Excuse the Vegetarian-ness

About a month ago, I wrote a particular post about things that I would like to do but would probably never achieve. I didn't release this post on the day I wrote it, because I thought I'd save it in me and Jenny's 'blog-bank' for a rainy day (no wait, I meant for a blog-post drought). But judging by people's reactions to Jenny's vegetarianism, I think it's about time I finally release this post, and explain about this vegetarian thing. Here it is:

*****

There are a great number of things in life I would love to do, but know I will never get around to doing. Which is sad, but true. I would never have enough self control or determination to achieve these things. Lets chuck in a list of things I want to achieve but never will, shall we?

1. Redecorate my room. I have been telling myself to do so since we moved in, but I never seem to have the time or money to do so. The first step to doing so would be repainting the disgusting walls (what were the old owners thinking?! Mint with apricot?!), next is re-tiling the floors, then fixing the lightings (I really like those nano-chandelier things they have in Ikea), buying new curtains, lamps, furniture, the list goes on.

2. Getting a job. I know I will have to get a job eventually, but I don't think it' s going to happen anytime in the near future. I'm just not bothered to go typing up resumes, phoning people here and there, and arranging transportaion. It's such a hassle.

3. Become a vegetarian. I often get lectures from Sophie about how bad for your health meat is, and I know it's true. I know that heaps of chemicals go into animals these days, and Van was telling me the other day about the cruelty pigs go through for us to obtain pork (something about pigs being skinned alive?), but I seriously cannot ever be a vegetarian. I love meat wayyy too much. I could never give up my KFC or lasagna or tacos. What would I eat everyday if I go vego anyways? I detest seafood, so that's not an alternative.

4. Learn to play the violin. I have felt the urge to play the violin for a few years now, but have never gotten around to actually buying a violin and arranging lessons. I've asked Ida to teach me but she has refused (I think she just doesn't want me to touch her violin. Musicians are like this with their instruments. I would chuck a tantrum if anyone scratched my piano.)

5. Learning to speak French. We learnt it in Year 8, but I can only remember the basics, une! deux! trois!. Jenny and I have also tried online lessons, but this has proved ineffective, and the only thing I remember now is Je veux un enfant de toi, which basically means I want to have your baby.

*****

Well folks, the times are a-changing, and I'm actually making an effort on the vegetarianism one. Here's the full story. Sophie became a vegetarian ages ago, and has been attempting to convert us for ages. But I've always thought that I wouldn't have enough self control. Yes, meat is bad, but not bad enough for me to stop eating it.

But then I thought maybe it is a possibility after all. Maybe if I slowly decreased my meat consumption, I will eventually stop. I managed to limit my meat to one meal per day, or less. It was much easier than I expected. I found nice alternatives for everything, and it was wayyy healthier.

I was telling Jenny L of meat-consumption limits yesterday, and she thought that we should try and eat less meat together. Then we did a little bit of research on the disadvantages of meat and... we have officially been converted. Meat is disgusting, I can't believe I haven't realised it earlier. It makes me nauseous to imagine myself eating meat now.

Trust me, if you actually enjoy your meat, do not google 'meat is bad', or 'advantages of being a vegetarian'.

But Jenny and I are willing to give up meat for the rest of our lives. We are officially vegetarians. Well, Jenny's an ovo-lacto-vegetarian (a vegetarian who eats eggs and dairy products), and I'm a lacto-vegetarian (because I actually like my milk, but I hate eggs).

I know many people are sceptical about this whole thing (just look at the comments Jenny received in the last post). Some people believe we won't last. They think we'll constantly crave for meat. I believe this is untrue. When someone mentions 'McChicken burger', I think dying chickens, artificial hormones, blood, guts, grease. When someone mentions 'Juicy steak', I think dying cows, blood, cow pee, heart disease. Trust me, I have no desire to touch meat ever again.

Then there are others who think we'll have a deficiency of nutrients. Like my parents. They went ballistic when I broke the news to them. But did you know that you only need 45 grams of protein a day? Which you can get from one potato? It is highly unlikely that we'll have protein deficiency. And the iron? Well you can get that from many foods that I highly enjoy, such as beans, nuts or grain products.

But I won't bore you with the rest of the details. The point is, I believe that I can do this. I think I will be able to live without meat, it's a good choice for both moral and health reasons. Discouraging me from being a vegetarian won't work. Trying to contaminate my food with meat (yes I'm looking at you Jenny N) won't work either.

Reasons to Get a Sex Change

Being a girl is ever so difficult. I've compiled a list on why guys are so much better off:

1. The most obvious: That time of the month. It comes and haunts you twelve times a year. It plays with your emotions, gives you stomach cramps, annoys the hell out of you, and may even (god forbid) leave you with an embarrassing stain if your timing isn’t right. Girls have to deal with this every single month.

2. Giving birth. This is similar to the one above, but still. Why is it that females have to be the ones made to carry babies? Why do we have to be the ones who have to deal with periods and pregnancy? Oh, right, they're related, but why?!

3. There are more women than men in this world, according to Theresa. She says there’s something like 59% women and 41% men. So you see, there are more females, which just makes it even harder for them to find a partner.

4. It’s a stereotypical view that guys should make the first move. (Yes yes, I know, it’s just a stereotype, but still.) Guys are expected to make the first move. They can ask as many girls out as they like, and it’s fine. But if a girl does that, she’s automatically considered a ‘slut’ or something similar.

5. Girls shop more often. Girls spend more money. Girls need more money. Need I say more?

6. Guys have more control on how they look. They have a higher metabolism, and can gain muscles/lose weight more easily. This is probably why you hear girls complaining about their weight more than you hear guys.

7. Public toilets. There is always a long line outside the girls toilets, whereas guys can do their business wherever they want, leaving their share of the toilets completely empty. Seriously, there shouldn’t be public toilet for guys. It’s a total waste of space.

8. Shaving or waxing is a pain in the ass. Enough said there.

Being a girl sucks, but since I'm such a girly girl, I wouldn't want to be a guy. I like the shopping, and being able to dress up. Oh, and I do like the fact that we don't have the crazy sex drive as well...

Harajuku Lovers

I'm being an awful hog on this blog, posting when it's not my turn (my apologies to jenny), but I just had to break the good news.

Two words: Harajuku Lovers. Yupp, it's Gwen Stefani's latest fragance, and the bottles are AWESOME.

Aren't the bottles so FUNKY? GOD I'D LOVE TO HAVE ONE OF THEM ON MY DRESSING TABLE. But it's $25 US for a measly 10ml, so I don't think I'd be purchasing one any time soon. Check out the rest of the bottles:



Sigh. Speaking of things I can't afford, anyone remember Christian Siriano from Project Runway 4? I absolutely loved his clothes when he was on the show, and his final collection has finally launched on bluefly.com-

You can buy it HERE, but most of it's sold out, and there are only very few pieces left. I wish I had enough money to snatch up the last few items before they're completely gone. Oh the pain of having an empty wallet! *Breaks down and weeps*

Okay I'm going to go and scavenge rubbish bins for coins now. Toodles~

Please Don't

Funny how in the holidays, everyone blogs almost everyday, and they visit each other's blogs everyday. But school starts, then everything halts to a stop. But not earmuffed.com You can count on us to be faithful to our blog no matter what. But we'll have to stop blogging daily though.

To liven things up a bit, lets talk about the formal. Buying a formal dress can be very stressful, and many people opt to buy many many dresses (yes, I'm looking at you), which might be wise. Because you never know, when you're desperately looking for a dress days before the actual formal, your head will go corrupt and you'll choose a completely disgusting dress.

So here's me to the rescue:

What Not To Wear For The Formal

(please refer back to this before you go out and buy your dress)

Please prepare yourselves for the monstrosities below.

It's an absolute vegetable. Seriously, what were they thinking when they were designing this? Maybe it's for Halloween, for people wishing to dress up as a piece of broccoli.

Honey, a bra is all it takes. You shouldn't resolve to using thick silver cables for extra support.

Please, don't get too close to the car engine. The exhaust smoke might ruin your hideous zebra-leopard-dalmation dress.

She must've gotten attacked by tiger wanting its skin back. No wonder her dress is in the shredded state it's in at the bottom.

Watch out, it's a gigantic green melon. All it's missing are some stripes and some seeds.

Oh god, AVERT YOUR EYES BEFORE YOU SUFFER HAVING TO SEE THIS DRESS. IT'LL TRAUMATISE YOU FOR LIFE.

Is it made out of tightly stretched boiled cabbage? And those little black bows remind me of sad little dead flies attacked to pieces of thread.

The Slut Dress #1. It looks like a hideous green bathing suit with a piece of fabric attached to one side. Please, no one wants to see your bony ribcage.

The Slut Dress #2. What kind of whore would wear this to their formal?! It's like something an Arabian princess from Aladdin would wear.

PLEASE, TAKE IT AWAY BEFORE MY EYES START BLEEDING RAINBOW SPARKLY RIBBONS.

This dress is actually pretty nice, too bad the model looks like a drag queen with a white wig.

There you go, if you ever feel in doubt, please refer back to this guide, and if the formal dress you had in mind slightly resembles any of these dresses at all, then PLEASE DON'T. Save the grade from the terror and stick to something slightly less hideous.

School's Cool

So school has started again. In the four days I have been at school, I have managed to:

1. Miss the train. First time this year. I woke up at 7:58 to be exact, and managed to catch the 8:10 train. I’m actually very proud of that actually. ROFL. Needless to say, I didn’t brush my teeth properly, didn’t brush my hair properly, barely packed my bag properly, and spent my day in a daze.

2. Did a test without studying. At all. Usually, if I don’t study, I still flip through for a recap or something, but nope, not this one. I didn’t look at the book one little bit. I await my results.

3. Forget my PE uniform. This landed me with an essay on the topic of ‘Why PE uniform is a vital part of my education’. It was fun thinking up creative ways to attack the question.

4. Run around the school during all my recesses and lunches for subject selection signatures. In the time that I am not running around, I am lining up in long ass lines.

5. Hate the rain. Actually, I’ve always hated it. Whatever.

6. Hate school. Actually, I've always hated that too. Whatever.

School is not cool.

Documentary: TeenyBoppers

So the other day, Rosa popped over and we decided to do another vlog-type thing to get a few thoughts off our minds. Since my sister's horrific friends were over, we decided to make a documentary on the stereotype my sister's friends fall into: the Teeny Bopper. I am not stereotyping them, they wish to fall into the stereotype themselves.

So what is a teeny bopper? Well, it's a pre-teen who thinks they're a gangster. Anyways, here's there documentary.


Don't take it too seriously, it was just for a good laugh, that's all. It was hilariously fun to film. But very difficult. We kept getting the angle wrong, or kept getting interrupted. So many times, in fact, that we managed to compile a whole bloopers section, that was so long it couldn't fit within the 10-minute-Youtube limit. My cousins insisted they be part of our doco, so I guess this can be their contribution:



That's all for now folks, I can't be bothered to blog properly at the moment. I'm shivering from the cold, and I'm dead sleepy, plus I have a whole pile of homework to attend to. So ciao.

Emo-ness

I was reading Theresa’s letter to herself in ten years time (yeh yeh, it was a while ago) and saw her mention of emos:

Wasn't it too long ago that the term emo was used to refer to a style of music?! Well now, people think that if they wear enough eye-liner and hate the world enough, they'll be able to join the exclusive world of emos, which, surprise surprise! Is not that exclusive after all. These people boast the fact that they are individuals and are different, but in actual fact, they all dress in pretty much the same way, cut themselves in the same places, and listen to the same commercialised bands.

I completely agree with that. Most emos are attention seekers.

There is however, a proportion of people out there (I’m not sure how big of a proportion), who truly suffer from some form of mental illness. I would know.

Before you go into shock, no, I do not suffer from a mental illness. But I have a friend who does. We’re not close or anything, simply ‘hi, bye’ friends, but I am close to one of her closer friends (confusing, much?).

She cuts herself according to her marks. So if she gets a 45/50, she’d cut herself five times. Now, no matter how smart someone is, you can’t expect them to score 100% every single time. She’s been doing this for a while now; you can imagine how many cuts she has on her hands/arms. I have no idea what her reason behind this is, maybe pressure.

Her friends know all about this (maybe not the full story, but they know enough), but what’s really sad is that they’re not doing anything to stop it. Sure, they may be telling her to stop, but that obviously isn’t working. They’ve been telling her to stop for over a year now; do they really expect her to suddenly stop?

Something else that’s really stupid is that her parents have failed to notice the cuts on her arms. They did ask her once, and she said that she scratched herself on a tree branch. Seriously, what kind of branch cuts in three perfectly straight parallel lines?

I don’t really know what to do because I am in no position to. I am hardly anyone to her. The most I’ve ever talked to her would be maybe a one minute conversation. All I can do is try convince her friends to take action.

On a different topic... school starts tomorrow. These holidays have flown by so fast, and I haven’t got anything done! I’m going to stuff the Geography RAP assessment tomorrow, and I still need to collect signatures for subject selections. Yet, I’m still undecided about what I want to do. Physics or no Physics?! I don’t want to decide, I’m scared I will make a mistake, like my electives for the past two years, except this is so much more important.

Numero ONE Vlog

Before I show you that promised vlog, I'll recount what I've been up to since I last posted, since the past few days have been quite eventful.

On Thursday, the family and I decided to go to the city to await the pope's arrival. The city was so strange with pilgrims marching around everywhere, waving their flags around and singing their lungs off. Everything was so freaking festive and joyous, but in a good way. Here are a few pics:

It was crazy, when the pope arrived, everyone started jumping around, shrieking, waving their flags, hands, anything they had in their hands, and taking pictures like ballistic Japanese tourists. It was truly amazing, and it awes me how such an event could attract the attention of so many people from all over the world. I managed to get a pretty clear shot of the pope:

After that, we decided to wait on the lined streets for the motorcade, but ended up waiting close to two hours. Yes, two hours for this:

The backside of the pope's bullet-proof car. It moved by so quickly, and after he passed, everyone around me was complaining about him moving so fast, and were marvelling over the cameras of those fortunate enough to take a picture of the pope.

I took this trip to the city as an opportunity to hunt for the ever-so-rare Moleskine notebook (rare in Australia, that is). It was probably sold at about 4 places in the whole CBD, so I spent my time hunting down those stores to find a Moleskine. Three out of these four places did not sell the art notebook I wanted, but at last, I found the notebook in all its glory in Kikki. K.

It was such a cute store, I ended up spending over $50 in it. Which wasn't much, considering that the Moleskine alone costed $32. Here are some of my purchases (this is like major advertisement for this place, they should pay me):


And look what they have in the lining of their gorgeous bags:

Isn't that so charming?!


The Queen Victoria Building: I love that place. The exquisite interior design, the beautiful exterior architecture, the classy haute couture stores- all of it.

Mum & me- people often mistaken her to be my sister, which I hope is a good thing, hopefully, the youthful gene passes through me.

Oh, I don't love the lack of toilet though. It seems that the whole city seems to be lacking in working ladies' rooms. After 9 hours of walking and hydrating myself, my bladder reached its limit, and it was time to go to the loo. Only, I spent 30 minutes looking for a toilet. I kid you not, there were no working women's toilets. Not the QVB, not KFC, not Maccas, not the 4-storey Supre store, not even the freaking train station. They all had signs in front with some excuse or other about maintenance or something.

Anywhos, my fingers have tired themselves from typing, so while I go rest my fingers, you go watch the very crappy vlog I filmed last week:


Yes, it's a complete and total mess of bits spliced together, I pinky promise the next one will be better.

Before I zoom off, I need help desperately. Again. It's much more important- subject selections. My subject selection sheet is still as empty as my bank account, and I just can't make up my mind. I am on the verge of insanity, and if someone doesn't help me soon, I'm going to jump off a cliff. Okay, here are the choices.

To either do:
a) Music in Year 11 and drop it in Year 12, or
b) Extension 1 in both English and Maths, keep it for Year 12 and have 12 units altogether, have something to fall back on just in case.

Here are the pros and cons of choosing music:
Pros
- I enjoy it.
- It's easy, it's a bludge, it's fun
- Less study

Cons
- It's a waste of time, I wont continue it
- It's irrelevant to my future career
- Doesn't scale too well
- Leaves me with only 10 units- nothing to fall back on
- I rank well in my school, but my school totally sucks at it, so compared to the state, I suck.

Pros and cons of choosing Extension 1 for English and Maths:
Pros
- 12 units means I have something to fall back on
- Slightly more relevant to my future career, but not really required- it'll just look flashy
- Scales better
- 'Waste of brain if I don't do it', as I'm told by too many people
- It will challenge me. Yes it is harder, but I work better when challenged and pressured. If I do Standard Maths and Advanced English, I will laze around, I will bludge, I will be over-confident.

Cons
- I slightly enjoy English, but I hate Maths.
- I am not top for either of them. I am merely above average.
- I am not prepared to commit all that time to those two subjects. If I choose extension, it will mean I have both Maths and English almost every day. It also means that I will have homework for these subjects almost every night- these two subjects are the highest homework-giving subjects, mind you.
- It is hard, I am scared.

I am stupid and naive, whenever I balance my Pros and Cons, I always end up choosing the ones with more Cons anyways, please tell me what to do. I am lost and possibly insane at the moment, I am not capable of deciding. PLEASE HELP ME. I BEG OF YOU.

Project Impossible: Physical Features

Day 5; final day of Project Impossible:
If you could change one of your physical features, what would it be?

Jenny's response:

Well, I’m already changing my teeth (braces) sometime near the end of this year, so does that count?

But if I were given a choice to change something, anything about myself, it wouldn’t be my teeth. The only reason I am changing my teeth is because it is so much simpler than changing something like say, my nose or eyes for example. Seriously, it doesn’t involve any surgery (actually, mine does involve removing a tooth stuck in my gum through surgery, but that’s not really counted) or risks, or big money (ok, just not as big money).

So, if not teeth, I would change my eyes. I don’t exactly hate the way they look, although I don’t exactly like how they look either, but they are so bad. Bad, in that I am short sighted. I don’t wear glasses, but I still have to wear contacts everyday. It is such as hassle having to put them on and take them off everyday and night.

Some people take their perfect 20-20 eyesight for granted. They should try experiencing what it’s like having to wear glasses/contacts everyday.


Theresa's response:

Oh this is an easy one. It’s not really a specific thing, it’s more like… an area. Now, before you start getting any raunchy thoughts, I’ll tell you- the lower half of my face. I know I should be happy with what I have, but it’s not like I obsess over the bottom half of my face everyday or something. It’s merely an area I would change if I had the opportunity. Not that I would go as far as plastic surgery to get it fixed.

I just really hate my teeth. My teeth point in all directions (it’s something inherited from my dad’s side of the family. You should see our family group photos where everyone’s grinning.) I also quite dislike my lips. I don’t exactly mind them, but it would be nice if my lips were slightly wider (horizontally).

I also dislike my jaw and chin. My jaw is so sloped, and it’d be nice if it was more square. The whole sloped jaw thing makes my chin really pointy and angular too, and the effect of this seems to magnify in photos (especially side-on ones).

So if I could magically change anything physical feature of mine, it would be the whole bottom half of my face. I’m quite content with the upper half.

What would YOU do?

Okay, that's it people! Bid your teary farewells to this lovely blog project, 'cos it's not coming back! But don't get too sad, just know that whenever Jenny and I are bored out of our minds again, we'll start another blogging project.