Moar schopping

meaning MORE SHOPPING. well There are still things I want to buy but have not.

1. I went to Dorothy Perkins today and they HAVE the dress I wanted but not in my size. None in stock and none that they can order in. SHOOT.
2. I hit H&M a few days ago and was considering buying a nice light blue cardigan from them. Unforch its. £9.99 so a bit over my budget right now. Waiting till the parentals come...
3. Tried on the Red Next dress I was thinking of wearing to Grad but its not very flattering now that my middle has shrunk somewhat. I need a fitted, structured dress. Preferably red, preferably fitted.

Hmmm... So one is a size issue, one is a price issue and one is a "I-can't-find-anything-to-wear!" issue. I could always wear what I have in the closet. I have no problem with that looking between the price tags on the racks and my empty wallet. Oh why did my haircut have to cost so much!? Darnit...

Yeee ouch

Exams are over. Will it's been over since last Tuesday.

I was trying to be good and I went to a gym class on Friday. Legs, Bums & Tums. A good class and left feeling all worked out, tired but a bit sore. I was sore all day until i went to bed.

Come Saturday.

Getting up in the morning was such a pain. And I mean PAIN. From the waist down. Quads. Hamstrings. Calves. And all the tendons and ligaments were twitching and straining and refused to hold my body upright or move me around the room smoothly.

I walked down to the city to try and walk out the built up lactic acid in my legs. MISTAKE. After a relatively pleasant stroll around the city for a few hours, I was walking back past city hall when my left leg decided to seize up and stop working and decided to tell me by sending shooting pains every time i tried to put any pressure on my knee.

All I can say is OUCH. and still ouch.

Beware all ye who dare...

I am in the foulest of foul moods.

1. My period came today. Effing OUCH. It feels like there are callipers trying to pry my hips apart. And not mentioning the dull ache of the fat kid trying to dig his way out with a blunt spoon. And the eternal flow of blood. Disgusting I know but I have to live with it and I’m not happy about it EITHER.

2. I have my final exam on Tuesday and this is the LAST thing I needed. What next? A power cut?

3. One of my flatmates with which I share pots and pans with is hogging them by cooking and not cleaning up after herself. I’m sick and tired of having to clean up after her every time I want to eat so I’m not going to clean up anymore. It’s oven pies and milk and toast and waffles for me from now own. Suck it.

4. Why do I look like such a dork when I wear glasses and tie my hair up? Seriously, there cannot be a more unattractive look but yet it’s amazingly practical. I can’t win can I?

5. FYI, period pains are like having gastric pains, just lower down. Imagine the worst pressure on your gut like you haven’t eaten all day and your intestines are so full of “wind” that they feel like they are going to burst, and that’s what period pains are like. Except they aren’t constant. Oh no. They ebb between excruciatingly painful to achingly bearable like a indecisive fly trying to get out of a closed window.

Piss off, all of you happy people, and leave me to wallow in my fury.

Rethinking shapes...

Give me athletically toned over curvy tho. Muay Thai ftw!

Wasted waist?

I'm not obsessed with hair or food or clothes or my looks by my own admission. There is one thing i will admit being slightly obsessed with tho. And that's my waist. Mainly because I'm short and I was quite round at one point and I want that curvy cut-in waist but can never manage to get. That hip-to-waist ratio becomes uber important when you're only 5-foot-nothing.

So cue this morning (or rather "afternoon") when I got up and was feeling rather trim and lean. I lost my measuring tape a while back when I lost my sewing kit so I've resorted to using the AV cable from my Canon camera to measure round. Held the length and folded it in half and measured against the length of an A4 peice of paper which i know from Microsoft Word is 11.89 inches.

Saturday, 12.30pm Waist measurement: 24 inches

Score!

I was really pleased. The last times I measured round (not that often, only when I remember to) It's been 25 inches after I wake up.

I measured round a few times to check that I got it right (Yeah, it was right :)

Remeasured at night as well. 25 inches!

It sounds damn vain to be so happy about this but I'm glad to have a waist. It's amazing how easy it disappears when you're short and it takes all the will power in the world to try not to care when I want to binge out on briyani or something. I'm always going to have a thick waist, it's in the genes and I'm just not built to be skinny. Curvy is the best that I can aim for so that's the goal.

Now I need to hit the gym a bit more to tone up. I'd like to get some of that old gymnastic ab definition back. I used to have a six pack you know - back when I was six tho...

Numb Bum

Have you ever sat on your bum so long that it becomes uncomfortable and you have to keep shifting your weight to get some feeling into that area?

Have you ever sat on your bum so long that it begins to hurt when the bottom of the pelvis digs into the seat cushion?

Have you ever sat on your bum so long that it stops hurting and begins to go painfully numb?

Have you ever sat on your bum so long that you can semi-feel the blood pooling at the butt tissues?

Have you ever sat on your bum so long that it stops hurting altogether and your bum feels like a big squishy cushion because there's no more feeling down there?

I just have. It's weird.

Giddy up!

One for the road. A pony tail with a literal hair band. A little messy because I only have one bobby pin but I like it! a 9/10 for neatness and naturality but minus one for me not being able to tie a nice pony tail all the time. And from the front, I look a bit bald with a pony tail. Damn fine hair!

Note to self: remind mum to bring over bobby pins. They are expensive over here!

Au Natural

I like this :)

Air-dried.

9.5/10! Minus points cos my hair isn't shiny :(

I'm glad I can see myself in a messy unposed state and still think it looks better than chemicals and heat. I honestly believe that it looks nicer :)

Balance

Oh dear,

I have become what I hated the most. Too many cutesy posts and none with actual intellectual substance. Exams are not to blame for this drain of blog post uncreativeness. I've just been too happy with life and/or otherwise preoccupied with the Boy and work and so forth to dwell on the darker side of society and existance.

After reading some of my older posts and their comments, I feel like I have lost some good readers in favour of sunshine and sparkles.

I do promise to write something more thought-provoking after the Exams end.

Till then!

Productive procrastination?

My maternal granddad turned 80 over the weekend so

HAPPY 80th Gong Gong!

Yellow for added ong-ness.

* * *

I'm supposed to be writing down notes for Med Eths Exam but instead I found myself craving a dress that I saw on the internet while I was looking for a red dress for graduation. My mum asked me to at least think about what I was gonna wear so the train of thought is not entirely my own. However, I was going thru several online uk retailers (Topshop, Asos, Next etc) and I found this gorgeous 2-in-1 dress top/skirt combo which I really wanna get:

It's 20 pounds but I think it's abso fab cos its a tank top AND a skirt all in one! You may be thinking, but you could do that with a tank top and a skirt. WITHOUT actually buying that. One problem I have with skirts and tops are that the tops have to go down quite low on me cos I have rather a short torso (grrrr) so the skirts usually have to go down quite low too, to the point where they would practially slip off. I have my fair share of skirts but they all have to sit quite low on my hips, and they move upwards (as skirts do) when I walk. Oh, and there's a grey one too!

I couldn't buy either of them because they don't have my size in stock! Gutted!!

I have a little crush on dresses and I'm glad that recently, there are more casual dresses availiable so that it doesnt take a special occasion to pull a dress on and walk out of the house with it. The only casual dress that I have is a brown linen one - the brown is honestly the colour of mud. It's a nice dress but super super boring looking. Maybe over the summer I'll "Gok" it up with some beads or something. Gok's Fashion Fix ftw*!

*people keep asking me what does "ftw" mean? It means For The Win! Deriving from the slang terms that sports pundits use when asked who they think would win the match/race/etc.
e.g. "It's Manchester United for the win!"

* * *

Which is a nice segway to mentioning that Manchester United are the Barclays Premier League Champions 2008-2009! Awesome!

I am very pleased about that and I was watching the United-Arsenal match on justin.tv and I was looking forward to seeing them pick up the trophy and celebrate and all that but the stream that I was watching swiched over to the other Sky Sports Channel so I missed the celebrating! Gutted!!

So I've been trying to find a clear video of the trophy lifting bit in Old Trafford but no luck yet.

* * *

The Boy is nose deep in exams so boa sorte meu amor.

Lea is done with her exams *jealous* hehe Well done Miss Tan!

Full har har

A Full hair braid but with a slight twist. I took half hair first and did 4 turns of a plait and used it as the center braid in the full hair plait. It doenst show but it looks quite smooth I guess. It's not a centre braid as it slants off over the right shoulder. 6/10 for being pretty but boring. Useful in studying situations. Now if only my hair was a little longer then it wouldnt prickle my collarbone so much...

Half Eh?

A pleasant half-hair plait. Straight hair is remnants of the blow-dry a few days ago. Score: 6/10 cos Even tho it loks nice, Taking half hair is tought for me cos my hair is quite thin so it looks even thinner when half is tied up.

* * *

This is wilso serve as a hair diary so that I know what I can and cannot do with my hair. There are weird things that I do to it late late at night which look alright but I quickly forget what I did and how I did it.

Straight Away

Blow-drying your hair is a necessity in the UK. I don't particularly enjoy it, I am fully aware of heat damage and I try not to use the hair dryer but when the weather is damp and cold, a head full of wet hair is the worse thing to have. I use a spray on heat protection + straightener (2-in-1) so my hair comes out (un)naturally straight. I still find it quite eerie even after a couple of years of using this product. I'm used to having air-dried messy hair.

This is blow dried straightness. I need a hair cut. The ends are getting feathery and not behaving.

I reckon a reasonable 7.5/10. Its neat. It feels tidy. It's great for doing pony tails and getting hair out of the face and I like that I can run my fingers (slowly) down from root to tip if I dry it properly. I don't like the look however. Too poker straight and boring. And it never lasts long. One good gust and it's back to hair-all-over-the-face.

The orangey streaks are the remnants of highlights I had in over last July. I got lighter brown highlights and black lowlights which is why you may see an array of orange-brown-black colours in there. The orange is the result of the light brown getting washed out. I had dark purple streaks put in a couple of years ago and they washed out orange too! My hair doesn't hold colours like it holds curls...
The dark mahogany brown in-between the orange streaks is my natural colour. I swear. And I'm quite pleased that it shows up in the sun and in pictures because I can't really see it for myself.

* * *

I'm not that hair obsessed. I just wanted to fill my blog with something that I could talk about that I can talk about with substance. Not necessarily interesting to read but mainly to at least bulk out my Blog entry list.

Oh and I made cheese on toast today! The cheese has gone a bit off I think...

Sleep and Specs

So I slept on the curls and voila! Lovely bouncy waves! They are a little looser than they look in the picture but they feel nice and soft and give my hair a bit of much-needed volume.

I love this hairstyle! 9/10 for gorgeous bouncy waves! The only bad thing is that when windy, the waves will go haywire. And since I also like being messy and running around, they won't last very long. So minus 1 mark for relatively high maintainence.

Also, I highly recommend watching BBC's 10 Things You Need To Know About Sleep. Really informative and really helpful, especially if you're highly strung out on exam stress and have early mornings to wake up too.

* * *

I've also recently remembered that I bought these. No, they are not defective sunglasses, they are Natural Vision specs which I bought from Guardian in Malaysia.

The small open dots allow the eye to focus naturally on a point and they work for any visual impairment from long-sightedness (as tested on my parents), short-sightedness and astigmatism (as tested on me) and a few others which are mentioned on the box but I don't remember what they are. They are my little triumph of retail pioneering because they are about 60 Ringgit and at that price my parents were not happy about me buying them but once I brought them home and made them try it, they were sold. Apparently after wearing it for about 10 minutes, my dad's long-sightedness wasn't so bad. Technically they are better than specs because they force your eyes to focus instead of relying on glasses to do the work. They claim to reverse astigmatism and so on because of this. Unforch at 60 Ringgit a pop, they are a little too pricey for everyone in the family to have one. Since I bought the XS size, thinking I was the only one in the family to ever wear it, I have them here. In Cardiff. Where I haven't worn them in quite a while. I don't know if the claim to reverse visual impairments is true but they are a good and less tiring alternative to specs. Especially if you don't have multifocal lenses for reading. The only trick to it is that you can do more than 20 mins near-point focusing at a time (i.e. reading) because you will strain your eyes. Not a bad downside I reckon.

The wonders of a flat iron

I was bored so I played around with Chern's flat iron which she lent to me for CROWNight and I haven't returned yet. My curling control has improved tremendously tho I am aware of the dangers of heat damage to hair. I didn't blow-dry before curling - I let me hair dry naturally.



The curls here are quite tight and bouncy - not as tight and curly as the CROWNight curls tho... thank goodness. Pictorially, a nice 8/10 because I'm quite pleased with the picture but 7/10 in real life because the curls are way too curly for me. Too short at the sides which makes my face look like a dinner plate.

Exam procrastination

Because of exams I am finding new ways for destressing/wasting time.

Here are a collection of pictures that I have taken to illustrate Exam Hibernation Season:

A receipt from Lidl.

The Highlighted yellow items are instant food. Should keep me going for at least a week.

The aforementioned items. Plus some leftover Cadbury's hot chocolate. Which I have now finished. Nesquick ftw!

* * *

I will also be putting up pictures of what I've done with my hair. It's cheap, it's easy and it wastes time. First off: a double French braid.

Not as tight and severe as I usually do it but the looseness makes my hair shiny. A solid 8/10 I think.

Halloween 2009

Yes, I'm already planning my costume. Because I don't want to end up in the middle of October and not know what to wear.

I want to wear this:

But seeing as it costs a bomb for the shirt, skirt (with tie) and socks, I think I will make my own.

So I need:

• A yellow Spongebob t-shirt
• Brown mini skirt or shorts
• A red tie
• White knee high sports socks
• Black Mary Jane heels
  

That is, provided I actually care about going out on Halloween. Because what's the point of a costume if you're not going to go out? I'm still on the fence about that.

Dream Scare

I hate it when dreams get poignant.

I also hate that poignant isn't spelt the way it sounds. So very annoying.

Will try not to think about aforementioned dream but it is haunting me at the moment. Instead of a dream catcher, someone should invent a dream swatter. To go with a memory eraser. And a sin scrubber.

Societies Awards dinner tonight. Dress code is formal so I have to get all fancied up. Deciding between a floor length plain purple dress and a low cut backless blue and black halter dress. Depends on how skinny I feel tonight I suppose.

Also must go to Lidl to stock up on food. Well not really food exactly. Microwave dinners and frozen oven things don't count as food. I will stock up on Milk and croissants. That seems to be the only thing I enjoy eating nowadays - well, hot choc and croissants. Eggs and butter only onthe shopping list when I feel the urge to bake.

Solitudeness

I feel like I'm in a white washed bubble. Something like the white room/place in the Matrix. Cept I'm there all by alone feeling sorry for myself.

Sounds so pathetic.

Oh well. I'll take a gander round and see if I can't find a door or at least some company.

Oh yes. Exams on the 12th, 22nd and 26th.

Good luck to everyone for theirs.