The Advantages of Heels

A recent study with controversial findings have shown that the wearing of high heels might not be all that harmful. Research in the past have solely focused on physical effects of high heels; with lower back pains, neck aches and deformed feet topping the list. However, a recent study suggests that the advantages may well outweigh the disadvantages.

This study was led by an Australian researcher (Jamie Chiu) and studied over a period of 8 years (since the beginning of my high heels career). Interestingly enough, the study showed that women who wear heels feel more confident and receive more compliments when a few inches taller than not. The common misconception of losing balance easier was shown to be untrue. The study showed that the amount of falls a flat-wearing girl will go through in any given time period is no less than a heel-clad one.

Surprisingly, the study claims that when going through emotional turmoil, adding a few extra inches may not just up your height but your self-esteem too. As quoted from one participant, “being 4 inches taller can give you a whole new perspective on everything!”

Another finding worth noting is that the benefits increase exponentially with the quality, price and brand of heels worn; with the best heels projecting maximum effects.

The researcher concludes by saying that unless physically unable to wear heels, all females should do so. 

However, the reliability of such results is yet to be confirmed through further research.

almost some Final Destination shit, yo!

I am glad to have made it home safely.

It was David’s farewell and so we went to Seoul to party one last time (maybe our second-last time..) and all was going well until a string of stuff kept happening to me (and it could’ve well happened to anyone else, but no, it was me..and just me).

Firstly, we were all walking along the street towards a bar when suddenly, BAM! I was on the ground. Hoyan was walking infront of me, he slipped but I fell. What just happened? I had no idea…..I was just on the ground.

With my ass hurting, we made it into the bar where we met up with a few other people. I was catching up with a couple of guys and clinking beer bottles to a “cheers” when BLANG!! this dude’s glass shattered onto my arm and his drink was all over me. Who the hell smashes his glass when someone says “Cheers!” ?!?

Okay, so we went to a different bar with my wet arm reeking of gin and we happily played darts. We played 501, cricket and then played a game of Horse too (kinda like the basketball game). At the end, everyone got a bit restless and we were all ready to go. The guys started being silly and throwing darts this way and that, trying out different poses and throwing darts backwards when AJ decides to stand across the room and aim for the board. With about 5 of us sitting inbetween AJ and the board, he strikes a pose and aims. NO~ scared, I covered my face with my arms and BANG! and OWWWW~~~ the dart hit the ceiling and bounced straight down onto the top of my head. Oww…

So we finally leave (with an aching buttcheek, smelly arm and a swell on my head) and we head over to Burger King to grab a bite. Nom nom nom….the onion rings were good and we go catch a cab. I walk out the door and my shoe flies off. Owww……AJ stepped on my heel causing me to trip and my shoe to fly.

All in all, I think I made a pretty good attempt at hurting my body from top to toe (literally) and still be alive =D because here I am, I lived to tell the story. It definitely was almost some Final Destination shit, yo!

apparently i'm a blog nerd :)

its just that my brain is too small to hold all those crazy thoughts of mine and i have to release them somehow….

in order to have some space for normal everyday functionality…

sexy hairdressers wear shades to work

Nicole, Audrey and I went to get our hair done (as girls do…in a group) and Audrey and I went there first. That already, was a bad idea because nobody understood anybody and a shades+leather wearing man was flicking my hair and examining my strands like I wasn’t even there. Somehow, not knowing what, we sat down in the big plush chairs and had towels wrapped around our shoulders and blah blah I had no idea what was going on except that shades+leather man was still tugging on my hair this way and that, and flipping it and twirling it……

And then the door opens and a bright light shines through and I think I heard the birds chirp and the flowers bloom…in steps our angel, Nicole (well, maybe more of a walking translator/dictionary/tourguide and of course friend haha). So after a few moments, everything seemed to be understood.

And the shades+leather man got hotter by the minute…hahaha or maybe it was just the chemical fumes I was breathing in….

Hours later, we are done and we walk out all pretty and our wallet wasn’t that much emptier. It was ashtonishingly cheap - about 80 dollars for wash, cut, colour, curls and a 5 minute head massage and a 150mL bottle of hair serum (which costs about 28 dollars) and he spent soo much time on my hair…he curled it twice because the first time didn’t work so well so he re-rolled my hair, etc!! SSSOOOO nice!!!

If you want to be a trendy, sexy hairdresser in Korea, your best approach would be to put on a pair of huge shades and don on your leather jackets (NB: must be real leather - plastic would just bring down your hotness)…and ta-da…your sexiness would just burst through the roof.

Well, apparently, this is true in the hair salon I went to.

So…tips to take home :  Wear shades + leather jackets to up your hotness. OR release chemical fumes and intoxicate those around you and you will become hotter.

Monet to Picasso to Turkey to Line 9

10:45am. Oh shit!! I’m late!! I message Nicole..”just woke up” and I closed my eyes again. My phone beeps but my eyelids are too heavy to even read her reply. With one eye open, I read her reply and smiled. Haha..good! She’s sleeping too! Guess we can do our hair tomorrow in the afternoon when we are functioning humans again….And with that I fell asleep again.

11:30am. Dun, dun, dunn…It’s the msn tone and it wakes me up. Ric messaged me and his flight got cancelled! Aww…he was so excited too! Still half asleep, we chat for a bit longer.

12:10pm. Audrey messages me to hang out. Hmm…should I stick to my original plan of going to the museum?? I reply asking her to join. Come to the art gallery with us, she says. Cool!! I jump up to get ready and crap~ my hair is still half-curled from the night before. Shit…I don’t have time to wash my hair. Hairspray, where are you? I tousled my hair and wrapped a thick scarfe around it, and ran out. I catch my reflection in the mirror in the elevator Bleh…it’s horrible! Why is it curly only on the right side and straight on the left? Bleh…who cares! It’s saturday!! Ding…..a blast of icy cold air hits me in my face. Shit it’s cold!
12:20pm. Finally made it to Kuna’s apartment after making a couple wrong turns. Audrey gives me a Reese’ peanutbutter and chocolate cupcakes and they are the best thing next to diamonds. It’s like a mouthful of nutella and peanut butter. MMMM…..

1:50pm. We see the bus coming from across the street and us four girls made a dramatic run for it. Turns out….wasn’t even our bus! hah…

3:30pm. We are here. Seoul National Arts Centre. I whip out my camera to take a photo and realize that my memory card is stuck in my laptop. SHIT! What an idiot I am!!! And I recharged it last night too…-_- Lucky Megan and Audrey had cameras. We walk in only to be faced with a super long line waiting to buy entry tickets. Bleh…this sucks already…

We wait 15 minutes…….and had to pay 12 bucks to get into only ONE exhibition. What~?!?

Then we wait another 20 minutes to get into the exhibition. WHAT~~?!!???!?

FINALLY……..we are at the front of the queue and the man takes our ticket for our “Monet to Picasso” exhibition!

Excitedly, we walk through the doors and BAM…there are like a million people crammed into the first exhibition hall. I felt like a prisoner waiting in line for our lunches where we shuffle our way along the room……disappointed we walk into the other hall, and the other hall and the final hall only to have to return to the first hall because they were all the same. So we ended up cutting lines whenever there was a free spot, peeking at the paintings behind a sea of bobbing heads, pushing and walking in the wrong direction, getting stared at and glared at and us glaring at crying babies and elbowing the girls back. Hey, this feels like NB all over again! Why do parents take their young children to see such an exhibition? It would be so boring for the kids…….I was beginning to feel aggravated and annoyed!! However, I did see some really beautiful paintings, they were originally in the Philadelphia Museum and are currently here in Seoul for a few months. I think I will have to come back really early in the morning on a weekday some other time…..this is ridiculous. Having that said, I was very excited to see the world famous sculpture, The Kiss. It was mesmorizingly beautiful. There were many many works of art that left a deep impression on me, but my favourite one was by Wyeth called The Cooling Shed. Very cleverly done piece of work. Okay…won’t bore you anymore!

5:30pm. We have all maxed out our quota for the week. What quota? The number of Koreans we come into contact with. I think I just liked Korea a little bit less…….We head out to Gangnam to eat dinner. Yes…that would make us feel better. Kuna takes us to this really cool restaurant with funky design and we ate Turkish food. It was delicious and definitely a change from Ansan! We talk about all sorts of things from candy to shopping to being naked. Yea, that was the sauna and whether we felt comfortable enough to be naked…….

9:00pm. We step outside once again after having coffee at this really cute hole in the wall cafe with rusty chairs and wooden stairs and crystal chandeliers. Clashing, but tasteful. We are going shopping! Yes…we go into this huge, and I mean HUGE cosmetic shop with has like 6 different counters and different brands. We try on everything we could fit on our faces. We walked out all glittery and pretty. Who needs to carry makeup when you can touch up or even do your whole face at a shop (which there are millions of all over the place!).

10:30pm. We look for our bus stop but we keep getting distracted along the way. Oooh…look! Earrings….Oooh…look! Gloves and scarves! Oooh…look! Fuzzy pants and fuzzy shoes! Oooh….look look! Sparkly headbands!!! Oooh…street food. Ooooh….more street food! Oh no! It’s too late now and we have to catch the subway!! >
11:40pm. We are power walking down the streets to the subway station. Weaving in and out of people, pushing through crowds, panicking because we didn’t want to miss the last train and have to catch a taxi.

After a dramatic rush, we finally made it!! Good work girls! Pat on the back………

12:20am. We made it home…..=)

Girls' Night In

Just came back home… so tired, so full, so happy.

Outside is freezing. Well, I wasn’t really outside, since Julie lives in the same building as me…so technically, I was just in the corridors and the elevator…but that was cold enough.

We girls spent the night making our own cold rolls, eating lots of choc-chip muffins, chocolate fondue, fruit salad with yoghurt + honey and ice-cream and more chocolate….mm….it was a guilt-free pig out session with just girls - stuff your face; no judgement; no shame; no diets.

We even played with Julie’s new hair straightener/curler too! (And the box says “Results may vary according to individual use” which was extremely accurate in our case….just didn’t know how to make good curls, did we!)

Then we watched a heart-warming chick flick (of course!! wouldn’t be a girl’s night without a chick flick) - Four Christmases with Reese Witherspoon and Vince…can’t remember his name but he’s so funny! Very cute and sweet movie which made all of us want to get married and have babies. haha!

Ahh…I’m so tired! I think I just ate a week’s worth of food (but knowing me, I’ll be hungry when I open my eyes tomorrow morning!)

Hmm….Tomorrow should be a good day…

I am getting my hair done with Nicole in the morning. I’m not sure what I want to do with my hair, but I just know that I desperately need something to be done….it is limp, thick, unshapely and just a plain mess!

And then I am embarking on a journey for one to the biggest museum in Korea…or maybe I might ditch that idea and just go shopping.

I’ll see how I feel when I wake up.

The next time I post, I might have some ajuma ramen curls or be in a crazy credit card debt but a wadrobe full of beautiful shoes or be enlightened by the historical monuments of Korea……well, till then…..

grumpy jam!!

yes i am cranky. cranky about everything…
so cranky that i cant even be bothered to use proper caps and apostrophies and commas and so forth.
why you may ask..well the answer to that, i do not know.
maybe it was them, maybe it was you or maybe its just me.
maybe im pms-ing, maybe my hormones are playing up or maybe i just ate too much.
they are laughing, i get annoyed. they are quiet, i get annoyed.
you talk and i get annoyed. you dont talk and i get annoyed.
so yes i am cranky. cranky about everything…

its already january..

Flipping through my calendar/diary, I realized that I came to Korea on the 12th of August. So I have been here for five months and two days. As cliche as it sounds, time really does go by quickly…I still have the habit of telling people I’ve only been here for only 3 months..hehe

So let’s check my progress…..

I would definitely give myself a big fat tick next to “Make New Friends”. I have met many fabulous people here and made many friends which I am very very glad for..Of course, I’ve met the creepy and the weird too, but these people are all over the place and totally unavoidable. So for the most part, everyone I’ve met is really nice and very generous.

Okay, now for “Learning Korean”, I think I’ll give myself an F written in thick red ink. Like every foreigner/tourist, I bought all the books on grammar, vocab, “How to Survive” and “Easy Korean” and “Everyday Korean”, etc…but did I use them? Yea, they sit in my bookshelf for decoration now. As soon as I learnt the basics such as food ordering, directions, taxi and money…I kinda gave up. And now that I’m here for 5 months already, really…do I need to even learn? By the time I know something, I’d be leaving anyway.

Next is “Exploring Korea”….this I did do when the weather was much warmer..now that its so cold, I’ve been getting lazy and kinda just wanting to stay indoors.. Also I’m not a huge fan of skiing, so I haven’t done that yet either. Hmm…all the palaces look the same, so going to one means going to all! I think I have done exceptionally well in finding the best fried chicken in Korea and finding the coolest bars to chill! haha

What constitutes a fun night?

The few times that I had been to Hongdae (a clubbing/bar area in Korea), I wouldn’t exactly have called it fun. It is far away from where I live, and I had to share a cab home with at least 4 people or wait for the subway to start again at 6 am. The amount of foreigners in that area is somewhat off-putting and entry fee is generally quite pricey. People are extremely sleazy and girls are very overdressed and make me feel underdressed. However, the previous weekend, I was in Hongdae again. At first I somewhat dreaded it because I am not exactly fond of that place. But it was far from what I had expected because I actually had a really fun time. So that got me thinking, what constitutes a fun night? According to my experiences, it wouldn’t have to do so much with the places you go…

Here are a few ideas that I have…

1. Your mood.
This is probably the most important. That Saturday night was when my bf came to Korea to see me. Maybe I was already drunk and high on happiness that whatever or wherever I went would have been fun. However, your mood is also something that fluctuates and can easily be influenced.

2. The people.
The people you are out with is a huge decision-maker in whether I have a fun time or not. There are certain types of people to party with and certain types to avoid. You generally would want to be with people who would drink, who are willing to spend money, who are generous and would take turns in buying rounds. The people that you would want to avoid going out with are those that complain, that keep saying they have no money (or those that don’t even carry cash out), those that get tired easily, or those that are just party-poopers. Depending on how many people you go out with (usually the more the better), but you probably wont want to be stuck with someone what was extremely skanky or just looking to hook-up (because then you’d be left by yourself).

3. The alcohol.
The amount you drink will also make a difference. You wouldn’t want to be so drunk that you don’t remember things, throw up in cars or just downright collapse in some dark alley. You wouldn’t want to be the only sober person in any given place either. A happy tipsy is best.

4. Feeling safe.
I think if I felt safe, I can relax and party. What I mean is, knowing that I have enough money, having my ID and bank card on me just in case. Knowing that I have a way home. Knowing that the people you are with won’t leave without you. Knowing that you can get drunk and someone will look after you. After all, you wouldn’t want to be the baby-sitter of a drunken pack, or be the one dialling for a taxi or be the one paying for unpaid tabs.

So this is my list, and on that eventful Saturday night, all was checked and I definitely had a great night out. Any other opinions?