Friday, October 24, 2014

Rant time: My love for makeup!

Soooo....I love makeup.

Something about stepping into Sephora or Ulta or the makeup aisle in CVS, Walmart or Target just fills me with pure satisfication. Its as if all of my worries are slowly disappearing and I am in candy-land. Lipsticks, eyeliners, eye-shadows, foundations, mascaras, etc. whisper to me soft, gentle words which truly soothe my soul. Aaaah....Sorry I got a little too side-tracked with my raw and unrefined love for makeup...let me pull myself together. So. The thing is. I have a part-time job and I get paid peanuts. While I don't spend most of it and just put it towards my tuition, I save up a bit of it to buy some makeup. It makes me happy. So, when someone (a friend, a relative or just someone) thinks I should buy them Urban Decay eyeshadows and MAC lipsticks for shits and giggles, I am just blown away. Wait a minute? How did you even start to expect that?

By the way, my mom and sister are the only other people who I would and do buy makeup for...I learned to love makeup from my mom ( I used to see her Christian Dior lipsticks and lancome eyeliners and yearn for them) and my sister is my boo..so yeah, they are in the executive category. 

Back to the point---So how can people just begin to expect that...like I get that look like 'Oh if she's using Urban Decay, she better get me some too '.. I mean....if I get you some out of my own will, that's a different thing, but here I am, trying to save up some of my peanuts (ew.) to buy some makeup and I am supposed to be buying some for you too? This might make me sound like a bad person (or not if you totally understand where I'm coming from), but I am not. I just don't have thousands of dollars laying around that I could just spend to buy department store makeup for other people. I bought a MAC lipstick two days ago and this is my first MAC lipstick of the year and that is the frequency at which I buy expensive makeup. Now. Why is all this relevant to this blog post? Well, I can't post any stuff about my makeup loot on any of my social media because the next thing you know, people are asking you to get them some too. My makeup is like my trophies. I treasure them and I enjoy caressing them late at night with some soft ballads playing (totally kidding). I would love to go all crazy on instagram and facebook and wherever talking about my makeup in discreet detail. What I post on here is not even half of what I have and I do that intentionally because I don't want emails or messages or even thoughts in people's head that the next time I see them,  I will be buying them a truckload of the same ish I have.

So I have to continue secretly admiring my makeup, without taking sensual photos of them and posting them up here or anywhere else. This sucks. 

Friday, October 17, 2014

Restaurant review: First Chinese BBQ


    Beef Crispy Noodles
   Cheese-crusted jumbo shrimp

The food was alright. Very fresh, both of them. However, there was an overpowering taste of MSG to the crispy noodle. The shrimp was good...a bit greasy but still fresh. Sadly, we didn't get to try any of their bbq items because hubby's just not a bbq kinda guy. I'm not crazy about bbq either. Something about sweet sauces in savory foods gets to me.

Monday, October 6, 2014

One of many keys to happiness and contentment



I think I've found something. Something quite phenomenal. It took me some time to find it and I must say, it took quite an effort. Friends make up a huge part of our life (unless we are an introvert, solitary type of person). So as we forge new friendships in our lives, we often encounter a few snafus. Friends who don't quite reciprocate in the same way as we'd like them to or to the same extent that we'd expect them to. I had a blog post earlier about wonky friends and acquaintances, who never quite understand the meaning of maintaining friendship and reciprocation. But now, I think I have finally found the solution. This might be a bummer to many as its not a concrete, one-stop solution. There is a bit of faith and spirituality involved in this, so brace yourselves.

So there have been times when all of us have given a 'friend' a present, invited them over for a lavish dinner, or simply done them a favor and never heard from them ever again or worse, saw them doing the same but for other friends. I used to get so angry and think 'what about the effort I put in?' That is when my mind went like 'Eureka!':a higher power will reward me in a much better way. Possibly with a new job offer, saving a loved one's life, a higher salary or a gift of some sort. So wouldn't I rather have that greater, bigger, better gift from the Almighty than a five-course meal from a friend? Well, of course I would. This way of thinking has improved my mental well-being. It has actually happened more than once, when after an instance of disappointment, it was immediately followed by some sort of good news that is much bigger in magnitude, than what I would have received in return from that 'friend'. While not expecting anything in return is the best solution, it is equally important to watch who you spend your efforts on. However, the occasional snafus do turn up, and that is when I revert back to this thinking that my efforts have not been wasted. Something good is going to happen for me or someone I love, and I just have to wait. 

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

In an anniversary mood...







So maybe I lied about our anniversary celebrations ending on Sunday. Yesterday, while hubby was shopping for eid groceries, I snuck into Cafe Mozart Bakery and bought this butter-cream cake roll. Cafe Mozart Bakery is a korean bakery, where they have the most decadent cakes, cookies, muffins, breads, sandwiches and bubble tea. What I like most about their baked goods is that they all have only a few ingredients and butter is always one of them. It's a shame that most bakeries and grocery stores here carry baked goods made with rapeseed oil, cottonseed oil, vegetable/palm oil or something unpronounceable. If you were raised outside the United States, you know we've always had our cakes with more butter and less sugar (absolutely nothing against American-style cakes and confectionery but I do feel they really go to town on sugar.) Long story-short: bought this cake and a beautiful card. Hubby and I have always been a fan of Papyrus greeting cards. Complete with the gold hummingbird seal, it lends an old-school feel to the whole greeting cards thing. Needless to say, hubby loved the cake roll and the card, but guess whose been hogging most of the cake?