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Year 2011 has been — to say the least — the most horrible year of all the years in my memory. The best of the worst is, of course, having neglected my blog for almost 10 months, and not finding the time nor motivation to redesign it.

But since it’s already three days into a brand new year, let me not dwell on the past and instead write a summary of what has given me the greatest joy amongst the bad:

In January, I turned 21.
In June, I completed all my LLB exams, one semester ahead of expected completion date.
In July, I received confirmation that I satisfied all requirements for my BCom/LLB degrees.
In September, I officially graduated from the University of Auckland with conjoint BCom/LLB.
In October, I completed my Professional Legal Studies course, and the New Zealand All Blacks team won the Rugby World Cup 2011 yay!
In November, I got my first ever smart-phone — iPhone 4S, baby!
In December, I was admitted as a Solicitor and Barrister of the High Court of New Zealand, received my practising certificate, and received LLM offers from both universities I applied to.

I mean, how could that sound like a bad year, right? But at each and every step to attaining an achievement in 2011 I was met with a challenge, an obstacle, and (what seemed like at the time) the biggest headache of my life. Even when signing the contract for the new iPhone plan I became the victim of a muck-up that has less than a one-in-thousands chance of happening. The bigger the achievement, the bigger the headache. *facepalm*

But hey, the year is now behind me and I am ready to face what may be the last 12 months of the human history. Happy (belated) New Year!

Mirrored from Appassionato.

Despite all the ranting about losing my creative juices, I figured that trying to revive them while there are remnants is better than waiting till there are none left.

I have written stories before. But they were all mystery thriller psychopathic ones that made me freak out so bad I couldn’t muster the courage to walk over to my bed to sleep. So for a change, this time it’s a fantasy.

I love World of Warcraft, but I can’t stand most of the people who played.
I have a hidden knack in drawing and designing fantasy ancient-style Tolkien-style maps.
Always wanted to write a love story involving myself.

But, it’s not going to be a love story, it’s not a fanfiction, it’s not going to be a copy of anything, it’s going to be original (or as original as what I have in my head).

So here’s my invitation to you: Would you like to be a character in it? And here is some info to help you decide.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Mirrored from Appassionato.

Team work, creative solutions… has uni (law school at least) been forgetting this? Out of five years’ worth of courses in Law, Finance and Economics, I have come across one class with a strong group work element. It’s true that law lecturers always encouraged creative thinking, yet did they ever endow us with the skills to properly develop our creativity?¹ Not in my classes. We all know that in the real world we will need to cooperate with one another (even if grudgingly for some of us), but for most of the past four years I’ve gotten nothing but an individualistic, competitive vibe from my environment. 90% of you responsible and academic-oriented ones may enjoy this, because all if not most of you would have experienced having to cover three other group members’ work in the last minute. And I was indeed one of the 90% who stood by individualism yet shamelessly stressed how much of a team worker I am in job applications. Was.

The dispute resolution paper I took over January-February involved a group presentation, with seven students in each group. When this course requirement was introduced in the first class, I cringed. By the end of the course, I have made six new friends, allowed my creativity to soar, and experienced staying so late in law school that we got locked in the building. The group presentation deprived me of a golden A, but was nonetheless the most rewarding experience I have had throughout my years of uni.

By fifth-year in uni, most law students tend to think of themselves as working individually in small cubicles, little to do with other “lowly dumb commoners”. When people are put in groups whether it be during class or in a co-curricular activity, the ambitious ones are fighting to be the only one to present all the ideas for the group (as if they did all the work), the less-ambitious ones are as quiet and non-contributing as they were five years ago, and the “leaders”² are bossing other people around without ‘please’ and ‘thank you’s.³

Creativity-wise, I used to create admirable artworks and designs. Recently, I’ve struggled to create an averagely-attractive blog design for even the simplest blog.

Stories and poetry used to flow out of my head any time, anywhere. These days I’m hitting walls trying to come up with any decent descriptive language to write average quality fiction. After all, I’ve written five-years’ worth of research essays in a strictly professional tone about nothing but law and economics.

Those studying in the creative fields may not be able to sympathise, but I’m dying to finish this semester so I can escape this rigid cage, confinement, whatever. Of course, while at work I’ll still be referring to statutes and regulations, but at work I support and am supported by a team of amazing colleagues and I can once again bring back the daily usage of Adobe Photoshop and flowery adjectives after 6pm without a trace of guilt.

By this I mean not just telling us to think outside the square, but teach or train us how to think outside the square. [↩]
Thank you very much for encouraging this, law firms. [↩]
Disclaimer: these come from my personal experiences and my observations on a general scale. And I said “tend do”. [↩]

Mirrored from Appassionato.

My kidnap value is:
$ 67,320,000.00
What's your kidnap value?

So I turned 21.

No party, no booze, no Facebook contact list-wide event invitations, just a couple of small lunches with my favourite people at my favourite restaurants and a cake from my favourite cake shop.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Mirrored from Appassionato.

Following my weight awareness previously, I have experienced periods of “Okay, I’m going to shed those fatty 10 pounds in 2 months” and “Fuck this isn’t even going to work”. During one of those periods of optimism, I started my food and fitness blog: Rilly Fit. I am making a daily record of:

Food consumption.
Exercise.
Good fitness/dieting tips I come across.

I will also make body measurements from time to time and record these. Many weight loss articles have recommended starting a food journal because the need to record every food that is consumed will make one feel guilty if they have consumed something. At the same time, I guess having recorded no or minimal exercise in a day will also make me feel guilty.

If anyone’s interested in my progress or self-reminder tips or ideas for starting your own one, feel free to check it out! It’s my new source of pride. <3

I just got the bottom of my left foot burnt with liquid nitrogen today to kill a plantar wart, so cardio exercises are out of the picture for now. The new direction is discovering more good eating and home exercise tips!

Mirrored from Appassionato.

Thanks to Emma and Snark, I just received my first ever gift from a Secret Santa organised online.

I felt so bad putting forward a massive “dislikes list”, but I often do receive a lot of Christmas gifts I have no idea what to do with…

I have my own cup at home, I do not need a bigazillion mugs and glasses.
I have an unromantic Asian family, we do not light candles, maybe wait until I’ve moved out.
I do not use a camera made in the 1990s, nor do I print photos, so I have not needed photo frames or albums since I was 11.
I already have a five years’ supply of body lotions from buying too much from girly stores.
Unless it’s a 4+ set of kitchenware, one-off cutlery pieces do not match the rest of what we have.
Impractical things.

Unfortunately I get a mountain load of them. (I know I’m such a whiner.)

I’m a very material person that do not appreciate what would usually be thought of as sweet things. I do not like handmade crafted gifts unless they were up to a professional standard, I do not like things I can’t use in everyday life. A gift voucher, though it looks flat and cheap, is sometimes the far better choice. A simple tip for getting gifts you’re not sure someone would definitely like: ask for an exchange card.

Fortunately, my amazing 2010 Snark Secret Santa Ashley got me the cutest, prettiest notebooks!

secretsanta20101 My first offline online Secret Santa

secretsanta20102 My first offline online Secret Santa

Cute stationery just can’t go wrong.

Mirrored from Appassionato.

At least for the next few years.

Academically, my grades have improved a whole lot over the past year since I started dating Stephen. I totally disproved the traditional-Asian-parents theory that boyfriend = distraction = fail grades. I’ve also sorted out the rest of my papers in uni and will graduate in just half a year!

After graduation, I have a job lined up for me. I’ve worked part time there for the past two years and did not want to leave. Fortunately, my boss did not want me to either.

For years I hoped and hoped for a long-term relationship that would last for at least a year. I’ve reached that goal and just based on the fact that Stephen has gotten me an iPod and a Wii so far for these two Christmases I think I made an awesome choice.

And now… just one most challenging goal: sexy body.

It’s so easy to gain weight working full time in an office with a boss that loves food just as much as I do. So what I’m starting to do now is:

Working out or going swimming just about once every other day;
Home exercises almost every night; and
Reduce consumption of fatty, oily and sugary foods.

I have to look good for my sister’s wedding in November next year! Any tips from anyone who has been there and done that?

Mirrored from Appassionato.

What’s the use of having big eyes and great eye sight and not needing any glasses? Destination #1 for flying debris.

On the way to work this morning, something got in my left eye. I tried eye drops, washing with tap water, sitting there with my eyes closed and letting my tears flow and by the end of the first hour, it was still stinging like crazy.

I got my boyfriend to come and pick me up from work and drive me to my university’s health centre for an emergency appointment. Lo and behold, all the doctors were in a meeting and no one could help me for one and a half hours. A nurse came along and she didn’t even bother to look at my eye, but immediately said she couldn’t do anything. She offered to give me a medical certificate so I could take the day off work, but she wasn’t listening to me saying I had urgent matters to deal with at work.

So, one and a half hours for an emergency? I think I’m going to rate it a 2/10.

The uni health centre referred me to another nearby medical centre. Baaaaah. It was open but I was told by the receptionist that there was no one there. Good game, good game.

My boyfriend then took me to the hospital. Fortunately, third time lucky. An emergency nurse came and looked at me within two minutes. He washed my eye with a truckload of saline and for the first time in two hours I could finally keep my eyes open for more than a couple of seconds.

How I loved the hospital today.

Mirrored from Appassionato.

I’m currently going through the busiest time of my semester so far:

1500-word essay.
Legal Research assignment.
Moot (mock case trial).
3000-word essay.

But, enough with the excuses, for I have still been spending some hours here and there on World of Warcraft for breaks. I’ve written a few draft blog posts, but never put in the effort to finish them for publishing, because I don’t get that blogging mood often when I’m publishing posts to a layout I feel is ugly.

I still like some concepts of this design: the colours, the organisation of the footer, the comments link… but I feel funkiness may be what keeps me interested in my own blog when I have to spend perhaps 10 hours each week on it, despite having desperately wanted a minimalistic design.

So here’s going into a new design brainstorming stage again…

Mirrored from Appassionato.

Four years in uni should contain four Winter breaks and four Summer breaks. Should. It’s not like I’m a nerd that studies 24/7, but it just so happens that I never allowed myself to have a real holiday over the past three and a half years.

2007 Winter break: tried to study ahead for the next semester in order to keep up good grades to get into Law school.
2007 Summer break: enrolled in a Maths paper for fun and work.
2008 Winter break: essays and tests for double semester Law papers and work.
2008 Summer break: enrolled in a Finance paper, a necessary prerequisite and work.
2009 Winter break: essays and tests for double semester Law papers and work. Again.
2009 Summer break: enrolled in Company Liquidations paper because it’s one of my favourite subjects and work.
2010 Winter break: essays and tests for double semester Law papers and work !@£$% and AMUNC event in Sydney.¹
2010 Summer break: I initially promised myself I will enjoy this break with no study at all. But I’ve already made the grave decision to enrol in whichever paper that I have ever the slightest bit of interest in.

Who said uni was freer than school? I can’t stop the voluntary self torture, and hence I probably can’t complain. I definitely need a proper break for revitalisation but alas! I expect 2011 to be quite the same.

Not really a holiday! [↩]

Mirrored from Appassionato.

“Best friend” should really be used for the one top friend and tends to be mutual. But as I have indicated earlier, I have multiple “best friends”, some of whom may not consider me as a best friend. This is because of the way I “organise” my friendships so that I have friends who are closer than others in different “departments” of my life and activities.

For example, I have an S closest friend in law school, I have an S closest friend in girly gossips, I have an S closest friend who’s also my boyfriend (Stephen), I have closest friends of different countries, I have closest friends of different circles, I have closest friends in different organisations, I have closest friends in different stages of my life… and I often lazily refer to all of them as “best friends”. But my one true best friend, Sean (another S), is my bestest friend.

Sean probably took a big role in shaping who I am today, so my personal profile would not seem complete without introducing him.

The Beginning

We began as classmates when we were 11 and 12. I got along well with everyone, especially well with the males, and especially well with Sean because we were chess buddies/rivals and he tried to edge closer to me in the hope of dating me. I believe we maintained close contact even after we got into different high schools because he was stubbornly crushing on me and promising everyone that he won’t give up on me until he was 28 years old. Eventually he gave up after four or five years because I was cruel. Examples:

I repeatedly told Sean I would never like him because he was “childish and immature and bony”. These adjectives haunted him for many years to come.
I was naturally “allergic” to Sean, and still am. If he edges close to me, I’d step back. If he edges closer, I’d scream. Out of reflex. So even as best friends, we have never hugged, I have never leant on his shoulder for a cry, and I never allow him to touch me. If we ever accidentally touch each other, I’d get goosebumps and feel like disinfecting myself.
Apparently there was once I made him be my slave for a day in exchange for my kind grant of some refill paper.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Mirrored from Appassionato.

After decades of the old blocky TV, we finally got a flat screen LCD TV in our house for the first time, a sweet 40-inch Sony Bravia. But this TV also made me realise how absolutely hopeless those old parents can be with new technology

Day 1

Stephen and I spent two hours moving the new TV into place and setting it up. We also kept the wiring of the various machines (DVD, Karaoke, etc.) the way they were. So technically, everything would have started working like magic after we plug the cables into the TV. However, we were left with an extra cable which we couldn’t figure out where to fit into.

When dad came home from work, he found the “hole” in the wall which that last cable was meant to go into. Good job dad! All he had to do with make that very last connection… But no, he pulled out all the other cables too, based on intuitive doubts about us young people’s abilities. I tried stopping him, but I was pushed away and yelled at by mum for not just sitting back and listening to dad.

So who had to do the work of fixing up everything in the end? Duh.

My first visit to the hospital (4.2)

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Mirrored from Appassionato.

And if it wasn’t for him being my friend’s boyfriend, I might have been arrested for physical assault today (smashing his nuts). Sorry for the violence, but I’ll explain. (Warning: language used below is unsuitable for young readers. Lol.)

One of my best friends, S, is a nice and modest girl, so I simply did not expect her boyfriend to be such an arrogant nuthead.

When S first introduced me to her boyfriend, I said, “Hi I’m Cheryl.” He looked around, avoided eye contact with me; in summary, he ignored me. I didn’t think much at the time, as I was genuinely quite excited to meet my friend’s new boyfriend, so I wished my friend a fun time with him and left them alone.

Before today, I had pretty much left that bit of memory behind me.

S invited a few friends (including me) and her boyfriend over to her place today. Due to the crappy first meeting between me and S‘s boyfriend, I held my hand out along with the others for a handshake greeting. Great, ‘sif refuse to shake my hand and leave me holding it out awkwardly in the air. I felt a little miffed but shrugged past it, I’m used to awkward situations.

During lunchtime, he babbled on with an arrogant tone. What offended me the most was a claim relating to my chosen career path. It went along the lines of:

Anyone can be a lawyer. I can be a lawyer from reading a book.

Sure, perhaps you can be a lawyer after reading a book of at least 100,000 pages of cases, statute law and textbook explanations (good luck finding such a publication), but there are professional legal training courses to go through before admission to the bar. Perhaps you can do all that, but you also need to get your cocky ass past job interviews. Perhaps if you can do that too, I don’t know what kind of lawyer you’re gonna be, but surely no more than one hell of a dumb fucking blood sucking parasite. Go stick with your Engineering and English. If you’re so great, why don’t you add a Law degree to your CV? It’s only one book away.

He knew that both S and myself are law students. Wasn’t that an incredibly rude remark against his own girlfriend that shows he’s always looked down on her?

S, if you ever come across this post, I swear I have nothing against you personally. But a cocky asshole is no match for a nice girl like yourself, and me and Stephen are definitely not the only ones who think that.

Mirrored from Appassionato.

That’s right, I’m talking about the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

I went to bed just after Italy scored the penalty goal against New Zealand to make a 1-1 tie. I woke up to the news of the game finishing at the same 1-1 tie and I was like, “Holy shit”.

Game summary at FIFA.com

And not only me, my Facebook homepage this morning is filled with status messages announcing the surprise.

Now, the big players such as the German and Italian teams receive unlimited budgets when they attend the World Cup tournaments. They get paid BIG bucks, sleep in the most luxurious beds, but all that the Kiwi team strives on is simply the spirit of sportsmanship. First we tied 1-1 against Slovakia (rank 25). Now this? We were ranked 73 places behind Italy, we were made up of half part-time players, and dude, that 1 goal we scored is the second ever goal scored by New Zealand in the FIFA since the 1980s.

More embarrassingly for the four-time FIFA World Cup champs, if it wasn’t for the badly called penalty shot for which the referee is now being verbally bashed, it would have been Italy 0 to New Zealand 1.

Aside from the FIFA, New Zealand Olympic gold medalists are similarly part-timers who compete for an interest in the sport, and upon returning to New Zealand, need to continue working in their other jobs to feed themselves. Consider how Chinese participants are pushed into hard training from a young age, and that winning a single gold medal for Taiwan equates to not having to work for the rest of your life.

Despite what the scoreboard says, despite being an underdog, New Zealand is a winner. We are the biggest champion of all for having the true sportsmanship that is supposed to ground these sports competitions.¹

Woooooooooooooooooot!

This reminds me of the Disney/Pixar movie Cars. [↩]

Gaming addiction (4.4)

Mirrored from Appassionato.

In the last post, I said that the business card design was the first step in getting to this version 20 design. Guess what? I lied. I almost forgot that I had ever designed what I should now refer to as Appassionato Version 19.5. Indeed, this is the reason I once blamed Sheng Han for using a header background image similar to mine:

one blog post v19.5 One blog post for the past year

Appassionato Version 19.5 (Click above image to see the live version)

All my guy friends thought this was the best design I’ve ever came up with, totally un-Rilla style, and it’s actually the first photo manipulation I’ve done. Reasons why I didn’t go through with it:

It looked perfect on my 1024 x 768 screen, but when I switched to a laptop with 1280 x 800 screen I realised that it was too small.
The file size of all the images was too big for a blog.
No one ever notices my favourite part of the design: the hanging wire aka “skip to footer” link.

Main crux of this blog post however: summary of the past year of my life.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Mirrored from Appassionato.

As you can see below, my last post was 3 April 2009. Meaning I’ve been such a big fail and took more than a year to come up with a new design and change my CMS from own-coded to WordPress. But that latter part was the horrible part. I had to manually transfer all the posts one by one (because I wanted to proofread them all) and eventually decided I was too tired to bother with the comments. Anyway, let me show you what design concepts I went through before deciding on this one.

Steps of getting to this design

First I made a business card design, just playing around.

Header design

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Mirrored from Appassionato.

I have no idea why I can't just have one boyfriend who lasts "forever" like my sis and her guy.

But... This 9th one is the first that my best friend Sean approves of, and he's been pretty amazing since we've known each other. (Well we are still in the honeymoon period)

So... I hope this goes down well and I won't have to go to two-digits for the count of boyfriends.

Feeling: happy

is ecstatic.

Last exam tomorrow and immediately after that, our first date.

Feeling: anxious
Listening to: Glory Box - Portishead

While preparing to go to uni for an exam this morning, I forgot that during uni breaks (i.e. now), the buses go past our stop quite a bit earlier than its usual specified time and therefore, I missed my bus and which meant I would potentially have been late for my exam.

When the next bus came along, I hopped on and was the first one on the bus. The bus driver asked me if I was trying to make a 9am class in uni and I said no actually it's an exam. He told me that with the morning peak traffic, it'd probably go past 9. I tried not to look too worried but he could see right through me and tried to comfort me on the way. Eventually, the bus arrived at uni at 8.55am and when I said my thanks to him, he said good luck for the test. That really made me feel a lot better about the exam.

And although it's unlikely to be an A exam, it is the best and longest law exam I've done (five legal analysis essays as opposed to the usual four) and the first law exam I've actually completed in time. So yes, I'm satisfied.

This just goes to show how much a simple show of kindness from a stranger can help to make one person so much happier.

Feeling: relaxed

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