Hello world. This is Hannah reporting in from Dubai Airport, where there’s wireless – but what is the point of wireless when I can’t find a power outlet and my laptop battery is dying?!

I have a looooonnnggg wait here, I got in at 3.15am and my plane isn’t set to leave until 9.50am. The gates don’t even open til 8-ish so I’m stuck on a seat in the middle of nowhere trying to get comfortable. Too self conscious to sleep, but sooo tired I might just accidentally slip. My laptop should manage another half hour and then I might go down and look for some magazines to read!! Hopefully Dubai has US Cosmo mag’s, because I hate the stuff they print in the UK. Any magazine that at some point has had Jordan on the cover is trash in my books.

The flight was okay. Looongg and I didn’t get a window seat because it was so ridiculously full, so I kept leaning into the aisle and having to wake myself up to rearrange my sleeping position. I managed to stay awake through the whole of Blades of Glory and Freaky Friday (embarassing guilty pleasure), am saving Disturbia for the flight to London

Dubai airport is like a big mall, and everything being duty free makes me want to buy it ALL because it seems like such a bargain!!! But it isn’t really because when would I ever under normal circumstances buy MAC cosmetics?! Little student budget = drugstore makeup.

I’m going to search this place for super super cheap things because it’ll give me something to do til my gate opens. Bargain hunting + Sega emulator fun as long as my laptop lasts.

My nose is hurting me

Technorati Tags: Dubai, Airport, Transit

So, at the moment I’m back in Kuala Lumpur, where my summer began. I got in late last night and I have to leave again at midnight tonight! So I have just a day here to shop around, get random things because it’s the last time I won’t have to worry about crazy exchange rates killing my spending capabilities.

At 2.15pm on Monday afternoon I’ll land in Heathrow (hopefully, if nothing goes wrong!) and Matthew will be picking me up at the airport. I haven’t seen Matthew in almost 4 months, to say I’m a little nervous is a bit of an understatement. But I had my hair cut last week, and I have a stash of new clothes, painted nails and flashy new accessories, so hopefully he’ll be too distracted by the shiny new things to point out any bad changes!

I lost 2.5kg over summer, most of which I’ll probably gain again when I get back to Scotland! My body goes into fat-producing overdrive because I get so cold.

I’m looking forward to getting back just because I feel like my life has more purpose when I’m at university, like I know what I’m meant to do – work. I don’t like just lazing around, I think I’m actually incapable of relaxing. I’m always unconsciously making lists of things to do in my head, and whenever me and Matthew decide to spend money on a nice meal out, or he wants to get me a present, I start thinking about the opportunity costs.

I can’t wait to see Matthew again! Will update early next week – and with pictures of my last few days in Brunei and random snaps of my time in between there and the UK.

Technorati Tags: Kuala Lumpur, Travel

I’ve gotten hooked on articles in the news about fashion & style. Before it was just the occasional scroll through Makeup Alley, and reading hair tips on madradhair. Now I read the style articles on the Washington Post and the NY Times – articles about clothes I can’t afford and makeup trends that my eternally young baby face can’t pull off. It’s so frustrating but I can’t stop reading it!

I read an article in the NY Times about a hair assistant’s first experience at New York Fashion Week, and she mentioned trying to emulate the hair style of rich preppy girls, much like the ones I go to university with at St. Andrew’s.

You can be sitting next to a girl in a 9am lecture and her hair will be messy. 7 hours later when you walk past the same girl in town just as you’re leaving Tesco’s with armfuls of groceries, looking disheveled because of the coastal winds, she’ll have the same hair she had in the morning. It’s just the right kind of messy and it never changes; if there was such thing I’d call it the perfect mess. But that’s a bit of an oxymoron isn’t it?

It bewilders me.

Me, being blessed with naturally curly hair, trying to imitate the preppy messy look in the comfort of my own room almost always ends up with me resembling cousin IT from the Addam’s family.

The question that’s going to bugging me for the rest of tonight is: Is there a secret hairstyling cult that girls get to join in preppy high schools with a how-to session on cute messy hair, or is it just a whole lotta hairspray? I really want to know how to get it right!!

PS: Congratulations Kendra on the birth of your beautiful baby boy Aiden!

Technorati Tags: NY Times, Style, Hair, Messy, Preppy, Fashion Week

I like it better than Rihanna’s.

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Technorati Tags: Mandy Moore, Umbrella, Cover, Mp3

FRIDAY: On my last day of work, the last time I get to dress for work for a while!

The last time I’ll be seeing the morning sun at 7.30am in the morning too.

A little late, but it’s my last day!!

SATURDAY: Bringing our four kittens to the vet now that they’re 2 months old. Lucy panicked and wouldn’t stop crying and hissing at the other cats who were carried past her, so we had to bring her to the back office and I had to make her calm down.

Look at those sad eyes, she was so frightened of the vet’s waiting room!

Got Lucy to sleep and Jazz and Shia started screaming instead. They just wanted cuddles. Both asleep.

When we got home we found Mikey on the patio table, the chair’s not comfortable enough.

Got a new jacket from the mall at 50% off! SUCH A STEAL + mandatory bubble tea.

Beach trip photos coming in a private post.

Technorati Tags: Photos, Cats, Kittens, Scenery

A week ago I posted about how much I loved Britney’s new single?

I still do love it, and it could have been her big break… but then the VMA’s. WHAT?! I’m a huge Brit fan and even I couldn’t watch

[Washington Post article]

[YouTube vid]

Technorati Tags: Britney, Gimme More, VMA

We were eating dinner tonight (mmm chicken and mashed taters) and we got to talking about toys we used to own when we were kids! They don’t make toys half as cool as the ones they used to, even though the ones now are all computerized and techy.

I LOVED MY CHILDHOOD TOYS!

I like walking down memory lane (like I’m that old) so I’m going to dedicate a whole blog post to my 5 favorite toys of my 80s/90s childhood!

5. Finders Keypers (Snail)

Okay, so Fancy wasn’t really mine, she belonged to my older sister, but I liked her a lot. She was completely pink and had one long chunk of pink hair coming out of her head.. which is weird because it was just one long piece, like some sort of samurai, and she was a snail.

I learnt how to braid my own hair from always braiding her hair, but I could NEVER figure out what the little animal who lived inside her shell was??

WHAT ARE YOU?
(from Ghost of the Doll)

4. Play-doh

NOT ONLY did I have 2753624542 little tubs of the stuff, I also had a machine that made play-doh cookies and noodles. Despite it being ridiculously salty and tasting a bit weird, I ate LOTS of it when it was in cookie form. Definitely not for kids like me who have a tendency to eat whatever they find.

Not a joke, I ate a piece of lizard poop while my mom (or dad?) was videotaping me as a toddler. Someone rushed in from somewhere offscreen and fished it out.

3. Babyface (So Sorry Sarah)

(from Babyface Dolls)

Her hair went green because I washed it with my blue J&J Baby shampoo and it stained We had 5 of these dolls; So Surprised Suzie, So Shy Sherri, So Funny Natalie (got stolen when our house was robbed), So Delightful Deedee and my Sarah.
I loved the little hearts that came with them! When you warmed them up they revealed cutesy messages! And their diapers. When I was a little girl, being a mommy was an obsession. Diapers made things more realistic.

2. Cupcake doll (Purple grape girl!)

(from Cupcakes Dolls)

The smell under their skirts was amazing, which seems very rude now, but back then nobody thought that way. The ’80s, a time of innocence and pure minds. HAHA.

…

Anyway, I had the grape cupcake doll. Inevitably when you give an under-10 a doll with very long hair, the hair gets overbrushed, frizzed and tangled… and then the doll is no longer attractive. Interest in this case completely ran out when the doll stopped smelling like grape and I lost most of her accessories.

1. SEGA MEGADRIVE

When my dad first brought this home, I didn’t know what it was. And he played it all night and it seemed so new and so advanced, us kids had just been given the most technologically advanced machine we’d EVER seen, and it was GREAT!

(from Wiki)

I quickly turned into a videogame addict, which would explain my very bad eyesight and my embedded geekiness. My favorite game of all time, and one that I still can’t finish even on my Sega emulator is…

(from Wiki)

I used to be able to get up to the stage with yellow webbing, now I can’t even make it past the third section of the graveyard stage, DAMN BODYLESS GHOULS.

IRL news, I got a haircut. My hair was getting way too long, and so tangled. I’ve had people say they envy my natural curl, but you seriously don’t know what I have to deal with every day

I got bubble tea because haircutting day is a happy day and must be celebrated.

It’s blowdried straight at the moment, and I just never realized how little hair I actually have.

I’M PRACTICALLY BALDING!!!!!!!!

Tomorrow’s my last day at my internship! I’m so excited because it means only a week left til I fly back to the UK, and just about 2 weeks til I actually get back to my uni! I met one of my future flatmates off facebook and I’m so excited to meet her in person in a few weeks.

I HOPE that I like all my flatmates equally this time. I think everyone noticed the tension in our flat last year, it just got a bit too much towards the end.

Off to bed, don’t want to be late on my LAST day of work! Last i.e. done with i.e. stopped i.e. over i.e. FIN. YAY! I am a free girl again.

Technorati Tags: Toys, 80s, 90s, Finders Keypers, Babyface, Dolls, Cupcake, Sega, Playdoh, Hair

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I love this song.

I’m biased because I’m one of those hardcore Britney fans who disregard every negative article about Britney in the tabloids, and then fawn over every complimentary one.

This song is going to be my morning work-prepping song for my last week of work

As I come to the end of my summer back home, I actually physically ache to be back with Matthew, which made me realize that we have been doing long distance ever since we left high school, with the exception of a year break from end 2005 to mid 2006, because I just couldn’t take it.

Sometimes the long distance is severe and sometimes it’s just being in different regions within the same kingdom, but either way, we live a hell of a lot further away from each other than most other couples I know, and we’ve managed to carry on this way since we were 17 (I turn 21 next month).

We’re not perfect (I don’t think any couple can say they are without lying) but we have lasted and we’ve both always been faithful. That being said, I now present to you Hannah and Matthew’s LDR Survival Tips (essential reading before you venture into the unknown).

Matthew says ‘Number one – force your boyfriend to write your blog with you’. Meet my boyfriend, Matthew the whiner.

THE REAL LIST

1) Love, beyond reasonable doubt
Stable grounding before you embark on something as challenging as a LDR will increase the chances of your relationship surviving it still intact. Make a point to get to know each other as well as you can, and be 100% sure before you commit. Matthew says embarking on a LDR is similar to ‘the initiative black ops team being uncertain about being there, and in the end the mutant zero snaps and kills them all’ (ONLY GOD KNOWS), whereas I would compare it to starting up your own business – risky but worth it in the end.
Which brings me to my next point…

2) Respect your differences
When you live so far apart, and sometimes even when you’re together, you and your partner will have different interests and be involved with different people. Matthews likes comics and RPGing, I enjoy going out dancing and shopping. Not to say that I put my social life before Matthew, but everyone needs time to develop themselves as an individual as opposed to being the other half of a couple.

3) Relationship transparency
NO GAME PLAYING. This might work and may have gotten you together in the first place, but emotional game playing in a LDR is very dangerous because you’re doing it on very shaky ground. No to mention they’ll have to deal with it on top of the emotional stress of being so far apart. It’s just not nice.

4) Honesty
Arguably another component of transparency, it’s important to encourage complete openness. Realize that everyone makes mistakes, and make sure he realizes this as well. Don’t take this as an excuse to start behaving badly, but if you do happen to slip up, I’d say its better to admit it and deal with the short term anger than shoulder the burden for the rest of your time as a couple.

5) Keeping it ALIVE
Long distance relationship’s are only as boring as you want them to be. Keeping things interesting with the smallest unexpected gestures, whether it’s a short phone call when they’re not expecting it or a huge hand-delivered bouquet of flowers, can make a very big difference and can reinforce your love for one another.
A real life example; I was once craving chocolate (as all girls do) and Matthew got 2.5kilo’s of my favorite Cadbury’s Shortbread chocolate delivered to my door via Tesco’s online shopping service. Not the most expensive gift ever, but the thought he put into it made it one of the most romantic.

As added encouragement, check this out;

• [LINK] Approximately 7 million couples in the US ALONE, consider themselves in a LDR, and the marriage rate for couples in a LDR are between 10-16% (high!).

Technorati Tags: Long distance, Relationship, Matthew, Tips