24 March 2008

ah-ha-ha-ha stayin' alive, stayin' alive

stayin' alai----hi--ay----ay-aive

hello, give me some credit please, i was trying to type out the words in the same way those beegees sang it.

contrary to belief, i haven't died yet.

no, i've just been busy as a bee. in fact, busier than a bee, and just about as busy as a queen ant. in the last 3 month's, i've returned from a holiday from singapore and japan, had an argument with my roommate, been put in a situation where we didn't talk for over a month, went to view apartments, and i mean at least 40 different places (no kidding), packed up and moved out of my old place and into the new, forgave my old roommate and talked things through, found a new roommate, bought and installed new furniture, decided i had to kill myself because i had so many clothes and no where to put them...

and all that while going through regular classes!

you have no idea how tired i was!!! oh man!

it was really hard. trying to keep up with being a full-time fashion student + moving house (especially when you have as many things as i do) is not recommended.

i know a lot of you have come back to visit this blog and sent me messages asking if i've disappeared. after i've manage to build up a reader-base, it was really silly of me to stop posting for so damn long because i probably have like zero readers now... or worse, more like minus 5.

basically it was a very difficult 3 months and i had very negative qi. my ex-roommate and i could not get along and she spent her days practically thinking about "revenge" and how she could send me emails that would anger me. to be honest, her emails did piss me off at first, but after a while, i realised it was so ridiculous and it became like a joke to me everytime i got one of her emails dipped in poison. i knew i had to move out of the place because i definitely wasn't happy there and it didn't help that we hated each other. i was coming home extremely tired from school and keeping to myself in the room, only leaving it to go to the bathroom or the kitchen. i had never experienced something or someone like that before, and believe me it was a real eye-opener.

anyway i moved into a new place about a month ago, and guess how many boxes i left my old place with? 3-fucking-0!!! there were big ones and there were small ones, but there were 30. crazy shit. i wanted to slap myself. the room that i have now is way smaller and i've had to learn about being organized. but it's quite newly renovated and it's in an amazing location. my new roommate seems really nice. she goes to parsons too so we can bitch to each other about our crazy teachers and how tired we are and how expensive the school fees are. yay!

my ex-bosses (roger and yvonne, a husband and wife team) and edmond, a great mutual friend came over to new york at the end of february for a few days. edmond used to live in new york for 10 years, back in the days when it was still very dangerous and the parks weren't safe and the lower east side wasn't a shopping area. so he brought us around to his favorite restaurants and it was so hilarious watching this grown man get all excited saying, "ohmygodiusedtolooooovecominghere (breathe) thefoodisamaaaazing." and he'd give us instructions on how to eat this and that. yummm!!


el faro (823 greenwich street, 212.929.8120) is a spanish restaurant with sme very homemade dishes. the space was cramped but edmond made reservations so we didn't have to wait, and he had made orders ahead of time so food came pronto! and the garlic bread, is the devil. in a good way. like i want it everyday. *lick lips*


edmond's friend, steven, lives in new york and works at artsee eyewear (863 washington street, 212.414.0900), a really cool shop with unique glasses and sunglasses in the meatpacking district. he brought us to this tapas bar called pamplona (37 east 28th street, 212.213.2328). we ordered like everything on the menu and holy crap it was so so so good. some of the stuff we ordered aren't even shown in the pictures above. particularly amazing were the celery root soup (coming from a girl who hates celery and celery root), the dates wrapped in bacon, fried chickpeas, and the peanut butter ice-cream!!! hello!!! peanut butter ice-cream!!


they stayed at the W in union square on the 20th floor. who knew new york could have pretty sunsets?

spring break just ended yesterday. a friend of mine from japan, yuka, came over for a few days so i was tour guide for a week. it was more tiring than i thought it would be, because literally, i was planning each day!!! i'm such an ass for complaining, but she basically came over with no clue as to what she wanted to do, and she didn't really care so much about what we'd be doing. so that made planning even harder, because then i had no idea where i should bring her and all that. but we got through it, walked a hell lot, ate even more, and spent too much money. sounds like fun eh?

i don't know what the hell i was doing shopping with her when i'm not even on holiday. did i mention that i'm broke and that i had no space to put anything in my puny room!!!!

and oh my god, did we eat or did we eat.

i regretted not taking more photos with her while she was here. i think we took like 4 pictures together. the rest of our pictures were all of the glorious food we had.

what disgusting pigs!!! we just ate and ate and ate more!!


pizza at lombardi's (32 spring street, 212.941.7994). some people hate it, i think it's yummy and i love the crust, and the meatball toppings! it's apparently new york's first pizzeria, but who cares about history when you've got amazing mozzarella and meatballs in your mouth! hee hee.


cupcakes from magnolia bakery (401 bleeker street, 212.462.2572). made famous by sex and the city, i'm sure there are many more cupcake places that must be better than this place. but for the moment, it makes my sweet tooth happy and who can resist all those cute colors! (although i have to admit the purple icing was way too much even for me.)


korean fried chicken at bon chon (314 5th avenue, 212.221.2222). introduced by a korean friend of mine, this restaurant is apparently also famous in korea and every korean in new york is supposed to know this place. the thing is, this is the best fried chicken i have ever had in my life. i've brought 4 different groups of friends there, and we can't get enough. you know it's good when you're so full you're about to puke and you still wanna gobble some more. it's fantabulous.


at the hershey's store in times square, 4 outfits from the project runway challenge were on display. jillian's (the one of the red corset) was really pretty amazing.



we had a huge lunch at the peter luger steakhouse (178 broadway, 1.718.387.7400) in brooklyn. i was told that the single steak wasn't as good of a cut, so we ordered the porterhouse steak for two, which was actually steak for 17. it was cooked in 4 pounds of butter or something and we all know how good that smells and tastes. also amazing was the bacon that we ordered as appetizer. give me a strip everyday please. the second shot was taken while on the subway back to the city.


i hate making the rich richer, but dylan's candy bar (1011 3rd avenue, 646.735.0078) was too cute not to mention. never mind that a lot of the stuff were all about easter when we went. the whole place was so colorful, even the stairs were cute! the place was also stocked with tons of very nostalgic sweets. i wonder if the kids these days even know what those are! i used to have those lollies that you wear as a ring and all that! loved them. and yuka spent like 70 dollars buying a basketful of pez! crazy girl! she collects them!


i also brought yuka for cheese fondue at the bourgeois pig cafe (111 east 7th street, 212.475.2246). i love fondue and i quite like it here. plus, the place has pretty great atmosphere. i had a glass of champagne with a strawberry reduction. it was so delicious.


our last meal was at florent where fries are always amazing. i had a huge bowl of mussels. i don't think i've ever eaten that many mussels at one time. i was telling yuka that i doubt it'll make me full, but halfway through my tummy was overfilled. they gave us these paper placemats with empty faces, so it was fun to fill in the blank looks. i think if i ever had a restaurant of my own, i want to have something like that too.


at the m&m's store in times square, there are m&m colors that i had never seen while growing up. there's also this huge-ass machine in the middle of the 2nd floor where you stand under and they tell you what color you are. i had never tried it out before (very embarrassing), but since i had yuka with me this time, we both decided to join the line. yes, we were the only grown-ups in line. among all the 5 year old kids. ugh. as you can see, i'm sugar and spice but mostly spice. i think this fortune teller is pretty accurate. it was so funny! i'll have to go back again one day to see if that has changed.


and lastly, on saturday, after yuka left to go back to tokyo, i walked out to the supermarket and realized that there was this ultra-funny event taking place outside the union square subway station. pillow fight!!! the air was filled with feathers and i didn't wanna step nearer even to take pictures because i could see the people who had stepped away from the fight, and yes, they had feathers in their hair, on their coat, in their nostrils. there were soooo many people, i would imagine getting a neckache after getting slammed on the head one too many times by someone's hard-ass pillow!




so that's it, i've been away from my blog for a while, but if you've read this far, you'd know where i have been:

fat camp.

i'm so disgusted with myself i could hurl. yuck! stop eating you fat pig!