somewhere and can't move on. Omg, that would be so depressing...

All I want for Christmas is (not) you

2011-12-26T01:06:00.000+08:00

Mmm I wanted to post this yesterday when it was still Christmas but since it's only 1am now, it still feels like the 25th...

Nowadays (or now-a-years) Christmas has totally lost all that excitement. Actually I don't even understand why we even celebrate it in the first place since we're not Christians, but then we don't really celebrate it now anyway. Just buy presents for my parents, watch them open it, then the rest of the day is like totally normal.

At least this year my mum got into the hype and forced is to set up the Christmas tree, and even insisted on buying the lights for it. I have to say, it was a pretty good idea because the lights are really pretty. :)

Unexpectedly, mum gave me and Jo a really cute Pet Shop bag each.

Me: Why got present wan? The Japan trip was already the best Christmas present ever~
Dad: Ehhhhh ya lor, see I already give ah! Don't ask me for presents!

But he still tried to give another RM100 anyway. :P

Buying presents for my mum was super easy. She has so many things she wants, plus now that I am so educated in the make up section (cough cough), I went to Inglots at Sunway Pyramid and got her two brown eyeshadows from the Freedom System. She is forever buying Estee Lauder stuff, and I hate Estee Lauder because everything is gold in colour and their eyeshadows aren't pigmented at all. And don't they all say Estee Lauder is a brand for old people...? Yeah anyway, I love Inglots' Freedom System because the palette is so pretty. :D I took a photo but had to delete it because of complicated reasons involving my mum finding out about the surprise.

On the other hand, getting something for my dad, whether for Christmas or his birthday, is always difficult. He is such a don't-care-about-anything person and doesn't seem to have any hobby, so every single year me and Jo buy him the same thing - peanuts, cocktail nuts, pistachios, sometimes chocolates, and a beer. Most boring person I have ever seen in my life. :O

At least, this year we have a cake to om nom nom anytime we want because of a 50% discount voucher for A Slice of Heaven.

One slice of heaven got nommed already before I could take this photo.

Sigh, thinking of the good old days when I was young and cute, waking up on a Christmas morning and dashing to the presents underneath the Christmas tree. I used to look forward to Christmas a lot when I was small, and I always got Barbie dolls or playsets then. Hell, me and Jo had the most awesome collection of Barbie shit then! XD We had a bunch of loose random playsets, a kitchen, a Ford car and a scooter! Diaries which I wrote in when I was around nine years old used to state my Christmas wish lists, and they always involved Barbie dolls and coloured pencils (Wtf Past Anne, y u no taste).

Jo YOU STILL OWE ME A PRESENT! For your information I want the Melliesh Blush in 05 or the Canmake Contour Powder in 02! Since it's impossible to find Melliesh in Malaysia so... hint hint Bugis Junction and John Little got sell okay!

Lastly, Nendoroid its-a-surprise-but-I-don't-think-anyone-cares has finally arrived! Because I used unregistered SAL, it totally gave me a scare because it took THREE WEEKS to come. I even gave up hope and thought it was gone forever. I can't do my usual post on it yet because I'm waiting for my study room to be fixed up properly, so the three Nendoroid posts I owe will be a little late.

Merry Christmas again if you still think 1am is considered night and not morning, or Happy Boxing Day since it's literally the 26th of December already!

Comic Fiesta 2011

2011-12-21T01:45:00.001+08:00

Comic Fiesta 2011... Another one of those overwhelming experiences that is so epic (in good ways and bad) that I have no idea how to start blogging about it. :o

Firstly - I took very little photos. I know from past events that it is very difficult to take photos while cosplaying, so same goes to CF. It was just really a hassle to keep stowing my camera into my pocket underneath my skirt every time someone asked me for a photo, and to make matters worse, a button on my camera died and I was stuck on Macro and couldn't focus. I can normally use my own photos to explain myself because I tend to spend photos of everyone I meet, but for this post, I'll be looting some photos from other people (credited of course!). :D

Day 1
Okay so as I'd mentioned before, I was cosplaying Yurippe from Angel Beats on Day 1. Make-up routine was almost exactly the same for both days (except I forgot the blush on Day 2). Just for future reference:

Face: ZA Two-way Foundation, Stage Picture Perfect Liquid Camouflage, Elianto Cream Concealer, Diamond Nose Make-up
Cheeks: Canmake Powder Cheeks in PW20
Eyes: Kiss Me Heroine Make Liquid Eyeliner, Majolica Majorca Lash Enamel Glamour Volume On, Diamond Lash Cat Eye, Senria and Daiso bottom lashes
Lips: Rimmel Moisture Renew Lipstick in Nude Delight

Also used Blytheye Green contact lenses for the first day.

I managed to sneak out of the house without my mum noticing my green eyes, thankfully. Even though she now knows I wear them, I try to avoid the topic as much as possible.

Because something ALWAYS goes wrong, this time it's my costume. I got it commissioned from someone whom I've entrusted two costumes with before, but this time I was a little disappointed because the colour wasn't very accurate, though she did tell me it was difficult finding the right colour. The skirt is also a bit too long, mistake on my part for giving inaccurate measurements. I did use a safety pin to shorten it a little but it didn't do much good.

With no more Ikano shuttle bus to depend on, me and Jo left the house around 9am plus and took the U7 RapidKL bus to Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman and walked to the Bandaraya LRT and took the train to Masjid Jamek to transfer to the Kelana Jaya line and take it to KLCC. Hell that was a mouthful, and that was how complicated it was. I HATE the bus. It literally stops every few inches of the road, since Malaysia doesn't have proper bus stops. I was really annoyed and tired because I was up till 2.30am the previous night sewing on my SSS badge (forgot all about it).

Having pre-ordered my tickets, I expected to enter the event properly but wtf no, there was a super long queue, and they wouldn't even allow me with my mock ticket in. We joined the queue for a while, but after a while we realized it wasn't moving at all. Since Jo had asked Shufei to buy her tickets earlier, she managed to get in while I walked around in search of a washroom to change. The only visible washroom there was inside the event area, so I went to the Aquaria washroom to get changed and locked myself into a stall to do my make-up and all that.

If I thought the queue before was super long, what I saw after getting changed was INSANE.

This was taken on Day 2 but it's basically the same.

The queue stretched all the way past the entire convention centre building and down to this abandoned car park/random ulu place.

End of the queue.

It was just pure insanity. The worst part was that the line wasn't moving at all, because the security guards said that there were too many people inside and would only allow people to enter once they had exited. That is actually pretty retarded because why on earth would the people inside leave?

I refused to join the queue so I was wandering around outside, looking for Jerry, then Carina and Kevin spotted me. Since I had nothing to do I just tagged along with them while they got changed (Carina cosplaying as the Katamari prince and Kevin as Shunsui from Bleach) and walked around outside. One of the guys who asked for a photo showed me his Yurippe phone strap and asked me to do the same pose lol!

We found Crimotaku there ("How's your Tension Meter?" rofl), who was conveniently staying at Traders Hotel, then just continued hanging out with them until Jo was done and just gave me her armband because she couldn't even exchange my mock ticket.

Photo by Crim!

Jerry told me that they were finally letting people in, so I tried my luck but I still ended up waiting for at least half an hour outside the doors, while people raged at the security guards, shouting at them and demanding to enter. Can't blame them either - imagine taking all the effort and money to come to this event, only to be denied access and stuck outside. My make-up was melting off just standing there under the sun.

When they finally let us in slowly, I ended up getting imprisoned in Hall 4. Hall 4 was supposed to be the ticket counter, and all the events are going on in Hall 5, but just getting from Hall 4 to 5 required another INSANE queue, so Hall 4 became a camping spot for cosplayers. I found Pamela cosplaying as Louise again, accompanied by a Gundam Lacus cosplayer which I assumed was her friend, gave her an Elmo keyring from USJ and dumped my fat bag with her stuff.

Photo by... someone using Pamela's camera. :o

While walking around, another Yurippe cosplayer approached me and asked me to follow her, and she brought me to two of her friends who gave me a Yurippe Weis Schwarz trading card for the lulz, and then we took a few photos together with mirrored poses.

I HAVE improved right?! Right?! ;__;

"Am I seeing double?!"

Two photographers also invited me to a small studio shoot in a corner. I didn't know who they were except that one of them was not very good in Chinese because he was so relieved when I replied him in English lol, saying he was a banana (high five, dude).

Beautiful photo of a not-so-beautiful subject ie. me. xD

Found out on Facebook that they were Hew Kuok Hoong of HKH Photography and Antares Chai. Thank you so much! I have no idea how they manipulated the lighting to make it so nice, besides the fact that they used an umbrella reflector. HKH takes such beautiful and professional photos that I really feel very honoured to have a pic by him. :) I made it my Facebook display picture because the photo was taken so nicely with the depth of field with my gun and all, though it's attracting a bit too much attention... I'm not looking forward to going back to school and possibly hearing people comment or make snide remarks on it, or on how I am such a bimbo or a perasan person or whatever the hell people say these days. Can seriously imagine it already! Like "Walao you think you so pretty ah!"

And yes, I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW my left lash is drooping like a wilting flower FML. I swear I will invest in high quality and expensive lash glue next time (anybody want to buy me a tube for Christmas?). I bet the photographer had a lot of Photoshopping to do on this photo though. And Jo says I look dead. -sulks-

The queue to Hall 5 was still refusing to move so I mostly just wandered around Hall 4 looking for friends. I was getting real tired then when suddenly the girl cosplaying Lacus earlier said something like "Hey Joanne! Join me lah! You must be hungry after the whole day here," and I was thinking "Ehh how come she knows my name?" and then suddenly I realized it was Bette. WHAT THE FARK IS WRONG WITH MY FACE RECOGNITION SKILLS it's even worse than Facebook tagging the wrong people. _|_ But in my defence, Bette was too pretty (and cute :D) to be recognized hoho.

I ended up spending the rest of my day camping in that corner with Bette, eating her tau sar piah and sandwiches...

...while watching Aaron trying to pikat her and failing miserably. :P Jiayou lah Aaron.

Also spotted Carina and Kevin again, this time all property suited up:

Naa na na na Katamari!! :D

Then me, Bette and Aaron went outside (but still inside the building - geddit?) for a drink and back in, lepak-ing at Aaron's luggage while waiting for Bette to get changed out. It was then I noticed a group of my ex-classmates from Kuen Cheng sitting in a corner nearby. I sure as hell didn't want to announce my presence to them, but I glanced over often just to test if anyone recognized me - and no one did. Score! 8D

Around 4pm me and Jerry went to hunt down Ermakyo at the Aquaria food court. Amanda had given up trying to enter the hall and went off to karaoke, so I only found Ermakyo, Irudono and UntoldHero there, none of them bothering to join the queue as well. Gave Ermakyo and Irudono a Cookie Monster and Elmo keyring each and got Irudono's very awesome namecard. Then I went to COD with someone and hurriedly got changed out and again very hurriedly took the LRT to Kelana Jaya where my unsuspecting (I hope) mum picked me up.

In a paragraph, Day 1 was really disappointing. The money I paid for my mock ticket I couldn't even redeem, and I had no use for Jo's ticket anyway because I couldn't enter Hall 5. If I hadn't pre-ordered my ticket, I would have the choice to leave the event without wasting my time, but I didn't have a choice. But anyway, it was pretty fun cosplaying Yurippe all the same, and meeting up with some of my friends (couldn't find the rest OTL).

Credits to respective lulzy person. xD

"Comic Fiesta 2011: event so exclusive even money can't buy you in." - @lerrymaru

And also, the iPhone 4S launch was going on right there at the same time, so I'm sure they weren't very happy with the amount of people swarming to CF instead of their launch hahahaha. If that's not bad enough, apparently the Bersih people were having a picnic in the park too. No wonder Day 1 was such a mess!

Day 2
So after all that make-up-melting the previous day, I was really reluctant to go for Day 2 but I had promised to join Haruhi Syaoran's Vocaloid group for Secret Police. I had breakfast with my parents and then they dropped me off at Suria KLCC, which was pretty convenient because it was really early then and the washroom was peaceful and empty for me to do my make-up. I had meant to test out the lens I was using, Geo Twilight CP-A2, the previous night, but I was so exhausted after the first day. They are actually Halloween-ish lenses and really opaque compared to the normal fashion circle lenses, but on my super dark eyes, they didn't look too scary and gave off a really nice light blue colour.

When I walked to the convention centre though, the same, super long queue greeted me again. I was thinking "Seriously? They didn't change anything from yesterday's whole fiasco?" but decided to join the crazy queue. However, this time I noticed that they opened a second queue for ticket holders (doesn't apply to me with my mock ticket ;__;) and that the queue was moving. Though not very quickly, it was really moving, and after about half an hour or more I managed to get into Hall 4 to redeem my tickets. Everything was much more organized too - there was still a queue to Hall 5 but it wasn't too mad. Anyway I dumped my bags in a corner and got changed.

Cosplaying Secret Police Luka certainly wasn't a very good attempt... For one thing, I'm starting to hate my Luka wig for being so small. Never going to buy any wigs from 1/2 Prince again rawr. It was fine for the first half of the day, but later on it started to slip off like Bette's Lacus wig the previous day (I suspect she got it from 1/2 Prince too). I don't think I can pull of Luka's prettiness either. ):

Photo credits to Natalie Chen. If this is Photoshopped remember that I am much uglier in real life - double whammy ugliness, oh the horror!

Since this version is based on the song Himitsu Keisatsu - Secret Police, I couldn't very well smile could I? And that's the problem. I should cosplay happier characters because when I do this stupid poker face I look really sleepy instead. Smiling makes my long face look shorter too I think. :o

Anyway I found Haruhi in Hall 4. My awesome taichou! :D

Photo credits to Natalie Chen again!

She said the cigarette tasted horrible hahaha! Anyway, our group was supposed to meet up at 10am but with the crowd and all, no one else showed up until three hours later. So I just hung out with Haruhi, met Mamoru again (from Animangaki) who took a few shots of us. I really suck at posing and kept depending on Haruhi for help ;__; She is like so experienced and pro!

After a while there my twinnie Cloudee found me there!

Sorry I think you must be sick of seeing my face so often already but this photo was taken by twinnie and her camwhoring skills suck LOL. She was cosplaying as Mayoi from Bakemonogatari and she was SO CUTE I kept glomping her :D

Twinnie and her sister! That bag must be really convenient. XD

After that we found our Gakupo, Alex, and then even later on, our Kaito, Gumi, Kiyoteru and Miku, cosplayed by Naito, Hanatsu, Zul and Stephanie Yukino respectively. Miraculously, we got into Hall 5 and watched a bit of the cosplay competition (and had a drink - my apple juice tasted like water and it was RM3.50, what a rip-off), and I finally found Abby and Belle there, both cosplaying characters from Hakuouki (please don't ask who, I didn't like the series and can't remember the names anymore wtf). Then we went outside for a short photoshoot. It was then, while waiting for our photographer, that my wig started to hate me and decided it would be really nice to slip off slowly and become really messy. EURRGHHH.

I noticed that when you're in a group you're more likely to be asked for photos. I've found plenty of photos of us in the same or similar pose outside the hall while we were waiting and I was quickly getting really tired and was just dying to change out.

Photographer unknown, sorry!

Then we met up with the two photographers and went to the KLCC park to take some photos. It was pretty short because we were all blardy tired. I haven't seen the photos yet and I only know one of the photographers was called Ash, but the photos were supposed to be sent to Yukino. If I do find them I'll post them here, but for now here's a teaser from someone else's camera (I think it's from one of Hanatsu/Yukino's friends):

Gumi refuses to OTL with us lololol!

Miku and Gumi here were actually going to have another shoot themselves after it and asked if I wanted to join them, but I was seriously getting pissed with my wig by then and decided to give it a miss. Finally, FINALLY, I got changed out, grabbed my bags and went to hunt down people. Outside, I found David and Pamela cosplaying ~~Sasu-gay~~ Sasuke again and crashed her photoshoot (hur hur sorry :P) and then tagged along with Aaron and Bette again. Bette, being a one-in-a-million female Dota fan, rushed into Hall 5 to watch the tournament there. I don't play Dota, but I think it would have been pretty fascinating if I actually knew what the hell was going on and if my back wasn't aching from hours of walking. Hell, I stood there for ages watching the players tweak their Heroes and then realized the match hadn't even started yet.

Abby found me there again and I gave her a Tiger & Bunny Gashapon I bought from Japan, and asked her to help me pass one of those heat packets to Belle who was going to Japan soon as well. Then I ran off to Hall 4 to find my Uchikazoku, which I hadn't seen the entire day.

Found Crimotaku, Ermakyo and Irudono there, and also Carina cosplaying as Elektra along with a Marvel group, very sexy! :D

Found Pamela and Abby in Hall 4 again~

Hate my grow-too-fast fringe to the max. Photo by David btw.

Both of them are short people so they made me grow short too. )': -perasan- You're both just jealous! -flips hair Homura style-

Spotted Haruhi again now changed out of her Meiko costume and cosplaying someone from Uta no Prince:

Also found Nero cosplaying as... a chicken? LOL joking, photo taken by him btw:

I was planning to stay for dinner with the others, so I followed Pamela and David back to their hotel room because Pam wanted to change out. I knew that Pam, Bette and David were staying with their parents (and apparently their other relatives too) at a hotel nearby, but it was only after I had followed them back when I realized that they were so conveniently staying at The Ascott - a fancy-pancy 5-star hotel (or service apartment omg) that I will never have the chance to stay in before I die due to extreme poverty. Only went to the lobby there once to meet up with my cousin years ago.

It was a super huge room with a living room, dining table, kitchen and three bedrooms. FM-very-sad-L.

While waiting, David taught me how to play a bit of Dota...

And I saw Pamela's collection of coscards. JEALOUS MAX. ;___;

See what happens when you're a famous tsundere chibi.

This is mine in comparison:

Sad or what? I only got Arisa and Akihiko's coscards because they happened to be giving Haruhi then and generously gave the rest of the group too. So technically the only person I really know among this three is Haruhi lol.

After that we walked back to KLCC and joined the others waiting in a corner.

Photo by Rul Evilmatter.

I was horribly mistaken about being able to stay back for dinner, because even by 8.30pm the rest were still not done and I had to leave. Took the LRT to KL Central and got my pathetic dinner of Subway there to nom on the way home.

So here's my loot from CF2011:

Haruhi, Arisa and Akihiko's coscards, Irudono's namecard (SO CUTE XD) and the Yurippe trading card. Though I did check out Hall 5, nothing at the doujin booths caught my eye and I only spent RM4 on lens cases, which is just plain random.

Things I learnt from Comic Fiesta 2011:
- POCKETS ARE GODLY. My Day 2 costume didn't have pockets and I couldn't take any photos or call anyone to stalk them.
- Have to work on my poses. Evidently I am very, very fail at posing till I have to hire Abby or Haruhi as my director when taking photos ;___;
- Also have to work on my facial expressions. I admit that I didn't portray Yurippe very well though I did research more about her personality on the Angel Beats Wikia.
- .... buy better eyelash glue wtf.

So next up is to cut and style my Iwasawa wig for the Angel Beats shoot early next year which is currently in its planning stages in the Facebook group, and get ready for a Toradora one also next year, waiting for Pammy's green light. :]

I got a pleasant surprise back home though - my uncle gave us a new camera. :D For some reasons a lot of our phones seem to come from him second hand, so same goes to my new baby here.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T99. This is probably the camera Jacklyn had that I was craving for two years ago haha. It's just another point-and-shoot with only 3.5 max aperture, but it's got a program auto mode and the sweep panorama function I like. Awesome timing too since the other camera is almost dead!

Yesterday I also received something in the mail from my host family:

A photo book of my time in Japan with them. I miss them so much and they are so super awesome! ;___; While on the topic, a few friends actually asked me how was Japan and all I could say was "awesome". I just don't know how to summarize four blog posts of epic awesomeness into a single reply. :x

Okay that's all for the crazy rant, Merry Christmas to everyone in advance unless I post again before then. My bed is in a Christmassy mood too~

PS: I just realized I've never mentioned this before, but I asked Tzy Yang last month when I should return the PS2 to him and he told me to just keep it because he doesn't use it anymore. O__O So er... I have a PS2 now? Lol. Thanks Tzy Yang! Almost-forever in your debt! :D

Three days to CF 2011 (Warning: Wall of Text)

2011-12-14T02:05:00.004+08:00

Here comes Comic Fiesta again! It's funny to think that just two years ago I was there for the first time in my life and found the whole thing so unbelievable. Anyway, I'm going to be cosplaying again, stubbornly hoping to keep improving every time I do so. A bit of a last minute rush, but I shall be cosplaying Yurippe from Angel Beats on the first day and Megurine Luka with a group on the second.

Come to think of it, I started off this year with plans to cosplay Shiina, Sumire Kano and Shimizu Megumi. Somehow throughout the months, this plan got a little warped - I dropped Shiina due to the lack of funds, but did finish Megumi (though I'm still not very satisfied and will probably try to improve and do it again next year if I have the time), and have Sumire Kano ready but haven't cosplayed her as planned because Pamela is planning a Toradora photoshoot with some of her friends, probably after CF.

I added in Masami Iwasawa from Angel Beats, also for a group shoot with Pamela, and because I didn't have any plans for CF Day 1 plus didn't have enough money to buy more costumes, decided to recycle my haven't-even-worn-yet Iwasawa costume to cosplay Yurippe. So there you go, my plans for this year.

Over the months, I recall hearing a lot of people I know going to Comic Fiesta and I simply can't keep track on who to look out for anymore. ;__; Never mind looking out for schoolmates there - it's awfully hard finding cosplay friends there because I have such a hard time recognizing anybody in costume! Anyway He Who Should Not Be Named is apparently going so I shall be steering clear, and then I have a bunch of people I have to COD with (Diamond Lash) and Uchikazoku will probably be making plans for lunch or/and dinner there. Looking forward to seeing them all again, this time Crimotaku too, back from Australia.

Will be a bit of a hassle sneaking out of the house with green contact lens on and a bit of make-up on, I never let my parents find out too much about what exactly I'm doing.

Anyway, it's probably too early and from the above experience I doubt I'll be sticking strictly to it, but I've already got plans for next year. xD

1. Akemi Homura (Moemura)
I've always considered Puella Magi Madoka Magica as one of my most favourite series and Homura is my favourite character. Particularly the Moemura variant because she's so cute. XD Thanks to my awesome twinnie Cloudee, I'll be cosplaying Homu Homu with her as my cute Madoka! :D I'm hoping the glasses can mask my un-cuteness hohoho.

2. Kirishima Shouko
Shouko has always been on my want-to-cosplay list but I can finally confirm it thanks to Pammy's sudden desire to cosplay Hideyoshi, so again, I'm joining her group. The best part is there's a Yuuji in the group too so I can start making torture devices as props! Arren is going to be one of the FFF Inquisition too lol!

3. Gasai Yuno
Like Megumi, Yuno is the sort of character who isn't the nicey nice type... in fact, she's a psycho stalker but I love her and so far I'm loving the Mirai Nikki series. This is tentative, but I'm really hoping I have the time and money to add her to my plans. :)

I'm itching to add Queen from Final Fantasy Type-0 to my plans too, but I only played like ten minutes of the game (couldn't bear playing it in Japanese) and I don't want to go solo.

I haven't been up to much these past few days, except for executing the movie marathon plan. On Monday, Tze Ying and Rachel came over to my house with a LOT of junk food (Ruffles, Chipsters x2, Pringles, Jigs, Meow Meow wtf) and spam watched Star Wars. It was originally planned to be a Lord of the Rings marathon because of a random fangirl session in school a month or two ago (LEGOLAS-KUN), then it transformed into a X-Men marathon and then a Star Wars one. There obviously wasn't enough time to watch all six, so we spam watched the fourth, fifth, sixth and then first movie on my shiny new TV which mercifully allowed USBs to be plugged in. I used to watch Star Wars when I was young and didn't understand a thing, so now I finally do. :D And today I dropped by Mei Jun's super huge house to show her how to put on contact lens and to collect my own because she so kindly helped to receive them, knowing that my parents don't approve of too many Poslaju dudes showing up at my doorstep.

My ICLS Japanese classes for Intermediate 1 also ended last Saturday, with only me, Florence, Zi Xian, and Yeen Mok taking the exam because the others were busy with something or another.

I managed to scrape an A, but I'm not sure if I will be continuing to Intermediate 2 because my parents are complaining about the transport and fees. ):

And so to end off this messy rant, I'm playing Skyrim now because I'm curious as to why it's so popular and got such high scores on so many websites. I know... I used to dislike PC games... until I took an arrow in the knee :O

WMS Japan Trip Part 4

2011-12-10T19:24:00.001+08:00

The last post of this much-longer-than-it-was-supposed-to-be-coz-I'm-lazy report of Japan, I promise!

On the 29th of November, I was woken up by the phone ringing which was just a really annoying wake-up call. Then there was wake-up call no.2 which I certainly wasn't expecting, this time by one of the teachers (can't tell who it was) telling me to make sure everybody was up and under no circumstances was anyone to continue sleeping. Annoyed from being the one who has to crawl out of bed and answer the phone... I don't think my tone was exactly polite ^^" We were given one hour to wash up, so I went to bang on Mei Jun's door before realizing they were super early birds and had already went down for breakfast.

Buffet breakfast at the hotel was about the same as the dinner. I didn't eat much because I didn't want to throw up in Universal Studios later, and just taking a bit already got me full. The hotel was insanely near the theme park so we just walked across the road, climbed some stairs and ta-da, we were at Universal Studios Japan!

Tze Ying and Su Ann (and James photobombing unintentionally?)~

We were there before the park even opened because our tour guides are experienced in the field of theme parks - CHIONG EARLY. So chiong we did. I'll rant about each of the rides separately, so here goes.

1. Hollywood Dream: The Ride

This was obviously taken later but WOOOT I DID IT HOHOHO

Before the trip, I read up about the rides at Universal Studios, and mentally prepared myself for the scariest and most challenging one there - Hollywood Dream. When I first read about it, I thought "okay, it looks scary, but I'll give it a go." Then I checked it on YouTube and nearly had a heart attack. Watching a video of it was TERRIFYING OKAY. I'm not really scared of roller-coasters, but I sort of have a love-hate relationship with them. Sometimes I think they're fun, and I like going really fast, but I absolutely hate drops. The airtime with the funny feeling in your stomach when you drop down is horrible. Anyway being the most popular ride there, Hollywood Dream was bound to attract long queues, so I didn't have a chance to warm up or anything before Chui Lynn demanded that we sat on that the first thing. I didn't have time to go around pondering whether I should ride it and I knew I would regret if I didn't, so I followed them (and the seats are four in a row anyway, don't want to be a wet blanket). While queuing I was freaking out, and when I got on it I had no escape. D8

One thing cool about Hollywood Dream is that you can change the music blasting in your ears. The seats are equipped with two speakers and you can choose different songs, so I had actually planned to pick something soothing like Osaka Lover until I got into my seat and realized I couldn't seem to change the song and I was stuck with Eminem rapping "Lose Yourself" in my ears, making it even scarier. I was frantically jamming at the buttons while the train was climbing up, and I was so scared when it reached the top and begin the longest fall ever. Until now, I still can't quite believe I rode the Hollywood Dream, where the blardy drop is even steeper than the climb. It was a really long drop too, and I was just praying that it would level out as quickly as possible. But after that first, horrible drop, it wasn't too bad. Another part of the track I was afraid of was a sharp turn that turned us 90 degrees as though the track was on a wall, but it turned out to be the best part. There were a few more short drops, but other than those, it was okay. In fact, it was pretty fun. And since I am so proud of my achievement of actually taking the ride, I shall now spam every single photo I can find with the track in it:

The angle of this photo makes it look like it's a 360 degrees turn, but it's not, it's the sharp 90 degrees turn I was talking about.

LOOK AT THE CLIMB AAAARRGGGHH

When the ride ended and I was feeling traumatized....

Me: Okay, fine. You have my permissions to take it again. :o
Chui Lynn: THAT WAS FREAKING AWESOME!! WE'RE TAKING IT AGAIN WITH OR WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSIONS!
Me: ;___;

But anyway, we didn't take it again because a few hours after the ride, the bravado feeling I had wore off and I started to chicken out, and the queue had become a 70 minutes wait.

2. Space Fantasy

This is basically a rip-off of Disneyland's Space Mountain with a Little Mermaid rip-off and cute little yellow thingies as the mascot, but it was my favourite ride there all the same. Unlike Space Mountain, the vehicles are being loaded constantly (think Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters) and are round, and spin around during the ride, in the dark. There were also buttons which you were supposed to press when they glowed to donate your energy or something (sounds like Kyuubey) or whatever it is the story was about, but they were pretty stupid.

While queueing, we had our photo taken by one of the staff (of course we didn't buy it - overpriced shit!), then boarded the vehicle. I sat in there assuming it was going to be really mild and kid-friendly, so I got a huge shock when we were tossed rather violently around after the initial rather short climb (the starting really looked like Space Mountain! Rip-off!). It wasn't scary, but considering I had thought it was baby crap, I started screaming because we were flying around pretty fast. That aside, it was really pretty in there with all the lights and stuff. Unlike Space Mountain which climbs all the way up and zoom around to the bottom, Space Fantasy climbs up a bit, flies around a bit, climbs up even more, flies around even more, and then ends. The ending was really nice, with a lot of lights going off to give the illusion of being electrocuted (by what, I don't know either). We went for a second round later because the queue wasn't very long.

3. The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man

Chui Lynn, having been there before, ranked this as the second scariest ride after Hollywood Dream, so it got me worried for a while until after the ride when I realized Chui Lynn's ranking abilities are crap. This is probably what Universal Studios Singapore's new Transformers ride is about, a 4D movie and a ride at the same time. Getting over the fact that Spider-Man was speaking in Japanese, it was a really cool ride and quite mild, and thanks to the 4D-ness, kept making me feel like we were really being tossed around and shot at with fireballs and water.

I checked photos of the Transformer ride at the vehicles looks really similar. :o

4. Back To The Future: The Ride

Been there, done that at Universal Studios Hollywood, so I knew it wasn't much. Just a simulation of flying around and nearly crashing into everything. By the end of the ride, all my friends were grumbling that the old dude supposedly driving the car was blind and that the car was cacat.

5. Jurassic Park: The Ride

Forgot to take a proper photo, sorry!

Ditto above at Universal Studios Hollywood. The first time I rode it there, it took plenty of courage and convincing from my Jurassic Park-loving dad to go. It's a fairly boring ride until the drop at the end, and eurrghhhh I hate drops... surprisingly the drop on this one seemed pretty short though. At least, much shorter than Hollywood Dream. The staff warned us that we were going to get really, really wet, but at the end of the ride, we were hardly wet, even Charmane who was sitting by the side. A lot of people wasted 400 yen on that cheapo-looking plastic poncho I suppose.

6. Jaws

Pretty much like Disneyland's Jungle River Cruise except for the shark attack, just a boring little boat ride around Amity Village with some special effects with fire. I've never watched the movie, so nothing to shout about.

7. Snoopy's Great Race

Oh dear. We must have been really bored or something to even take this, because it's like a really kiddy roller-coaster, equivalent to Gadget's Go Coaster in Disneyland. The track is built indoors and the train is so tiny and cramped that our legs were almost sticking out. It was so mild that I even said it looked boring and my friends were so shocked because they had assumed by then that I hated roller coasters. Real funny, guys...

8. Peppermint Patty's Stunt Slide

Forgot to take a photo of this, but it's just a pretty fun tunnel water slide. Because it was in Snoopy Studios, it looked like a kiddy ride but when I reached the top I got a bit scared because of the speed people were zooming off at. It wasn't so bad actually, there weren't any drops and though we did slide down pretty quickly, it was really fun. And we all got really wet at the end, far more wet than what Jurassic Park promised. How come no one told us to buy the dumb ponchos here?

9. Shrek's 4D Adventure

I watched this at Universal Studios Hollywood too and didn't like it. I'm not the biggest fan of 4D, and the whole Farquhar returning as a ghost story is a bit lame... and I hate having water splashed at my face randomly. I didn't even bother wearing the 3D glasses and just counted my money ~~like a boss~~ while waiting for the show to finish.

10. Terminator 2: 3D

I love the Terminator series, so obviously I liked this show a lot even though everyone was yapping in Japanese. There was a pre-show where a Cyberdyne employee with a very fake-ish attitude introduced us to the hall and asked a few people where they were from, until there was an interruption by Sarah and John Connor. JOHN CONNOR WAS SO CUTE :3 Uhm anyway after that was the 3D movie, which was a mix of watching it on the screen and a bit of acting by a Sarah Connor and a John Connor on stage. The last part was fantastic, where a huge blast of smoke covered everyone and I couldn't see a thing. Hasta la vista, baby!

I suppose our time management wasn't very good, because we missed the Waterworld and Backdraft show.

We had turkey leg for lunch, and also a churrito and a Snoopy bun (courtesy of Chui Lynn!) each:

Some of the rides like Hollywood Dream and Space Fantasy required that we dumped our belongings in lockers:

Thankfully, the 100 yen was refundable.

There were also a lot of lucky draw stalls around the park, each dip for 500 yen, so I tried the Hello Kitty one and got a tissue holder.

I also bought a really cute Snoopy plushie for 1200 yen! It was just too adorable! Got souvenirs for friends as well. My loot from USJ that day:

More photos...

At 6pm, we met up near the entrance and went to Universal City Walk.

I honestly don't get why everyone was so excited about Hard Rock Cafe, but whatever. I wasn't hungry and was just feeling resentful that I didn't get enough time to shop at Shinsaibashi (why am I such a bimbo shopaholic?), and was hoping to find some good shops there. We only found a lot of restaurants there though, so we settled for a not-too-expensive (but because it's Japan, it was still expensive) restaurant serving omurice.

I kind of regretted not eating after the food arrived because it tasted DELICIOUS. LIKE SERIOUSLY AWESOME. My friends forced some onto my bowl so yeah that's how I know how delicious it was. The restaurant is called Pomme-no-ki if anybody wants to try it out one day.

While I was waiting for them there, I flipped through the Universal City Walk brochure and spotted an outlet called Jump Shop. The logo seemed a bit familiar, so I said:

Me: Hey, does Jump Shop have anything to do with Shounen Jump?
Chui Lynn: Nahh. -continues eating nonchalantly-

So I dismissed it.

After the meal, we spotted some Gashapon machines and Chui Lynn started going a bit crazy there, then decided she was tired and wanted to rest in a corner. Charmane, me and Mei Jun left here there and were about to head downstairs to check out the shops, when suddenly we saw this:

Then we started shouting at Chui Lynn to join us and proceeded to run down the escalator. And so I entered the first anime shop I have been to in Japan.

I'm not a big fan of Shounen Jump, but at the sight of all the ORIGINAL anime goods there... I felt like hyperventilating. Previously I was wondering what I should get for that noob Jo because I knew she wanted One Piece stuff, and this shop was the answer to everything. The shop was full of One Piece (duh), Katekyo Hitman Reborn, Bleach, Tiger & Bunny, Nurarihyon no Mago, Bakuman, Sket Dance and Naruto stuff. There were posters, calenders, mugs, keychains, pins, plushies, shirts, phone protectors (designed for Jap phones though - they're pretty popular there, Hikari's phone has that cartoon twins with the pink and blue hair whazitname protector) and everything else you can think of. The only series from this lot I like is Tiger & Bunny, so I practically stayed rooted in front of that section, then proceeded to get some stuff for Jo.

After a while, the guys discovered this secret lair and all came swarming in to attack.

"I knew I'll find you here Joanne!" - Tzy Yang

A few of them bought the mega expensive and huge calenders and brought back big (but light) boxes to the hotel where the tour guide Mr. Shen said "how are you going to bring that home!?". That was how bulky it was.

Because of the K-On movie hype going around, Lawson, a small supermarket (or convenient store) were selling some K-On stuff.

I bought a K-On file similar to the one Michiru gave me, and a Mio bookmark. I later read in Danny Choo's post that Tokyo's Lawson stores have other K-On stuff too. Also bought some last minute junk food to bring back.

We returned to the hotel after that, where I unpacked everything I bought in Japan and organized them all to make sure that my luggage didn't exceed 20kg. Here is my loot excluding the previously posted ones:

K-On file, Barnaby mug, Kotetsu postcard and Mio bookmarks for myself and One Piece stuff for Jo.

Clockwise: Some sort of cream biscuit, Omoshiroi Koibito (STUPID RIP-OFF AND MONEY-CHEATING CRAP RAWR), Salty Chocolate Pocky, Alfort chocolate biscuits (Ricky was swooning about how awesome it was and I later found that out to be true), Green Tea Kit Kat mixed with cinnamon ones inside, and green tea cream daifuku (HEAVEN).

A small souvenir from Toyosato Elementary School.

Fashion magazine More, Tiger & Bunny guide and Persona 3 manga.

Diamond Nose Makeup, brown Love Liner, Eyelabo lashes, Disney lash case (original yo!), and cheap 100 yen lashes.

Miss Teng popped in again to check on us that night, and I crashed into bed after packing everything.

We were woken up pretty early the next morning to have the buffet breakfast at the hotel again, then we left for Kansai Airport.

I really wanted to continue shopping there but we were only given free time after taking the sky train to the second terminal. While waiting, I got rid of my small change by buying Strawberry Kit Kat and a potato snack I grabbed because FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 WAS ON THE PACKAGE ZOMG.

Also got a Pocari Sweat, just because the name is funny. Only realized later it was available in Malaysia FML.

Even though we weren't forced to sleep on the flight back and had plenty of time to watch movies, I wasn't in the mood. I tried watching Inception but got too lazy to understand the story, then watched The Prince Of Egypt, which brought back really good memories because it used to be my favourite movie when I was a kid. Rewatching it on the plane brought a lot of light to bits of the story I used to misunderstand, and I'm now addicted to the song Deliver Us. I also watched a bit of Spy Kids 3, which I used to love when I was younger too, but this time when I watched it, I thought Daryl Sabara's acting seemed wooden and the whole movie was just plain dumb.

Luckily, I wasn't hit by the awful pressure problem when the plane landed (where my nose, face and ears hurt a lot). I had been kindly informed earlier than none of my parents were interested in picking me up from the airport when we reached at 8pm (okay fine my father was busy and my mum "can't drive at night"), so I took the KLIA Express to KL Central with Tze Ying, James, Su Ann and Sarah, and Tze Ying's sister dropped me off at my new home, which I'd only moved into like one day before the trip to Japan.

So whoot I'm finally done ranting! Subject to further changes and edits. :) I can't really get started on my figure posts because they haven't been unpacked yet due to further revamps to be done on the study room, but I'll post them once I get the chance to. Meanwhile, more rants on my sad life up next.

WMS Japan Trip Part 3

2011-12-08T11:51:00.001+08:00

I've finally gotten Unifi (BOO SUCKS TO YOU P1 HAHAHA) and am mass downloading every single damn anime I plan to watch! And Ouran live action drama! Okay okay better remind myself of the blog posts I owe:

- Nendoroid Madoka
- Nendoroid Miku Support version
- Nendoroid... nah, it's a surprise! Well not much of one if you read my Twitter and Facebook.
- Scrapbook posts!
- Updates on cosplay plans
- Ouran High School Host Club J-drama!

I realize I haven't talked about my new house and neighbourhood yet.

I'm really sorry these posts are moving so slowly! It's not even a lot, I'm just really lazy and keep ending my posts too quickly. Anyway, I'll be doing some minor edits to the previous two posts because I tend to be doing something random like watching Persona 4 then suddenly remember "Shit! I didn't mention blahblahblah in my post!" This happens about five times a day so yeah, you may or may not notice some extra shit added in. :3

So on Monday morning the 28th of November, I woke up slightly earlier than usual (thank goodness for their alarm clock) to go back to Omi Brotherhood School with Michiru. My host mum gave me two packets of green tea (the powder kind - cool or what!), two pencil cases she made herself for me and Jo, an old scarf for the next two days, and a few packets of the warm pack thingy. I think I've forgotten to mention this as usual - the previous day, they lent me this little white packet containing some sort of powder inside. It's a very awesome invention or something because it absorbs heat from goodness knows where and really warms your hands when you hold it. XD I never knew such a thing existed and I thought it was like damn cool! Anyway Michiru gave me a K-On! Mugi file, a hair tie (I should stop calling it a rubber band) and a bunny keychain.

But of course, the best thing they gave me, not pictured, is their hospitality in letting me be part of their family for four days and three nights, and being so insanely generous with the gifts they gave me and paying so much for my meals and admission fees and all that. I mean, come to think of it, they really spent A LOT of money. Let's see - Saturday's breakfast of marmalade and bread, the cool fruits, Marguerite Station gelato, admission to the Hundred Year Old Temple, offerings at the temple, the expensive udon for lunch, admission to the Biwako museum, the purikura photos, the bottle of green tea and Calbee snack, train ticket, expensive rice dish for lunch (all the food there is expensive wtf), admission to Ishiyama Temple, offerings there, the Lady Murasaki bookmark, the mochi-like thingy, all that sushi at the restaurant, the Mugi file, more green tea, keychain and hair tie.

I FEEL SO GUILTY NOW WTH.

So anyway that morning, Hikari left first, then my host parents and Michiru took photos outside the house with and for me.

My fantastic host family (should Photoshop Hikari in).

My host father stayed behind while my host mum drove us to school. They were pretty surprised when I told them what time school normally starts here because theirs start at like... 8am or 9am wtf unfair max.

When we reached the car pack I found Oscar and his host family there too, and he showed me all the Kamen Rider kits his host gave him lololol. Otaku much? Back in the entrance, I saw everyone else there, mostly taking photos and hugging. It got a bit awkward there until they announced that we were to get our asses onto the bus. And my host and her mum actually cried! Maybe from relief haha. I gave them a few hugs (I don't cry easily) then got onto the bus together with my friends and just waved frantically from the window for ever.

After we left, everyone on the bus was exchanging their fantastic homestay experiences. Chui Lynn got to go to an anime shop (NUUUUU!!!), Mei Jun's host family don't seem to believe in lunch, and so on. We had a short stop for a toilet break and drinks...

Japan is a land of vending machines.

... then continued our journey to Osaka Castle. Oh dear, here comes the educational parts of the trip again. ):

I swear the trees there are so beautiful. End autumn is a perfect time to visit. XD

Ricky, Elena and James!

We walked a short distance from the parking to the castle itself.

This is Ricky drinking water from the... thing. This is the same thing as the thing I mentioned before at the temples.

Now, by now you should know I totally hate history so even after lectures and explanations and blah, I have no idea what Osaka Castle is about except that it was built or owned or whatever by a dude called Hideyoshi. That's the only part I remember, because obviously, I keep thinking of Kinoshita Hideyoshi from Baka to Test.

Group picture from James' camera taken by the tour guide Mr. Shen.

Inside Osaka Castle is one of my worst fears - a museum.

Oh well they had scale figures. Ha. Ha. Ha.

"Joanne looks so bored." - Mei Jun

OH GOD I COULDN'T TAKE IT AHH IT WAS SO BORING. About eight floors of boring-ness somemore. Of course, everyone else was fascinated and excited and yabbering historical shit and Chui Lynn was declaring her love for the place while I just followed them around looking bored. The only mildly interesting part of the museum was that they had two different staircases at opposite sides, one for walking up and one for walking down to avoid congestion. YES IT WAS SO BORING THAT SOMETHING LIKE THAT IS CONSIDERED INTERESTING WTF.

Finally it was over and the others went to get ice-cream (I didn't because I was being a cheapskate). Nope, it still couldn't beat Rapty's gelato. That one totally owned anything else I've tasted.

Then we were shepherded off to have lunch at a restaurant there. Thankfully this one was covered by the fees -cheapo-.

Guess what it was?

TAKOYAKI MAKING HOHOHO. I felt superbly experienced in that department thanks to my host family. That was the before pic, now the after:

Almost perfection! Hahahaha! :P

Have I mentioned that Japanese people eat a lot?

I don't think anyone managed to finish everything here. Chui Lynn hardly touched her bento and I couldn't finish the bottom right square of noodles. There was also a bowl of udon that came later okay.

After the meal we had a bit of free time so most of us when to the souvenir shop. There were Reborn and Fairy Tail Gashapon machines there too, so the guys swamped it. Then we got onto the bus and headed to Maishima.

Second part of the educational stuff: Maishima Incinerator Plant. When I first read the itinery it sounded pretty stupid to visit it, but actually, it's a rather pretty incinerator plant.

Kind of looks like a theme park doesn't it? It was designed by some smart Austrian dude called Friedrich Stowasser (I obviously Googled that). It actually felt like visiting Wonka's Chocolate Factory.

Mei Jun, Charmane and Hui Woon.

We were told this was a very rare opportunity to even step foot inside. In a little classroom, one of the staff explained some random facts about it (my tour guide translated to English for us) and told us that people in the past had mistaken the place for being Universal Studios because it was near that area and looked like a theme park lol.

The rest of the stuff there was almost as boring as Osaka Castle because me and Charmane were damn sleepy after the meal and had not much interest in how garbage was incinerated. It was really hot in there too. Hey I don't pollute the environment and I recycle okay, but it was just damn sian watching garbage being dumped around.

Really like a theme park weih!

And finally, FINALLY, FINALLY, the fun part starts! The bus takes us to Shinsaibashi, a popular shopping district!

We were given a map of the area and a discount card for a certain store. Originally, we were only given about an hour and a half there, which is just way too little time, but our headmistress very kindly extended our time to about two hours.

The famous Glico running man!

Even so, let me tell you that shopping at Shinsaibashi in two hours is VERY STRESSFUL. So first, let me tell you what is there. Two buildings of H&M. A giant building of Zara. Another giant building of Forever 21. Rows and rows of shops selling EVERYTHING, restaurants... omg my eyes, brain and feet were working overtime.

I knew there wouldn't be time to browse through clothes, so we planned ahead on where we were going to. After that, it felt just like some sort of shopping spree with a time limit so we were frantically rushing everywhere. First, the tour guide brought us to the department store where we could use the discount coupon. It was a super huge building with about four or five floors, each with different stuff. The first floor was full of food, but when I stepped onto the second floor... OHMYGAWD make-up heaven. My terribly un-bimbo friends shook their heads and left me there while I almost died of stress from looking at everything.

How do I start? The entire second floor was full of Japanese brands I've only seen online before. Right at the entrance was all the Dolly Wink stuff, including the new line of lashes just released a few days before then that would take ages to reach Malaysia. Jumily lashes. More Diamond Lashes. D.U.P lashes. Eyemazing. LITERALLY ANYTHING YOU CAN THINK OF.

Esprique, Nyx, Kate, Majolica Majorca cosmetics... Yeah I'm such a blardy vain pot but SO WHAT. Could see one of my tour guides and a teacher going crazy there too. And the worst part was I didn't have enough time to take in everything because of the time limit so my friends restricted ten minutes for me there only! Instantly I felt like instinctively grabbing everything I saw. I didn't even have time to process every item carefully and think properly because I had no time. See I didn't even have time to take a photo wtf.

At least I still had some self-control and only spent about 3000 yen there. That's really little you know! I almost bought a pair of Jumily lashes before I stopped myself, almost got a Dolly Wink eyebrow pencil which I don't really need now that I've thought about it. In the end I settled for a brown Love Liner (very popular in Japan and definitely not available in Malaysia), Diamond Nose Make-up (contouring powder, of course not available in Malaysia!) and a tray of Eyelash Laboratory or Eyelabo bottom lashes (need I say more?). I actually told myself not to buy any expensive lashes but they were on a 50% discount or something. :D I presented my discount card, but wtf no discount, just a free Hello Kitty keychain. FML.

I think I exceeded my time limit there but when I finally went downstairs I couldn't find the others. I was panicking and wasted even more time running up and down trying to find them until I spotted them at an alternate entrance. Then we headed to Tsutaya, a bookshop, and while going down a level to the manga section...

AAAARRRGGGHHHH almost tripped over the escalator and died there.

Manga section was full of Japanese manga and familiar fictional faces. My brain was still a little hyped up from all the excitement and lack of time to process anything so I grabbed a rather expensive copy of an anime guide for Tiger & Bunny, and a Persona 3 manga just because Mitsuru was on the cover lol.

Another thing about animanga in the places I'd been to there - it's hard to find anything else except One Piece. Unless you specifically go to an anime shop, you'll see One Piece stuff like EVERYWHERE YOU GO and the occasional KHR and Fairy Tail. But really, everywhere, it's One Piece. It's almost a normal part of their lives. Tiger & Bunny is the next easiest thing to find there, but even then it isn't really.

We walked to the end of that part, even though there was actually like "Shinsaibashi: The Sequel" across the road, we had been forbidden to go across so we turned back (after getting frozen yoghurt).

We also stopped by a Family Mart and I bought a Pepsi Nex (because Blue Rose advertises it in Tiger & Bunny hahaha):

... and a potato snack and a fashion magazine just to loot the freebie make-up pouch, tissue holder and calender. Much as we tried, we couldn't find any anime shops there, just a lot of UFO catchers full of - One Piece. In the end, we spent the rest of our time taking purikura photos.

I am obviously the most girly one out of them.

Surprisingly, the purikura machines there are cheaper than those in Malaysia and much better. In fact they are so pro that they automatically enlarges everyone's eyes the moment it's taken, so they actually looks pretty scary in some shots.

We got back to our meeting point quite punctually...

Sorry for the blur pic! Ricky and his Giant Pocky. He looks so happy. XD

... and headed to our hotel, Universal Port.

It's an official hotel of Universal Studios Japan and my first time staying in one related to a theme park (five star hotel too weih!).

I was damn exhausted from making my brain process so many things at Shinsaibashi but we weren't allowed to crash into bed yet because of the buffet dinner.

Even the elevator was pretty. *__*

Food is not bad, but nothing special to whoop about really...

There was a souvenir shop around the lobby with even more One Piece stuff, and there I found it - Green Tea Kit Kat. Been hearing about it a lot since it can only be found in Japan, but it was damn expensive! About 850 yen for a box of 12 little packets. Mei Jun bought a box of cinnamon Kit Kat and I bought the green tea, then we exchanged half so we could both try it out.

The hotel room was pretty normal, but considering this is Japan where there are shortages of space everywhere, I guess it was quite big, especially since it was three to a room. My room-mates were Kimberly and Hui Woon.

The bathroom is almost exactly the same as my host family's, with the automatic lid and warm seat!

Looted some of the toiletries because they looked cute. XD

I visited Charmane, Mei Jun and Chui Lynn's room before our lights-out time to hang out, and watched a TV show featuring opening songs of old animes with the original artists singing there. Sadly, I only recognized the OP of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Back in my own room, Madam Aza, Miss Teng and Madam Leong randomly popped in to double check on us (what did they expect to find, Yamamoto Yusuke hiding under my bed?) and commented on the big mess of shopping we were trying to sort out. I slept pretty late that night but thankfully the air-con was nice and warm (or perhaps not even turned on) so I didn't wake up shivering the next morning.

To be continued again! Will probably finish it in the next post. :)

WMS Japan Trip Part 2

2011-12-05T12:18:00.001+08:00

I think I should edit my previous post a bit to include more details, I must have been sleepy when I wrote it because it looks so short. :\ I really am a very lazy person.

So earlier that morning on the 26th of November (which was also my host mum's birthday!), we watched anime at the dinner table - Suite PreCure and Doraemon, and Power Rangers too. Then I was told that they would be bringing me to Toyosato Elementary School. It sounds a bit retarded, a school as a sort of tourist spot for a homestay student, but if you're a fan of K-On!, you should know this well. On Friday night on the way back from school, I told my host mum and my host about the Japanese artists I liked and of course, anime. They weren't hardcore otakus (like Oscar's host, dammit!), but they knew K-On and I told them that I did too and liked it. To be honest, the last part is only half-true - I'm not a big fan of the anime but I kind of like the franchise. XD

Toyosato Elementary School is the real life version of the K-On school. Yes I did know it existed before, but at that time, I only gaped at photos of all the K-On stuff in there and it's likeness to the anime, without even considering that I could visit it one day. I HAD NO IDEA IT WAS IN SHIGA. And was in a total state of shock when my host mum said so. *__* It was Michiru's first time going there too, and Hikari (my host's older sister) wanted to go too but had basketball practice or something.

On the way there, I was thinking.. are we allowed into the school? Wouldn't we be disturbing the lessons or something? Then when we arrived I realized the school had been turned into some sort of otaku tourist spot and the real school was built opposite it.

Familiar?

I obviously showed much more interest and excitement than at the temple when I got out of the car and saw all the Itasha there... and life-size dolls of Mugi, Mio, Azusa, Ritsu and Yui in front of the school building. The people in charge there were almost finished with combing Mugi's hair and giving Ritsu her drumsticks, so we waited a while then snapped a lot of photos.

When we went to the main building, we had to change into the ~~loose and uncomfortable~~ school slippers just like Omi Brotherhood's:

... and we immediately spotted the iconic tortoise-and-hare duo on the staircase!

It's pretty awesome being there, like stepping into an anime. XD I know at this point I sound like some hardcore otaku with no life, but it felt truly awesome! There were a few guys with big DSLRs having shoots with their Dollfies there too. We went up to the music room and found the whole place completely K-On-fied. Let the pictures do the talking...

This guy having a shoot with his Yui Dollfie!

Fake food on the table~

The adjoining room where Mio's fan club party thing was held:

We walked to a separate building where there was a small souvenir shop (I bought a Mugi towel lolol), a cafeteria, a corner full of everything K-On-related like Nendoroids and scale figures, the real instruments (the keyboard wasn't accurate I think, because it was different from my Mugi's keyboard) and a table of K-On stamps.

Me and Michiru got pretty busy there and got almost every single stamp on the back of a map.

There were a few Mawaru Penguindrum ones there too, like the famous "Destiny" stamp that weirdo stalker girl Ringo uses. My host mum talked to one of the guys in charged there and learnt about this K-On Movie campaign thing going on, and one (or two or three?) of the Keihan railway trains had been K-On-fied.

Across that building was the famous hall where they hold their shows in K-On.

After that we took photos of the many Itasha cars in the parking lot, of K-On of course, but also including Haruhi Suzumiya and Vocaloid ones.

Haruhi Itasha full of every single Figma and Nendoroid from the series you can think of!

One of the Miku Itasha cars had a Good Smile Racing tag on it!

I'm not into GSR but after reading about it so much on Mikatan's blog, it's pretty cool to see the logo right there in front of me! Guess I was really in Japan. :P

We had udon for lunch at a nearby restaurant in the "K-On district", which also had some K-On stuff in it. It was getting a bit scary, really.

Hi Ui!

i ate kitsune udon if I'm not mistaken - it was delicious, and so hot and steamy my glasses fogged up. :P

My host mum also got a text from the Wesley student they hosted last year, Queenie or Qee Ni or someone, wishing her happy birthday in English, so I roughly translated the message for my host mum. xD Then we drove back home, and I watched my host mum make takoyaki for dinner. You pour the stuff into the special tray and poke the overflowing parts back into the portholes while it cooks, then when it forms a thin crust, you do a quick ~~swish and~~ flick ~~with your wand~~ with your stick to overturn it and cook the other side. I did a lot of poking but my takoyaki didn't end up looking very nice. ):

My very-silent host father was really pro at it and made really beautiful takoyaki though.

Perfection.

Hikari had a friend over for dinner too, so the table was pretty crowded that night. We watched a Japanese rip-off of The Twilight Zone where some guy got an ear scoop stuck in his head and some very retarded game of scissors paper stone (they call it Janken), and I happily discovered wireless internet available in the house, probably from someone else but whatever la loot it la lol.

Because they knew about Haruhi Suzumiya too, I told them the English name (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya) and they were like "Ehhh? Mo ichido!!" and were all super fascinated rofl.

Also tried out the fruits.

Didn't get a photo of the other one but this one (mube I think) tasted like jelly with a bunch of seeds inside. Yuzu, the Japanese citrus, tasted like pear. :o

I actually did a bit of my Japanese homework there and my host mum helped me out, and checked Michiru's English homework. I find the questions kind of odd though hahaha. They also played a DVD of a Japanese comedy series, and told me it was a popular TV series there.

The next morning, my host family brought me to the Biwako Lake Museum. Their home is very near Biwako Lake, which is a super huge lake right in the middle of Japan (if you ever go to Shiga and drive by the Biwako Lake and see a Coca-cola factory, that's where they stay!). About 18 of the others actually went to the Biwako Lake Museum the previous day because their hosts had to take some sort of test.

Sorry for blurry pic!

I was given this device thingy with numbers to press at certain places in the museum to listen to the explanation in English. Super foreigner-friendly hohoho.

Well obviously it was a museum, so there were stuff like animal and plant fossils, and explanations on the formation of the lake, blah...

This part showed different Japanese (and some international) stuff throughout the years, so you can see Doraemon, a very old Nintendo, and Final Fantasy here:

There were displays of historic ding dongs like traditional fishing boats and houses...

And an aquarium with a lot of fishes.

My host and her mum took me to a purikura machine there but it wasn't the gyaru kind (the one with all the loli girls plastered all over it), just the boring type where we picked a background and decorated a bit. And it was only one sad photo strip, totally not worth the money at all! Mehh forgot to take a photo of it.

After the museum visit, we stopped by a supermarket to grab some snacks and then my host father dropped us off at Sakamoto train station, and my host mum told me they were going to take the special K-On train we had found out about the previous day! We purposely let the first train that arrived there pass by, nomming on the stuff we bought earlier...

Was really delicious! Japan seems to have a lot of this potato snack thing XD I saw it at Jusco and it was like RM8 here! I remember it being slightly cheaper there :o

Then finally, the K-On train arrived! May the pictures do even more talking again...

We took the train all the way from one end to the other, which is from Sakamoto to Ishiyama. My host father picked us up at Ishiyama station and we had lunch at a restaurant near Ishiyama Temple.

A rice dish with a mixture of random ingredients, still tasted really good!

This restaurant had the traditional low table where we had to take off our shoes and kneel or sit crossed-legged on the raised platform. It was a bit uncomfortable and my host mum offered me this short little butt-shaped (ROFL) seat to help, except it didn't help much. After the meal when I stood up, my legs were damn sore. ;__;

We went to Ishiyama Temple after that. It was far bigger than Hyaku Sai Ji, and was slightly different too. More stuff to look at, really pretty trees and cute fruits...

Pink trees! I love autumn!

They were also pretty profiteering and sold luck charms (I think) and random stuff. My host mum bought me a bookmark of Lady Murasaki (some historic person I couldn't really care about lol I hate history) with a purple ribbon because I like purple, and dropped a coin into a box to let me do this lucky-draw thing to get a fortune-telling piece of paper. I think I've seen this process somewhere before on TV... but anyway my paper got 大吉 which is supposed to be very lucky, but Michiru got 小吉 ): Then they stopped by a store and bought four mochi-like thingy for everyone.

After that, we drove to a shopping centre called Foleo.

I think they wanted to develop some of my photos to keep, but the wait was too long. My host dad went to buy some electronic stuff while I followed my host mum and host to this 105-yen store called Senria or something, where I bought a Mickey Mouse lash case (and original Disney Mickey too okay!) and two different pairs of cheapo fake lashes.

My host mum tried to buy me a new and rather expensive scarf in another store but I hastily told her I didn't need it so she relented. We queued up for a Bingo/lucky draw thing with a coupon from my host dad but obviously didn't win anything awesome.

We drove to one of the train stations after that to pick up Hikari on the way back from school.

Saw a Gundam train pass by too hahaha, guess it isn't only K-On taking over the trains. Actually, it was only after I uploaded my photos that I noticed that I snapped a photo of the Gundam train passing our K-On train earlier that day by accident:

We went to a sushi restaurant for dinner that night. Every single plate on the conveyor belt was 105 yen including tax, and if were got tired of waiting for what we wanted to appear, my host mum pressed a button there and requested what we wanted and what we ordered would come on the conveyor belt with our table number in front of it. We took 36 sushi plates in total for the five of us, and Michiru and Hikari had ice-cream after that (I said I was full). I swear, I have never seen so many sushi plates stacked up like that before. On the way back, I played games on Hikari's iPhone and let them play Doodle Jump on my Android. XD

That night, we took photos together on every single phone and camera they had.

Hikari, Michiru and me~

Wtf they are so fair I'm damn jelly D:

Anyway... To be continued! I think this post is more image-heavy than wall-of-text-heavy. Nowadays feeling really stressed out because CF is coming soon and I'm not prepared PLUS have a bunch of things to bring there like souvenirs to dish out and stuff to COD. Aaarrrgghhhh.. ;___;

I'm supposed to be getting my internet connection cut today and getting Unifi tomorrow, but for some reasons that stupid P1 disconnected me yesterday, so I'm currently online at McDonald's at Mont Kiara. I seriously can't wait for Unifi to start downloading everything I want. *__*

Also, once I'm done with all the Japan trip rants and three figure posts I owe, I'm planning to start a blog project for myself if I have the time. I currently own a photo album scrapbook where I paste everything memorable to me - train tickets from Melbourne, purikura with friends, class photos, receipts from random awesome purchases and all that. The stuff in there dates back to years ago but I don't have the time (or patience) to decorate it or write anything much except for some titles. I always have this constant phobia of forgetting good memories (blardy hell my memory is so poor), so I'm planning to write about the contents of the scrapbook here, with a picture of each page. If anybody's reading this, do give some input as to whether it's a dumb idea, a waste of time, or if I should go ahead with it once I'm done with my debt of posts. XD

WMS Japan Trip Part 1

2011-12-02T14:42:00.001+08:00

I have absolutely no idea how to blog about this.

This has got to be the most amazing holiday I've ever been on, and it's not surprising since it's Japan after all. Japan is the number one country I've always wanted to visit the most and now I've done it, and on an exchange program somemore! It's not even Akihabara or Shibuya in Tokyo, but Shiga, Kobe and Osaka and it was just like a dream come true. I think this will take a few blog posts to summarize, so please bear with me if you want to! I know I meant to write short posts while I was there but there was very limited internet time. ^^"

So on Thursday the 24th of November, we gave a very excited Tze Ying a lift to KLIA where we gathered with the others , the tour leader Mr. Shen, and five teachers: Ms Teng, my scary Bio teacher, Madam Aza, my awesome Maths teacher, Mr. Pandian my homeroom teacher, Ms Leong, 4K's Add Maths teacher and my headmistress, Madam Chia, at 7pm. Chui Lynn, Charmaine and Mei Jun were all busy with goodness knows what with their parents (mine just dropped me outside and left rawr) so I hung out with the other parent-less people like Adrian, Oscar, Tzy Yang and Tze Ying.

We took Silk Air to Changi, Singapore (codeshare with Singapore Airlines), and hung around for a while. It's been years since I've been to Changi! Favourite airport! ;___;

Colouring thing at Changi which everyone got addicted to. "Look at these big kids!" - Headmistress

Then finally we got onboard Singapore Airlines around midnight, reaching Kansai Airport in the morning. SIA is my favourite airline company and the last time I took it was... IDK I think it was in 2003 when I went to Perth, going overseas for the first time. Food was not bad compared to MAS' "chicken or fish?" routine. The inflight entertainment was awesome of course! Didn't know what to watch out of so many, so I ended up picking Bad Teacher. For some reasons, I couldn't sleep much on the plane.

We reached Kansai Airport around 8am if I'm not mistaken. Stepping onto Japanese land for the first time was too overwhelming for my brain which wouldn't accept the fact that I was really in Japan.

Before the trip, I checked the temperature and all that and was informed that the average was about 15 degrees Celcius, which is Genting-ish temperature, so I didn't expect it to be cold at all and only wore my thin Disneyland jacket. But when we landed, SIA's KrisWorld told me that the temperature outside was 10 degrees so me and my friends were all like WTF. Once I got my hands on my luggage I got out my thicker, longer jacket ~~that I looted from my mum~~ and thank goodness I did, it was pretty cold outside.

I put on my contact lens in the airport (and delayed the others for a minute or so because I had difficulty getting them on - I'M SO SORRY D:) and then we took the tour bus to Blumer Hat in Kobe.

Blumer Hat Kobe was a small shopping centre where we had takoyaki for lunch and I had my first glance at a Japanese pharmacy, or more specifically, their make-up line.

It was just... breathtaking. All the shit you can never find in Malaysia like rows and rows of Diamond Lash and Eyemazing, all staring in my face. There were brands I've never heard of before too like Esprique, and other familiar ones like Kate and Majolica Majorca. We also dropped by McDonald's there where Chui Lynn got her hands on her Pokemon calender and gave me one.

I went to the supermarket looking out for Morning Rescue but failed, so tried out one of their bottled milk tea. Didn't taste very nice, and what hurt most was that everything there was so expensive! There doesn't seem to be anything there below 100 yen, honestly! A bottle of water there costs about 100 yen too k! Slightly cheaper if you get lucky. ;___;

Oh but the cashiers in Japan are cool. They don't dig around in a pop-out tray for coins, instead, the exact change needed is calculated by the computer and it pours out into a little cup to be scooped out! Damn pro! 8D

The second floor had a bunch of UFO catchers and stuff and there I realized exactly how popular One Piece actually was in Japan.

One Piece was literally everywhere there. A sticker on the back of a car, keychains and swingers and Gashapons... the only sight I saw of Naruto was a poster, and I didn't see Bleach anywhere there.

Anyway, we didn't get to spend long there before we were whisked off to this Disaster Reduction Institute nearby.

There was a room with a panoramic screen where they showed us recordings of Japan's 1995 earthquake, complete with flashing lights. We were sort of told that it would vibrate a little so we crowded to the center hoping for some nerve-wrecking shakes of the platform except there was none zzz. Then we were shown some displays about it and a demonstration on the measures they used after that. No photography allowed in there so I don't have any pictures.

Right after that we had to spend about two hours on the bus driving from Kobe to Shiga, where Omi Brotherhood School is. The first hour was spent hearing Chui Lynn and Oscar arguing over Pokemon with the occassional facepalm-able joke from Tzy Yang, while the second hour we spent playing terribly lame word games.

We reached Omihachiman around 3 plus and shown into the entrance of Omi Brotherhood School.

To think that I actually got to go to a Japanese school! I felt damn jealous of all the students there with their anime-like uniforms and the freedom to wear their hair in whatever way they wanted! Like in animes, they had different shoes to wear in the school, and we had to change into school slippers while we were there.

Then we were brought to their classrooms. Never thought I'll really have the chance to step into a Japanese classroom ;___;

I got paired with a girl named Katayama Maki, and she kind-of taught me calligraphy. I said kind-of because I've been doing calligraphy for years and I completely suck at it, so a little extra lesson from a student sure didn't help much. She was super pro though!

Then we were brought back to one of the rooms where Chui Lynn and Shaun did their speech (the usual surprised air at Chui Lynn's pro ability at Japanese) and the other boring stuff. I was so exhausted I felt dizzy, until finally came the tensed moment where we were all introducted to our host families. All I knew about my host beforehand was that she was 14 years old, so it was really odd meeting her there. My host, Ishiya Michiru, and her mother drove me from Omihachiman to Moriyama where they lived, stopping at a supermarket to get breakfast on the way. It's funny spotting familiar kanji words on random stuff, like a brand of butter or something called Megumi (惠). FYI one of the staff at the incinerator plant later on was called Shimizu (清水) lolol.

Anyway, I mostly spoke to them in really basic Japanese with a few English words, because their English was pretty terrible like every other Japanese.

It was only about 4pm then but it was as dark as 9pm so I kept thinking it was damn late! Anyway, their house had two floors, and this I only noticed on my last day there, a dome thingy for stargazing, which I was told that my host father (who was really, really quiet and shy and probably more antisocial than my dad) liked. Cool or what! My host also has an elder sister, Hikari. Both of them are huge basketball fans.

Dinner that night was oden, with konnyaku, daikon radish, eggs and other random but really delicious stuff inside.

Saying "Itadakimasu!" before a meal for real and not just for fun, lol! Oh there was a TV on the dinner table and a bigger one in the living room in front of a kotatsu, and I spotted a Wii and a pink PSP!

A Japanese TV is pretty different from any other I've seen before. There's like a menu screen showing all the programmes going on and a timetable, and the advertisements are all pretty crazy.

I showed them how to wear the kemban thingy and then took a bath. What you read about Japanese baths are true - you shower first then take a dip in the hot water and it was really, really nice! But err try not to think of the part where the same water will be used for the others la. Since I was the guest I got to use it first, thankfully. Their toilet is damn pro! The moment you step inside, the lights turn on automatically and the toilet seat opens for you! And the toilet seat itself is heated wtf!

Even though the living room and everywhere else was nice and warm, the bedroom was so cold that I started shivering the moment I entered.

The light switches of all the rooms were cute too - they were all long and rectangular in shape with the names of each room stated on them so you don't have to fumble around to figure which turned on what, and a green light will light up if it is turned off. Unfortunately I still had to fumble around because they were written in kanji. OTL

I was given this bed to sleep in, with FIVE layers of blankets. Epic.

I tried using my free trial Acuvue Moist daily contact lens the next morning but couldn't put them on at all. I got them onto my eyes all right but they just wouldn't stick! Thank goodness for trials, I'll never buy them. :\ So I just used my nerdy glasses for the next two days there.

One thing about Japanese people is that they eat a lot. Breakfast the next morning was bread with marmalade which I picked from the supermarket, sausages and an omelette. I can normally make do with one single piece of bread, but the bread in Japan are cut really thick so I was damn full after that. My host father finally made an appearance and drove us to this place called Marguerite Station, which sold some food and random stuff like scented candles and ribbons.

There was a supermarket nearby too, and my host mum bought two different weird Japanese fruits for me to try, yuzu and mube.

At that same place, there was a little store called Rapty which sold gelato.

And it wasn't just any old ice-cream, this one totally melts in your mouth! Suddenly all the overpriced, branded ice-cream I've ever eaten (have I eaten any branded ice-cream before?) tastes like crap compared to this. It just tasted like heaven. There were some pretty different flavours available though, no chocolate as far as I could see.

We watched a street performer (he was pretty cute) juggle some balls and knives...

Then we continued on our journey to Hyaku Sai Ji, the Hundred Year Old Temple. Because it was end autumn, some of the trees were orange in colour and leaves were dropping everywhere.

There was a little spring with water where we washed our hands. Saw someone drinking from it too, it's supposed to ward off illness or whatever I think... After that it was a pretty steep climb up to the top. You know the process of dropping a coin into a wooden box and then banging a gong and praying in Memoirs of a Geisha? I did it for real! XD

This may sound evil, but I think temples are very profiteering. :\ Everything requires money. Here's another gong banging thing (moar moolah required) but this one can be heard all the way down and was really loud that it killed my eardrums:

Next up: Toyosato Elementary School! I'll rant about that in another post because I'm getting tired here. I've no idea how many posts I will use to write this all, but the more I write, the more details I leave out because I get tired and lazy, so I need decent amounts of breaks in between hoho. Stay tuned if you want to! :D

The Last Party (and it was lunch, not supper)

2011-11-20T17:02:00.000+08:00

Finally, finally finally, the work experience program ding dong finally ended last Tuesday. During the last two days, we didn't have much to do except to act as spies for the Education Planning department, making calls to other colleges to inquire about their programmes. For someone like me who prefer to order pizza over the internet rather than using the phone, calling Sunway University College and ISKL was really scary. I almost had to call Mont Kiara International too but me and Elena tossed a coin and I won.

On Tuesday, we finally pulled together our presentation, and since it was our last day there, we treated ourselves to a slightly more expensive lunch at a Japanese restaurant. Had a lot of fun showing Elena and Tze Ying the new Hunger Games movie trailer (which was so awesome that I watched it about five times in total and Elena almost went crazy) while Rachel refused to watch it as she wanted to imagine her own version of Peeta and Gale first. I wonder what I was so worried about with the presentation because the big shots and the douche-y heads didn't even bother to turn up. It became a pretty relaxed thing with only some of the lecturers and admin peeps watching us fumble through. And just like that, we were done with the two weeks of job shadowing. We got a certificate too, though I wonder if it will do any good to my future resumes and stuff. Chan Wai, our boss and EP counsellor, made a video of the last day there:

Back in school on Wednesday, we spent the whole day practising the stupid Satu Malaysia song to perform for the Japanese students from Omi Brotherhood High School (which I'll be visiting!) who were coming over on Thursday. So on Thursday, the last day of school of the year, the bunch of us going to Japan had to change into traditional costumes and perform the song during the opening ceremony. I had a good look at the Japanese students who came - none of the guys were cute except for one J-rocker-ish guy with super awesome hair who apparently got stalked by a lot of fangirls that day.

Chui Lynn with her epic Japanese skills was the emcee, and the Jap students cheered a little when they heard her speak. Heck she really sounded like a Japanese! XD We did our dumb song performance with the even dumber rap part (Oscar was awesome though), and watched three of the dance club members perform with Asmaradana from Puteri Gunung Ledang and Glee's Thriller/Heads Will Roll. A student representative gave a speech on Omi Brotherhood's background in English, and I'm afraid to say that I couldn't understand much of what she said. The Jap students performed a rather repetitive dance that seemed to consist of feet stomping and chants of what sounded like "Fukushu, fukushu! Syaoran, syaoran!"

It seems to be a tradition of WMS that the last day of school was strictly reserved for a class party. Or rather, one big school-wide party since we could simply walk into another class and just eat whatever we wanted. Oddly, with so much food there, I had completely no appetite and only ate half a Big Apple doughnut, a cupcake, and a cup of Coke. What a waste, dammit! Anyway after randomly walking around doing absolutely nothing, the students hosting the Japanese were released so I followed Hui Ping and the girl she was hosting, Miki. She was a really cute girl who had some problems understanding what we were trying to say, but then I guess they all do... Tried out my super fail Japanese on her too and felt extremely stupid... and it felt like everything I had learnt at ICLS just decided to leak out of my head the minute I try to translate something in my mind. On a slightly dirtier note, Oscar told me and Tze Ying that Tzy Yang asked the Japanese guys if they did it in Japan a lot and it took 10 seconds for the question to register. By the way, the answer was no.*__*

Celebrating the last day of school in Wesley is pretty different from Kuen Cheng. Maybe because I didn't have a lot of friends there, but all I did on the last day of school there was say goodbye to some of my closer friends and then proceed to run as fast as I can out of the school gates and into the comfort of my bed or computer. Here, a lot of hugging goes on, but for a few of us, we just yelled "See you on Thursday!" and watch Rachel sulk. Also not surprisingly, holiday homework. Like anybody's going to bother doing it...

During the last hour of this school year, Tze Ying, Hui Ping and I just sat with Miki trying our best to chat with her, and got some pretty handy tips for our Japan trip ("Samui!"), complimenting her shoes, hastily flipping through Hui Ping's Japanese dictionary, and telling her how everyone else were baka. Me and Tze Ying had earlier planned to go to Pasar Seni after school to buy souvenirs for our host families, and since Hui Ping held the responsibility of showing Miki around KL, we went to Pasar Seni together via the LRT. The dumb people there have changed the ticketing system to tokens. Are they stupid or just even more stupid? Miki was really fascinated with the tokens though.

It was raining pretty heavily when we reached and we all ended up getting wet, even with one umbrella.

And FYI, I've never been to Pasar Seni before actually. It's like every single souvenir shop in Malaysia all combined in a building, so it was a pretty neat place to buy souvenirs. We wanted Miki to try out the Henna hand art but the ink lasted two weeks and she said the school didn't allow it. Besides that, me and Tze Ying went a little crazy there hopping from store to store finding the cheapest price and haggling a bit, and by 3.30pm we were done.

Tze Ying checking to see if she had been scammed LOL

My loot contained a hand-painted kemban (or scarf or something la wtf I also dunno), two Chinese-y drawstring pouches, a batik fan and a customized keychain.

Also have a wooden wind chime to add to the pile. I was really pleased that I decided to get the customized keychain, because for RM3 only, it was really nice. This is the back:

Fabulous max! Now my host will remember me forever. XD

So, I'm off to Osaka this Thursday (and officially moving one day before lol)! I can hardly believe it myself. Suddenly the trip is so close that it's somewhat scary, especially when I start worrying about the million and one things that could go wrong. All I can do now is to start packing my luggage, collect every ounce of courage I have to take the Hollywood Dream roller coaster, and pray that my host is awesome. After the trip, it'll be time to start paying back my HUGE debt and start working on my CF plans. I don't feel so guilty for begging my parents to let me go on this trip now that even my awesome grandmother approved of it and said it was a good experience to have.

Thus ends a year studying in Wesley! There were horrible times, plain awful I-want-to-die-now times, awesome times and really fantastic times, and even though I still feel a little left out and can never really fit in properly with the people who have spent three years together there, I'm still very glad I transferred to this school. Even combined with the lonely moments when I look like a loser wandering around with no friends, I still think it's been absolutely worth the trouble, and I've had much more fun than I did when I was studying in Kuen Cheng. Not having school on Saturdays have been such a bliss that I now look back and wonder how I managed to survive for so long in the past three years.

Anyway, depending on how often I get internet access in Japan, I'll try to write brief posts for each day before I do a full rant when I'm back. And lastly, happy birthday to... wait, who's birthday is it? All I know is THERE SHALL BE CAKE. :D

WMS Work Experience Program Part 2

2011-11-12T21:10:00.001+08:00

Marshall's dad dying almost made me cry.

But my own grandfather's death didn't. I know, I am such a heartless bitch with a heart made of stone. This fact proven by everybody I know who watched Ano Hana and cried while I didn't. Anyway, pretty much like my maternal grandfather, I never knew him well. Actually, I'm much closer to my maternal grandfather than him when you compare them... the only time I talked to him was to receive ang paos during Chinese New Year.

Maybe I've been influenced too much by what I was told about him, but he wasn't exactly a role model to his nine children... But I think his death was quite a relieve to him after being stuck in bed not knowing what was going on all the time and suffering from Alzheimer. Honestly, I've seen him, and if it were me, I would have rather died early. We didn't go to his funeral because of the whole family drama and I bet my dad would have just gotten pissed off with my uncles and aunts and start a shouting match if he did go.

Rest in peace Ah Kong, I know I complaint about you staying with us before (eh sorry) but I'm glad my dad did his bit ~~unlike the others~~ and thanks for getting us so many Hello Kitty magnets from Guardian. :) Those medicines sure weren't cheap... and I really enjoyed myself putting them into the pill boxes yo.

A little off-topic: I haven't seen the obituary in the newspaper... Hey, if he was a Taoist who was forced into becoming a Christian, what happens after death? :\

So anyway, another week of job shadowing down. I didn't enjoy shadowing the Student Experience department, but I loved it because we got so much free time to sit in the Student Council Room doing absolutely NOTHING. Or watch videos on YouTube. Me and Elena occasionally got some random odd jobs, but other than that and working on the presentation, it was really relaxed.

An interesting event we had last Thursday was a forum theatre by the college's theatre arts student. When we heard about it, we all thought: "Okay, we're gonna go watch a play." But when we entered Alpha Theatre, we were made to join a group activity that involved hypnotizing people, and a much scarier one too, where two people would act out a really dramatic scene in the middle of a circle and one by one we had to yell "freeze!", release a person, and take over his or her place acting. I am never good with public speaking, or public acting, or public whatever... I think I died of embarrassment there. The theatre arts students were REALLY drama and REALLY good, and so were Elena, Hui Ping, Rachel and Tze Ying. Dammit I really suck. While I was accusing a student of being blind for seeing a red imaginary bag and getting bullied instead, I was praying and praying someone would quickly yell "freeze" and rescue me. I swear, I am never joining theatre arts ever.

When I started to think we had gone into the wrong room, they started the forum theatre play. It was really unique and interesting unlike other skits I've seen. They acted out a scene of a girl convincing her parents to let her take a gap year, then did it again, this time letting the audience jump in, take over the role of the girl, and change the story.

It was hilarious and super cool, and kudos to the actors and actress for being so quick to improvise! Tze Ying was the only one among us brave enough to take over, and she was awesome even though she thought she did horribly!

I missed yesterday's work because of a Zara and Pull & Bear warehouse sale going on at Jaya One. I heard about it from Vikki (thanks! :D), so I went there at lunchtime. It was packed full of ah lians and ah sams grabbing clothes from huge piles, and though they were quite cheap compared to their usual prices (it's Zara for goodness' sake, overpriced branded shizz), they weren't very nice and were mostly too big. All I got was a white Zara Basics skirt for RM30, which was actually RM180. I sure can see why nobody wanted to buy such a plain skirt for blardy 180 bucks.

This morning, I finally had a good look at our new home in Mont Kiara, and then met up with my ICLS Japanese classmates Abby, Zi Xian, Florence, Steve, and Iori at 11am to watch Immortals. I didn't know it was a 18-and-above-only movie, but it didn't matter because they didn't suspect me as I walked pass the counter at all. Win! The movie was delayed because there were some technical problems and the screen kept going blurry (Abby: "Refund! Refund!"). It was actually a bit stupid and over-drama-tized, but it was still pretty cool hanging out with the others. We went to Waffle World after the show, and then Zi Xian gave me, Florence and Abby a lift to Jap class. We all trotted in 10 minutes late, except for Steve and Iori who must have been speeding on the road because they arrived earlier.

And some pretty sad news today was the arrival of my Ben Nye tattoo cover (which I was hoping could cover my moles) which came completely smashed into bits.

Depressing. ): If it's any consolation, I didn't really buy it but swapped with a forummer with some stuff I didn't need. Arrghhh, it's so hard to find Ben Nye in Malaysia! T__T Have I ever mentioned how much I hate Poslaju? Honestly, Pos Malaysia provides the shittiest service ever.

WMS Work Experience Program Part 1

2011-11-06T01:48:00.000+08:00

It's been four days working at Taylor's, and six more days to go hence the Part 1. Summarising my lousy no-pay job in a sentence, it's a little weird but quite relaxed and easy, except for a big horrible bit at the end that sort of makes the actually-easy job become stressful.

For starters, the weird part comes from the fact that the job is not really a job at all. I was expecting this program to be really what it's supposed to be - working somewhere, doing odd jobs and all that. But on the first day stepping into the campus meeting up with Rachel, Tze Ying, Elena, Hui Ping, Mikaela and Nuo Lin, it was pretty much downright weird. The whole day was spent on orientation, where we were briefed about some random stuff, given long lectures that always revolved around "what we're going to learn there", a talk on the different Pre-U courses that Taylor's offer (wtf I thought we were working why are we like potential students now) and a tour around the campus.

Kiraboshi! Photo taken by Elena :]

Aside from the luring-us-to-join-Taylor's treatment, it was still pretty weird. The work experience program somehow turned into a job shadow project, and the fact that we were supposed to be working for them got twisted into a sort of workshop for us that we seemed to have unknowingly registered for and made it seemed like they were doing us a big favour organizing it all. Yes we got RM10 a day for lunch allowance, but I can't help thinking that wouldn't have happened at all if my mum didn't suggest it to the boss. The big horrible bit at the end was a presentation we had to work on, and for me, it made everything become stressful because I hate public speaking and I had no idea how to present the damn Powerpoint. Anyway, since we will be spending two weeks there, we all agreed to try a different restaurant every day, so Tuesday's lunch was a random Chinese restaurant there.

We were assigned into three groups to shadow two different departments (which I don't remember because I lost my schedule heh). I'm working with Elena, so on the second day we both shadowed Ms. Dachaini aka Ms. D. According to Jo, she was scary but thankfully she was pretty nice to us.

I say this job is relaxing and easy because all we did on the second day was a bit of data entry in Microsoft Excel and then went online on my laptop and watched How I Met Your Mother in the Student Council Centre. Slacking on the job, yeah!

We had lunch at Kim Gary, and at 4.30pm, we were forced to intrude on a meeting for Taylor's Vintage Ball for the committee members.

I bet they thought we were a bunch of annoying little kids eavesdropping on their top secret plans, but well, it wasn't like we had a choice. There, we discovered said top secret plans and classified information, some which even the committee members didn't know. XD Ms. D unveiled her scary side there, and because me and Elena were her interns, we had to give some suggestions for the prom. Oh damn the president (who was the same age as us wtf!) was really pretty, life is so unfair. ):

After that, we (parents) had dinner at a Korean restaurant called Uncle Jang at Solaris which was highly recommended by both Jo and Tze Ying. First time trying out something so unusual...

Thursday was even better. For the entire morning, we spent less than an hour trying to make progress on our presentation and the rest of the morning watching funny advertisements on YouTube, like Old Spice's. After lunch at Subway, Ms. D explained to us the super long process of proposing and organizing an event, and after that it was back to slacking away using the campus WiFi.

Friday was pretty interesting. Instead of job shadowing, we followed Mr. Josh and Ms. Valerie (Canadian Pre-U lecturers) to Sri Garden International School in two cars as they were having workshops for the Form 4 students there.

Hmm didn't see Jerry there though. :o

Elena, Rachel, Tze Ying and Nuo Lin followed Mr. Josh with his Chemistry workshop in the school library while me, Hui Ping and Mikaela followed Ms. Valerie to the hall where she held a talk on public speaking there.

It's actually really cool to be an assistant and feel superior to the students there even though we were the same age, and for a while, the students there thought the three of us were college students because of the Taylor's lanyard we were wearing, until Hui Ping told them we were sixteen too and they were like "Eh? What the hell?". Yes I know I look mature and awesome, thank you very much.

Hui Ping the super Cut The Rope pro who helped me get all my missing stars! This is a level that I owned her though, taught her the strategy on her iPhone :3

On the way back, the car which we and Rachel were in got into a little accident when a truck came much too close to the Toyota Unser driven by Mr. Chan Wai. For one moment I was thinking "woah, the car is almost hitting the truck next to it!" and the next moment, there was a loud sound, the right mirror was squashed in and the car titled a little. Naturally we got out hurriedly until the mess was cleared up, leaving the company car with the right headlights fallen out. Back at the campus, we had the awesome sandwiches (APPLE SOUR SAUCE!!) at San Terri Cottage...

...and watched Mulan until we had to go to the Gamma room and got even more homework (questionnaire on Taylor's - honestly, who gives a fuck?) and a lecture.

I have to say, it's pretty weird walking around the campus with students occasionally staring and sometimes running into Jo or my mum there. I sure don't want to study there after Sec 5. :O

Gonna tough it out and get through the next six days. On a different note, I held my first ever batch order for Diamond Lash last month and it went pretty successfully. I didn't profit much from it because the reason I held it was because I'm a sucker for Diamond Lash and I don't want to pay RM50 for five exact same pairs of lashes, so it's a win-win solution.

I ordered them from Rakuten Japan via a forwarding service by Tenso, at the price of 800 yen per box which is cheaper than the normal retail price of 1050 yen. The seller was even nice enough to throw in free make-up sponges!

And so I have my very own customized box of Diamond Lashes. :D

Also, there was a warehouse sale by Alliance a week or two ago. My parents found it very disappointing but I was really hyper because they were selling Silkygirl, Revlon and Stage make-up really cheap. I'm not keen on Silkygirl, but oooh the Revlon and Stage stuff! Unfortunately it's hard to buy make-up in front of my parents, so I just got a liquid and a cream concealer.

Stupid sales assistant conned me into buying the wrong shade for the cream one...

Guess the inevitable job is here - gotta start packing up for the move. No we still haven't gotten the key to the new place, but if we don't get it by Tuesday, we'll be paid RM150 a day after that. Now I really hope it'll be delayed! :D

Temporary ownership of a PS2!

2011-10-26T16:57:00.000+08:00

Throughout my sad childhood of no Astro, Gameboys, or any other form of entertainment besides books and the internet, I never got a Playstation either. I was super excited when I played the PS1 for the first time in a hotel room somewhere in Johor, because it was some kind of family room (and it was like wallpapered with dolphins or something and had a double decker bed!). Millions of years later, my dad caved in and bought us our awesome silver PSP, on the condition that Jo gave me tuition (she never really did XD).

I'm not demanding to have every single game console ~~like some rich kids I know cough cough~~ but can you imagine how awful it is to play a few games part of a series but never get to complete it?! Okay fine so getting a PS3 is impossible, but now that the PS2 is so dirt cheap and almost obsolete after so many years since it was the in thing, I wanted one. Could have bought one too, except my parents said no. So I resorted to more drastic measures, and borrowed a friend's. :D

Spoilt kids like Tzy Yang have everything else he needs and since he never uses the PS2 anymore, he was nice enough to agree to lending it to me.

It's pretty old and the game data of Final Fantasy VII Dirge Of Cerberus says that the last time it was played was 2007. :O Tzy Yang included some of his games, including FF7 DOC as mentioned, Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy XII, Devil May Cry 3 and Atelier Iris.

With it, I can finally play all the PS2 games I've always wanted to play (albeit the older ones since no one is going to lend me a PS3). I feel pretty outdated, because the game shops in 1 Utama didn't have PS2 games anymore, and when I went down to Johor and Singapore a few months ago, the new shopping centre at Johor Bahru called YSL didn't have it either! I thought I would have to resort to downloading, but just yesterday my parents and I drove down to JB again to visit my grandfather, and this time we stopped by Holiday Plaza. It's a really dingy, crummy old shopping centre, but since it was so old, they definitely had PS2 games everywhere. :D

I ended up getting Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Kingdom Hearts 2, KH Re: Chain Of Memories, and Persona 4. The shop didn't have KH1, and my dad was like "enough already laa" so I didn't drag him to another shop to hunt it down. I'm a bit picky when it comes to playing in chronological order though, so I guess I'll have to find a way to get hold of it. My holidays will be a very busy time of hardcore gaming!

The exchange program to Japan is in less than a month's time and I'm getting even more excited and nervous. Most of my friends have no idea what souvenirs to buy for our hosts, especially since we don't even know who our hosts are yet. There has been so many meetings and briefings on it, and more to come. Passports submitted, Japan visas made, hotel room arrangements done... it's a bit annoying because there are a few days of school I wanted to skip but can't because of briefings planned then!

So far all I know about the trip is:
- We will transit at Changi airport before taking SIA to Osaka at midnight. Dammit I want to play Mario on the plane wtf
- The school we are visiting is in Shiga
- Chui Lynn and Charmaine are going to take all the scary rides at Universal Studios
- We are staying at Universal Port Hotel for two nights. It's an official hotel of USJ so FUCK YEAH WOOOT first time staying in a theme park hotel! XD
- Will be sharing a room with Hui Woon and Kimberly - don't know them too well but it was three to a room and Chui Lynn will be staying with Charmaine and Mei Jun
- We will be singing Satu Malaysia as our performance (while wearing traditional costumes). Oh what the hell...
- My seniors have actually spent like 50,000 yen there omg I hate being poor ;___;

I'm actually quite worried about the money. The "travel booklet" says that one blardy McDonald's McValue meal costs RM27. Are you kidding?! It's RM6 in Malaysia! I wonder if I can tell my host family that I rather skip meals and spend the money on other stuff instead. Guess where my allowance is coming from? Drumroll, my bank account again! I still owe Rachel green tea Pocky, and I want to buy Morning Rescue and Pepsi Nex if it's available there. Honestly, anime advertising is so efficient... As for the homestay, I seem to be the only one being nervous about it. :\

More random rants to come while I try to think of something nice to give as a gift to my host family!

What now?

2011-10-18T20:15:00.003+08:00

Now that I have finished every single exam that Sec 4 life has thrown at me (and I don't want to talk about it ;___;) and am close to finishing off my Sec 4 school year... it's a bit overwhelming that I don't have to study anymore, until next year, that is. My super long list of stuff I had planned to do after the exams looks quite intimidating now actually. Suddenly it's like whoa... I'm free. for three months or so. What do I do?!

From what I'd heard, post-exam activities in Wesley is apparently a fun thing. I've never had post-exam activities in my life before since KC's idea of post-exam is back to studying and the usual blackmail of 0.2% off your marks if you skip school. We won't be having post-exam activities this year though, because there is now a compulsory work experience program for all Sec 4 students. The idea is to work somewhere for two weeks, just for the experience of it. The notice given out said that salary wasn't necessary, so I was like "oh mehhhh yawn" and thought I would just kill off the two weeks in some random place. So I asked my mum about it, and now I'm to be working as an office admin at.... Taylor's Sri Hartamas. Oh the horror.

That was before I knew that we were allowed to select where we wanted to work (they told us they would throw us into some ulu place if we didn't source a place to work at), and now I'm thinking, damn! I could have earned some money working at Manhattan Fish Market or Tony Roma's! Why the heck did I sign up for this Taylor's thing! But thankfully, I got some of my friends to join me there.

Other than burning off two weeks working for free, I have plenty of anime series I want to watch. With such limited bandwidth thanks to P1, I can only stream low-quality versions online instead of downloading, but I'm just bearing with it till we move. Currently chionging Mawaru Penguindrum and Shikabane Hime, and then I shall move on to a bunch of Crimotaku's recommendations (which are normally pretty good - Ga-rei Zero!) like Seto no Hanayome and some Type Moon stuff.

Moving out of MD seems to have been delayed thanks to bitchy house sellers and the existence of the law, but I gave all my beautiful figures a good dust and packed them back into their boxes. Just for the lols, this is the Lee household's current collection of figures:

Lazy to edit, blame Jo's phone this time

Clockwise: Nendoroid Kinoshita Hideyoshi, Nendoroid Nagato Yuki Disappearance Version, Nendoroid Kyon Disappearance Version, Nendoroid Megurine Luka, Nendoroid Hatsune Miku Support Version, Nendoroid Black Rock Shooter, Figma Dead Master, Hatsune Miku Lat Type Version, Kotobuki Tsumugi, Portrait of Pirates Zoro, Tohsaka Rin Unlimited Blade Works Version, Nendoroid Petite Angel Beats Set 1, and Nendoroid Kaname Madoka. Awesome or what!

And you wonder why I'm so poor. If anybody is going to ask why I don't eat lunch again, this is the answer. Addiction to little sculpted bits of polyvinyl-chloride bearing the cute faces of awesome characters. Ehh there was this question on my Chem paper to draw the thingy of PVC... :o

Oh wow I'm damn proud that I'm able to read some of the katakana up there. :D Deer Eye Madoka!

Guess I'll try to be a little more organized and start packing up for the move. But as for tomorrow, PONTENG. I need a damn break after such agony. Tomorrow I shall sleep in late, spam games and anime, start reading my novels and walk to Curve for lunch. Gonna miss such convenience of a shopping centre nearby when I move! Come to think of it, I've got manga to read too. I've actually lost my manga-reading mood since a few billion years ago, but I went to the Big Bad Wolf Sale for a second time and was amazed at my stupidity of missing out three huge tables full of manga for RM3 each. They were either mostly or all Tokyopop ones and incomplete, but I bought two volumes of xxxHolic, four or five Saiyuki and three Trinity Blood. Too cheap lah. XD

Off to do anything I want now!

Nerd Wonderland

2011-10-08T13:18:00.002+08:00

Yes, I admit I am a nerd. In Kuen Cheng, prefering to read a novel in class rather than go downstairs for lunch is like walking around with a sandwich board stating "I'm A Loser". Or if you're optimistic, some people say I'm "hardworking", even though it's a storybook and not a Sejarah textbook. I don't think the Nerd Effect is as strong in WMS but I'm not too sure about that.

I don't know how many books are on my to-read list, all the way back from last year's book warehouses to yesterday's loot. Mostly because I don't have the time, or some of them I just don't feel like reading because the first book put me off. Tales Of The Otori... oh yawn. What was it about again?

My reading mood has been pretty faithful to me throughout the years. I don't remember when I started to like reading a lot, but I do remember starting out with the Peter and Jane kiddy shit, and then Noddy, to Enid Blyton and suddenly the road opened up to a wide path of many different authors. My reading mood has ditched me once or twice but has always come running back to me eventually. XD

Now is a pretty bad time to get back my reading mood with the exams and all, but last month and yesterday, I went to three book fairs. The first was the Popular BookFest held at KLCC on the 1st of September, which I was a little sore about because I couldn't get a job working there. As expected of a Popular sale, it wasn't that great. Most of the better books didn't have any discounts, and the discounted ones still went down to above RM10. Still, I bought The Da Vinci Code Special Illustrated Version, The Lost Symbol, and Percy Jackson 1.

Round 2 was better. MPH warehouse sale on the 16th of September, which I nearly didn't go because I didn't want to wake up early. In the end I went of course, and it was a pretty awesome one. Though most of the books I wanted were still RM20, I got a few books from Kate Brian's Private series for about RM5 each, The Alchemyst, and a few others I can't remember at the moment.

Round 3 was yesterday - The Big Bad Wolf Book Sale! I have been in a long relationship with it since 2009. The first time I went to a BBW Sale was on the same day a different, lousier one was held at the hall next to Puay Chai 2, where I met Garett and his family. The book sale there was quiet and had shitty books, so my parents brought me to the Big Bad Wolf Sale at some random building somewhere. It wasn't very crowded then, but I was so happy with the variety of books there that I think I must have spent a lot of money. They held a second round in the same year at Amcorp Mall, where it was really cramped and we had to queue up for ages just to pay, but it was worth it. Last year it was held at Sri Kembangan, and because it was bigger, my feet weren't stepped on too often. :)

Yesterday's Big Bad Wolf Sale was held at MAEPS in Serdang. They seem to keep going further and further away don't they? On a normal occasion, we would have gone to the sale early on a Saturday morning but unfortunately my dad had something on this weekend, so he took me there after school yesterday. The place was huge, and I'm not talking about the hall. There was a free shuttle bus taking us from the car park to the hall where it was held, THAT'S how big it was! And the hall itself was massive, more than ten times the size of my school's hall, and I had no idea where to start. It was pretty hard to find books too since they were pretty much scattered all over the place.

In the end, I bought The Atlantis Complex (LIKE FINALLY), And Another Thing, Chasing Harry Winston, Can You Keep A Secret, Lucky from the It Girl series, Vampire Dairies 1, and saving the best for the last, xxxHOLiC Official Guide for RM3! I was so happy to see it there, and it was the only copy too! Something like that would probably have costed about RM50 if I were to buy it at Kinokuniya! The manga there was limited but then I was surprised they had any at all. Fruits Basket 15 and Rozen Maiden 1, anyone?

Since a lot of my friends couldn't make it because it was so far away (or they are just rajin unlike me), I tried to help them find the books they wanted too. Unfortunately I only saw the fourth book of the Septimus Heap series which Pam wanted, and it was badly damaged, and no Nicholas Flamel series in sight either. Got Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix for Jo who was too lazy to go (we both want to re-read the entire series XD), and the best find there was a Deluxe Version of Brisingr for Chui Lynn. Damn, the cover was shiny.

Me [calls]: Just wanted to tell you I got Brisingr! Hard cover too!
Chui Lynn: Awesome! How much is it?
Me: RM8!!!
Chui Lynn: OMG OMG OMG OMG ASDFJKL!!!

Giving is indeed better than receiving sometimes. XD

By the time we were done it was about 7pm, and conveniently, there was a mobile Pizza Hut van there, sort of like the Milo van. I'm not a big fan of Pizza Hut, but somehow the pizza there tasted pretty awesome lol. Maybe because I was in a very good mood.

Sorry for fail photo, blame my phone please

Another one-of-the-best-things-in-life: Sitting in a corner eating pizza with... err your dad (why no hot guy D:), with two bulging cloth bags full of books. Kudos to the awesome people like us who brought their own bags instead of wasting plastic! Heck, some people brought luggage bags wtf. I applaud them.

Traffic jam all the way back and reached home pretty late! And because of all that high-ness I couldn't study at all yesterday. Valid reason okayy!

Here we go again

2011-10-04T23:18:00.000+08:00

Final term exams. There are so many things motivating me to live through these two awful weeks (okay la it's actually less than 2 weeks) to see the sun shining (actually, I prefer the rain) on the other side of this torture, yet I feel like dropping dead at all times. It's like I used up every pound of concentration and rajin-ness in me for the first two exams this year and have none left to spare right now. And I didn't even do well in the first two, what blardy concentration and rajin-ness la.

I can spend hours staring at the same page without reading anything, and then regretting like crazy. And I'm starting to panic that there's not enough time to finish the syllabus, YET I am still slacking away and playing Facebook games halfway through revision! Each time the exams come around I think to myself: "Have I ever been THIS lazy before?!"

The first paper is ICT this Friday. So far I've skipped a day of school for more time to study at home, and I'm doing that again this Thursday. It's amazing to think that I don't have to worry about 0.2% being deducted. Anyway just to cheer myself up and remind myself on what awaits me after the exams...

1. Star Wars + Lord Of The Rings + X-Men movie marathon with Tze Ying, Rachel and Hui Ping
2. Back to chionging Final Fantasy VII Dirge of Cerberus and Final Fantasy XII! Which reminds me, I should blog about my temporary ownership of a Playstation 2. :P
3. Kingdom Hearts 1, Kingdom Hearts 2 and Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories once I find a way to get my hands on them!
4. JAPAN TRIP!!! Omg I'm getting excited. On the lousy side, I think my host is a guy. This is gonna be awkward...
5. Back to my reading mood! Been buying a lot of books from sales lately but haven't found the time to read them. Note to self, blog about them too.
6. Possibly an outing to the Berjaya Times Square theme park with Jacintha, Mikaela, Nuo Lin and Tashana!
7. Comic Fiesta 2011! Still a long way to go though.
8. Possible both the Angel Beats! and Toradora! photoshoots after CF. Stupid chibi Pam and her SPM so annoying lol! Busy tsundere is busy.

Something I'm not really looking forward to after the dreaded two weeks is a job experience program thing my school is having for the first time. Again, will rant about that later when I can actually afford to spare some time.

Since I am so hopelessly fail at studying, the least you can do is pray to Haruhi that my exam papers will be easy. Knowing Haruhi, if she decides to answer your prayer I may just get like some primary school's exam papers instead. Wouldn't that be awesome?

Monash U's Intelligent Systems Boot Camp

2011-09-28T20:30:00.001+08:00

On the Tuesday before last during Games, Mei Jun caught me before I headed home to tell me there had been an announcement (which I missed due to an ICT revision lesson) on a workshop Monash University was holding, called the Intelligent Systems Boot Camp, and thought I would be interested. I made a note to find out about it but forgot until I saw Calvin tweeting about it. It was a 2-day workshop on the 24th and 25th of September (last weekend la) at Monash University Sunway campus for secondary school and Pre-U students, and thanks to my packed schedule on Saturday, going for it meant postponing piano class and abandoning Japanese class, but it really sounded pretty interesting to me. And it was free too. :D

I guess the programming part interested me, because my current dream ambition is to be a game programmer, perhaps for Square Enix. Whoaaa, big dreams right? Probably not going to come true, but it's still a goal. I've always wanted to work in the game industry, but since I can't draw for toffee, I guess my interest in Maths and Physics can kick in here in programming.

Because it was Sunway and all, my parents weren't too glad with my enthusiasm (Mum: "How about your piano class ah? Postpone again ah?!") ... so I carpooled with Calvin to get there. Monash University is quite nice I suppose, but for a university I think it can get owned easily by all the other international ones.

Sorry for the shitty picture, my Android is a horrible camera and I'm too lazy (AND BUSY) to edit it.

The students there were mostly Sec 5 and college students, and a lot of them were from SMK Damansara Jaya and Mutiara International Grammar School. There was a short talk first, then breakfast, which I didn't have because I had already eaten. Calvin and I were separated into different groups, so I was mostly wandering around by myself the entire day because I am bloody anti-social like that.

My first workshop was called The Mobile Social Experience, focusing on making apps for iPhones and iPads. My group was brought to one of the computer labs which were filled with Macs. Shiny, white Mac computers to work on, for everybody. *___*

The instructor, Jason Khong, is the founder of Apptivity, which.. well obviously, makes apps. He was pretty awesome and taught us a bit on using Xcode and the programming language. While it was fantastic and all, I don't think I'm interested in learning the language for Apple computers. C++ for me, tyvm.

We had a lunch break, which I thought had very little food (but I wasn't complaining since I wasn't paying a single cent) until I realized I hadn't noticed the other three more trays there. Stupid me. As a result of such stupidity, I didn't eat much.

The second workshop was Android Mobile Game Development, held in a different computer lab, this time using Windows.

With the most MASSIVE SCREEN I've ever seen, complete with fast internet connection. HEAVEN.

Seeing that I'm using an Android now, this could possibly be useful to me... The instructor wasn't as good as the previous IMO. We were taught how to use Google's App Inventor to make Android apps. The unique thing about it was that it wasn't coding like most stuff are, but it was totally user-friendly, complete with jigsaw puzzles of codes to drag and connect to. Though easier, I didn't really like it compared to the iPhone app-making one. :\

After another generous tea break, my group went back to Jason Khong's workshop where we were introduced to Facebook's API Graph Explorer and an app he was currently working on, then back to the Android one to make a simple app to control a Mindstorm NXT. Actually, we didn't do anything because all the main coding work was done for us.

At 6.45pm my parents came to fetch me and send Calvin back, then we went for dinner at a Thai restaurant at Kota Damansara. Green curry is love. :)

The same carpool plan for Sunday, and this time I was wise enough to have my breakfast there. Honestly, for food being served for free, they are really generous compared to some shitty hotels I've stayed at before where we actually PAY money. After breakfast, we were divided into 12 teams in total for the Go Race competition where we have to control the Mindstorm to collect balls for points. Me and Calvin were grouped with three others from SMK DJ, and the least I can say about them is that I've met much friendlier people before. There, I won't start bitching. I mean, I'm not the most friendliest person ever but seriously... -mutters-

We were given about two hours in yet another computer lab to enhance our Android program and test it out on the Mindstorm. Within the two hours, I was pretty much useless since the five of us were using one app, and one of the guys from DJ was quite pro and there was... basically nothing I could do. Went online, played Sims Social... you will not believe how wonderful it is to play Sims Social on a Monash computer. NO LAG AT ALL. Anyway, we had lunch after that, which I ate properly this time and discovered exactly how delicious the chicken and potatoes were. I still miss the food now, it was that awesome!

The competition started after lunch. Four teams at a time, each Mindstorm with the task of tracing out the letter M and then collecting balls and scoring them. Attacking other Mindstorms and snatching balls from the goals of other boxes - all allowed. Woah.

Here is where my fail point and shoot kicks in!

Thanks to the said pro DJ guy, we could adjust the speed of the Mindstorm so I was feeling pretty awesome. Until it was actually time to control it... oh wow. It was so hard to get it to move properly or turn to the right angle to grab a ball. I completely screwed up on my turn and... kept staring at the blue team's Mindstorm wondering why it wasn't doing what I was controlling until I realized it was blue and not green. D: SO STUPID I tell you.

Here's our baby. :]

Some minor maintenance needed in the midst of the competition.

Yeah anyway, controlling it was easier said than done and we didn't do very well. I feel like I let my team down even more. )':

After yet another tea break was the closing ceremony and prize giving. I am so pissed off that I missed the chance of landing some money - the first prize was RM800 for the team! The second prize was either RM400 or RM600, and the third prize was RM200! To think I own that exact damn Mindstorm and could have practised any time I wanted! Rawr! D:

So at the end of the day, we got certificates and a bag of random stuff (actually, we got that on Saturday) and were fed pretty well. And considering that all of it was free, it's pretty... wow. xD

The bag contained a bunch of Monash University brochures, a Careers in ICT booklet, a 4GB Kingston pendrive (woot I love this one), notepapers with highlighting stickers, a notebook and a pen.

And now onto the bad news... I indeed, failed my Grade 7 piano practical exam. I guess that was to be expected since this round was terrible, though I was still clinging onto the 50/50 chance of passing... if it's any consolation, I think my score is 96, so I'm still moving on to Grade 8 though I don't really seem to deserve it.

Also, final term exams are looming up again, starting on the 7th of October. I know it's the last round of the year and I should give it my all, but oh well... no mood to study as usual, gonna fail almost everything. There are so many beautiful things waiting for me on the other side once I'm done with this round of exams, but they just make me feel even more reluctant to study. The fact that I am blogging right now shows that I am being lazy as usual.

And though I did started revisions earlier than usual, it doesn't feel like enough. T__T

Sneak Peak: Nendoroid Kaname Madoka

2011-09-18T00:46:00.003+08:00

Oh come on, you should know how much I love the Puella Magi Madoka Magica series. XD Getting the complete set (except Sayaka Miki haha) was a MUST for me. Unfortunately I'm not that rich, so I won't exactly get to see them all on my desk. Two of them will be on someone else's desk though... :P

I love the colour of the box so much. Such a pretty mix of pink and purple! :D

So here is Nendoroid Kaname Madoka! Like Miku Lat version, this is a delayed post and I actually got her the week before last or something. Again, I can't bear to play around with Madoka and change the parts, only to put it back into the box. So a full post on it will come in late October like Miku.

And because I cannot resist....

"Make a contract with me and become a magical girl!" :3

Sigh, I really have to get around to tidying up my bed and desk. Or rather, my ex-bed, since I'm currently sleeping on a mattress on the floor of the study room because I'm a spoilt brat who can't stand sleeping without the air-con. Hey, blame the mosquitoes.

This bed is seriously my dumping ground for everything. It's just so convenient to enter my room carrying something and put it on the bed... and leave it there. Look at all the shit I've dumped on it! Clothes, books, fabric, plastic bags, papers, my mum's sewing basket, school tie, magazines, headphones falling off, brochures, wires, bags, files, hangers...

And on my desk:

More books, tissue pack, make-up brushes, colour pencils (wtf), fake lashes, hair clips, pens, money, more wires, a toy camera, Nintendo DS game card, KC badge, contact lens, Cyclonus speaker, empty tin previously containing cookies, nail clipper, papers...

Yeah I'm such a slob I should join the Hermes cabin. I'll clean it up... soon. :)

Good Smile Company's 1/8 Lat ver. Hatsune Miku

2011-09-16T19:26:00.001+08:00

Me buying scale figures are a rare occurrence. But when the moon is blue...

This post (and another one coming up) is actually quite delayed, as I received Good Smile Company's 1/8 Lat version Hatsune Miku figure on the 8th of September, after Ami Ami shipped it on the 22nd of August.

My bed has become a dumping ground for almost anything. :x

Two weeks and three days is a crazy long time for a SAL parcel from Japan to Malaysia to be delivered, probably because of the Hari Raya holidays and all that. I did start worrying I would have to contact the post office but luckily I didn't go into major freak-out mode because I used registered SAL for it.

I totally fell in love with this figure on the day it was announced. Yeah Hatsune Miku is overhyped and has too many figures it's starting to annoy the shit out of me, but this Lat version was just... wow. It doesn't look THAT much different from her default but it just looked so pretty! Normally I would have just fangirled a bit and dismissed it, but because Miku here was designed with 3DCG, the price was lower and she only costed 4080 yen not including shipping! And of course invisible, virtual strings (again) pulled me to click the pre-order button!

I admit this figure has left a nasty dent in my bank account but what the hell I'll pay it back okay. ;D

So here's more on Miku's pretty box.

Inside the box....

She comes with some pretty random stuff I'm not too happy about. It's like they have no idea what to include with Miku and just made extra parts to make the box look fuller or something.

Firstly, two stands. The black one is pretty, but the pink one looks cheap and was included to match the default 1/8 Hatsune Miku figure if you have it. I don't, so I'm never touching it. What a waste of plastic seriously!

And then two glasses. The red frames are nice, but will GSC care to explain why there is a need for two? Unless Miku has another pair of eyes hidden somewhere...

Two microphones, one black and one silver. Oh hooray, big deal. I for one don't really care what colour the microphone is.

But aside from the totally useless extra parts, Miku is really, really cute. :3

I am always oddly fascinated with the details on the crease and all that on the outfits of scale figures. :O

She also comes with two transparent pegs for her legs with instructions, but I still don't know how to use them because I can't even find a slot for it. :x

Like Nendoroid Miku Support, I don't want to risk displaying her on my desk so it's back to the box until October. Sorry Miku! D:

On a completely unrelated note, I'm getting worried about my final term exams. The syllabus is just... ridiculously huge and my brain is running out of space. AND I'm too lazy to study properly. Someone please bonk me on the head for being such a slacker.

Animangaki 2011

2011-09-13T19:27:00.003+08:00

Because everybody loves walls of text! :D

The last two utter-failure cosplay attempts have dampen a lot of my moods but I'm a very stubborn person and refused to drop the hobby. I know this sounds really cheesy but I felt that I could do better, and hopefully keep improving even more after that ~~until I become king oft he world~~. So yeah... I've mentioned at the start of the year about one of my cosplay plans, Shimizu Megumi at the end of last year (post here!) and I have indeed completed it!

Photo credits to Poh Wen Haur!

This is the first and probably last (at least, until I'm older) time I actually made my own costume. Prior to sewing it, the only thing I knew about sewing was threading a needle, trying to get lucky when tying multiple knots and just poking the needle in and out. Yeah I know it sounds awesome when I say "I made my own costume!" but the truth is that Megumi's school uniform is very darn easy to make compared to the fancy stuff other pro cosplayers sew. Heck, white shirt, green plaid tie, green plaid skirt. Of course being absolutely lazy I wanted to buy it, but I couldn't find a single seller that used a close-enough fabric for the green plaid, so I decided to make it myself.

I endured a LOT of stares when I visited the textile shops near Sogo and had to mentally prepare myself to think "fk them la student cannot buy fabric izit" every time I entered a shop. And I couldn't find the right plaid fabric I was looking for! So I resorted to buying online, but walao find online also near impossible! In the end I settled for the closest thing I could find on eBay, and though the price was reasonable, the shipping wasn't. ;___;

I found a nice tutorial to making pleated skirts, but couldn't find a simple way of making the tie (which I actually assumed would be easy - it turned out to be the biggest problem). So I used my RM5 Daiso tie and wrapped it up. Hah, ingenious right! The whole costume was completed really last-minute-ish because I actually planned to debut with my Angel Beats group at Animangaki but due to some complications the group is delaying it. I actually finished sewing my skirt, tie and ribbons on Sunday morning in time for Day 2. The skirt is a bit cacat if you look properly because I'm terrible at sewing and ended up making my pleats too short. ): My prop was the postcard with the penguins on it that Megumi intended to give to Natsuno-kun on the first episode.

I know it isn't great, but I'm taking things one step at a time so this is quite a major improvement compared to Cissnei. I've still got a long way to go and I still feel so envious of all the other pro, pretty cosplayers. But anyway I'm quite satisfied with the results of my lousy make-up skills and cannot resist it to list out what I used, so here goes:

Note: SORRY FOR CAMWHORING 8D I feel like I've committed a big crime, but I wanted a close-up photo because I like how my contact lenses, I.Fairy Super Crystal Pink, look here, and I'm on the subject of make-up. This super-perasan photo was actually taken the night before when I was testing what I should use, and for reasons to be explained, I think I look better here than I did at the event. orz

Face: Elianto Cream Concealer, ZA two-way foundation
Cheeks: Canmake Powder Cheeks in PW20
Eyes: Kiss Me Heroine Make Liquid Eyeliner, Majolica Majorca Lash Enamel Glamour Volume On, Daiso top and bottom lashes
Brows: Silkygirl Perfect Cover Concealer and Elianto Luminous Shadow in Mauve Pink
Lips: Estee Lauder Pure Colour Lip Gloss in Rock Candy
Nails: Elianto nail polish in Pink

Anyway... I should start from the beginning. I finished sewing last-minute stuff early in the morning (Dad: "WAAH why wake up so early?!") and did the less-freaky part of my make-up there, thinking it would last. Got my dad to send me to Sunway Pyramid first because I needed to buy a pair of socks, and then like last year, I took the shuttle bus to Sunway University College around noon, paid for entry and went to find Bette. She was supposed to be cosplaying Ciel but cancelled last minute because of some problems with her costume.

I don't know why the members of the Chia family seem to be slightly confused about their gender because this was the second time I had to go to the male changing room to find them, or rather, find Bette in this case. I know it sounds wrong, but girls do use the guy's changing room too. IDK why. -clueless shrug-

Dumped my fat bag there and Bette accompanied me to the washroom to change. The washroom on the fourth floor where the event was held was extremely crowded, so we went down to the first floor and I changed there. I started to regret that decision when I put on my wig and fake lashes there while students from the university were constantly entering and leaving. I was feeling quite flustered then, and wanted to re-apply my make-up because it obviously didn't last very long (well I walked a lot and all) but didn't.

After that, me and Bette just walked around the event. I later learned that that was basically what cosplayers do, walk round and round. It isn't as boring as it sounds though, especially when you have a Panty, Luka Magnet ver, Deidara and Sasuke on your Wanted list.

So I'm walking around with Bette, heading out of the multi-purpose hall... and suddenly there's this little kid in front of me. A Sasuke cosplayer. And then Bette started talking to this Sasuke cosplayer and 5 seconds later only did it trigger my brain that it was Pamela. O____O Shock! She did tell me the night before that she was cosplaying Sasuke, but I still couldn't quite believe it was not another tsundere character. Didn't manage to get a picture but Bette did (sighh shiny red camera D':).

Continued checking out the booths and everything, and found Abby my classmate from ICLS! She was cosplaying as Takuto from Star Driver, Ginga Bishounen! 8D

For the next hour or so I tagged along with Abby because I'm so lonely and sad that way. :D She introduced me to some of her friends like Dante, and I continued tagging along for her photoshoot with Mamoru (if I'm not mistaken!). I was curious to watch because I've never joined one, and I ended up participating too because Abby was tired and she told Mamoru to shoot me instead.

Being an item on my bucket list, I would love to cross "join a cosplay photoshoot" out but I don't really think it's fair since it wasn't exactly a voluntary thing. Either way, it was a really cool and unusual experience for me! We went to the bridge connecting to the next building of the college and Abby became my director, instructing me how to pose, which I completely suck at. I have to say, for some reasons I found it very hard to roleplay Megumi. I tried acting cute (DON'T KILL ME) and Abby gave a lot of helpful tips on posing too. Most of the time I was wishing a giant mirror would pop up in front of me so I could check if my make-up and wig were doing alright.

Abby was still complaining about her boots and all but had her shoot then too. It's really awesome just watching the whole thing really.

I haven't seen the photos though, they're probably not up yet and I don't know the photographer's FB, but I can't help worrying I'll look horrid in them. :x

Found Belle soon after the shoot, cosplaying Hikaru/Kaoru from Ouran with a friend! Walk around even more and finally found Sacred cosplaying as Deidara! It took him about 10 seconds to recognize me. Later on, I went back to the changing room, ransack my stuff and then I realized the most IDIOTIC THING EVER.... I forgot to wear my ribbons. Whaddafark sew like crazy, and completely forgot about them! ;___; Especially having the shoot without wearing them! I'm surprised no one mentioned them, maybe it's too significant or they're just being polite. D: Anyway I actually planned to watch Final Destination 5 with Bette but she suddenly said she had to leave early so yeah plan cancelled and I get to live on peacefully.

After a while I finally found Cloudee cosplaying as Luka Magnet version! Glomp my awesome twin Luka! :D

And then found Nero! xD Damn, he always makes me feel short...

Photo credits to Pui Ying.

I dunno why everybody started popping up so late that day, because I finally found Carina cosplaying as Panty then, surrounded by a wall of photographers that I had to wait so bloody long to glomp her too! Anjerasu was her Brief as well, and I walked around the event with them. At one point, there was a really cute little girl dressed in a cat costume sitting on the floor, and a Pedobear came up from behind and started creeping towards her!

It was damn hilarious!

I swear I had photos taken with Abby, Carina and Anjerasu and I would dearly love to post them here... the problem is that other people took the photos and I can't find them in the mass of photo spam on Facebook. D: From experience, it's hard to cosplay and take photos at the same time because I have to hastily stuff my camera into my pocket if someone asks for a picture, or find a nearby chair I can dump it on temporarily.

Around 4.30pm I met up with Cloudee again after asking Carina how to get to the Kelana Jaya station without getting lost, and we got out of our costumes (wooot such a relief, I sure wouldn't want to be Miku with two super long and heavy twintails for EVER) and walked to Sunway Pyramid. Being the idiot I am, I forgot to bring my lens case and had to buy one from Daiso. I normally throw my lens away after an event, but I may need this one again for upcoming... stuff. -cough- :P

Crossed the scariest, steepest bridge ever to the bus stop just in time for Cloudee's bus, but I wasn't so lucky and had to wait... and wait... and wait.... saw no sign of the bus and was about to call my dad for rescue when I overheard another girl telling her friends she was going to Kelana Jaya station. So I continued waiting with her... and waiting... when it began to rain I went up to her and asked, and she said she took the bus there in the morning but didn't know why it wasn't coming. So I gave up and my dad called in time to rescue me from Sunway Pyramid instead of relying on the dumb public transport this country offers.

Well I had a lot of fun on Sunday! The amount of photos I took is pathetic, but here are some, or shall I say... three...:

One of my favourite figures, and I don't even like Bakemonogatari. D:

Mega giant thanks to Abby and Carina especially for accompanying me, and everybody else! :D

Sneak Peak: Nendoroid Hatsune Miku Support version

2011-09-05T22:49:00.002+08:00

And so my awesome week of free time and relaxation flew past in a blur and I'm back in school dreading my final term examinations. ): But for a first day back-to-school sort of thing, it wasn't so bad because of the familiar sight of a parcel waiting for me when I reached home today.

Omg forgot to blur out my address and too lazy (AND BUSY) now, don't stalk me k -perasan-

At last, the arrival of yet another reason why I'm so poor right now - Nendoroid Hatsune Miku Support version!

The reason why I put Sneak Peak in the title is because I haven't done my usual ceremony of unboxing and spamming photos of this figure. The increasing number of figures on my table is bound to piss my dad off one day since he doesn't exactly approve of me and Jo buying this "nonsense". He knows about it of course, but I don't want to go adding salt to a wound. So Miku here will remain imprisoned until I move around October, where I should be able to find a nice corner for my collection. Oh dear, Tohsaka Rin now has a fellow friend to discuss with on how life sucks when you're stuck in a box. :x

Seriously I only took her out to take this one photo and to test the myth on how she can stand up without a plastic stand thanks to the godly powers of her twintails. MYTH CONFIRMED.

So yeah if anybody still reads this, full rant will be delayed. On the other hand, I've been extremely busy these days because of last minute cosplay plans for Animangaki this weekend. And I've got so many homework just on the first day back... ):

"Nimba? Sala? Oh look a Merlion!"

2011-08-30T21:20:00.001+08:00

I love holidays. You get to drop everything and just escape for a while, plus get extra money for shopping! Yes even now when I'm in the midst of a financial disaster and very damn poor, I still choose to ignore everything and go on a rampage shopping spree in Singapore.

My parents gave me SGD100 for this trip down. It would certainly take a nice chunk off the money I owe my savings account, but I put this money into a different category in which it's meant to be spent on awesome goodies in Singapore! :3 So yeah that was the main purpose of this holiday. Anyway, we left on Saturday morning, stopped at Kluang to visit my grandmother and at a care centre in Johor Bahru to visit my grandfather. We stayed a night at Johor Bahru too but there was nothing much except for a new mall called KSL which was quite boring. Perhaps much better than Holiday Plaza though.

We left for Singapore the next morning and dumped our luggage at a super crummy budget hotel called Hotel Supreme. We had a lot of trouble finding an available room for goodness knows what reasons (the F1 race isn't till September, why the crowd?) and ended up paying a LOT of money for this shitty little room. The only good point is that it's very near Ochard Road so we rarely needed the MRT. After that, Jo went to meet up with her friends while I went shopping armed with money and a Autopass NETS cashcard containing SGD77. The Autopass card is actually used to pay for toll in Singapore, but we had too much money leftover in it and it was expiring in December, so I was told to take the card and spend it all. One drawback - the only place we knew that accepted cashcards as payment was 7-Eleven, so it was a crazy SGD77 shopping spree confined to little 7-Eleven marts.

H&M finally reached Singapore... but opening in September. ):

I think I've had friends being all surprised at the thought of me being able to run around Singapore alone, but I go down so often that I'm quite familiar with it already, so shopping alone was no problem at all for me. I intended to spend my money on stuff I really NEEDED, like clothes, a bag, and shoes. From Orchard Central where we were staying at, I walked down all the way to Far East Plaza, exploring 313@Somerset, Ion Orchard, Ngee Ann City and Atria as usual... the thing is, it's really hard to buy stuff in Singapore. Most of the time they were either too expensive or just not what I wanted. Actually, they were mostly too expensive, even with SGD100. .___.

But Candylicious was finally opened at Ngee Ann City, so I bought Peeps. I LOVE PEEPS OMG HOW CAN ANYONE NOT LOVE PEEPS. *___*

I failed to do anything productive around Orchard and Somerset except have an odd lunch of takoyaki and chocolate taiyaki (again) from Ngee Ann and a chocolate melon-pan. Finally I discover why Shana loves it so much! Then I took the MRT to Bugis and explored Bugis Street. A lot of Taobao-ish clothes I didn't fancy and food. Bugis Junction was much better, but I didn't do much there either. I walked to Iluma and bought a pair of shorts from Miss Emily there, and spotted a Puella Magi Madoka Magica Gashapon machine at Otaku House. I know I've given up collecting Gashapon, but I wanted it so badly! Even though it was SGD4! Even though I may have gotten Sayaka Miki which I don't want! Still, I marched into the shop and asked for four tokens only to be told they'd run out of it. ;___;

Made my way back to meet my parents at Somerset and then took the MRT to Promenade to find Jo. While waiting, Cashcard Spree #1 started. It's a truly amazing feeling stepping into 7-Eleven and grabbing ANYTHING YOU WANT. Your eyes land on a box of Pocky, and you just grab it and put it on the counter. Oh, I see a bottle of apple juice. Grab. Calbee chips! Grab! You don't even have to look at the price when you have an equivalent of RM190 to spend. It was a pretty small 7-Eleven and I spent about SGD15 in there.

From Promenade, we walked to Marina Bay Sands because my parents are too cheapskate to take the bus (okay just kidding, it was actually quite a short walk).

The double-helix DNA bridge!

Marina Bay Sands is not a place for poor people like me to hang out. It has a Pavillion KL feel to it and has a whole bunch of branded stuff. Even the Cold Storage there is labelled "Speciality" weih. And we actually found out that Cold Storage accepted cashcards, so we were no longer confined to 7-Eleven!

This looks bloody familiar.

We collected our tickets for The Lion King musical at 8pm that night and then had dinner at the food court.

About 7.45pm we entered the theater.

We even had to have our bags checked before entering. There were staff offering program booklets but they had very few in hand and nobody was rushing to grab them so it was pretty obvious they weren't free. -cheapo-

We paid SGD88 each for our seats, and that's actually the second-cheapest ones available. We were on the bottom floor, pretty far at the back but in the middle and the stage was still visible enough.

Photography was obviously banned during the musical, but it was just amazing. I don't even know how to describe it, but the music was beautiful, the cast was so bloody fantastic and they had a healthy amount of comedy mixed into the story. The actor of young Simba was so CUTE that he immediately triggered my shotacon mode, and the props and special effects were even more spectacular. If Disneyland's Lion King show was awesome, this is ten times better.

I can't remember how long it was but anyway we headed back to the hotel after that.

The DNA bridge at night.

The next morning we had breakfast at Cuppage Plaza and then continued our shopping spree. Went to the same places, and to Cineleisure as well. At Cineleisure, me and Jo saw a girl with a really beautiful bag but we didn't know where she got it. ): And while walking out, I saw another girl with the same bag but a slightly different design! Omg I was aching to find out where they bought the bag! D:

A lot of walking and decision making later, and I ended up buying a red messenger bag from Rubi and a grey sling bag at 50% off at The Little Things She Needs at Ion. We took the MRT to Vivo City too and I saw the Puella Magi Gashapon machine again at Toys 'R' Us. But this time I had some self-control and convinced myself not to buy it.

Then Cashcard Spree #2 started at the Cold Storage there. Anything I wanted I grabbed. Snapple Apple, overpriced Pepperidge Farm chocolate chip cookies I have only tasted once in my lifetime before, imported potato chips, chocolate bars... I think I felt truly rich inside Cold Storage. Like a millionaire. I'm pretty tempted to tick "go on a shopping spree" off my bucket list but this doesn't really count since it's totally confined to Cold Storage. Still had to have some control because we couldn't lug everything around, so we paid (yet didn't really pay! :P) and went to McDonald's for lunch because I had a random offer coupon on my phone for a Pepper McGrill, which you totally can't find in Malaysia.

Went back to Orchard Road, continued shopping until my legs ached, and then went for Cashcard Spree #3 at the Cold Storage at Centerpoint. Even more junk food later, we dumped our stuff at the hotel and went for dinner with my parents at the food court at 313.

Wouldn't feel complete without having mee pok when in Singapore!

And for the rest of the night - you guessed it! Even more shopping! I don't know how many times we went into Forever 21 but really couldn't find anything. I bought a pair of sandals from Rubi again but had leftover money that I didn't feel like bring back home to stare glumly at, so I bought the much-raved-about Kiss Me Heroine Make Liquid Eyeliner from Guardian. Hey, I needed it. Really. :X

Last trip of the day was Cashcard Spree #4 at Centerpoint again to finish off the last few dollars of the card, then reached back around 10pm.

Left Singapore early this morning, visited my grandfather again and tada, back to home not-so-sweet home. And now for the pure enjoyment for myself and for you to be jealous (if anybody is reading this, unless you happen to have an expiring cashcard too and went on the same rampage or you're just a millionaire) I'm going to mass spam everything we bought in 7-Eleven and Cold Storage. Ready? Go! Calbee seaweed potato chips Calbee hot and spicy potato chips Pepperidge Farm cookies Qoo three bottles of Snapple Cadbury Twirl Cadbury Boost random Cadbury chocolate bar Ghirardelli chocolate bar Ruffles potato chips Swiss Miss marshmallow hot chocolate Pucca Pocky Snickers Cadbury Bubbly two bars of Hershey Kit Kat Chunky apple juice a bottle of ice lemon tea Calbee sour cream and onion potato chips Yakult Meiji chocolate milk soya bean jellybeans!! Yep I think that's about it. :3

Well anyway even though I'm back to reality and I still owe my bank account a lot of money... there was a 54% discount off the Canmake powder blush at Sasa you see... so I... errr...hee. :D

Oh by the way, did I mention there was actually a second expiring NETS cashcard containing SGD90? 8D

Sayonara, soshite sayonara!

2011-08-21T15:01:00.000+08:00

Four months after I finished Beginner 1 Japanese at ICLS, I'm done with Beginner 2. I did terribly during the exam yesterday because I screwed up an entire section, and I blame it on my pure stupidity of spending every spare minute I had in school memorizing katakana until I didn't have enough time to study the grammar and nouns/verbs properly. ): Never mind if the katakana had come in useful, but a day before the exam, Abby reminded me that there was a chart on the wall with all the hiragana and katakana! Am I like stupid or what! T___T

In the end, I got 78%, and my certificate is tarnished with an ugly B grade. My mum, who came to pay the fees for Intermediate 1 and Jo's Intermediate 3, also questioned my stupidity asking why I was the second lowest in class. Hey, there's only 10 people in my class. Putting it as "I got no.8 in class!" sounds better than "second last" right? Oh my god I feel awful now. I promise I'll study my ass off during Intermediate 1.

But anyway the main highlight of yesterday's Japanese lesson wasn't my epic failure, but rather my awesome teacher Ando-sensei leaving. He's been super awesome and funny for the past two sessions I've had with him. xD

Ando-sensei: GTO shitte imasu desuka? (Do you know what is GTA?)
Someone: Great Teacher Onizuka..?
Ando-sensei: GTA shitte imasu desuka?
Someone: Err... OH GREAT TEACHER ANDO!

The last lesson of ICLS classes tend to end super early since oral and written tests, GTA marking the paper, us getting back our results and certificates printed on the spot, and a photo being taken takes about an hour and a half only. So at 3.30pm, we had a surprise party for GTA's farewell. Abby, who is super pro at baking, made a really scrummy chocolate cake, and Yean Lee made some pasta.

Do you see the chart on the wall behind? CURSE YOU FOR... EXISTING!! D: Photo by Allan btw.

I also realized we were eating cake in front of a big notice on the right side of the wall that said no food allowed. :3 The receptionist didn't seem to mind though.

I had to leave at 4pm, but the others went to the nearby Starbucks and belanja-ed our GTA to pricey coffee.

My B2-3063 (I think) class excluding Madu and me. I was tagged in the empty chair. :x Hahaha he's actually holding a paper saying 'GTA'! Credits to Allan for this photo too.

We'll all miss him loads! And I guess all of us will be proceeding to Intermediate 1 together. :)

Onto a completely different subject, I have a new phone. Recently my phones all seem to be second hand ones from my uncle who seems to buy too many of everything. Goodbye to my Sony Ericsson Vivaz! I never really liked it much, but it has been okay to me. My phone's a little different now...

It's a Dopod A3288! If you've never heard of Dopod, don't worry, you're forgiven. It's a China brand, but it seems to be related to HTC in some ways. It runs on Android, and I'm pretty in love with it right now albeit some random China-ish apps. xD The camera is even shittier than my shitty Vivaz one though. Right now, I'm having some problems downloading Android apps because I don't seem to have the Android Market in it. Trying to find a solution to it ASAP though.

I have more musings, but that will come later this week. Looking extremely forward to the Singapore trip, and after hearing about Kansai-ben from Abby and Belle, even more excited to hear it! :D

Updates that don't fit anywhere

2011-08-16T23:15:00.000+08:00

Hmmm. A lot of worries these days seem to be sprouting from money issues. When I first got access to my savings account, I promised myself that I would only use it to make payment transactions online easier, and that I wouldn't use the money inside. Looks like everything is turning upside down now though! RM2k gone for the Japan trip, but that aside (which I plan to repay back when I get a proper part-time job), my greed and weakness to temptation has made me even poorer.

I'm talking about pre-orders of figures that are drying my account up. When a new, totally irresistible figure is open for pre-order, it's just far too easy to click the PO button and worry about paying later. A few months ago when I chose to pre-order GSC's Nendoroid Hatsune Miku Support Version and 1/8 Lat version Hatsune Miku, I did estimate that I would be able to pay for them. But somehow, it's August already, Lat version Miku is out, Ami Ami will be sending me a payment request tomorrow and I don't have enough money to pay for it. Of course I'll be temporarily using my savings, but this is exactly what I'm talking about! If this keeps happening my account is going to be empty soon. ):

As for Nendoroid Miku, Good Smile Company announced that they "accidentally used surface mail instead of EMS". Which means it will be delayed, which I'm happy about because I have more time to raise money, and also to expect a horribly dented box. The company I pre-ordered it from hasn't said anything about it arriving even though Singapore has already gotten theirs.

Photo by Rei Sama from SG Club Forums.

.... Yeah. Singaporeans have gotten their squashed Nendoroid Mikus.

Fortunately, GSC is offering replacements if the damage is bad. I hope mine arrives either in good condition or very, very bad condition.

And you know why I should kick myself? On top of all this poverty issues, I still pre-ordered Nendoroid Tomoe Mami and Kaname Madoka. Yes you may WTF at me, but I can't miss it. I love the series and I NEED the Nendoroids. Especially since Jo has pre-ordered Homu Homu too.

I suppose they are the main cause of my lack of cash right now, but other things are building up too. Like for example, I absolutely need more daily-wear contact lenses. I only have a pair or two left, and goodness knows when I'll need it next. AND this week has been totally lousy so far, with only more things to worry about and absolutely ZERO events to look forward to. This Saturday is also my last Beginner 2 Japanese lesson, which means my awesome teacher Andou-sensei is leaving and I have to study for the test.

Honestly, this week is full of shit. My income solely depends on Sundays when my mum walks into my room and gives me RM30 for the week's allowance, and a small writing job I'm currently doing. I joined a few survey panels too but so far I've only cashed out RM10, though I'm a few points away from getting a RM20 voucher (I NEED MONEY NOT VOUCHERS RAWR) and currently involved in a marketing research discussion for one of the survey panels. I can't remember which, but it better be one that pays money.

The only bright spot I can see in the distance is a short trip to Singapore at the end of August. At least I don't have to worry about money there, because my parents will give a bit of spending money. We'll also be watching The Lion King musical at Marina Bay Sands on the 28th of August at night. I'm actually pretty surprised at how keen my dad was on it - he was driving me to the LRT station as usual one morning and heard the radio advertisement and said it sounded interesting. I never really believe what he says these days, but shockingly he reminded me of it a day later and asked about the ticket prices. So yeah, we've booked four tickets to the second-cheapest seats (SGD88 each!) available and I'm looking really forward to it, and also to go shopping in Singapore (SCREW MY FINANCIAL ISSUES, WE'RE GOING SHOPPING BABEH). Unfortunately we are too poor to stay a night at The Sands too, which is like my dad's dream hotel or something.

This tiny glimmer of awesomeness is still far off, but I really can't wait for it. :)

Revisiting Kuen Cheng

2011-08-07T22:45:00.000+08:00

As I was informed a few weeks earlier of a Kuen Cheng event that outsiders were invited to, so of course I gladly decided to drop by today! It is one thing to study in that hell every day, but it's completely different to have gotten out of it but return for a visit just to see how things are going. It was a "open day" for KC - in other words, an event to pull in as many new kids as possible and earn some money at the same time. Win-win solution right?

I planned to reach there at 10am but ended up over-sleeping as usual, and only made it there near 11am. Immediately found Wei Ning waiting for me at the gate and she became my tour guide for the rest of the day.

She sold me four coupons for RM10 which she had to get rid off and we were off! All the clubs and societies had activities, exhibitions and stores going on there, so we just walked around the school, occasionally bumping into ex-classmates. Most of the time, I didn't dare to say hi in case they didn't remember me anymore and walk by thinking "who's that weirdo who waved at me?", but instead, they ended up saying hi to me first. Okay, so they haven't completely forgotten my existence yet...

This classroom was shared by the Comic Club and the Photography Club.

The Comic Club (there's Chao-Jin on the right cosplaying as Cloud again!) had a screening of Gintama and as usual, had cosplayers. Nice to see they had decorated the notice board with anime posters. :)

On the other hand, the Photography Club had a great display of really beautiful photos:

After that, we just checked out the other floors and then went down to the canteen. The old canteen I used to be very familiar with has been blasted off and has moved temporarily to the hostel's one, but the same food was there.

Before transferring to Wesley, I took KC's canteen food for granted. I remember being sick of eating the same old things every day, even though they weren't bad. After coming to Wesley however... I mentioned during my entrance exam that the canteen looked like shit, and I can prove that the food tastes like shit too. It may not really concern me since I hardly eat there, but boy when you come back to Kuen Cheng and see the food you used to dislike, you miss it A LOT. I immediately found my favourite burger store and got one for one coupon. The taste of it freshly made on the spot... ;____;

So here's a shout-out for KC's only perk: THEY HAVE THE BEST BURGERS EVER which tastes even better if you ask the aunty for cheese or mayonnaise. And the Chee Cheong Fun is fantastic, as well as the aunty selling it who always adds extra stuff. I don't like the drink stall but the variety of drinks they have is pretty good, and I STILL CANNOT FIGURE OUT HOW THE FIRST STALL MAKES SUCH AWESOME MAGGI NOODLES. It's impossible to copy their secret recipe. :o

Okay, onwards. Walked around somemore, met more people, and then got drinks and went to the benches to chat. Joanne Lau came down and forced me to go to the Biology lab where my other ex-classmates were, for goodness knows what reason. It's really, really awkward entering a classroom of people you know, as an ex-student...

Got back Confessions Of a Shopaholic from Joanne Lau who looted it for EVER and never read it... Went on checking out exhibitions, saw McD herself and automatically nodded in her direction, and bumped into Zhee Chien.

She was cosplaying Hatsune Miku but I didn't catch her with her wig on. You may not notice this, but the dress is familiar - it's the same dress as the Magnet Miku cosplayer at C2AGE and HELP Cyber Games, because she borrowed it from the Miku cosplayer there, who happens to be a KC-er too. xD

I left around 12.30pm (which was a bit late because me and Jo had intended to catch the 1pm bus from Kelana Jaya to Ikano), grabbing the book, my PMR Geografi report and the JR3C class shirt everyone had to buy. We ended up having KFC for lunch at KL Central (after failing to buy the delicious pisang goreng sold around Tun Sambanthan) and taking the 2.30pm bus to Tropicana City Mall where my dad picked us up.

It's funny how this post highlights the two things I miss the most of KC - the canteen and the co-curriculum. I've said it before and I'll say it again - Wesley's choice of activities are fail. These are two things that can own my school in half a second. I do miss Kuen Cheng, but not in a way that makes me want to go back to studying there. I like my school life in Wesley much more, but still... it's odd to think I would have been one of them there if I hadn't transferred out.

Anyway, it was a great day there and special thanks to the super awesome Wei Ning for teman-ing me all the time! Glad I met up with Jacklyn (STILL SO PRETTY), Hai Ryun, Joanne Lau, Zhee Chien, Kar Kiet, Aien, Chao-Jin, Kyee Yuen, etc etc (I admit I've started to forget names). Unfortunately didn't see Pooi Ling who was off on her usual St. John Ambulance duty again. D:

Shall end this post with Jo plotting evil plans.

Dat Flower

2011-08-03T22:02:00.000+08:00

Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai. I HAD to check Wiki to see if I had gotten the name right. I used to think of it as "that anime with the really long name", and only took up an interest in watching it after Ka Wei told me she watched the last episode five times and cried five times. When she said that, I got really curious, because the only show that made me cry was... this really random Singaporean movie about a teacher. And I didn't really CRY. I just kind of almost-cried. Doesn't count. :)

Well this series is certainly very enjoyable, and the little details that they paid close attention to made it even better. Not the greatest fan of Menma and her annoying kiddy voice (but then, she's kind of a kid after all), but I do like Anaru and Tsuruko. The anime is kind of a slice-of-life thing I guess, and is a little like Ghost Whisperer. There, I've gone and spoilt a bit already. :P

I brought the entire series in Jo's hard drive and gave it to Pamela as part of her birthday present, and what I don't understand is that she apparently cried non-stop throughout the series and couldn't sleep. O__O Suddenly, it's one of Pammy's "best series of all times" (and it has even been declared to be the best birthday present hohoho I feel so honoured)! I guess it differs for everybody, the way Durarara! does as well, but Jo's heart of stone survived the series with no emotions while I had the whole overwhelming-feeling-of-going-to-cry-right-now thing on the last episode only. But yes it's really sad, and you should take up the challenge to see if this series can make you break down in tears. :3

Next, here are a few photos from Anjerasu (Kevin) and Irudono from the last Uchikazoku Tweet-up. Photos by pro photographers always make me T.T in jealousy!

Hahaha so cute! Photo by Kevin.

Group photo, also taken by Kevin. Omg I know I look horrendously FUGLY but I just had a cheap RM15 hair cut and the hairdresser sucked and cut my fringe too short. ):

For some reasons, I really like this photo. Maybe because you can't see my face, yet it plainly shows DSLR goodness. :3 Photo by Amanda using Irudono's camera!

Dunno who took this since Irudono's camera was being shared around lol... This is the only photo of me that makes me look... normal. Except my eyes are like super squinty.

Mmhhmm yeah can't wait for the day I have enough money to buy a better camera.

Anyway, preparations for the Japan trip is running slowly but surely. Just yesterday, the 36 of us divided into four groups of nine students. I never liked this kind of group-forming things because I don't have a posse to follow with all the time and I'm no popular student, but I'd already asked Chui Lynn if I could join hers. So my group consists of Chui Lynn, Mei Jun, Charmaine, Kimberly, Hui Woon, Hsin Yue, Aaron and Sara Ann. We then divided into even smaller groups of three, so naturally I had to go with Kimberly and Hui Woon, none of which I know very well. And all three of us are the shy-shy type. :x

I kind of regret declining Ricky's offer to join his group (which consisted of two others, Ricky, James, Adrian, Tzy Yang, Oscar, Tze Ying and Elena! D:) but since I'd already said I would follow Chui Lynn... there isn't anything wrong with that, and I'm just being picky as usual, but I'm not close to any of my group members except for Chui Lynn and Mei Jun. But if I'm not mistaken, this formation is only for the performances and stuff, so nothing much to worry about. I hope.

Okay fine I'll just be frank and admit that I'm scared of ending up walking down the streets of Osaka alone. Or awkwardly sitting next to someone who won't talk on the plane. Yes I'm being paranoid AGAIN. Can someone please get a frying pan and hit me on the head and tell me to shut the fuck up?

All of us going over there were actually supposed to host a Japanese student in return, but knowing my parents too well... I had to find a replacement who would host the student instead. I was in a panic frenzy yesterday trying to find someone willing to help me out, and thanks to friends helping me out, I did. It was really such a relief because I would have no choice but to host said student if I couldn't find anyone. Phew!

Well so yesterday I went to KLCC after all that mess for an hour just to walk around with Jacintha who is like forever stuck at home due to strict parents. Nothing much to report, except that the Burger King I often went to when I was young ~~and addicted to Petrosains~~ has officially been shut down and replaced with something the now older me would like - SEPHORA. How thoughtful of KLCC to change shops in favour of my age. :) I know there's a Sephora somewhere in KL, but I've only been to the Ngee Ann City one before. I didn't enter the store, but from the outside, it looked so big and so colourful and so inviting... but I just did a Chizuru face and walked past it. Because I know I can't afford anything in there. Heck, the first thing I saw at one glance was a counter of Urban Decay make-up, again with the missing slot for the Naked eyeshadow palette. Damn. But anyway, I checked out the Sephora website and was randomly being shocked at the prices when I suddenly saw.... TOKIDOKI PERFETTO EYELINER. OMG IT WAS SO DAMN CUTE. I can die for it right now. D: I know I'm judging things by their appearances again, but Tokidoki is SO CUTE!

And to end this make-up rant, here's a tag. :3

1) Would you rather lose all of your mascaras, eyeliners, lipsticks, and lip-glosses or lose all of your palettes and eye shadows?
Lose all my eyeshadows. Because I only have one palette (lolol!) and I'm not a fan of eyeshadows in the first place.

2)Would you rather chop off all your hair or never be able to cut it again?
Never be able to cut it off again! Rapunzel's life doesn't look too great dragging along so much hair, but I don't want to be bald tyvm.

3) Would you rather have a coral cheek or a pink cheek?
Errr I dunno. Coral I guess. Pink is too... pink.

4) If you had $1000 to spend, would you rather buy clothes or makeup?
Probably clothes. It would be nice to splurge on high-end cosmetics but I think even I can get what I want with a few hundred, whereas clothes have more variety and are damn expensive.

5) Would you rather apply lipstick as eyeliner or eyeliner as lipstick?
Lipstick as eyeliner, but who the hell does that?

6) Would you rather only shop at MAC or Sephora?
I love MAC (even though I don't own anything from it pffft) but Sephora has a lot more variety and stuff to choose from.

7) Would you rather only use one eye shadow color or one lip color the rest of your life?
One lip colour. I don't give a damn about my lips much.

8) Would you rather wear winter clothes in summer or summer clothes in winter?
Summer clothes in winter - at least people look at you and think "wow, can tahan even though it's so cold" instead of "why the hell is that freak wearing five layers of clothes in summer?".

9) Would you rather have dark nails or bright nails all year round?
Bright nails! I always hate black nail polish. Makes your nails look rotten.

10) Would you rather give up your favorite lip product or your favorite eye product?
Lip product, because I don't care about my lips, and I love eye make-up too much.

11) Would you rather only be able to wear your hair in a ponytail or a messy bun?
In a ponytail of course. Three years of Kuen Cheng has taught me to hate buns.

12) Would you rather never be able to paint your nails again or never use lip-gloss?
Never paint my nails. I'm not a huge fan of nail polish because I suck at the art of applying it.

13) Would you rather shave your eyebrows and have none at all? Or sharpie them in everyday?
Sharpie them everyday, but both sounds equally horrible. For now, I'm leaving my eyebrows alone kthxbai.

14) Would you rather live without makeup or nail polish?
Without nail polish of course! Who cares about it?!

Five birthdays

2011-07-25T00:42:00.000+08:00

Time yet again for a #uchikazoku Tweet-up! Organised to celebrate the birthdays of the June and July babies - Amanda, Pamela, Irudono, Carina and Laniemon - the meet-up was held at e@Curve again today. It coincided nicely with a small photography and cosplay competition by HELP College, which I initially didn't really planned to go to.

When I reached Curve, I went to find Pamela at EpiCentre because some certain rich chibi was buying a brand spanking new MacBook Pro. ;___; Met Bette, David and Aaron there as well, and after seeing the sleek, shiny laptop in the hands of an evil tsundere, we headed to the Garden Lifestyle Store and Cafe at Curve to meet up with the others: Carina, Amanda, Ruru & Irudono (awww :3), Jerry, Jeevan, Kevin and KururugiSeiryuu.

I brought Jo's hard drive for Pam to loot some anime, as part of her birthday present along with a Domo-kun plushie.

I tell you, it's impossible to find any decent-priced food in that menu. They were really expensive and I ended up ordering Thai green curry and rice and that alone costed about RM16. And right after the meal, Ermakyo brought out the cake she'd ordered as a surprise for the birthday peeps...

Is this not like the MOST AWESOME BIRTHDAY CAKE EVER?!?! XD

Yes, it IS the most awesome birthday cake ever. If I'm not mistaken, it was a brownie cake from Secret Recipe. And it was delicious. :3

Cutting the cake... wait, what?

Specially tailored for tsunderes.

Omg! Rivals reluctantly hugging! :O

While the others hung around waiting for Laniemon and Peacefan, me and Pam went to get ~~cheaper~~ drinks from 7-Eleven and dropped by the HELP event.

It was pretty small, and a little messy. I don't really think it was aimed to be a proper ACG event but more of a competition type of thing, but there were still a lot of cosplayers. As usual, I spotted people I recognized from photos, mostly people who don't know me - for example, photographers like Blur. xD Yeah fine I'm kind of like a blog stalker, but I love his photos. Pam as usual always seemed to know everybody we passed by, and we just walked around the event and dropped by Tenshi no Cafe. It was my first time going in, and the figures on display was jaw-dropping. The maids were cute too haha!

The initial plan after that was to take three cars (Amanda's, Ruru's and someone else's) to 1 Utama for baseball at the batting cages, but it looked like it was going to rain and there didn't seem to be enough time so we switched to bowling instead. Except that we found out the bowling alley was full due to a competition, so a change of plans again and we were at the cinema. But because of time restrictions and age restrictions (four underage kids there!), we gave up on that too and ended up going for karaoke at Song Box.

I suggested it instead of Redbox claiming it "looked cheap", and indeed it was! For about twelve of us, everyone only paid RM7 each and got drinks and some snacks. The song choice was a bit limited, but we still had one hell of a great time singing everything off-pitch, attempting to sing Korean songs (MAJOR FAIL) and listening to the most retarded and old Gen X songs I have never heard before. Bohemian Rhapsody... OTL

A song by The Gazette.

Sorry for super blurry pic, not enough light!

We spent two hours fooling around in there and finally disbanded around 6.30pm. As I was walking towards Maybank to deposit some cash, I got the shock of my life when I suddenly heard my parents calling out to me. I guess that was one of the drawbacks of living so near Curve, but the worst thing was when my mum asked: "Why aren't you wearing your glasses?"

Oh well, busted. I was seriously thinking "OH FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK" when she said that, because I was caught off-guard and forgot I was wearing contact lenses. Very surprisingly, my parents weren't angry (or didn't seem to be) with me for wearing them even when my mum said I couldn't, and just did the usual "Aiyohh" exclamation and lectured about how I have to be hygienic when handling them. Hmm, trust meter is going down... well, not that there was much in the first place anyway.

Anyway, it was a great day out and I'm looking forward to the photos by Kevin and Irudono (photogs if I'm not mistaken). Oh did I mention there was a Mayushii keychain hanging on Irudono's DSLR..? :3

A new look

2011-07-23T22:32:00.000+08:00

I know, it's actually really unusual of me to change my blog layout so infrequently. Well I no longer like looting any nice layout I see from Blogskins.com, and naturally I have no talent nor time or will power to create my own designs, so of course you are bound to be sick out of your minds seeing the same old layout everyday.

But eventually, I started getting sick of seeing my own layout too, and was finally motivated to change it. I got some inspirations from websites I loved and tried to make a new blogskin from scratch, but after two years of no progress in web design... my mind just went blank looking at the codes. I think I even invented some of my own in vain, trying to get it to work. :x

Anyway I gave up making one and ended using Kotoire's basecodes from this blogskin. After hours of tweaking, I don't think it bears much resemblance any more. :) Further edits to be done, but for now I'm too tired to continue. And as you can see, Jo's Nendoroid Hideyoshi now dominates the top of my page! Isn't he absolutely adorable?! It's pretty amazing what Photoshop Lightroom can do to make lousy, shitty point-and-shoot photos look a little better.

Speaking of Lightroom, I used it to touch up some old C2AGE photos and other pics of figures and was very impressed with the results.

A bit grainy from sharpening perhaps, but still... :3 More here!

Time to pack up and get ready for another Tweet-up tomorrow. :]

How do you solve a problem like Maria?

2011-07-20T19:52:00.002+08:00

I've never really watched The Sound Of Music properly. I've seen snitches of it, and on my first day working in the program booklet team the teacher played the movie but it was halfway through then.

Either way, Wesley had a full-dress rehearsal today, or in other words, a Matinee show for students. I was actually quite impressed with it, even though I was told it apparently sucked compared to last year's Flower Drum Song. I suspect that after three years in Kuen Cheng where our beloved headmistress McD strongly discouraged any sort of contact between girls and guys, where students were told off for dressing up and singing "seductively" or something (omg don't get me started on THAT incident, they were just singing Up by The Saturdays), Wesley's open-ness is a great change. Of course there wasn't any hardcore romance going on, but portraying the relationship between Maria von Trapp and the Captain, well I can certainly imagine McD dying of a heart attack if she was watching the concert today.

It wasn't just acting, but also the dances, like the Ballroom Dance. Obviously there have to be couples in that, so... yeah I once again imagine McD in a state of shock as she watches that particular one. But screwing McD and her preferences, I spotted a photo or two I looted from the internet used as a backdrop :P As for the opening credits, I've heard it so many gazillions of times in the computer lab but never really saw it until today! The intermission I've seen (inside joke: old man writing it!) and heard (KINGDOM HEARTS DEARLY BELOVED FUCK YEAH 8D), and the ending credits too.

Unfortunately what I was really involved in, the program booklet, will only be given to guests during the official shows on Friday and Saturday which I will not be watching because the tickets are bloody overpriced and my parents are obviously not interested. Yeah fine, I know how the cover and everything looks like, but I haven't seen it in a book form right? Anyway, Mikaela said she'll try to steal one for me. :)

We had a lot of free time after the show, so I ended up spending all that time spam-reading Deception Point like a nerd. I also learned to play Monopoly Deal! I've heard of it but never really thought twice about it, until Chui Lynn brought a deck, Hong Kong version! I'm lazy to go into details and I'm still pretty blur on how to play the game properly, but it's quite fun and the best part of it was seeing all the familiar Hong Kong places like Mong Kok, Tsim Sha Tsui (don't know how to spell it properly) and MTR stations! I wish I could have taken a photo of it. D:

I'm definitely going to miss concert practices after all this though! It's really odd to think of my first day in the lab being absolutely timid and quiet, and later on just talking shit all the time and having a lot of fun with the guys. It just proves my theory that I take a lot of time to get used to people and overcome my shyness. Concert practice has been really useful time spent watching anime (with Shaun being a very annoying narrator), reading blogs, betting how I wouldn't get past one page of a website without seeing a Hatsune Miku cosplay, messing around with Photoshop (I love the Mummifly), eating Oreos, playing Pictionary (ROTTEN MUFFINS!!), shooting elastic bands, doing homework and of course, actually working on the program booklet itself. I'm probably doing this next year too, but it won't be the same without the two senior IT geeks!

Spending weeks in the computer lab, I also had access to almost all the photos taken at school events, and more importantly, class photos, club photos, and concert photos. So of course I abused my power and looted some in soft copies...

IT Whiz Kids! This is my favourite photo because I don't look as shitty as the others.

My class, 4L. Thanks to prefects catching me, I had to pin my fringe, thus the fugliness.

Upper Secondary Computer Club. Not the prefect's fault here, I just forgot to take off my pin FML I look terrible.

The specially Photoshopped Concert Booklet and LCD Display Team. Dunno why I look so unhappy. Look carefully and you'll notice someone's shirt has been virtually edited... :P

Yeah anyway all the photos taken by teachers and students and don't belong to me. Please don't sue me for stealing photos kthxbai!

Last minute-ish

2011-07-11T22:57:00.000+08:00

Where do I start? Guess I'll just go straight to the point...

Not too long ago I was being emo about not being able to fulfil an item on my bucket list, that is visiting Japan as an exchange student. I gave another shot bargaining with my parents and asked if I could withdraw the RM2k from my own savings, and to my extreme surprise, they agreed. Albeit a little reluctantly. I promised to pay back the money I owe poor bank account, even if it takes years to do so.

A short lecture, some uncertainties, and a little good luck later... I'M GOING TO JAPAN IN NOVEMBER!!!!!

Of course I am like super excited! There isn't a country I want to visit more than Japan, and I've always wanted to try being an exchange student. I'm not exactly your class clown or the sort of person who's outgoing and loud, but I know I'll regret like hell if I miss this opportunity.

So the drawback is:
- MUST NOT shop like crazy in Japan. This is purely for the experience of a school trip and homestay. I promised myself that if I want to go on a crazy otaku shopping spree, it'll be one day in the future in Tokyo.
- Temporary stop buying figures... ):
- Put all planned cosplays on hold (but luckily I've already prepared most costumes before this whole fiasco)...
- Find a job during the holidays.

The last one worries me the most as not many places hire kids like me, but I do hope I'll find one even if the salary is fail shit.

But now, focus on the REALLY AWESOME STUFF of this trip:
- Friends going include Chui Lynn, Tze Ying, Mei Jun, Kelvin, Adrian and Ing Shaun! I hope Chui Lynn will let me gatecrash her group or not I'll be walking down the streets of Osaka alone. xD
- SINGAPORE AIRLINES!!! HELL YEAH GOT CLASS!!!
- UNIVERSAL STUDIOS JAPAN!!!
- Er, Kobe Disaster Reduction Institute, Maishima Incinerator Plant, Osaka Castle? :x
- Shinsaibashi SHOPPING STREET!!!
- "Studying" (yeah right) in Omi Brotherhood High School!!!
- It's WINTER in November there!!!

Being the worry-wart I am, I think I may go crazy just deciding what I'm supposed to bring and wear and what souvenirs to buy for my host family. But whatever. I feel so hyper now. :) Loads of thanks to my parents for letting me go!

And lastly, CONGRATULATIONS TO JEANNE for being short-listed for AFS' JENESYS Program Selection Camp! Obviously I didn't make the cut and didn't bother to check my mailbox, so I hope Zhi Jean aces the second interview and be one of the few lucky students getting to go to Japan for two weeks!

A broken dream

2011-07-07T20:15:00.001+08:00

Wiser to blog now before the RM10-for-2GB-bandwidth runs out and connection hell breaks out.

It's yet again one of those experiences where you give up on something, but someone brings your hopes up,only to crash it down again much more painfully. After being pretty certain I flunked the AFS interview for the student exchange program to Japan, Wesley announced their one week exchange program to Osaka. I was fearing that it was cancelled because of the earthquakes and all that, so of course I was happy to hear the news! Better yet, I had classmates who were joining too. I wasn't sure about the price then but I was told it would be about RM5000, and when I relayed this news to my mum, she was reluctant and said it was expensive. After that the topic just dropped.

Yesterday, I got the official form for the exchange program, and indeed it was RM4900. But flying to Osaka via Singapore Airlines (that was a surprise!)! Universal Studios Japan! Visiting a Japanese school! Of course I'm a bit scared of the actual homestay, but I wanted to join it so badly. Yesterday I really did my best trying to persuade my parents. I bargained with my mum to not go for the next December trip in exchange for going on this program, and she nearly gave in until my dad simply said "We'll pay RM3000, you pay RM2000."

He KNOWS I can't earn RM2000. It's impossible, I don't have a job and I'm already sacrificing my health for RM30 a week. Asked how I could get two fucking thousand ringgit, he said "work for it.". After that I just got really pissed off and mad. That line was just another way of saying "no, you can't go". Especially since the application deadline is next Wednesday, I'm supposed to conjure two thousand bucks out of thin air in a week's time. I didn't mean to sulk, emo and cry because I know it would just make me look worse, but I was really upset yesterday. All I got was a long lecture from my mum about how I don't deserve to go at all.

I understand that it's a lot of money, and I understand that my parents aren't exactly in the best financial state now thanks to a particularly BITCHY seller of the new house. But I think of this like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory:

"There's plenty of money out there. They print more every day. But this ticket, there's only five of them in the whole world, and that's all there's ever going to be. Only a dummy would give this up for something as common as money." - Grandpa George

True, it's not one of the five golden tickets, but it's an experience I'll never get again. They ask why I want to go so badly when I can go to Japan any time in the future, but a student exchange program isn't an experience you can just pay for, I'll never get this opportunity in the future. I'll never get to go on a holiday with so many people I know. They don't understand how badly I want to join this trip at all, and of course they don't give a fuck either. There aren't any programs next year, so it's this or never. Looks like it's going to be never.

So yeah, I've got six days to raise RM2000. What I want most right now is to prove my parents wrong and hand them the money, but of course I can't. I applied for an event job at BookFest in August, but what are the chances of getting it?

Anyway, I'll like to give my deepest thanks to Tze Ying, Chui Lynn, Ka Wei, Kelvin, Mei Jun and Mikaela for all the support they've given me. They know I want it so much, and they all gave plenty of support and encouragement when I told them about my parents' response (Kelvin: "Withdraw from your bank account la! Don't care about your parents!" hahaha). Especially Tze Ying for being so determined to help me raise the money, she nearly (NEARLY) made me start crying again. :') You guys rock! I hope Tze Ying, Chui Lynn, Kelvin and Mei Jun will enjoy themselves there. And they better bring me back souvenirs. :3

The only consolation I can find from this is that it's Osaka and not Tokyo, Universal Studios and not Disneyland. If it was the latter respectively I think I would have slit my wrists already.

What goes on at 1pm

2011-07-02T00:01:00.000+08:00

If you ask my opinion, my school is dedicating way too much time for the Sound Of Music concert. I mean, it's just a concert ~~with overpriced tickets I can't afford~~, even if half the school participates in the acting, dances and the singing. Heck, all our periods have been shorten from 40 minutes to just 30 minutes for most days now, the last period of every day gets killed and we have a full two hours and fifteen minutes for concert practice! I'm not complaining though, I love missing Chemistry and my two hours and fifteen minutes are spent slacking in Computer Lab 3 doing anything I want.

When concert practice first started and was just an hour and 55 minutes long, my job was to find photos of Salzburg, Austria, Photoshop them if I needed to and edit Adobe Illustrator files. Way better than rotting in 4M everyday doing nothing, even if the only people I knew there was Kok Yung and Wern Shing (the latter and me being the only girls there not including the very awesome and full-of-lolz teachers). I got to know the other guys over time: Hao Yi, Chern Xi, Adrian, Shaun, James and the Computer Club president Wen Chuan.

After a while, concert practice times began getting longer and my work began to get lesser. Today, concert practice means enjoying the air-con in the lab, doing homework, going online (though social networking sites are blocked) and just watching Chern Xi draw a random plant or a Domo-kun in Photoshop. Sometimes I feel a little guilty because I can't seem to contribute much to the team, but the problem is there really isn't much to do right now. But I'll admit I feel quite proud to be part of the team, even if I'm like super useless. It's nice to be around other geeks in a chilly lab. :) Hmm I would have liked to attach a picture of the production team here but we haven't taken the photo yet and I wouldn't have access to the file. XD

Last Monday, the topic of fixing computers for teachers and students ~~FOR A FEE!~~ was brought up and I randomly said that my laptop had died from a malware attack (and my stupidity for making it worse), so I was offered free service from the super pro IT geek Kok Yung. I brought my notebook on Tuesday morning and left in the lab in the care of my computer teacher, and watched, along with Adrian and James, as Kok Yung meddled with weird technical stuff like a pro. Things weren't looking very good for my laptop but I really didn't want to reformat it yet, so during Wednesday's concert practice, Kok Yung and Wen Chuan (who was extremely fascinated with my laptop's touch-screen) tried installing Ubuntu (COOL WEIH I'm so used to Windows!) to rescue my files. No luck, my hard drive was corrupted. In the end, it was a sad goodbye to my photos, music and games I hadn't bothered to back-up as Wen Chuan let me handle the drastic act of clicking the reformat button. And so my laptop is up and running again, with loads of thanks to Kok Yung and Wen Chuan for their help. Now where did I put that Windows 7 upgrade CD...?

Schooling overnight

2011-06-26T16:56:00.001+08:00

I think I can consider myself quite a geek. I'm in the Computer Club, I'm taking ICT classes for SPM, I'm helping out a little with the concert program booklets and out of the blue I'm in the school's "IT Whiz Kids" group (even after slacking so much during concert practice, wow)... and because I'm in the Computer Club, I was also forced into joining the compulsory In-House Training Camp on Friday and Saturday. I was actually pretty interested in it because camps are cool, but I got much less enthusiastic when Mikaela couldn't go and successfully got out of it. So I was practically forced to join it alone. Sleeping over in school. If you're normal, you'll know that it's really retarded and pathetic to participate in activities like camps alone, but I really didn't have a choice.

I was so reluctant to go that I thought I would just get the 24 hours over with and forget it all. I didn't even think it deserved a blog post, but I guess it wasn't THAT bad. Fine, to be honest I wasn't really alone. I had friends who joined it too like Kok Yung, Wern Shing, Ing Kee (her name is so cute right! :P), Jia Vern, Shaun and Adrian (the latter two whom I met during concert practices) but four out of six of them were too pro and were facilitators of the camp while me, Jia Vern and Adrian were ordinary members. And I didn't know them well at all, so I was still alone. The ratio of girls to guys in the Computer Club is like 1:6. I'm not kidding.

It definitely sucked not being able to leave the school at 3.15pm (MIKAELAAA BETRAYAL D8) and waiting alone listening to music on my phone for it to start, and it certainly sucked even more upon finding out I was the only Upper Sec member in my group of ten, and one of only two girls - but hey Kok Yung was my group leader. xD Had some dumb ice-breaking session but I was feeling really moody and didn't participate much. There was a Photoshop tutorial on photo editing basics which I'd already learned before (spot healing tool win!) so nothing great about that either, though I think the president did a pretty good job on the tutorial.

Both photos taken by Jia Vern.

I joined Ing Kee, Jia Vern and Adrian's table for dinner (canteen food D:) and then took a shower. I miss my showerhead, bathing in the school washroom with a hose was weird. After that there was a movie screening session where they offered Tangled and Boogieman. Naturally I chose Tangled because I haven't seen it, and I'm not that mad to watch a horror movie at night. Of course most of the guys dare not pick Tangled in fear of being labelled gay or something... There were bread, Milo Fuze and Nescafe given for supper after the movie and then we went back to our classrooms to sleep.

Only nine girls in the whole camp, so plenty of space. :3

Thank goodness for the air-con, but still it was uncomfortable using a sleeping bag and a rather useless blanket. From 10.45pm to 11.45pm I paid RM2 for an hour of internet access on my phone and let Ing Kee and Jia Vern use it too. Wern Shing drank too much Nescafe and I just didn't feel like sleeping at all, so I non-stop spammed music on my phone (Wern Shing: "You've been doing that the whole day!") while Ing Kee did her homework. It was really weird staring out of the school building at midnight seeing the last LRT leave the station, and seeing the whole school cloaked in darkness.

I finally went to sleep at 1.30am and woke at 5.30am with five mosquito bites, but that's actually quite mild compared to Jia Vern who was attacked pretty badly. Assembly was at 7am so I spent an hour and a half playing music AGAIN, walking around aimlessly and throwing a water balloon around until Ing Kee threw it at Shaun and it burst. We had morning exercises at 7am, and they played Party Rock Anthem and made us fail-shuffle at the famous "Everyday I'm shuffling" part. After breakfast, we had some pretty interesting games that involved guiding blind people through obstacles and getting hit by a water balloon, facing the danger of hypothermia when reaching for Scrabble pieces in a pail of icy water to solve computer-ish questions, and attempting to flip a newspaper with nine people standing on it (IMPOSSIBLE).

I left early after a shower and lunch because I didn't want to miss my Japanese class, so I missed the Counter-Strike tournament where all the girls chose to quit. Had a Big Mac and Coke welcoming me back in the car. :) So I successfully completed the camp and returned alive! Fine, the camp itself was not as bad as I expected, but it was really lonely for me. I think it would have been fun if I had close friends with me there though!

Of course it sucked

2011-06-22T21:26:00.000+08:00

Hilton Hotel PJ. Never once have I stepped through it's doors feeling good because the only reason I go there is always for ABRSM piano exams. I've been through all that agony five times before, so this Grade 7 practical exam is my sixth time. Same old nervous feeling, same old panic mode.

I don't remember much of my Grade 2 to Grade 4 exams because I hadn't started blogging then, but I remember doing very badly in Grade 5 but managed to pass, and pretty well but not great in Grade 6 and got a merit. My Grade 7 exam today was almost exactly the same experience as Grade 5 or maybe worst. ):

I reached an hour and a half early because my mum was busy so technically this is my first time going there alone (not that my mum gives much moral support when she does follow) and just walked around the hotel killing time and finally went to the waiting room, where I chatted a little with the mother and sister of another of my piano teacher's student when it was her turn. I was having an awful cough then and when my turn came, I think Haruhi Suzumiya or whatever God there is decided it would be really interesting if I had a runny nose too. Pre-doom preparations to make matters worst.

The examiner was a woman and she seemed quite nice, kind of like the one I had in Grade 6. I started with the third exam piece, Lowside Blues, which I was the most confident in. It was already horrible trying to concentrate while my nose was so annoying at the same time, and I screwed up really, really bad. My fingers slipped, I couldn't press the right keys... and my fingers started getting sweaty and making everything ten times worst! Made so many mistakes at parts I've never faced any problems with during practice. At the end of the song I was already wishing the floor would swallow me up.

Second piece was slightly better, but still a lot of mistakes. First piece was almost as horrible as the third, slips, mistakes, completely screwed-up... mix in my cough and runny nose and you have me feeling like crying and dropping dead right there. Unfortunately dropping dead wasn't an option, so onwards to scales - much better compared to the disastrous exam pieces but again, mistakes here and there. No comment on sight-reading but it wasn't too bad.

I had expected to flunk the first part of aural, so flunk I did. I managed to hear the first part of the tune but I totally invented the back. For sight-singing, I got my rhythm fine but the tune went haywire. Cadences and modulation was actually what I was the most worried about because I only managed to get some practice REALLY last-minute, solely thanks to a CD recording rip I found online that was from my teacher's aural practice book, but I don't know if I got the modulation right. For the final part I was just aching to get the hell out and I made up some rubbish about Alberti bass and broken chords.

Summarizing everything up, everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong, and not only did it go wrong but it went much worse than that. I'm pretty sure I'll be failing this round, but what's done is done. ): Now to look forward to a particularly nasty Friday and Saturday to be spent sleeping over in school for a Computer Club camp, practically alone except for some other friends whom I'm not closed with and my phone (how I want to bring my PSP but obviously I can't). Hooray, my life is awesome.

Nendoroid 93: Megurine Luka

2011-06-19T00:31:00.000+08:00

It's been a while since my last figure purchase! I've always wanted to own a figure of my favourite Vocaloid character ever Megurine Luka, but never saved enough money. Luckily for me, I found a seller on CF Forums selling Luka-chan for just RM110 and bookmarked the page while I slaved away at skipping lunch. A month or so later and Luka was still available, so I bought her. :)

The parcel was sent out from Sarawak on Tuesday by Kangaroo Express (which I've never used before btw) and only arrived on Thursday, but no one was in as usual and I missed it. When Jo called the number given to re-attempt delivery there was no answer at all, and after calling the main phone line and being redirected, no answer either! I proceeded to SMS the phone number too, and no response. Also wrote to them via the online contact form, no response. I was feeling damn stressed out and pissed at the stupid kangaroo when suddenly yesterday as I was walking to the car to go out for lunch, the van came just in time to deliver it. Sucks that my parents were around then, I got another lecture for it.

Luka comes with surprisingly few parts, probably because the most adorable octopus in the world is included. Tako Luka acts as a head of a Nendo Puchi and it balances really well too. AND IT IS SO DAMN CUTE AHHHHH NOM NOM TAKO!!!

Dissect! I had an awful time trying to remove the front hair piece the first time because it was pretty tight, but after that it was fine. I was really scared I would break it. ;__; I couldn't figure out how to use the stand, which is slightly different from Yuki Nagato's, until I had an Eureka! moment and fitted her skirt in. It's not very tight-fitting so a little force can hit Luka-chan down, Tako and all.

Tako! :3

Luka and her normal smiley face. Sorry for poor lighting.

Her Double Lariat face and Tako on top of her head.

Her singing face.

There really isn't much to play around with, but I don't mind since I'm more into displaying figures than playing around with them. I'm glad I bought her at such an affordable price! She'll soon have her companion. ;) -hint- In the meantime, she's joining the happy family on my desk.