sentimental season

(NOTE: Hi - I wrote the thing below when I was younger but I don't feel this way anymore - mostly because I don't use LJ in the same was as I did. LOL. But I don't want to delete it since it is a product of my childhood. With that said, feel free to add me and I'll add you back but I am not as active on LJ as I was before. That's all :))


I'm not really looking for any LJ friends. Please don't think I am a stuck up snob, an elitist or whatever judgment you might form from this post. Let me explain myself. I want to be very honest with you and tell you that I probably won't have the time to keep up with your journal. In addition to that, I feel that I regret adding some of the people I have added but I don't have the heart to remove them. I no longer feel the same affinity for certain things, so I don't want to be a disappointment when I cannot revel in the same things.

I really do want to make new friends but I feel that having the same interests as I, no longer counts as a valid factor in choosing my friends.

In short, feel free to leave me a comment if you want to be added as my friend but I can't guarantee that I will. I apologize to you in advance.

I deeply apologize for the scare that my site had given you before especially with the malware. It’s all fixed now! I swear, I had my site verified over there at google webmaster tools and it’s allllll good to go

So I’d like to quickly recap what happened in the past few months

-First and foremost, my best friend Yuki got engaged and I am going to be her maid of honor!!!

-I went to Philadelphia not too long ago to visit one of my best friends, D.

-I finally got to go to MoRoCo chocolat & the Windsor Arms for afternoon tea (oh and the Rittenhouse Hotel in Philadelphia)

-I booked a flight to Jamaica with one of my other best friends!

-I’m a pescetarian! (I don’t think I officially announced this)

Stay tuned for these updates. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a cute picture of Quatchi, showing off his cousin

I’ve suddenly found myself really busy so I had to cut the deadline for the giveaway short! (2 days only)

A BIG thank you to everyone who participated in my giveaway.

The winner is Deanna from stubbornox.net.

Congratulations!

I’ve already sent you an email so please get back to me with your info so I can send out your package

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I’ll start talking about my trip to the Netherlands shortly. If you haven’t already, please check out Mr.S’ post on transportation! Click HERE. It’s his first time using his own account to post something so let’s make him feel welcome, OK? <3

“Goedemorgen” Good morning as they would say in Dutch (Let’s assume I wrote this in the morning so I can sound smart with a word I actually know!)

So A will be writing about all the fun stuff later however I really wanted to talk about the transportation in Nederland because it is very practical.

I guess the best way to talk about it is to break it down by methods of transportation:

1) Cars – Who even drives there? Ok, so you will see cars there but really there is nothing special about them. in fact, all there cars look outdated and less luxurious. The streets are less crowded with cars than in Toronto which makes it faster to travel within the city.

2) Bikes – As we may have all heard, Nederlands are big on bikes. If you think Toronto now has a lot of bikes due to those BIXIE bikes being installed across the city, think again.

Some locals told us that every single person in Amsterdam has a bicycle! So if the population is 800,000, you can just imagine how many bikes are rolling around and that doesn’t even include tourists renting them.

They have their own dedicated bike lanes, I don’t mean like a small little space in the streets like in Toronto, but a full half sidewalk just for them. They even have their own traffic lights!

What really threw A and I back were how they had parking lots for their bikes, not 1 floor but 3 floors for only bikes and yes they were completely full.

So pay attention when you’re walking around because you don’t want to get hit by being in the wrong lane

This is the 3 floors of bikes!!

Lots of bikes!

3) Trams – similar to streetcars, they are quite efficient but a little more advanced than Toronto.

They have stop announcements and a digital screen that shows the next stop. Not too impressive but still good.

They have a digital “tap” machine where you need to tap your card to get in and tap it again to get out. you don’t even need to get in through the front, there are back doors you can enter through.

This is me, waiting for a tram.

What I really likes was how organized their schedules were. Some stops had digital boards that tell you how long, thanks to GPS, the next tram will arrive. Also, you know when you read the bus stop maps and try to figure out if that bus is going to where you want? Well here, they don’t show you a map. They simply show you each stop it goes to and shows you exactly where you are so you will never get confused.

One of the types of digital boards. We didn’t get a shot with the time on it.

I recommend taking a Tram to get around or renting a bike if you feel brave enough to engulf yourself in the sea of bikes! Beware, you may be given an orange bike meaning you are a tourist so that locals know to avoid you

Me and A waiting for a tram.

4) Other – You can also take boats I’m sure visiting your neighbour as everyone has a boat in their backyard. No lie! And then you can even take the subway!

This makes Amsterdam looks really beautiful.

Here’s the entrance to the subway.

That’s it for now but I’ll be back as a guest blogger.

I am feeling generous today (not sure if it’s due to my sickness j/k) so I decided to have a giveaway of my favourite things.

These are a few of my favourite things that I will be giving away:

Here’s a closer look to what the winner will get:

4 Julep nailpolishes. You can visit their website at julep.com. I absolutely love painting my nails so I’m giving away four different colours for different styles. They’re a bunch of spring colours that’s perfect for this season

As you know, I talk about afternoon tea a lot, so I’m bringing afternoon tea to you. I can’t give you a 3 tiered platter with desserts but I hope you like the tea anyway.

I adore falsies. They really do make a difference to your face. So here’s one of my fave brands – Dollywink. Okay, personally, I love the MAC one a lot more but that’s like $$! Haha.

Here is me with falsies. No photoshop or any filters or anything!

As much as I love make up, you also have to keep your face clean. To keep your face looking fresh, I’ve included 2 facemasks from My Beauty Diary.

Girls love bags! Here’s a cute black bag to hold all your new goodies. I recently bought it on ebay but I have so many bags at home, I need to share the wealth!

Another thing I love is to accessorize. I don’t normally wear jewelry on a daily basis because it gets annoying when you work. Here are my 3 picks. A necklace and a pair of earrings from Forever21. And a plastic rose ring that’s from Mexico. I’d like to say that I got it while I was in Mexico 2 months ago but it’s actually brought back by Mr.S’ sister from Mexico last week!

And because I absolutely love that necklace, here’s a closeup of the pendant. It says “I’m yours” with the Eiffel tower.

How to enter:

To enter the contest, you need to be at least 16 years old or if you’re not, you have your parents’ permissions to sign up. The contest form below is an automatized raffle widget. You complete the tasks on the widget and you get raffle entries. Then on May 28 I will be announcing the winner! I’d make it shorter BUT I’m going on vacation and I don’t want to drop the ball…

This giveaway is open to anyone with a computer. I swap stuff with people internationally so I have no qualms about sending this package overseas

a Rafflecopter giveaway

You need javascript enabled to see this giveaway.

is not for me. That’s right. I would never ever go back to Catalina island unless you can guarantee me that the other side of the island (not Avalon) is not full of birds or anything. I don’t know how my fear came about… I mean I’ve always been a little afraid of birds but now my pigeon fear has reached… Let’s just say I have Ornithophobia. Anyway, Mr.S berated me saying that I should’ve looked up about birds before travelling somewhere. WTF Where was I supposed to get this information? Out of my bum? There’s no page on the internet that warns you about pigeons… dur. I think they mentioned like those birds of prey but they weren’t much of a concern of mine since they weren’t that close to the city… That I know.

Anyway, we begun our journey to Catalina island on a town car. They call them limos (that are not stretch) here in Toronto. It’s a Lincoln. Lalala on our way to the Marina. I took pics for instagram ala Adam Irigoyen. (he takes lots of pics of sceneries).

We took the ferry to Catalina Island from Marina Del Rey. It is about 1 1/2 hr. FUN, right? Lol. Make sure to bring a sweater because it gets pretty chilly.

Fare is $40/per person/per trip one way. So in total, $80/per person round trip.

So it’s going to be a short post. Just posting pics here.

May be a pic from when we first arrived or when we left. Either way.

I feel like I’m on an island. But you know, the tropical kind. Anyway, I spent a good portion hiding from birds.

Got hungry and ended up at Luau Larry’s. I am assuming it’s Larry cause that goes well with Luau but I am too lazy to check.

How attractive of you, Mr.S. He’s having a swordfish sandwich.

Swordfish tacos to share.

Just fish and chips. Had better in Toronto but this one is still better than London. WTF makes no sense. You’d think they mastered fish and chips over there lololol!!

This me is outside, before I cried. About birds and stuff! There’s some drama about birds, arguing… we were supposed to go on some open boat tour. Tour forced us upon submarine tour. I didn’t want to go…blablabla. Plus there were birds and whatnot.

Went mini golf. No pics, we tied. Okay he allowed me to cheat a little <3 Whatever. I was half paranoid during the whole thing because I saw bird shit everywhere. Nasty. Oh and we had icecream afterwards. I was afraid of going outside with it ... paranoia. Blablabla.

Finally got to leave. BYE you stinkin island. Make up ruined. Had to take off my falsies.

Close up of the houses/stores on the island. It really doesn’t look American. More European… Greek-like no?

On our ferry ride back to the Marina, we saw whales! Several whales in fact!

And they were spouting water! Amazing. To think that some people go on whale watching adventures and never see them. And here I am, not looking for any of them and there they are. I felt so happy! Mind you, I don’t want to be on a tiny boat next to it. Just saw Nim’s Island last night. The mom got eaten by a whale or something?

Sunset picture.

Then finally, we got to meet up with my friends from my forum. Okay, so DaRon was the original founder… I was still an admin, and an active one at that. Active on the forum not physically active (anymore). So I got to meet Joey and Lena. We had sushi at BAD sushi – sushi was pretty good but the service could be better. Then fatigue hit me and Mr.S like a ton of bricks. We wanted to hang out with them more but alas, we were too tired. Next time I go to LA, we’ll for sure hang out more. I think I have met the most forum members.

Summary picture

Hello there! Here’s the summary for Day 1 (and I wasn’t going to write as much but for Yuki, I will)

Should I even call it day 1 since we didn’t do much but travel. Check in was smooth enough.


Here’s me playing with the check in thinger.

Mr.S fiddling with our luggage tag.

Okay, so anyone here follow basketball?? Well we were pretty hungry so we had some pizza. While eating, Mr.S commented that the guy who passed by us was a retired basketball player. And the best part? It really was him and he was riding our plane. This is the first celeb encounter I had in the airport. Rick Fox is such a nice guy to entertain pictures for his fans.

Here is Mr. Rick Fox (ex-husband of Vanessa Williams, if that makes him more relevant), towering over Mr.S. He’s actually wearing a faded Lakers t-shirt.


Duffy is all buckled up.

Anyway, during the plane ride, we pretty much just watched movies – well he watched movies while I did the crossword (which I almost finished btw!!!). I forgot to mention that we took Air Canada. Now, it’s not WOW like Porter cause I heard you get free food but hey, it goes to the west side which Porter does not do at this time. We had to purchase our own food and I believe we were too late in ordering our food so we got stuck with “chicken noodle soup” (which was actually instant cup noodle) and some cashews. The plane ride was comfortable enough. I mean, how comfy can a plane be for economy class…

We landed in glorious Los Angeles. The airport is better than what I remember. It was more run down or in the middle of construction last time I came here. We were absolutely not greeted by warm weather but it was actually not that cold either. Hooray.

I booked us a shuttle to Disney’s Paradise Pier hotel. The shuttle company name was …. Super Shuttle (more info). May I say that these shuttle services are very convenient, and affordable!! No pics. Too tired. Anyway, how this shuttle works is that there’s like a shuttle stop, kinda like a bus stop, at every terminal and it goes around the airport. It picks up all the people going to a certain location, in my case Disney grounds, and drives you there. In total, there was a set of four in our van. Four families not four people, I wish. So we were the first one dropped off. Paradise Pier isn’t what you would consider the top tier Disney hotel but I quite liked it.


Goofy welcomes you to Paradise Pier Hotel.


I’ve never had anyone spell my first name correctly while my last name incorrectly.


I had a discussion with Yuki regarding the soaps at Disney. I had hoped they had the mouse ears but I got h20 products instead.


Another thing I forgot to mention is that Paradise Pier has like a beach/pier/boat theme going on. So here’s Duffy resting next to a beach ball while we get ready for bed.

I’ll talk about the rest of the Disney trip and Southern California trip another time but I want to end this post with a picture of my other loves playing with the beach ball.

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Price summaries

Breakdown: One way ticket from Toronto YYZ to Los Angeles LAX p.p = $255.59 + tax $9.93 – Air Canada

(and you know about the whole reward thing so we paid $31.04) ordered via TDTravelRewards

Reasoning: Best deal for a flight going out at night time

Breakdown: Paradise Pier hotel $175/night + tax $59.50 / Total $409.50 ordered directly from the Disney website

Reasoning: Best deal for a Disney hotel and it was newly renovated so, why not?

Breakdown: Super Shuttle – Shared Ride van $16/pp (tip $4) / Total $36.00 booked directly from SuperShuttle.com

Reasoning: I ain’t paying $90 + tip to drive from LAX to Anaheim. And Disney was not shuttling past 7 pm.

(also, I am too lazy to post my itinerary so download it here http://pdfcast.org/download/califo…, don’t worry it’s a safe website or ask me to email it to you)

This is my second Luxe Box from Loose Button and let me tell you, it has exceeded my expectations!



It contains:

Sheyna handmade earrings (bonus item) – Very cute!

Proclaim Cocoa Butter Hand & Body Lotion – I am not fond of the smell too much, it smells like chocolate. And I am not that fond of chocolate.

City Lips Lip Plumping treatment – I kissed my bf’s back and there was a red lip mark on it! He’s allergic to it. But the product itself is good. I didn’t take before or after pics so I can’t tell if it works but there was a tingling sensation.

Pur 4-in-1 mineral powder – I will use it as powder but not as my foundation. I tried it yesterday and did not work very well to contain my oily face. Also, this only went out to some Luxe Box customers. I heard the others got nail polish.

Calvin Klein Forbidden Euphoria Fragrance – smells very grown up but I like it.

Anyway, if you have the means, you should order it and get to know products that are available for you out there. Because of last month’s package I researched more about hair oils and Loose Button even has this great article on it on their website.

For those who haven’t gotten a chance to see my previous video and started reading my blog, you can now see me. In video format. Not my best look since I just got home from work and was super excited – I had to make a video.


Duffy with the box. The way it was packaged was so cute but I removed it.

So you have to watch the video to see what I got.



Ok so I won’t really put you through that. So here it is!

Essie nailpolish, Proclaim hair oil treatment, Stella – Stella in Two Peony Fragrance, and Trucco pro lip liner. Wish there was chocolate though. But all in all, very happy with my box!! (in depth commentary via video )

Order yours on Loose Button | www.loosebutton.com

I’ve always wanted to go camping for the longest time. Every time I watch western shows, there’s usually one episode they have in the woods or some lakeside cottage. Well I finally got my wish when I booked ourselves to a few days at Deerhurst Resort. It’s in middle of nowhere, Canada. Seriously.

Here is Duffy and Quatchi and me waiting for our car to pick us up. We rented a car from Enterprise and as you know they will pick you up. (That’s their slogan or something…) Anyway, we waited for like ever and then I called and harassed them about it and they said they can’t pick us up. Well, why not? Because the rep thought we lived on St. George and not on George St. TOTALLY opposite direction. Well we got on a cab and headed there and they said they’ll reimburse us for it. In the end, we got a free car upgrade.

(insert long story about how google maps led us astray and we ended up in some city south of Toronto.)

This was our room. Bottom left you can see the edge of the jacuzzi. Our room was right next to the lake!


We decided to venture around the resort and stumbled upon an arcade with the claw machine. Lo’ and behold, Mr.S won me a Shiro plush from Crayon Shin-Chan – it’s weird because again, we’re in middle of nowhere, Canada. After that we did some sports aka ping pong. ROFL.


Entrance of Eclipse – which is the main restaurant for the resort. They have incorporated some of the G8 menu into their current one. And for those who don’t know the G8 summit (google it yourself) was held here and a few of the world leaders were here. Below are pictures of our food. YUM


This is supposedly poutine but it’s made with fingerling potatoes so you miss out on the french-fry goodness.

Elk… yum, I guess. I had this lengthy conversation with my friend’s boyfriend who actually hunts and he tells me it’s gamey. Mr.S obviously was trying to convince me to try it. (PS this was one of the G8 foods)


Seafood platter – it was alright. Not that great.


Cute chocolate they give you after dinner. Too bad they are mint chocolate. GUH-ROSE.


Another thing about middle of nowhere, Canada is that they are very fond of paintings. Everywhere you go there’s a painting on the side of the building which I find awesome. This painting in particular was dedicated to the hardworking people of Deerhurst (they have such amazing staff btw). And especially, parts of this painting was done by the world leaders. There’s a picture somewhere in the resort wherein they show you each world leader painting a portion of it.

We headed back to the room and we were left with a wonderful surprise.


Chocolate covered strawberries and dipping sauces galore. Oh and can’t forget the white wine. Although it doesn’t go as well with the strawberries. (I specifically asked them to switch our red) Anyway, more on the trip some other time. I am heading home! I’ll try to be a “hard-working blogger” and post the rest asap. (not like you care )