Origami Elephant on my Ukulele

What it says in the title.

Today's BEDIHT is a quicky, as I'm about to go out for my friends birthday dinner! I'm sure you guys have had enough words to read on my blog from yesterday. Hope you guys enjoy these pictures, even though I couldn't get the focus exactly where I wanted it and they are by no means perfect!

See you tomorrow,

Rebecca x

I'm thankful for...

I feel like I haven't written a talky-talky post is quite sometime, so I am going to do one for today's BEDIHT (Blog Every Day In Half Term). On Wednesday, my friend Stripeytofu, wrote his post: "I'm thankful for...", and I'm going to write my own version of it in response to it.

WARNING: THIS IS A WAFFLY, BADLY STRUCTURED AND A MARATHON OF A POST, SKIP TO THE BRAIN AT THE END FOR A SUMMARY

My Parents:
Obviously my parents are who I am most thankful for, as most people would say. This is because they are usually the people in the world who  teach you some of the most important and basic skills required for a successful life: what is right and wrong; how to converse and communicate and how to look after yourself, so hopefully one day, you can leave the nest, live your own life and pass on these skills to the next generation - it's basic biology.

Now as for myself, I may not have a story as poignant as Stripeytofu and even though I may have not appreciated it at the time, I am eternally grateful for what they have taught me and done for my upbringing.

• Independence
• I personally think that I am a very independent person for my own age (you can be the judge of that). This is mainly because my parents have given me so many opportunities to explore the world by forcing me do things, which to begin with may feel scary, but is something vital to learn. For example, I have been to a variety of places by myself, plus I also went on a plane to Finland for the first time when I was 11, which at the time, was really nerve racking, but now I know how to navigate an airport. It has taught me try new things, take the risk and not be afraid.
• I also think that this independence has made me very self-motivated. I strive to achieve, not because my mum is going to shout at me if I don't, or to impress to parents, but for my own satisfaction. Even though perhaps, deeper down that may be still a reason, but it is not the sole reason. If I achieve an A* in an exam, I don't go telling my parents, or anyone else for a matter of fact. I try to be pro-active as possible, and find my own opportunities, than relying on other. 
• Eek, I just realised these two paragraph makes me sound so egotistical and I hate talking about myself, so don't judge me And no, I am not using reverse psychology.
• Appreciating other cultures and travel
• This is something that is a huge part of my life, and is something I am extremely, extremely thankful for. Being a BBC means that I have been able to appreciate two different cultures, and my parents have done very well to try and bring alive my cultural heritage. We go on holiday almost every year to a variety of countries. These holidays, however, are never just sun bathing on the beach. I always manage to learn something from these holidays to places of cultural/historical importance. I feel like appreciating other cultures is absolutely imperative for the future as the world is becoming increasingly globalised, and multicultural. Cultural understanding and acceptance is the key living harmoniously together (I sound like Confucius or someone!). I am going to write a more in depth post on this subject later this week, as I feel like a measly paragraph cannot do it justice.
• Obviously, I am thankful that my parents have the time and money to take me on holiday, as I do realise that lots of parents aren't able to do that, so thank you!
• Modesty
• This is almost a paradox by saying this, but I thank my parents for making sure that I'm always modest - lol, what a hypocrite.
•  Violin lessons
• Again I am not attempting reverse psychology or anything, but I do not think I am very musically talented in anyway, at all. Why are you grade 8 violin I hear you ask? Well, I think it's simply because my parents have been sending me to music lessons since I was 7, and I practise (sometimes!). This is all thanks for my parents, especially since music lessons are so PAINFULLY expensive.
• Taxi driving
• Some of my musical activities are very far away, so thank you Dad for driving 60km a day for a week, for my music course! Also, I must mention that my school is 15 mins away from our house and there is no bus, so thank you for driving my sister, others and I to school every day for the 11 years - now that's dedication.
• Having a love for food
•  Something that is a HUGE part of my life is - of course - food. My parents have taught me something, which I am SOOO grateful for, and that is to not be picky with food. I can honestly say I am probably the least picky person you could ever come across. This is probably because I love food so much and that my parents fed me some food from a young age, which you guys may find rather bizarre/grotesque/stomach turning, but I find delicious! For example, in this week alone, I have eaten frogs legs, pigs ears, and fish cheeks.
• Culinary skills 
• My mum is a whizz in the kitchen and has passed on a few tips to me about food preparation, but I really hope to learn as much as I can before I leave for university.  

The Internet: 
We are the first generation who cannot remember a time without the Internet, or a personal computer, thus in that sense, I am so grateful to live at a time in history when technology is so quickly evolving and changing our lives.

Why it's so cool:

• If anyone has any problem they need solving, type it into Google and BAM, there you go, an answer in around 0.15 of a second. 
• They say the uprising and revolutions in the Middle East were catalysed by social media via the Internet. 
• Over 35 hours of video is uploaded to Youtube every minute.
• Imagine if North Korea had the same level of technology and accessibility to Internet as South Korea, and everyone suddenly became computer-literate, what would happen?
• We can't deny that we do enjoy those Internet memes such as the troll face, nyan cat or rickrolling. 

 

What optimises the Internet - in my eyes - is that there is freedom of speech, and when there is opposition against it, such as SOPA/ACTA/PIPA, a huge backlash is prevalent. That is why I do believe that when governments do block/regulate the internet (such as the Great Firewall of China), it can be so detrimental. That, and also the fact that it does enable opposite sides of the globe to be connected in milliseconds, linking into the ideas of increasing globalisation and other points I mentioned earlier.

Anyway, I enough about all that deep stuff. I really should do some more research before these types of posts - I don't claim to be a expert in this topic! Back to what I was getting, I am also so thankful for blogger, as doing BEDIHT, has made me realise just how much I enjoy doing it, and being able to express my views online, even if no one is reading it.

Future Posts:

• Being a BBC (British Born Chinese)
• Drinking culture vs Food culture
• Cultural intolerance and Stereotyping
• (They sound so lame, but they will be enlightening!)

Okay, that was a really long post. Sorry if my writing and grammar is a bit flouncy and incoherent- I am in a weird essay writing mood (what has the world come to!) and I think I went off on a tangent on quite a few subjects. I am a pseudo-intellectual, at least at the moment!

In summary, I am thankful for my parents for teaching me everything I know, and the internet for being awesome. 

Hasta la vista,


Rebecca x

P.S. CONGRATS if you've gotten this far and the entire post, you are a true fan!
P.P.S.   Support me by following via Google Friend Connect
P.P.P.S Create a bookmark of ScatterrBrained, to stay updated to the posts, simply drag the image below onto the bookmark bar above your tabs. Please do this as I spent yonks making and editing that tiny image - time to learn how to use Photoshop/Gimp etc!
P.P.P.P.S I probably have missed out lots of words etc. in this post, but my eyes are going funny from after staring at this screen for 2 hours, so I'll proof read it later, and you can giggle and laugh at it for the moment being. 

Profiteroles

Today, I decided to make profiteroles with my awesome friend MP. After the first few steps, I must admit, the choux pastry looked absolutely vile, but in the end it turned out pretty ay-okay.

The finished product!

Here is a video I made of the entire process! 

Here is Youtube video that I got the recipe from.

 
And lastly, here is a funny video about profiteroles. 

I now realise why no one ever makes profiteroles by hand. They are probably the most tedious and ridiculous things to fill with cream and dunk in chocolate - especially since ours were so diddy. Nonetheless, they tasted very yummy!

Unhello,

Rebecca x

P.S. I am uploading this post at 00.14pm, so technically I have broken my Blog Every Day in Half Term, which sucks! However, I got home at 10.30pm, and since then, I've been attempting to upload this video onto Youtube, which has decided to be a bum and keep crashing when reaching 93% uploaded. I also posted twice yesterday and I've also got another 2 planned to write later today, so please don't be too angry!

Stop Clownin' Around

WARNING: NOT SUITABLE FOR THOSE EASILY FRIGHTENED 

Party-pooper

Obligatory Camera Shot

~ BONUS NUGGET OF KNOWLEDGE ~

Did you know the fear of clowns is know as coulrophobia, as coulro- means stilt walker. In 2006, the British arts and music festival "Bestival" cancelled its planned clown theme, after many ticket holders contacted the organisers expressing their dismay. 

Two posts in one day - I'm on fire!

Adieu

Rebecca x

P.S Sorry for the rubbish pictures, still haven't worked out a method of taking pictures of myself.
P.P.S Sorry if I have scared any young children. Clowns have always been creepy.

Arty Farty

Since I didn't take Art GCSE, there aren't that many chances to express my own creativity. The good thing about half term, is that I have more time to do things that I normally wouldn't have to do - being creative is one of these things. It is quite a time consuming activity, so usually end up starting something and never finishing it. Today, however, I thought it was time I changed this and actually finished some of the "projects" that I have started in the past.

 

 I started drawing this on MS Paint on my laptop during a 14 hour plane journey to China last year, as I was honestly so bored. I just copied this model from my magazine very tediously using the touch pad. I never finished the rest of her body though, so I did that today. I made up the shoes, as I've lost the magazine I copied it from, but I think black and white brogues work quite well.

This is a pencil drawing of Daniel, which I started more than a year ago. It's of a photograph I took of him, but I have since then, lost it the image, so I just made up his clothes and half his hands.  I was going to do a background to it, but I got lazy and gave up. The more I look at it, the worse it is... I wasn't sure if I was going to even upload it, but oh well. I wish I was better at drawing.

So those are two things that I completed today. As I was searching them up, I came across these Tim Burton Mad Hatter inspired images that I did with MP. I'm actually happy with how they turned out, I really want to do something like that again - my face painting skills must be getting a bit rusty!

The Making Process

I forgot how epic the eyebrows were

Farewell!

Rebecca x

Favourite Youtubers

I was going to write a boring post about trains today, but then instead I thought to myself, who cares.... I'll do one of about my favourite Youtubers for BEDIHT day 3!

I far too much time on this website, as I am sure you do too. I am subscribed to almost 300 people on it, even though I have recently decided to unsubscribe to as many people as possible. It's just too tempting to click on a video on the subscription list, and then spend half a day going through all the videos on the channel. Plus, alot of the people that I am subscribe to, no longer interest me since my taste in videos have changed.

I think I first started watching Youtube videos in 2007-ish. This was when I first started getting into make-up and beauty, and at this point the beauty community was much nicer, less bitchier and I felt like I was actually learning about it from the videos. I am still subscribed to loads of those beauty "gurus", but I find that some videos are so repetitive, really poorly made and often unrelatable. There are make up artists (such as Lisa Eldridge) who have decades of professional experience in the trade making videos; I don't need a 14 year old girl to teach me how to do my eyeliner too.

Anyway, here are my favourites:

KickThePj
I think that his videos are all so fantastically animated, drawn and edited- it is obvious that alot of time and effort have been taken in them. And those eyes!
Favourite Video?

It's so peculiar, I love it!

brettdomino
Brett Domino and Steven Peavis are the epitome of cool. Geeky is the new sexy.
Favourite Video?

grav3yardgirl
I think that this is one of those beauty channels that I was just ranting about, but I think Bunny has to probably one of the funniest people I have ever come across on all the interweb. Plus her eyes and shoe collection is absolutely awesome.
Favourite Video?

I don't have a favourite video - all of her videos make me feel happy - but is a random recent one.

sortedfood
I think I can thank Sorted for helping me improve my culinary skills! Plus, whenever I watch their videos I get so hungry!
Favourite Video?

This simply because I use this recipe so often for an instant chocolate cake!

ClothesEncounters
If I had to only watch one channel, this would be the one that I would chose. As you can probably tell at the moment, I am really into thrifting, fashion and clothes and Sarah has a fantastic sense of style. It's so inspirational.
Favourite Video?

This is by no means my favourite video since I love all of their outfit videos. I want some disco pants, plus all of Jenn's platforms! I do miss Sarah's presence in their videos though. :(


I realise that probably not will be interested in quite a few of these channels, since they are often quite specific, but I hope you got something out of this quick blog post!

What are your favourite Youtube Channels? Tell them me in the comments. 

Tah-tah for now.


Rebecca x

Camden

Today is day 2 of BEDIHT*, and the first phase of "Outings with FC" - we went to Camden for a spot of shopping and generally being tourist-y. I was going to take my camera to take some cool hipster photos (sarcasm), but I forgot.

Note to self - tomorrow, I am going to be a good blogger and actually remember to take my camera with me.

Random Stock Image

I caught the 12.44 train to London Euston, which I met FC on, and they we got going into Camden. I've been to Camden a number of times already, and I swear I enjoy it even more each time I go. It is honestly such a tourist location, but the further you go exploring around it, the better it gets.

Why it's such a tourist location:

1. The shops - they are all identical in Camden Lock!
1. There are literally so many of the same shops, which sell the same sort of merchandise, such as: 
1. Printed tee-shirts which say have very un-funny slogs on them such as "i-pood" or "addi-hash", along with some terrible quality hoodies and souvenirs with the Union Jack plastered across it, usually sold by an Asian man (not being racist, merely an observation).
2. Stretchers/plugs/tunnels and other body jewellery, sold by some foreign dude.
   
3. Printed floaty vests and off the shoulder tee-shirts of fruit and animals, being sold along with fob watch necklaces and dangly earrings by a Chinese lady.
4. Incense, tie-dye clothes, shisha bottles and "cocaine" lollipops & other legal highs sold by a man with dreads.
2. Probably the greatest tourist location in Camden is Cyberdog: a shop with blaring rave music, UV lighting and very cool dancers on a platform. Probably, less that 5% of the people who go in there actually buy their items of neon rave clothing, so that may be why all the other smaller nicknack's are so ridiculously prices, in order to cover its huge electricity bill.

1. The food stalls -  so obviously targeted towards the tourists. Most of them are Asian take aways, offering a variety of deep fried chicken, smothered in fluorescent sweet and sour sauce, and MSG. They offer free tasters by shouting at you through a microphone,  which usually taste deliciously addictive, so you end up buying a portion of the food. This usually tastes quite good, whilst you are eating it, but afterwards, you finally realise how salty and the amount of unidentifiable chemicals that were probably added to it, thus end up feeling rather nauseous. Well that's just my experience. 

1. The crowds - they are ridiculous! If you go on a weekend, like what I did, it is usually flooded with mainland European tourists. It can be quite squishy just coming out of Camden Town station, but having gone to night markets in Taiwan, I'm used to the squeeze!

Obviously, I don't mind that Camden Lock is pretty much a huge tourist destination - after all, the last few times that I have visited Camden, I have been a tourist! 

Why I like it so much:

1. It is a melting pot of so many sub-cultures, ethnicities, and styles. 
2. It is absolutely ginormous as the stalls seem never-ending.
3. Camden has some amazing vintage shops. 
1. I have really been loving vintage clothing and there really are some amazing shops, where you can get good quality, stylish apparel for decent prices. I bought a teal, oversized demin shirt for only £15 (even though it does smell rather funky, but nothing that a quick wash won't fix), but I really want to go back for some vintage Levi cut-offs, a really furry jumper and a farmer jacket. Looks like I'm going to have to come back again soon.  Also, all the people who worked there are seriously well-dressed and good looking.

In conclusion, I really do want to go to Camden again asap (maybe again in half term) so I can simply have some more time to have a good rummage through all the lovely vintage shops, as I have decided from this day forward, I am not going to buy anymore boring clothes. Moreover, I feel like I still haven't been to every single stall/shop there is there, as it is so big, so I want to get to know where all the good shops are.

If you want to go yourself, I advice you to on a week day where there will be not so many people, and also try not to be lured into the yummy foods - you'll regret it later!

Plus huge thanks for FC for being such an awesome person - we have such good organisational skills, since we planned this last night at 10.30pm.  Looking forward to phase 2 of our adventures; I wonder if there will be a nice old lady on the train next time.

So that's what I did today, what did you do?

Cheerio!


Rebecca x

P.S. Will start doing more fashion based posts soon, as I have literally been so inspired!
P.P.S. There are loads of other places I want to go in London for some more shopping: 

• Spitalfields Market
• Brick Lane
• Covent Garden
• Portabello Market

*Blog Every Day In Half Term

The Woman in Black

Yesterday, a group of my friends and I went to see "The Woman in Black" in the cinema.  Firstly, I would like to express my dismay at the extortionate prices that multiplex cinemas seem to be charging nowadays! Now that we are above the age of 14, we have to pay adult peak prices for tickets, which turned out to be £7.95 each. The price for concessions is slightly less at £5.75, but apparently, that is only for children under 14, OAPs and students - which we don't count as being, since we aren't university students (ridiculous!). I have decided that being 15-17 is a terrible age as you still don't officially count as an adult, even though you have to pay the ludicrous prices, as some of my other friends and I once found out when we attempted to buy a family ticket instead. The price of popcorn and other confectionery is just as preposterous - £2.50 for a scoop of ice cream my arse.

Anyway, for the actual movie itself, it was okay. I really detest Daniel Radcliffe - he's like a middle aged man trapped in a teenager's body - but I suppose he was bearable in the film, even though it wasn't a particularly taxing role to play, since all he had to do was creep around the house looking anxious. The film seemed to be mostly filled with lots of scares and things that would make you jump, instead of having the story line as the main focus. My friend who went to see the theater production said that the story line was particularly chilling, especially the ending, but this wasn't the case in the movie. Instead, the most prominent feature of the movie was the use of camera trickery to create all the scares, which was enhanced by the horrible, suspense-building background music.

I would be lying if I didn't say that it kinda freaked me out. There were so many scares which were so obviously coming, like when Harry Potter was looking into the room which had Lucy locked inside, or when that bird randomly flew across the screen and the dog barked. They are the types of scares that would make you jump as they would build up by slowly increasing tension, which was suddenly broken by a loud noise, but, they aren't actually that creepy. However, I think the most chilling things are when you half see the actual woman who is haunting the house, such as when you saw her blurred in the rocking chair, or behind the spinney thing. Her scream is also horrible, but apparently in the theater production, it is so much more ear-wrenchingly loud and blood-curdlingly piercing. I really want to see it in the theater!

There are most probably way more scary moments in the movie, since I spent quite alot of the most frightening moments not paying 100% attention, as it was so creepy. In retrospect, it's quite funny really, because during the really horrible scenes, it seemed that everyone had adopted a different method of hiding from the scary parts. (See if you guys can work out who is who...;))

• I sat side way, and watched the scary parts with my peripheral vision, so I could easily look away
• One friend had her coat on backwards and but it over her head, then used the sleeves to block out all the sounds
• Another friend closed her eyes and hand her hands over her ears
• Another friend buried her head in her scarf
• Another just simply put her hands over her face
• One attempted to look at her phone to distract herself from what was going on onscreen. 

I wasted far too much time drawing this...

So yeah, it was all in all a good movie! They attempted to make a "happy" ending, which sort of worked, I suppose. I recommend you to go watch it, just not by yourself! I want to see it again too, simply so I can watch all the scenes that I missed.

Good bye,

Rebecca x

P.S. Today is the start of BEDIHT - Blog Every Day In Half Term. Huzzah. I'm not really sure what I am going to write about, but it shall be fun. Click follow on Google Friend Connect for a new post everyday.