Pink/Hello Kitty bedroom

In my last post, I mentioned my love for "kawaii" things, and that I would do a post on my Hello Kitty covered bedroom. If it's not Hello Kitty, then it's Tare Panda, Totoro, Doraemon or something equally cute or pink.

Of course, I've made some other Hello Kitty additions to my bedroom since I took the following pictures. I took them around the start of the year when I had first moved into my shared student unit.

Not so pink, but this is my study desk, with my printer and TV.

My pink shaggy rug, and Hello Kitty bed-things.
The fluffy pillow matches the rug. You may also be able
to see my Hello Kitty alarm clock, my Tare Panda, a small
Hello Kitty plush and a Hello Kitty cushion!!

Somewhat of a more "full" shot on my bedroom.

Totoro plush accompanied by my boyfriend's alcohol (Bundaberg Rum
coffee liquor and Jagermeister!)

It seems that I'll need to change my bedroom interior design tastes, though. I'm moving in with Shannon, my boyfriend, around the end of the year and I'll need to choose decorations that are more neutral-gendered in taste. Oh well, I'm still going to allow small appearances of Hello Kitty when we end up getting a townhouse or unit together in the middle of next year... Hehehe!

I wonder how those other kawaii-freaks' boyfriends deal with their obsession.

Oh, and sometime real soon, I seriously need a better camera. I'm so jealous of all those other bloggers with glossy, good quality photos on their blogs.

Little Singapore

I hadn't caught up with one of my good friends, Kathleen, for a few months so we decided to have a sleepover at my place. We went to a predominantly Asian suburb in pursuit of a good place to stuff our faces as we were rather hungry. First, she took me to a Sanrio store. It was full of kawaii.

If you knew me, you'd know that I'm a massive sucker for kawaii ("cute" in Japanese) things. My room is covered in Hello Kitty - in fact, I'll do a post real soon and show you guys my Hello Kitty bedroom. When I go into "kawaii" stores, I go into this trance where I get extremely overwhelmed and ignore anyone around me while trying to take in my surroundings.

I ended up walking out after about four laps of the store, and buying nothing to avoid spending all of my savings. Taking me to a kawaii store is like waving drugs under the nose of a drug addict.

Anyway, we ended up walking around for a bit.

"Feel like Vietnamese?"
"Hmm, let's look around a bit first."
"Taiwanese?"
"Hmm..."
"Chinese?"
"Maybe..."
"Malaysian?"
"Umm... Perhaps..."

Then, we saw a place called "Little Singapore"... And that's where we dined. $10 for a meal sounded good to us, especially being uni students with little money. When we looked at the menu and ordered, we weren't aware of how large the servings were.

Kathleen and I ordered a bunch of things to share among the two of us. Probably about 5 plates, which came down to $60 when we ended up finishing and paying for the meal.

Satay chicken and vegetables with rice, and vegetable spring rolls.

Kathleen, rather happy with her meal.

Vegetable curry muffs, something with pork in it up
the top there, and beef chow mein.

Digging in! Om nom nom.

It was a funny meal, though -  the Chinese-Singaporean waiter was lingering around our table the whole time, watching us eat. He approached our table a few times looking worried, too...

First time:
"Are you sure you girls are going to be able to finish all of that food!!?"

Second time:
"Are you alright?"

Pretty sure he was expecting us to pop as we had so much food on our table. Though we finished it all with smug looks on our faces! Then went for gelato.

Red-headed bridesmaid in royal blue

One of my older sisters got married on the weekend. It was a beautiful ceremony which was all decked out in royal blue decorations, and plenty of bubbles blown by the 6 bridesmaids and 6 groomsmen.

We had our make-up and hair stylists come to us at the hotel at about 7am, got a hell of a lot of photos, drank champagne with strawberries, helped the bride get into her dress and touched up our make-up until we had to go to the botanical gardens at noon for the ceremony.

My big sister (the beautiful bride) and her mum.

There's me - the pale one with the red hair.

The make-up artists and hairstylists did a really good job on all of us. I asked for my hair to be curled with some of the top of it pulled back somehow. Originally I wanted smokey eyes but the bridezilla refused to let me "get hooker make-up". However, I really liked the end result.

Make-up, and hair from the front.
Ignore the t-shirt, I sleep in it, haha.

My hair from the back. For some reason,
curls always make my red hair colour stand out, like POW!

I didn't realise that I did a peace sign pose until I saw the picture!

Annnd the big booty shot.

Now I've got wedding fever. Just great. I have to wait at least four more years for my own. I gave Shannon (my boyfriend) a four year time span to at least propose, hahaha! What!? A girl's gotta get cracking.

Quitting smoking

My usual cigarette brand
(Image source)

Whoever said, "You'll never know how addicted you are until you try to quit" was absolutely correct, and I've learnt that the hard way. The very hard way.

I had my first lousy attempt at a puff of a cigarette in the school bathrooms when I was about 14-years-old. I'd never tried it before and had always been curious. Little did I know that I would be starting the quitting journey about four-and-a-half years later.

Over the past few years I'd been having the occasional cigarette with a friend of mine who smoked. I did it behind my family's back. When I turned 18 last year, I thought it would be just wonderful to start buying them and smoking regularly. I got addicted, and fast. In fact, I turned into a one-every-hour smoker. I lied to my family about my habit and tried to hide it the best I could until my mum finally admitted that she knew I was smoking.

I didn't intend to quit until I had some kind of an epiphany one morning last week. It was about 7am and I hadn't gotten to sleep yet, so I just started bawling my eyes out. I cried about being unhealthy, I cried about being lonely and I cried about wasting $60 a week on cigarettes when I'm meant to be saving to move into a townhouse with my boyfriend next year.

So, I decided to quit. I had intended to quit last Friday, but I was convinced by my sister (who was getting married that weekend) and her friends to quit at the end of the weekend, as nobody wants a grumpy bridesmaid going through nicotine withdrawals. On Sunday morning, I slapped a patch on my arm and haven't touched a cigarette since Saturday night. That's a huge change for me, considering I'd been smoking every hour for 6 months.

(Image source)

You may think 6 months isn't that long for a smoker and that it should be easy for me to quit, but not really. My body's that used to the nicotine that I couldn't go half a day without nicotine continuously going into my bloodstream.

Now I'm on the 16-week Nicorette patch program. For the next 12 weeks, I need to wear a 15mg patch from when I wake up until before I go to bed. Then for the rest of the program, I'll be wearing patches with less nicotine in them. Basically, I'll be weaning myself off of nicotine for the next 16 weeks until my body is used to having none.

A week's supply of Nicorette patches is about $25, meaning it will cost less than half of the cost for me to smoke cigarettes. The side-effects that I'm currently having are mainly just depression and drowsiness. When the heck will my body get used to these patches!!?

Notebook, get in my belly!

Image source: SEI design group

I have a problem. It's not particularly serious, but it is a problem nonetheless. Or is it? It could simply be a healthy addiction. Perhaps a slightly expensive healthy addiction at that. But here goes... I love notebooks. Notepads, diaries, Filofaxes, exercise books, journals, and just plain old notebooks.

I love them so much that if it were possible - which it probably is - I would roll one up, stick notebook paper inside of it, light it, and smoke it. (Actually, I could do that, but it wouldn't have much of an effect other than to cause me to cough my lungs out.)

I love notebooks so much that I would grow my own paper penis, cut a hole in the notebook, and make sweet love to it all night long. There - that's better, and a tad more practical. (I just had a mental image of my paper penis spitting out liquid paper.)

It's not that I ever write in them much, either. I mean, I use them for taking notes during lectures and tutorials at university... But that's it, really. It's just something about that fresh paper. When I buy a new notebook, I have high hopes for it. I wonder about the information that it will someday contain; whether its sole purpose is for a place to spill all of my secrets, hopes and dreams, or just a place to write my weekly grocery shopping lists.

That's the problem. I buy them, but hardly ever write in them. I may begin to write in them, but forget to continue - or simply lose motivation. Sometimes I avoid writing in a brand new notebook out of sheer fear. Fear of guilt. That's mainly if it's not one of those spiral spine ones, though. If I wrote in a fresh, new notebook, I would feel guilty, as someday I may decide to use the notebook for another purpose... And I couldn't bear to rip out any pages. If I ever did that, I would avoid using the notebook altogether as I wouldn't be able to bear looking at the thin, ragged strip of paper along the spine of the book.

That brings me to another problem - I'm highly obsessive compulsive. Especially in regards to this notebook business. I'm one of those anal (haha!) people who will only use one colour pen in one book. This includes my lecture pads for university. It needs to be blue, or black. And it needs to be either blue or black throughout the entire book, or I would feel a strong desire to toss the book out of the window. Or rather, never use it again.

A glorious Moleskine notebook.

But anyway, I'm currently experiencing feelings of lust towards one particular type of notebook. The Moleskine. I've never actually owned one of these so-called beauties before, but I want one. A lot. Many bloggers have described the Moleskine notebook as being the "only real notebook". They have mentioned the beautiful, smooth feeling of the paper under the pen. Oh my gosh, that's what I want!!

You know those pens that cause your handwriting to be a lot neater than usual? Those pens that you actually look forward to using. That's what the Moleskine is like in my lustful fantasies about it.

I will search, and search, and search. I will find you, Moleskine notebook. And you will be written in like a mofo.

Avoid awkward situation - talk Bollywood!

Last weekend, I went to a going-away party. My best friend, Madeline, has been living in America on a scholarship and plans to return as her summer holiday has probably come to it's end.

Following a few drinks (I had six cans of Smirnoff Double Black, which are 1.9 standard drinks per can, plus one of my friends had poured some vodka into my last can before I downed it), most of us were pretty messed up and ready to head out to the clubs.

So we called a cab. The cab driver had to wait a little while as Madeline tried to find some shoes to wear out. We got in the cab, and two of my friends were confused that the cost of the cab had already gone up to $17.50 when we hadn't even left yet. I guess it was due to the cab driver waiting for us all to get into the cab - I'm not sure.

While a couple of my friends had a go at the cab driver, who was a shy, timid Indian guy in a Sikh turban, I felt sorry for him. I diverted the subject... By talking Bollywood!

Me: Excuse me good sir, but where are you from?
Cab driver: I am from India!
Me: Oh, cool! I love Indian movies.
Cab driver: Oh! Wow, that is so great, I am happy to hear that!
(his eyes lit up in the review mirror)
Me: Yeah, do you know the actor Shahrukh Khan?
(Probably the most famous male Bollywood artist)
Cab driver: Of course! I know! You like?
Me: Yes, he's an awesome actor, I liked him in Om Shanti Om and Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna.
Cab driver: Yes, yes, I know those movies!
Me: I also like, uh, what's his name... Amitabh something? Something Amitabh?
Cab driver: Amitabh Bachchan?
Me: YEAH! Wait, no, his son! He was also in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna.
Cab driver: Abhishek Bachchan?
Me: I think that's it, yeah!!

Unfortunately that was the end of the taxi ride, and the end of our Bollywood talk. I've found that in order to really get along with some of your Indian cab drivers, you talk Indian film business. The cab drivers I've spoken to about Bollywood so far were absolutely delighted and amazed to hear that a plain Aussie gal like me is into Indian films.