post stress celebration

That awful project that I had to do is FINISHED!!!!!!!!!!!!.

I was going to go buy something to celebrate then I remembered that I'm poor now and Christmas is fast approaching :(. But Alex thoughtfully bought me some adorable panda and gingerbread cookies! They're so delicious. What would I do without him?

That's not what it really looks like but I didn't take a picture of the cookies so this will do for now.

There was a lot of intense last minute work. On Friday, everyone in my group (minus one girl who literally didn't do shit) met up at 7 PM and stayed until past 10 PM. We met again on Monday at 5:30 PM and I didn't leave until 10:30 PM, got home, had supper and worked on the project until 1:30 AM.

Tuesday morning, Murphy's Law kicked at full force. Everything was going wrong, our videos for the oral weren't working, we couldn't connect our laptop to the school's overhead system. Complete chaos. I was ready to slit my own wrists before a heart attack could catch me.

Yesterday wasn't a regular fuuuuuuuu, it was an uber FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!

But we managed to get everything working right before our oral. It went alright, I thought we did pretty well but the prof said that we didn't have enough information on our slides. Well...

To celebrate the completion of this project and being completely done with the course, I went to Alex's house and...slept.

I had a headache by the time I got back to his house and it's a really bad time for me to get sick so I took a 2 hour long nap, after inhaling some tynenol and slept like a baby. Or so he said. He said I looked like I was having a really peaceful sleep. And I damn well should have been, my project is over!

But I have to work on another project but I'm not too worried about that one. It's for my Not-for-profit accounting class, and everyone knows you just bs about that. I did for both my midterms and I got 84 and 93 on them.

Hurray for good BS!

More kawaii goodies came in the mail these past couple of days, it's not wonder I'm poor with all this kawaii purchasing. But I'm really stopping now because I have way to much. I'm actually trying to sell some of them. Will post links and such when I have to take pictures and put them online. There's already some stuff up on my flickr.

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handmade plushes made with love and fancy fukuya

You'll never guess what happened!!!! When I got home from school today, I went into the kitchen to say hi to my mom and I found this:

They're so adorable!

Mom said she took the design from some plush on display in a store that she sees every morning when she drops Dad off at work. I know which store she's talking about it's most probably an Uglydoll, although I have no idea which one. Not that I'm not a crazy fan of UglyDolls, some of them are cute. I have one and Dad got it for me when we went to Virginia this past summer.

Mom said that she knows how much my sister and I (especially me) like plushes so she decided to make us some. I was so touched. I thought they were cute in a funky way. They were so soft too! I couldn't decide between the one with blue eyes or the one with orange eyes, so I let our dog, Obi pick. I held both of them in front of him and after a bit of sniffing of both, he tried to bite Blue Eyes so I decided to take that one.

This one's mine :D

My sister's.

Today, another one of my packages came (I can't stop, it's like a drug). It was the one that I had ordered from an amazing ebay seller. I purchased 3 times from her and everytime, she ships the day I ordered and it always gets here in less than a week! From Japan to Canada in less than a week, that's amazing. She always gives a little gift each time too. Her shipping costs are reasonable as well. In case you couldn't tell, I'm totally in love with her, so much kawaii in her shop :) Check our her shop.

Please excuse the crappy photos, I took them in a a hurry.

I have no idea what's happening in this picture but it's so cute, it makes my eyes bleed rainbows.

I want everything!!

The plush I bought from her a rabbit/dog (seriously, that's what the company that made it calls it). It's made by Fancy Fukuya who specializes is making super cute kawaii plush that are available by crane game machines, just to piss all the kawaii lovers off. Either that or make it really hard to find, because if it wasn't, I'd already probably have a whole bunch of Fancy Fukuya stuff. But I don't. Instead of making it readily accessible, they have to make it incredibly frustrating, time consuming, and wallet emptying for you to get them.

Their most popular/famous character is the usadango, which is so cute I could barf rainbows and sunshine dust every time I look at it. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find one because they sell out like fat kids going at a chocolate store, which makes me rage even more.

Here are some of their products that are so cute and impossible to find.

USADANGO, Y U SO CUTE!?

Then they have these little cute chipmunks, which I have a few of. I bought them off of Naomi, that ebay seller I was telling you about. She even threw in an extra one for me as a gift. This was my reaction when I found out how awesome it was to get an extra kawaii chipmunk.

Kawaii chipmunks playing kawaiingly

These are the two larger ones.

Little baby ones! The one that's standing on the leaf was a gift from Naomi.

And I think they came out with some new characters which will make my bank account deplete like there's no tomorrow. One of them is...a bunch of dancing animals or something (but still cute!) and some other miscellaneous characters that are equally as kawaii as the rest.

Hypnotic kawaii dance to make people buy their stuff

Aww.

Omg, cute crying puppies! My greatest weakness!

Damn you Fancy Fukuya!! Visit their website for more super enraging Japanese kawaiiness.

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package goodies

For some reason I've been been obsessed with buying Kinder Surprises for the past couple of days. Remember those? It all started a few weeks ago when I had time to kill before heading to work so I went into Pharmaprix, a huge drugstore chain. Walking around, I spotted Kinder Surprise and I thought to myself, why not? I haven't had one in a really long time and my parents didn't really buy them for us that often as kids. But as it usually happens with things in Quebec, there was no price tag and the price scanner was broken. I knew it was $1 something but I wanted to know exactly because I wanted to pay in change! I love paying with change because it doesn't feel like you're really paying with anything. Haha. Then I saw the 3 egg package and thought that maybe it's cheaper to buy that and get one for my brother and sister too. But there was no price! I was all like

But luckily, there was an employee scanning prices nearby so I asked him. The pack of 3 was on special for $2.99 instead of 3.99 so I bought that. When to work and opened mine and IT WAS THE SAME TOY THAT I GOT A FEW MONTHS AGO! I was so pissed! What are the odds, they clearly mass produced that one! It was an hourglass that had a picture on the top and bottom of the hourglass so when it was empty on the top, you could see the picture.

Proof that this is mass produced: I typed in "kinder surprise hourglass" and the first two pictures were of this.

This is personal. I was on a mission to find a super cool awesome toy that they keep advertising on those kinder surprise boxes.

Bring it on Kinder Surprise

During my lunch break, I went with my colleague Sara to the Rockland Centre, a mall near work. I told her my mission about Kinder Surprise so we went to Pharmaprix (another one) and I bought a single Kinder this time and she bought some nasty coconut chocolate called Bounty. Ew.

Back at work, I ripped off the wrapper, cracked open the chocolate egg and guess what I found? AN AMAZING TOY! It was a monkey stamp and it was soooooo cute!

Both Monkey Stamp pics taken from here.

Anyway, remember those packages that I was talking about in my last post? Well, I received my swap from Yumi last week! It was a pretty exciting event, although a little disappointing after I thought about it.

Swap from Yumi

The reason I say that my swap with her was disappointing is because I spent about $135 on a dress that she wanted. I had waited since May for this package to arrive because she was apparently really busy (traveling and having fun). Although the items that she got me were really nice and amazing, I honestly don't think they add up to the $200 value that she wrote on the package. Plus, I think she usually just swaps away things that she doesn't want anymore since she has a huge collection on flickr. Not that I mind, as long as I like the items. But this time, I don't think those items are worth $200. On top of that, I had to pay custom duties and taxes of $30 when I got it. >:|

I received this swap about a month ago from another girl, her name is Ashley and it was freggin' amazing! She basically bought everything that I wanted!

Total kawaii awesomeness!!

And finally, because I managed to find time between that project and studying for the midterm, I took a picture of me and my sister's current arpakasso collection. Yaaaay! Those things are so damn cute and addicting, it's like drugs, except for the cute part, drugs make you ugly and nasty, so don't do them.

The cherry ones are my sister's, except for one of them, we traded a lace and a cherry, and the rest are mine.

We also have mini arpakassos! Blue Ribbon is my sister's and the other two are mine.

I have to go review my notes for my midterm today. I really need to do well on this, wish me luck!

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shopping goodies

It's been a good week so far. Yeserday, as Alex and I were getting into his car, he went to put his schoolbag in the trunk and threw a package at me. IT WAS THE ALPACAS!!!!

He had ordered some super duper kawaii alpacas for me and they finally arrived! I was practically bouncing in the car. Here are the contents.

Two of these; orange and green. Highlighter colours, as my sister said.

These were for my sister. He ordered for her and she paid him back.

But the cherry ones, my sister gave me one of the cherries and I gave her one of my lace ones, that was in one of my previous posts. I believe she gave me D.

Today, I met up with one of my cousin's friends who visited her in NYC (omg so jealous, I want to go to NYC) and she brought back the Longchamp Hobo bag for me. It's way cheaper to buy things in the States than in Canada and especially since I have someone who lives in the States now, I can buy as much as I want and just ship it to her place. She always has friends visiting so they can bring things back for me. Except I'm not making much money now so I need to control myself.

I love this, the main reason I bought it was so that I can have a practical and good sized bag to bring to Asia next year. But I'm going to wear it as an every day too.

There was also a package that came for me on Friday but my mom forgot to tell me until yesterday. I hope it's the swap package that was mailed out to me last Wednesday. I did a swap with a girl on flickr and I had sent her stuff back in May and for some reason, it took her forever to this done. Don't think I'll be swapping with her again. I had previously swapped with her and she sent an amazing package. Let's hope that this one will be the same.

As requested by Vermillion, here a two more pictures of my previous alpaca purchase. I'll definitely take more pictures once I have more time. Remember that stupid project that I talked about? Well, it's still taking over my life. Two more weeks until the deadline. And I have to study for a midterm for the same class.

Finally, join this contest so that I can have a better chance of winning. Except don't because that'll actually decrease my chances of winning.

And love and adore my dog, Obi. He orders you to, you can't disobey this cuteness.

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a shitty way to be fired

This morning, I had about 15 minutes to spare before heading on the metro to catch my bus to get to work. The reason, I don't get to work early, because the doors are not unlocked until 9 AM, on the dot. If I get to work before then, I just wait outside the building so I might as well arrive on time...or late. Alex and I went to Starbucks and I had ordered their Peppermint Moka. I'm not a coffee drinker but I will drink starbucks only because put so much crap into their coffee that it won't taste like coffee anymore. It was so yummy, minty and chocolately, absolute love. Also, they totally busted out their Christmas decorations already and it felt so festive. I went to Starbucks with a friend yesterday during a break and that's when I noticed that everything was all Christmasy. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Makes me happy just thinking about drinking this.

In other news, I've been trying very hard not to pay anymore cute things because I don't make nearly as much money as I used to. I used to work two jobs, one as a medical secretary and the other as a private tutor. Both jobs paid really well but I've lost both of them now. I lost the medical secretary one because the department got a new manager since the old one retired. She restructured the whole department and basically told me that they wouldn't be needing me anymore. But they called me back in August saying that they needed me to come in for a few weeks to replace someone. I was tempted to say no because "they didn't need me anymore," but I wanted some extra cash so I swallowed my pride and said yes.

The tutoring one, how it ended was infuriating. And still is. It's a bit of a long story but here it does. I had worked for that family for three years. Every day for the past three years, from Monday to Thursdays (sometimes Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays), I'd go and tutor one of my boss' two sons, or both. Now, his older son is extremely smart but lazy. He won't ever study unless he has a test coming up and he makes a lot of reckless mistakes when doing his math problems. Normally, I'd tutor his sons from 4 PM until 5:30 PM unless they needed me to stay longer to help with projects, exams or they just have too much homework (which is often the case). This past spring, I would finish my 9 to 5 job, then take about an hour of commute to his house and tutor him for about an hour before going to kickboxing on Mondays and Wednesdays. The other days of the week (usually including Fridays), I'd tutor him until 7:30 PM. So basically, I'd extend my work day to help his son prepare for his exams.

After his oldest son's exams, I e-mailed my boss to ask about his results. Apparently, they weren't too great and he had asked for my availabilities so that we could meet and discuss on ways to improve his son's results. This was during the middle of summer, and I replied with my availabilities. No response. In August, I sent him an e-mail asking about his son's progress with the summer math package that he had to do (my boss had told me about it in a previous e-mail). He told me that his son had been doing it regularly and he asked for my availabilities again to meet and discuss with him. Gave it to him again. No reply.

September rolled around, and he never called me to work (he usually does by the end of August). I thought it was because it was the first week of school (and both his sons are now in high school) so I didn't worry too much. By the third week, I was getting worried. But decided not to contact him until later. By the end of September, he e-mailed me telling him about his son's dismal results of the math re-test (he had to work on the package during the summer and take a test at the beginning of the year). He told me that his son has been working with another tutor (red flag) and that the tutor was sure that his son knew the material well. This is basically what I had told his dad (my boss) for the past three years. There was only so much work that I could do with his son. I gave his son exercise sheets that he had to do during the weekend, or work to do when I wasn't with him but he would never do them. I told his dad, his grandmother and even the housekeeper about this and asked them to remind him. His dad did tell him to do it but wasn't making any precautions to enforce it.

Anyway, his dad continued in his e-mail saying that he had asked his son to bring the exam home and that all three of us can go over it. Asked for availabilities again. Gave them, standard response, which was none. He also told me to tell my sister (who had been tutoring his younger son for the past few months so that I would dedicate all my time to his oldest son) that he "promise[s]" to get back to her and he hasn't forgotten her. He never e-mailed either of us back ever since.

I had basically given up hope by October but I decided to send him one last e-mail, asking him if he still needed our services. Not surprisingly, he never replied. Needless to say, I am uber pissed about this. Yes, it sucks that he most certainly hired another tutor but that's not what pisses me off the most. The worst, absolute shittiest thing that he did was not even bother telling me, in any shape or form, that he did not need me anymore. I spent 3 years of not only tutoring his sons, but also babysitting his daughter and her friends every Friday, by playing soccer with them, staying late when needed (sometimes to 8 PM), house sitting when no one was able to, taking care of his daughter and her friends during her parties, coming in on Fridays when needed, canceling my weekend plans when he asked me to tutor his son (the morning of, mind you), attending parent-teacher meetings with him. Don't tell me I was not a good employee to him. I did over and above my call of duty for him and his kids. I did all I could to help his kids improve their grades but I am not their full time tutor, I have a life of my own (although I limited it greatly when I was working for him) and I cannot be with them 24/7 to make that they do their extra work or when they write their tests. His kids were pretty much a priority while I was working for him, I never took days off to fucking study for my own midterms and exams until the past year for Christ's sake. I fucking deserve to be told that my services are no longer needed, instead of being cast aside as a dirty rag. I feel insulted that he didn't even bother to tell me but instead, lead on about all this bullshit about meeting him to discuss this and that.

I thought I knew my boss, especially since I had been working for him for 3 years, seeing him almost every day. He never struck me as the bullshit type, especially since he's the CEO and founder of many big companies. And I am surprised that he can act so unprofessionally and still be an important part of management. But people are always full of surprises.

What sucks even more, is that I didn't properly say good bye to the kids. You grow attach to them when you've been seeing them every day for 3 years and especially the oldest, who I believe sees me as a friend. He tells me about his day, his life, and his friends. If I had known that I wouldn't be seeing them anymore, I would've said a proper good bye. But you can't change the past, so with this post, I can finally let go of his insult and move on.

In other news, this is so damn adorable. It would be the perfect case for my camera!

Cute little dinosaur! Buy this for me! You can find more adorable cuteness here.

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