Clovers & Roses

Studying my current course is rather hectic and stressful. For the first two years of my course, my classes and exam schedule follows Cardiff University academic calendar. This means I have exams and tests the same time the students in Cardiff do as well as have the same length of classes as them. The thing about the UK system is the first semester and the second semester of the academic year is done continuously in the sense that after finals for the first semester we might have a short break of a week or two before the next semester begins. After second semester finals then we have a long stretch of holidays aka the summer holidays. 

Right now, I am enjoying my first ever summer break for around 3 months plus. I am really excited to be having a long stretch of break where I can do whatever I want. It's almost a month since my holidays started and I've been having a blast doing absolutely nothing but enjoying my time. But fun can only bring that much entertainment before it becomes a complete and utter bore.

I went part-time job hunting and I got accepted for a few. I didn't apply for any jobs related to my field of study because I didn't think most pharmacies would choose to hire a Year 1 pharmacy student since we barely know anything at all. And I wasn't really sure if community pharmacy was the area I wanted to work in after graduating. I chose typical part-time jobs like becoming a service crew/kitchen crew in a restaurant, joining Starbucks as a barista and an office job.

I ended up working in an office in my university itself and I basically do data entry and face the computer the entire day which is not much of a problem for someone like me who spends averagely 8 hours or more in front of the computer screen on days where I have nothing to do. The job pays pretty well for a part-time student. RM 5 per hour is the usual rate at the moment. Except for Starbucks because I think they're rate is a little bit higher.

Working in the office feels pretty cool to be honest. For once I actually feel like the time I spend doing things in front of the computer is worth it. I'm making money with each passing hour :D

Most people will say keying in data is a mundane and boring job which I do agree. After keying in stacks and stacks of data it gets a little redundant. But the environment in the office isn't that bad. I mean, my supervisor, Ms. Jocelyn is really nice. She's not very strict and she gives us quite a lot of freedom and flexibility. Since I am a part-time helper, I can choose when I want to come in and when I want to leave which is pretty convenient. I can even go out any time while working if say, I wanted to get coffee. 

On my first day of work, the whole of Selangor state was facing the bad haze situation and all schools were ordered to close for the day by the MOE. My university cancelled all classes and most exams for the days too. Since it was my first day, I still had to show up for work. In the morning, the haze was still quite okay but towards the afternoon it became so bad that the lake couldn't even be seen from a certain distance. I stupidly didn't have any surgical mask with me and I figured I'll be coughing my way back home in the evening. But I didn't because Ms. Jocelyn came to us helpers with a box of masks and handed each of us one :)

I have to admit that working and earning money feels pretty good. Although I will not prioritize earning money at the moment. I still have some serious studying to go through before I can prioritize the money making phase. 

Mum's pretty happy to know that I'm not gallivanting around KL and spending money like it's water and that I am not wasting my summer holidays there just by enjoying life. She even told me what my first RM 150 will go to and I have not even received my first pay check yet. I'm definitely looking forward to learning how to save up my earnings because Lord knows I need a serious lesson on being thrifty. 

Hopefully after all the working 

I'll treasure the value of money more

Spend lesser and wisely

But an occasional splurge or two wouldn't hurt

Yes, I am a semi-shopaholic

But hey, I'm learning and trying to improve myself

If there's one thing about me that not many know about, it's my love and obsession for nail lacquers. To date, I have (what I consider to be) a large collection of nail polish. I have multiple shades of every color and in different finishes. I definitely am not close to being a real nail polish collector or a nail art guru but I have a passion for these tiny bottles of color. 

My love for nail polish started when I was 9. It was Chinese New Year and my mum painted my nails a light pink with micro glitter in them. The brand of the nail polish was Revlon. It was my first ever nail color. I remember refusing to remove the nail polish before the Monday when school reopened. I actually went to school for a day with my 10 little fingers painted AND DID NOT GET CAUGHT BY THE TEACHERS! :D

A nail polish color is like a statement piece of jewelry on a woman's entire ensemble. It's like wearing a casual outfit and accessorizing the look with say, a bright yellow nail color, for summer. I like to experiment a lot with nail polish. Which probably explains why I have so many bottles of them. I splurge on nail polish that are unique and try to get more colors to add to my collection. My ultimate nail polish dream is to have a bottle of every color available irregardless of the brand. 

***

Today, I will be sharing my latest addition to my nail polish collection. I recently made a purchase and got my hands on Glitter Gal's hologram polishes. It is not sold in shops in Malaysia so I had to search pretty much everywhere to get it. I bought only 1 color because I was not really sure if I would like it when it arrived. The color I chose was Not Another Red. 

From the bottle it looks more like a red but when painted on it's actually a very nice deep rose pink color. Well I consider it as a deep rose pink from my point of view but feel free to think otherwise :)

I felt like the color didn't really "show" on the first few shots so I took another round of them and the picture below is much closer to the actual color once painted. 

However, 

Technically to do nail polish swatches, especially for holo polishes, there should be a few shots or one at least under the sun. But I could not get a decent shot under the sun. Every shot I took did not show the boom of the holo under sunlight. Hence, the flash shots. 

Anyway, for my first ever holo polish I am really glad with this choice. It's my first time purchasing a Glitter Gal polish and I am definitely impressed with it. I wish there was a permanent stockist here in Malaysia for Glitter Gal but sadly there isn't one. I will not debate on buying these pretty babies if I could get my hands on them again.

Until my next nail polish splurge

Another post on past events. 

It's another birthday celebration again, this time Ms. Wei Li. 

Wei Li and I go way back, back to my UCSI days. The first time I met her was in the Registrar's Office. Being scholars of the university's trust, we were assigned hours to clock in per semester. She was enrolled in Foundation in Science leading to Biotech while I was doing my A-Levels. We got to know each other while doing the tedious filing in the RO. She also lived in the hostel like myself but she was on the third floor. We occasionally bumped into each other at the hostel's cafeteria. Back then, she was just an acquaintance. We never thought we'd end up studying Pharmacy in the same university but it seems fate had it all planned for us to end up in the same BPharm course. I still remember how excited and surprised we were when we saw each other on the first day of orientation. Ahh the memories :)

Isn't she pretty? :D

For this celebration, we ended up having vegetarian food for dinner. Us girls know how much Wei Li loves her vegetables. I can honestly tell you that there is no meal that this girl eats that has no vegetables. So I guess that explains why she is so slim and slender. 

We met up at Simple Life in Pyramid and had our usual chatty and full of laughter dinner. Speaking of meals and dinner, I seem to think that I have some kind of magnet for food issues whenever I eat. Maybe it's because I tend to over-scrutinize my meal. That night while I was halfway through my claypot vegetable curry, I noticed that there was a strand of hair in my small bowl of curry. I stopped eating and called the waiter over. He took the pot and headed to the kitchen. A few minutes later, he reappeared and told me that the chef was making me a WHOLE NEW BATCH. 

I stoned there for a good 30 seconds before nodding my head.

Reason being I had eaten half of the curry with my rice and I felt a little full already when he told me I will be getting a new pot. But since he is offering me a new pot and the chef was already preparing I felt kind of bad to say no. So pot of curry round 2. 

Like every birthday, there's always dessert! 

She got a cake this time. A light, fluffy vanilla sponge cake with lots of cream filling and fruits. So delish! 

And the absolute must shot for every birthday: 

(I meant it's a must to take a picture with the birthday girl)

With Wei Li :) *and Mun Yee's unintentional photo bomb at the back

I believe there's a whole lot more of pictures from that night but they're all in Wei Li's phone and she didn't upload any of them it seems. Or maybe she forgot. Haha 

Here's to more birthdays together

Until next time

What if you know what you want but try as you may, you can never get what you want? What do you do then? 

The only silver lining that I can see now is my certainty on what I truly want. At least I am not lost on that aspect. 

Ultimately, I still cannot get what I want. 

How twisted life can be sometimes. 

Or maybe it's just me. 

A brief post. 

Little words. 

It's more of a musing and rant. 

The first event that I am posting about is a birthday celebration way back in March:

(Although her birthday has long passed, I'm still going to post it up here and tell the story of how we met.)

I met JN on the first day of orientation itself back in September of 2012, together with Wei Li. There in the cold surroundings of Lecture Theater 12 JN sat two seats away from me on her own. Since the whole row of seats only consists of me and Wei Li before she sat down I ask JN to take a seat with us and join us because she was alone. Orientations were a week long and during that whole week we bonded and got to know each other really well. Who would have thought that all three of us were Perak born girls :) 

Proceeding to the celebration, we decided to meet up for lunch at Pyramid since none of us had classes that day. The plan was to have lunch at Bar-B-Q Plaza because JN has not tried it yet and neither have I. Before meeting up with JN we made a pit stop at Cotton On to get her a present. Thank goodness for us being almost similar in size because it is way easier to find clothes as gifts when we're nearly the same size. We bought her a nice lightweight dress and glad to hear that it fits her fine and she likes it! :D

Wei Li and I taking the cliched fitting room shot because fitting rooms have the best mirrors :)

Lunch was pretty much your standard all-girls lunch. Filled with food, chatter, laughter and random topics ranging from all the possible emotional spectrum. Talking is really just what girls do best. We connect at this inexplicable level and we just talk. We share what we think and what we feel and we feel better when our friends can relate and understand what we feel. I don't know how much of that is actually real for everyone else but I know that it is for me. 

And then there's the pictures that we just love to take each time we are out together. 

Mun Yee, Jee Nie, myself and Mayin

Mun Yee and I. Supposedly we have similar looking smiles :D

Mayin and I.

Instead of having the conventional slice of cake for a birthday we went with something different. We got ourselves some BR ice cream since it was coincidentally a Wednesday. 

A small cup of BR ice cream definitely makes us smile :)

It was a pretty good day out with my favorite girls from university. I honestly cannot imagine how life in uni would be if it weren't for these four gorgeous girlies of mine. It's very reassuring to know that they are always there even though we met less than a year ago. We're all so different yet so similar at the same time which is probably what makes our bond so special and uniquely us.

Perak girls FTW!

Smiles that started a friendship between 5 girls 

A post for Miss Sexy-Long-Legs

Until next time

Finally I am back with a publish-able post on my blog. I know it's has been quite awhile since I last blogged. I kind of abandoned my poor blog as my second semester progressed. I had no choice because it was a really hectic semester. We had so much to study and at every possible chance lecturers were constantly reminding us that our finals are around the corner (even when it was 4 or 5 months away). 

As stated in my title for this post, I am 1 down with another 3 to go. What I was referring to was the number of years I have left for my BPharm course. I have officially entered the post Year 1 graduate student status, pending Year 2 depending on my results (YIKES!) but I'll cross that bridge when I get there. Hopefully I do well as my expectations. 

Anyway, I figured since this blog has been abandoned for a long time I should retrace all the events of this past half a year and post it here. After all, a blog should function as some kind of a memoir or journal of my life. Who's to say I might end up with Alzheimer's or dementia down the road and I might want to relive the memories of my youth before my own brain fails on me as the neurons start to degenerate. Heaven forbid of course. 

My first post on past events will begin in the next couple of days I hope. 

Until then.