K-Pop Music Fest in Sydney

These past few days have been, like, wow :')
I was lucky enough to win a competition that gave me entry to the K-Pop Music Festival in Sydney Rehearsal on Friday, so I took my friend there. We all lined up, and suddenly heard SHINee's Lucifer and Hello. Which was good, because we could hear them singing LIVE, but bad because they'd already started to practice.
FINALLY during Goodbye Baby by Miss A, we were let into the stadium. We took our seats and enjoyed a few hours of rehearsing, and the artists waved and greeted us in their microphones and it was like WOWOWOWOW.

The next day arrived. Saturday. Potentially the best day of my life.
My friends and I arrived at Olympic Park at midday and enjoyed the games and activities and entertainment and Chonny from YouTube until we began to line up at 4:30-ish. The line was sooo long, but at 5:20 we were all let in. Security was tight- our bags were searched and drinks were taken away, but it was totally understandable.

As the start of the concert neared, the MBC advertisements on the screens disappeared and we were entertained by shots of the crowd, which was really funny. There was one middle aged man holding up his iPhone that had SNSD's 'Gee' lyrics scrolling across the screen. Then the countdown. We all went totally crazy.

The concert kicked off with the hosts, Tiffany and Yuri. Then Taemin danced really well. SHINee performed Lucifer, Hello and Ring Ding Dong and Minho looked even better than he does on the computer (I know, I didn't think that was possible either!).

The night went on and CN Blue was amazing (when are they not!?) and EVERY SINGLE group was so so so terrific and TVXQ did the final performance and I just felt so happy, to know I was watching the real life Changmin and Yunho.

At the end of the concert, all the artists came on stage to say goodbye so my friend and I rushed as close to the front as we could, and I held up my Minho sign as high as I could, and he waved! I totally melted. BTW, I cried when SHINee was performing. They were just spectacular.

Babbling + Aesthetics

After next Wednesday, I will actually smile so hard that my cheeks go red. AAAAHH! Exciting! But really, I would like to say a few things.
Not really, because I don't know what to say... How about my personal taste in fashion- what I think is awesome and people should try! Just because I have spare time.

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
I absolutely love wearing dresses, and seeing people wear dresses- they're fun to wear, colourful, and are so great at expressing moods and feelings.
What I like in not just fashion but also decorating houses and things is to relate colours- pinpoint colours and accent them. In this photo on the left, I've designed a simple yet absolutely adorable dress outfit. I accented the colour of the ribbon onto the shoes and the purse.
The Jungle Book

This is actually an outfit that I have at home, although since I don't have khaki converses, I wear sailor shoes instead. It's comfy and youthful. I'm a big fan of stripes, since stripy tops pretty much get thrown on top of everything in my wardrobe. Denim jeans, use stripes. Black jeans, use stripes. Denim shorts, use stripes. It's really convenient actually. But maybe not on top of even more patterns.

One Winter
This is an outfit I wear SO often during winter. Half of it is made up of things I've 'inherited' from my mum. I have a really lovely holey cardigan in the dark navy colour, and I usually wear a simply shirt underneath it. Then I wear black slim jeans underneath with black Converses, and an old brown leather bag- the kind that goes across the body with the long strap.

So that's the kind of thing I like. And the last two outfits I actually wear. Unfortunately, I don't have such a cool retro A-line dress like the one in the top outfit I designed, but it's the kind of thing I would wear if I could.

And yes. That's that.



Growing Up

I bought my senior uniform last week (or maybe the week before that) for school, and I was quite surprised that I was going into Year 11. It feels like a few months ago that I was in Year 7 thinking, 'I don't get to wear the senior uniform for AGES!' but now here I am three years later thinking, 'I'm going to be wearing the senior uniform next term'.
Quite scary.

And to think that in about 2 years I'll be in University! And then I'll have a job! And next I'll move out of home and flat with some friends! Overload? I think so.

For now though, let me just say this. Hopefully in 3 days time I will be sitting the RTA test that will let me get my L Plates to drive.
Yeah, I should study for that.
And study for Yearly exams.
And shop.
And get ready for the Formal.

I'm not busy at all...

Pitiful

So I'm listening to some lovely Bach Preludes and Fugues, and I hear a very nice interpretation, so I look at who I'm listening to, and there we go.
Konstantin Lifschitz.

Does anyone else think he has possibly one of the most coolest names out!?
I think it's absolutely awesome. Personally. In my opinion.

If that was my name, I would totally put my surname on my Year 12 Jersey. Life would be great.

Lookin' Good

So.
Can I just say a few loverly things that might interest you, and might not?

(1) I have another blog- visit it at http://speaking-simlish.blogspot.com/ 
This blog is all about the Sims 2. Because that is one of the best computer games EVER invented. In fact, the whole Sims franchise is totally brilliant. Speaking Simlish only has 2 blog posts as of today, but hey. If you're interested in random things about me playing the Sims 2, check it out ;)

(2) I will squeal and hop around and smile like a 12 year old JB fan at 3:21pm on the 11th of November. Why? BECAUSE by then, I would have finished both my School Yearlies, AND School Certificate exams, AND the next day is the Kpop Festival in Sydney Concert (omgomgomg) AND on the 18th I have an excursion and Formal. What a moment to capture in time.

(3) I'm learning some really cool pieces on the piano: Bach Prelude and Fugue in C# Major (from Book 1), Beethoven Sonata in... let me get back to you with that one... it's The Hunt, and two Chopin etudes- Black Keys, and the Revolutionary Etude. Oh yeah. Muso's are going crazy right now.

(4) Only 7 more school days until the holidays! I have to study in the holidays... but still! Holidays!

And yes. Let's hope I do well in everything :)

One Day of Many

So you might have realised that I haven't touched this blog for a little while.
You know. Same as usual. I've had things to do, places to go, people to meet.
What can I say? I'm a sought-after kind of girl.
Within the last 3 or so months, what's been happening? WELL!


I had my AmusA piano exam. And passed. Wooh!
I've had my 8th grade violin exam. And passed. With a C+. But a pass none the less.
I bought my senior school uniform because I'm a big girl now. :)
I've gotten a heck of a lot of work to do for school :(
I've entered my initial subject choices for next year, although they're still to be confirmed. Shall I tell you what I chose?
Advanced English
Extension Maths
Music 2
Society and Culture
Business Studies
Biology


So you'll see that I have quite a variety of subjects.
Mainly because if I could, I'd do every subject because they're all so good, and secondly because I have no idea what I want to be when I'm older.


What else I did recently was, I had a shared 16th birthday party with my best friend Christine Morgan. It was at night and we had dinner and decorated pillows and danced and things. It was really fun, and I got really awesome presents, which is in all honesty, what we all look forward to.


Speak to you all later, and let's hope it's not another 3 months until the next post!

Hoot

Me, Christine and Jess learnt SNSD's Hoot dance. It was, might I say, awesome! And really really fun to perform. And we performed it at Katrina's party and it was good to perform it to everyone there. We just have to clean it up a little and then video it well and eeeeekk!

Eyelid Operation

I'm actually writing this with one eye open, one eye closed under an eye patch. Why? Cause I had an operation on my eyelid!


On Australia Day this year my mum noticed a lump on my left eyelid. We went to a doctor about 2 weeks later, and followed his advice to do warm compressions- warm water on a towel and hold it on my eyelid for about 10 mins 3 times a day. 
That didn't help, so a few weeks after that, we went to another doctor. He said it was a cyst, and referred me to an eye doctor. 
Which brings me to this morning. I thought it was just a regular appointment at 9:30 am. Just a little look at what the problem was, and MAYBE, just MAYBE, if the doctor was up to it, the operation. 


First, I got called to see a doctor who just asked me lots of questions, and we talked about school and subjects because he was also a tutor. He got me to do a few eye tests (and I found that my right eye was the dominant one). Then we went to another room and there was an assistant who just checked out my eyelid. Then the doctor who'd do the operation came and we were like, ok, we'll do the operation please so it's done during the school holidays. 


It was kinda weird, but fun anyway. They flipped over my eyelid and made an incision and drained it and stuff. Yummy, right?

The Holidays.

My holidays will be quite packed. 
'Quite packed' is a total understatement by the way.


 I'll tell you all the things I would have liked to do during my break at school:
- Go to Luna Park with my friends
- Go shopping for three wardrobes worth of new clothes with my mum
- Play on the computer for extended periods of time
- Cook lots of yummy things from my mum's many cookbooks
- Work out with my Pilates DVD <-- totally impossible btw
- Watch hilarious Japanese DVDs with my mum
- Go on a short holiday with the family (inc. my dawg)


Instead, here's what I will be doing:
- PD/H/PE Assignment (fun...)
- Music Assignment
- History assessment
- Geography assessment
- Commerce assessment
- Science assessment
- 4 hours of piano a day :O yeah right
- Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of piano general knowledge for my exam coming up
- A few fun things I will (I say 'I will' with too much hope) squeeze in 


:'( 


But still, it's the holidays. So I'm totally looking forward to them :)

Titles are Difficult to Think up

The holidays are slowly coming closer. 


Basically, I can't wait, but I'm going to have to practise piano way more than I've been doing recently because... my exam is coming up around May. So I'm not too sure where this blog post will lead... That's why the title is a little bit vague. 
I would really like a new piano. Grand piano. Because I'm grand, and the pianos are grand, so us grands were made for each other. :) Nah, but I really would like one... SOON!


In the holidays, I plan to shop for clothes as well. Every year, I need a whole heap of new clothes, just to keep fresh and original. Luckily, I've been 'inheriting' some clothes from my mum so I'm surviving. But I have to say, she sure liked her stripes. 
You might remember that ages ago I wrote an entry called Welcome Weather, about how I was looking forward to Summer and Summer Fashion... Well now, I'm looking forward to Winter's coldness and Winter Fashion. 
BUT I HATE RAIN. Just to impress Emma... But the temperature is absolutely awesome. Chilly. Chill. Umm... anyway....


By the way, just assuring that my family in Japan is ok- they're in a different part of Japan (south-west of Tokyo). 


When I'm older, I plan to have the majority of my wardrobe filled with things from Country Road. They have uber nice clothes, and a cool brand name. Country Road has REALLY nice jumpers- when my mum and I went shopping, we found a Country Road woollen jumper, that was, surprise surprise, stripy, and it was really nice. I can't find it in any stores any more though... what a disaster. 


Babbling is fun, but not as fun as watching Valentina Lisitsa play Liszt on YouTube. You've probably heard La Campanella (or at least you'll recognise it when you hear it) but Lisitsa plays it AMAZINGLY well. One of the top rated comments is '99 people have arthritis'. So true my friends. Watch her fingers go. 


So like I said, babbling is fun but not as fun as watching fingers go crazy over a piano so I will be ending this post. 


On the count of 3 you'd better skip to 2:33 in La Campanella played by Lisitsa. 
1
2
3 (watch it)
Yeah. Wish you could do that, right?

Mango the Spoodle

Wow, I just realised that I actually haven't blogged about my dog Mango. Disappointing really... 

I REALLY like dogs, and always have. In fact, I used to wake up at 6am and search through dog-selling websites for breeders with new litters. I'd look at websites from pounds, like Doggie Rescue and the RSPCA, and then I found a new litter of Spoodles. 


We wanted a girl, so I emailed the breeder, and she replied that there were definitely some girls available. And so the emailing began, and the  breeder sent some photos, and I'd show the photos to my family, and then it got to the point where I'd pretty much bought 'Girl No. 2'. She was in Melbourne, so on the 26th of June, 2 months after she'd been born, I came home from tennis and TA DAA! There was a little bubby dog sniffing all over the carpet. We'd set up toys and blankets and a cardboard box for her, and the little baby puppy just slept. Mango went to puppy school where she could be very naughty, but usually by the end of the lesson she'd be so tired we had to carry her out to the car before she slept on the floor. Spoodles are great dogs because they don't shed fur. Although that might seem like a small issue, it really does help. There's hardly any fur on clothes or furniture, and it saves a lot of work with the cleaning. Mango is obsessed with food, like any dog, so as soon as she hears the fridge door opening, it's like she's been called by some strict army trainer, and she MUST go. 

Hard to believe, but in April this year Mango is turning 3. Oh, my little baby's growing up! She's the most beautiful, loving, protective, adorable, hilarious, happy, caring, affectionate, amazing dog. :P You'll hear that from every dog owner.
But it's all true.

Any Plans for the Future?

Yes, I'm perfectly aware that it's not always a good thing to be thinking about stuff that won't happen for ages or might not happen at all in life... I'm just very good at doing that sort of thing and now that we're all getting older, it's even more exciting to be talking about life in 5 or 10 years time!


My plans? Have a part time job while I'm at university (I'm at a dead end about what exactly I'll be studying but I'll figure it out later). Once I have an ample amount of money, and Christine as well for that matter, we'll rent a tiny one bedroom unit and buy lots (or hardly any, depending on our budget) of second hand furniture. Score! ... Puis, we go to the local Coles every week and buy a stack of 2 minute noodles, bread and spreads. We don't need a toaster because we've already got the 15 year old crusty oven built into the moulding kitchen, and we have toast EVERY DAY. Lunch... more bread, with some of the lettuce and cheese we remembered to buy. We have to make a dinner plan so we know EXACTLY what to buy for the week. Home brand and Vinnies are our new best friends. We have a tiny square table to fit an absolute max of 3.5 people (half of the fourth person doesn't fit so they're sitting at an angle). We actually have to clean up after ourselves... Which means... the... BATHROOM! Shock horror. 


Who knows what secrets and surprises the past owners of the unit have left behind for us...


We share our car. It's a small, rusty, in-need-of-a-service car we bought off a friend. We sleep on mattresses on the floor, but then find the revolutionary new world of Internet Shopping. We need to pay electricity bills, water bills, internet and phone bills... Just a lot of bills. Then the rent. The people living upstairs go wild on Friday nights so we do what we can to hear Leonardo's last words in Titanic on our microwave-sized television. Titanic is only on video though. No DVD players just yet. BUT our parents upgrade to Blue Ray and donate the DVD player anyway so it's all good. We have a problem with the wardrobe. Our one bedroom unit doesn't allow for the clothing requirements of two twenty year olds, so half our clothes are in cardboard boxes hidden in a build-it-yourself cupboard in the living room. The bulb in the bathroom has blown but we can't find the time (or will) to buy a new one, so we make sure there's a torch in easy reach from our beds for any middle of the night call-of-natures.


It all sounds good, right? I think so too. 


Except for that ever growing army of dampness that's taking over the living room ceiling... Just wait for our next promotion. Then we'll think about taking care of it.

Things You Might Want to Look Up

I'm very flexible.
I'm talking about mentally by the way. Doing the splits and stuff is totally out of the question. Anyway, being quite flexible and understanding, I like an assortment of things (I don't know about you, but when I hear the word assortment, I think of lollies...) so just so you can kill time and procrastinate from those Science assignments, or you're just curious, here's a list of... STUFF that I quite enjoy on Youtube.


Youtube: "Summertime by Janis Joplin" <-- THIS IS PURE TALENT. Not everyone will like it. Definitely. But I do, and I think it's very cool. I think the best video on Youtube is the Live Grona Lund 1969 one. GAH! It's actually cooler than me. That's hard to beat. 
Youtube: "Brahms Intermezzo Op. 118 No. 2 Nikolai Lugansky" <-- I'm playing this peace on the piano right now, and it's SO beautiful. Almost as beautiful as me (... I'm not self centred...)
Youtube: "Kina Grannis" <-- This is a young lady to keep watching. She's already got a CD, and I think she does really nice covers and songs. 
Youtube: "Sunny Choi" <-- She does piano interpretations of popular music, like Firework by Katy Perry, or Raise Your Glass by P!nk. Unfortunately she doesn't have any scores; she just memorises her whole piece (Yeah, she's amazing).
Youtube: "Bond Explosive" <-- Bond is made up of some electric string players I've liked since I was a little girl, and this song is my favourite.


Have fun Youtube-ing!

Say Cheese!

Take a picture. It'll last longer.


That's true. Let's say your parents took you to Vanuatu when you were 2 years old. Do you remember it 10 years later? Nope. BUT your parents remembered to pack their old camera into their suitcases before they left, so luckily, they've got a few photos of you digging a hole in the sand halfway to China. Now, you look at that photo thinking, 'I went to Vanuatu? I WENT TO VANUATU!? MUM! DAD! WHY'D YOU TAKE ME WHEN I WAS 2?' (Groovy rhyming, eh?)


Could you take a photo of us, and we'll take one of you?


Who's never heard that from a tourist? No hands? Right. The backpackers have obviously noticed you trying to take a "selfie", and failing tremendously, so they were nice enough to offer a win-win situation. You smile, nod and say thanks. The tourist says, 'You just press this button'. You think, 'Duh! As if I haven't taken a picture before!', but their instructions aren't over. They continue, 'But before you take it, try and make it look like we're the same height as the Harbour Bridge, and don't get any other people. If there's a ferry passing, please wait until it's left, and make sure the sun isn't in the way, and then, actually, could you take it so that it looks like we're holding up the Bridge? Hmm, I think that would be better, and then...' and so they go on, talking about how you press the button halfway to make the picture focus, and then press down all the way. Then you realise the flash wasn't on, so you have to endure the whole process again. Finally, it's their turn to take the photo, so you hand it to them. They tell you to walk back a little, left a little, about 5 metres further backwards, and then they run off with your camera. Joking! They take about 3 minutes to figure out that with this camera, you also press the big button on the top, and you're just standing there grinning, noticing all the people waiting to take their own picture in the spot you're standing. 


What the- it's a UFO!


For some odd reason, you notice a glowing disc way up in the sky above your house. It's OBVIOUSLY a UFO with real aliens plotting to zap you up to them with a large green ray of light that comes down to you. 100 years ago, people would have been thinking, 'No one's going to believe me! This is a UFO right here, and every one's going to think I'm mad! If only I could prove it to them!' Now, you can quickly grab your camera phone from your pocket and start recording. However, having a 2 mega-pixel camera doesn't quite offer the great quality you're looking for when it's dark and you're jumping around hysterically. Then, of course, the video you submitted has the possibility of finding its way to several situations.
A) Everyone thinks that you're handy with some expensive editing software, which you've managed to try and cover up with the bad quality of the recording, and you're deemed a public nuisance.
B) Everyone believes you and the world prepares for alien contact. (Well, that's a first. It's not like we've never tried Morse Code-ing to space or anything...)
C)The New Zealand government has found the video, hidden it away, and then some genius finds it 12 years later and the video is now part of WikiLeaks. 


Option C is obviously the most entertaining, and it must be made inevitable that this is the path set out for your dodgy-quality video of a 'UFO'. Which, you figure, was actually just some little kid's new frisbee he had coated in glow-in-the-dark paint. Of course, you keep this little part to yourself. 


Where would we be without cameras, right? I've taken the liberty to provide 3 extremely relevant (um...), serious (er...), truthful (well... about that...) examples of the necessity of cameras. My insightful (oh seriously?) report and 5 star (more like 0.5 star) analysis of several situations has hopefully added something important (pah! Fibs I tell you!) to your day. ;)