Monday 31 March 2014

Night Night.

Chilling in bed watching Night Cops, this boy got arrested for drink driving, he completely smashed his car up into a wall and got arrested and he's crying. He's actually crying. He's whimpering because he just passed his test a week ago, just bought his car the day before and now it's all smashed up. No sympathy for this guy. Shouldn't be driving when you're not fit to drive. This guy was saying he bought this car with a broken handbrake, no rear lights and worn out tyres - why? I don't understand some people, why drive a car that's like that let alone drive a car when you're intoxicated? 

I actually find it quite funny that he only passed his test a week ago and now he's getting banned for driving lolol. Might even have to re-take his test. Shame.

I've been such a lazy cow recently that my Mum has caught on. Did nothing this weekend apart from play League, eat, watch TV, eat some more, play some more. Should be doing my coursework but it's too easy for me to actually spend any time doing it. Started one a while ago and already done 200 words. No effort. Should have it done by Sunday if I start it Wednesday. It's only due next Wednesday. 

Mum was asking me why I wasn't doing any revision and just playing all day. FFS. I hate it when Mum questions me about my life, she's pretty much accepted my independence but sometimes when it comes to study or work she worries too much. She never lets me have more than one day to relax and do what I want. I mean she expects me to be looking for a full time job by the time lectures finish - wtf, exams haven't even started yet, woman. I just get really angst-y and touchy when she gets annoyed at me for playing/lazing around too much, I need time to play as well as work, jeez. So much pressure from my Mum sometimes, I hate it *teenage ranting*

My body fucking aches at the moment because I've started working out again - this is coming from someone who hasn't worked out properly in 1 year LOL. Stopped working out as soon as I got together with the boyfriend (naturally), I feel like for a lot of girls, once you find someone you really love, you learn to accept yourself for who you are. Not meaning to sound soppy, but I'm beginning to love myself for who I am, it's slow but it's gradual - my boyfriend always reminds me of my beauty (vom). But I'm determined to keep fit for the summer, no aims for six pac abs but hey, we'll see what happens. Hating it at the moment because my body feels so weak and limp. Did press ups the other day and my elbow hurt for the rest of the weekend, tried to do press ups today and my arms felt like beansprouts. FML. 

Weight wise, I'm trying to get down to 8 st. Currently, I'm 8 st 3. How hard can it be to lose 3 lbs eh? I've come a long long way from 2 years back when I was my heaviest at 10 st 5. Maybe the pressures of final year uni and masters has made my weight go bye bye. Who knows. Weight loss isn't always great though, I've lost a lot of fat in my boobs LOL. I'm not into this whole eat clean shit though, truth is, I cannot  eat clean - I need to have the yummy unhealthy foods in my life or else I'll just be a huge ball of depression feasting off vegetables for the rest of my life. Tbh, you need carbs in your diet to burn fat anyway. It's just all about portion control and moderating the unhealthy shit against the more healthier shit in life for me. 

Anyway, just thought I'd do one of these Q&A's since I'm bored as hell and trying to get sleepy. 

1. Are you a very open or private person? 

Private. Well, I would say private but according to psychometric testing, I'm an extrovert so...

2. What is your favourite Christmas movie? 

Not into Christmas movies much but Love Actually was pretty good, oh, and Bridget Jones Diary.

3. When did you stop believing in Santa? 

Since he failed to come down my chimney when I was like, 8. Waited for him at midnight with my Dad as well. Totally stood up.

4. What do you get complimented on the most? 

My eyes probably and hair (when it was long... sob sob).

5. How are you feeling right now? 

Aching, all over.

6. If money was no object, where would you move to? 

I would move into central. A year ago, I might've said I'd move to a different country but I've actually become pretty attached to my home city.

7. Who was the last person to make you cry? 

Boyfriend. He always makes me cry T___T /truth

8. Did you make any resolutions for this year? What were they? 

I actually didn't but I'll make some now...

  • Work out until summer
  • Revise hard for the exams
  • Begin job hunting after exams & accept that I have to go out into the big wide world of work one day
  • Quit League 
  • Save money
  • Stop spending on crap I don't need
  • Do lots of overtime at work to save duh monies


9. Is there a song which can bring you to tears instantly? 

Nope. My heart is hard as nails.

10. Who was the last person you talked about sex with? 

Boyfriend.

11. How did you bring in the New Year? 

Karaoke with friends. I got sprayed with champagne though, wasn't nice as it went into my eyes.

12. Have you ever online dated? 

Yes.

13. Post a screen shot of your Twitter “Interactions” page. 

No.

14. Click on the messages tab on Facebook, post a screen shot (erase surnames for safety). 

Nein.

15. Post a screenshot of your tumblr activity page. 

Aiyah.

16. Do you believe in soul mates? 

I do actually. I'm the type of person that believes there's someone for everyone as well.

17. Do you play video games? 

Too many.

18. What age do people usually mistake you for? 

Idk how to answer this one, I mean a few years back people used to think I was really young, younger than my actual age. But now, I feel like I'm started to look like I'm 22, maybe corner shop guys still think I'm under 18 (since I still get asked for ID) but sometimes I slip the net.

19. What or whom do you miss right now? 

I miss the days where I used to sleep early and wake up early.

20. What perfume do you wear?

Depends on how I'm feeling. I usually wear Marc Jacobs Daisy now (because summer is coming), but for nights out, I usually wear Lacoste Pink as it's longer lasting and stronger. Used to be a huuuuge fan of Harajuku Lovers: Wicked but after 2 bottles of that stuff, I got sick of it.

Saturday 29 March 2014

Clocks going forward!

Doesn't mean shit to me though as I have no work tomorrow!

To think I took holiday at the right time, Mother's Day tomorrow AND clocks have gone forward so that means 1 hour less sleep - although that won't mean much to me since I don't have anything to wake up for. But I get to wake up and see my Mum receive the flowers and card I bought for her =)

I'm actually really bored at home when I have days off, it's come to the point where I'm so bored that I actually consider doing coursework to put my time to good use. It's a good thing I guess, then work actually gets done and procrastination is 0 because I have nothing to procrastinate with. Happy days.

My friend got her rook pierced yesterday, so jealousssss. I've wanted one as well ever since I got my conch pierced but I just never could decide which ear to get it done on. I wanted to do it on the right ear since I have too many on my left ear already, but the problem is that I sleep on my right side so if I had a piercing there, I'd have trouble sleeping =/ waking up to a pillow soaked in blood is not fun. I need to get my 2nd hole re-pierced on my right ear as well since it closed up for some weird reason. Idk, maybe I might reconsider getting it done because I'm pretty happy with my piercings at the moment and taking care of a new one for a few months until it heals is going to be too much work for me.

Spent the day being really unproductive. Went dim sum as planned, well, not all planned... We wanted to go Imperial China but when we got there they were like "We only accept cash now", this pissed me off slightly because what dim sum restaurant doesn't accept card? It's stupid, who do they think we are? We're not rich people who just carry around wads of cash in hand wherever we go. So we left and went all the way to Wing Yip and had dim sum there, foodwise, it was better there anyway. Came home and pretty much sat on my arse playing League all day - very productive as you can see. Could've started coursework but no, League came first.

Boyfriend wants to take me with him to have a Thai massage one of these days. He's been experiencing some deep muscle pain in his legs, but I just keep insisting that it's because he's too fat for his legs to handle his belly weight LOL. I'm scared of massages - what if they hurt me? I know the best massages are ones that make you feel a little bit of pain in order to loosen your muscles up but still, I don't want to come out all bruised up :(

Since I'm watching Made in Chelsea (nothing else is on TV at 4am), I read this article the boyfriend showed me about some upcoming spin off called Made in Brixton. My god. It's going to be some ghetto version of MIC, I cannot actually imagine how one would make a reality TV show about Brixton, it's going to be full of slang/hood words - may as well be in a different language for some people. If you haven't grown up around the language, you'll be watching it like wtf. Maybe I'm just being stereotypical of the people in Brixton but it's how I see it everytime I visit my boyfriend (who happens to live in... Brixton!)

Friday 28 March 2014

Socially Awkward.

I feel like I'm socially awkward when it comes to my fellow masters classmates. I don't know whether it's because I don't know how to talk to internationals or whether it's because I'm already from this country so I don't feel like I need to make friends with others (not that having new friends is something bad...) but whenever there's a social event, I just don't feel like going. Socially awkward right there. I even considered that maybe they think I'm fresh off the boat so they think I don't speak English LOL.

That reminds me of a few days ago when me and the boyfriend were in Waterloo and this street entertainer was all like "HELLO, WELCOME TO LONDON!!" to us and we were just walking away from him in our face and I shouted "WE ARE FROM LONDON!" was a funny moment. It's like if you're of ethnic minority in London, you need to get used to street entertainers all up in your face trying to get you to buy something or watch something. Similar thing with these women trying to sell you roses in Chinatown - yes, they've invaded Chinatown.

I submitted an essay 3 days before the deadline today, wtf is going on? I'm always a day before the deadline kind of person but for some reason I managed to finish this essay super quickly. When I read through it, I had a feeling a lot of it was lifted from the textbook but oh well, you can't blame me for the lack of literature on culture and change out there. I blame the academics in this field. I can't even celebrate the fact that this essay is out of the way though, because I have another 2 to do (technically, I have 3 including my final project but that's not due for another 6 months so I don't even want to think about it).

Can't sleep right now so I'm trying to waste some time by doing some blogging, no one is on League to play with me... Flipped my mattress earlier and it feels sooooo good. The perks of having a memory foam mattress - best investment ever. I need to invest in a heated mattress cover next winter, tried to get the boyfriend to buy me one for Christmas but then other things got in the way of my dreams to never have cold feet in bed ever again.

Celebrating Mother's Day early tomorrow, Mum wants yum cha (a.k.a. dim sum) tomorrow so we have to treat her to that. She doesn't know we bought her flowers either so somehow, Mother's Day has become ever more expensive as the years go by - I still remember we used to invest our pocket money on buying a card for Mum every year, now it's all about the yum cha and flowers now. But hey, you only ever have one Mum. I love being able to have money to spend on Mum, even though I earn peanuts working part time in retail, I spend wisely now so that I can buy things I really feel like I deserve rather than spending for the sake of spending. I have the most wonderful and supportive boyfriend as well who always helps me out and doesn't ask for anything back - I'm so grateful to have him by my side.

Better finish here before I get soppy and obsessive.

Wednesday 26 March 2014

Legit reason to copy from the textbook.

There is NOTHING on organisational development model of change in literature. Nothing I can access anyway - I don't know why my university claims to say we should have 100% access to all journals but we don't...

So I'm just copying and citing large chunks of text from the textbook.

Needless to say, this essay is almost done and I've only spent like, 3 days on it. Such an easy essay to write but I bet because I found it so easy, I'm going to get a really shit mark for it.

Always happens.

Tuesday 25 March 2014

Haven't had a day as long as this one in a long time.

For once, before 1am, I am ready to crawl into bed and put an end to this day.

But I know it won't happen because I turn nocturnal even when I don't mean to be. I think the reason why I'm so uber tired besides waking up before midday today is that there's this house down my road that is undergoing some major refurbishments and they were doing some wall injections or re-wiring as the noise was like a constant hum/drill sound. So that pretty much woke me up at 9am and then a couple of times after that up until 11am. Sigh.

Went shopping with the parents at Brent Cross today, the only reason we went Brent rather than Kingston is because Dad wanted to eat at Wing Yip haha he's too Chinese. He'd have Chinese food over any other cuisine any day. Mum had a shopping spree at H&M to make use of my staff discount, I'm surprised she actually saw a lot of things she liked and ended up spending an hour there to pick out clothes. I randomly found a long sleeved maroon shirt in the sale for £4 so I just picked it up and said I was buying it - woohoo, further discounts on top of the sale price = shirt for about £3. Went into Office and I bought some new sandals for the summer - I'm doing all my summer wardrobe shopping now even though it's spring, it's alright to skip a season right? Or else I'd end up wasting so much money getting a new wardrobe of clothes every season... Does anyone even do that?

Ended up getting home around 5pm, went straight out again to meet the boyfriend for dinner. We went Namco in Waterloo for the evening until we wanted dinner, Namco is an arcade place with lots of games, bumper cars, shooting games, driving games etc. it's awesome because you get tickets for every game you play and then you can redeem the tickets for a prize before you leave. It's sort of like, everyone wins which is nice. My boyfriend won me something from one of those claw machines!! He's tried many times to win me something from these scammy machines but with no luck... This time he got me a Despicable Me plushie on his 2nd try :D I was such a happy girl obsessing over my minion in the arcade. We played a few games, he beat me at most of them apart from basketball shooting ahaha. I got to stage 3 and he didn't even manage to pass stage 1 TROLOLOL.

We Vapianos again for dinner this time, never been there for dinner but it's a lot more packed than lunchtime. I think most people went for dinner around 8pm as when we went there it was around 9pm and queues were short but tables were pretty full... It was a nice light dinner, we were considering Misato, Taro, Eat Tokyo, Nandos... But nothing apart from pasta made us feel hungry, so pasta it was.

It's currently 1am so I don't think any more of my essay will be done, my brain cannot handle the pressure of adding any more words to my essay anyway. So looks like tomorrow will be a hard day's worth of work with my essay to finish and to record my last interview for my mini project.

Oh, I found out I have this weekend off work as well - my job must sound like such a doss because of the amount of times I'm on paid holiday. It's nice to have this weekend off in time for Mother's Day.

Sunday 23 March 2014

Getting a little too old for this.

Long story short, went out yesterday night, 2 hours sleep later and I'm at work for an 8.5 hour shift. 

Right now my body is in agony due to the lack of sleep, working too hard at work and having to walk home in the cold because it's Sunday and buses are pretty much a no-go as they come every 30 mins.

I'm not actually feeling tired though, my body is tired but my mind is really awake right now. I'm planning to stay up to catch the latest episode of Walking Dead later on... We'll see how far that goes though, I have a feeling within the next 2 hours, I'll be crawling towards my bed and will knock out very quickly. 

I'm getting too old to be doing these nights out drinking with friends then rolling into work the next day. 

Friday 21 March 2014

As I learn more and more in my MA...

...I come to realise that my whole life will revolve around conflicting with managers.

As a sales associate I come across incompetent managers. I'm in conflict with managers because I don't necessarily believe they're always fair with things like handing out shifts to people, pressuring people to do overtime (esp newbies on probation), being always on your ass about tidying, clearing dumps etc. I don't actually have the last one because I'm a loner in my dept, my manager probably doesn't even know I exist half the time until someone mentions "Home department" lolol. It's nice to be non-existant though, I won't be the first one in mind when he's handing out overtime like drugs.

Later in life, if I work in HR, I already know I'll be at loggerheads with managers again. From what I've learnt this past year (academic year), managers hate HR and HR hate incompetent managers. This is something I hear a lot of:

"A lot of managers don't have the right skills to manage people properly."

Not meaning to sound degrading or ignorant to those who hold management positions, but this is actually true in a lot of cases. You don't need qualifications to become a manager, in fact many managers work their way up from the bottom to be able to become a manager. But arguably, managers are some of the most hard working and dedicated people I've seen, overtime becomes compulsory and a regular thing for them, long shifts become the norm. It's no wonder managers feel like they have no time to actually deal with HR demands. But in other cases, I've also seen some very bad management without the HR side of things - lazy managers, power abusive managers, pressuring managers, threatening managers, managers that like to micro-manage (don't get me started on micro managing...). It's also no wonder why HR hates managers too.  

Problem solved.

Factory reset my phone yesterday, I was becoming too OCD about the battery so I tried a last resort factory wipe and looks like the phone is completely fixed now. Still rooted because the WakeLock app is so awesome. I actually thought factory reset wasn't too bad this time around, I wrote down exactly what I had in the folders that I had so it was really easy to put back apps in place (wasn't very time effective though). Still think Samsung should create software similar to Apple's that at least puts your apps back in their respective folders.

Spending the day doing my assignment for MCC, struggling with it a little because there's barely any literature (apart from one paper) on criticisms for the Lewin change model. I'm laughing slightly because the assignment guide says "Bear in mind that an essay is not putting down everything you know or can find on a topic" - well arguably, it kinda is, but you're just twisting what other people say to favour your assignment topic. 

I can't even put down "everything I know or can find on a topic" because I can't actually find anything on the topic... Not that being on here is being anymore productive that is.

Thursday 20 March 2014

My Odd Red Eye and Bad Lectures.

Saying 'red eye' because I don't want to use the term 'pink eye' as we all know what causes a pink eye...

So I've had 1/4 of a red eye for the past few days, I'm pretty sure it's not an infection because I'm not weeping pus or constantly crying out of one eye. I did get some episodes of blurryness though but after a few days of being on Viscotears (these eye drops are magical, seriously, if you get dry eyes often invest in some Viscotears), the blurryness went away - I hope I'm not going blind.

I had the worst example of a lecture today, I'm glad I decided to be late and miss the first 30 minutes, I'm less glad that I didn't decide to be a lazy bum and stay at home. I could've been more productive with coursework if I stayed at home. The lecturer gave us a lecture on being obvious - "a balance scorecard is a scorecard that is balanced", thank you captain obvious. He spent the little time that we had defining every definition that was already written down in our workbooks. I really felt like I left that lecture with no more knowledge than I had before coming to the lecture. I felt like I gained no more knowledge than I would have gained staying in bed and sleeping till 3pm. He even kept us 30 minutes longer to explain some more pointless information that is already written in black and white in our books. Believe me, everyone was a bit pissed off by the end of the "lecture". By everyone, I mean the 9 out of 20 of us that bothered turning up.

So glad I have the day off tomorrow... Oh wait, I have coursework to complete since I'm going to a friend's birthday on Saturday.

With regards to my earlier Android KitKat entries on battery issues and stuff, the issue was actually fixed for about 2 days, but now it's draining again. Did a little more research and I'm actually planning to go more in depth with fixing the issue by rooting my device - except this time, I'll make sure to unroot before I install any updates. So the plan is to root the phone, see what's draining my battery using Wakelock/BBS (whichever is better, I haven't actually tried out BBS yet but Wakelock doesn't seem to show information in a language I can understand...) and nip the problem in the bud.

Monday 17 March 2014

Weekend off work.

Just had a nice weekend off work despite having to do coursework on Friday and Saturday, but then again, that's pretty standard for me. It's March now and I have 3 pieces of coursework one due each week back to back at the end of March, so I'm trying to make some progress at the moment before I stress out and have a breakdown. I've "started" two pieces, these pieces of coursework are easy but I really should think about what I'm writing before I write things now. Literature search is a pain as well, mainly because there really is no literature that I can work with at the moment - I mean how many people write journal articles about how to interview properly?? I guess I'll just cross that bridge when I get to it.

Sunday was a rare day for me, usually I work so it was nice to have a week off. The weather was perfect too. Went out for lunch at Vapiano in central London with the bf, we actually didn't know what we wanted for lunch, at one point it was McDonalds, then it was Burger King, then we upgraded to Pizza Hut, then we considered KFC and finally we were like ah Vapiano! So we ended up there and had some pasta for lunch.


I had the carbonara here, it was actually really nice that day, it wasn't too thick and heavy. I've noticed at Vapiano, it really depends on which chef you go to, there was once I had the carbonara made by someone else and it was thick as hell, I couldn't even finish it. This was perfffff. The Arizona green tea here is really nice too, perfect with my pasta. 

During my visit to HK, I bought myself a Polaroid camera and happened to have it with me so we took some selfies... Practice selfies actually, since I bought a separate lens to attach onto the Polaroid that has a mirror on it. It's really hard to use... There was one where we were ridiculously close up, I guess my short arms aren't cut out for taking selfies on the Polaroid. 


Went to watch Need for Speed later that evening in 3D at the Odeon in Leicester Square. Tickets were damn expensive because it's on a huuuuge screen and because it's 3D. We were actually disappointed in the movie, when I compare it to the Fast and Furious franchise, this one is really bad for a racing movie. The story was cliche, we knew this kid was going to die from the minute he showed up and we could predict what would happen in the end. Ever since the kid died the whole movie exploded into some sort of revenge plot for the main character. I think we just watched it for Aaron Paul because me and the bf are big fans of Breaking Bad LOL. Props to Imogen Poots for her witty acting though, perfect portrayal of what we British people are. 

Ended the day by having some Nandos, I imagine I'll be having a lot more Nandos within these 2 months since we have too much free chicken to claim before they expire in May. Had some bubbletea in chinatown before we went home. I usually buy the Mango QQ from Chatime but I decided to try the Passion Fruit Green Tea. It was bitter as hell but for some reason, I actually quite enjoyed it... 

So it's Monday today and I have a lecture later. It really sucks to be having lectures in the evening, I wake up at 3pm because I sleep at 7am (yeah, my sleeping pattern has once again, reverted back to some awful state), then I go to uni come home, do no work and sleep. I think I'll have to start waking up earlier to do some coursework before uni so I can actually come home and afford to do nothing without feeling guilty as hell. 

Have a good week peoples! 


Thursday 13 March 2014

Android KitKat Battery Issues & Possible Fix??

Ok, so I had the chance to test this OS out today. [Beware, this post is very technical and full of complaints.]

I've noticed the battery drain is just awful on KitKat, when my Galaxy S4 is idle, the battery gets drained even when nothing is being done with the phone. Back on JB, my phone never did this, I would be on idle after full charge, hop on the tube, get off 45 minutes later and still see 100%. Today, I was already on 88% by the time I arrived at uni. Really unimpressed with this whether it's due to bugs or not but KitKat is supposed to be lightweight and SAVE on battery rather than drain it. 

The main issue that I've been having is that Android OS and Android System are the 2 things that are draining most of my battery. I've been a keen watcher of my battery and what exactly is using most of my battery ever since I joined the Samsung crew and usually it's the screen that takes up majority of my battery life but that's normal for me - it makes sense that whenever I use the phone, battery gets used up right? At the same time, things like Android OS and Android System used to use about 3-4% of my battery life. Ever since KitKat, I've notice Android OS and Android System usage shoot to about 18-20% and my screen is still around 20-30%. Therefore if you do a bit of maths, my battery is around 60% by this point and I've only had it off charge for about 4-5 hours. This is really abnormal as when I used to be on JB, I could use my phone for 48 hours before I needed a charge. 

I've been looking for a fix all day (even in my finance class since I sped through all the questions, my lecturer had nothing to say since I got them all right), but managed to find nothing concrete in terms of a solution. A lot of the problems were geared towards the Nexus 5 (since they got KitKat before everyone else), but no real solution for the Samsung users. 

I saw solutions such as do factory reset - I absolutely hate doing factory resets on Samsung, mainly because Kies DOES NOT back up your settings and layouts with folders etc so any customisations you've had, you will lose. Only thing you keep are well, the things you backed up - which is pretty lousy and minimal considering iTunes backs up EVERYTHING so even if you do a factory reset, when you restore your backup, everything just looks the same before the reset. Why, Samsung? Why?

Another "solution" was to disable location/turn GPS off/turn the Wifi on always to Wifi during sleep only when plugged in. I ask myself why people call these solutions - these are not solutions, these are workarounds. Why would these features even be available if Android developers know they will drain the battery? It doesn't make sense to compromise performance of the phone as a solution to battery drain issues. The problem must be deeper than just Wifi/location issues.

A feasible solution I saw was to do a cache wipe - for those of you who don't know, you boot the phone into recovery mode and you get options such as reboot, wipe data, wipe cache and apparently wiping the cache sometimes solves battery drain issues - sadly, this solution didn't work for me. 

There were other solutions that involved rooting the phone and downloading some sort of battery monitor but I don't want to root my phone again since I almost bricked it last time I upgraded a rooted phone. It's safe to say that rooting Android is no where as simple as jailbreaking an iPhone. I had to learn so much developer lingo to get my phone back to working order when I upgraded to 4.3 and it pretty much rendered my phone useless with no Wifi or network. 

So I took it upon myself to try a few solutions out myself. I tried disabling a couple of things such as disabling NFC and S beam (those fancy Samsung data exchange via touching your phones features). That didn't really do much but it IS a part of Android System so I just left them disabled. I had a look through the phone to see what could be included in this Android System but didn't actually find anything (so many dead ends to my "solutions"), I wiped the cache of some Android related apps under the app manager in settings. None of these seemed to decrease battery drainage massively so I did a last resort battery pull and guess what? It's actually fixed my phone (well, I hope it has). 

So far so good, I've been on 60% for the last 30 minutes, without any idle battery drain. I'm actually just waiting for Android System and OS % to decrease to show that the problem has been fixed. I'm hoping to see results tomorrow when I do a full charge overnight to reset the %s. But at the moment there's been no increase in the battery usage of those 2 and I hope it stays that way! 

So guys, tl;dr - do a battery pull, pull out the sim card too, wait for 1 minute, put them back in and turn on the phone. 

Wednesday 12 March 2014

Nerd post: Android 4.4 KitKat

So 4.4 KitKat has finally dropped for Samsung phones. Today was the day I finally moved away from 4.2.2 JB.

I was reluctant to upgrade at first because last time I did, things went horribly wrong. I upgraded to 4.3 and was left without wifi (for some odd reason wifi could not even be toggled on and off) and a really unstable network. I had to go through the long ass process of downgrading back to 4.2.2 which took me about 4 hours to do. Obviously, I didn't want to have to go through that again so I've been putting off upgrading anything for a few months now.

Finally took it upon myself to upgrade today and surprisingly it worked, got to 4.3 fine without problems and then surprisingly the next upgrade went to 4.4 without problems as well. KitKat doesn't look much different to JB, I was expecting a lot more changes to the interface and icons but everything looks pretty much the same. I was probably expecting it to look like my boyfriend's phone, he bought the Nexus 5 preloaded with KitKat - lucky Google phone users got KitKat before the official release to other phones.

I'm actually glad that not much looks different since I'm a change hater, only thing I was a bit like "ewww" towards is the main clock on the lock screen. I could swear it looked different on JB but it looks a bit blocky and square for my liking on KitKat. Haven't managed to test the performance of the new firmware but I'm hoping there's not much change there either, I was pretty happy with the speed, battery life and overall performance of 4.2.2 so hopefully the upgrade hasn't affected the battery life much with all the new features (which I'm yet to see).

I noticed there's a Samsung app called Knox installed with 4.3. I've heard a lot of bad things about Knox and how it prevents downgrading so I have yet to actually enable the app - at the moment I don't plan to downgrade but just in case, it's better to leave the bad things untouched.

Overall, I'm pretty happy that the upgrade went well, I was actually just upgrading to test if there's been a fix for all the problems that people have been reporting regarding the wifi and network stability but looks like everything is alright now. On the contrary, I was actually preparing myself for a night of downgrading again in case 4.3 screws me over, but I can sit back and enjoy playing around with KitKat for the rest of tonight instead.    

Happy days.


Tuesday 11 March 2014

I've jumped onto the Walking Dead wagon.

Yes, I've finally got round to watching The Walking Dead. 

I've watched Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad so now it's time for me to jump on The Walking Dead wagon as well. Currently on season 2, I'm pretty much forcing myself to watch all the early episodes because similarly to Game of Thrones, it's starting off really slow but I know the good parts will happen later. So I'm basically cosy'd up in bed marathoning TWD whilst drinking green tea - perfect end to my Tuesday night. 

I had a pretty nice Tuesday today, I ate too much though. Woke up in the afternoon, went over to my boyfriend's house to wake him up to go out. We shared a box of 20 nuggets and had ice cream because we're fatsos. Ended up going to Oxford street to shop around until dinner time. I bought a new trenchcoat from Zara, their trenchcoats are so pricey but last so long and are made of good material so it was worth the monies invested. Only thing I'm not too keen on is the colour, but anyway, this is the trenchcoat I ended up buying.


The style and material is nice, I really like the length of this trenchcoat because I'm pretty short, many trenchcoat styles are way too long for my height so it makes me look even shorter than I already am (unless I wear heels). This trenchcoat sits nicely at thigh length when I put it on so it's great, I can wear it with heels and without. 

We had bolognese for dinner, was supposed to have KBBQ but we both weren't feeling it at the time. KBBQ is one of the meals me and my boyfriend have as a treat when we're really hungry, because it's expensive to have, we try and limit it to only when we crave for it or if it's for a special occasion. We got bubble tea after at Chatime. Chatime is a really popular Taiwanese bubble tea place in Chinatown, there's pretty much always a queue that goes outside of the shop because of its popularity. But because me and my boyfriend go near closing time, the queue isn't so bad - there's still a queue but waiting time is about 3-5 minutes to get served rather than the 20-30 when you go during lunchtime or late evening. I ordered the Mango QQ bubble tea today, I was so tempted to have the Hazelnut Milk Tea but because I just ate dinner, I didn't want something so heavy after so I settled for a cold juice drink. Definitely a better choice. 

My mouse broke recently and my boyfriend bought me a new one and sent it to my house LOL. He's missing me playing league with him so he went and bought me a gamer mouse, I'll miss my shitty bubble mouse that I bought for £4 off eBay :( 

Back to uni tomorrow, sigh, I hate having evening classes since I get home really late, miss out on dinner with my family and then I feel too lazy to do any work =/ 

Monday 10 March 2014

Why do I always leave things so last minute?

It's currently 4am and I've just finished teaching myself how to use Final Cut Pro...

I'm a complete noob at anything video editing related and iMovie was driving me mad because it won't let me cut my video and save it (something so simple right?) so I resorted to getting Final Cut Pro. I always end up getting more complicated and sophisticated programs instead of standard ones just because the standard ones can't even do something as simple as cutting and saving. Oh sorry, it's called 'exporting' in the video editing world. These video editing apps aren't really for people like me looking for the MS Paint equivalent of video editing. 

So tomorrow I'm going to be mock interviewing my boyfriend as part of my mini project for my degree. I can already see how badly and how long this will take us. He really needs to be serious for at least 30 min tomorrow or else I'm going to be very pissed off. I really just want to get these 3 mock interviews videoed and edited and ready to go because I really need to start the write up even though this project will only be 3000 words long. Seeing as how painful a further 500 words to my standard 2500 word essays can be, I really want to start early as my deadlines are all clustered together... again.

It seems like this semester is finally picking up pace, no more relaxing after uni and chilling on my days off. I need to start buckling down and getting these deadlines out of the way by skipping a few more of those pointless-nothing-to-gain lectures and just getting some of that word count out of the way. 

Other than boring uni stuff, life has been pretty chill. Just sitting around, going out, getting ill, coming home, suffering through the illnesses, going to work through the illnesses etc. I have this week off work though, the last remaining hours of my holiday pay (until next month), I planned to spend it doing work but it looks like I'm going to be catching up on precious relationship time that has been long overdue. It's the weekends that I have off work that I really wish I didn't even have work at all on weekends, but H&M staff discount and my practically non-existent presence at work really doesn't make it seem as bad as I make it sound. 

I remember saying student life would be perfect if I had a good balance between studying and weekend work (back when I had no job and just spent my days as a student bumming around living off student finance)... Oh how wrong was I, money is definitely NOT easy to make. You realise that when you're no longer protected by the financial bubble known as a student loan.