102

feels like I've been away from this space for a really long time without realising it.

thanksgiving is a day away and I feel the need to remind myself of the things I'm thankful for this year

this year I'm thankful to 1) have fallen sick lesser than I usually do, 2) feel less anxious, 3) have supportive family and friends and 4) be okay alone (doesn't necessarily mean I like being lonely)

22 days to Christmas break, 26 days to full 456 reunion, 84 days to the end of year 2, and 110 days to Korea.

hanging on for now.

ramblings

don't know what's been up with me lately... been feeling sad more often than I should because I really have no reason to be sad and being sad is a gigantic waste of time (because I should be studying).

I figured out the few things I hope to achieve this year (new year resolutions 9 months late)

1 - seek refuge and gain strength in the Lord, always

Psalm 118:8

2 - constantly remind myself that those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind

3 - always always always work hard bc suffering is temporary

4 - above all, count my blessings 

happier days 

-

tired

98

It's the 30th of March (well as I type this post it's 12:34am on 31st).

The first quarter of this year has come and gone so fast. Soon enough it'll be the end of the year again

:(

January:

(L-R) 1. New Years Eve 2. The night after 3. Cher's birthday

4. Saturday night suppers 5. Becky's birthday 6. CNY 

February:

7. Last presentation for Year 1 

8. + 9. End of Year 1 

March:

Combined CG Night - 1. wenqtpie 2. 미친놈들의 Interrogation (LOL GUYS) 3. this is eight 

4. Jiajie's birthday surprise 5. Jill's birthday 6. Joy's baptism

7. NOOPS 8. Af @ NP 9. Last time at KAP

10. New favourite pair of jeans 11. Main gurl 12. Temp tattoos

13-15 Divergent/Shopping/Dinner 

16-18 FUN-O-RAMA XXII

19. Chinatown Food Street 20. Random OOTD LOL

School starts in 3 weeks, excited but scared for Year 2 to begin. 

P.S. Pls excuse the horrible formatting I'm trying to find a way to fit my x-large photos and align everything properly as well. Might take me days or weeks or months or... never

BYEBYEBYE

97: Korea (IV)

Namsan Tower (N Seoul Tower), 20 December 2013

I really forgot what we did before this and I keep getting mixed up with what we did every day. Anyway, Namsan Tower was super nice. I've only seen it on Korean dramas and reality shows and I really wanted to go there because of the love locks thingamajig and the view!

The sun was setting just as we made it up by cable car, and it was sort of calming in a a way. But the calming effect disappeared immediately after we stood in -6deg weather for the next 45 minutes or so haha

 Jade and I bought 2 locks each, 1 each for our families, 1 for SGT (just to mock justin and speaking of which I have yet to pass the key to him 😂) and 1 for ourselves. Also I forgot to take a photo of all the locks there. All the railings are locked with locks (excuse the poor expression) and we struggled to find a nice spot.

It was a rather cloudy day, so this photo of Seoul doesn't do it justice..

Besides, it took forever for the sun to actually set and I was freezing by then so I refused to stand there to take a proper shot 

Myeongdong (again) + BWCW Store (again and again), 21 December 2013

Didn't take any photos at Myeongdong because we basically just shopped and ate (also, I don't recall if we went to MD on this day or the day before)

Went back to BWCW and finally bought a sweater that burnt a gigantic hole in my wallet, but now that the BWCW is closed I HAVE NO RAGRETS

After which we went down to the same store again to them Christmas presents we bought and thankfully they were there this time!! 

❤️❤️❤️

Went back to the hotel in the evening for a rest, and went out for dinner at this BBQ place in Gangnam which was freakin' amaze balls. I'm not even exaggerating.

It was about 15sgd for one full plate of beef and that's all we ate. Beef and beef and more beef. It's also because they didn't have pork that day, so. Not complaining though, one of the best Korean barbecues EVER.

Post-dinner: We went back to the hotel to do final packing and I had really hard time squeezing two down feather jackets and a trench coat back into my luggage. #winterwoes

It wasn't as bad for me as it was for Jade, who had to sit on her luggage multiple times just to shut it hahahahahahaha more random hotel room stories

Goodbye Korea!

Korea was really a great experience and I love love love Korea, despite how difficult it is to find a dustbin (lol)

It's nice to be in a country where culture is completely different and if I had another chance I would do it all over again the same. 

Thankful that I've been blessed to be able to go on this trip with Jade and made even more memories that we can look back in retrospect and laugh about. 

I'm really excited for future trips to Korea. So so so glad that I went and now that I'm done with all these posts I really miss Korea 😔

Even though I'm sure only my friends read my blog, I hope my ramblings weren't that boring.

Till next time. 

96: Korea (III)

I AM BACK!!!!!!!

Originally planned to only have three posts because I'm a lazy bum, but after filtering through the photos it'd be picture + word heavy if I put everything in one post.

To be completely honest, I kind of lost track of what we did on a daily basis.. BUT all of these photos were taken with my phone, so YES I HAVE THE DATES

Paju Premium Outlets, 17 December 2013

We travelled 1.5 to 2 hours out of Seoul to get to Paju, which was kind of fun I guess. Paju is gigantic, and I bought a bulk of my purchases on impulse.. I mean, I don't regret buying them at all but I should've put more thought into buying them? I took this photo when we were about to leave and were taking a short rest. 

The ride back into Seoul was close to 2.5 hours because traffic in Korea is crazy. The expressway has about 6 lanes and I'm pretty sure we were travelling at 30km/h... 

(also, I didn't bring along my earpiece, so that was terrible.)

We got back to the hotel around 8, 830pm and went out again for dinner before calling it day.
This photo is of Jade *casually* reaching across my bed to use her phone that was charging. She stayed there for about 20 minutes hahahaha ok sorry random hotel room stories

Myeongdong, 18 December 2013

I really, really love Myeongdong.
 

It's a pity I forgot to take a photo of this, but there are about 5 stores of the same cosmetic brand in that entire area, maybe even more. It's quite ridiculous really, but what's even more ridiculous? The prices. Typically, I don't really wear make-up but I do wanna try wearing it more often? (Translation: Skin's been crap lately, need to conceal dem flaws #stillflawsometho) 

Also, F21 in Korea (imo) is significantly cheaper than in Singapore. On my first trip to F21 in Myeongdong I spent about 140SGD on 12 items, which works out to about 11SGD per item. WHERE TO FIND IN SINGAPORE?!?

After Myeongdong, we went down to the BWCW Store again... Not saying this in the capacity of a fan, but I really like the atmosphere there. I don't even know how to explain it? I'm really so glad I got to go thrice and yes we went again after this but will be explained in next post.
Went round the corner to Garosu-gil to find our friends, but they weren't there so we left for our hotel.

Gwangjang Market/Itaewon/Apgujeong, 19 December 2013

We went to Gwangjang market, and it was a cool experience. Didn't expect much and I was sincerely hoping it wasn't a wet market kind of market. When we got there (with much difficulty), I was shocked... and happy. Bc food is everything.

SPICY RICE CAKES I MISS YOU SO

Ok so looking at this photo it looks kind of gross, but this seaweed + fishcake soup was super tasty!!!


Didn't get to try this, but it looked interesting. So.

This was really good....... I don't even know what the ingredients were, but I could only taste potato and bean sprouts. There was definitely some other ingredient/condiment, but I have NO clue till this day. 

After Gwangjang market, we went to Itaewon (no photos) which was kinda sian bc most of the stalls weren't really open yet as we went in the afternoon.
 Then, we went to Apgujeong to shop and the photo below was of Galleria, which was really pretty :(
(I miss Korea so much :()

Went back to the hotel and this is us being step with our beanies.

Korea (IV) will be up in 1-2 days? I took almost 1.5 hours to edit and do this post so I might get really lazy to do part 4 but I try my best la give me chance ok

Exams start in a week. 

Very much lost and unsure what to do with myself

been wanting to draft Korea (III) but I've been so busy ever since school started and probably won't be free till exams end (i.e. 27 Feb)

so I guess hiatus till then?

hopefully I'll have photos from cny tooooo

~okay bye~

it's really always easier said than done

sigh

death will never not scare me

91: Korea (II)

PART 2!!!
 So I'm not sure if there will be a part iii, but we'll see by the end of this post!

forgot to put this in the previous post, but we had to use the stylenanda photobooth hehe

On Day 2 I think (I don't remember very well!) we went to Dongdaemun to shop at Doota and eat some great samgyetang (ginseng chicken soup). Unfortunately I didn't take a good photo of the soup because I was way too hungry and cold! Also I really love samgyetang because it doesn't just consist of chicken, Korean ginseng and soup. They stuff rice into the chicken. R I C E. How to not be obsessed?!

After more shopping, we took a cab to Lotte World to shop and take a look at the largest indoor amusement park in the world..... In retrospect I forgot why we didn't go in, but I guess we didn't really plan to go in but we wanted to shop at Lotte Department Store there. (note: there was a LDS right next to our hotel, but this one was way bigger)

 

Day 3: Jade and I really love EXO (friends reading this pls don't judge me I love y'all) and they opened a pop-up store in Garosu-gil (in Gangnam-gu) that was originally supposed to close down in September, but because they were releasing a winter/christmassy album, the store is open for the whole of winter (blessed or what?!)
 

So after visiting the BWCW store (note again: we went there thrice. no ragrets.) and spending a significant amount of money on exo-related paraphernalia we left to shop along to streets of Gangnam and Garosu-gil!

I recognized a shop that I saw on a reality show and I had to go in to shop...... We went in only planning to look-see, but look-see always ends up as 'look-see-BUY!!!!!!'
We left the shop happy girls with our purchases and 2 new korean friends ^~^

Eunji 언니 (I talk to her on an almost daily basis, which is pretty cool. My broken Korean and her broken English makes it very entertaining.)

and another 언니!!! I never got her name even though we went back to visit twice, bc every time we went she would be busy manning the till or serving other customers :(

After which we walked around a little longer, and we wanted to go look for the entertainment agencies just for the fun of it. Who knew it would take 1.5 hours for us to find it? Prior to this we had found out how to get there, with various 'landmarks' we had to look out for and such. 

Crisis #1: A 20-min walk became a 1.5 hike around Gangnam/Apgujeong. 

Crisis #2: Took to long to find the agencies, so we decided to take a cab. Told the cab driver where it was in terrible Korean (must be the pronunciation, I swear) I said, "Dosan-daero 89-gil please!" and he brought us to 45-gil.

At this point I was fuming........... I mean, if he could bring us to 45-gil, why couldn't he find 89-gil? 

:(

Anyway, we got off the cab, because the cabby was getting frustrated and so were we. Walked 2km from 45-gil to 89-gil and finally we found CUBE cafe and JYPE!!!!!

(some toast thingmajiggy from CUBE cafe, which was rly good but too much for me)

Walked diagonally across to JYPE, in the hopes that someone famous would come out......... we gave up after 20 mins bc we still wanted to go to SM Ent.

Didn't take any photos of the SM Ent building cuz the new building looks pretty shabby compared to the old building (current global training centre)
I HAD REALLY HIGH HOPES THAT I WOULD BE ABLE TO SEE EXO OK (sian) because the new building has the same entrance and exit, which means anyone that was leaving or entering the building would be easily spotted......
Sobbles bc we didn't get to see them but it's ok we left to go shop again (lelelelel)

^Shinsegae which is really big and beautiful (inside and outside)

DAS OL FOR PART 2 I guess there will be a part 3 after all!!!

안녕 친구들 ^^