AMANDA'S blog.

Essays, schmessays / Halloween

2011-11-01T02:18:00.006+11:00

Apologies for the lack of updates guys, but I'm proud to say that I have been (mostly) busy spending most of the last 2 weeks working on one of my final essays.

Yup, it's that time of the year again - class officially ended for the year last Friday and that means everyone gets one week of Swot Vac to cram their brains out for final exams and/or hurriedly research and write their final essays. Ugh.

As usual, I am currently lamenting at the fact that 2011 that has just flown by within a blink of an eye. I have and I think I will always parrot my anguish at how fast time flies towards the end of every year. But I really do feel as though it was just not too long ago when I started Semester 2, and here I am right now desperately trying to finish the three major final essays I have due next Monday. And after handing in my final assignment of the year on the 11th, I will be officially done with my second year of uni, WHAT.

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Caught in the middle.

2011-10-20T23:41:00.000+11:00

Jan and I were walking through Woolworth's last week when "Dolly" on the magazine rack caught my eye, because this month's issue came with a free 48 colour-eyeshadow palette:

So, as we are fully Asian and we totally embrace our cheapskate ways (HAHA), of course we each got one. I have always liked Dolly and shimmery eyeshadow, plus Emma Stone is pretty cool!

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More Harry Potter!

2011-10-13T01:05:00.063+11:00

This one's a quick post because I totally forgot to include these photos in my previous post about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2!

Bought the special "Harry Potter" editions of various magazines in the few days leading up to the movie!

HI :D

2011-10-10T21:39:00.000+11:00

I know, I know, that was probably my longest absence ever. But I've missed my blog, and this time around, I feel like I'll be staying on for a little bit longer before I make my next disappearing act.

Well, nothing too exciting has actually happened in my life since I've disappeared off the radar, if you guys were wondering. Have mostly just been going to uni and work, watching shows and movies, listening to music - same old, same old. :P

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

2011-10-10T02:21:00.000+11:00

I swear, I have never looked more forward to seeing a movie so much in my life before.

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Part-time jobs: Meld and Gloria Jean's!

2011-07-12T17:40:00.004+10:00

Apart from school and social events, the reason why I haven't had much time to blog is because I work two part-time jobs! :)

So I can't remember if I talked about it on this blog before, but I actually worked as a waitress for a bit back in 2010, from about August to November. While I got along with my colleagues fine, I absolutely disliked the job - mainly because of the bosses. They were mean-spirited, grouchy and paid me quite terribly. I won't name the restaurant for fear of being sued for defamation, but I will say that it was located in Chinatown. :/ As soon as final exams/assignment time rolled around, I gladly used the excuse of being "too busy" and said goodbye to that job.

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Quick note of thanks!

2011-07-11T22:55:00.000+10:00

I apologize for the infinite time, to the readers of this blog, who have seen me break my promises, again and again, to keep this blog regularly updated, as I haven't been doing that.

I've come to realize that 2011 has been an incredibly busy year for me - and still is - so much so that not only have I not been able to update this blog, I haven't had much time even to keep in touch with the family and friends, whom I value so much.Which sucks, but honestly, there's really not much I can do about it, as much as I want to. :(

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Source Code

2011-06-18T21:27:00.001+10:00

Source Code turned out to be ingenious, I thought!

I thought the plot was rather original: a supposed army pilot named Colter Stevens (played by Jake Gyllenhaal, who did a wonderful job!) wakes up to find himself suddenly thrust into a situation where he is someone else - an unknown Sean Fentress - on a train headed to an unknown destination, sitting opposite an unknown woman who apparently seems to know him. All of a sudden, the train explodes and Colter awakes once again to find himself in a weird pod-like place, with a strange woman peering at him by ways of a virtual screen.

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The Hangover Part 2

2011-06-17T21:29:00.000+10:00

"The Wolfpack is Back", and this time they're in Bangkok!

As I expected, the movie turned out to be just as funny as the first. It fazes me how much of a sense of humour the writers for the films must have in order to come up with such a script. :P

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X-Men: First Class

2011-06-16T23:57:00.000+10:00

I've promised myself that I will see every movie on my Top 10 list for 2011 when its released in the theatres, so I've decided that I will do a movie review each time I cross one film off the list. Hope you fellow cinephiles will enjoy them as much as I will writing them!

I'm proud to say I've actually gone out and seen three out of 10 - The Hangover Part 2, X-Men: First Class and Source Code (numbers 3, 4 and 5 respectively on my list) - over the past 6 days. And seeing as I saw X-Men out of the three first, I guess I'll start with it.

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS

Initially heard nothing but great things about the film when it first came out so I thought that it was the best one to go out and see first...

Random snaps, round 2.

2011-06-15T02:44:00.000+10:00

If you're wondering where I disappeared to that last time, I was off being a wreck by pulling all-nighters while I stressed out over completing four major assignments due on the SAME DAY. I have to say that it was perhaps THE most tumultuous point in my life. I don't ever remember feeling as stressed as I was during that period, it was pure insanity.

These pictures do a poor job of justifying it, but this was my mess of a temporary workspace at one-half of Jas's desk (there was just too much crap on my own table to work at).

Totally utilized the Brit government's message on my birthday present from Jan!

Random snaps.

2011-05-26T21:14:00.001+10:00

Just wanted to show the few random photos that I've taken with my phone in the past month:

The Maltesers gift boxes were on sale one day in Woolworth's, so I decided to buy them for myself, hehe.

Student Experience Surveys!

2011-05-20T17:52:00.002+10:00

*Warning: This is a totally random useless post as it is about my school's changes to its survey system, but yeah feel free to stick around and read if you're really that bored. :D *

Everytime the last 2 weeks of semester rolls around, the university usually hands all these anonymous feedback survey forms to the students in each lecture to fill out. It's basically for them to know how students felt about the subject and use the comments/ratings to figure out how to improve it for the next batch of students that will take it.

Interestingly enough, this year they put everything online, which I think is pretty smart. Not only does it save a ton of paper, it also gives students more time to properly reflect back on their time in the subject and type in some valuable comments as opposed to just quickly filling out the damn thing at the end of class without thinking too much because all you wanna do is get out of there and go home.

But yeah I logged into my student portal one day and did a double take because apparently I'm studying CULT subjects...

The Wombats!

2011-05-14T13:46:00.004+10:00

After much anticipation, May 11th finally came and went - the date on which The Wombats played in Melbourne's Palais Theatre, the gig for which Jan and I had bought tickets for earlier on this year! :D

For those of who didn't already know and love the Wombats, they're the ones who came up with the highly infectious dance anthem "Let's Dance to Joy Division", and my self-proclaimed theme song "Moving to New York". Only recently, they've released their second album The Wombats Proudly Present: This Modern Glitch, including tracks "Tokyo (Vampires &Wolves)" and my personal current favourite "Techno Fan".

The Wombats are one of those bands who I find to be consistently good, i.e I like every single song that they come up with, so I was really quite excited to see them play.

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Top 10 Movies I Want to See in 2011.

2011-05-05T23:31:00.000+10:00

Yeahhhhhh. I don't even wanna defend myself anymore for not updating, it's getting too pointless. I am ashamed.

I know I haven't talked movies in this blog this year yet, but oddly enough, I've actually been downloading and watching a lot of films particularly this year (I'm even doing a film subject this semester!) - new ones, old ones, films I've always wanted to see but never did, and movies I've watched countless times, but will rewatch again and again anyway!

My current 'dying-to-see' movie would have to be Thor. I was already psyched for it from when its trailer first came out, but just haven't found the time to actually head down to the cinema to see it yet. It's gotten pretty decent ratings so far. Will review it as soon as I see it!

SO LITTLE TIME.

2011-04-19T00:58:00.002+10:00

Sooo yeah I know I pulled yet another disappearing act (blog-wise) again.

I just have a lot going on at the moment, so I really don't have the time to sit down and come up with interesting posts. And if you are a fellow Blogger user, you would know the ridiculous amount of time and effort it goes into uploading photos, with their crappy photo uploading feature. -_-

But I'll be talking about a lot of stuff once I'm all caught up with uni work - Easter Break is coming up soon, so I'll have ample time then to get all my shit in order - once I get all my uni blogs and assignments done, I'll devote my time to updating this blog, I swear. So expect a barrage of updates SOON. :D

Until then, do relieve yourself of boredom by visiting this site, or this one. You can alternately check out my Tumblr page, which like I've said before, is updated a lot more frequently.

Will catch you guys asap. :) x

P.S: For those of you who were wondering about the layout change... basically what happened is I somehow managed to accidentally revert my blog layout to one of my really old ones - think when I was in Form 3-5 - and I couldn't figure out how to switch it back, so I just picked one from Blogger's list temporarily. It's pretty boring, but I quite like it. Might keep it this way for a while longer, we'll see how it goes!

Joy!

2011-04-01T16:18:00.004+11:00

Hey guys!

I know I said my next post was gonna be about the foam party, but I've decided to put that on hold for a moment, because I'm too busy at the moment to do a long post!

I sadly have 3 major essays due in exactly a week. And I still have 0 words for all of them. :( Yeah I guess I still reign as the queen of procrastination - I HAVE to shed this title by the end of this year, I swear.

My current work area in the living room. Yes I am naturally that messy. :/

But yeah the reason for doing this quick post was just to express my absolute JOY at getting something I've wanted for the longest time...

PART 4: IMAX and Chadstone!

2011-03-27T00:18:00.000+11:00

Mar 17th:

Before this day, I've surprisingly never ever been to a single IMAX theatre - nope, not even the one in KL. I've always, always wanted to go, but for me, it was one of those things that you frequently say that you want to try, but just never find the time to. I mean, the name 'IMAX' is synonymous with 'awesome giant movie screen', and as someone who enjoys going to the movie theatres, I really am quite shocked at myself for putting off going there for as long as I did.

The main reason why I finally went on this day was because Jas found out that Tron Legacy 3D was for some reason, still playing in the IMAX theatres (didn't it come out in like November/December last year?). I was ecstatic when I heard the news, I immediately told her to book two tickets for a 9.30 pm showing that night!

I have wanted to watch Tron Legacy for the longest time - ever since I caught the trailer mid-2010. I thought the visuals were amazing, and the plot looked interesting enough. Unfortunately, when it came out here, I was too busy at the time working on final essays to catch it, and it had already stopped showing by the time I was back in Brunei. :/

The IMAX theatre is only about a 10-min walk from my place... which makes it all the more reason that I should have gone there earlier.

PART 3: Future Music Festival 2011

2011-03-25T03:43:00.009+11:00

[Caution: EXTREMELY LONG POST ahead. Read only when you're not pressed for time!]

Mar 13th:

"EPIC" is the appropriate word to describe this day.

What is the Future Music Festival, you ask? Revered for bringing top electronic/synthpop acts from around the world to major Australian cities every year, the FMF is basically a 10-hour-straight concert, with multiple stages, and a booze-and-drug fuelled (not everyone though), fanatic, dancing audience of about 1500. :D

Being a pretty huge electronic/synthpop fan, and having never gone for a music festival before (and trust me when I say there are A LOT here), I just knew that I HAD to go for FMF 2011. Especially when I found out that Mark Ronson, MGMT and Steve Aoki would be there! Yeah most people would be most psyched for Ke$ha, but I always had this inkling that she sucks live, so I wasn't as excited, meh.

So anyway, Jan (who shares basically the same music taste with me) and I bought tickets super early, on November 10th!

Yeah so we basically have been waiting for this day since FOREVER.

And what a day it was! :P

I gotta clarify, however, that like any experience in life, it wasn't completely all good. There were definitely some bad/insane/scary moments, which is only understandable since it was a booze-and-drug fuelled crowd, after all.

But as you keep reading, you'll see that the good moments totally owned the bad. :D

Nonetheless, one downside that wasn't in anyone's control was that it rained throughout the day. We're talking severe heavy drenching here. And it sucked extra bad in my opinion because it literally only started raining as soon as we joined the massive queue of people heading into the Flemington Racecourse (where the event was held) - so not cool!

Haha first pic of Jan and me of the day! It was only drizzling at this point, so we didn't look that soaked yet!

It was a pretty long walk in! Haha don't know if you guys can see it, but the warning sign in the distance said "No Passouts". :P

PART 2: Disney Exhibits & the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival

2011-03-22T01:26:00.039+11:00

- Read Part 1 here if you haven't! -

[I honestly thought I blogged about this, but I've scoured my blog archives, and apparently I didn't. I only uploaded the photos onto Facebook, my bad. So yes, we'll be going back in time for the first half of this post! :)]

In 2010, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (otherwise known as ACMI) in Melbourne, played host to a Tim Burton exhibition from June to October, courtesy of MoMA.

I was ecstatic since Tim Burton is my absolute favourite director (nope, not James Cameron or Spielberg, although they do make pretty kickass films), so after much procrastination, Jas and I finally went for the exhibit in September.

That's Jas with the poster at the entrance.

Yes I was referring to the MoMA!

I liked how the entrance already was embellished with this giant stripey snake and quirky purple eye (that's what I think it is anyway) that are so easily distinguished as Burton's creations!

Haha winter was already over at the time, but it was still quite chilly! Hence the red winter jacket I was wearing. :)

In case you didn't already know - yes, Tim Burton directed the original Batman movies!

A PROPER UPDATE - PART 1

2011-03-19T22:19:00.025+11:00

- 19/03/2011

Okay yeah I know I didn't end up updating like I said I would last weekend.

HEAR ME OUT FIRST THOUGH. I honestly fully intended to, last Sunday (13th March!). I had my Blogger dashboard opened up and everything, only to met by a problem: I couldn't find the Phone-to-PC cable for my phone, which meant I couldn't extract the pics from my phone.

-_-'

YOU GUYS CAN'T IMAGINE HOW FRUSTRATED I WAS!! I must have spent a good half hour searching for the damn cable, I even went to the trouble of wading through the huge pile of crap we have stored in our store room (it's a lot of crap, trust me). Tried emailing the pics from my phone, but for some reason that didn't work. I couldn't Bluetooth the pics from my phone to my laptop neither, because my laptop DOESN'T HAVE A FREAKING BLUETOOTH FUNCTION. -_-

So yeahhh I went to Chinatown this week and bought a multi-memory card reader, JUST so I could get the damn pics out of the phone. The things I do for this blog, wow.

I have a ton of pics to show you guys, seeing as I haven't blogged in what feels like a zillion years, so what I'm gonna do is break it up into chronological posts (you'll see what I mean). I'm leaving the pics from my KK trip and Chinese New Year for another time, just to make it easier! :)

STILL ON HIATUS.

2011-03-09T22:04:00.002+11:00

- 09/03/2011

So does anyone even bother reading this blog anymore? :P

Yeah I know it's been wayyyyyy over a month since I declared my "hiatus".

Good news - My Tumblr page is still very much active, so go there NOW for something to look at, so that your attempt to kill boredom by coming here was not completely futile.

Even better news (?) - I WILL be updating this blog this weekend. :D :D :D

Haha catch you guys then! x

I declare a hiatus.

2011-01-25T03:38:00.004+11:00

- 25/01/2011

Hey guys! Just wanted to quickly declare that I won't be updating the blog for a little while longer. :( Will be in my hometown of Tawau from tomorrow onwards till the 8th for Chinese New Year!

Unfortunately, I will NOT have internet access while I'm there, and basically I will mostly be staring blankly at the walls of my house as each day slowly and painfully passes. Yeah I know it's really sad, but I really do despise my hometown so, sigh.

I can assure you guys that I will be back with lots of pics though. I have been having fun in KK for the past 9 days, for those of you who didn't already know. :)

So yeah, hope everyone has a cool CNY, HAHA. Chao for now! ;)

2 weeks of 2011.

2011-01-14T05:34:00.029+11:00

- 14/01/2010

Once upon a time, I vowed never to become one of those people who only update their blog once in a while. It really irked me when I visited blogs who were run by such people - they would update very rarely, and after a while, I completely gave up visiting them.

Unfortunately I have failed to abide by my own promise. I have turned into one of these people myself, and I am well and truly ashamed. :( I really don't think I can ever go back to my glory days of proper, regular blogging.

While the regularity of the blog posts here cannot be determined, I can guarantee that this will, nonetheless, always be an updated blog - I've been running it for too long to completely quit. :P

I've said it before and I'll say it again - TIME FLIES BY TOO FAST. I still don't know it's entirely cos of my eternally screwed-up sleeping pattern, but it's seriously annoying. I felt like it was just yesterday that I was ringing in 2011, but today is the 14th, which means 2 weeks of 2011 have already flown by. Whatttttttt.

Hmm. Anyway, I know I said in the last post that the next one will not be a 'pictures post'. Yeah well, screw what I said, because this will be a picture post anyway. :D I have tons of pics from the last week of 2010, but I'm gonna save them for another post and show you guys pics from January instead.

I guess New Year's Day must have been like any other day of the year, because nothing significant enough happened that day for me to remember anything from it!

Neil and April left on the 3rd, and so we had a farewell dinner for them at Fratini's.

(Pics were all from Kok How's camera!)

Group shot! Haha I'm all the way at the very end!

Soooooo good.