My Current Favourite Songs 9

Its the end of the month again, and technically the last day of the year. So wish you guys a new year and welcome to this month's selection of my current favourite songs.

This month's selection is slower paced with 2 of them being new age songs because I just came down with a bout of stomach flu, so I'm been doing nothing but sleeping and vomitting for the past 2 days. So I've dug up and dusted my collection of new age songs to calm me down and relax to at least get some sleep. I've forgotten just how much I loved them...



Re_birthday (Kagamine Len) : The final song to the Daughter of Evil series. Someone really ought to make an anime series of it instead of the total failure of the incredibly confusing Black Rock Shooter series. Royalty? Check. Deception? Check. Love story? Check! So please can an anime studio make this a series already?


Calendula Requiem (Kanon Wakeshima X Kanon of An Cafe) : A nice departure of Kanon Wakeshima from the predictable and somewhat boring, saccharine sweet lolita look of hers. She still looks sweet but in a different way and the music is still in her usual style. So hopefully, there'll be other music videos that will take her to different directions instead of sticking her in the same path.



Turning (Suzanne Ciani & Yu Chiyi) : I bought her CD some years back and after listening to it a number of times, I stuffed it into the back of my cupboard and totally forgot about it. But after listening to this track again, I'm falling in love with it all over again. Her music soothes me and makes me think of afternoon teas in a sunny garden with a good book...



May It Be (Enya): The theme song for Lord of The Rings. I love all the movies in the series and I really hope it'll be considered as a great a classic like Star Wars and Star Trek. I rememember having a friend once who was so into LOTR that she taught herself the Elfish language to the point she could not only speak it, but read and write it too!


Kanon D-Dur (Evangelion Death & Rebirth, Shinji: Cello, Asuka : Violin, Rei: Viola, Kaoru: Second Violin): Its really nice to see the four children all playing this piece together, and for once you get a sense of peace from them despite the constant bickering and death all around them. Evangelion definitely helps one to appreciate classical music in a different light, such as Beethoven's 9th Symphony that is often used in the battle scenes

Okay, I feel my stomach acting up again so wish my dear readers a happy new year once again! And hopefully have a better start then I do...

Merry Christmas!!

Dear readers, I'm sorry for the late post, but wish you guys a Merry Christmas and may your day be filled with love, light and cheer!!!

xoxo

Hotaru

Personal Outfit 48 (Cosplay Photoshoot)

Went out to assist in a cosplay photoshoot last Sunday but because we ended up shooting in a open roof carpark, 3/4 of the time, Esther and I were just sitting around battling the soaring heat and awful insects.

Outfit consisted of :

Inner long shirt: Uniqlo

Plaid outer shirt: bought in Australia

Tights: Bought in Hong Kong

Engineer Boots: Bought in Macau

Spectacle frames: Random shop in Far East Plaza

Becuase I knew my hair would end up irritating me during the shoot, I ended up tying it into 2 little balls on my head. Its pretty simple, just twist like a mini bun and secure with a pin.

Esther and I also ended up playing with her camera and taking pictures of each other to pass the time.

The photoshoot was a somewhat failure as we ended up getting chased out of the premises because they claimed we hadn't received permission to do photography there. I found it to be tter rubbish because a friend and I had done previous photoshoots there with no such problems before not to mention, they only told us and kicked us out of the premises after we were wrapping up and deciding to move to another location. It was so (O____O)"

I left when the rest of the gang decided to head to another location because of heat exhaustion and my tights had torn so I felt kindda exposed.

But it was pretty fun and I learnt some new things about light exposure and such in photography whilst fiddling with a camera. Useful stuff to know so that I can get myself a betetr location next time when I do my own photoshoots haha!

I'll update soon about my Christmas celebration, but considering I don't have the usual family gathering this year, its kindda boring.

EOY 2010

* Sorry for the pic spam, but I just love the look of this costume so much despite the difficulties of moving around in it.

Firstly, this is how the costume is supposed to look like. The character is Ciel Phantomhive from the series Kuroshitsuji and he crossdressed in an attempt to avoid detection and get closer to the enemy

An up close picture of my costume. love the details!

And a almost full length picture of the costume. The dress had 3 parts to it, a hoop skirt to pouff up the whole thing, an underskirt (that's the white parts you can see) and the pink dress on top.

I love this pic alot and will probably be using it for my next batch of coscards

An up close pic of my face and this is another picture that I plan to use for my next batch of coscards

I loved this costume alot despite dying of heat, mostly which was caused by my long gloves. So I ended up taking it off whenever I was just standing around and I had to ask photographers to wait whenever they wanted to take a picture because I had to quickly shove them on.

Not the best event day because I overslept and ended up having to put my makeup on at the location itself inside the smelly, dirty toilets. Also, Esther was waiting for our friend to bring her wig and the friend ended up coming only at the later part of the day. So Esther was moody most of the day, not a very good person to hang out with. But I had no choice since I wasn't as close to the other cosplayers and it was bit redundant to walk around the place all alone. So I ended up missing abit of photo-taking opportunities because I was mostly sitting at the shop stall trying to cheer her up.

Not to mention, there were 3 other cosplayers who wore the exact same outfit as me and unlike me, they had at least one friend who was cosplaying the same series as them, so they had a person to pose with. And I so need to rant this out, there was this total cosf*ck of a person who I was so pissed at. She wore the exact same outfit as me except hers was so obviously made of some crappy cheap satin with a really tiny hat that was so small and tall that it almost looked like a miniature tophat. The hat wasn't worn to the side as shown by the character, hers was right ontop of her head and had the front brim pushed upwards. Not to mention, she didn't wear a hoop skirt so her dress was like completely flat and worse thing was, she had wavy brown hair and tried to scrimp on money and didn't wear a wig. She didn't even bloody bother to tie her hair into 2 ponytails and just walked around in that crap of an outfit she had on.

Worse thing was, because her friend's stall was directly opposite Esther's, she kept hanging out there and eyeballing me. Come on, like seriously? Your outfit is so crappy that what reason do you have to eyeball me for? Jealous much?

And I'm sniggling to myself now because after sifting through the photographs that have been uploaded at the forums, it seems no photographer took any pictures of her (except one where she totally photobombed a fellow cosplayer). That shows you how crappy your costume is, so stick your eyeballs back in your brain and try harder. Okay rant over!

Anyway, I'm trying to convince Mini to do a photoshoot with me for this costume since she's already done Sebastian for a few other people, so I need to bugger her and a photographer soon.

Steph's Indefinite Break & Blog Award

Hey everybody, I know some of you have been kindda wondering what my friend and fellow blogger, Steph of Cosmic Love blog been up to lately. Well, she's been pretty much bogged down by her work lately, so even when her urges to blog does strike, she's often left too tired and brain-dead to actually gather up the energy to write up a post.

So just be patient, because I'm pretty sure when she's back at posting, her posts will definitely be worth the wait!

On a side note, Truc of sstardesire.blospot.com, recently awarded me the "Lovely Blog Award". Its amazing that I actually got a blog award since it was like the furthest thing from my mind when I actually started this blog and I'm glad that readers enjoy my posts and blog. So of course, I'd like to give this blog to some other bloggers:

Truc of sstardesire.blogspot.com

Steph of xcosmic-lovex.blogspot.com

Jenny of sushi-cat.net

Mitsu of universal-doll.com

Tori of cherristory.blogspot.com

Bloomzy of bloomzy.blogspot.com

These are the gals that I love and constantly read their posts. I may not always leave a comment (sorry!) but I love them nonetheless. So go forth and spread the love!

P.S. I'll be updating my other cosplay soon, I have the majority of my pictures at hand, so I just need to arrange and edit some stuffs first, so be patient kays? Thanks!

STGCC Day 2

Ah, finally tracked down most of my pictures for STGCC (Singapore Toys, Games, & Comics Convention) day 2 cosplay. I chose not to go for the event on the first day as not only did I not have a costume, but I knew that I'd be dead tired after 2 days of cosplay and three straight days was really too much for me to take.

So for STGCC, I ended up cosplaying as Rin Kagamine, neko (cat) version. Technically, there's no such version for the Kagamine twins as only Miku has ever been shown wearing this particular outfit. But Esther and Minichaos and I decided to do it as a team as it'll be more fun that way.

So pictures from the event:

From left: Esther as Len Kagamine (my "brother"), Minichaos as Hatsune Miku and I as Kagamine Rin

Unfortubately, Mini kept disappearing to meet friends so it was mostly Esther and I walking around by ourselves.

A picture of our full outfits, we even had cat tails attached to our belts to keep up with the neko look. Hahahah

One of my favourite pictures from the event. My mom says I don't look like I put on much makeup, but I swear I put on waay heavier then my usual daily makeup! "0(>.<)o"

I was pretty shocked when I found out that there were a few pictures our cosplay up on the xinmsn.com website when there had been an article about the STGCC event. So I guess I'll take it as a compliment?

Despite having the event at the exact same place as AFA, this event was managed so much better. For one, all the cosplayers weren't yelled at to move our belongings when we were trying to find a location to settle down and finish putting on our costumes or makeup. We were asked in a pretty nice manner to move and even offered a location unlike AFA where we were chased from location to location before the management finally got the hint to open up a space for us to settle down.

The place wasn't as crowded too so there was more room for us to walk about and meet friends, not to mention, my costume was so much more comfortable and easier to move about in so I could run around and whatnot all day without getting too tired. Plus kids of all sorts loved us, so we had alot of little kids (girls especially!) running up to us trying to hug us and their parents asking us to pose with their kids. So it was pretty fun.

I'm still waiting for my EOY (End of Year) event pictures, but its not looking good since there were 3 other girls, excluding me, who were all wearing the same costume and I didn't get to walk around as muhc because I was pretty busy trying to cheer Esther up. So I probably have to wait for my "official" photographer to pass me his batch of pictures.

Personal Outfit 47 (Rushing Ahead)

Ah, been rushing alot of things lately, so many things to get done but so little time. Lets see, I have two cosplay events for the weekend, then there's handling my school's administrative stuffs, and then Chirstmas followed by the staycation I'm having with the Bf. And oh, I have to squeeze in sometime to get my hair dyed and clean my room before my new school term starts.

I'm so glad that the next cosplay event has been pushed back to April so at least I can take a breather to save some money and get back to being just gyaru again for awhile. Plus I can get settled down to my new school and hopefully have more fun as compared to my sucky life in Polytechnic. I swear I was slowly counting down everyday I had to come to class and then just zoning out if I actually went to class.

But sad things aside, here's today's outfit (okay technically yesterday, I just noticed the time):

Military dress with pouffy skirt & belt: Taobao (the whole outfit is a onepiece)

Scarf: borrowed from mom

Nude pumps (not shown): Can't remember (the sole is spoling gah! Gotta hunt around for a new pair I guess)

Anyway, today was spent with Francine, just chatting with her and catching up. I also helped her in finding the right clothes she needed for her Lady Gaga inspired outfit that she needed for her company's Dinner & Dance. We struck gold with an awesome massive black sun hat that had wires in the edges to manipulate its shape, it looked somewhat like what she needed plus, it was only $7.90 after discount!!!

She was so happy about it and kept telling me about how she spent only a total of around $15 for her whole outfit, hahahah. Lucky her!

Ugh shucks, its really late, I need to get my beauty rest to be able to last for tomorrow's (technically, today's) cosplay event. I'll be dressed as Rin Kagamine with cats ears and paws and for Sunday I'll be wearing Kuroshitsuji's Ceil ballroom version gown. So if you recognise me, don't be afraid to say hi! I'm friendly and won't bite, mostly... hahah and just so you know, my cosplay name is Rahzel and I'll gladly give you my coscard if you want!

Personal Outfit 46 (& Recent Gets)

I've been pretty busy this past week in a rush to try and get my stuffs done for the upcoming cosplay events. I can't believe its gonna be this weekend already, considering it was like juz a few weeks ago that I finished AFA. Oh well, at least if the next event is postponed, I'll get some time to save abit and finish up my costume and get some new ones. I still haven't been able to confirm anything yet for next year, but I've already decided on a few solo cosplays so I may just tag along with my friend again.

On a side note, I had a haircut done just recently. Steph introduced me to her hairstylist but there was some miscommunication between the hairdresser and I (my mandarin skills are of mediocre level) so I'm left with a too short fringe, heavy blunt layers at my jawline that remind me of Maikos (Japanese Shinto priestesses for those who don't know) and still unable to curl my hair like before. Haiz... I'm bordering on the line of kidnapping my ex-hairdresser and smuggling him back to Singapore very soon.....

Wore this outfit for the haircut & shopping with Esther after it

Spectacle frames: random shop in Far East Plaza

Black top: given by a friend

Denim skirt: Victoria Beckham for Rock & Republic

Leopard print tights: Can't remember

Black pumps(not shown): borrowed from mom

(sorry for the tired expression, this was taken after the long day of running around with Esther)

Been buying alot of things recently so here's just some of my recent gets:

Black and red striped legwarmers: For cosplay & a total steal for only $2!

Topshop tights: They have a really adorable heart print on them that reminds me of Tsubasa's S-leg brand. Though I havent come up wiht any outfit with them so far... Hmm...

Candy Sugar PVC school bag: A bag for my school term starting next year. It'll be alot easier if I have one bag just for school purposes

Cat ears & tail: For my upcoming cosplay event. I'll be adding bells to the ears and tail and I'm waiting for my cat paws to be done. Nya!

Fashion tape: An essential for cosplay events where anything can go wrong. These help to fix nearly everything!

Flower wreath: Yess!!! I finally found one for my cosplay photoshoot after searching high and low for it. Its bit pricey at $15 but I'm desperate for it. I'll be adding pink flowers to make it look thicker.

Sunglasses: This is a Chloe inspired design and the biggest glasses I have in my collection. Got it for a steal at $9.90!

I still have so much to prepare for my upcoming events and hopefully, Esther will be able to get my coscard format done in time. That way I'll have a coscard to pass out to people at the events yay!

Christmas is coming up soon so I gotta get ready presents for my loved ones, and after that it'll be the little staycation that the Bf and I will be having to celebrate our anniversary. Anyone wanna guess how long we;ve been together? Hee.....

Background Change

Hi guys, if you've been a reader of my blog for awhile now, you will probably notice some changes I just did to my blog. I had to change the background because of some bandwidth thingy and because I had to change the background, I hate to redo my entire template.

Why? Because that's how Blogger works... damn it! Anyway after struggling with it for the past half hour or so, my initial plans to write up a post has kindda been zapped away by tiredness after fiddling with all the stupid applications I had to go through to get my desired outcome and redoing it after Blogger refused to accept any changes I had initially made.

I know the whole blog is now rather pink, but please bear with it for awhile, at least till I can get a better background image or someone kindly helps me out with it, anyone?

*bats eyelids*