Vintage Stickers

Met up with Bec today so I could pass her the receipt for the purple knitted gloves she wanted to refund (if possible, since she'd be able to get it at half price elsewhere!) or exchange! We scheduled to meet at 11.30 in the morning, but we got all delayed till 12.30 since Parent Trap was showing on Disney (I haven't watched it in a really long time...)! 

We went to town and walked up and down between shopping malls again! We approached the cashier at the store's level with the receipt and the gloves. We were a li'l nervous 'cos this receipt didn't exactly state how many days were allowed before refund/exchange wasn't valid anymore, and we required the price tag on the item to boot! Bec had asked the cashier to cut off the price tag last week when we bought it so she could wear it immediately. The woman from the store didn't allow a refund in the end, but she gave a voucher worth the price of the gloves of that shopping mall, instead of the store! Crap.

We then walked to Wendy's (exhausting much?) and spent the longest time slowly eating our usual order, in our usual seat! Thank God there wasn't anyone at the counter ordering, so we came through pretty fast. I finally managed to finish my fish fillet burger this time 'round! I'm proud. 

We then went 'round in shops like New Look and Steve Madden and tried on cool boots (yep, even when we had no money whatsoever to afford it). I'm dying to get that way comfy Steve Madden uggs (not the real ones) that are in cool knitted patterns! Too bad it costs 140 bucks. Bec even got a half-priced shirt at 20 bucks from T-Bar (from Australia!) I wanted one but decided I was too poor. 

I managed to get those CityLuxe vintage stickers I've been dying to get since last year, or early this year, I forget. It costs 26 bucks, no discounts in that store or whatsoever, like most others during this holiday season, sadly. I was torn between the 'Americana' and 'Paris' sets. Chose the first in the end! When I went to the imaginary counter and finished paying (really just some display pen sets on a table at the front of the tiny store), Bec noticed we could pay 20 bucks for an annual membership (40% off during your birthday month, and 3 ten bucks vouchers immediately when you've signed up!) It was a bit too late though, else I coulda gotten that membership fee and just have paid off the stickers with the vouchers. Oh well. We opened the tin set later (Bec managed to get it to fit back into the thin plastic it came with later!) and there were two sets of similar stickers, which meant there were only 14 pages of unique stickers. At least there won't be much heartache (I exaggerate) when I use each one, since there's def an extra set there! Pictures below!

Anyway, my mother finished hand washing my new Christmas fingerless gloves, but look how it turned out!

Before -> After

It's become a lot thinner at the wrists!

"Fortunately I own a vintage brain, and I am alive and well in the 21st century, still making records, still working at an intense pace and most of all, still having fun doing it." 

- Tony Visconti

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Final Friday

It's time to break out on the couch again and start festive-watching and eating in front the TV once more! God I love Christmas so much. I'll probably end up in the state like that kitty below by the end of the holidays! Bummer.

 COOLEST. SLUSHIE. MACHINE. EVER.

 OMG imagine the joy living in such a pinkified, Hello-Kitty themed house. I'm in love.

Get gobbled up in a giant cheeseburger as you sleep. Coolest bed ever.

Another uneventful day today, really. Had 6 hours of lessons, then I headed home. Pretty boring life I have, I'm should be so proud *dripping with sarcasm*. We had to do another presentation of outline for Speech Communication! And I got paired with a guy I don't exactly talk to in my class for our stereo capsule radio assignment for radio since our teacher chose partners for us. Oh well. Good news is, today's the final day of classes before the holiday break starts!! Ecstatic. But totally bummed it's only till after the New Year's...

"The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder." 

- Ralph W. Sockman

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Glee Production Halts

Noooooooooo...!! Since several cast members of Glee, such as Dianna Agron (who plays cheerleader Quinn - one of my favorite characters!), came down with tonsillitis, production that was scheduled for this week is postponed to January next year! That's too long a wait! Sure hope the next release of the next episode in February won't be affected though...

       The tonsillitis scare - revealed on Dianna Agron's Tumblog on Friday!

Anyways, Glee aside, I'm working on my assignment for Speech Communication right now, which is due Friday. Gonna attempt to complete it today anyway. As well as a radio commercial script... and study for a meaningless pop quiz on Social Psych. Damn. Guess I won't be able to get any downtime to play computer games (save for blogging right now, I ALWAYS make time for blogging!) Anywho, I gotta do a Phonetics Journal on 30 commonly mispronounced words. I've to search for each phonetic transcription of the words, then explain where I found or heard the words, and how and why this mispronunciation occurred. Might seem easy to you, but for people (like moi) who really hate doing all the explaining, it's pure torture!! I was prowling on the Internet for some inspiration and research, and here's what I came across! Another epic 'smh' (shaking my head)! I compiled it together, since it wasn't exactly the first answer to this question on Yahoo answers.

"English is a funny language; that explains why we park our car on the driveway and drive our car on the parkway." 

- Author Unknown

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Harry Potter 7 Part I: Watched

Had a terrifyingly long day today, both in school and out. Good thing is, I finally got to watch Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows Part I after all this time! First time I've ever been so delayed watching a Potter movie, really. 

Anyway, I started school at noon with Radio Production first. We toured the DAWs (it stands for 'Digital Audio Workstation' - i used to think they meant 'doors') and the recording studio. We also had to install Pro Tools into our Macs with this flash drive. Lucky me, I went through so many flash drives none of them could install successfully on my computer. Each time, it installed half way, or three-quarters through, and the disc friggin' ejected ON ITS OWN, even when I didn't touch the f***ing thing! Obvs, I didn't get Pro Tools installed in my Macbook by the end of the lesson. Bummer. The thing was 6GB too, and my computer had way sufficient memory! Damn. 

The next lesson was the worser part of the day. Speech communication class! We were due to have this graded impromptu speech worth 10% of our final grade! And we had to each speak for 3 minutes! Damn. I barely survived through the practice speech last week. So here was what went down: we each picked a tiny piece of paper with a random topic for our speech (mine was HUNGER), we had 15 minutes to prep and outline our speech, then we were on... for hell (for me, at least)! The first thing I thought of for the hunger topic was the African kids.,, and that was what I went with. I didn't exactly have time to start thinking deep. I had to get research done... and pronto! I decided to talk on world hunger (stuff like chronic hunger) and eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia which cause hunger (now that I think about it, I didn't exactly refer those eating disorders to hunger... oh wells). 

When my turn came on, I was trembling all over. I trudged up to the front of the class best as I could with some ounce of confidence (which is highly unlikely how I felt at that point) and began talking. I managed to reach nearly 3 minutes!!! Def improvement, I s'pose. I paused quite a lot along the way, and stumbled a lot. Damn. I probably was the worst speaker out of the entire class. Still, that's no big surprise.

Immediately set off for town once the teacher dismissed us! I took a bus, then the train. Just when I was on the train to the destination for the cinema my mother asked me to go to, she changed venues! Ugh! It was a full house theater at the previous, and she said another venue was a lot emptier. She already bought the tickets for the movie that was due to start in less than twenty minutes too! I was friggin' pissed by then, but when I reached and began to watch part one of the finale of the epic phenomenon (that is Harry Potter) with nachos in hand, my anger kinda diffused. 

Overall, it was definitely a better film then the Half-Blood Prince! Even my mother agreed for once, since she didn't manage to fall asleep through this movie! There was def more humor in this one too. Plus, it's too bad they gave Hedwig (she's Harry's snowy barn owl!!) so little mourning time when she got killed by a Death Eater trying to protech Harry! They gave more airing time to Dobby, the elf that first appeared in the Chamber of Secrets! Of course, Dobby died in this film. The part where he said he was a free elf just before he got hit with Bellatrix's wand was where I started to feel the tears coming on. Mind you, I do remember some of it from the book I'd read, even if it was years ago! Harry and his friends then buried Dobby (without magic)! 

It ended pretty quick after that, with Voldemort closing the scene after stealing Dumbledore's wand from his grave. I cannot wait for the next final installment!!

Self-explanatory. I love this GIF... must have watched it tens of times already!

"Dobby is a free house-elf and he can obey anyone he likes and Dobby will do whatever Harry Potter wants him to do!"

- Dobby from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

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Hell in Impromptu

Had just two modules today, but it was 6 hours in total! Damn. Anyways, I had radio in the noon! We had to get into random groups (the teacher chose randomly unfortch... but my group was okay), then we had only AN HOUR to come up with a radio commercial, with SFX and all to boot! When it was our turn to present, I realised I didn't have any roles assigned to me, and it was a kinda graded assessment (just 5%). The teacher asked what I was gonna do, and the people in my group just nodded when she asked if I was the one cueing everybody in for the commercial. *Phew*

We had Speech Comm next. I kinda knew there was gonna be a practice impromptu speech, to prep us for the graded impromptu speech next week, that would have to go on for 3 minutes. Crap. I know I'm dead meat for that one. Bec had the same class earlier than mine, in the morning. She told me the subject of the speech and I kinda thought about it for a bit. I still kinda messed up in the end though. I paused (but not as much as I had blanked out in the sales pitch weeks ago). I managed to do my speech with a conclusion, but it lasted only a minute and fifty seconds. I've no idea how I'm gonna have to talk for 3 whole minutes in the next one. Argh.

These rats are hibernating up to Christmas too! Adorbs Santa hats!!

Check out this Dancing Dog groovin' to Mexican tunes! ¡Ay, caramba! Though if you take away that catchy music, you'll realize the poor shaggy is really trying to claw through the glass window!



"Remember, if Christmas isn't found in your heart, you won't find it under a tree."
- Charlotte Carpenter

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Screwed Presentation

We finally had our Social Psychology presentation today. Real tiring day it is, for sure. I arrived pretty early for the presentation (we all had to, or else 1% would be deducted off the entire group if just that one person wasn't in class yet).


My group went 2nd! When we went up to the teacher and gave him our flash drive AND a CD. He started scolding us when he saw that flash drive. Something went wrong with the paper we handed up to him too, 'cos we filled it up wrongly. Naturally, we got scolded for that as well. It didn't do good for our nerves just before our presentation. He told us to calm down to boot. God.


We showed our human documentary first (love the music - it was Pokemon Red/Blue Route 1). We spoke our powerpoint slides pretty all right. Somehow, we think we did the worst out of all the other groups in class though. Damn. Ours totally wasn't in depth at all. Oh well. 


Had hot cream of mushroom soup for lunch when we went to the printing shop! It burned my tongue, bad. It was real awesome tho, the soup. Had WritComm after that. Did tons of activities. Then, I went home. Another boring, boring day. Gah. Share

St. Regis

Got to attend a wedding at St. Regis! First time staying in a hotel here, albeit a five or six star one! I actually am starting to miss the place now... It was totally grandeur in there. From the lobby to the ballroom to the guest rooms! I had to wait a few hours after I went home from less than 2 hours of WritComm (thankfully, it's really supposed to be 3 hours, but it never exceeds 2 hours of class time) - my mother had left to get a hairdo at the hairdresser's and by the time she got back it was around 5! Plus, we had a hard time calling for a taxi. It was raining pretty heavily to boot.


By the time we reached the hotel (my mother kept beating the bellboy to everything - opening the door of the taxi, getting her bags from the boot... It was hilarious!), the wedding solemnization was nearly over! Just in time I suppose. The people who were getting married were my cousin Violet (I don't talk to her or most of 'em much - not exactly in my age range if you get what I mean) and some guy (obvs. a guy) called Chris.


Anyways, after the solemnization was over, we got to return to the hotel room since the dinner wasn't due to start anytime soon! Pity, Bec coulda have come to St. Regis to the hotel room right then. Took as many photos of the room as the camera could possibly snap (mostly flash, it was a lousy cam!). It was a pretty room.

All their couches and armchairs all over the hotel (even in the rooms) were hell comfy. You could just sink in it (in a good way) and just fall asleep! And how cute is that tiny glass table?!

Night view. FYI, the curtains and drapes were totally awesome. There were three sets, 2 translucent and another the red drapes! The button remotes at the bedside table could control each one to draw open and close!

ABOVE & BELOW: Really, they're just the same chandelier (although it doesn't look like the kinds you'd usually see - it looks cheaper). 

I didn't get to sleep on the bed that night. Two li'l toddlers named Isaiah and Kaira (somehow, I'm their aunt) and two grandmas (one which is theirs and one which is mine) slept on it instead. I got the couch. Lucky me. It wasn't too bad sleeping on it though. 

I slept in one of these bathrobes. I didn't get a blanket, poor moi. They felt kinda stiff though, but are really long! 

The door has a chain lock that works INSIDE some device instead of having to hook it outside. Okay, that was a crappy and bad explanation. I'll try again.

This is how door chain guards usually work. They're placed on the door. The one at St. Regis works inside the hinges, rather. Cool technology. Okay, I bet you probably still wouldn't get it. Whatever. I don't know why I bother anyways.

Now, photos of the bathroom!

There is a mini TV (similar channels to the one outside in front of the bed) right above the bathtub! Didn't manage to get a shot of that, unfortch. There was even an accompanying tiny remote! Too cute.  I wish I had TV to watch while I soak in chocolate bubbles in the tub...

This shower jet is seriously fascinating. There are three modes you can shower with here. The top - which would just blast down on you like a waterfall (I didn't bother trying that), the middle portion, which has three tiny jets which would just shoot the water horizontally out at you and of course, the shower head you can just detach and use.

The view at night. I know there really isn't much to see...

Anyways, we were all feelin' pretty hungry, so we took a look at the menus for room service (there were 2 for different restaurants that were in the hotel!). We didn't get anything in the end... They were all too pricey and although there were lots of options, we couldn't exactly find anything that was light and cost reasonably, well, acceptable. I'd wanted to get the escargots (that's snails in Francais!) though... I kid!

My brother reading the menu.

Since the wedding dinner was due to start around 8, and we were starving, my brother, cousin and I followed our father to the shopping mall nearby to get something to eat. We loaned the umbrellas outside the hotel (without telling any staff around) and walked in the drizzle. Found there was a cool Scandinavian shop in the mall! The scent from the candles in there were positively alluring me in. I'll go back there in the future, for sure! 


Anyways, we got food from the food court. My brother, cousin and I got three wild mushroom soup (yummers) and chicken and calamari at 8 bucks (my cousin and I shared this). I forgot what my brother ordered. We walked back to the hotel after that with some time to spare, and I whipped out the camera and started snapping stuff around me once more... including the corridors on the guest room floors! I didn't get to go to the pool area though, pity.

The carpet at the lift lobby and my brother's interfering shoe.

A bonbon wrapper statue outside the ballroom with the Singapore flag on it!

People at work on the huge Christmas tree in the middle of the hotel lobby! It was later lined with fake presents around the sides of the tree!

Magnifique boat-like chandelier!

Apparently, the description said 'Nude couple hugging'. Lol

Those are really reflections. They're just mirrors!

Another mirror on the ceiling!

They put lots of paintings as decor on the walls around the hotel.

Another statue. Nude, most likely.

I love staircases like these, especially when there's a carpet like that in between.

Another huge chandelier... They seem to have an awful lot around the hotel. Really beautiful though!

We got into the ballroom at 8 plus! I got a seat between my cousin and my brother. Anyways, they had ah-mazing door gifts lying on each table! A letter opener with a star charm attached to it and a heart-shaped trinket box in a velvet brown bag. Too lovely! 

 Dayuuuum I'm in love with the trinket box!

 Close-up! 

The letter opener! I didn't take it out of the packaging for a picture. 

 The tableware is absolutely exquisite!

 View of the rest of the grand ballroom.

 Several candles on each table! They went out halfway through the wedding dinner...

 My brother just had to burn something..! He ripped the card off the door gift and held it over the candle flame. It turned out quite nicely, and he didn't burn the entire place down, thank God.

 The finished product...

The bride and groom walked in through huge double doors close to my table. The two kids Isaiah and Kaira walked ahead of them and walked slowly. They didn't know exactly what to do and some of the staff and their parents waved them in the direction. Lol. The girl Kaira didn't exactly know what to do with the basket of flower petals in her hand too. She threw only 5 or 6 petals the entire walk. Lol. Then, they rolled a pretty lame slideshow of how the bride and groom met, though I'd admit it was rather sweet. And the figures in the cartoon looked like the real people it was portraying. 

...And dinner finally came! Been waiting all night for this!!

 First up! From left to right, roasted pork (even though I'd sworn off pork I couldn't resist and bit off the top brown parts. Gave the meat to my grandmother. My brother did the same.), wasabi prawn atop a watermelon slice and octopus atop spicy jelly fish! The wasabi prawn and jelly fish was gross, but I finished the rest! I was pretty happy they offered mini octopus.

I ate 2 octopuses - my brother's and mine!

 Broccoli, mushroom (I hate these dark brown kinds) and abalone! I finished this dish save for the mushroom, of course!

 This was the second last dish! Yummy noodles.

Finally! The dessert was last. There was chocolate truffle cake (the tiny one at the side) and ice cream in red glutinous rice. Scraped the ice cream off and didn't bother with the red stuff. Gross.

When the whole thing ended, my mother and father (who was slightly drunk) started urging me I shouldn't stay overnight at the hotel since the 2 kids and their grandma were staying in that room too. I was so exasperated. But in the end, they decided I could stay over with my grandma. My brother and 'rents went home in a taxi. 

Anyways, this blog post is coming to an end... I took nearly an hour and a half doing this up, so I'm getting exhausted... To make the long story short, I tried the shower (it rocked), stayed in bed watching a re-run of the AMAs and reading a Clique prequel, and waited for the two kids and their grandma to arrive in the room. They winded up playing Plants VS. Zombies on my iPad. Or at least, the boy kid did (he actually knew how to play - sorta! Even though it seems he's only 5 to 6 years old!). The girl was nearly in tears 'cos he wouldn't share the iPad with her. They're kinda growing on me. Never used to converse with much, if not at all. Ended up going to bed close to 2!

"Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction."  

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Footnote...!!
I'm actually posting this 2 days late, but I'll just put this as the actual date of the wedding! I couldn't actually blog since there was no WiFi available at St. Regis! Damn. We had to pay for Internet access! Ten an hour. Twenty a day. Goshers. Share