This week has been so busy!

Thanks to everyone who commented on the last post, I went with the red one for the Petronas CEO's luncheon and then the white top and batik skirt for the Vietnamese Prime Minister's talk at the Empire. :)

AND! I've bought my birthday dress! I'm turning 21, and Matthew's going to be staying up in Scotland just for my birthday and we're going to make a trip to Dundee with whoever's back in St. Andrew's for freshers week and I'm going to be wearing THIS!



I love it.

I wore a black strapless dress last year with a frilly bottom, and I ALWAYS wear black so I wanted something a little different. I'm not going to use the ribbon that comes with the dress though, I'm going to look for a big chunky elastic black (or gold) waist belt or am going to get a big (or gold) made out of stiffer material than the ribbon in that picture, so it holds the bow's shape a little better. And because I'm me, and it's become my thing, I'm going to have a ribbon round my head.

I'm not going to party for my birthday til the 26th though, even though my birthday's on the 21st! Because I won't be in St Andrews til the 22nd! The 21st is going to be me and Matthew's special lunch, fruit and juice in the park and lots of hand holding day. I really miss him.



It was his birthday two days ago, and I felt so bad for not being there.. because there was no one around to make his day big and special! Matthew's a quiet guy, I don't think he even told anyone there was anything special about the 16th. So we've decided it wasn't his birthday, and his birthday is the day after the day after I get back. I'm going to make breakfast, we're going to sit in the park and he can read while I eat nectarines, we'll have a nice dinner and then we can slow dance in his room to our favorite songs (almost the entire Sleepless in Seattle soundtrack haha).

Other than work, I'm trying to brush up on my PHP coding. I haven't done proper coding in ages, and even then; when I properly ran my domain normal HTML was a lot more common than PHP. Its things like div layers replacing table layouts that confuses me a bit. But I'll get there.

Back on the 1st of September!



I'm going to be keeping this LJ open to be able to read my LJ friends' journals, madradhair and ONTD. And for the occasional very private post! I'm also going to be cross-posting, but disabling the commenting here.
I'm excited. pamela, daylatefri3nd & snuubbly are you coming? :)

Tomorrow the CEO of Petronas (Malaysia's biggest petrol-based company, I think) is going to be our guest of honor at a luncheon. The dresscode is supposed to be business attire, meaning suit, but since I don't have a suit they've said okay to my baju melayu. I'm only working the registration table anyhow so it's not like I have a huge role to play in things.

SO! I need opinions. Which looks best?

I probably won't get any comments before the luncheon anyway but JUST in case!

Red with orange.





Purple on white.





Black top with batik skirt.







White top with batik skirt.





Comment away :)

I don't like waking up in the morning, I like late lie-in's and waking up to the smell of lunch. My mom thinks I'm really lazy, but I just enjoy sleep.

I sleep like a mummified dead person. I have to be entirely covered in blanket, from the tips of my toes to the top of my head.. it's weird but it works!!

Enough blabbing, it's 5 minutes to 8 and I'm not even in the car yet :)

I got the confirmation of hosting email today!!! This means all I have to do is bug my dad to revert my laptop Dave back to XP and then technically I'm off!!! Although knowing me, the whole design + coding process will take a while.

I got a few sponsors, very generous ones! And now it's just down to getting my Vista switched back to XP (my notebook does not have enough RAM for this shit) and reinstalling my Adobe and getting to that designing.

Signed up for a new domain, just because it was free with the hosting, although I can't decide on whether I'll use that one or my current one (fivestoriesfalling.net), so what do you guys think?

xhannah.net OR fivestoriesfalling.net

the first one sounds kinda iffy, but I like that it has my name in it.

Pamela, Cat and Kiki (and anyone else who used to own a camgirl blog), come back with me! It used to be so big and so much fun, and I think there are a LOT of people who prefer our personal blogs to big money-based paysite things! It would be amaziiinng.

I WANT MY ACTUAL DOMAIN BACK.

It's really annoying because I know LJ is pretty customizable but I hate LJ coding. I think it's unnecessary complicated, I'm too used to Wordpress.

I miss the days when camgirl wasn't a term synonymous with softpornstar, and when it was a really tight knit community! Most of us have disappeared now or become more risque, which I would NEVER have the guts to do. I found Kiki again (after a while) and she's been missing her domain too! I want to bring everyone back, I miss it so much!

Today I had to go to work. I hate waking up in the morning, this morning I woke up when my alarm went off, walked out to the tv room, and went back to sleep. I had a dream about pirates and organizing pirating zones so pirates wouldn't have to fight each other anymore and then I woke up and had half an hour to get ready for work :(

Spent most of the morning working on calling people and faxing, but the reason behind it is TOP SECRET because it hasn't happened yet (I signed a non-disclosure agreement, so I'm bound to it). So as far as all you guys know, I fax and phone, this is my job.

Then I got home and was sleepy so I tried to nap but couldn't because the ants bother me. Every few seconds there'll be one on my arm or leg and it annoys me so much. The heat in Brunei is something else that annoys me, why does Brunei have to be SO CLOSE to the equator?! And why do I have to have been born here?! It's so hot I can't stand it.

Look what I got.



I read really good reviews of it on here, and I got my dad to bring back some from KL because I couldn't find any shops selling the new formula here. It better work because it costs about 10x the amount of the Herbal Essences Totally Twisted stuff I usually use. I tried it for the first time yesterday and all I've noticed is it makes my hair BIG. Like my hair needs any extra volume, I hate being naturally curly, at the same time I'm not brave enough to permanently straighten my hair in case I hate that too. I'm just fickle.

I think this is really sad. It makes me feel so guilty because it's like they're paying for us trashing everything around us. I love animals, I think articles like this, more than the warnings about pollution or things like Live Earth, really push me to make an effort to be a little more environmentally friendly.

It's not like I'm environmentally UN-friendly to begin with! I don't use plastic bags unless I really have too much to carry. I refuse to drive (because I'm scared) but it counts as saving on carbon emissions, no? AND my cats poop in the garden and it helps the flowers grow :)

I hope my contribution to the world's supply of organic animal-based fertilizers cancels out the fact that I fund giant environment destroying multinational corporations because I'm a typical consumer driven girl in her 20s, or my future kids will have it in for me.

So I started my internship this Monday at the Brunei Economic Development Board, finally something to do! I work normal office hours, like a normal office girl - which is a drastic change from my summer routine of waking up in the afternoon and watching TV all day (I now am a very big fan of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, and I LOVE the Coco Can Can).

Like starting all new jobs, the first few days I was really nervous. I'm VERY bad with names and extremely shy around new people so being thrust into a whole building full of new people was very extreme. I've been working for a week now though and I'm getting a little more comfortable around people, the occassional shy giggle. I'm so lucky I have a tan in Brunei so it doesn't show when I blush. During my nocturnal days in Singapore I lost my tan completely and Ridzwan used to make fun of me going very red whenever I ate something spicy or said something ditzy.

Today I worked at the Youth Day event at Brunei's Indoor Stadium.. not as busy as I expected, but that's probably because I forgot how Brunei is on Friday's. It was a lot of fun though! We had a few other organizations set booths up around ours and the people were really friendly, so I had fun chatting to them and found out a lot of the places they worked at and what they were promoting. I was at the BEDB booth with one other employee in the morning, and then another person in the afternoon.. being in a one-on-one situation with people is a lot less nerve-wracking so I actually spoke and was a lot more comfortable, and I got to know them better, which was really good :) They're very nice! It's just working in an office you don't get to interact with people that much, except for the ones who work directly around you. So I only knew these two girls in a hi/bye kinda way. I like them a lot now tho :)

And now it's officially the weekend! I never thought I'd look forward to the weekend so much, but after a whole week spending most of my day in an office environment, I'm so ready for the break. I'm looking forward to cooking this weekend! I've invited my cousins and their family over for dinner on Saturday night and am going to attempt an entire Middle Eastern menu (ooh). I tried the hummus at our last major family dinner and it went down well, so now I'm adding:
- Tabbouleh with feta and avocado
- Grilled chicken pita with mint yogurt sauce
- Grilled red peppers brushed with olive oil and herbs, and
- Baklava

i love cooking. I'm not great at it, but it's pretty decent home cooked food (when I don't mess up). It's a really good form of stress relief too, which is why I do it twice as often during exams, for my flatmates. Late night studying is so much more bearable when you have cookies and cake. On the other hand... losing weight is so much harder when you have cookies and cake.

On a side note: I'm trying to get my proper website back. I shut it down because maintaining it was way too hard without a laptop (I lent mine to my sister for a year because she needed it more than I did). I'm looking for sponsors because I'm a student and am financially stretched enough! It's US$60 a year, even partially sponsoring it would make a big difference, and I'll give you credit of course, and a perm. link if you own a website too. If you're interested, email me hannah.zaman@gmail.com.