Winter Break Vacation: The First Day

Day 1: December 26

I took the 7:45AM bus and arrived around noon time. The ride was normal. Spent the first hour or two chatting then slept the test of the way. 

First thing we did was drop everything off at the apartment and then headed to Ippudo NY for lunch. Been wanting to try that place because of the raving reviews. 

Ippudo was about an hour wait. They take down your number and then they text you when it's almost time to be seated. I used that time to look around the neighborhood, which I found to be mainly Japanese food. I stopped by a super cool store called Toy Tokyo, which has a lot of collectibles. If only I could buy everything I want from there lol. I I bought a Gloomy Bear charm.

So back to Ippudo. We got the text and got back to the restaurant ~7 minutes later. Then it was another 5-10 minute wait to be seated. 

I ordered the Karaka Men ($14) with poached egg ($2). The ramen was served within minutes. The noodles were chewy and thin. The portion was pretty small though..I wish finished with it rather quickly. But they do offer extra servings, not sure how much that costs. 

After lunch we took went to Times Square. We watched American Hustle there. I think the movie was kinda meh. I didn't like it that much. 

Walked around the area some more before heading to The Halal Guys to grab some food. 

By this time our phones were out of battery, but we managed to get home safely :) 

Then.. We had a Paranormal Activity marathon because I wanted to watch the 4th one but we ended up just watching all of them. Didn't go to bed until 5. 

Missed my drop deadline

So today I found out the last day to drop a class was two Fridays ago :( I haven't been doing well in one of my classes, so I contemplated dropping it (and having it shown up as Withdrawn on my transcript) because it was just going to kill my GPA. But now I'm stuck with it. I turned in a paper last week, and after turning it in, I realized how off-topic I went with it, so I'm anticipating a sucky grade, just hoping it won't drag down my average lower than it already is. I have to depend on my final exam to save my grade as much as it can, but it's only worth like 30%, which isn't too much. Bleh. 

I'm finally done with all my exams, aside from finals, so I'm happy. I have some projects and a paper to write though, but nothing too bad. Thanksgiving is also coming up, so I'm looking forward to the week-long break ^__^

Haven't had much interesting going on in my life, so there was nothing to update on. Errm. I started playing rank for League of Legends a few days before the season ended and got placed into Silver 4. It was disappointing, and made me regret not starting it sooner, but whatever. Not a big deal. 

Well, not much left so say, so until next time!

China Glaze: Scattered and Tattered over Naked

Haven't had a nail post in so long! I wanted to do a red mani, but the only red I had around was China Glaze's Scattered and Tattered from their Glitz Bitz 'n Pieces collection, which I picked up at Sally's not too long ago. 

Deciding on a base coat was challenging, but I decided to go with a pink, China Glaze's Naked which I got as a set for Breast Cancer Awareness. 

Scattered and Tattered (1 coat) over Naked (3 coats)

Naked

Application: The formula was on the thinner side, but easy to work with. It took three coats before I was satisfied. Two coats still had a bit of visible nail line.

Color: It's a hot pink with very fine shimmers. 

Overall: I'm happy with it. But it started chipping/wearing really quickly. I took the photo a day after I applied it.

Scattered and Tattered

Application: Nothing wrong with it. I used one coat and it was pretty dense, so I was satisfied.

Color: It's black and red glitters of all shapes and sizes (stringy, hexagon, circle); clear base

Overall: It's a fun polish to play with, but since it's red, I have no idea what to pair it with.

Columbus Weekend: CollegeFest 2013

Friday night I went home and I spent Saturday shopping at Urban Outfitters (50% off clearance) and Forever21. More damage to the existing hole in my wallet. Was super tired so didn't do anything else for the night, but ended up staying up til like 5:00AM anyways and reorganized my nail polish by brand. 

This year CollegeFest was hosted at Hynes Convention Center on October 12 and 13. They were passing out free tickets on campus but I didn't know about it T_T I decided to go on Sunday and it was my first time going, so I didn't really know what to expect. It started at 12 and I got there around 12:45. It was basically just companies setting up booths and advertising themselves. A lot of it were raffles (that I didn't win), plinko, or pong. 

I think it was an okay experience. Definitely get your money's worth of goodies and time passed by quickly. We had to go around 3..so it was only 2 hours but still felt like forever. I think I'd go again next year though. One thing I don't understand is HOW people end up getting loads and loads of goodies.

Went over to my friend's for the night and the next day had dinner there as well. It's only been three days but it feels so long :o Tomorrow I don't have classes either, so I'm happy :D But my TF wants us to go to her other discussion because ours is canceled due to the holiday. 

Going Blonde v2

The last time I dyed my hair was in April and May, where I bleached it three times (two were full coverage, and one time was just the top of my head because it was really uneven) and you can read about it [here].

Here are the end results:

So the night of coming back from Brazil I bleached my hair. Normally you should wait 1-2 days after you washed your hair to do it, but I washed my hair twice the day before. >< It's not a good thing, but I didn't have time to wait.

I mixed Ion Color Brilliance Powder Lightener with an Ion 30 vol developer in a 1:2 ratio. I started timing AFTER everything is applied.

I applied it to the hair that was already blonde for 25 minutes before proceeding to the some of the black regrowth and lastly my roots. I left it in for a total of 55 minutes. The packaging says up to 50, but I had to leave it in a bit longer because it hasn't processed my roots much yet so I had to wait for it.

The hair that was black is noticable a lot more orange. I think I should've applied it to the black hair (minus maybe an inch of roots) at the same time as the ends of my hair, but I was hoping it would still be considered my roots and lighten quickly. I can't tell if the rest of my hair has much of a difference aside from sections which reached a pale blonde (almost white.)

My hair was retaining a bit of water at this point because it didn't dry until 12 hours later. This includes minimal blow drying because it was still soaking wet when I went to bed.

The next night I bleached my hair again. This time I applied it everywhere minus about an inch of my roots. I left it in for about 40 minutes.

The color is still uneven because of how it was previously, but not too noticeable. My regrowth is also more yellow than the rest of my hair, but unless you're really close or staring at it, it's not noticeable.

After the second bleaching session, my hair became super porous and would absorb the shampoo, making it hard to wash out. The first time as it was drying, my hair started to harden wtf. So I washed it again and the same thing happened and I used more shampoo thinking maybe it was just the bleach not washing out. I think it's shampoo because the water I squeezed out is still slightly bubbly :( So I washed it again the third time in the morning without soap, but I conditioned it and it took forever to dry because my roots would retain water.

I ended up toning my hair about a week or two later. At first I was HORRIFIED because parts of my hair came out silvery because I have a bit of hair that's a lot lighter than the rest. But after a few days it faded to a more platinum sort of color. It's still noticeably lighter than the rest of my hair though.

My hair is definitely two-toned, but I like it from the front. Can't say the same about the back though.

 Outdoors.

 Natural lighting (by the windows)

Here's the back..where you can see the middle section is noticeably lighter :( I kind of just dealt with it.

To summarize, I basically bleached my hair twice and toned it. My hair came out a lot more uneven (to me) after toning though. My hair still feels healthy, maybe the flyaway hair is more noticeable, so it does look a bit damaged, but it soft to me, so idk. My hair was only porous in the beginning and went back to normal after a few washes. Overall, I like this color a lot better than the previous :D

Disappointed, but Whatever

Friday I had an speed interview with an organization I wanted to join. There were definitely places I could've improved on but I hoped for the best and tried not to think about it until the result came out. I actually ended up playing games the entire day because of a bet so I didn't even think about it. 

But unfortunately I didn't make it :(( It's disappointing because I started thinking more positively about the results, just to have it be a letdown. I'm not as upset as I thought I'd be though. While I am disappointed, overall I have a whatever attitude. 

I'll definitely try again next semester. I was hesitant because next semester I have my core classes, so it'll be really busy with my team project and I don't want to be that member who can never attend meetings. But I'm hoping it'll work out because.. otherwise I won't get to do it since I want to study abroad next fall. And if I'm really committed in joining..then I should definitely try harder to balance the team project with it. 

School has quite busy lately, but I'm alive. I usually start my day off at 8:00AM (class) and get back around 10:00PM or so..and by then I'm super exhausted and can't focus on my work so I am a bit behind on all my readings.

But yeah, nothing else exciting. So until next time!

Brazil: The Way Back

We ended up leaving the house a bit later than expected, at 2:45AM, but that's okay. I forgot if I mentioned this before, but we had to drive to the GRU Airport because we couldn't book a local flight there. We ended up arriving around 6:30AM, so it was a lot shorter ride than expected. I slept the whole way lol. 

Airplane food..not the best, but it will suffice.

The first flight was the most annoying one ever. I'm not sure if this is how it is with all international flights, but there's three rows of seating as opposed to two normally (one on each side of the plane) and we ended up being seated at the very front row of the middle section. I sat on the left edge of the section, and the whole ~10 hour ride I had people brushing against me every time they walked by. It became like such a pet peeve whenever anyone walked by because I had to put up with it for hours. As if that wasn't enough, since we were in the first row, it was also the intermediary between the left and right section of the plane so people just kept walking through and stepping/kicking me in the process T_T And this entire plane ride I never got a single apology for any of this ughhh. I slept most of the ride, but I think every time I woke up it was because of either of it. 

When we got off we had to go through customs and we ended up getting taxed for the cigarettes we bought fml. The person at the shop told us we could each buy one (which was a pack of three cartons), but the truth is you can only have one carton per person without being taxed. >:(((( So the mother wasn't very happy about it T_T;

Anyways, we waited about 2 hours for the next flight and the ride wasn't that bad either because I was asleep a majority of the time. Our flight landed and we got our stuff and went home. So that was it :))

Overall, I think it was a worthwhile trip. I'm happy with the things I bought :))) And it was nice to reconnect with some family members. It's also good to learn about new cultures..sadly that might come with feeling excluded if you don't understand the language.