I totally forgot about this blog!!

so anyway, since I have time right now I will start to blog again just because. again, Im not a writer so my blog will consists of only pictures of me and maybe other things..

so the other day Ny and I were talking about me and my personality. Ny said he feels bad for me because I am blunt, opinionated, and way too straightforward. how can I make or keep friends this way? well my dear, I dont. and I dont care. true sincere friends are not there to receive compliments, and certainly should not only want positive feedbacks. true friends will give one another reality check. and quite frankly, I am happy being alone from the beginning. whats wrong with having only four friends? if Im happy thats all that matter. actually when I tried hanging out with a lot of folks, drama had its way to get in anyway. so four friends it is.

so in a couple days will be new year. new year means new start. like every year, I dont have new year resolution. this year, however, I am going to start dressing different. I want to look more mature and approachable. I dont want to look foreign anymore. well see how that goes because for some reason I always go back to being me....

so anyway, since I love me so much here are some more pics of me. I was just playing with makeup, but I think I kinda like this new look

lifestyle project

Lifestyle Project Week One

Before starting Lifestyle Project I would never thought that our normal everyday activities would make such a big impact on environmental footprint. Food consumption, for example, requires tremendous amount of energy, physical labor, and water just to produce a tiny fraction of food. Therefore, in attempting to participate in this project to reduce my environmental footprint, I decided to work on food consumption, waste generation, and car usage all simultaneously for three weeks.

Food consumption is probably the hardest part of the project because I am a regular meat eater. I do not remember the last time I had not eaten meat for a day. Instead of going cold turkey vegetarian, I decided to just cut down to being a pescatatrian for three weeks. Instead of red meat I would substitute seafood and lots of vegetables and fruits. I was never a fan of chicken so chicken will not be on my diet at all for these three weeks. My rice and carbs consumption will stay the same because there is no way I can cut down on that.

Waste generation would probably not be that difficult since the project days are pretty reasonable. However, I do tend to buy stuff without thinking and would end up with piles of trash around the house; it could be anything from potato chip bags to makeup boxes and/or clothing bags from the mall. This is something I really need to work on. Instead of buying stuff without thinking, I need to think ahead and plan my days accordingly without generating any trash at all on those project days. I will only buy things that I can recycle and if not I would not buy anything at all unless it is for personal hygiene.

Car usage is probably the easiest to do since public transportation is easy accessible in my area. I will cut down driving by not driving at all on project days. Instead, I will use public transportation to school and other places around Long Beach since CSULB offers free pass to anywhere in Long Beach. On weekdays I usually do not go anywhere other than school so it is quite easy just to take the bus around.

Monday October 10, 2011

Today is the first day of the project. I am excited since I have never attempted to become a “vegetarian” at all. Just thought of it already challenge my brain. While being a vegetarian occupied my mind the most, I do realize that I have other two lifestyle categories to work on as well. Conserving waste is not as easy as I thought. The first thing I had this morning was a banana, and this makes me feel uneasy because after I finished my banana I do not know whether it is ok to throw away the peel. But I figured since I already purchased this days before I did not contribute to waste generating on project day, or at least I hope so. Going to school was quite a breeze. I walked to the nearest bus stop which is only about two blocks away from where I live. The bus goes straight all the way to school without me having to make any transfer to different buses. I also took the bus back home since I had only one class on Monday; and I skipped lunch for today. For dinner I had fried fish with ginger and soy sauce. This is something I’ve always loved so it this is a win win situation. So far so great; I feel great that I survived the first day with a breeze.

Tuesday October 11, 2011

Today is also school day for me so I took the same bus to school again. For lunch I had cup noodle. This is the challenge: after I finished my lunch I realized that I had to throw the Styrofoam cup away. Although I did great on the part that I did not consume any meat I still messed up about my waste generation. I did, however, use a reusable water bottle instead of the plastic bottle that I had always bought at school. Although the water bottles at school are recyclable I still think that it is better to just reuse everything I can since it does generate energy to recycle materials. I took a different route going home today. I carpooled with my husband because I figure it gets quite dark after I got off of my last class. My husband got off work at 5p.m. and it took him about 40 minutes to get to CSULB so I waited for about 40 minutes at school until he picked me up. When we got home we had grilled fish and stir fried tofu with veggies for dinner. I felt like my change of diet affect his as well but he has been very supportive of this project. I am proud to say that I survived the first week of this lifestyle project with not many problems at all.

looks like Ive been neglecting this blog for quite a while now. I have no intention of writing anything, actually, but I am bored out of my mind at the moment.

well, Hi, fellow invisible followers! Ive been great. not as busy as before but I am a little lazy. There is nothing new to be bragging other than Ny's birthday, yay! he is turning 27 next week! haha

Right now I am being very productive. Things happened a lot this past couple months. I would love to talk about it, but that would take too much time. to sum it up I decided break off from my high school friends of more than ten years. Im just tired. Im tired of being the scapegoat of everything. I have to admit that Im the bitchy one in the group, but Im very loyal to my friends and they have no reason to blame me when I decide to leave. but its not even about the hate, its the jealousy that had been lingering in their mind for like ever. Im not gonna go in details, but what kind of friend would not be happy to see you get married? dont think I forget, I still remember this shit. there, this is already a good enough reason to break it off. they did not want to see you happy so why waste your time? Im so easy to get along with so why would you make everything so complicated? if anyone knows me they should know that I dont like complication.

right now my life is right on track of where I wanted to be. I love every minute of it. sometimes I just sit around and think "damn, I am so lucky. pretty much everything just work my way. this is what you call karma. karma may be a bitch, but if all you do is good deeds then good things will follow you as well."

what I've always believed

in my lifetime I’ve come to realize that you can’t depend upon other people for what you want, and you can’t be scared to go out there and get it. You have to dream hard, wish big, and chase after your goals, cause no one else is going to do it for you. And even if things don’t work out, you’ll always be able to say you tried.

(quote from I speak female)

frugal rina

yes, the title said it, i've become frugal for quite awhile now. the thing I still dont understand is that why does ny still think im so high maintenance? i dont know, I take the bus to school, I use coupons to shop, and I even pack cup noodle for lunch! I have to admit, I do often chose quality over quantity. I dont like to settle for low quality products; I'd rather not have anything.

anyway, so far I've only use the coupons I've been collecting once at target. I really dont need that much stuff to be shopping everyday (even though you would find me at target almost everyday). I try to buy only the stuff I need, and when I do shop I would pull my coupon booklet out. I think I only saved about 25% the last time I shop, doesnt matter though, since Im a beginner I think it's a pretty good start.

it's interesting the whole coupon thing. I was amazed with this for awhile, not that Im amazed with how much you can save, but amazed how all those coupons just came to me effortlessly. for example, I was only thinking of using coupons but didnt do anything about it, and the next day I got sunday newspaper delivered to my house when I never subscribe any! and couple days later I got a coupon booklet from target! weird right? we never get coupons sent to our house before! just so weird, but in a good way. now I love going to target.com and print their online coupons out. all the coupons I have below were mostly sent to me, I seriously did not make any effort to get it. on a side note, I will subscribe to sunday paper starting next month. I had no idea how many coupons accumulated in the sunday paper insert, Im truly amazed.

just got another coupon from coach in the mail. $100 of $300 or more. I actually get this coupon once in awhile, i.e on holidays. all you have to do is sign up for their mailing list, same for dooney and burke. but $100 off is definitely a good deal! now if only louis vuitton does that haha

my coupon collection. I organized them by category, i.e beauty, food, misc. etc. and place in the a white envelope.

and tada! all my coupons are stored in this blue folder

peter and Abby's visit

last week was a pretty busy week. ny and I had to babysit our nieces <3 and then we had to hang out with Peter and Abby because they were visiting from Texas. It's not like we had to, but we wanted to. peter is a close friend of ny, so close that they call each other cousins when theyre not. nonetheless theyre good company.

I love being with my nieces, but sometimes they can be a handful. seems like they always have energy, I dont know how but they do.

originally Ny and I were suppose to hang out just the two of us because Ny took the day off from work to spend time with me, but then Peter called so we all hung out together. I wanted to go to china town so yea, we took them there too haha. but instead of the crowded china town like everyone familiar with, we took them to the "old china town" where it is more secluded and easy on the eyes.

next was little tokyo. I love this little place because they got stuff that you cant really find anywhere else. on top of it all? they got this cosmetic store which I LOVE! almost love it more than Takashimaya in san gabriel

I was wondering why everyone gather around this tree, but then found out that it was a wishing tree. some of the wishes that they wrote are hilarious lol

santa monica promenade. I've always loved that place, but the best thing there that day was the giant smurf lol

salsa dancing at the pier

santa monica pier always have weird stuff to look at, but this man kinda creep me out

memorial day weekend

yea... finally decided to not be lazy and post some pictures from memorial day weekend. that was like a month ago? dont remember.

I swear everyone was in vegas that weekend. I have friends, and friends of friends who were all there. and trying to meet everyone was a bitch too.

what better way to celebrate memorial day than vegas right? ha, not really, just as long as you get to spend time with the people you love. which sadden me a little, this was my third time in vegas this year without Ny. it's ok though, Im planning to go vegas again, just me and him, this August to celebrate our 2 year wedding anniversary :)

anyway, pictures say it all. went to vegas with just girls (although you might see a pic of a guy there, he was actually doing his own thing), party, eat, sleep, drink... etc. I actually didnt get to eat at any buffets this time. crazy right? I always have to go to at least one buffet every time I go to vegas! annnnd this was also my first time clubbing in vegas. to be honest, there's nothing spectacular about clubs in vegas; it's just like any clubs here in cali. to me clubs are not all that different, I just wanna dance so anywhere with music is great to me. and we went to marquee in cosmopolitan, a supposedly very hard club to get in... the ambient is nice, but again, it's just a club.

also, I would never go to vegas on a holiday again! the drive home was a bitch. it took me about 7 hrs (I did stop at the outlet) to get home when driving there, to vegas, took me less than 4 hrs. we spend most of the time being stuck in the dessert! luckily I rented a very nice roomy car. omg, imagine my little integra lolololol. im proud of myself though, I drove there and back all my by myself without stopping (except the outlet thingy)

anyway, didnt get to take too many pics since I forgot my camera most of the time. the high quality pics are from Cina's, and the low quality ones are from mine of course