Be Yourself

I wouldn't really be able to describe this much better myself, and it really bugs me when people want to follow the crowds instead of being unique. I pride myself in not copying other people, I dress my own way, act my own way and choose to do things based on my morals and my personality.

"Gemma" is often telling me how she wants this 'Paul's Boutique' coat because everyone at her school has one, and she only wants certain branded clothes because of what others think. One, it makes things expensive and two, she looks like everyone else. At least if I try to find my actual sister in a crowd, I can based on her clothes or hair. If I look for Gemma, I look for the smallest black child around, not her sense of style or how she dresses.

I love Jenna Marbles, she's a great inspiration and makes some pretty funny videos like 'How to trick people into thinking you're good looking', and admittedly her older videos are the best ones. Jenna doesn't try to be someone else, and if you go past the fake tanned skin and blonde hair, you find that she isn't a bimbo, but an intelligent person with a great personality.

Just remember to:

• be creative
• be strong
• be courageous
• be ambitious
• and most importantly: be yourself

:)

Respect

So, I have this foster sister, and let's call her Gemma. Now Gemma is a difficult girl. She's 15 years old, but with the mind and body of a child of no more than 10. Heck my youngest sister (who doesn't live with me) is 11 and is physically and mentally more mature.

As I sit here tonight, I realise (not for the first time) that she has no respect for my mum. My mum is a lovely person, but she is getting ill with something that causes immense amounts of pain and no cure. Gemma has no respect for everything my mum has done for her. Gemma's dad left her to look after his mum in London, and my mum took her in so that she didn't need to change to a third secondary school. The nan has since passed on and the dad has no obvious intention to move back and look after her again. Social services got involved at some point and moved her to three or four foster parents, each lasting not much longer than a month, before bringing her back here. Long story short, my mum has looked after her for almost two years (with interruptions) and Gemma is a horrible child. We have changed everything about us to accommodate her, my mum has fallen out with friend's because of her behaviour, I've changed bedrooms three times, we now eat junk food (well I never did but it seems to be the only thing mum buys now because Gemma isn't healthy), I quit my job because I hated coming home to this place, and we even have to make sure someone is home all the time just in case she leaves school early (walks out during the day) or comes home randomly because we don't trust her with a key.

THE MAIN BIT.
If a person has the patience and love to take you in when no one else would or could, should you not show them some respect by behaving? Don't get me wrong, she's had a tough upbringing, but then so have a lot of us. She cries thinking that it's her fault everything is like it is (her dad says so, but he abused her so...), she screams, shouts, starts arguments for no reason, yet when I finish them, I get in trouble because I'm older, stronger and shouldn't lower myself to her level. I know I'm not perfect but I know that I've never been as bad as her.
Let's put this in perspective. This girl doesn't listen and is constantly trying to make us feel bad, to make her feel better. I came back from uni in mid-June and I have considered leaving home three times since then. THAT'S ABOUT ONCE EVERY ONE OR TWO WEEKS! I just have no where to go myself. I because depressed again after being fine for the duration of being at uni. I get stressed and really short tempered.

Now there's a meeting this week to see if she stays or goes (and if I get my dress replaced that she bleached and cut up). Fingers crossed that she goes... Or is better behaved, I don't mind either.

Born In The Wrong Culture

Ok, I mentioned in an earlier post that I like anime. That's a bit of an understatement. I wouldn't call myself an obsessed fan but I do love it. Along with all thing Eastern Asian, my family have a huge interest in the music and programmes. Two of my sisters love japanese music, while I prefer Korean. We all watch japanese dramas from time to time, and my mum likes some Korean music (especially when it is sung in English, haha). My sister also listens to some Chinese music, although not much.

Here's a small list of anime that I have watched all the way through, from beginning to end, in no particular order. I have seen various episodes of others, or unfinished series (where I broke my laptop and forgot what episode I was on) but these will not be included. These are also recommendations  to anyone wanting to watch something a little different. Most of these are English Dubbed (in English), although not all of them are.

• Black Cat
• Kuroshituji 
• Kuroshituji II
• Vampire Knight
• Elfen Lied
• Karin
• Ouran High School Host Club
• Rosario + Vampire
• Rosario + Vampire capu 2
• Death Note
• Clannad
• Blue Exorcist (Ao No Exorcist)
• Code Geass
• Fruits Basket
• Gravitation
• Angel Beats
• Mermaid Forest
• Baka + Test: Summon the Beasts (Seasons 1, OVA and 2)
• Toradora!
• Karneval
• Danganronpa
• Daily Lives of High School Boys
• Gosick

I know it isn't very long, and I only really got into it about 3 years ago. I have also taken time out to get on with my studies, and other times I just have too much of a social life to sit down and make time for even one episode. Let's not forget that there are also loads of anime films, Japanese dramas and Korean films to watch. Of course I've seen the anime that actually gets broadcast on TV and as I never know if it's the complete series and I may miss episodes, such as:

• Pokemon
• Sailor Moon
• Dragonball Z
• Power Puff Girls
• Mew Mew Power (Tokyo Mew Mew)
• Pretty Cure
• Beyblade
• etc...

That's all for now, bye :)

Prejudice

Now I want to go back in time to last September, when I met my flat mates for the first time. I was terrified  and hungry (typical for me) and hadn't met anyone yet on the second day. I walked into the kitchen and everyone was there, they were so loud. >.<

I come from a pretty quiet house, despite everything that goes on, my family will stay away from each other or just talk quietly. The only time we are loud is during an argument, even when my mum tried to break my arm, she was quiet enough not to wake my sister in the same room.

So imagine my horror when I found everyone talking really loudly, laughing and discussing parties. I was fine with all that, I swear, but the sheer volume of them scared me. Sure I may love to watch anime, read, watch films in my room like every other hermit out there, but I also love to party as much as every other girl my age. Getting dressed up, drinking, and having a tonne of fun with my friends. I'm actually pretty normal, despite what I claim.

I found out a few months later that my whole flat thought I would be a boring bookworm. They didn't know that I go out a lot, or that I gave up pole-dancing before going to uni, and as a child I played loads of sports. When they found out, it shone a whole new light on me, as if I suddenly became a different person. Just because I wear glasses and had a shirt on that day (originally undone over a vest but I got cold and buttoned it up), it doesn't mean I am that kind of person.

It really bugs me when people judge others before getting to know them, and I know that I do it too, but we should give people a chance before blowing them off. I hated this one girl at first because I thought she liked the same guy as me, but now we're really close and I regret how I felt at first. People are surprising and if we just take the time to get to know someone, then we might end up staying friends for the rest of our lives.

So what I'm saying is that you shouldn't judge someone on the way they look, or because they drink when they go out. Just because they smoke weed (I have never done drugs and I'm completely against it for my own reasons but I won't bully you to stop. Although smoking is really bad and you should give that up :) If not, it's your own health you're damaging), or go pole-dancing, or play sports, or are gay/lesbian, or just don't behave in the same way as you. No one is perfect and the sooner people accept this, the easier it will be to make friends and enjoy life.

Uh-huh

So I've finally started sorting out some stuff I had as a kid, and I found some old diaries. It's quite cute knowing that I couldn't spell the simplest of words (and still can't) and how I corrected words that were right to begin with. (I wanted to find my current diary that I packed when I moved back from uni in London.)

It's nice knowing that I only wrote down the boring stuff, and some happy things. I noticed that I was very detached from my emotions and just wrote the events down instead of describing things and saying how I felt. Even though I do not remember any of the things I read earlier today, I know that not everything was so bad. Unless it was but I didn't note it down...

I ended up keeping some of the stuff that I had, not because they brought back good memories, but that I know there was probably a memory attached for me to keep it. I haven't read everything yet, but I will do soon. Maybe I will post some pictures of the stuff I have kept.

How many of you have kept diaries, either now or as a child? And what do you write in them? My current one is just to keep track of all my plans, and without it I forget everything :/.

Portfolio and Results

So, as any of you that have read my other blogs know (which were purely for coursework reasons), I study photography at university. Although the course is not what I expected, and that I dislike one of my modules, my results were not too bad. I mean, if I exclude that one anomaly, I would have finished with a much higher grade. Unfortunately I got a 2.2 for my first year, even though some of my work was just 2 or 3 marks off a 1st.

Hopefully next year will be better as I have added a minor subject (extra work), and it will not all be so repetitive. If I still do not like photography as a subject, I will just end up doing it as a hobby and will concentrate on something academic, by possibly restarting university all together.

Anyway, I thought I should share some of my work (ones without people because I have no model release forms..) just to see if my work is as rubbish as my lecturer says, or if it is better than she thinks.

Greed

Lust

Envy

Sloth

^ These were part of a small project on the seven deadly sins where I aimed to use just fruit and vegetables, most of this series are shown here. The rest of the images below are from random projects over the years.

Parliament

Peek-a-boo!

Romance

Shells

Skull

Strawberries

Skull and Shells

The Last 12 Hours... (at the time...)

I'm going to try to keep this short.. :)

This all happened about a week or two ago, on the 14th. My cousin, John*, had been staying over for the past week and my friend decided to go out in London for her birthday. I don't live in London when I'm away from uni so we decided to catch the bus, a train to London Victoria and then a tube to West Ham (where we started the night). So the first bit was all fun and dandy, just a lot of talking about the past and present, how things are different from where I live and where he lives. We left my house at 7pm.
Then we got on the underground. As soon as the doors closed behind us, there was no escape. The stench was vile, a mixture of sick and possibly urine. A strawberry blonde haired boy sat in the corner next to the door, head down and small stains of puke on the sleeves of his suit/uniform. The look of disgust from other passengers, the whispering around the carriage, the way people would cover their noses and mouths with scarfs and hands. At every passing stop, I asked John if we could change carriage, it was making me feel nauseous and we still had 11 stops to go, 10, 9, 8... He thought it was funny just watching everyone's reactions to the obvious situation. When he finally got off at a station, about 4 stops before our own, we noticed that on the inside of his trousers, was an oozing brown substance we could only imagine as the faeces.
Skip forward a few hours, arriving at my friend's house a little after 9pm, and we start drinking. Meeting up with some more friends from uni, and leave my friend's house at 11pm-ish.
Skip again to when the club closes (what happened inside is just typical and I don't want to bore you with the details) at 4am. We get outside and need to decide if we are staying in London or going back to mine. At 4.30am, we decide to make our way back to London Victoria. I get out my phone, and it takes us past Trafalgar Square, St. James' Park, Buckingham Palace, all whilst still a little drunk.
We managed to get to Victoria all in one piece, bought more tickets to get home, waited around for a loooooooooooooooong time and caught two trains to get to Gatwick Airport. I haven't been to the Airport in a long time and I usually go with my Dad who knows his way around pretty easily. John and I got lost, and circled it at least twice before finding the exit for the buses.
We eventually got home again, and I unlocked my door at 7am.

IT REALLY WAS AN EVENTFUL 12 HOURS :D


* John is not actually his name but who cares. Oh, and the most exciting things happen when John comes over.
I know I rushed the last bit but, who cares :P.