Graduation

Few days ago marked the end of four years of work. Which is apparently celebrated by dressing up like a bunch of cultists, listening to a long list of names, shaking hands with important people and paying £60 for free champagne! Go figure.

Wearing academic robes made me feel uncomfortably like an overgrown bat. Substantial +int aside, the hem repeatedly caught the heel of my shoe, filling my head with horrible visions of flying across the stage and destroying a VIP's ribcage on impact. After flapping on over to the Royal Albert Hall, it was quite a struggle to get anywhere, since the way was blocked by what appeared to be half the population of China. We eventually squeezed through and sat down in the hall, which was buzzing with excited conversations and camera flashes.

A hush fell across the auditorium as a man with a massive, sparkling silver and gilt mace (seriously, what were the stats on that thing?!) headed a procession of various important members of the college, most of whom were unknown to me. After some speeches, row by row we were led to the stage to have our names called out, walk across the stage, shake hands and head back to our seats.

My visions of horror did not come to pass, and I am proud to say I managed to avoid bashing my face in on the floor in front of a whole crowd. It did, however, turn out I was insufficiently broad in shoulder to support the robes, so I managed to graduate with my robes halfway down my side. Messy? I prefer 'interestingly windswept'...

But overall, great success! Congratulations to the class of 2012!

Hair VS heat: The Final Showdown

I've never needed straighteners, because I've got pretty typical Asian poker-straight hair - very obedient, falls down like a ruler within 15 minutes of me getting out of bed. No comb, genetics only, Final Destination. Pretty low-maintenance. But I always found curly hair more interesting! Grass, greener...

I decided to break out my curling wand and curl the ends the last time I went out, for Japan Underground. As someone with low heat tolerance and a tendency to drop things, twirling a superheated stick millimeters from my face isn't really my idea of a great time.

Well, the obvious happened, and below you can see the full extent of my horrific burns.

The doctors say they can probably save my cheek, but the
eye is gone forever.

After some great leaps forward in medical science, this happened:

Curly! Or curli-er at least.

Ponytail, formulated for  less pulling by unruly and slightly drunk friends. ;w;

Having learned from the mistakes of twintails at the last Japan Underground (i.e., my friends start drinking and attempt to make me into a helicopter) I put it in a sort-of-side-ponytail, after Serah from FFXIII. It looked like this for roughly 15 minutes. Then my hair grumpily decided it had had enough of this 'curly' business and swiftly downgraded its status to 'wavy', shortly followed by 'barely kinked'. By the morning, it was 'straight, yet with a hint of crispiness from residual hairspray'. Very sexy.

I like how it looks, but it's a bit of effort, damages the hair, playing with cattle brands is scary, and at the end of it all, I seem to lose it very easily. Next time I will try it with more discipline (actually pinning it up once curled, etc) and armed with industrial-strength hairspray.

It seems that this is a distant dream.

Japan Underground: Girl Rock Night!

miette-one

33Insanity'sVertebraの真野 希

 Yesterday, there was another Japan Underground event (so soon, so soon!) billed as 'Girl Rock Night'.

I was a little late and missed all of the first artist and most of the second. The third, miette-one, had dreamy vocals drifting over bleeps and bloops from the music maker on an iPad. A little bit of melodica and keyboard at points, along with a game of じゃんけん with the crowd. It was all rather cute! She threw four CDs into the crowd at the end of her set. Well, I say threw, but they really didn't make it far - Marvin, Matt and Anders each got one, so the furthest only made it two rows back! Heehee... flunked sports, maybe...? (Like I can talk.)

So that was all well and good, but I was sort of wondering where the 'rock' part of the Girl Rock Night was - but then the last act, 33Insanity'sVertebra took the stage, and the night kicked up a notch. Everything was suddenly very, VERY loud! Their show was great fun, the music got the crowd going and cheering for an encore. Unfortunately we missed out on her CD giveaway, those things vanished before I even knew they were being given out.

Managed to snag a photo with the vocalist, Nozomi. She's pretty! And I like her fashion sense and hair. :D ♥

(Pictures in this post shamelessly stolen from Marvin, some BW'ed for consistency!)

To heel!

So yesterday, I was woken by a deafening 'BZZZZT'. In a blur of confusion, I stumbled out of bed, into a T-shirt and worryingly loose jeans, hurled myself out of the door and galloped down several flights of stairs to let the waiting postman in.

Exceeeeept there was no postman, because someone else had let him in first. So my haste in descending far too many stairs while clutching desperately at my baggy waistband was all for naught. But no matter! I have received SHOES.

Ankle boots

Mio cosplay shoes

The first was warm grey ankle boots. The second were some black dolly shoes for my (hopeful) October London Expo cosplay of Akiyama Mio, if I manage to finish sewing her dress.

Both of these have heels, which is something I'm not used to. I'm not exactly at baby giraffe level with them, and have never fallen over. But at the ripe old age of 22, I've still only worn heels before three times. The first two occasions having been about 10 minutes each, before I decided I'd rather chance the broken glass and alcopop residue from tipsy 18-year-olds. (Why I let myself get peer pressured into the end-of-secondary prom is one of the greatest mysteries of my life. ಠ_ಠ)

So I have started heel training, which basically consists of going about my everyday business in the flat, except in heels while thinking 'Heel, toe, heel, toe...' Maybe it will become natural and I will avoid ending up flat on my face in public at some point.

I will be satisfied as long as I can do better than this poor woman.

Winter is coming.

Soft soft scarf!

There's a chill in the air! And a lot of rain, because British weather is glorious.

Which means that for now I'll probably have to say bye to my beloved stockings and miniskirt for now. Or at least layer it up more thoroughly, which is my current tactic before the snow and ice hits. Adding a jumper, a knee-length coat and swapping the thigh-highs for tights makes quite a bit of difference. And a scarf! My current one is very soft and warm.

I should probably buy some boots though, to replace my previous knee highs which suffered catastrophic zip failure at some point. It's annoying though, dunno how long it'll take to find ones as good as those at a decent price.

In other news, my list of things I want to make is kind of racking up - sometime I'll try making the school skirt from Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai!, as it's just my style. I've never made a skirt before, but from the looks of it, it's not very hard at all.

Now to just finish two entire cosplays first. No big deal, right?

Dragon Blades and Wild Dogs

Had a good day at the Troc the other day. Since I was ill I wasn't going to step out of my comfort zone too much, but my DDR highlight was clearing Dragon Blade on Expert on my first go. A nice bridge to harder things, with a decent enough pace and intuitive steps. And no crossovers, because I can't manage them yet. I hope to get good at that one!

I was pretty happy about being at the Troc because it meant I could play Time Crisis 2! I spent my youth longingly watching people play it in seaside arcades. Since then I've played through the PlayStation version a few times on infinite credits, but have only ever managed to give the arcade version a go three or four times. The machine said £1 a play, but bizarrely we managed to get 6 plays out of our initial £2 - it seems it was actually 50p play, with an extra credit left in the machine? With three continues between us, we managed to complete the game, plus Isao got a shot at single player afterwards.

I found it a bit strange that most of my damage was inflicted by blue guys that got lucky, rather than bosses? I don't think Wild Dog even managed to hit me once, but several random grunts shot me in Stage 2, sending me to my death VS the man mountain who enjoys swinging entire missiles.

(Incidentally, I checked out what happened to Wild Dog in Time Crisis 4, and he has tractor beams on his arm. Tractor beams.)

And I also got to eat what's basically my favourite dish at Ten Ten Tei, サーモンいくら丼~! >w< Nyaaaa, it's sho goooood. <3