It is counterintuitive to be productive on a weekend; I’m too hard-pressed to get out of bed and depending on how ruthless the past week has been, my brain falls into varying stages of incompetence. I’d elaborate but there are just better things to write about today….like my plan to write an entry every week to get this site back on track.

Seems a little far-fetched for someone who disappears for a month only to return with feeble, guilt-ridden hellos and a long ass entry about what went down on, say, Valentine’s Day (nothing but brunch with a girlfriend happened goddamnit). But bear with me. This is my last year of uni, my last year of freedom, so to speak, before I proceed with the slow, painful recipe for corporate success: shackling myself to a desk and what would likely be a computer running on Windows. I need to utilise this time carefully: do more writing for my portfolio, get to know the other Singapore and Melbourne-based bloggers, read and allow myself to dream a little.

Writing doesn’t come easy for me. It’s one of the scariest things I’ve chosen to do since I constantly live in fear of the blank screen. Half a bar of chocolate and 3 cups of extra strong English breakfast tea: that’s what I had to eat/drink to write this and I know the process will never get any easier. But as long as I wait for the right conditions and my writer’s muse to reappear – I’m not going to get anything done. Weekends are best for sleeping in, but also for waking up to do the best creative work of your life.

Today I’ll be reading issue 27 of Dumbo Feather, an Australian indie magazine that interviews people we ought to know, from chocolatiers, stylists, bakers, to publishers. Next to it, a milky cup of China Jasmine tea. Tea is my favourite therapist and drink but I also like taking the weekend crash therapy session by piling more sweet-scented beauty products on my face.

My friend, Felix, bought me a tube of Aesop’s Rosehip Seed Lip Cream for Christmas with an insinuating note which said “Ilyana, Because I know you like things that squirt or ooze”. The lip cream’s been difficult to live without in this heatwave Melbourne’s been having, it’s very nourishing and I won’t be surprised if I run out when I actually need it the most – winter.

This damned weather has also sucked the moisture out of my face so I’ve been remedying it by massaging Weleda’s Wild Rose Facial Oil capsules into my skin. It smells like a $200 bottle of perfume but every time I use this, I’ll be on automatic house arrest because the oils won’t absorb into the skin until several hours later. This is my plan for a creative Saturday, what will you be doing today? (Someone share brunch stories and make me jeals, please).

Oh I forgot to mention I’m currently freelancing for inSing.com so here are some shameless self-promos/recommended readings for your weekend:

1) 6 Apps to Make Your Instagram Photos Look Better
2) 8 Lipsticks to Brighten Your Look This SS/13
3) How to Shop on Gmarket Like a Pro

Image credit: Elise Crombez, Vogue Netherlands Dec 2012.

My heart is beating in a different way
Been gone such a long time and I feel the same
Will you miss me?
When there’s nothing to see?

Every time this song plays on my laptop, as sung beautifully by The xx, I’d wish the band would’ve written it a little sooner (Missing was released in 2012, on their album, Coexist). It describes succinctly what 2011 was for me and though that year has disappeared into melancholy, the song’s meanings aren’t all lost to me.

Every year I do these little posts just before I leave the country to whine about my first world Asian problems. This year it will be no different. The good news is it’s my last year of uni so this is the final round of whingeing y’all are gonna get (nah, not really lol). I was reading my old emo posts and aside from being slightly embarrassed by them, I’m happy I wrote ‘em down. Measuring change is, above all, to recount these things of the past and figuring out if you feel the same (another nod to Missing, god I hope this doesn’t betray my infidelity with the other songs in my playlist). These old entries have had time and a shitty internet connection from being pored over by my eyes and I read them now, surprisingly distanced from past insecurities.

My fears of being left behind for being away for too long, of being alone in an unfamiliar place, of change because change sucks – they don’t bother me much anymore. I don’t have any real answers to why this is so; the only legit thing that’s different about my life is that I eat more gelato now. Is gelato or anything full cream the cure for all ills? Then I would recommend one scoop a week for those in a similar predicament, two scoops if you’re feeling especially tragic.

Somewhere in swirls of frozen green tea and white chocolate, I figured no matter how many times Oprah tries to tell us change is good – it’s horrid most of the time. But we can’t help these things you know? Ice cream messes, stickier situations; these catalysts for our formative years. It isn’t pretty but we must learn to accept, live, and grow – we do it in our own ways – because remaining stagnant is worse.

And don’t worry so much if it’s taking too long for things to fall into place. Life will always be a series of wrong turns, bad choices, foolish ideas. It’s going to be okay. We’ll be okay.

Image credit: Gemma Ward in Details Mag.

I was cleaning out my laptop and found these photos I took last year that never made it on the blog for reasons I can no longer remember. I have a hunch I wasn’t particularly excited when I first saw them, which would explain why they’ve been squirreled away in a folder I named “Mehhh” in my photo archives. Now that I’ve exposed my very inventive folder naming system to the world, we can put that to rest and talk about my renewed interest in these photos. I can’t really put my finger on why I like them again, maybe photos can be likened to wine: leave them alone somewhere dark for months and rediscovering them gives you a high so intense you see their hidden potential. My other flimsy theoretical take on this is that somewhere in that 12 month hibernation period, my tastes have altered slightly.

Taste is chemistry: it is conditional on a blend of the obvious – like your mood or food allergies (if you can’t eat peanuts, then it is certain Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups aren’t your favourite afternoon snack) – and also things that seem ridiculous: how early you got to work that day or whether you wore the right sort of underwear. And in my private universe of brain cells that dictate taste, I would imagine all these random variables accumulating, steadily tinkering with just how much I liked or disliked this and that.

Changes in taste can happen slowly: I don’t have the same enthusiasm about eating satay like most Malays do. It’s what I’m famous for. I have, at many a family barbeque, been treated to cousins sneakily pushing sticks of satay into my plate just to see my face contorting itself into this. Something happened earlier this year though – it was my last weekend in Singapore and dad suggested we hit this morning market in Malaysia for breakfast. I knew that was code for I WANT SATAYYYY! – meh – but I relented anyway since 1) we were already heading to my fave restaurant for dinner 2) I am a legit daddy’s girl, admittedly the worst sort. 20 minutes after placing our order, the sticks of dread were served and maybe it was the charcoal heat, the grease, my family’s happy nomming faces or the bitterness of having to leave them again for school but I found myself reaching for a satay stick, and another, and ano..damn it, I suppose I like satay now .__.

But unlike my Sataygate of 2012, changes in taste can also be in a constant flux. One day, you can hate undercuts and love it the next day when you see it on someone who can pull it off really well but only to dislike it a little when your best friend tells you NO. Disclaimer: I am not this person. Another strange taste-related event is that I’m also beginning to like people I once couldn’t stand? ‘Like’ might possibly be too charitable a word but I’ve become more patient when in close proximity with these people. I don’t feel like killing them half the time which is certainly an improvement. I think my brain cells must be all wonky from the cold. Or maybe I’ve just grown up a little.

I have been getting the same dreams lately; I wake up in an empty apartment, I walk out and everything is blanketed in snow. I walk for a bit, look back and discover I don’t leave any footsteps. It’s more beautiful than eerie but I’m only saying this because I always wake up before anything creepier happens. This is the last week of my holiday in Singapore and it’s this period that I become an emotional mess; my brain becomes muddled between missing home and missing Melbourne. Today, for example, when I had a really shitty watered down iced coffee that I paid 5 bucks for and all I could think of, apart from stabbing the barista and getting my money back, was my daily $3 cappuccino at Melbourne’s League of Honest Coffee. Then I did a little lingerie shopping at H&M, fantastic bras for only $20? No really, even I was skeptical until I tried them on and HOT DAYUMMMM Singapore, you are forgiven. And as if God didn’t believe finding cute bras was redeeming enough, Dad asked me tonight what I wanted for dinner and he drove to our favourite restaurant, despite having tons of work to do, to get me my chicken rice. I bawled in the toilet when he left.

I am very, very lucky to be able to experience an entirely different world in Australia and then come back home to relive my old life for a split second. Yes, it’s hard to leave things behind, I’ve said this many times, but today it dawned on me literally 20 minutes ago as I stared at my ceiling light – a moment which compelled me to write this entry immediately – this unbearable feeling that intensifies as my flight back looms closer? It’s the fear of being left behind. It’s ironic since I’m the one leaving but when one leaves, the space one occupies in a person’s heart diminishes with time and slowly they get used to being without you. It sounds like I’m elegantly describing what a break-up is to most people but it happens to all friendships and every tie forged with another person. I know my friends love me dearly but we are in different stages of our lives now; most of them are working, some of them are struggling students like me and we’re all experiencing different things. It is childish to think things would stay the same, even I know I’ve changed in some ways. But in my white dreamscape, it was nice to be in some place impervious to change even for a little while.

I should probably create a new “EMO SHIZ” tag, for things like this.

The past two weeks have been hectic for me so I’m sorry I MIAed on you guys. My baby brother got his O’s this month, proving that he is certainly much brighter than my 16-year-old self – especially in the Math department. He seeks a future in aviation so fingers crossed I might be able to travel for free in 10 years or so. CONGRATS LIL’ BRO, I’m so proud!

I had a gay friend, K, who flew in this week to meet his Singapore-based boyfriend and ladies, we have a problem. It took an expensive brunch (which my friend paid for *COUGH TAKE NOTE STRAIGHT MEN*) and a hilarious debate between the three of us and his other uh, rather conservative – that’s all I’m saying – friend about the “hazards” of having half naked A&F models gracing the Singapore store but I am convinced that all the nice guys are gay.

SIGH. I know I’m overgeneralizing here but honestly, I have never met a gay person I didn’t like. K has told me many stories about the assholes he’d dated but I’ve been lucky so far: all the gays I’ve befriended are warm, extremely well-mannered and so bloody nice. This is a serious epidemic ladies – there are plenty of amazing guys out there, they’re just not interested in us D8

My friend, Nad, tells me it takes a special kind of man to understand the modern Muslim woman – he has to have a wealth of knowledge of Islam, sufficient enough to guide his family, while being liberal in his views on religion, current affairs and just how much we want that clutch from Yves Saint Laurent. This man has to find some way to balance these sometimes conflicting ideals while tolerating my warped sense of humor. Does such a man exist? I’ve made some crass assumptions about men and I will continue believing in them until I cross paths with a guy who pisses me off because I was wrong, he’s right and in that moment of bewilderment, I will become the girl who traced the outlines of her lips and colored it with songs of his heartbeat – minus the dragon tattoos.

Oh yes on the A&F debate – obviously, I am all for some man candy while K’s said conservative friend (SHE’S NOT EVEN MY FRIEND JSYK) found the show of man flesh to be repulsive and “disrespectful to our society”. Bitch please, do you know how rare it is to find men in Singapore with abs (and hot faces LET’S BE REAL) of that calibre??

Photos were taken with my father’s Nikon 35mm f/2.0 lens I stole with no shred of remorse. Unfortunately, they stopped making this particular model some time ago but if you’re interested, Nikon makes a stellar 35mm f/1.4 lens I think. I’ve been wanting to check out Antoinette for a while now but don’t let the photos fool you – I never got to It was completely packed so my friends and I headed to TWG instead. TWG’s matcha raspberry cheesecake took my disappointment away, such an amazing cake!

p.s yes, this is one hell of a random entry. I’m talking about gay men in one paragraph and the ideal Muslim man in the next WHAT THE FORK. My best friend’s words of wisdom: “Every man has his own burden to bear”.

I found my old moleskine while cleaning out my drawers a couple of days ago. I can’t remember who or what started it but in 2008, Dejiki and I were religiously documenting our lives in our moleskines. We’d spend our lunch hour writing in the cafe at work while sharing a brownie and when we were done, we’d switch moleskines and laugh over the stupid things we’d written. “Omg this is so bitchy,” was what Aaron told me this week when I showed him some of my favourite pages from the book so for your sake, I’ve blurred out my writing so nobody gets hurt ;p

The main reason why I was so adamant in pouring my soul in this moleskine is also an unlikely one: I got dumped, wanted my ex-boyfriend back for reasons I don’t want to remember and you know that stereotype about designers being extremely dramatic? It’s true. I was determined to get my ex-boyfriend back so I found the solution in a beautifully-bound $25 notebook and the plan was to write about how much I missed, loved, cherished him (so it appears I actually had a heart in 2008? *gasp*) and I would pass it to him a month after – more precisely, the night before I was due to leave for a holiday in Hong Kong during which I hinted that since it was typhoon season, I might not come back alive. God, I would have made such a great actress in a Malay soap opera.

Of course, the theatrics didn’t stop there. I had these big, bold headings in my moleskine and sketched here and there to make it the most awesome, incredible, stunning etc diary I could possess. Designer stereotype of having a personalised moleskine with sketches? Check. After a while, writing in that book became a daily ritual; it was a form of catharsis for me and it helped me understand why my ex wasn’t the right person for me, why I had failed as a girlfriend and why it’s completely justifiable to spend $500 on a wallet. The sad thing is I’ve completely stopped doing any form of writing in my current moleskine, apart from scribbles about essay deadlines and lecture notes. So this summer holiday, I’m aching to bring back my dotted sketches and unrestrained writing in a brand new moleskine! What say you, Dejiki? Coffee, cake and quiet writing again? :3

ps: My moleskine project didn’t work in the end. It takes a lot more than a notebook to repair a broken relationship but looking back, I wouldn’t have done it any differently. He took up a large space in my heart for the bulk of my teenage years and I loved him. But to be frank, if your man isn’t a designer, an artist, or a writer, there is a chance he can’t tell the difference between an expensive notebook and a $2 one. Shit. I have such high expectations :/

pps: I am LOVING all the guesses on what you guys think Storm in a Teacup is! No one’s got it right yet but oh wow you have given me so many ideas on other entries I can work on for this blog Anyway, Storm in a Teacup will be unveiled in the middle of next week so look out for it! x

I don’t talk about my religion much on this blog and you wouldn’t find my version of the ‘trial and tribulations of a hijab wearer’ that you find often discussed on hijab style blogs. I don’t know, it’s not that I’m uncomfortable writing about Islam but seeing as how the Internet dangerously allows words to be misunderstood, the complex inner-workings of my religion seem to be better discussed with friends, rather than with 99.9% of the world’s population who don’t know me in person. Besides, who made me the expert on Islam right? There are so many things I don’t have a complete grasp of, some things I’ve struggled to understand and well, I have my vices.

I have a good Muslim/bad Muslim complex; I tend to oscillate between these two modes on an average day. Of course, when I talk about being a ‘bad’ Muslim, I don’t mean that I’ve tried to rob a bank or eaten 10 skewers of pork – it’s those little things: losing my patience or swearing like a sailor when someone or something pisses me off. Of course, I try to control my vices whenever I can but sometimes, things just don’t go as planned.

Like yesterday, for example.

I had a coffee date with super beauty blogger, Roseanne, and I was running a little late so I decided there was no time for fancy schmancy dresses and grabbed a basic top from my closet. Since I started wearing the turban as my hijab, I’ve been using turtlenecks to cover up any exposed skin from the neck down. Two of them were in the wash and one of them I ruined with a hot iron just last weekend, so the turtleneck I was supposed to wear was the only one I had left. It was a wee bit wrinkly so I figured I’ll iron the damn thing. I’ve already ruined one before so there’s no way I can ruin another right? I burned a hole the size of a golf ball in the middle of the fabric right where my left breast was supposed to be. I NEVER SEEM TO LEARN DAMN IT. Or maybe I need a new iron :/

And so I was faced with a dilemma: I could either choose to expose my neck or my left breast to the world LOL – of course I picked the lesser of two evils and went with a boat neck striped tee.

Then it occurred to me after I left my house that I could have covered up my neck with a shawl -____- Bad muslim moment omfg. Ah well, we all have our moments. And how’s that for some religious controversy? ;p

Anyway, I’M BACK! I meant to blog sooner but I’ve been down with the flu for the past two weeks, the most serious case of flu I’ve ever had to be quite honest. I threw up a lot, especially when I ate meat, and it got really annoying to the point where I told all my friends I was pregnant with Jared Leto’s vegan baby LOL.

Well, it’s good to be on holiday again – the couple of weeks have been horrendous because of all the essays I had to write while suffering from said flu and a fever that never seemed to go away. I was drugged up every 4 hours on Panadol and all the magic pills my mother supplied me with before I moved here – here’s hoping all my essays don’t turn out to be incoherent rubbish! ;p

Charlotte
In response to Sofia Coppola’s film, Lost in Translation (2003).

Crumpled sheets and a hotel with no name.
He leaves her with a kiss that bruises her knees.
She looks below and sees the city,
Atlantic lights playing with red blue pink orange gold.
It has a different smell from her New York but tastes the same.
Urban trees bear the same fruit,
packaged under a different name.

The streets are beaten with stilettos
And pelted with runaway stars.
She can tell them apart after the third day,
they watch her as she watches them
The Shibuyas.
Same streaks of blonde,
fake like her pink hair,
But their renegade dreams too real.

The rain looks like it touches her
But it doesn’t, her 100 yen shield.
Transparent, it unfolds onto the skies,
turns back time
And removes his kiss.
The city was hers, not his.

She went as far as Kyoto,
Snaking through carmine temples,
Where monks painted loneliness on her wrists.

But she didn’t leave and still by the window,
Toe nails painted red, she whispers “Goodbye, Tokyo.”

- For Aaron.
Poetry Final Collection of 10 poems, 15.04.2011

Oh my gosh, my Poetry results came out today and I scored 90/100 for it..I’m stunned, speechless etc I can’t even think properly right now so please forgive my garble! It’s not in my nature to be shy about things but I rarely ever show my “real” writing to people other than myself. Writing is, I suppose, one of the areas I’m convinced I will never be good at. Fortunately, my Singaporean mentality comes in handy in such instances, rejecting the thought of failure and reminds my frail ego to toughen up or risk upsetting my mother by getting a B. Tough love – that’s just the way it is with Asian parents.

Most people would be stumped when asked to name their favourite movie but I can honestly say nothing has ever topped Lost in Translation in my mind’s eye. It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen and it still is. Its soundtrack is perfection and while the ending doesn’t make me bawl like it used to, I still appreciate the mystery it leaves me with. I have always, always wondered what happens to Scarlett Johansson’s character, Charlotte, after the movie and this poem is my personal response to that. If you have watched the film, I do hope you enjoy this poem and if you haven’t, what are you waiting for omg? Watch it!

As with all my best and favourite poems, Charlotte is dedicated to my best friend, Aaron. He’s the only person who gets my obsession with Lost in Translation because he’s obsessed with it himself! Plus I send him all my poem drafts and he reads them without complaint, stepping in only when he sees something he dislikes to say “OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS EMO SHIT” HAHAHAHAHA I love you bb! Aaron thinks Charlotte is my best poem yet and I sorta agree – it’s going to be difficult surpassing my borrowing of Sofia Coppola’s magic in Lost in Translation. I don’t know if I should post the rest of my poems up on tea noir since poetry isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but I figured I’ll start and leave you with my best.

tea noir will be back to regular programming next week! Hello to my new readers and thank you so much for leaving me a comment! I know there’s a ton of comments I haven’t replied to in my last two entries but I will get back to you guys over the next couple of days. So much drama happened during my birthday but more on that later! I have to start packing urgh, my flight back home is in 3 days!

I love it when my girlfriends and I get together for dinner. Somehow the best conversations always seem to be formed during the great wait for your food to arrive from the kitchen. The other night we were trading relationship horror stories (the ones where you start with “omg you wouldn’t believe what this douche did to a girl I used to know”) and a friend who’d never dated before exclaimed that hearing all these stories made her fear relationships even more because everyone seems to get hurt/cheated on.

She does have a point. The stories of ever after and true love have become less apparent, less heard of, while botched fairy tales where the girl gets dumped have quickly risen to become a staple topic at girly dinners. But honestly, I think getting dumped may not necessarily be as terrible as it is made out to be. Of course, if your ex-boyfriend was a lying, cheating bastard who dumped you for another girl, then yes, I will be signing my name on your petition to have him sterilized and sent to live among sheep.

But what if he broke up with you because you weren’t the greatest girlfriend? And that you weren’t the flawless female you thought you were? If that is the case, then the break-up serves as a way to re-examine yourself, to discover the flaws you subconsciously knew you had all along but never took notice of – I mean, who likes admitting they have flaws right? You can cry for a month but you have to realise that there has to be a reason why your boyfriend left your purported perfection to cruise the highway for singles once more. And while it stings like a mother to admit that you were the main cause of the break-up, good news is you finally have time to work out what actually went wrong, to brush away the thin shroud of denial that once comforted you and slowly, work on diminishing your weaknesses.

Being in close contact with a person gives you awareness of how you behave in private: you show a ‘secret’ side of you, a certain vulnerability that your family and best friends never get see – I think this is the ultimate reason why even the most mutual break-ups hurt. But it’s okay. Every break-up we go through only serves to make us stronger and a little closer to figuring out how relationships work. And slightly twisting a song title from Daft Punk, we all emerge hardened, better, faster and stronger. Whether your past relationships have been happy or progressed into grisly horror flicks, I think we all can learn a lot about ourselves from being romantically involved with a person. Of course, I am in no way recommending that you throw yourself on the next available guy mmkay!

Ok is this blog turning into a relationship advice column or what lol? I have to apologize, some of my girlfriends flew in from Singapore last week and god, it’s been so long since I’ve had a girly dinner with people my age so the stuff we talk about is bound to end up on this blog ^_^; Oh and one more thing I like about girly dinners? The bitching fest that comes with dessert 8D

Some photos from last week:

1. My vegie burrito from Vegie Bar: Refried beans wrapped in a tortilla and nacho chips with sour cream and guacamole.

2. If these blended fruit juices had come in shorter glasses, they would’ve deceptively looked like potent cocktails.

3. My friend’s wild mushroom risotto from Vegie Bar.

4. Coffee stop at the Sensory Lab.

5. Showing my friends from Singapore my favourite graffiti wall in Melbourne.

6. Chicken paella at the Morrocan and Spanish restaurant, La Paella, off Sydney Road.

7. With a name like Van Gogh, this has to be the prettiest cake in the world.

8. Is it safe to say we will never run out of cakes in Melbourne?

Excerpt from After the Park by Felicity Plunkett.

Things fade and fail, but not the dream – Gwen Harwood

Noon emptied the park like a death.
Vanished skies swung crying.
The last woman, lingering,
I pushed the beads of a plastic abacus:
counted my losses. At night
my dreams rolled back to taste your trace
and I sailed their upswing
woke to the jolt of their stop:
salt mornings; hope’s flaking away.
But what if it were not
too late? What if, as you turned
and left our accidental meeting –
our unrehearsed universe
pressed between pages of unwritten notes –
I called your name?

I don’t fall in love often. I think when you’ve had your first one, two, maybe 10 relationships, you start noticing there are some things you absolutely can’t stand about a person and some things you adore. Then, based on the skeletons of your failed relationships, you start mapping, in your mind, the ideal partner you hope and seek to fall in love with. The problem many women and I have in common is that we’re just too damn picky. Our standards sometimes border on the ridiculous:

1) Has to be hotter than James McAvoy.
2) Has to be a writer or be able to write beautifully*
3) Understands what Prada means to me**

*My friend told me last night that I should give this up because, and I quote, “In Singapore, you’d be lucky to find a guy who can even form a proper sentence.” Not true, obviously but I think it does give you a slight indication of the kind of single men I have to deal with in Singapore.

** I’m only half-joking.

The thing is I’ve been single for 3 years now and I think part of the reason why it’s so awesome to be single is that you get to hang out with your other single friends! You know, the ones who can confirm that they’ll be meeting you for lunch instead of cancelling with a sad text: “Eek Ilyana I’m so sorry it’s just that my boyfriend has this thing he has to go to and he doesn’t really want to go so he’s asked me to go and I can’t say no because I feel bad and I love him and he- OH MY GOD I DON’T CARE. Srsly, single girls will reach this phase where they realise all their other single friends are no longer single *shriek* And when you see how happy your newly taken friends are, you start turning your back against the Ya-Ya single sisterhood and start pining for love.

It happened to me this semester when I met an amazing writer and no, it wasn’t love at first sight – I just fancied his intelligent ways, you know? ;D Meanwhile, my mind was constantly swamped by thoughts of him and it got to the point where I couldn’t take this b/s so I figured I should get to know the guy more before I decide if he was going to be the love of my life or not. I did and while I admired his knack for writing brilliant prose, we had nothing in common. Now I know having nothing in common never stopped anyone from falling in love but as the night progressed, I understood that what I did like wasn’t him to begin with: It was the idea of romance.

It’s tricky, this romance thing. Sometimes you think you may have feelings for a person but other times, it’s just the thrill, the idea of romance that clouds your judgement and manipulates you with images of decadence, roses and “Meals For Two” cookbooks. Maybe I’ve been single for far too long to be sucked in by the cheesiness of romance but I suppose this means my heart is capable of feeling love for something that doesn’t involve shopping. That’s comforting.

I can’t believe I’m making my return to blogging with an entry detailing my failed romance that never was lol! Well, I’m sure my mother would be very pleased with my still sorely single state. How has everyone been? I’ve had the most intense month in school ever omfg, I swear this semester is the worst one I’ve been through. I had to write about 12,000 words in essays and blog posts for my finals this time and it was absolutely horrendous. I spent the last week in my pjs, just writing and writing. Of course, I had a bit of fun writing a 2,500 word dissertation on Sex and The City, I’m going to be so pissed if I don’t get a distinction for that because I werqed those Manolo Blahniks fo’ reals.

Now that I’m officially on holiday, I’ve got a couple of entries lined up and that giveaway I’ve been wanting to do! I can’t wait to read and catch up with everyone’s blogs, it has been too long since I’ve had time for myself and this blog. Also, helloooo new readers! I’m sorry the first entry you guys prolly had to read was my pronunciation guide to tea noir, oops! I suppose I can count on everyone to pronounce it correctly now, huh? ;p

Anyway, imma brb for a bit guys, I need to indulge in some DVDs before I can blog full time (and because I fricking deserve it):

Somewhere (2010), Sofia Coppola.
The Delicious Miss Dahl (2010), Sophie Dahl.
The French Kissers/Les Beaux Gosses (2009), Riad Sattouf.
2 Days in Paris (2007), Julie Delpy.

p.s My best friend, LK, has started blogging! Check out his blog: Dejiki.com. He has a bit of an obsession with theme parks and he takes amazing photos too