It's probably not "Song of the Week" time yet but I really really can't resist. I LOVE THE NEW BEIRUT ALBUM. I LOVE it so freakin' much. If it were human, we would already be married and procreating by now...
I was feeling a little bit bored so... I drew squiggles and stuff:
Most of the patterns you can find at www.tanglepatterns.com. Pretty great exercise for stress relief actually - not that I'm stressed. To be honest, I don't think I'm studying as much as I should be. How many hours are you guys putting in per day? Am I doing less because I only have 8 units or is it because I'm just a lazy ho?
The study that I do do seems greatly unproductive. I was trying to write a practice essay for A Doll's House the other day and at the end of it, I realised I'd essentially just recreated my trial essay. It was the same points, the same techniques, the same bloody phrasing. WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN? I always go back to talk about the same things in every essay. There's no variety LOL.
To be honest, I had a hard time deciding whether I wanted to blog about this book series or not, mainly because the subject matter is so icky. For me personally, it wasn't that big a deal though because I've read/seen a lot of weird shit and it's come to the point where I think I'm like, 100% desensitized. Don't get me wrong - I don't go out to find this stuff, it somehow manages to find me by accident. I get lured in by a cool cover, I read the book and then I realise that the subject matter is taboo. Haha. I think that's what's happening with Fifty Shades. My sister said her friends wanted to read it because everyone was talking about it. I asked her if she knew what it was about and she said "no".
Well... have fun discovering what it's about.
Anyway, I think I'm getting sidetracked. What I wanted to say was that I recently read a book series called "The Dark Duet". Actually, I'm not sure if you would even call it a "series" - there are only two books in it after all. This is what they look like:
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Book 1: "Captive in the Dark" by CJ Roberts
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Book 2: "Seduced in the Dark" by CJ Roberts
Are you starting to get a clue as to the subject matter? Judging from the title of the first book, it wouldn't be hard to guess - this series is about HUMAN TRAFFICKING.
There were two main things that made me start the series:
- I was doing human trafficking in legal studies and I was kind of curious as to the whole other side of it - not just the dry stuff like the legal/non-legal measures.
- The COVER - especially that first one. It is beautiful and gripping in a kind of terrifying way.
Without giving too much away, the book was about an 18-year-old, Olivia aka "Livvie", who gets kidnapped by a man, Caleb. As a child, Caleb was kidnapped and sold into slavery. 12 years on, Caleb is so close to getting his vengeance but to get closer to the architect of his suffering, he must become the very thing he abhors and kidnap a beautiful girl to train her to be all that he once was.
“He was my tormentor and my solace; the creator of the dark and the light within.” ― C.J. Roberts, Captive in the Dark
In some ways, the story can be seen as a romance BUT - and this is a ginormous BUT - what I liked about the story was that, in no way does the author try to romanticize what is happening. A lot of the stuff that happens to Livvie is horrible, disgusting and demeaning. This is a story about HUMAN TRAFFICKING (I'm sorry, I don't even know why I keep putting those words in caps) - not a story about a normal girl and a normal guy. There is a lot of dark/taboo erotic content in these books and unfortunately, not all of it is consensual. I was on goodreads and one of the reviewers said that at the end of the first book, they were feeling so many things, they couldn't even figure out whether they wanted Caleb and Livvie to end up together. C.J. Roberts is a fantastic writer, I think. She was able to balance very well the romance part of it and the horror of the whole situation. A lot of authors would have somehow tried to justify Caleb's actions by making him out to be a good guy in disguise and I guess to some extent he is, but there is just so much more to it than that.
Usually I would end up by trying to convince everyone to read the series but in this case, I don't think that would be a good idea unless you're absolutely sure you can handle all the messed up situations of the book. Definitely not for the faint of heart but it is still an intriguing, well-written, fascinating story. Kind of like a train wreck I suppose - something that fills you with horror but you can't tear your eyes away from it.
Click on the link to learn more about the first book 'cause this review sucks shit:
(Source: TCW's facebook page)
CONGRATS, THE CIVIL WARS, ON YOUR ALBUM GOING GOLD!! I LOVE YOU GUYS - PLEASE NEVER STOP MAKING MUSIC!!! I'M GOING TO SOMEHOW FIGURE OUT A WAY TO SCRAPE TOGETHER SOME MONEY TO GET TO YOUR AUSTRALIAN CONCERT NEXT YEAR OKAY?! I'LL EVEN ROB A FUCKING BANK IF I HAVE TO, OKAY?? OKAY?!?!?! /end spaz.
My fangirlism - it cannot be contained.
*ahem* Okay, now that the obligatory Civil Wars reference is outta the way, let's talk about ... books! Yay!.... Nay? Well serves you right for subscribing to this blog in the first place!
So I recently finished A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin - otherwise known as the 2nd book if the Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones series. It was pretty good... except it took me about 5 weeks to read 'cause I was constantly distracted by other books. What can I say? I've got the "oooh shiny syndrome" and have trouble finishing books longer than 350 pages.
In the time it took me to read this book, I think I finished about 15 other ones. Yup.
Anyway there's not much to say about it, except for the fact that now I'm finished, I can watch more Season 2 clips from the TV show on YouTube without fear of spoiling myself. My favourite character arc for this book was actually Sansa, believe it or not. I don't know what it is but her story is so interesting. Arya's was pretty awesome too - especially when she met H'ghar and he did all that killing for her. Tyrion and Bran bored me to tears, unfortunately. And Theon... jeezus. Does he ever stop having sex? Ever?
Speaking of books, is anyone else going to read the new JK Rowling one? The premise doesn't sound that great.... but it's JK Rowling so I suppose I still would read it.
My sister started watching Gossip Girl last night and I was kind of passively watching as well. It brought back so many memories LOL. I used to be so obsessed with it - thanks again Jessica. I think it was you who gave me the first 12 episodes. You were also the one who introduced me to Doctor Who and because of you, I think I might start watching True Blood as well. Haha.
Gossip Girl here. Your one and only source into the scandalous lives of Manhattan's elite...
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Anyhoo, I really miss Chuck & Blair.... They were such a cute couple. I would continue Gossip Girl... 'cept I have no idea what episode I got up to. That's actually the case for all the shows I never finished - The Vampire Diaries, 90210, Chuck, etc. etc. Once I stop something, it's very unlikely that I would ever pick it up again. Now that I think about it, I should probably try to start Season 7 of Doctor Who ASAP, just in case I lose interest by leaving it too late.
Before I forget, Othilia, you should check out www.markreads.net. Basically, this guy, Mark, reads books and posts his reactions and thoughts after every chapter. I've been reading his blog/site since 2010 when he was doing his reactions to Twilight/The Hunger Games. Before that, he read the entire Harry Potter series and oh god, his reactions and predictions for each book were so funny. Anyway, I brought it up cause he's currently reading the Song of the Lioness quartet and seeing how we both used to have a thing for Tamora Pierce, it might be worth checking out.
Before I finish, I have to post this:
because it reminded me so much of this:
LOL Cynthia fail.
P.S. Hey Emily - if by any chance you're reading this, I just want to say that I hope it's okay that I'm following your blog. I was gonna post a comment on your cbox but apparently it's locked so... yeah. Anyhoo I hope it's fine :)
P.P.S. I recently got a job offer! My first one too! But I won't say where it's at in case I get jinxed.
P.P.P.S. You HAVE to watch this, if you haven't already:
Peeta: "And that's how babies grow??"
Oh Peeta... that's definitely not how babies grow... and I'm pretty sure there are about 50 billion girls out there who wouldn't mind volunteering to show you how it's really done...
I highly doubt it but would there happen to be anyone out there nice enough to help me with this probability question? I would be ETERNALLY grateful if there was :D :D :D I've been staring at it for the past half hour and I haven't gotten anywhere. Le sigh. Biggest waste of my life. Anyhoo, here it is:
In a tennis club, there are five (5) married couples available to play a "mixed doubles" match, that is, a match in which a combination of one man and one woman play against a combination of another man and another woman. Inhow many ways can a group of four (4) person be chosen for this match if:
i) a man and his wife may play in the match but not as partners?
ii)a man and his wife may not play in the match either as partners of opponents?
The answers are: i) 130 and ii) 60.
I remember doing the question at tutor but when I was flipping back through my book, I had no idea what my working out said. For the question part, the working out was:
5C2 x (4 + 3 x 3) = 130
Dafuq, how does that explain anything?
Okay, that's all. If there's someone out there who will take pity on me, again, I would be really grateful. Thanks :D
Second half of the video is gorgeous. If you like the song, you should also check out Beirut's older single, "Nantes", (if you haven't already).
Here, have a picture of the band:
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So anyhoo, all the excitement's kind of died down now. I s'pose it's back to studying and slaving over belonging essays... not that I do any. I tend to leave the essays till the very last minute LOL. My mentality is: the closer to the exam date I do it, the easier it is to stick in my mind.
I cooked an egg this morning with Stephanie's frying pan and this is what happened:
So tempted to chuck $10 into the pan and see if I end up with $20.
I've also been spending way too much time on goodreads (again). This is totally unrelated to anything but I really like the cover of this book:
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Isn't it pretty? Might not reflect the quality of the book *cough*Fallen*cough* but at least it's easy on the eyes.
LOL okay, that is all.
This gif is so relevant to my life right now :( Le face palm.
Can't be bothered blogging properly so I'm just gonna repost what I wrote on facebook:
*****
LONG MESSAGE IS LONG - I know "thank you" doesn't cover it, but I'm going to try anyway: First off, a massive THANK YOU to everyone who wished me a happy birthday - yes, even if you only said it because everyone else was saying it. I understand. I do that too. lol. THANK YOU to the rainbow, hummer girls - if JK Rowling wrote an 8th HP book and filled it with buttloads of magic and badassery, it would not be half as awesome as you guys. Siriusly. THANKS to the grade for turning up to my b'day party, haha, okay, not really. THANKS to the people who sang "happy birthday" to me while I was on the toilet. Classy girls, real classy. THANKS for all the spastic dancing, great food and Gangnam Style-ing. And last but not least, THANK YOU ALL FOR BEING THE BEST GRADE THAT EVER LIVED. You guys are enthusiastic, friendly, loud, beautiful, smart, bizarre, unique, sexy and extraordinary. My only regret is that there was not enough time - there were so many of you's that I wanted to know better but I guess time just ran out. I will miss you Class of '12 - stay safe, stay optimistic and most of all, STAY HAPPY - that is the whole point of life after all.
*****
Can I just say, I have a whole lot more respect for the hairdressing profession right now. They managed to turn this:
Into this:
HAIRDRESSERS FTW!! F*ck journalism, I'm gonna go into hairdressing LOL. Jokes.... kinda....
Anyhoo, most pictures are up on facebook so I'm not gonna post many here. I'll just upload a few of my favourites. I hope people don't mind me using some of their photos. I was mostly camera-less for the night, haha.
I was flicking through photos and I realised that I have exactly the same expression in every single one of them. It's like the background changes, but my face doesn't.
And just for the lols:
Haha, I was definitely cuter before.
cooking, friends, high school, memories, photos, school
Last Days of High School // Song of the Week: "Lullaby" by Priscilla Ahn
Like a lot of people whose blogs I follow, I feel neither happy nor sad about the end of my high school life. To me, it's just a big, fat, meh. There have been plenty of criers - teachers and students alike - but the only effect this has on me is to remind me of my own impassivity. Perhaps it just hasn't hit home yet - perhaps to me, it still isn't the end because we haven't gotten over that last hurdle. Or perhaps (and I think this is the most likely), it is because, like Ron Weasley, I have the emotional range of a teaspoon.
A lot has been going on these past few days (obviously). First off, with the help of Tian, Nancy and I discovered the joys of waxing. It's actually not as painful as I thought it would be - those stupid movies misled me into thinking that it would be an excruciating ordeal. But it's not. It's quite fun actually - once you get the hang of it. We spent a few hours sitting on a pile of newspapers on Nancy's living room floor figuring out the correct angle to apply the wax, etc, etc.
We also found baby photos for the school Yearbook. Unfortunately, they got rejected because the committee only wanted "individual photos". Boo... I ain't spending any more time looking for pictures. They can either take 'em or leave 'em. Seriously - look at these photos. WHAT KIND OF HEARTLESS PERSON REJECTS PHOTOS LIKE THESE??
I really like Tian's expression in this last one.
On a side note, we used to be so cute back then. What happened guys???
Anyhoo, quick recap of what's been happening at school:
Maths: We gave Ms D her Pandora bracelet and she cried. Ngawwww. We then gave her lots of hugs and she cried harder.
English: Ms S cried before we even made our toast to her LOL. She had to duck out of the room to fetch a tissue box. While she was out, a bunch of Year 12's gathered out in E block to a) see Mr M emerge in his pink shirt and suspenders and b) to skip class. It looked something like this:
Someone then yelled out that they saw Mrs B approaching and our grade then did the most awesomest scattering effect you've ever seen. It was like that scene in Spirited Away, when the dust mites get startled and they all run to the nearest holes. Actually, this gif kind of describes the situation:
... except it was on a much, much bigger scale. Afterwards, Mrs B walked into our english class and said, "Did any of you people happen to see a large group of Year 12's gathered out in the block? We got a few complaints from teachers that something was going on outside." *cue a lot of head ducking and smothered laughs*
Legal Studies: We watched Taken and Mr G fed us pastizzi and sausage rolls. Great times. We got to stuff ourselves with hot food while watching (or in my case, rewatching) one of the most epic displays of badassery that ever graced a movie screen. Seriously. Liam Neeson - please be my dad.
English Extension: We got cake and coffee/mocha and spent the whole double period talking about travelling. Mrs A told us about a trip to Cyprus she took when she was 18 and how she thought she was going to die at the airport because of all the scary guys walking around toting machine guns. It was quite funny actually.
During lunchtime on Wednesday, there was the Teachers vs Students Basketball Game. Watching it was quite a strange experience - mostly because I kept looking at people and thinking, "Hey, you used to be such a midget in Year 7... when exactly did that growth spurt happen?"
All that happened a few days ago.
TODAY, we had our Year 12 picnic and everyone came home with tons of sand in their bikinis. The group prepared our own lunch the night before - Group 1 made cupcakes, Group 2 made sandwiches and pasta, and Group 3 (my group) made a blueberry, swirl cheesecake.
An early picture of the cake we made - isn't it pwetty?? The swirls are made from a blueberry and sugar puree.
Despite getting dunked repeatedly, sunburnt, and having my knees scraped raw, it was still a great day. I finally felt a little bit sad, watching our spastic grade do spastic things on that beach .... but that lasted about as long as Othilia's tuna sandwiches. Then I was back to normal.
Tomorrow morning will be the Formal Assembly and later on that night, the whole grade will be turning up at Curzon Hall for my birthday party. Yes, the whole grade - even those people I hardly talk to will turn up to wish me a Happy 18th - isn't that marvellous??
LOL jokes - who am I kidding? No one wants to go to my birthday party :( *FOREVER ALONE*. BUT they will be turning up for the Year 12 Formal, which happens to be on my birthday, so....
Anyways, that's all that's been happening in my life recently. Despite all the chaos and the impending feeling of DOOM (resulting from the HSC), these last few days have been so fun and memorable. For now, I'm just going to sit back and enjoy the ride. Screw the HSC, screw post-school responsibilities - we've worked 13 years for this moment and we will damn well enjoy the celebrations coming our way.
I have a lot of questions running through my mind at the moment, of which the most infuriating one must be,
WHAT EXACTLY DO DONNA AND HARVEY DO WITH THE CAN OPENER THAT TAKES LESS THAN 3 MINUTES IN HARVEY'S OFFICE??
Oh wait - I think I got - no, actually nevermind.
I'm dying from the curiosity here - seriously dying.
On to other news, I'm graduating in about a week. Thirteen years of schooling - gone - BAM - done and dusted. Well not really, since there's still the HSC but whatever, it's only the HSC. Surprisingly, I don't feel sad. Not at all. It just doesn't feel like the end, plus, I feel like if I have to spend any more time holed up in a classroom being forced to write essays, my head would start imploding.
Speaking of heads, I just spent 2 hours of my life looking up hairstyles for the formal. Everything I found was either too hard to do or just not worth the effort. I don't think I want to go to a hairdresser's to get my hair done - $40 to $50 just for someone to wield hair-spray and a curling iron when I could do it for free? Errr, I might just do it myself...
Although, prior experience has led me to believe that Cynthia + A Curling Iron =
Um yeah, you might want to rethink the shampoo - I don't think it's working...
Yup. Sigh. This formal's more trouble than its worth. Ah well, I'll figure something out... eventually.
There's also the small matter of the dress - namely the fact that mine has a tendency to pull a "melting popsicle" and slowly, but surely end up pooled onto the floor.
Uh huh. I really do not want that to happen - and I'm betting no one else wants that to happen either - not unless they have plans to throw up everything that they've eaten on the night.
I'm thinking I'm gonna need dress tape. Lots of dress tape. Preferably, a whole body's worth of dress tape (just to be sure). Hell, I'm just gonna wrap myself in the stuff before I step into my dress. It should be fine, I think, as long as I make sure to permanently exhale (cause inhaling causes the dress to slip) and remember not to throw my hands up in the air. Dammit, my plans to dance epic-ly to Gangnam Style have been foiled! I'll just have to make do with awkward side steps, all the while keeping my arms plastered to my side and my dress hitched up to my armpits. And DEFINITELY, none of this stuff:
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So much X-Factor goodness flooding into youtube - the American, British and Australian versions are all on at the same time. Gah! Where do I even start??
Almost good enough for Eurovision....
It's from Britain's Horrible History series on BBC. I'm not exactly sure how I came across it. One minute, I was researching chimney sweepers and the next, I was watching this.
Description for the video is:
Egyptian pharaoh Cleopatra was the queen of bad romances; she sent the most powerful men in the ancient world gaga!
Eyyyyy, I see what you did there... I picked up on about 3 direct references in the song. LOL. If only children's television was this entertaining 13 years ago - imagine how much I could've learnt.
So... I blew lots of money yesterday. Admittedly, not a lot of it was mine to begin with - sorry Mum, sorry Dad, I will get a job after the HSC - really, I will.
Black chiffon 3/4 jacket from Blockout, to wear over my formal dress (maybe):
Another black outer jacket from TEMT for everyday use:
Floral-print dress from Paper Scissors:
Cream cardigan to go over it, also from Paper Scissors:
And something shiny to wear with my formal dress. It's shiny. Very shiny. This was an 18th birthday present from my Mum that cost MORE THAN MY ACTUAL FORMAL DRESS. Like seriously - I've never gotten anything so expensive. I don't even know what to do with it. Where do I keep it? In a safe? A heavily padlocked and chained safe? Protected by a fire-breathing dragon from Gringotts Wizarding Bank, maybe? On a side note, the lady who helped pick it out was very friendly. She was also wearing those contact lenses that make your eyes look like they have tiny diamonds in them - very fitting for someone working at Swarovski.
Last, but definitely not least, this was the most satisfying purchase of the day, for me:
Fuck yeah - BEEF FLAVOURED RAMEN!!
It doesn't take much to make me happy - ramen, books and a good internet connection are probably all I need in life. Speaking of books, Dymocks at Parra didn't have Angelfall... They had 1,473,609 copies of Fifty Shades of Grey stacked in towering piles at the extrance of the bookshop - but no Angelfall. They didn't even have the American version of Divergent. Dude, if I'm going to use my money to buy a book instead of getting it at the library, I would like for it to have the proper cover.
They had this one:
When I was looking for this one:
Le sigh. Why are Australian/British covers always so much uglier than the American ones? Germany's also got some amazing covers as well. Just look at their version of The Hunger Games:
Perhaps this is a sign that I shouldn't read young adult books. Believe it or not, I don't think I've touched a young adult book since December last year. How many months is that? Ten? Maybe it's because I can't empathize with characters only just starting high school. I don't know...
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