Hotpot is the best in a cold autumn ~

Recently my newsfeeds have been flooded with super gorgeous photoshoots in sakura, summer outfit hauls and OOTDs, kawaii little girls in yukata (thank you Humans of New York （≧∇≦）) and gorgeous girls in bikinis. Thinspiration much? Haha~

While the northern hemisphere has settled in to the swing of carefree summers of bbqs, beaches, massive-cosplay-making-plans etc., NZ is officially in autumn. Only, Autumn this year is weirdly bipolar. If you heard about NZ, chances are you will have heard about out wickedly unique weather; most days we get all 4 seasons, and occasionally multiple seasons at once. It's not uncommon to see a beautiful blue sky with the sun shining brightly at 20 degrees celsius, but rain is absolutely pouring down.

This week marks the start of the second term of first semester. I'm super excited that my travel plans are drawing closer (have I mentioned that I will be in Europe June 26-July13 and Tokyo July14-15?)! But at the same time, the sudden drop in temperature has been quite the shock.

Last Sunday, the night before uni, I finally got to visit a hotpot buffet for the first time in YEARS. Some people call it steamboat but directly translated from mandarin, 火锅 is actually 'fire pot' so I call it hotpot.

Photo from Google. We were way messier than this LOL

I got to catch up with some uni friends whom I never seem to meet up with anymore even though we go to the same uni lolwtf. Chinese hotpot restaurants in NZ are usually buffet style, so we completely pigged out and ate wayyyyy too much!

Our buffet area looks something like this stock image, but there was a loooot more meat. And actually just a much larger food variety than this image.

I gained 2.something kg from dinner. Yes, I weighed myself before and after >> << >>

This restaurant was extra awesome because it's the first hotpot I've been to where they serve scampi!

This is scampi. And scampi is delicious.

Unfortunately we were too far from the buffet area to catch the big ones, but the smaller ones were nice too ~ next time I will sit my arse right next to the buffet area for those scampis!! >:|

Is anyone else in the Southern hemisphere btw?@@ it feels really awkward uploading thick winter OOTDs when most of the people I follow are in summer right now QAQ

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Thoughts :: Career vs. Gyaru

TL;DR is the last paragraph.

Yesterday I finally checked my Snow Rii facebook after a couple days of hiatus. I used to be logged in on Snow Rii on the facebook app, and my private account on the safari browser, but recently there's been too much random stuff on Snow Rii's feed so I changed accounts.

It was really shocking to be greeted with a link to ameblo, where egg was officially announced as ending in a month.

Honestly, it's like the drama in the gyaru community never ends. before something ends, something else would start up. And even if there's nothing, something gets stirred up anyway. It's kind of tiring :/

I like meeting all the girls in the gyaru comm, or at least most of them (plain truth: some people are just unpleasant) but it's so abstracted from the needs of daily life that when I look back on what I have done this past year, I really noticed how much time was wasted doing....nothing? Nothing of value anyway. Just opinionated people posting stuff 20 times a day, saying things that make them all high and mighty but are actually irrelevant to probably 99% of the people that skim it.

The energy has also been so low in the gyaru comm what with all the magazines going. Tbh I was a little sad about it too, but life goes on, and it isn't the end of the world. I liked egg too - don't get me wrong, it was one of my favourite gyaru magazine. And it will always be the most fun gyaru mag in my eyes, but I guess because the past 2 issues have been dreadful, I wasn't too sad to see it cut before it gets worse. #nofilter lol.

Recently I also bought some more clothes to fill my wardrobe. Looking at this cart, I bought about 1/4 mainstream clothes/accessories. Gyaru obviously is quite expensive, especially since I really really want to own something with ma*rs' gorgeous prints, and it's reaching the point where I actually cannot/should not be funding both work, Lolita, and gyaru clothes. They're all expensive wtf, and combined together is just unmanageable .-.

Lastly of course, there is also the fast approaching issue of finding a post graduate job. I study IT which opens a huge number of career opportunities ranging from a nice small 9-5 job, to positions in massive firms. I still don't know if I want to work those 80hrs+ a week jobs, but at the same time if I settle for a 9-5 job it feels like I'm actually just....settling. Both have their perks, so it's a real struggle trying to decide what would be the best approach. After all, it's a lot harder to do a career change once I am officially out in the working world...

And how does it all tie together? Well, I'm mostly trying to decide where I want to go in the gyaru community or perhaps withdraw from it, and how to balance reality with the gyaru lifestyle! Both are so consuming, I'm really torn! Are there any gyaru people that work high profile jobs? I really need to find some people I could look to and see how they got to where they are, and whether it is actually possible to juggle both?

#AVeryLostChild

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A slight mixup with my Disqus QAQ

Don't know if anyone has noticed, but all the comments on my blog are gone T________T

This is seriously devastating to me. I'm still in shock over the fact that I won't ever be able to see or retrieve the comments anymore....


How this happened was, I set up on disqus with 'snowrii' and registered this blog to that disqus account. Later, I changed the URL, and registered the current url to my new disqus account (set up with my email) because of conflicting names and all. I completely overlooked the fact that my disqus comments were still linked up with my snowrii disqus.
When I failed to combine the two accounts, I thought it would be easier to just delete my snowrii disqus, but of course it took all my blog comments with it.....

I didn't back up my accounts on disqus before deleting that account :( really all the deletion did was make it easier for me to log in to disqus, but iofanhwaikejnfewlknfakwefnalke I should not have done all that T_T


Please continue to talk with me, I promise this won't happen again! QAQ


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IPhone accessories wishlist

This month I will be making another taobao order, including some other hair accessories (i need extension pigtails for my black hair!) and new phone accessories I found last night :3

Taobao is so awesome <3

So here's the list of stuff I would like. Chances are, I won't be ordering all of them. Especially the pink cute stuff, I think I picked too many. But anyway, if anyone wants anything from here feel free to ask me for link :)

Let's begin!

The front and back stickers would be really nice with the bumper case, and they're so pastel and cute! Some of the stickers had words that were cut off or too much going on so it took ages to find the ones I liked QAQ

Also these are a few other kawaii things I saw in the same shops ^^

There are actually a lot more sets for the stickers above (they're nail stickers) but the images were so huge so here's just an example ^^ isn't it super kawaii and pastel!? I love Little Twin Stars so much <333

edit: I have now gone and ordered all the products (wtf am I crazy!?) and that includes 2 of the earplug danglies (different designs) and about 11 sheets of stickers (each with different design). Since there is so much I will definitely be writing a haul post when I get everything >< [21/04/2014]

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I can blog from my phone now!

So today I finally sniped a good deal on an iPhone (64gb 5s gold) and am back in the land of non-lag! This year I've been having such terrible luck with technology- 

- first, galaxy s3 dies

- then my brick phone has a line of dead pixels

- then my iPod touch lags sooooo bad (no exaggeration. Even Apple products lag if you use them for long enough)

- this week my netbook of three years died (something corrupted on c drive, will have to reinstall windows again)

- also this week, managed to burn the capacitor inside mom's desktop computer monitor.

So I'm reeeeally glad right now to have this new phone that DOESN'T LAG!! Pretty sure this is on the lower end of first world problems yeah???

Hopefully I will be blogging more now (and be more active on IG) since I can post on the commute to/from uni!

Also, now that I have secured a phone, I can buy kawaii My Melody cases for it! Seriously a huge part of why I wanted an IPhone. :)))))))

GFC is working again!

What were you doing Google? >:|

There were several gyaru bloggers I wanted to follow these past few weeks but haven't been able to due to some fault with GFC. I know I wasn't the only one to experience this problem, but yay it's been fixed now!

Please comment me your favourite gyaru bloggers/fashion bloggers, hoping to add some more bloggers to my newsfeed *v*~

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More shopping / wtf I'm going broke QAQ

I don't remember if I mentioned in my last post that I had also placed an order for clothing on taobao? I wanted to try the replica Ma*rs items before I consider buying the real product - after all, the replica price is far more acceptable and perhaps it's a little more un-asian-sized?

Here's a quick snap of the items I'm ordering

Some of the items are a different color to the displayed image

Didn't order too much, but this still came down to about 250NZD QAQ
OK tbh 250 isn't much for 11 items of clothing and 5 accessories, but I'm just so used to bargains on taobao that spending over 100CNY for an item of clothing is weird .-. #toostingy

There are a few other items I want, but aren't ordering yet. They're mori style clothes, and wig pieces for dark hair. Since I'm not ordering them yet till probably May or June, I'll post them up as a wishlist post later :)


Anyway today I went shopping again, because a few friends' birthdays are coming up and I needed presents. But while mom and I were in the mall, we found more clothes that were cute and on sale! These are my buys:

belt I spotted in Pagani!

Pagani again, size 14 lace blouse which I trimmed the sides off into a long top

Dress from Forever New. I finally have a black dress *v*

Seriously I have been searching for a simple-ish semi-formal black dress forever, so I was super happy to find this today! For 70NZD, this was a pretty good find *v*

Now I have 2 dresses from Forever new in the same style, except the other one is white and doesn't have this chiffon skirt outside... Well, it looks good so whatever ~

Oh and I appear to be sick with some kind of bug fml. Not so much runny nose / sore throat / hacking lungs out, but I'm half asleep all the time, super uncoordinated, tired but not sleepy and just overall feeling really meh. Did I mention a literature review is due in 2 days? yippeeeee.......

That's probably why I've been shopping like crazy this week. Retail therapy to make up for being sick and the work that's piling up hahahaha

OK time to sleep this bug away. night night~

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x-plain NZ designer brand buys && evening fun

At the university my mom works, there's this admin/PA who dresses in 100% designer clothes. TBH I didn't really know about this, but today my mom said that lady had recommended an outlet store on 7 Triton (Rosedale) that opened not too long ago.

I was pretty skeptical cause my taste in fashion is pretty....different from most NZers .-.

BUT the store was actually super nice!

The interior design was super minimalistic but bright and fresh and spacious~
For once, my mom didn't complain about waiting for me to try clothes. She usually hates the stores I go to and would never wait for me >>"

The clothes in the store weren't that cheap, they were all indie NZ designer brands. But the selection of items there were all really nice. The overall style concept of all the clothes in the store is probably retro/hipster/high fashion. It's an interesting mix, but I will definitely visit again!

I splurged quite a bit today. Not something I'm particularly proud of, but the quality of the clothing was so nice, and the design so unique that I had to buy them! Besides, the clothes my mom buys are about this price anyway >> << >>

So I bought one jacket - the Kibosh Jacket (link is to the brand's e-store), and one skirt - Boggie Skirt.

love the asymmetrics on this jacket and the mix of textiles!!

without chiffon attachment

long chiffon attach

base skirt

shorter chiffon attach

nice minimalistic packaging ~

the designer of the shop, which also sells other brands such as the one I bought o.O

I super loved that the jacket and skirt had detachable areas which completely change the look! The design is just so awesome, it was totally worth the $170 I paid! (Yes, in store price was even lower than the webstore 50% off price!!!)

So all in all, my wallet is bleeding, but I'm feeling pretty smug. These pieces definitely improve the style of my "normal" wardrobe~

KTV & Pool

Man it feels like forever since I last went ktv!! Actually I went several times before uni started. There was a period where I just wanted to sing so much hahaha

Anyway this evening, went KTV with some friends and met many new people *o* Funny story, some of the friends I did know were from online gaming years ago! It's so awesome to meet up again offline and have mutual friends from offline wtf haha

So we went ktv and played pool after, and it was so much fun! Pool was so competitive lol. We booked two tables and my table had the most serious game I've been in these few years! My team won 5-3 though *hi5 to my awesome teammate RC who totally ownd* >:D

Today was so much fun, I hope there will be more days like this! Hanging out with friends is so rare now wtflol!

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Short Gyaru hair inspo / First look at my shorter hair

I still haven't decided what I want to do with the final color :(

Since buying the champagne pink dye, I have taken a look around online and apparently it doesn't work. at all.

This afternoon I bumped into a friend and she got some red highlights recently. It looked really good, and she said it was by a trainee hair colorist for only 30$ wtf!!

I think I may go and get that trainee to do my pink, and use the champagne pink in the future to touch up / cover the roots when my hair grows out a bit...

Now, photo time! I thought I might as well dump all the photos I looked through when researching what hair style / color / length to get, in case anyone else wants to reference. It was really hard finding photos from all over the net! ;v;

First, my hair right now

After a day of uni it's super limp lol. Got a nice rokku feel yeah?

I'm pretty satissfied with the ombre. It didn't lift all too much, so I won't have to deal with disgusting regrowth in the future!

I ended up getting my haircut referencing this style

Rokku gyaru

Long fringe / pixie cut

Pink / purple half-half color

Onee gyaru

Neo / himekaji

Rokku gyaru

Neo / onee gyaru

More styling options - shoulder length

70/30 dye split

Rokku / Onee / Neo omg she looks so good with this hair just wtf.

Half half again, bob cut

More neo gyaru styling for shoulder length

Below shoulder length hair faked to look shorter. It's pretty cute actually!

Mid-neck length styling

I actually referenced my mom's hairstyle from this! Base of neck length

Base of neck length again, amekaji, kogal

Long sides and short back style?

Pixie!

Inspired me to do ombre style. Bob cut

Inspired me to do some streaks

I really really wanted this cut omfg so gorgeous.

 But then my hairdresser said my hair is too thin / don't have enough hair to make this style work == well, at least he warned me :')

Bob cut styling

If you end up referencing one of these styles for your cut, comment or link me a photo of your hairstyle! I would like to keep updating this post with new photos for future reference :)

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