Travelling

I am inspired by my cousin travelling alone and think its a good idea to go for one before I graduate for good and possibly having to leave Europe. I don't think I would have the courage to go travelling alone anywhere else in the world, as much fun as it sound. Say, I wanted to go travelling alone at the Mediterranean or even just Paris. I think my father would kill me before I am allowed to do that.

So, I am thinking about the Scandinavian as I never been to any of these countries before and I've heard good experience from friends who had visited the cities and friends from the cities. Plus they have kick ass seafood. As a loyal seafood fanatic, I had to visit one of the Scandinavian countries before I die right? If you think Teluk Bahang or Tambun (places fame for seafood in Penang, Malaysia), you are dead wrong!!! I had seafood on the cruise from Newcastle to Amsterdam, it was great compared to Teluk Bahang's and Tambun's but I am sure anyone from Scandinavian will think otherwise. Freezing deep sea water breed the best seafood.

My first few choices are Copenhagen and Oslo or perhaps Germany even though its not a Scandinavian country. I could visit my friend from university. I had to ask my cousin about her experience after she gets back from her trip before I decide. This will tick off another wish in my bucket list. I never once think I would have the chance to do that and I am so excited now. I am going to stay in hostel and meet new people. So, now I had to make a decision on where to go......its only mid-semester and I am now thinking of going on a holiday.....

Chinese New Year celebration in London 2013

Chinese New Year this year was different. I actually doesn't dislike it. Call me abandoning my own culture, call me unappreciative. But I never like the noise and the symbolic-ness of red. Red is good and black is bad? Its just a colour and I like black. Also, Chinese New Year just ain't my cup of tea. =)

This year was different, I had a "reunion dinner" with my cousin and I invited my friend to join the fun. She had never seen a Chinese New Year celebration before so I thought it would be nice for her to experience it. We decided to have Korean in oppose of the usual Chinese food that we always have during CNY eve.

We had BBQ, dukbhoki and bibimbap. As the name suggest, Korean food has a reputation of being spicy, like many other cuisine. And my friend can't really have spicy food. But kudos to her, she tried it anyway.


And gifts kept coming in. My mother sent me some bak kwa all the way from Malaysia. I received an ang pao from a very sweet aunt that understood my lonely feeling of being abroad during festive time. Even though I love the fact that I am away from all the craziness. I appreciate the thought greatly.

My former colleagues and good friends sent me CNY cards and I used them to spruce up the place, make it more CNY-ly. Like what my friend once said, no celebrations are better than good companies. Even though I don't get your companies personally, I am glad there are little somethings that kept me company all the time.

Reunion Dinner....Korean Barbeque and a whole table of food.

Friend that I invited to join in the CNY fun.

The next day, I endure the pack underground and took a trip to Chinatown, London. I wanted to experience the difference in celebration. I mean, this is London, even CNY should be grand and huge. But.....I have to say I am slightly disappointed but a lot people seemed to have a great time watching the  Lion dance though.

I only took a few pictures of the Lion Dance because I felt bad for hogging a place. I had seen this more times than I could count and Lion Dance isn't my thing. I took a few quick pictures and gave other people opportunity to be entertained by it instead.

Crazy expensive durian.

It snowed on CNY. Just made my day

And this comes a few days after first day of CNY with a very cute hair piece, just in time for Valentine's day. Come back in a few days, I will post my Valentine's day post and find out who I spent it with and what London had for Valentine's day. Yes, London has celebration for everything. Gotta love London!!! There is still 7 days left for CNY. So, Happy CNY. Btw, when is 七夕情人节？(Chinese Valentine's day)

Chinese New Year Update

Hello!! Happy Chinese New Year to all my Chinese / non-Chinese friend. I just want to update you on me, I am quite busy with mid-terms coming up and a lot of social events to attend! I am actually excited about Chinese New Year this once. I will be having reunion dinner with my cousin in a few hours time and I've invited my non-Chinese friend to tag along, this is the first time she will experience all these.

And there are parades and performance tomorrow, I might be going to one or two of them. I will update when I have the time after the parades and performance. This is the first time I "celebrate" Chinese New Year in London, I think it will be more fun here than back home. Its most importantly, cold and relative-free. The 2 things I dread the most during Chinese New Year. I would be dreading even more when relative start asking questions about whether I had a life partner I wanted to grow old with. Gimme a break, I am 23 years old, I am allowed to diversify while I can. =p Let the less fun counter party settle for the familiar face. I am going for the hot Italians. Hehehehe....

Anyway, Happy Chinese New Year again! 新年快乐！！！

Probably the most inappropriate thing I had to say

This is a wordy post, skip if you like only pictures. Apparently Nuffnang ads didn't work on Microsoft platform, it works well on my computer though, I will try to get it fix.

Wednesday is the most tiring day in my week. I have classes from 9 to 9 with 2 breaks in between. I had my fair share of working from 8 to 10pm but you know when you are sitting there listening. Its just not the same. Absorbing info are much much tiring. Hahaha. Anyway on the side note. I have 2 things to share.

First and foremost, this is probably the most inappropriate thing i have to say and I would just say it once, at least officially. I can never stop gushing it to my friends. My teaching assistants are hot! Who knew the field of academia can be hot. When i say hot, i meant hunky-abit muscular-with a bit of facial hair kind of hot. Exactly my kind of hot. Hahahaha. Really, everything is modernised nowadays. Gone are the days that lecturers are middle age man that looks like Einstein because they are just too smart to bother and they wear jumpers all the time.

My lecturer dressed smartly, suits, waistcoat and all. Partly because he was working in addition to his teaching job. Also partly because he is so young. My friend's first impression of him is "wow, our lecturer has muscles!" Lol. I won't post any pictures due to very obvious reasons but i could show u if you want to, as i really thing this is really inappropriate. :)

Back to teaching assistants, most of them, i dare say 9.5 out of 10 are italians. I had 2 teaching assistants last semester. Italians. I have more than 2 teaching assistants because they teach different topics in the same subject, all italians. :) but i am not complaining, they are cute. That makes the subject interesting. Well partly anyway. Yes their pictures are available online too. :)

The second thing I wanted to put into writing is how much respect I have for some people. Despite on what they went through, they are still so strong. I used to think that I would paddle through sticky circumstances like this, but on a second thought, I would have thought of many ways not to. I just am not that strong that I would want myself to think. To put things into perspective, I think this is my second resolution this year, try not to be influenced by people THAT easily. What I do now is to avoid these people at all cost. My principal is "don't ask, don't tell" and "I'd rather be ignorant than knowing the painful truth" as well as "Ignorant is bliss". Of course, these works till a certain extent.

So, right now, I would gradually teach myself to take in negative feedback or "bad news" (not necessarily bad but things that would get me upset when I heard/know about it).

Besides these, I would like to wish all my friends Happy Chinese New Year, no matter where you are!! I received bak gua from my mother and decided that its too precious to share with my cousin. =p And we decided to have dinner in Chinatown on the eve, so good luck to us finding a place as well as squeezing through mountains and sea of humans. Hahaha. Anyway, Happy Chinese New Year! I don't care about chinese superstition, this is MY year - the year of SNAKE, trust me year of dragon are overhype, I grew up among them (hehe, sorry Eugene) and most importantly, I WILL RULE THIS YEAR!

Ok, I have to go pay attention on my teaching assistant now. =)

Pretty Little Liars

Ok, recently I got myself hooked onto Pretty Little Liars and fell in love with Troian Bellisario, she look so special, according to wiki, She is of African-American, English, Italian, and Serbian descent. I But I think she looks abit Asian, like Rumi Neely, a famous fashion blogger from US.

Left: Rumi Neely, Right: Troian Bellisario

Source: The Coveteur

Source: http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/troian-bellisario/images/19940678/title/troian-bellisario-photo

Rumi Neely is Japanese, Dutch and Scottish. Just my point to say that she is pretty.

Anyway, off topic: I just wanted to share the song I heard from the series, Andrew Belle's In My Veins. Its a bit emo though but I sure like it.

Here's a link to the song, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Andrew Belle - In My Veins

New Year, New Head with a theatre show

1 February 2013

I had wanted to cut my hair for a while now as I got sick of long hair. I am always the kind of person that would change dramatically because that would gives the freshest look. And since hair would grow back eventually, I wouldn't mind cutting my hair off just like that.

What makes this so special is, this is my first time cutting and dyeing my hair in London. Most people might find it a shock but I usually cut my hair for RM 12 (£2.5) and had been dyeing my hair for less than £20 professionally. Yes, it is that cheap. I had been to the salon 3 times in my life and this is the third.

Yes, so paying an amount above £25 would be consider expensive for me. Like all my haircuts, it was rather impromptu. I didn't want the time to think that what if I miss my long hair or I wanted something else. I like being "there, you are there, no turning back". Of course, getting a hair cut isn't that serious. I still could say no if I wanted. This salon I went to is an Asian salon, I have had haircuts by non-asian before, it just doesn't work for me. So, I am glad to say they did a good job. Anyway, here are some in progress and after picture.

I touched up my roots and cut off about 3 inches of layers, I wanted the haircut like my sister's. And so far, I am loving it. Under light, it looks like there are some purple (which is quite obvious in the picture below, though I did not have any purple from this time, only from 6 mths ago, I guess the new color brough the purple out under the right lighting), red and black.

Under sunlight, it looks quite red, not fiery red but quite a substantial amount of red.

This was from instagram if you haven't already know.

Just in time for CNY. Lol, I am never the person that cut my hair for CNY. I just need a change in my hair, thats it. Later that night, we went for a theatre show - The Shogun and the English Samurai at the Sadler's Wells Theatre, Islington, London. Its half Japanese, half English. So when the actors speak Japanese, I had to read the subtitles above.

This is the only few pictures I took as we are not allowed to take pictures. There are alot of people, mainly Japanese women with their non-Japanese partners.

A happy cousin after the show. It was better than I expected. Well, though I don't think I had the mind to watch theatre often. I had to prepare for it. Its quite an event for me, I can't just go spontaneously, it had a more serious tone compared to a movie. And I learnt something new, if the audience clapped long enough, the cast will come out again and again to thank (bow) you. It is an interesting yet goose bump inducing fact, don't you think? It was so grand, so "wow, I could never do that in my entire life". It is still on at Sadler's Wells, if you want some history, some humour and a very special theatre (English speaking and Japanese speaking), I am sure you will enjoy it.

This is part one of my "in London, nothing is too weird" collection.

I took this picture because the platform is double the size the usual platform, I think its because there usually are a lot of people travelling via this station.

This concludes my first and probably last haircut in London and my first non-english speaking (completely) and second experience watching theatre show. I am going to watch the famous 4/5 theatre show next, any companions?

"Sort of" Bucket List

A little more than a year ago, when things gets bad, I started changing a lot in my life. Perspectives mainly. I tried to compile a list of things that I would never do, more precisely, the old me wouldn't do.

1. I decided to get a tattoo, a thought that was with me for years but didn't get around doing it (also mainly due to the former love doesn't like tattoo-ed girl, I would never let anyone get into my way anymore, I had the tattoo for more than a year and everyday its like discovering something new). Am thinking of getting a new one soon but it was so expensive in London.

2. I decided to change myself a little bit and how I see life. I decided to get out of my way to do things that I weren't comfortable in doing.

3. I decided to get an Iphone even though I used to dislike it to the guts and don't think I will ever get one, even though I am a Macbook fan girl. I think things change when life decided to change.

4. I hated going out till late at night as I prefer to chillax at home, nowadays, you would be lucky to find me sitting at home in the evening, chilling.

5. I started going out more with different people, even though inside i was screaming in protest, I still make myself go. I said yes to all invitations (valid ones, of course, not some random dodgy guy). If you know the old me, I wouldn't do that. Am I right, Master? Its all because of my high dependency on him.

During New Year, my dad texted me a long list of wishes and advises that include this particular one that i like "Even if you don't feel like it, get dress, show up, the best has yet to come." Well, that was so right. Naturally when I saw this stem cell donation drive, I didn't think twice to sign up for it. I was horrified with needles and tubes. I saw how it was done on my mother and I freaked out on how high the blood pressure is when you extract blood. But seeing this is one of the things I wasn't comfortable doing, I am going to give it a try. I do not know whether I would be a match but at least I decided to do something about it.

Perhaps donating blood could be a yearly thing that I do and also sign up to be an organ donor (one thing I always wants to do) when I die. Did anyone one where I can find information on this in Malaysia?

6. I never really liked photography, I believe that we should savour the moment rather than busy snapping pictures for memories. The memories that was captured in the mind and heart counts more than the memories on photo paper. Pictures wouldn't be able to capture how you feel about the place there and then. Memories might fade but the feeling, it will always be there. First kiss, I forgot how it was but I remember how it feels like - weird and wrong. Hahahaha, messy. My point being, it will always be there. The feeling at that moment, it was irreplaceable and unlikely to be forgotten for life.

But now, I had the responsibility to share my life with everyone that cares about me. So I picked up a little bit of photography using my Iphone. And I got some really nice comments from my Instagram, my followers increased and I got a little recognition from the school paper! I shall go steal a few copies and show it to you guys. But hey, my main point of all this is, if I didn't venture to this area, I will never had gotten that. Sometimes its a complete waste of time but sometimes, the time wasted isn't all for nothing.

So perhaps it was right of him to tell me that even if I don't see us together in the future, it doesn't mean its not worth the time. Sometimes the journey is the destination.

Lets see, I was picking out things that I was never comfortable doing and try to strike it off my list one by one. Whats next on the list?