A Bittersweet Goodbye

In 10 hours and 22 minutes as of right now, I arrive in New York. Initially, I was typing up a blog post up before I went on the plane but since there wasn’t enough time for me to finish typing up the whole blog up, I decided that I might as well type up my blog post on the plane.

This morning, as I sat on the car and looked out the window of Hong Kong, I must admit there is definitely a sense of nostalgia going on. I think about the people who I’ve grown up with, the people who made my time in Hong Kong memorable and all the things I’ve spent my time doing in Hong Kong. I will definitely miss and cherish the moments living in Hong Kong. To many people who know me, they probably think I’m super excited for college and ready to embrace the next stage of my life and although this is true I will miss doing the everyday things in Hong Kong. Like just having lunch with my dad, or popping by his office once in a while, shopping with friends or even going out and getting a drink with friends.

 A surprise phone call from my brother and sister-in-law came by this morning as I was on the car. They basically called to say they will miss me and that I should keep in touch with them via facebook and I can message them anytime. It was quite awkward, lots of pauses and yeahs but after the phone call, I couldn’t help but get a bit teary. Of course I hid that from my parents since I’m not someone that likes to show any form of tears but if they were to say farewell to me in the airport, I don’t know if I could hold in my tears. I was shocked that I was getting teary since I didn’t expect that I would miss them so much.

 As the title suggests, it is just a bittersweet for me.

 Even though I wasn’t thrilled that my mom came with me to send me off to college since I have a long history with her, and although she’s not my favorite person I’m glad that she came with me in a way. I don’t know how to explain why I feel this way but I hope you understand somehow.

 This summer was one of those summers where I didn’t do much. I spent my days at home watching tv shows and sleeping, and spent my other days “working for my dad” or hanging out with friends. I was able to learn more about myself this summer than I ever did and in return I got to meet many different people and even became good friends with them. I just keep reminding myself to put myself out there and be more outgoing and this little reminder alone has really helped me to open up to more people thus becoming good friends with many.

 I will end this blog now but when I get to New York and start college in Boston, expect to see me blog more frequently. I will document my experience as a freshmen college student so hop on aboard in entering the next chapter of my life! 

Singapore (Part 1): Food

Last month as a celebration for graduating high school, I went to Singapore with my closest friends. I know, I should have updated my trip from Singapore right when I came back but there was so much going on and my contributed laziness. But today I decided that I will finally do a update of my trip.

I have divided my Singapore trip in three parts.

The first part I’m going to blog about is the food we ate.

Day 1: 

We arrived in Singapore around 1ish pm, and by the time we checked in and got ready it was near 2. I did some research before coming to Singapore and one of the restaurants that was recommended by people is the Canele Patisserie Chocolaterie. Of course, desserts are the most popular in this chain-restaurant but they also serve western food like pasta, sandwich, salads etc.

Below are some of the pictures I took of the food we ate including the desserts we ordered.

Address:
Canele Patisserie Chocolaterie
350 Orchard Road, Shaw House #05-21

At night, we wanted to check out the local Singaporean cuisine so we settle on the Lau Pat Sat Hawker Center. Hawker Center, for those we don’t know, are food stalls that serves all types of food. So if you want to look for CHEAP, inexpensive yummy local food, this is the place for you. One of the more well-known food is the hainan chicken rice. Definitely try it!

Address:
Lau Pat Sat Hawker Center
18 Raffles Quay

Day 2:

We went to Universal Studios for the whole day (part 2 coming up) so I didn’t take pictures of the food we ate since it’s just normal theme park food.

At night, we decided to all dress up a bit and went to The Shoppes @ Marina Bay Sands. We didn’t have a particular restaurant to try but since we saw that TCC restaurant was all over Singapore, we wanted to try it out. Surprisingly, the food was actually really good but I thought it was quite expensive. But to the honest, the food in Singapore is quite expensive in general.

Address:
TCC
The Shoppes @ Marina Bay Sands
B2-120

Day 3:

Since we were all exhausted from Universal Studios the day before, we decided to just make it a chill and relaxing day. We went to Little India since it was somewhere different, afterwards we went to Haji Lane since most of us loves shopping. We got pretty hungry so we found a chinese restaurant near Haji Lane.

After shopping in Haji Lane, some of my friends were tired and wanted to go back to the hotel. But Michele and I wanted to check out Bugis Street since its known as a place that sells really cheap things. Upon arrival, we went into this mall that was filled with people and sold local Singaporean cuisine, many sex shops, cheap accessories, clothing. Basically, anything you can think of, it’s going to be there. I took some pictures of the food.

At night, we went to Clarke Quay for dinner. We went to this Spanish tapas restaurant called Octapas. The food was good but all the portions were so small that we kept ordering food. My favorite would probably be the paella. It was really big though so the paella filled us up.

Address:
Octapas
3D River Valley Road
Clarke Quay

Day 4:

I was really tired on Sunday since I came back to the hotel around 4 am, all that dancing from Zouk so I decided to sleep in while my friends went to Vivocity. I’ve been to Vivocity a couple years ago, so I wanted to sleep in, pack and then head for a foot massage and marina bay sands. Since I was kind of hungry while walking in marina bay sands, I picked up two macarons from TWG Tea. It was sooo amazing. A little too sweet for me however.

The last night, Michele and Marcie went to go shop some more, so the rest of us went out to eat. The cab driver didn’t know the location that we wanted him to drop us off, so we asked him to just drop us anywhere. I don’t actually know where we were but we walked for a while and thankfully we came across an alley of restaurants. I really wanted to eat na’an bread and since Anne and Ellen didn’t care, we headed for Indian cuisine.

Overall, I would say that the food in Singapore is pretty good except that the food in Singapore is more expensive than I expected.

Watch out for Part 2 of my trip, coming out sooooooon!

Food For Thought: Can we ever feel safe?

Can we ever feel safe?

The recent Colorado movie massacre has cause me to wonder whether we can ever feel safe. Never in my mind did it occur to me that an enjoyable night with teenagers, adults and families with children would turn to a shooting rampage.

This begs the question what does it take for US to avoid these kind of situations. Currently there are over 270 hundred million guns circulating in the nation and there is no question asked that people in the states love their guns. But how can US provide a safer environment for people to live in?

After the movie massacre, many cinemas are forbidding people to wear costumes to the movies but can that really prevent another shooting rampage from occurring? No. In my opinion. Every cinema especially ones located in major cities should add metal detectors machines the ones like you see in airport security and even include a station to check your carry-on before you enter the cinema. It’s interesting to me to see that the job employment problem still continues to be a major problem in the states, but why are people not recruiting more policeman or even hiring more security guards in cinemas to prevent these situation from occurring?

This leads me to my second point. What about places like malls or concerts where there are hundreds and thousands of people, can we feel safe in those places? In our mind, we do because we don’t think a crazy gunman would kill anyone in such a public area but once again what can the government do to protect the citizens? Whenever I hear about news of people getting killed, I reflect back how stupid the second amendment still applies in 2012. Yes, I understand that when the constitution was created, people needed guns in order to protect themselves. But in today’s day and age, this is no longer an issue. Of course, I am aware that abolishing the second amendment is nearly impossible but I think every state should start enforcing a stricter law in buying guns. People should not be able to get a hold of guns as easily as if they were buying a pack of chips.

Look at the other countries where normal citizens do not own guns, the rate of crime is much lower compare to the states. Why must Americans feel that purchasing guns will make them more safe? Doesn’t it create a more dangerous and violent environment? I read an article today on CNN about how attached Americans are with their guns. It’s absurd to me that even though President Obama flew to Colorado and spoke with the victim’s families of the massacre, however neither Obama nor John McCain propose any strategy in trying to solve this is pressing issue.

I will end it here but as a question for all of you to think about: What will it take for the people of America to change their attitude toward gun control?

That’s it for now and I am looking forward in reading and watching the court trail of James Holmes first appearance since the movie massacre.

Thoughts: Drifting Apart

This week I caught a cold but the good news is my cold is slowly coming to an end even though I have tissues all over my bed and whenever I lay down my nose gets so stuffed up I can hardly breathe.

But on to the topic for the day.

This isn’t something I suddenly thought about today, I’ve been thinking quite a lot the last year or so but decided why not talk about it since this happens to most of us.

My best friend, Winnie, and I have been best friends since we were 2. But especially this last year I feel as if we’re slowly drifting apart. Don’t get me wrong she’s still my best friend however  we don’t really talk or should I say quite rarely? even through text and skype. Since the start of 2012, I have only seen her once. Which was back in May. I made a post on that.

It’s weird to me because I like to make all these plans with different people, meeting them and having drinks with them but then it never really occurs to me to meet up with Winnie. To be honest, sometimes I feel like I can’t truly be myself when I’m with her. For example when I’m with my friend Michele, I feel comfortable and natural with her and hanging out with her alone than I am with Winnie. With Michele, I don’t know I can just be myself but with Winnie, I don’t know it’s just weird. It’s like I can’t truly be myself . The last time I saw her back in May we did talk quite a bit but to be honest I feel like we don’t have much to talk about.

Ever since she got together with her boyfriend last feb, it’s pretty obvious we’re drifting apart. She spends most of her time with her boyfriend and someone who is reading this might feel like I’m jealous of her but I’m not. (If her boyfriend was hot, then yes. LOL) I’m just stating a fact that because she likes to spend all her time with her boyfriend, her other relationships are starting to drift apart.

My mom constantly tells me to hang out with Winnie more but then I just feel like if we were to go to lunch there’s not much topic to talk about and it’s just going to be awkward.

The thing is whenever something happens to me or just anything when I was younger, I would be the first to tell her but now when something happens I don’t really want to tell her rather I resort to my other friends. So a note to myself even when I get a boyfriend in the future, I will still take the extra step in hanging out with my friends so they don’t feel left out because I don’t know if she notices this but because she got together with her boyfriend she is neglecting her other friends, more so me.

I will probably touch on this topic in the coming weeks but just felt like I needed to write this post just to get it off my chest.

A peek to the start of college partying

What is it about summer that makes me neglect my blog? It’s the most ironic thing ever. When I’m in school, even on the busiest days I would take an active role in updating my blog but once summer hits, my blog becomes dead. Silence. So I will try to take an active role in trying to update as often as possible. *fingers crossed*.

Going back to the topic.

July 5th was my brother’s birthday. And he turns 31. Because of this, he celebrated his birthday more like a gathering in this bar called billidart which had tables with beer pong, flip card and other classic bar entertainment like darts and pool. Since the location is located in Wan Chai, the drinks are all really cheap and to me it was more like a eye-opener just because I’ve actually never seen a real-live beer pong game in person or flip cup besides on TV.

The invite said 6:30. I got there around 7 and there was only 1 other person besides my sister in law and brother. So I just sat around, texted, acted bored and ate some wings and fries. Then later on the night, more and more of my brother’s friends came.  I talked to a couple of my brother’s friends and they were all very nice since some of the others I know pretty well so it was comfortable talking to them and others was good getting to know them. I wouldn’t exactly say everyone was nice but most of them were.

One of the first games we played was called flipcup. The rules are simple. You have two teams. You need to chug a certain amount of beer down. Once your done, you put your cup down on the table and u need to try to flip your cup. Once you’ve succeeded, the person does the same thing. And you keep going down the line. The first team that does all of the above, wins.
Needless to say, when I was playing my team loss. The thing about me is that I don’t like drinking beer. The only exception is corona. I can drink vodka, tequila and light-colored alcohol but dark-colored alcohol is not my thing. The other thing is that I’m never a fast-drinker. I can take in a lot of alcohol but I can’t drink fast. So when I had these two things combine, I was like choking myself when I was drinking the beer when everyone was like GO ANGELA DRINK DRINK DRINK. While beer was dripping down of me. Unpleasant.

But at least I’m good at flipping the cup. LOL. I’ll be the flipper and someone can drink my beer.

I wouldn’t say I had the funnest time but I was very entertained. The atmosphere of the bar was fun since other people was also playing flip cup and beer pong so it was fun watching others played. Then after a little while, it was girls vs guys in beer pong. I thought it was fun. Not the beer-drinking part even though I didn’t drink the beer. Everyone kept asking me to drink but tonight I really didn’t feel like drinking and needed to take a break especially after the last night of Singapore which you will read about it next week. Even though it was my first time playing beer pong, I got 2 balls in so I’m very proud of myself!

Then at this point, everyone is kinda drunk especially my sister-in-law. And let me tell you I have never seen her like this. She’s like laughing, talking to this girl she doesn’t like and acting like best friends, clapping, jumping up and down and then dancing. I was pretty freaked out at first. After a while, she threw up a couple times then passed out for like and hour and a half. While then, my brother was also drunk but was humping people and letting people hump him and was drinking etc. So in my mind I’m like fuck, I need to take care my 31 year old brother and 27 year old sister in law later on when we get back home.

My brother’s friends were funny and since my brother was semi-drunk, let me tell you I have not seen more humping and lap dances from guys doing it together in my life so I was truly amused. I will insert a picture that my brother’s friend posted on facebook. They were very into it as well. Sex with clothes on LOL.

As I mentioned, I talked to quite a bit of my brother’s friends and most of the topic was about college and asking me where I’m going and them giving advice and their experience. So that was good and I even found out that one of my brother’s friend who I know really well went to Northeastern as well so that was pretty cool since I always thought she graduated from parsons which she did but she went to Northeastern for the first 4 years then transferred to parsons to be with her boyfriend now husband which her husband is my brother’s middle school friend.

Then I played another round of beer pong but this time I was on the team with my brother and another of my brother’s friend I haven’t met before. I must say he was pretty cute, I can’t say he is super good-looking but he’s cute but sadly he’s old. He’s like 32 seriously I want to be older now like 27. He’s like my type of guy. He’s tall. Good body. Very americanized and great at playing beer pong. I may have developed a little kindargarten crush that night. Since after 1 round my brother was off doing something else, I was on the same team with him. I got one ball in LOL and all the rest he got in. While the other team was pretty bad and they were guys. I must say its a turn on when a guy is good in beer pong.

We left the bar around 1:30 with my brother very drunk and my sister-in-law finally waking up but kept repeating a gazillion time I’M SO FUCKING DRUNK. FUCK. I’M SO FUCKING DRUNK. Overall, it was a good night and a very entertaining night to say the least.

So this is what I will be doing in college. Playing beer pong and flip cup. Please give me something else then beer.

A week of haul & updates

Yes I know. I have been M.I.A for the last week or so and I apologize. I don’t have an excuse but the only thing I can blame is my laziness. I kept telling myself that I would update later or tomorrow but ended up neglecting to update.

I think I just needed a break from blogging but now I’m back and going to update pretty frequently.

This week was a pretty boring week. I didn’t do much besides I went out to shop, worked out (yay! first time in 3 months since I last went to the gym), and stayed at home and baked brownies and watch tv shows.

—————————————————————————————————————-

A quick update of my week:

• Baked brownies (first time baking semi-successful) – super proud of myself and surprisingly it tasted pretty good even though I bought the brownie mix from betty crocker, so it was pretty easy. There was some difficulty in terms of baking since it took forever to bake but ended up pretty good. Even though it wasn’t super successful but still tasted good.

I am motivated to try baking other things now but my oven is weird. I think I might try to bake cupcakes or a cake next time. Probably next week. Next time, I will take pictures when I do bake. My parents actually liked it. LOL

• Created facebook. Yes. I didn’t have a facebook up till now. I haven’t told that I created facebook yet since I want to set up everything in terms of uploading photos, privacy settings etc but will announce to my friends who’s my nagging me to create a facebook account for so many years.
• Finished watching million dollar decorators, million dollar listing: new york, million dollar listing
• Shopped in Forever21, bought some makeup, saw a Hong Kong celebrity

Okay that is a lot of writing. So without further or due here is my haul that I bought this week. (I forgot to upload my haul from forever21 but will post the pictures tomorrow when I’m home).

One of my favorite mac products

OPI nail polish

Mac Contrast eyeshadow

Wanted to get it for college but tested out the blade. It’s pretty horrible compare to my amazing Gilette Embrace razor

Got a similar sunglass that I lost in a hotel

Since my friend’s bday was yesterday, I got her a revlon foundation and an MAC eyeshadow I accidentally bought cause I thought I didn’t have but when I checked my makeup collection, I found out I had it. I felt so stupid. I was going to return it but thought I could give the eyeshadow for her.

While I was shopping at MAC in this department store, there was this event in SKII (skin care brand) and there was a lot of people. I went to see what was going on and I found out this asian celebrity called Angelababy (yes that is her name) was there to promote the brand so I took some pictures of the event. If you don’t know, I don’t follow or know asian or hong kong celebrity but when I watched Snowman and Huntsmen with Michele and during the trailer, Angelababy was in it so I now know who she is.

I also took some pictures of my OOTD a couple days ago. I will post them up next week.

Now on to today, as I mentioned my friend’s 18th birthday is on wednesday so we are celebrating her birthday today. We’re going out and probably go bar-hopping, shishaing, and going to clubs where she is finally legal to go. Except one of my friend, she’s still under 18 so unfortunately she probably won’t be able to go to the clubs even though she’s very optimistic that she can get in but really if she knew better she can’t.

I’m typing up this blog in my dad’s office and for lunch we went to this restaurant called simplylife. I love the interior design. It’s modern but it still has that vintage look. I took some pictures of the food.

Salad

Spinach + truffle + some kind of a cheese pizza

Sea bass + egg benedict + potatoes + cherry tomatoes + creamy mustard sauce

That’s it for now. I will update you on how it goes tonight and I’m looking forward to singapore in 6 days!