Photos of 2014!

Before I blog about my Christmas and New Year's, I want to get this post out of the way first~
It'll just be some photos I took during the last few months. I uploaded them last week so it'll be a waste not to publish them. So before looking forward to the new year, let's review a bit of last year.

This is the first O.P.I nail polish that I've bought for myself~ For a nail polish fanatic like me, it's a big deal. My next purchase would probably be an Essie nail polish~ They are retailed at £8 in Boots and other retailers but you can find them cheaper (around £5 or £6) on Ebay, which is where I bought this O.P.I nail polish as well.

This photo was probably taken at the end of Oct when it was still autumn. And I havent painted my nails for a while so I didnt do a very good job in painting them then lol

You guys know I don't like milk. So when I have my shredded wheat for breakfast (or lunch XD), I have either chocolate oat milk or chocolate almond/hazelnut milk with it. At the moment, I'm loving this chocolate oat milk. It's not too sweet and it's really nice. If you're like me and don't like milk or you're trying to cut out dairy from your diet, definitely give this a try~ Trust me, you wouldn't want to go back to chocolate dairy milk after you taste this. 

But it's quite hard to find. I tried looking for it in the Marks and Spencers and Waitrose in Westfield but couldnt find it. The only place I can buy it from is the huge Sainsbury's near me. 

There was once where I really needed milk and had no choice but to buy chocolate (dairy) milk from Tesco's, and it just tasted bad. I never knew I would one day say I don't like chocolate milk. LOL

Plus, dairy milk goes bad really quick, and I always fail to finish the whole carton before it expires.

And I never have that problem with almond or oat milk.

I havent tried either plain almond or oat milk though so if they don't taste good, don't blame me. LOL 

I don't know if I've mentioned this on the blog yet... But if you've seen a few of my tweets saying I'm a tutor, that's because I joined an program called Team Up and they are a team of university students who provide free tutoring sessions to secondary students sitting for their GCSEs, Their motto is all about increasing social mobility in the UK and empowering these students to achieve good results and to go to college. 

My main reason for joining them was because Nia convinced me that they'll give us a certificate at the end of the program and it will very useful for our future and an impressive thing to have on our CVs. So I was like, I only need to give up around 2 hours of my time to this thing and how hard can it be? So I joined... and regretted it. Not that it's not a good program but they had a few problems allocating me to the right school during the first few weeks of the program. And because I have to work from Wed to Sat, I didn't have as many choices of schools to choose from. 

The first school I chose to go to decided not to have any sessions until 2015, so I got asked to go to a school in Shenfield which is in Essex. It wasn't too far coz there was a fast train that could get me there in 20 mins. I did two sessions there before the school decided to stop the program because we had some very irresponsible tutors in our group that didn't show up for the second session. 

So I was asked to go to a school in East London which is okay although it takes me about an hour to get there. I've done two sessions there and it hasn't been too bad. It's just all the problems faced at the beginning that pissed me off. And I almost told them I didn't want to do it anymore. 

But since I've already committed to it, hopefully I'll be able to successfully get through till the end.

Oh and the photo above was from the induction session we had. And we were supposed to draw (in a group) how we felt after the session....

This was from my solo presentation for my module Persuasive Strategies for Marketing.

And that bald guy in front of me is my lecturer. He's the type of guy that wears black from head to toe every single day. How ever you judge someone who wears black everyday is up to you. lol

I thought my presentation went well. I practiced many times just to ensure I wouldn't go over the time limit and I didnt but I didn't get as good marks as I wanted to.

What we had to do was to choose an advert and analyse it and talk about it for 5 minutes. 

This has probably been my favourite module up til now. The lecturer was really good and efficient. Although he's strict, he was good. He gave us all the resources we needed to do well for our assignments and he explained everything so well that you understand and remember everything very easily. 

LOL this is a really bad photo but this was from the day I went for dinner with my godmother's grandson, Ben. After we chatted a lot at the Msian Society potluck event, we said we'd meet for dinner sometime. So I asked him if he would like to go for Mexican food one Friday night after I finished work~ I finished work at 8pm and we reached the restaurant at nearly 10pm lol

That's coz by the time I got to uni to meet him, it was alr 8.30pm and then we caught a bus to go to Brick Lane but we got on the wrong bus.... (it was my fault....) and had to catch another bus and walk a bit before we got to DF Mexico, which is a restaurant I always wanted to try. 

The food was good, portions were not as big as I would've like them to be but it wasn't very expensive so I guess that's why. 

I miss autumn now. 

The cold of winter can be unbearable sometimes but this winter has been relatively mild actually (in London). 

How many of you still buy stamps?

These are this Christmas' design. I wonder if there were more than one design....

Very bad lighting but Nia and I were in the library one day discussing about our research project and we got bored. haha those were Nia's clip-on cat ears lol

This was taken in Shenfield while I was on my way to the secondary school where I was tutoring.

It was a really nice town. It's always nice to get away from the hustle and bustle in London once in a while.

I can't rmb what the name of the restaurant was that Veronica and I went to that day but it's an Italian restaurant in John Lewis Oxford St. 

Something awkward happened when we went there XD

Veronica knows the manager of that restaurant, that's why we decided to go there for a late lunch after doing some shopping but her friend wasn't there when we went. And while we wanted to order our food, the waiters took a really long time before coming to take our order. We had to ask them a few times before they came. So when they finally came, Veronica complained that the service was bad. XD And then before our food came, the manager that was there that day came to apologize and chat with us. It was so awkward haha. Tbh, I wouldn't have minded that they took so long as we weren't in a rush anyways. But in the end, they ended up giving us very good service and and the manager himself served us our food. And they even gave us a discount on our bill. But then Veronica felt bad and gave them a tip. LOL

The meal was delicious though. I had gnocchi~ 

I think I've mentioned that I got a place for a work experience in the finance department at London City Airport when I went for the interview for it a few months ago. 

So on the 24th of Nov, that was the first day of the work experience, I went to London City Airport for it! And I had to miss a week of uni for it.

It'll be too long to go into detail about how it went but in general, it went okay.... 

I spent most of my time there sat in a chair, in front of a desk, doing filing. I organised a huge amount of documents in a particular order and punch-holed them and put them into files. 

On my second day there, I got to escape for a bit and went for a tour around the airport with some people from the Health and Safety department so I got to see some stuff which you normally don't get to see at an airport (which they didn't allow us to take any photographs of). 

Other than that, I only got the the chance to do something different on the last day there. One of the staff in the finance department came over and told me she could spare some time and guide me through some simple tasks like reconciling invoices. She was so sweet and I really appreciated that she took some time out for me~

I don't think I was allowed to take any photos in the office but I took a sneaky one. XD

It might not look a lot in the photo but trust me, there were massive piles of files all around.

Those on the table weren't everything. There were more on the chairs around me as well.

It took me five days to finish organising everything. By the end of the week, I didn't manage to finish filing everything because they didn't have enough empty files in the office.

But I guess overall, it was still a nice experience. 

Me with my Team Up t-shirt on.

It was my first week at the school in East London. And of course I had to wear my fav flannel shirt lol

My current favourite combination for my cleansing routine.

Since it's winter and my skin is dry and flaky as hell, the daily peel comes in so handy. And after exfoliating all that dead skin, my skin then absorbs everything from the the Dermedex cleanser which I use as a overnight mask. These two are the best for banishing my pimples!

All I need now is a really good moisturiser coz the winter seems to just suck out all the moisture in my skin. 

These cronuts look and taste yummy but they were expensive as fuck.

I bought them from a bakery near me which I have wanted to try ever since I moved here. 

So on one fine day, I was craving something sweet and yummy for breakfast so I went out and decided to try these out.

It was a small bakery, so when I stepped in and saw the price of these cronuts, I almost walked out but because it was such a small shop, it would have be awkward to just walk out like that. So I thought to myself, if I were to try them just this once, I'd just buy two and never come back. LOL

For someone who is always tight on money, it wasn't worth the money for these cronuts.

I haven't finished reading this book yet. I should really get on with it. 

I bought it because I saw that it was on sale one day when I was on Amazon. 

I've read a bit and it seems like a nice (and very easy) book to read~

For someone who loves blogging, it's a really fun and interesting book. When I read the first few pages, I could immediately relate to the character~

omg theseeee~ I love these stuff. Love them to bits. They are always on sale (£4 for 2 cartons) when I see them in stores. And I hope they will always be on sales because I need them in my life forever.

As I live alone, it's so hard for me to finish a box of grapes sometimes. And when I buy a pack of apples, I always get bored of them after three days or so. So these are my saviours! Because I want to eat fruits and I know I need all the vitamins and nutrients but it's just hard to buy a variety of fruits in one go sometimes. These are so easy (and cheap), I just have one cup each morning (you can get up to 4 cups from each carton), and I get my daily fruit intake that I need!

These are so tasty as well~ I cant wait to try all the flavours they have. I just bought two other flavours on Monday~

This was from the day I went for a Christmas dinner with my colleagues from John Lewis~ It was a dinner for the staff on our floor. It was really nice chance to chat with some of my colleagues. 

We went to a restaurant called Frankie's and Bennie's and  the food wasn't good... Well, the Christmas dinner wasnt that good. The other dishes were nice.

The portion for the Christmas dinner was humongous though. 

Mmmmmm the dessert I ordered was amazing though. Some of my colleagues that ordered the same one didn't think it was nice but I loved it. It was a mixture of warm brownie, coconut ice-cream and raspberry coulis. I would definitely re-create this dessert myself one day. I never knew coconut ice-cream would go so well with brownie.

Around two weeks ago, I went to Barbican to meet up with Veronica for lunch and a movie. 

We went to watch a new movie called St. Vincent and it was so good. Veronica wanted to see The Imitation Game but she couldnt get tickets for it. Before we went to the cinema, she kept saying that she doesnt think it'll be a nice movie because she doesn't like comedies, which influenced my expectations for the movie. I went into the cinema having very little expectations for it to be good. However, it ended up being so much more than just a comedy. It was so hilarious and touching at the same time. And I always think that a movie that can make you laugh and cry at the same time is really impressive. 

It touched on my soft points. The movie was about a young boy whose parents just divorced and he was living with his mum who had to work most of the time. So his neighbour, Vincent, ended up having to babysit him. And Vincent ended up teaching him about life and other stuff and became his best friend. And of course, Vincent had a complicated past and had his own life problems. 

At the end of the movie, the boy had to name someone a saint for a school project and he chose Vincent, hence, St. Vincent.

At that moment, I started thinking, if I were to name someone a saint, who would I choose?

At that moment, I wanted to choose Veronica. Because she has been so so nice and generous to me for the past year and I'm grateful for everything she has done for me.

But then I am also grateful for my mum, my uncle and my aunt for each of them for being in my life when I needed them.

Anyway, if you're looking for a comedy to watch, definitely check out St. Vincent. It'll definitely exceed your expectations you have for it.

The is a photo of the Barbican Centre, where we went for the movie.

Before we entered the cinema, we had a cup of coffee and I got a mocha~

It's 2.30am now, and I'm starting to feel a bit sleepy....

I planned to finish this post by midnight and then watch Bad Neighbours (which most people have said is not a good movie but I want to see Zac Efron!) and then go to bed but I guess that would have to wait till tmr.

I'll be blogging more tmr as well with more photos and probably a more wordy post keke

Good night.

x