5. 10am

Tea time. Nuff said.


February in photos

Bye bye 2011

The last few days have been quite uneventful. We met up with the bf's dad and stepmom a few times. Usually to eat. They didn't really want to visit any tourist things (lots of them were closed anyway). So instead we had a lot of good food. Not complaining there. Time at home I mainly spend reading and watching movies. Great and relaxing.

So today it's the last day of the year and I think it's time to look at last year's resolutions and see how I've done:

1. Drop ten kilos by the end of the year (preferably not gain any back over Christmas). Surprise surprise this happened! Well, not the last bit. I dropped 12 kilos, but gained 3 back during the holidays. But I am back on healthy eating tomorrow so not worried at all.
2. Read at least one book a month for pleasure (doesn't count if it's for study). Easy peasy.
3. Regularly update Goodreads.Done!
4. Get a haircut at least twice a year (yeah, that's a LOT for me) and make it short.  Done two by May! But none since. Bad me! Might get a cut in January.
5. Try to eat at least one piece of fruit a day. This has not happened since I switched to a diet back in October that avoids fruit. But I eat loads of fresh vegetables.
6. Go one week without carbohydrates (bf swears on this so let's try it out). I never did a whole week, but basically do six days of it and then an indulgence day on number 7.
7. Go out for drinks to a new place at least once a month. I think I managed this. Was not really counting though.
8. Go to at least six new and exciting dinner places during the year. I thought I would totally fail on this, but since the bf's dad took us out three times this week I managed! LOL.
9. Go out at least twice a month and ignore work/study for those nights. I meet people from uni about twice a month for drinks/bookclub. So to my own surprise I managed to do this.
10. Go running once a week. FAIL!
11. Have a detox day once a month. Fail. Though I feel with the diet I switched to it's really unnecessary. Though what I did do I stocked up on bath bombs, so now will try to have a nice relaxing bath about once a month.
12. Cook at least two times a week.Bf complains I didn't do it, but I think I tried hard. Though I do make him cook more than me. He's just better at it.
13. Go to the movies at least six times. Win, Win (May), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, 50/50, Breaking Dawn. Two missing. Darn.
14. Watch at least four Studio Ghibli movies that I haven't seen yet. My Neighbour Totoro, Grave of the Fireflies. I recorded some on our new TV. Now just need to watch them. But yeah, FAIL!
15. Use up all the tea in the kitchen before buying any new ones (except my daily dose of green tea. Cannot live without that. But all the 'fun' ones have to go before stocking up again). Fail, I tossed all the ones out when we moved that I knew I wouldn't be drinking anymore.
16. Go through the whole wardrobe and throw out what I haven't worn for a year or doesn't fit/isn't comfy/looks horrible. Yes! But I kept some things, maybe will have to do it again... Did it again while moving. Tossed out so many clothes mainly due to no storage to keep them. Am very proud of myself.
17. Buy one pair of shoes that looks good with skirts. And maybe buy a new pencil skirt. I bought some new sandals, which look really nice with skirts. And now also some heels for the winter. Still hard to walk in but at least they look decent.
18. Smile when somebody wants to take a photograph of me (instead of yelling at them). Yeah, this worked out good for me. Bf complains I don't let him take pictures of me. Which is not true. I don't have any images of him because he keeps hiding from the camera...
19. Buy a wrist watch. Done! See here...
20. Reply to messages within three days. No delays allowed. Yes, waiting three months is too long. Sigh, I am still very bad at this. Though got a bit better.
21. Go on chat/messenger programmes at least twice a week to stay in touch with friends. Still not big at going on messenger. I even turned off the facebook one.
22. Start an address book and update it regularly.Fail. Though I still would like to do it. I did find my old one. But it's not up-to-date.
23. Do not just get any job when graduating. It has to be a publishing job. Done, done, done!!!
24. Put away money once I got a job for a trip to Japan. Working on it. We want to book in a few weeks. I got enough for the flight, now need to save for the money I will need there.
25. Do the Japanese homework every week for term 2 and 3 and study for half an hour a week on top of the homework. Let's not talk about this...
26. Finish Japanese for Busy People I and work through half of Japanese for Busy People II. I had high hopes for this to do it in between uni and job starting. But then I started work before I even finished uni, so yeah, that didn't happen....

So there are many things I haven't quite accomplished what I set out to do. But on others things I think I have done rather well. I want to do some New Years resolutions for 2012. Need to have a think about what I want to achieve next year and what to concentrate on and then I will put it up.

 

Until then... Everyone have a great start to 2012! It can only get better...

Brighton Japan Festival

I meant to post these much earlier. This are some photos from the Brighton Japan Festival. I went there almost a month ago. I didn't spend a lot of time there. Just enough to buy some mochi and enjoy the atmosphere.

Brighton Pier  that burnt down a couple of years ago.

 

The mochi were delicious! Especially the one with the strawberry in it. Should have bought more. Maybe next time.

Sorry for not writing a lot about this. I really didn't spend a lot of time at the festival. I spent more time exploring Brighton as I'd never been, but forgot to take pictures of that. It was a great city so much to see and take in. Next time I will be better at taking pics!

After work drinks

On Friday after work I headed into the City for a couple of drinks (maybe a couple more). Met up with some of bf's friends. We were in a newly opened pub and there was nobody there. Maybe two other tables were taken, but otherwise it was empty. I kinda liked it because I had just changed trains at London Bridge and been run over by a big guy and really didn't feel like getting squashed by more people in a busy pub. So I didn't mind. And they played really good music. A bit random, I remember Ace of Base, Rage against the Machine, Black Eyed Peas, some country, dance and R&B. 

Best part of the evening: We all got hungry and headed over to a Japanese restaurant around the corner. They had amazing food and it was decently priced.

 Unagi and Avocado maki anyone?

Spicy wing sticks and chilli beef with green peppers, onions and black beans.

The bf wanted to share the food (never happens), I took advantage of that and stole more than half his chilli beef. We also had edamame beans but I forgot to take a pictures of those.

Getting to grips with Word

Hurray, after trying for hours yesterday I finally got my Japanese scripts up and running. Not that I can do that much with it at this moment. But I do want to type up some vocab sheets. That will make studying that much easier. I hate reading my own handwriting, and having to read it and study from it is just a horror. I hope this way I will get to enjoy memorising and learning new words more.

Anyway, a happy bunny is going to try out her new toy now! ;-)

A NON-Weekend Post

This is very exciting. Finally I manage to get in a post that is not on the weekend. Though, I guess since it is Friday evening I am cheating just a little bit. Thats' okay though. This week was actually really exciting, so I feel that I have something interesting to say.

Monday evening I finally got to see Twilight:New Moon with a friend of mine. I was so excited when it came out and then it took so long for me to go. Anyway, I really enjoyed the movie. It was done much better than the first, everything looked more professional and like they had more money to burn. Weirdly enough I liked the first one better. Maybe because everything was all looking a bit cheap and the mood was much darker in the first. In New Moon everything was glowing a bit orangey/reddish while Twilight was all in blue and bland colors. That drew me in much more. Plus, the storyline of New Moon was technically darker, so I thought they should have used the darker palette there instead. But oh well. I just thought I would like number two better because that was one of my favorite books in the series. I just love the werewolf/Jacob storyline.
Speaking of Jacob. First time he stepped up I was all 'Holy Jeebus, somebody beefed up'. He looks HUGE compared to how he was before. No complaints there. But I didn't like that he cut his hair. Was that really necessary??? I know, I know it's in the book, but the long hair just suited him really well. I thought it actually made him look older... But enough of Monday.

Moving on to Tuesday. I was off and got to lay in a bit. Which I just loooooooove doing. Rest of the day was spent out in Angel shopping and in the evening I had my Japanese class. The last in this term. I thought we had gotten away without a test this time. But behold, of course in the last half hour, there it was. Uh, I did really bad. So I guess my Christmas break should really be filled with some quality studying time. Weirdly enough I am looking forward to that. I wanted to concentrate on learning vocab. I don't have all the grammar down, but mainly I am struggling with remembering all the words. So I figured learning a lot of verbs and adjectives might be the way to go. I will just build the grammar around that. Kanji is another big thing. We are not learning them in class but I would really love to learn at least some. Wanted to get a study book, but I just cannot find the right one in stores. Might have to do an order on Amazon, though I really, really do not want to do that. I just always end up getting much more than I should, and there are still about a dozen books on my desk waiting to be read. Anyway, after class we headed out to a pub to have a drink. That was really nice, I had never done that before because I am usually beat. Might have to do that more often now. Hmmm. Last thing in class was a presentation about wine tasting and the guy who did it brought in three different bottles of red wine. Tasted those. They were really good. I felt a bit tipsy after those tiny glasses. LOL. Wine just gets me. Makes me feel sick and tired. But I like the taste. Cannot help myself. Should really say no. So that was another late evening.

Wednesday was really uneventful. Hurray! So let's skip to Thursday. Went to a pub to meet up with a birthday girl. Guess there were about a dozen people. Had a really good time (and a couple of ciders). Just did not like my early morning Friday. Honestly, I just wanted to close my eyes at work today and snore through it. That's usually not how it goes down on a Friday. But in the afternoon it got really hard to keep my eyes open. I guess I am just getting old. Long evenings and working all day just do not agree with me any more (hm, long working hours have never agreed with me). But I survived! So now I am sitting here, nursing my tea and writing a blog that nobody reads. Love my life ;-)

But I really missed reading all the blogs on my blogroll. Planning on catching up now. Have to make another tea for that. Getting really addicted to them. So here's a shout out to all the lovely bloggers, who care to share their life with the world. We love you!

Let's all have a great weekend!