when you crashed in the clouds, you found me

Hello *brushes thick layer of dust off blog*

It's been a busy summer, and one of my favourites so far. Right now I think I'm happier than I've ever been before :)

Song for this post is Barcelona's "Please Don't Go". Band title is appropriate for the content of this post, and it's such a nice balmy summer evening song, especially with this relaxing video.

I started the summer working as a receptionist in Camden. Filing, scanning, calming patients down on the phone - that sort of thing. Not very exciting - in fact it was braincrumblingly boring, but I managed to earn a bit of spending money at least (and a little respect from my parents). Luckily I was saved from this tortuous dayjob by the arrival of extended family (cousins) in France...



Took a speedy Eurostar down to Paris to join them for general relaxation Gallic-style - shopping, pretending to be Marie Antoinette at Versailles, attempting to go clubbing and failing in Montmartre (nothing was open :P) - instead, got chastised by a couple of supposedly stylish Parisians who insisted that our style did not carry from day to night and simply wasn't "done" in Paris. Ouch!



Ah well, I wouldn't let a snide French remark bring my party down any day! So the next day we headed straight to Ladurée, purveyor of the best macaroons in the world! Oh, and inventor of the double-decker macaroon. Got a major sugar fix here! I swear I could live on the Caramel Salé flavoured ones...miammmm, as the French say!

After this Parisian interlude came our annual European family holiday - this time to Catalunya in northern Spain. Visited my old old friend Daniel at his house in Besalu, where I kicked his ass at Pokemon Stadium :P, pushed our bikes over a river (where I fell in twice...yes, that's right), watched a baker making bread and postres at midnight, and lazed around at the beautiful nearby playa (beach). Soundtrack to this part of the holiday was provided by "Flaixback FM" (pronounced "flashback") - special credit goes to DCUP's "We No Speak Americano" :P



Above: on the cool medieval bridge that leads into the town Daniel lives in!

Moved down the coast after that to Barcelona, a city we've visited a grand total of four times now, but never fails to disappoint. Beach, city and mountain (well...hills) rolled into one. Plus, delicious tapas (especially at Navarra on Passeig de Gracia - recommended!) and the flagship Zara store with about five floors of affordable high street. Love it. Plus I always have to have a fruit juice at La Boqueria market - it's just the best there! Especially the coconut and banana...mmmm, so damn good...



Went to the Fundacio Miro again too, always nice to see works I used to like in my childhood, such as the above sculpture, which sadly gets groped by all the male tourists who think they're hilarious. A lot. You can see why though, nice pair of legs she's got there...



Ooh yeah, and we went to the sculpture park round the back of the foundation too, always one of my favourites as a child and remaining so now. So awesome.

After this we moved on to Sitges, which unbeknownst to me, happened to be the gay capital of Spain. All right then, I thought - great even! Means I can lie out in my bikini without fear of the stares of pervy old guys and even maybe find a GBF (gay best friend) :D All this goodwill dissipated when I saw the men wandering around in nothing but their underpants though...that's right, UNDERPANTS. Not swimming trunks. Their knickers, darling. :D



Found an awesome Mario graffiti on one of the shop fronts!



God I look so rough here...must have been the day I felt tired from travelling and ended up watching hours of German MTV, namely the awful and addictive programme "Fist of Zen". Great for drinking games though...



Sitges in general was great though, really enjoyed it, despite ridiculously high tourist prices everywhere. The town was amazingly pretty and it had its own microclimate, meaning that even if it was raining in Barcelona (as it was the morning we departed for Sitges) it would still be nigh on 38 degrees and blindingly sunny in Sitges. Needless to say, I got horribly burnt below my bikini top line ;)



And that was it! Catalonia in a nutshell. Not the end of the summer though, far from it - next week, after Reading, a friend and I will be travelling to Turkey to see sites of interest in Istanbul (read: archaeological and artistic, sure, but also the BAZAARS! Turkish delight, awesome clothes, spices, helloooo there!) and the fairy chimneys (the name makes me chuckle everytime) in Cappadocia. Can't wait!

Oh, and in other news, my results actually came out okay :) Very unexpected, I managed to get 3 A*s and my offer confirmed at Cambridge. Deliriously happy and can't quite believe it - just waiting for someone to ring up and say "oh sorry, there's been a terrible mistake - you actually got 3 U's".

Touch wood.

<3

you were born for greatness

stuff i'm loving :D

1) youtube and its endless zelda music links: fairy fountain, lost woods, spirit temple. geeky but so damn good!

2) the smile on this dog's face

3) the fact i have a mere five days before i'm finally allowed to enjoy my summer!

4) the world cup. yeah...i never thought it would happen, but i have officially become a football fan...particularly where it comes to...

5) mesut özil, the midfielder for germany's football team - that guy has serious ball skills :P even though the rest of the team crumbled without klose today, his playmaking was still eindrucksvoll. plus, i like his smile!



6) the red velvet cake my sister made - although it kinda collapsed in the middle, it was yummy!

7) this quote, by dr. seuss: "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened." applies to a lot happening in my life right now

8) tenderoni by kele, the song that the title lyrics come from. his album, "the boxer", is out in three days, on the 21st - i'm excited! but not as excited as i will be when bloc party end this silly hiatus and get back to making the magic :D

lots of love guys, work hard for the final stretch! not long to go now...

<3

lost my heart between the sheets of lightning

if my life were a song
the chorus would be all about exams right now :( revisereviserevise, no time for anything else until the 24th

other things i'm singing about:

recent trip to the ministry of sound for joy's birthday with clemmie, maddy and her boyfriend ludo. to be honest, i really don't remember much about that night...the birthday girl had a LOT of free drink!





after that we had our leavers' dinner for oriental society with my beautiful oriental girlies...and erry :P


hate this photo but xin and erry look kawaii...so...*concedes defeat*

a slightly odd evening some might say? we chose a strangely empty restaurant in chinatown, where the crispy duck was pretty good but i didn't really like anything else. we over-ordered by wayyyyy too much, which was probs my fault. the rest of the gang MADE me order, even though i can't speak cantonese or mandarin. two of the others could :P too shy were they? more likely having fun at my expense :D i felt like i was blushing so hard because the waiter kept taking the piss out of what i was saying, and i could hardly understand him so kept saying.."what...? what?!" so embarrassing...

we wanted to go to purikura after, but the place was shut - and all the nearby karaoke bars were so...damn...expensive...ended up wandering the streets of soho contemplating gay clubbing as a last resort



so we went to erry's friend's house, also in soho, to hang out
this excursion can be summed up with the two following attributes, illustrated by my two lovely assistants inez and xin



honey and iron man. nuff said. and no, robert downey jr. is not my man.

squandered a bit more study leave at soph's house - which was basically a couple's night plus tamsin and inez...so we decided to be couple-y too! not gonna be beaten!

we played a lot of jess's mariokart on the wii...then the guys took over and played brawl for about three hours. i kid you not. so inez and i baked some pokeball cupcakes :D didnt take any pics...there was no point :P jess and iona's cupcake mix was HEAVY. it sat in my stomach for days after :P but the icing inez and i made was pretty yummy! we used red and white for the pokeball colours and then stuck reese's pieces in the centre for the pokeball clasp thing.

since then i've only been going out locally, did a study session with yuji in the park. i was productive, he wasn't, don't need to say any more :P also went for a waterfight with my old old friend daniel! then walking around queen's park and kilburn discovering random graffiti :)




these foxes are everywhere in queen's park! i love them, want to find the stencil so i can do some of my own...


i've known daniel since i was four, so it's pretty safe to say he's my oldest friend :D

oooh, i got a new laptop too (this was a while back...shows how terrible i am at updating this blog.)


lastly, yummy - and beautiful - malaysian kuih from tawana



sorry about the hurried post (on strict time limits here T_T) - i leave you with a quote that i found touching:

"We lose the people we love because we are meant to love someone else. We lose them because we are destined to find somebody else. It is a simple fact that this is sometimes hard to accept because we are too stubborn to let go of something that doesn't belong to us anymore."

found it on good morning good night, it's anonymous :)

title song = zorbing, by stornoway

and another fun song i've been listening to is "the bright side" by "we shot the moon". it's kinda punky, something corporate-style i guess?

<3

give me a word you can keep

today, i voted for the first time ever!

i felt weirdly powerful, even though my vote is one of millions - but i didn't care! it really did feel like a momentous event.
despite my mum excitedly taking a ton of photos of me in the queue at the polling station, holding up my poll card, etc. *blushes* i think she was more excited than me...

it's been a pretty stressful week, for the following reasons...
a) my computer totally died. it breaks my heart to see the screen flailing about, the hard drive completely totalled. ah well, new laptop! a field about which i know NOTHING. going to have to ask for recommendations...
b) french oral - need i say more? actually, i don't want to think about it.
c) the sheer amount of essays i've had on top of my oral work. keep pulling all nighters to try and stay on top of them, but the little buggers just keep popping up...

tonight though, i'll be staying up to watch the channel 4 general election commentary. really, i would vote david mitchell as my prime minister any day...ooh, or david tennant. despite the fact i found out he backs labour...bah.

well, now that my oral's over, it's on to the fun stuff! hope to maybe go see iron man 2 tomorrow, despite its terrible reviews, and dinner with friends - and then some shopping on saturday, to help out a friend ;) yep, this is serious stuff.

started the post-oral celebrations a wee bit early with alex and hannah's party last weekend...
we went to annie's bar in camden (which was surprisingly nice). free drinks, free peanuts, free MASSIVE hunks of cheesy bread - what's not to love? although inez did hit me over the head with one of the hunks and it was like a rock. but anyway, i was out of the house for the first time in ages and so glad to get away from the books...


danced to the latest and greatest from dotsch's iPod...
thanks to therica for the photos, though she ended up breaking her boyfriend's camera in the process :P
the girl in green is my good old friend inez :) we've been friends since the day we first met at interviews for music scholarships back in year 6 - cheesily enough, we told each other we hoped we'd see each other on the first day of year 7 with scholarships, and we did :P

anyway, i was SO glad to have inez with me at the party - mainly because i didn't really know many people, and the friends that WERE there were all coupled up. PDA-a-licious, need i say more? even though she kinda left me at the end of the night for her hand-holding man ;) but it was fine, i knew people by then...

the bathroom was crazy. i mean, seriously. everything was mirrored, and some of the walls were at weird angles to one another - when drunk, this really wasn't the best place to end up...


and the sink was odd too - it was connected to the mens' room, so you could see hands underneath on the other side, but nothing else...and yes, i screamed when a random soapy pair of hands grabbed mine.


next to me there is alex (jess's new boyfriend) and so-chan, with whom i'm DEFINITELY going to finish twilight princess this summer. YES. but only if she refrains from showing me videos of doctors extracting knee tumours...or whatever those gross things were....ew.

last of all, today's song is "halfway gone" from lifehouse's new album "smoke and mirrors". favourite song of the moment is actually foals' "this orient" but i thought the lyrics from lifehouse would go better with the election theme :) the song's pretty good too...

happy voting guys <3

don't look away anymore

this week's feature: ORIENTAL SOCIETY! (heavyish in terms of photos...as expected. click if you want 'em bigger :P)

yep, oriental society. the one club i still take part in at school..ha! well, all we really do is nom oriental goodies and fawn over hot asian guys (for example - THIS guy miura haruma, officially the only asian guy i've ever thought was attractive *dies*) but lately we've been watching weepy films - koizora for example. shed so many tears over that movie...

anyway, we decided to mark our love for o-soc with a yearbook page devoted to the club. and what better way than to camwhore for all we were worth to provide visual material for the page? yeahh, you know i'm right :)

we spent the best part of an hour at lunch taking pics for the page ;) standard

and we brought in cool asian stuff specifically for the photos. i brought a yukata (seen below), inez a mini kimono and a pink wig, jing her awesome sailor schoolgirl uniform!

pictured here with the gorgeous xin nee, who brought her asian loving to the yard with geek accessories - glasses, books, calc etc, cat ears and a soho tee (yep...cause chinatown is in soho...:P)

so the camwhoring began.
one example of a "typically asian pose": the sailor moon pose. "tsukini kawatte oshioki yo!"

sailor moon style:

oriental society style:

yeah inez, you know mine was the most accurate ;) kinda.


inez looks like a sushi chef :P or, y'know. a yakuza :D
then we took the asian loving outside...

in the stark barbican landscape in front of our school, there is very little in terms of nature :P luckily we found a willow tree to express the orientalism nicely!

miaow! finally beginning to get the nekomimi craze...

i made more peace signs than i've probs ever made in my life. AND I WAS PROUD.




poses choreographed by inez while xin took the photos ;)


getting sick of the shameless camwhoring yet? :P


tore some flowers off a bush for this pic. ah well, put it down to artistic licence


haha. despite practically skipping food (noming is very important in the orient!) to do this, we all ended up having a lot of fun. asian girls love nothing better than a good photoshoot...you know it! we should have one once a week :)

and the funny/ironic/retarded thing is, we didn't even end up using any of these pics for the yearbook. facebook screwing up made sure of that...GRR! ah well. we made a nice homage to miura haruma instead :D which basically sums us up.

japan IS coming! this is just a little taster of the oriental life ;)

ai <3

p.s. title lyrics come from "don't look away" by joshua radin. randomly been listening to it a lot this week...

words that would melt in your hands

favourite band this weekend is two door cinema club! i know they're not strictly brand new, but a new term (my LAST term at school - ever :O) calls for new music. try "something good can work" or "undercover martyn", or better yet, listen to the entire album "tourist history" on spotify.

their sound really reminds me of all the lo-fi indie bands who were jostling for space back in summer 2008. already nostalgic?! whatever, it makes me excited for this summer! especially since today is the most beautiful day - last night the sky was full of stars and a fingernail moon, and today there are no clouds, just streeeetches of blue sky. haven't seen a trace of that volcanic ash from the eruption at all! also just wanna say, eyjafjallajokull = best name for a volcano ever!

no idea what we're doing this summer, though. all my friends have organized so far is a daypass (sucky) to a music festival and a potential camping trip, but i'm the WORST camper ever. feeling shards of rock under my head and condensation dripping into my sleeping bag is my worst nightmare. i really want to stay at a villa, but some people aren't keen on prices...so...ugh! i hate it when we can't reach a compromise. i will have *something* to do this summer at least - booked a 2 week italian course to at least teach me some basics, and then a holiday with my family if they'll have me ;)

maybe i should book another course with a friend. usually i go on piano camps abroad, but i did a cooking crash course last year and really enjoyed it! photography maybe? or another language one - mandarin? (really shouldn't use this blog as my personal thunderstorm/thoughtshower :P)

still being a fool where the last post is concerned. and i take all the blame for that. am in serious serious danger of slipping past the boundary between my happiness and depression again, which is definitely not what i need. so hoping to try and forget all that at least for a couple of months. they're going to be the most stressful ones i've had so far - A2s. i know that in a year i'll just look back and laugh, because these exams will have become so trivial compared to what i'm facing - but right now they feel so important, and i'm suffering from the stress a little...

just got to remember to eat fruit, drink water and sleep lots! the last shouldn't be hard, provided i get over my jetlag (from japan - more on that later :P)

bisous! <3

only human

i thought the numbness meant i was over everything...
well, i was wrong.
it still hurts. i know it's natural in the early stages, but looks like you had no trouble moving on. in fact you managed to pretty damn fast.
but every time i think of you all the pain comes flooding back, and it's destroying me.
i'm just so sick of beating myself up over you. of jerking awake in the middle of the night fresh from going through memories of you in my dreams. only to remember.
i don't want to remember any more.
heartbreak is a bitter pill to swallow..:'(