Happy Birthday, Ma!

Today was my mum's birthday! I didn't call her till the day was nearly over in Malaysia, so I feel kind of bad now. Maybe I should've called her last night instead...

Patrick came down to London yesterday. He left Concord at 11am, hoping to get here in time for Borough Market, but he didn't *sighs*. Luckily for him, I went there in the morning with Mel to get all his food stuff, so all is well and happy XD We ate scallops, fish and chips and an oyster, which doesn't sound much, but is freakishly filling. We didn't eat the chorizo sandwiches or the lamb burger or the venison burger because the lines were too long and we were short on time :( As it was, we just barely made it in time to get to Euston to pick Patty and his friend up!

After depositing their bags at the flat, we went to Waitrose to buy some booze (haha, such a funny word!), dumped it all back in the flat, then headed to Chinatown to buy some groceries for Patty and meet up with his friends for dinner at Misato. Patty had gyudon and I had the katsu curry rice. Yum, I really ought to have that more often.

After dinner, we headed to Troccadero to play in the arcade abit and digest our dinners before we went to Haagen Dazs for dessert. Yeah, we're pigs! :D When we were done with dessert, we went home, Mel tagging along, to watch a movie while drinking beer. Well, they watched a movie while drinking beer. I went to take a nice long shower and burn a DVD for Patty.

This morning, we woke up rather late at 11am. Patty and his friend rushed to pack while I cooked some venison burgers for brunch. I cut the patties in half, put ketchup all over them, then placed the half-patty into half a wholemeal pitta with salad. Patty also added mushroom pate over his.

At 1pm, we left the flat and reached Euston Station in less than half an hour (we took a cab) so they got to buy their 3 dozen Krispy Kreme and eat a pack of fries before they left.

I must say I'm glad Patty came to London because I was feeling a little homesick last week. I still feel homesick, but it's better now than it was before! *sighs* 6 weeks at home seemed like a long time when I was there, but now I realise it isn't nearly enough at all....

Event Aftermath: Pink striped wool kimono kitsuke

Today, there was a Chado (Japanese "way of the tea") talk and tea ceremony demonstration at the British Museum. I was curious about tea ceremony, so I dressed up and went! Of course, I didn't go alone :) aoi84 said she was free, so we met up at Holborn Station and walked to the museum, which took about 10 minutes tops.

There were lots of people in kimono around!!! Of course, they were all in nice, formal kimono (I saw iro-tomesode, tsukesage, iromuji, furisode..), so I felt really underdressed, but the two women in front of me were wearing komon, so I didn't feel too bad. Only thing was that my kimono was bright, so I kind of stood out, but hey, I'm a young girl! :P

After the talk (which was really interesting and illuminative) and the demonstration (very informative), we went to Haagen Dazs to have ice cream, then to Kulu Kulu for dinner because I was telling aoi84 about it, and we both got hungry (yes, while eating ice cream). We both realised we live really close to each other - if the DLR wasn't under works, there would be a direct train from her place to mine with only 4 stops! - so we promised we'd meet often and maybe trade some kimono pieces when we need them to match with our kimono!

We also made plans on what to wear for the MCM Expo this October ^___^ If hellokitty8182 is coming along too, then we'll dress up as Meiji schoolgirls again! That is to say, we'd wear hakama :P I'll be looking for a yabana kofurisode or kimono for the next few weeks hehehe.

Anyway, here are pictures of what I wore:


If my hair looks funny, it's because it's a side-ponytail. Very Ah Lien (how do you spell that??), but with what I was wearing, I think it worked.

The kimono is wool and has stripes of pink, white and what I think is purple, but can look maroon. For a wool kimono, it was quite soft and smooth! The obi has a pattern of kikyo (Chinese bellflower). I'm not sure if it's an August or September motif but *shrugs* it's an autumn motif, that's for sure. The obiage is black silk with the motif of ume (plum blossoms), which isn't seasonally appropriate, but you can't see it so NYAH. The zori are also black, but I really actually wanted to wear black tabi with bright pink zori. *sighs*

The point of today's ensemble is actually the han-eri, which is the black collar sewn onto my juban. I made this han-eri myself (okay, okay, so I cut two strips of cute cloth and sewed it together. It took work!!) and was happy that it turned out so well. I know I'm showing an ungodly amount of collar, but I think it brings the black bits in the ensemble together.

Ling, this was collar thing was made from the cloth that we bought in Singapore! It works really well! I can't wait to see the other cloth you got for me! :D

Bukit Tinggi!

Hey Ling, when I go home in December, let's have a one-day trip to Bukit Tinggi. Liss had mentioned the Japanese Village there, so I went to check it out. OMG I really really really wanna gooooo!! *whines whines whines* Teach meh to drive there so I can go there myself :P If we go, I'm soooo gonna wear kimono! And if we stay there for, say, a night or two, I'll wear kimono all the time XD (well.. unless I'm having my period, in which case, I'll be in a bear suit >:3 Rowr!) *singsong voice* It's only 40 minutes awaaaaaaaay~~

I'm kind of hoping Liss and I can go there together for a short holiday :3 Nyan!

Closet Feature: ool kimono shopping

I've been eyeing a few of Ryujiro-san's wool kimono lately, and yesterday, I'd noticed one of them was actually an ensemble! Ensemble = kimono + matching haori. I was so excited I decided to buy it straight off, and at the same time, buy those that I'd been eyeing too!

Here's a picture of the haori. The kimono is in the same pattern, which is red with white plaid/checks/whatever you call them.

I also bought this absolutely sweet kimono, which looks to be very transparent, so I'll only wear this in the spring or early summer.

Upclose detail.. I love the pink pattern and the ice-blue pattern on it!

AND I bought this piece.. It's white with multi-coloured stripes forming a plaid pattern.

Doesn't the pattern just remind you of a certain brand's bags? *cough*Coach*cough* I bought it so I can use those bags with this kimono :D I'm a little concerned that it might be a little too matchy-moo, but I'm thinking that with a nice solid-coloured obi, it wouldn't be too bad.

Ling, that last kimono was bought with you and Ma in mind :D

Outfit Snap: More hakama kitsuke pics!

My camera revived a little after I posted the previous pics, so I took more! I saved the pics so that I can post something today :P

Unfortunately, the pics still aren't spectacular and are still very blurry. *shrugs* I'll take what I can get, I guess...

The back

Some people on the IG forums mentioned that the colour combination is very interesting (dunno if that's a good or a bad thing haha!) but I feel like it's alright. I mean, orange and maroon always goes! But still, I wonder if it would've looked better with a pale or bright yellow hanhaba instead? I think a navy hakama or dark green hakama might also look nice.

I'm also currently bidding on another hakama set which includes a teal hakama... As well as contemplating buying another kofurisode-hakama set, only the kofurisode is pale blue while the hakama is navy. Dear dear me, I'm spending far too much money...

Outfit Snap: Sweet lolita dress and kitsuke

This evening, I wanted to play dress-up a little. I've been wondering for ages how my sweet lolita schoolgirl-style dress would look with my white shoes from Singapore, so I put it on to see. Here are pictures! Okay, bad lighting = bad pictures, so forgive me for that.

This one is to see the colour! I love that shade of pink!

And to see the back.....


The hairstyle (actually just two clips in my hair) reminded me of Meiji schoolgirls in hakama, so I felt like wearing hakama. I have also been dying to wear this orange furisode for a few days now, because I keep remembering how cheap it is ($30.30 for BOTH the furisode and matching juban!! well, $85 if you include shipping, but it's still really cheap, especially considering the furisode is mostly shibori!). I've been trying to match the furisode and an obi to accessories, but I have yet to find anything that really "clicks" for me.

Since the furisode was out already, I decided to wear the furisode with the hakama, since it didn't look all that bad together. However, for the obi (the green strip above the hakama), I didn't have anything very suitable, so I just took whichever looked best and used it. Here's how it looked:


Sorry for the bad pictures again, but my camera started going all wonky on me, so I couldn't take anymore pictures. I didn't even get to take pics of the sides and back! :( Boo...

Wearing a hakama on my own with a furisode isn't as easy as it looks. It was my first time tying an ohashori on a juban, and the collar kept slipping! As a result, my furisode was also very messy and the front collar kept slipping too. At least I did a pretty decent job of it! Or so I think, hehehe...

*sighs* I'm not looking forward to trying to fold the hakama again for storage!

University Rankings

I feel a very odd sensation of pride for my university.

I was checking the university rankings for 2009 on a whim, and I found out that my uni is ranked 3rd in the UK for its business courses. In 2008, it was also 3rd, but LSE was 5th. This year, shockingly, LSE had dropped to 11th. It kind of makes me feel odd because I'm very glad I got into my university as it's high-ranking and is more coursework-based than LSE (despite the stress, it's good fun), but at the same time, it makes me worry that it won't make a difference when finding a job because Cass Business School only gained its current name in 2002, and LSE is a famous name. I wonder if that sort of thing affects your job and stuff.

Am I being a brat? :P