Wassup wassup.

When I say to myself - "no more chocolate" I mean no more chocolate. It's been too often that I've eaten chocolate especially at this time of night. It's like, I see something interesting on TV to watch *whips out the chocolate*, I put on a movie *whips out the chocolate* This must stop. So today, I'm determined to not cave into my desires and instead, have moved my chocolate stash downstairs into the fridge. Far away, basically.

Started another K-drama out of desperation because I'm running out of things to watch. I've actually grown into this habit where I need to watch something to enjoy my meal/food/snack LOL. Started Emergency Couple and it's alright, not too sure if I like the whole hospital melodrama though. After watching the first couple of episodes I came to the conclusion that this ER unit must be the most unluckiest unit with the most unluckiest interns in the whole history of hospitals. A crazy man wanting to kill himself because he got dumped by his girlfriend grabs a gun and almost shoots everyone in the unit, these 2 interns get trapped in a lift with a cancer patient who starts vomiting blood - I mean, do any of these events even happen at hospitals? The likelihood of a crazed gunman and a lift breaking down just when this cancer patient is in need of help is almost higher than in real life in this drama. But let's keep in mind, this is a drama after all. Oh and can I mention, the main female actress in this is gorgeous. I won't start ripping it apart like Rooftop Prince... yet. Actually, I've made my mum start watching Rooftop Prince - there was nothing else I could recommend her was there? I mean, even my boyfriend's mum got hooked on Rooftop Prince so it must be good. She's taken a liking to Lee Min Ho after watching City Hunter LOL saying he's so tall, leng jai and handsome but I couldn't exactly recommend her to watch Heirs could I? It's not targeted for her age group... even I would feel a bit wrong if I saw my mum watching school romance k-dramas. Can you imagine my mum swooning over Lee Min Ho in a uniform? No, let's not go there. 

Went to the opticians yesterday because I finally felt like I needed to see an optometrist about my dodgy left eye. I really feel like I'm directionally challenged or dyslexic because I kept telling the optometrist that my "right" eye is blurry, my "right" eye is bloodshot, my "right" eye is sensitive to light - but when she had and look using those bright light tools optometrists use she started mentioning my left eye has problems. Then in my head and using what I usually use to determine left and right, I had actually meant my left eye all along... Sigh. Embarrassinggggggg. Anyway, she sent me home and to buy 2 brands of eyedrops to use to help my eye heal. Went hunting for them just before pharmacies closed and managed to get both, phew. Had to come back the next day as well for a full eye examination. 

So I went back today and saw a different optometrist - I had the bitch woman from last time yesterday and a really nice woman this time. There was a guy that did my eye health check up who started talking to me about my degree and stuff and it was really awkward for me because I had my glasses off and I couldn't even see his face, it was like one big blur so I was sitting there talking to this blurry faced man. Can't even remember his face at this moment... Or did I even see his face at all with glasses on? Anyway long story short, the optometrist said I had something called "staining" in my left eye which was the cause of the blurryness, sensitivity and everything that has been bugging me about my eye. She showed me some pictures and said mine was the most extreme, there are like, so many scratches on the surface of my eye which is why I have trouble seeing. It was scary when she said mine was the most severe =/ but at the end she said it was superficial and should heal in a few weeks which was a relief. I don't even know how this happened but I don't ever remember injuring my eye in anyway to get it so scratched up. Apparently all I need to do is to use the eyedrops "religiously" as the optometrist from yesterday said and the eye should heal! Sounds like an easy peasy job to me. 

My dad has been really worried bless him, I'm not even worried but it's because I'm always getting referred to eye clinics and stuff whenever I get an eye exam every year so he gets worried whenever something happens to my eye. It's a main reason I don't like telling him details but because he gave me a lift and waited for me and paid for parking, I thought he should know - something to talk about in the car on the way home. Really don't like him being worried though, it's nothing major anyway. But now I have to go back for another appointment on Tuesday and Thursday next week which is slightly annoying as I planned to crack down on revision for the whole week and not go out. So I'm working Sunday, revision class on Monday, opticians on Tuesday, nothing on Wednesday and opticians again on Thursday - annnnd suddenly my supposed week of revision has turned a whole lot busier than it should be. Apparently they just want to "monitor things" and make sure that my eye is on its way to healing. Better to be safe than sorry I guess. 

Also about these eyedrops so far, the 5x a day one doesn't feel like it's doing much right now but that's because this is probably my first whole day of using it 5x a day. The 2nd eyedrop is so gross, it's some thick oil like thing that you have to squeeze into your eye pouch and blink like 100 times till your vision goes clear. Because it's not viscous liquid, it causes blurring that lasts for around 10 minutes. Some weird eye lube. Made my eye feel all clammy and gross this morning even though it's supposed to protect it and prevent it from feeling dry in the morning. 

Had a very eventful 2 days, even bought myself chocolate yesterday to cheer myself up - it's not fun being blind in one eye x___o hopefully it improves quickly so I can get back to seeing properly with glasses on. I've been banned from contacts for a week so that sucks. Gonna have to go to work with glasses on this Sunday for the first time ever! I really pray it's going to be a quiet Sunday as I really can't be pushing my glasses up my non-existant nosebridge for the whole day if it's busy and I'm sweating and my glasses are falling down my face.   

Lazy but somewhat productive day.

After being out for the weekend, I had a nice day in today, slept in an hour later than my alarm before finally getting my lazy ass out of bed. Was planning to make some spaghetti for lunch but after yesterday's creamy pasta, I wasn't feeling for spaghetti anymore so I settled for some instant ramen. 

The productive part was me getting my notes together for MCC as I will be starting revision for my final set of exams (hopefully) ever! Will be so glad to finally be done with education - mainly coursework and exams. Had a really long chat with my friend on the phone soon after I did my "work" and then pretty much had dinner and lazed around for the rest of the night. 

Been having this weird problem with my right eye as well. I'm pretty sure it's just been overstrained and eyes usually take a while to heal as you use them everyday so they don't really get much chance to rest them apart from sleeping. My right eye has been mega blurry throughout the day and feels dry. When I use eye drops and rest them for a while they tend to be a tiny bit better but then it goes back to being blurry quite quickly soon after. Was thinking about heading to the opticians to make sure nothing serious is wrong with my eye but it did start to get better so I think I'll just wait it out for a few weeks, it's not in pain or anything, just weirdly blurry sometimes. People online tend to say these symptoms are associated with dry eyes/overstrained eyes anyway. 

Meeting some friends tomorrow for lunch as I haven't seen them in a while, hoping for some good food with good company and maybe some good weather too!

Exhausted AF.

Had a really nice but long and drawn out weekend. It was bank holiday Easter so a lot of people had 4 day weekends, started off with a relaxing Friday doing nothing, spent Saturday working and surprisingly, it was a really quiet Saturday for H&M despite the Easter holiday. So we ended work 30 minutes early (and 30 minutes less pay because H&M doesn't let us choose between unpaid or holiday deductions now) which was nice as I was already knackered and bored out of my head for the final 3 hours of work since there were no customers. Just hated the whole speed-cash up to make sure everyone was able to leave at 10pm. 

Slept in on Sunday then made my way to the boyf's house and spent Sunday afternoon having pizza with him and his sister and watching BGT rerun. Watched Megamind with the boyf - can't believe he hadn't seen Megamind, it's such an awesome movie, me and a friend back in uni used to quote silly lines from it when we watched it. Such nerds right? Ate some lamb curry his mum made, I wasn't actually going to have any because it was spicy but just to be respectful to his mum I tried some and actually it was really good! The boyfriend always makes his mum out to be a bad cook because she rarely cooks as she works a lot but the curry was actually really good, even had seconds even though my tastebuds were on fire LOL. My boyfriend downloaded some Walking Dead game on my iPad and it's the most derp game ever, you make choices from lots of scenarios and your choices determine the course of events that happen in the game. Watched my boyfriend play (because I'm scared of zombies...) and he game over'd within the first 5 minutes because he couldn't pick up the shotgun in time LOOL, was so funny. Eventually got the hang of it and he lied to this guy in the game twice and this message that says "Hershel will remember that" comes up and it just makes you feel so guilty that you got caught lying haha. Was so funny watching my boyfriend play and see him making all these bad decisions on what to say or what to do, he played it when we were on the bus today as well and he chose to save some man over a child!! I was like "SIMON!!!! >:(" couldn't believe it. 

Was bank holiday Monday today and we had a double date with our friend and her boyfriend. Her boyfriend's sister works at the zoo so we got free tickets to London Zoo! Was a really tiring but fun day as you could imagine, spent 4 hours walking around the zoo and we actually managed to see everything despite missing a lot of the talks as they happened around 12pm. Went to look for a place to have dinner and ended up at Zizzi's as a lot of small family run Italian places were closed for bank holiday. I've never had Zizzi's before so at least it was a new experience. Had penne pasta bake with roast chicken, spinach in mushroom sauce and it was ohhh sooo good, was really heavy because of the sauce but it was really good. Went wetherspoons after dinner to have a few drinks as my boyfriend didn't have to rush off to work at 11pm for once, was really nice spending time drinking, talking and laughing with these two. Double dates are rare but when they happen, it's great fun. 

Got home around 12am and now it's almost 2am and I'm ready to have a long night's sleep. 

Fujifilm Instax Mini 8 Review

Invested in one of these babies during my one week trip in HK back in February. The Fujifilm Instax Mini 8 is the latest of the mini series and as you can probably tell by the name, it's an instant camera! I've always wanted a polaroid camera but was always put off by the price of the film needed for it (1 pack only has 10 shots!), the camera itself is relatively inexpensive - around £55-£60 but the film can be quite pricey, especially in this country. Managed to pick up 2 packs of film in HK for a fraction of the price but of course, purchasing from ebay from overseas is going to be cheaper than buying from independent retailers in the UK but at the same time pricier than buying in HK.

In terms of the overall structure and feel of the camera, it's a really ergonomically friendly camera. Easy to hold, the camera is shaped perfectly for any size hand, it has a really smooth and matte feel to the body and is actually relatively light weight despite its looks. It doesn't feel awkward to hold when taking a selfie either, you can keep a really firm grip on it and the button is very conveniently placed for whether you're taking a picture of objects or a selfie from the front. 

This camera boasts the ability to automatically determine the best brightness level to take a picture by turning the lens to the corresponding lamp built into the camera:

I quite like the idea of this because usually, I associate polaroids as being quite vintage in nature, so features like auto-brightness detection is quite hard to come across. The only drawback is that you have to turn it yourself and hold it in place, if you let go, the lens kinda swings back into the home position... So this means it would be really fiddly for anyone to take a selfie using this feature. 

I bought this camera mainly to take selfies with friends so the ease of this camera for that purpose is quite important to me. Seeing all these extra accessories around in HK that you can buy for the camera, I stumbled across this selfie mirror as the Instax Mini 8 doesn't come with a built in selfie mirror like the Instax Mini 25 does. 

I actually find this mirror quite misleading, if I follow it and take pictures with someone at arm level, the image ends up positioning us too low down so there's a lot of space above us. So to use it properly, I tend to have to position my arm a bit higher than nose level and a bit angled down (selfie experiences using a digi cam) to take a relatively okay selfie. I guess using this takes a bit of practice but the nice thing about this lens is that it shoots close up, so images don't end up being blurry compared to if you were to take a close up shot at mid range without a close up lens. I guess a better way to use this lens when you're taking selfies with friends would be to look at your reflection in the close up lens rather than the mirror. The mirror seems to work fine when taking a lone selfie though, it's accurate enough to do that. 

So overall, the Instax Mini 8 is a decent polaroid camera that is in a decent price range and is pretty much a perfect first polaroid camera for anyone looking or thinking to purchase one. A main drawback is that there's no selfie mirror so people that are inexperienced in taking selfies can find this annoying, especially when you only have 10 shots in 1 pack of film. Though, you can fix this by buying the attachment that is sold separately - although again, this takes some practice to get used to. Another drawback is the hi-key mode (auto brightness detection), the fiddly lens setting that you have to hold in place cannot really be used with selfies unless you have spider leg-like fingers. So far, I'm really having fun with this camera, taking it out on special occasions and starting a polaroid collage on the side of my desk. I just wish the film wasn't so expensive to buy or I really would use this camera more often. 

Compared to the Instax Mini 25, I actually think the 25 is better than the 8 just because it has an in-built selfie camera, close up lens and light intensity control settings and also, I prefer the overall look of the 25 as well. Of course, having all these, the 25 is more expensive than the 8 but a lot of people say that the price difference is not sufficient for many to choose the 25 over the 8. But on the bright side, the batteries required for the Mini 25 (CR2 battery) is harder to find than for the Mini 8 (2 x AA batteries). Both are great polaroids and the features that the 8 lack can be substituted by buying the separate lens/selfie mirror and using the hi-key mode!

Nails Inc haul & Spring Cleaning!

Woke up today to a delivery of 5 new nail polishes from Nails Inc! They always wrap up the polishes so nicely, it feels like uwrapping a Christmas present for each one. Added 5 new polishes to my growing collection and now my collection looks like this:

I absolutely love this brand of nail polish, the brush applies the polish so perfectly and accurately. It's one of the very few brands I know that makes polish that doesn't thicken over time. There's nothing more annoying than your favourite polish going gooey after a few months even though you've stored them properly. I've heard that you can store them in the fridge to help them last longer but I'm not the type of person to fill my fridge up with nail polish rather than food. At £11 per pot it's quite pricey but at least the quality for the money you pay for is worth it. 

I should have sorted  them properly in the picture to show you guys which ones I added to my collection today but it's pretty much the first 5 from the left excluding the first black one. They are Queen Victoria Street, Devonshire Row, Kensington Park Road, Belgrave Place and Bruton Street. I think nail polish is my new addiction. 

Because of the sudden haul of nail polish, my small nail polish bag couldn't hold all of these in so as I went shopping today in the late afternoon/evening, I picked up an interesting acrylic storage drawer set from Muji. Had a few discussions with the boyfriend about how I should store my polish in it so it kinda went from this:

To this...

Boyfriend didn't like the idea of my polish being stored lying down and I agreed with him because the polish lids can get glued on by the polish and storing them upright is always the best way. Plus, it was pretty much a waste of a lot of space - had to use BOTH drawers to fit all my polish if I stored it like the first method but with the second method, I could even fit more in the future. Even had available space to fit cotton balls using the second method - I know it's a waste of usage space but just for the purposes of the box being a nail polish box, I thought stuffing my cotton balls in there would be cool. I just love the lift up lid on this box, it's so convenient (you can see my reject polishes to the right...) 

My night went from organising nail polish to actually spring cleaning half my room, my shelves looked so messy when I placed my beautiful nail box on it so I decided just to tidy the whole damn thing. This is what it looked like before cleaning:

Ermagad. So messy... boxes upon boxes everywhere, creams/sprays everywhere, was crazy messy. I had empty boxes because I'm a secret hoarder. I actually have no idea why I kept some - like my Links of London charm boxes, I must've thought they were cute or something because I kept them all piled up in the corner collecting dust. Sorted through the bunch of bottles on the left and found about 4 different deodorants, 3 body moisturisers, really ancient hair mousse, 3 different bottles of straightening spray/cream... I honestly have no idea why there were so many bottles of things I never use but just sit there wasting space. Threw away a lot of them as well as some boxes. I actually got creative with an empty box I found where my friend bought a mug for my 21st birthday and I've only just recently started using it LOL (I'm 22 now, sob sob). I cut off the flaps and made it into a little container box for my wires and chargers I had stashed up on my shelf - that's as creative as I can get really. I sorted through a tonne of rusty jewellery I had as well, didn't actually throw any away (hoarder instinct) so I just shoved them all in an old pencilcase and threw it in my hoarder cupboard. 

So my shelf after tidying looks like this:

Much tidier, I managed to even get my grand piano jewellery box across from my other shelf as well which is a result. That jewellery box is the most awkward box to fit anywhere because if you angle it into a corner, it wastes a LOT of space around the sides. The nail box actually looks like it belongs there now compared to the other picture where you could barely even notice it amongst all the mess! Ended up arranging my shelf into 3 sections - from left to right: haircare, cosmetics and jewellery. 

If you're wondering where did all the clutter go, the answer is here: in my hoarder cupboard LOL.

This is a cupboard full of might-be-useful-in-the-future items including: phone boxes, spare mugs, old netbook, pads of paper, hoard of re-useable bags, an old UGG box full of rubbish that I can't part with. Sigh, if only I had time and motivation to actually sort through this mess properly but just looking at it takes away my patience. 

K-Drama Ramble: Rooftop Prince

WARNING: Possible verbal diarrhoea in this blog post coupled with some heavy heavy spoilers. Please don't read on if you plan to and have yet to watch Rooftop Prince. Also, if you have no idea what K-drama is, please stop reading here or else this blog post will be wasting about 3 minutes of your life. 

You have been warned. 

It's been about a good couple of months since I touched Rooftop Prince, I left it at episode 5 before I swanned off to watch some other things and was off K-drama for a good while and I came back to it last week and finally finished it, woohoo. Go me. Anyway, this blog post is probably going to be more of a rant rather than cooing over how cute Chi San's love for omurice is.

Sigh. Where do I begin? I really enjoyed this drama until the very end, yes, the very very end, the last episode, the final moments, the ending that is supposed to make you teary and your heart warm and fuzzy like many K-dramas do. The ending was so cheesy and at so many moments I wanted to be like *vom*, I actually hated how they had to spend 80% of the last episode wrapping things up in Joseon world. Like, nobody gives a fuck about that part of the story no more (well, maybe some of you do) - how could they end episode 19 with the prince leaving and not show what's happened to Bak Ha until an hour later into the final episode? 

The Joseon part of the episode was so poorly done as well (IMO), it's like the script writers suddenly realised during episode 19 "oh shit, we haven't wrapped up what happened in Joseon and the crown princess mystery, let's cram it all into 50 minutes". The "mystery" was so predictable - oh poison powder, of course Bu Yong is going to poison herself instead and jump into the pond pretending to be her sister. If you put two and two together from the "future" it's really obvious what happens. The so-called running mystery of the drama no longer becomes a running mystery once you know enough about the characters. 

I don't really remember much of the first five episodes since I watched them so long ago but I literally laughed out loud when I saw who the evil mastermind behind the poison plan was - oh duh, it just had to be the Joseon version of Tae Mu. I couldn't stop laughing at his crappy tache and beard more than anything though. 

Oh em eff gee. From savvy looking businessman to weird looking ahjussi.

The worst part for me was the fight scene between the weird looking ahjussi up there and the prince. Here's a quote I plucked from another blog that pretty much sums up what my impression of this "final fight scene" encompassed.

"There is an epic battle of lameness, which seriously looked like five years olds pretending to be stunt men."

Anyway, the prince gets shot by our bearded friend and the prince is like "=O" and you guys at home are like "NO!" but surprise surprise, guess what saves him? YES, the necklace that Bak Ha gave him when they got fake married. How a flimsy necklace managed to repel a sharp arrow is completely beyond me, the necklace was the size of a 10p coin at most, he must've been one hella lucky son of a bitch for the arrow to hit the necklace or the bearded guy is just one hella unlucky son of a bitch to have hit the 0.02% of his body that isn't covered by something hard. Fate works in mysterious ways as you would have probably sussed out if you've been watching episodes of this drama continuously. Fate actually seems to defy logic in many periods through this drama but if I spoke about each one, this post would become some sort of series dissection. 

Now onto the actual ending scene that lasts about 10 minutes (maybe less), that shows our selfless heroine Bak Ha back in the present time. She goes to the palace and find this note that the prince wrote for her and buried underneath some dirt and 2 rocks. Somehow, the note has survived 300 years and she takes out this crusty yellow letter and begins reading and then when he mentions her juice bar that he built for her, she all depressed like, making juice and doesn't even notice when the real Tae Yong waltzes in and orders some apple juice, and when you guys at home were watching this, holding your breaths, bracing yourself for her shocked expression at meeting the man she loved, the man that disappeared and went back to Joseon on their marriage day - not even once did she look at his face. Surely if she was so in love with this guy, she would've recognised his voice at least right? Baffled. 

I digress. The final episode ends when Bak Ha finds a postcard on her shop door of another portrait of her drawn by the real Tae Yong and he asks to meet up with her again (I was secretly hoping he would get abducted and pushed off a cliff so the prince can come back LOL), so of course she meets up with him and the episodes ends with some cheesy shit like "even after 300 years have passed, I will still love you" and she holds hands with the real Tae Yong. The end. I was just wtf-ing because this Tae Yong is not the same as the prince - not the same memories, experiences whatever, I mean this dude here has spent over 3/4 of the series in a coma, bedridden, maybe he liked her from first sight in New York and they were destined or fated to fall in love anyway before the prince came along. To assume that they're the same person and for Bak Ha to look like she openly accepts this guy as the guy she fell in love with is completely nonsensical to me. 

Just so I don't end this seeming like a complete hater of Rooftop Prince, I actually loved the part where those 3 idiots were making omurice in Joseon and everyone was queueing up for it and Chi San listening to music on his iPod in Joseon was too funny. Hands down Chi San was the character that made this drama especially enjoyable (minus the last episode). 

Got my mum started on Queen In Hyun's man today and she goes to me "why is the main male so ugly?? I want to see dramas with hot guys in them!" Oh Mum...

Blog Break.

Taking a break from doing coursework. This coursework is actually going so slow, only because it's 3000 words and because it's my last coursework. EVER. IN. MY. WHOLE. LIFE. Well, except the final project I guess, but I don't want to think about that yet. Ugh. Can't wait to be over and done with studying, it's dragged on way too long. I've loved this year though, I feel like I've become more confident in myself and that I WILL be able to get a job after I graduate. When I graduated from my BSc I wasn't confident in doing interviews, speaking to people I don't know, presenting myself like I should be doing etc. But after work experience, volunteering for a year, getting a real part time job, meeting new people in a new uni, meeting new people in a new work environment, I've become a lot more extroverted. 

Anyway, I've been doing my coursework for around 4 hours now and I've managed to do around 700 words. I actually want to get as much of it done as possible today, hopefully around 1500 words will be done by today so I have like 7 days to do another 1500 words which is plenty LOL. It's nice to go to sleep knowing that I've done most of my coursework but then again, I'd just be waking up, wasting as much time as possible before doing my coursework. Sigh. Mum is already annoyed at me because I turned down overtime at work. I hate doing overtime for my workplace because once you say yes, they fucking abuse it and call you up again and again as if you're the designated overtime person. Also, I'm trying to say no to overtime so they might actually employ more people for my department. It's so damn understaffed it's not even funny the amount of work one person in my department is expected to do - tills, tidy, fill-up, hangers, cash up, float and if worse comes to worse, it's busy, someone smashes something by accident, you can't leave that shit there as homeware is next to kidswear and there's always kids running around homeware. So you pretty much have to hunt for a cleaner (there's only one and he can be found ANYWHERE), or you go admin office, grab a key for the cleaner's cupboard, go all the way back up to staff room and get a broom to clean it up yourself. So if you work in my department, you're not only sales associate, you're also part time cleaner. I'll stop ranting about work though since I'm working this Saturday till 10:30pm sigh, damn Easter opening times. Didn't even know my workplace has special opening times for Easter as well as Christmas and New Years.  

Going to continue grinding on with coursework, can't wait to reach my 1500 word target and finish for the day. I have actually never ever done more than 1000 words of my coursework in one setting (apart from that one time in first year I accidentally deleted my whole coursework and had to start it from scratch again on the night before deadline day). This is an achievement.