I'm aliiiiiiiiveeeeeeee.......

It's me!

Honestly, I don't even know if there's a place left for me on the blogosphere but I want to try this thing again, I really do miss blogging. I have been low-key Tweeting for the past week or two, and recent bookish events have reignited my passion for book blogging. While it has been wonderful to be free from the clutches of blogging during this crazy busy last almost-year I really want to fall back into a routine with book blogging. Despite all the tedious editing, hours spent writing reviews and fine-tuning typos and weird HTML glitches (courtesy of Blogger >_>), it was really fun being part of a larger bookish community.

For those who don't know me yet, I'm a now 24 year old paediatric nurse living in Sydney, Australia. I am an ABC (Aussie Born Chinese) and still really don't care for eating rice, serve me pies and burgers over rice any day! I love honest and realistic contemporary YA more than any other genre, though I also adore historical fiction, high fantasy and basically anything that pulls me in with an engaging plot and/or sympathetic characters with whom I can feel a strong connection. I would also love to one day finish writing a novel.

Since my last blog post in August 2016, I have travelled to New Zealand with my boyfriend, travelled to Japan by myself and started a new job (another paeds nurse gig). I'm currently between semesters for my grad cert in Paediatric Nursing. Of course, I have done more, but those are the big things.

I have still been reading during my time away from the blog and maybe I will post reviews of some of them sometime in the future -- we'll see how this goes. I'm not expecting too much. All I wanted out of this blog from the beginning was to get my voice out there, in my own little space. So be it if my words reverberate and bounce off these walls, echoes reaching out to deaf ears (or in this case, unseeing eyes).

If you have managed to make it here, then welcome! Please comment - I promise I'm friendly! I might even follow you back. :)

It's going to be okay. (+ Harry Potter movie!!)

I'm not really in the mood to even attempt a vlog for this week, so I'll do something next week for y'all.

I'm not sure how I feel about being so personal on my BOOK blog (my only blog) , but I feel the need to lay it all down.

Okay, so my formal for year 12 is on Tuesday. Bottom line: I went with my sister to the shops to get some help with all that beauty crap. You know, hair, makeup, whatever. What do the shop assistants say? They point out all of my shortcomings, speaking as though I'm not even there, topping it all off with, once my sister says that it's for a year 12 formal (I was furious by that time), "Wow! You're still a baby!" I don't think I've ever felt so inadequate before.

I just hate how there's so much pressure for girls to look a certain way: plump lips, shaped eyebrows, straight hair, tall and skinny figure, long nose . . . the way our society is now, girls and women are just, by default, expected to be as such. What if being "beautiful" by their definition isn't top priority for me? What if I just want to throw something on and go? I'm not trying to impress anyone, so why have I allowed them to take away my sense of pride in living outside the lines?

Thankfully, I've been given some time to myself, and have just been browsing around. I feel better, thanks to a few Yahoo answer pages and Youtube. Here are some links for whenever you're having a rough day, if you're feeling "ugly".

SONGS

A MORE BEAUTIFUL YOU by Jonny Diaz
Song | Lyrics

BEAUTIFUL SOUL by Jesse McCartney (laugh all you want)
Song | Lyrics

BEAUTIFUL DISASTER by Jon McLaughlin
Song | Lyrics

BEAUTIFUL by Christina Aguilera (of course, and yes, I bawled my eyes out, and also did so when Mercedes sang it on Glee)

Song | Lyrics

BLOGS

http://missjadedvixen.blogspot.com/

I love this blog. She's a fellow Aussie, and she posts really cool stuff.

Body Love | Mermaids vs. Whales

http://www.beautifulyoubyjulie.com/

Also Aussie. This one is moreso on loving yourself. I just found it.
Smiling Through the Staring | Self Love Lessons | Pressure on Women | Perfect

http://yaoutsidethelines.blogspot.com/

Yes! This one is book-related! A bunch of authors who live their lives outside the lines! ;D

If you'd like to send more links and stuff, please send them along. You can never have enough of this stuff! Especially in this day and age, when "beauty is everything", but remember: Beauty is skin deep; only inner beauty can stand the test of time. Stay strong and who knows? Maybe Definitely things will get better.

Don't worry. These kinds of posts will not happen often. I'm hoping this will be the only one. I think my posting this, even if no one comments, will allow me to just accept what is. I am blessed with what I've been given, and nothing that anyone says should affect me. Now that I've come to terms with this, I think I'm going to go crack open a book or something. I'm hoping The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams can pull me out of what you might call a "reading slump".

On a much more awesome note...

Who here has watched Harry Potter 7 Part 1?  How intense was it? I watched it 12 hours after it came out. :) Though if my friends weren't huge HP nerds I wouldn't have seen it so soon. I'm now determined to finish off the series. I quit at Book 5, because it's so long, and school got in the way; a few months later, when I wanted to pick it back up, I'd forgotten the whole beginning and gave up. I'll pick up Harry Potter again when/if I finish reading Jane Eyre, which won't be for a while.

Anyway, I liked the overall mood of the movie. From the beginning, the first 10 seconds, you knew that this was going to be a bone-chilling experience. I like the tagline "It all ends here". I really can't wait to finally get to the end and be able to compare book with movie.