darksunmoon

If I ever sold or bought any lolita items to or from you, you may leave me some feedback here. Thank you kindly! :)

Ok, so my friend recommended a website to purchase antique and vintage kimonos for really cheap and I caved...

Here's my haul:

( Kimonos and accessories for MECollapse )
( For my friend JFCollapse )

If you wish to purchase some for your own, here's the boutique's link: http://www.net-shinei.co.jp/com/index.php

I had a pretty eventful month of December:

We had a couple flooding events in the restroom at my job on the same weekend that some brawl took place in the waiting room by my office and some hoodlums stole our TV and cable-thingy's remotes.

I lost my wallet, then Dad lost his 2-3 days later, we turned the house upside down for a whole week and we found no trace of them both. Finally, the owner of the convenience store across the street came to return mine that one of his customer had found (must have dropped it while walking back with my milk bags; I had completely forgotten I went to buy milk after having been to the grocery store...). Dad is having all his cards re-issued because his didn't magically turn up...

I've been to the medical clinic 3 times; first two times for an ear infection (the 2nd round of antibiotics and corticosteroids finally prevailed! ) and today because I suddenly had lumps behind my head, around my nape. Swelling and hurting like tonsillitis, but but on the rear of my neck instead of in my throat... I also had red plaques that were pretty odd. Doctor gave me a form to get further tests on January 2nd, and said I'm under surveillance/observation for now, it's definitely not an allergic reaction to my antibiotics, but probably more along the lines of mononucleosis... Hey, I might wind up having my official fibro diagnosis sooner than I thought...

You know something I have noticed I find absolutely astonishing these past few years?
Everytime my birthday or Christmas comes around the corner, being asked "What do you want for a gift?" totally leaves agape.

The truth is: I have no clue what to ask. "Would that be an unreasonable request considering my friend/family member's current budget? "
My best friend (who's a strong-silent-sporty-geek type) told me last summer, a few days short of my birthday "I would have bought you lolita clothes, but I had no clue about how to shop for that!"

I felt kind of like this: (Dobby's POV, that is...)


But it's still as mind-boggling a question as being asked to describe myself in words for a job interview...

So, for those of you who might have missed my previous posts; I have a new job. For a couple months now, I have been dispatching taxicabs.

Want to see my "office"? ( pictures are here!Collapse )


I guess you managed to gather from the pictures that this place isn't very modern... In fact, my maternal grandfather used to work for the same company in the same building when he started working in like... 1940-something? Except for a few paint jobs and changes of flooring, it's pretty much the same old stuff that's always been around... Heck, there's still a basement that's dug straight in the dirt, no cement/concrete foundation or anything... The doors and stairs have been built by standards that have gone out of fashion longer than I've lived...

Basically, my job is to answer the phone and dispatch calls to the cabs who're free and in service. To keep track of who's in service or not, who's busy or free, I have these little numbered wooden blocks and "poles". There are two zones, what's downtown (south shore and all that's southwards from Dessaulles street) and what's uptown (north of Dessaulles street). If say, taxi number 14 is available to take calls, he tells me which zone he's in and I put his block on the right side of the "pole" besides the correct zone, between the checkered poles. If I send him somewhere to pick up a customer, I either put his block in the middle section if he stays in town or put him on the top checkered right-side part because he's in service but out of town/where the CB waves can't reach. If the taxi driver is not in duty, his or her block remains in order on the left-most side of the poles, in numeric order. If the cab is available but currently at the carwash, gaz station or busy eating or on the minivan for people in wheelchairs and other medical conditions or for job-related functions at one of our 2 stands, I turn his block to the side where the digits are red and he keeps his priority when he comes back...

But that's a real quick summary of it; there's a bunch of rules that seem easy to master but it can mess everything up when you try to actually apply them when you're working... But I guess they like me; I got my own shift of 4 days/week, keys to the president's office (to pick up faxes and make photocopies) and lots of good comments even though I mess up sometimes...

Summary of costs: LP : ¥15,000 + shipping = ¥ 18,500 =>$241.61 CAD (Exchange rate: 1 Canadian Dollar = 76.5696 Japanese Yen )

Customs fees: $77.09 CAD

Total: $318.70 CAD

( other pictures here!Collapse )

Sorry I did not write up in this thing much lately; I've been really really busy...

Why?

I had 2 jobs for a while and yesterday was my last day working at the Café-Bistro; finally free!!!

What's my new job?

I'm now dispatching taxi-cabs in my hometown. I work afternoons (2-10PM) and when everybody's vacations are taken, my normal schedule will be 32hours per week, Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, so I will have weekends and Wednesdays off for gallivanting, shopping, sewing, going out, dating, reading, catching up with writing my blog, etc...

Oh, and another perk: I can wear lolita or whatever I want; life is sweet. The pay is slightly better than my previous job, but no fancy insurance plans or anything special in terms of retirement funds and other conditions...

I bought a lot of things for cheap on Y!AJ this spring.
Unfortunately, 3 of them that I was excited about are too small for me. Please disregard the black tank top I'm wearing underneath; I got too lazy to put on a bra in this heat (26°C at 1am is pretty darned hot to me!).

( Click here for moreCollapse )


I'll post an other update soon about other things I wish to tell you guys about and probably my Meta LPs when I received them some when around next week...

I know I have a couple events to talk about, yet, but I dunno where to start so here's this to keep you a little entertained...


( quizzCollapse ) * * *

Here are pictures of how I dressed yesterday. Please forgive the mess, it was when I came back from a long, long day.
After my job, we were supposed to go see the new PotC movie with Shima, Shigeki and other friends. Saru, a new guy on the forum who just came from France for a year on a work visa met me at L2 as we were supposed then. I was happily surprised, he was much friendlier than I had anticipated and he looks really cute, too!

Some of my friends from the south shore that I hadn't seen in quite a long while were there and we had a long chat with them. One of them had to move to a new town because his house was near the Richelieu river and it's still flooded because of the whole Lake Champlain spring flood thing. So he moved to St-Jean and he's near the military college and he says it's kind of annoying because he hears the choppers fly by all the time.

When they left, we called Shima to know about their plans and Shima said to go to his place and we'd all leave from there. So we went and took the bus to go to Shima's place. We met middle-aged guy named Serge who was from the same region that Saru/Romain is from and we chit-chatted until his top. It was funny because he had a mixed Québecois and Southern French accent! When we got to Shima's place, the landlord answered the door; they had left about 20 minutes before we got there. I got a voice message on my phone from Shima saying they were already at the cinema and to call him if I needed directions. Only, when I managed to reach him, they were already in the theater watching the movie! Grrr... So Romain and I tried to go back to the Quartier Latin cinema instead, but their last showing was at 10PM and it was already nearly 11. So we tried going to the Starcité and the ticketbooth had been closed for a couple minutes and the doors were locked. No luck! ?

Well, Romain stumbled upon a Twoonie (2$ coin) on the ground as we headed for the Starcité's door. He managed to snap a couple night views of the Olympic Stadium that's just beside the cinema to send his folks back home. He says they've been pestering him for pictures all week! Then we wanted to go grab some McD's, because he used to work for them in France and it was on our way to his youth hostel, but it was all full, as usual on a Friday night, so we wound up at Double Pizza having poutine (not so yummy because the cheese curd had more of a cottage cheese texture, I wanted Squeek-squeek-cheese!) and I found a loonie (1$ coin) on the bench as I got up to leave. We had lots of fun, but his eyes were starting to go awry because of his lenses and our brains were starting to not quite follow the conversation so we decided to call it a day and go to bed. He went to his hostel and I went back to Berri station, then took the subway to Longueuil and then the last bus home. PotC will have to wait! Maybe I should ask Carl if he wants to see it at the cine park...

Outfit of the day:
OP by Angelic Pretty, courtesy of my friend Maki miracleshopping who finally got around to shipping it to me last week, after the whole tsunami/flood/moving around ordeal. Thanks, Maki! :)
Petticoat by h.Naoto Frill
Bloomers (not seen on pictures) and knee-high socks by Bodyline
Headdress: random bridal decoration found at DollarMax
Chocker by Moi-Même-Moitié, it used to have a pretty little rose above the cross, but I kinda broke it trying to wash the sweat of the ribbon one day. I'm still trying to find a new rose the same size to repair it!

Coat by Algonquins, pre-loved by my friend laila_astri. I'll take better pictures next time, I promise! And not at 2:30am when I just got back from work and just transiting around Montréal all day.

So, what have I been up to this past month?

Granny Aurore took a fall down her bed so Mom, me and Uncles and Aunts took rotations taking care of her, well, it was mostly me and Mom, My cousin Claudia sent in a couple meals she prepared so that we would only have to heat it and serve it, but Grandpa wasn't so happy about the spices she used... My grandpa is quite the pampered pet; he doesn't eat plain rice, but happily enjoys Rice Crispies squares, rice soup, rice pudding,  cigares-au-chou ( ground meat&rice balls in tomato sauce wrapped in cabbage). He won't eat it if he knows there's onions in it (if you don't tell him, he'll eat it and find it delicious, though! ). And he has only one hand as the left one was wrapped in his umbilical cord when he was in the womb. So I made them very simple things and they loved it. But I used to go eat with them as a kid, so I know a lot more than my cousins do about their eating standards, I guess. Grandma was eating soup, mostly, and it was very fastidious at first because the bruise was in the back of her ribcage so getting up to eat was very painful. I managed to work out a manner to lift her up on her pillows without crushing her or risking dropping her so from then on, she felt safe enough with me and was pretty much ok but she was arguing a whole lot with Mom when it was her turn because Mom hadn't gotten the "touch".

On Sunday mornings, Grandpa goes to help out in Church to prepare things for mass so I was staying with Grandma while she watches some other mass broadcast live from Montreal on national TV.  One day, they had this ecumenical meeting one in a church in Israel with all the different branches of catholic religion represented by a preacher. They spoke in about 20 different languages, a lot I hadn't heard spoken ever before like Hebraic or a pre-Arabic dialect spoken in Iran which's name I forgot and the usual French, English, Latin that I'm accustomed to . They prayed for the unity of the different churches  and communities and for once in my life, religion felt like a good thing. I wish they'd broadcast more like that. I feel like promoting peace that way is way more in line with the teachings of the Bible than all the mindless arguments between people that have already lasted much too long.

I'd gotten a job and I wasn't so sure I was going to like it. I ended up depressed because I felt like  wasn't being respected there but they were all trying to be nice and sugarcoating me into staying, so I did. It had been three weeks. On the last Monday, we had a wave of cold and snow storms and all. The place got really cold; it had bad heating, they were renovating the whole place, the office is part of the sales department display shop and the plant where they cut and assemble and store materials and they have those huge garage doors open to received and ship merchandise often... The water in the toilets froze. I was also freezing, I worked with my coat and boots on all day. My office was located at the front, in a bay of  floor-to-ceiling windows, surrounded by counters and more windows and the entrance door.  The lady providing the very lame and unclear formation had caught a bacteriologic bronchitis the previous week and I thought I was coming down with that because I was coughing and sneezing and my chest started to hurt. On Wednesday, I decided to call on a doctor to have it checked as I was awoken in the morning by a sensation that I would describe has having a 300-pounds guy sitting on your chest and sawing your ribcage open. I barely managed to speak; my voice was extinct and was out of breath like I'd run the marathon. I called and left a message on the company's answering machine saying I wouldn't come in to work that day, that I was going to the doctor's office.

So we left, Mom and me and drove to the "sans-rendez-vous" (which means "no appointment required") clinic. I got in the line and due to the really bad weather, although I arrived too near the 8am opening, there was still not that many people. The lady at the counter told me my appointment would be at 2PM. It was Mom's day of the month to have breakfast with her retired friends, so we went by the Mike's restaurant to wait for them, sitting in the car. They were to meet at 9. There was no one there. Mom thought they wouldn't show up due to the weather and drove me back home. I took a bath to try and feel better. The training lady called and threw me a fit and I told her that I'd left a message to say I wasn't coming in because I was going to the clinic. She was clearly pissed and wanted me to come in until AT LEAST 1pm. I told her I was not in a condition to go and that my mother refused to drive me there in the country on un-snowplowed roads (it was very very slippery everywhere in town and we almost had an accident spinning on a corner when she braked). I was out of voice and energy, I couldn't argue much, I was pretty much on the verge of fainting but I insisted I would not go to work until I was confirmed I was not contagious and could go to work.

The doctor told me I did well to come and have it checked because unlike what I thought, I didn't have a bronchitis but a much worse case of pneumonia (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumonia if you don't know what it is). 5-10%people who get it risk of dying of  complications, it's pretty serious. She signed my medical certificate thing to say she FORCED ME to take the rest of the week off as it took 48 hours into the medication to make sure I was not contagious (pneumonia is not always contagious) and prescribed me Bioxin antibiotics, 2 X 500 Mg pills is considered a single dose and I have to eat when I take them. Monday, one of the other ladies I wroked with was going to be in Jamaica for her vacations so I made a point of showing up, regardless of the fact that my physical condition would have liked me staying in bed more. Well, they fired me, for catching a disease in their wood dust filled cold place that could have ended up in me dying if I didn't get proper medical treatment. They exploited me to move and sort their things around in all that dust and now that I got sick because of their abuse, they fired me!
I'm better off that way, I don't want to work in a company where you're just a bunch of figures and not treated like a decent human being should be treated. Health is more important than money, especially when you're a single mother and your kid has no other parent (a.k.a. dad) to keep standing by his side if you die.


So now, I'm in a phase where I'm kind of angry at the whole world for not realizing that we're in 2011, the Berlin Wall and the World Trade Center have come undone and things have changed, but unfortunately, a lot of people's personalities have not evolved with their times; they are still as unhealthily close-minded and intolerant to differences as their uneducated great-great-grand-parents were. I think it's unacceptable, but I'm stuck to live in this world... I'm not sure how I'll get by, but I know that somehow, I will...
In a world that supposedly fights for the defence of freedom yet refuses to acknowledge that you have the right to express your freedom of expression through clothing or hair...


So anyways, that was my January for you...

January:Celebrated Shima's Bday, Went to see Under Aspect playing live, saw Guns N'Roses's (my favorite band ever) first live in Montreal after the 1992 riot incident on their tour with Metallica, work, work, work

February: QC-Harajuku Meeting III ; Work, work, work
 

March: Nick's Bday, Dad's Bday, Work, work, work...


April: Easter, Grandmas's Bdays, work, work, work; Unicorn got fired, Khanh and Afshan were hired, Pomme & Leo broke up.

May: got inspired to design lolita, started wanting to learn drums, had to move my sister's stuff from her ex's place to my folks', got offer to work for a taxi company & had a hair color dilemma...

June: Went to see Miyavi live with Odore & her friend, Shima, Shigeki, Akuryou and Setsu; Fell in love with "Taste of Korea" restaurant in the Pacific Mall, work, work, work; sister got back from Japan and started living at her bestfriend's... Went with Nick at La Ronde amusement park a few Saturdays, Celebrated Ste-Dolorès with the other QC-Harajuku lolitas
Photo credit: Shikisai Maki getoutofmyband 
Photo cxredit: Yukari/ Caroline Tremblay


July: saw Iron Maiden live with Bureau and we're still laughing at Bruce Dickinson's Google-translated-French; work, work, work because everyone else is on vacation!

August: Lost my keys+bus pass on the 2nd of the month (still haven't found them!)got into an argument with my mother because to me, sleeping was more important than having my birthday celebrated, bought myself a cellphone, went to Otakuthon with Ami & Li and all, partook in Benji's mass photoshoot... Work, work, work
Photo credit: Ami B./ aionwatha Photo credit: Jo Gorsky

September: Quit working, started resting; much needed, saw Parapraxis and 3Starz live, went to the JumpStart Club's J&K-pop event and I thought I was gonna die there, it was so cramped and hot. Weekend Rouge exhibition in the Parc Les Salines with my family. Sister's bestfriend decided to no longer be friends with her because of the way she treated him; sister lost her parking pass...


October: Saw X-Japan live in Toronto (but Shima changed his mind about accompanying me because his work demo was more important and blah blah... ) Meet new metal-loving friends, traded clothes with Kissumi, Lolita Bowling, Saw Project Versus's first live with Daimon Hellstorm as their new frontman, Frère André was appointed Province of Québec's first saint, sister moved in with a Japanese French-bakery worker roommie, Nick cut his foot open by kicking the glass part of the bookshelf near his bedroom because he did not want to go to sleep... Spent 6 hours in the ER to get 4 stitches

With Shima after the X-Japan concert (Shima was attending his nefew's baptism)
Photo credit: LittleFallenFairy/ Jennifer LaHaieNovember: airing of the documentary on QC Lolitas[ darksunmoon.livejournal.com/70684.html / darksunmoon.livejournal.com/71668.html ]; Went to drop and pick Nick from school by car with mom everyday, it was really hard making him let go of the crutches when it healed... Went to a job interview that yielded no result... Fell in love with Kpop girls group Orange Caramel...

December: Shopped for Xmas, kept job searching, spent time watching K-dramas not to get too depressed from lack of social life and lack of events...
Sister got a new BF, he's 24, he also studied guitar and they met in Japanese classes to get ready for the JLPT N2 test... Got selected for the 2nd round of interviews for a job that won't happen until January 11th...

Is it me or is 【PaRADEiS】's singer trying to channel matsuro0069  ?



Maybe it's just the "eyemake", but it struck me!


And for the record, I also think he's 10times cuter than An Café's Bou!

This week, I watched Road No.1. It's a Korean drama. It's pretty different than the dramas I usually watch; this one is about war.

It's a subject I usually avoid. I'm the kind of person who is against the whole deal of having armies and wars; I always considered it the failure of intellectualism and blamed it mostly on lack of education and of knowing better. When you talk to milicians, they're such dogmatic people that somehow, that in itself scares me more than the thought of dying or suffering. Now, I don't mean any disrespect to these men who've been defending freedom and all, just that I wish freedom was not in need of being defended. I wish that deep down inside, each and every human being could cherish it enough not to feel compelled to take it away from other human beings...

But back to the drama, now! I started watching it because is it starring So Jisub as the leading man. I loved him in Sorry, I Love You and in Rough Cut. He always plays strong silent type guys and he manages to make me fall for them every time! Also, the other leading man, Yoon Kye Sang is also an handsome and able actor. The drama has this really heavy war atmosphere, heavier even, I'd say, than in Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima (starring Kazunari Ninomiya who's totally brilliant in this role and Ken Watanabe).

Both these works display the hard on, dehumanizing realities that soldiers face in war; fear, loss of purpose, death, lack of proper nutrition and hunger, hydration, bitter cold, unhygienic conditions in which they have to try to survive from their wounds, the mental suffering, the competitive spirit, and all the crazy things they have to go through just to survive. It's impossible to watch these and not feel touched and transformed. You just can't feel neutral towards them. They shake you inside out. They make me get kind of "oversensitive"... I mean, I spent all week scolding Nick for not finishing his food while images of soldiers trying to eat mud to avoid going crazy under the burning sun or sharing the last meal they had for their whole "crew" (I'm sorry, I'm really ignorant when it comes to terms about dividing crowds into military units)...



I just feel so grateful living in Canada, with a roof over my head, food on my plate 3 meals a day and all that I get to enjoy that I know other people have sacrificed their lives over to make sure I would have. And I feel cheap. Like, really really cheap, towards the 80% of humanity that I know does not get any chance of ever enjoying these benefits that a lot of my contemporaries take for granted...

But the drama isn't all just gore and violence and dark, there's also a beautiful love story about two kids for fall in love and who go to great lengths to survive in order for their lover to have someone to come back to and something to believe in to drive them through. It's also about comradeship, brotherhood, and making negative feelings grow into fondness and caring...

-The finale of the drama was a bit WTF?! though, I don't think that guy, as die hard as he is, could have survived 60 years on a raft in the middle of the Pacific Ocean!-



This makes me want to pledge to end all this warfare non-sense within my lifetime... But I have no clue how realistic that would be...

And I don't really understand why this growing fascination I have for warfare, lately... It's been haunting me in my dreams, making me question the nature of my relationships with my friends and loved one and the means and to what extent I would go to protect them... What about you?

I just totally love Orange Caramel (오렌지캬라멜). These three girls are so cute, they're like grown-up 3 years olds! Plus: they always have those short poofy, nearing lolita style outfits!

Finally, I'm done!
Can you find me in the documentary? I appear 3 or 4 times in the last part!
I apologize in advance for any typo I might have left in there or words that are missing because I type too fast for my computer...

That song was the perfect Prom night slow dance when it came out, when I was still in elementary school.
That band had quite a few hits, many who still sound actual, regardless of how long ago they've been written & recorded...

I hope that you will enjoy Patrick Bourgeois' s nice rich voice (and good looks?) and song writting abilities as much as I do.
When his band disbanded, late into the 1990s, he ended up hosting a French Canadian version of "Name That Tune" (they'd renamed it "Fa-Si-La chanter", a play on the words for "easy to sing" (Facile à chanter)... I liked that show, too bad it didn't run very long...



I've been feeling quite nostalgic, lately so I decided to translate this song for you guys and girls...

The song is called "You Will Never Know" and it's about a guy who's in love with his bestfriend, but since she already has a boyfriend, he decided to just stay by her side, as a good friend, keeping for himself the burden of single-sided-ly loving her.

It dates from 1994 and was performed by one of the most underrated rock band that the Province of Québec has ever known: Les B.B. (Short for "beaux blonds" (that would roughly translates as the Dashing Blonds). That song was from their third album, quite plainly titled "3", their last before they split up for more than 8 years. They had been disregarded as being only cliché pretty boys making kitch music, due to the very commercial sound they have on record, but live, you can see they are quite talented. I would even go as far as to call them the Québécois equivalent to Bon Jovi.

Since then, they have reformed and released a new album in 2004 and have since made a few appearance on live festivals and on tv. For the past two years, they have successfully managed to drag quite a crowd at Les Francofolies.

On Lead Vocals & Guitar, the lyricist and composer, the charismatic leader: Patrick Bourgeois,
on Bass guitar, keyboards and back vocals: Alain Lapointe,
and on Drums: François Jean

Their official HP: http://lesbb.ca/
More about the history of the band: http://www.qim.com/artistes/biographie.asp?artistid=265
Sorry, though, both websites are in French....

For those who haven't been on EGL this week, this is a documentary that the French Canadian branch of International tv channel TV5 made about the local Lolita community in the Province of Québec.

You can spot many members of montreal_loli in it, including myself (I saw myself 4 times, in the last segment)!

I tried to encode it to hard subs, but VirtualDub is not being very cooperative ...

( Links in the doobly-doo!Collapse )

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up? Bold the ones you’ve read! Italicize the ones you’ve partially read!

Note: Italic means I've read it, either in French or English
Bold means I've seen a movie/tv/play adaptation of it

01 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

02 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

03 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

04 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

05 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

06 The Bible

07 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

08 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

09 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma - Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (I own the whole series, in French, and a few other of her works, like Tales of Avonlea and Emily of the New Moon, which was much better than the tv series for it)

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (Was a compulsory reading in high school... Didn't like it... Kinda too Battle Royale...)

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (Didn't read it fully, though, found it boring)

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Inferno – Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (I read it as a comic in a readers magazine aimed at young teenagers at first, then fully in high school)

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle I've always loved Sherlock Holmes, I used to watch the anime version with the dogs. I like the movie with Robert Downey Jr.

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery "Dessine-moi un mouton!"
I actually quoted the taming and the rose part to one of my romantic interest, once...

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas I'm still looking to find a copy of Vingt Ans Après, the sequel... I read that as compulsory reading in high school, but it was fun. I had a speed reading contest with one guy from my class and he beat me to it by a couple minutes only... No drama version of it is ever the same as the book.

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl I saw both movies and I bought Nick the sequel as a book, Charlie and the Glass Elevator

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo Don't like Hugo much, too dark and depressing

Read about 15, "saw" about 39.... looks like I've got homework to do, now...

That's THE coat/jacket I was talking about!

Sooooooooooooo, I went to Toronto to see X-Japan's 2nd live in Canada EVER (Vancouver is across the continent and more expensive for my meager means and I'm not all that healthy, so I just went to Toronto). I went ALONE because Shima decided to stay and keep working on 3d animation as Shima's big brother promised to make him a junior animator on some big projects his company has coming...

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This year is incredible, so far: I've seen Axl Rose wearing a Québec flag and X-Japan wearing a Canada/Japan one, I can die happy, now that I've seen two of the biggest and most influential rock acts for my generation, worldwide.

Weekly summary:
-Friday, the dishwashing machine at my job broke. So I spent half the day handwashing the dishes and when I was done with that and my other chores, it was about 19h30.

-Saturday, we went shopping. I stil can't believe that in all the underwear packages Wal-Mart's had in stock, I could not find a single one that was right cut, all cotton, not ugly beige/brown or with ugly motifs...

-Last Sunday, we went to see my grandma and I bought her a lottery ticket (La Poule Aux Oeufs D'or, which also has a tv show drawing that I know she likes to watch) to apologize for not showing up on my birthday.

-Monday, we were closed for Labour Day. I went to try and program a universal remote for my other grand-parents' "new" TV set... Only to find out the thing dated back to 1985 and therefore, didn't have infrared sensors, rendering the use of any kind of remote impossible, much to everyone's dismay...

-Tuesday, Jazz lifted me to Longueuil station has she parks her car there to go to Uni in MTL.
I had a REALLY LONG day, as we had nearly 400 customers (ee usually have about 240-280/day). I had to wash all of those nice *coughs* people's dishes because the dishwasher delivery guy couldn't show up.
Finished really late, around 9:30PM (including a 15-30 minutes break because I have some physical limitations I have to respect....).

-Wednesday, she gave me a lift even thought she didn't have school. She went to work with a classmate on some assignment they had for the Japanese class she's taking as a free auditor. We got the new dishwashing machine and Khanh installed it in the afternoon, so I had to handwash some more dishes, but luckily for me, there was a more normal amount of customers that day. When we got to the parking lot in Longueuil, Jazz noticed that she'd lost her monthly parking pass. Was not a happy camper... She was grumpy all the way home, so on top of standing my very tired and weary self, I had to stand her being obnoxious and frustrated when I really had nothing to do with the fact that she didn't store it somewhere safe and forgot or dropped it somewhere...

-Thursday, we went to buy her a new pass. They only charged us the 20$ deposit fee on the card.
We had a truckload of catering plates to prepare and it was overall a very hectic day, but I managed to finish on time to go see the Three Starz and Parapraxis show at L'Alizé Rock. I gave Aristo some men pants I'd had in my lucky packs that I obviously couldn't fit it because "I got back" and I'm not a tall skinny guy! :P He was very pleased with them and told me about the Emily Autumn show in October. I notice I was more tired than I realised when I tried to headbang (Three Starz play some kind of pop-punk rock) and my neck was sooooooo stiff, I could barely move my head forward about half an inch before it hurt. Took the bus+Taxi because Jazz's classes ended early and she was tired so I told her to leave first.

-Friday, the driver's side wiper FLEW OFF THE HOOK and it was raining (luckily we were switching roads and the wind had blown the rain clouds further so we managed to get to Longueuil safely). We had to wait until Longueuil to purchase another one, as it was 7am and all garages and car dealerships on our way were closed. I was so happy that Canadian Tire opened early... But damn it, I didn't think a single wiper cost 30$. I was kind of expecting to get a set at that price... Then we went and parked at the metro station and went our separate ways.Stéphanie came over to have a partial training.Still had a lot of work in prevision for catering orders we had for next week.

After work, I managed to go to the Jump Start Club's K&J-pop event at the La Commission des Liqueurs bar. It's a nice looking bar! We had the whole 2nd floor for our bunch. By the time I left, it was getting pretty packed, and so were the other floors. There were soooo many cute Asian guys! I danced with my friends from 9 to 11-something PM, then it was getting really hot and packed and my legs were feeling like I was gonna collapsed, so I messaged Jazz that I was leaving and waiting for her near our parking. She had originally planned to come to the party, too, but the friend she wanted to bring ended up deciding to grab a beer downtown instead and trying to convince her to stay overnight and stuff and she had a week as emotionally packed as mine, so she was glad I texted her, giving her the perfect exit door out of the touchy situation she would have gotten in trying to be tactful explaining to her friend that she wanted to leave and go to sleep because she really needed to get some rest, having slept only about 4 hours per night this past week...

My work contract prolonged 3 more days, due to more customers that expected, so I work until Wednesday night until Ghislaine comes back from her vacation, Thursday morning. I'm kind of pissed because there's a new measure in place starting THIS WEEK that is going to affect my unemployment benefits ...

This weekend, my hometown is having and event called "Weekend Rouge" (Red Weekend, referring to the fact that at this time of year, the tree leaves should have begun turning to red, but we're having such a warm summer that everything's still pretty darned green!). My dad is part of the organization so we're spending our weekend in the sun, while Nick has fun driving coaches, tractors, dune bogeys and nearly anything some adult allows him to drive and he's really proud of himself. I'm still helping Gaétane with her Old-fashioned Ice Cream demonstration. I got sooooo soooo many positive comments about my "dress" today, it's just crazy! I was wearing my Metamorphose/Crown Label Sweet Park skirt over my red gingham set from the summer 2009 lucky packs. I'll try to whip up something with my Teddy Pâtissier for tomorrow!

And then, I'll pack my things and I'll take some awfully damn needed and deserved vacations. I'm going to Toronto again, with Shima, to see X-Japan! It will feel so natsukashii to see Yoshiki and Sugizo again! (I saw them at A.X. in 200

Photo credits: sugrdva/berylbyrd @Flickr

Wow, August sure was a busy busy busy month!

And I noticed I have a lot more friends born in August than I knew about:

My birthday was on August 9th,
renge64's on August 11th,
winkychan's on August 14th,
muted_serenades's on August 17th,
fannylachipie's on August 18th,
ooshirahimeoo's on August 19th,
and matsubunny's on August 20th!

I hope you girls all had very enjoyable and memorable celebrations for YOUR day! :)
*****

Did you know I'm an opportunist? Yes, I am; when life throws me lemons, I make the best damn lemonade! :P
Lately, my ex-workmate Stéphanie kept calling us that she was going to quit her current job and would like to come back to work with us and all. But we didn't really need any other employees at the moment; we don't have enough customers to justify hiring and paying an other staff member. I'd been contemplating changing jobs for the past, what, 2 years, at the least?
I mean, from the start, I'd been hired as a temporary worker, anyways...
I was supposed to work just the two first weeks until laurymdragon left her other job and was coming to work with pastlink, Nath, Orazio and Ghislaine. Then they both quit and we also had a couple other employees over the course of the three years I'd been working there: Nicholas/Gringo, Matt, Vince/Mr.Unicorn, the thieving pretend bar manager guy, Julie-Kim/the schizo girl, Raphaëlle, and now, Afshan and Khanh.Oh, and Nath's nefew for a couple days! I'm the only one who lasted so long, I guess. Steph came and went 3-4 times and Laury worked with us twice, also, but I'm still the one that brought the most stability and ease in Orazio and Nath's mind; sure, I could be late, but I would never not show up or quit.

Even this once, even thought I'd been considering it, I didn't really know how to bring it up to them; Orazio and Nath offered me this way out. I took it early then they all thought I would, but by now, I'm so weary and tired and mentally exhausted that I just had to jump on the bandwagon, you know... So starting on SEPTEMBER 11th, I'm unemployed and I'll be enjoying every second of it thoroughly; I'll go drop and pick Nick to & from school and go shopping for MYSELF for once, not because Bureau Da Ge feels compelled to buy a t-shirt with a NES cartridge that reads "Blow Me!" or one with a Montreal staple historical monument on it... I need new undergarments, new shoes (God knows I ruin many pairs in a year because I walk so much!), some business suitable attire because my wardrobe is pretty much limited to goth&sweet loli/soccer mom/job uniform (i.e. black or pinstriped pants and a couple shirts I never or seldom wear)...


This picture is part of a photoshoot we {about 50~something people} did with Benji 2-3 Sundays back...

Phase 1: Heartbreak **** Photo credit: Benjamin Von Wong/ © Von Wong Photography | Montreal Based Photographer

Happy birthday to nana_komatsu7 & soopuhstar... and to me! Hihihi


Yes, I'm turning another page in the history of my life tomorrow...
This year is finishing off not so good: broke my glasses (will cost nearly 700$ to get new ones, ouch!), lost my keys and my bus pass... Had an argument with mom first thing in the morning today... Life's going well for me, lately, wouldn't you say?!?

I'm so glad I have friends that make me feel lucky to have meet them, like Shima, Steven, Maki getoutofmyband/shukketsuichigo/miracleshopping and others. They help me feel better about myself, just by being there and showing concern and sharing time together doing activities... Thanks to them, I can survive this murderous daily grind that has become this unhealthy routine I go through when living with my mother. I'm managing to keep on working and pay off my debts instead of curling up into a corner, crying and suicidal...

I bought a cellphone yesterday. A Blue LG Rumor2...With unlimited Canada & USA text messaging, yeah! My provider is Virgin Mobile. (I'd been with Fido and Telus, previously, and I wanted to try something new).

I have to go, now, kick myself in the rear to finish this outfit for Otakuthon next week... I hope the girls won't be too pissed at me for skipping this weekend's shooting at L2 with the TV5 people...

Posted for Yueri.

This is the new batbag?

I've yet to find a cool way of formulating it for my blog... So in the mean time, I give you Jon Lajoie as a boysband!

Ok, so I said my next color would be black with blue streaks... But I'm hesitating, now...
My hair has gotten thicker and now it's 3/4 bleached blond and 1/4 natural almost black brown. I'm not sure I wanna go dark haired during the summer. I'm already finding it hot with the dual-shaded short cut I have...

So I'll ask you: do you think Caramel color would look good on me?

                                            

I've been considering it, since it's still a light enough shade, but a bit deeper and more interesting than sable/sand color or platinum blond... Also, I'm in a sweet/punk lolita phase more than goth lately, and I got my two Special sets from Méta this week (Teddy Pâtissier skirt with socks in cream and the blue carnivalesque themed print with the puffy sleeved cutsew and dot socks in black)...

I think both alternatives would look equally good with my current sewing projects (If I ever DO find time for them, between study for the food manipulator course and packing and moving my sister's stuff before she comes back from Japan and vacation replacements ...).

I also thought of Black X Red since I wore red last Halloween and got plenty of compliments about it (except for mom and granny).I want your opinions!

http://doudoudidi.livejournal.com/11686.html

Odore-chan, your post made me dream that the Montreal lolitas got together to film a PV for "IL pleut, ça mouille, c'est la fête à la grenouille" where each lolita would represent an element of the song (frog, rainbow, rain, ladybug, snail, etc...)...

BTW, the little girl in that video was adorable!

I have nothing much to tell about what's going on in my life, right now...
I don't know if I mentionned, but Unicorn Boy got himself fired and so he got replaced by an Iranian-bread married girl, Afshan, who's my age and a 37 years old married, with a daughter, Vietnamese guy named Khanh. Khanh works the afternoon shift with me. At first, I had difficulty showing him the works. I had no patience at all and I just wanted to get Vince back because he KNEW what I was expecting of him as a workmate, he KNEW the customers and their tastes and specificities (special discounts/products and whatnot). Now, I have to show Khanh and although he's been here for a month now, he still asks me daily what the recipe for the Hot Chocolate or Moka is *headesks multiple times*...

Friday afternoon, Lady Marmelade was playing on the radio. Khanh was singing along as if it was just any song, but then he came to the kitchen and sang it TO ME. I told him he should sing it to his wife, not me... Turns out that although he's learned both French and English (his English is great, but his French is very Asian accented and sounds kinda robotic chunky-ish), he had never gotten that the song is about a prostitute and so he blushed in discomfort when ÉI told him...

I got some h.Naoto lucky packs off of Y!J through Rinkya and since one was for men, some pieces didn't fit me, so I offered them to friend Julien "I" and there was a pair of jeans that he didn't want. The waist was really tiny, so he probably wouldn't have fitted in them... So I ended up giving them out to Leo, the waiter @L2.. I thought they might be tight on him... He says they're too large!! I told him he should take them to a cleaner's to have them touched up, since he seemed to like them ... But he seemed embarrassed and I felt embarrassed to be embarrassing him... Does that make sense? I was afraid he would get some weird idea because I asked him his version about what happenned between him and Pomme (and he pretty much had the same version as her, which seldom occurs when talking to exes...)

Also, Gackt is going to play another videogame villain, Belscard in RPG Dragon Nest. He seems to enjoy villains; the one in Arthur & the Minimoys, the one in Final Fantasy, and now this one...

Now, I totally want to seem him being cast as one of Top Cow Comics' characters, either The Darkness' Jackie Estacado or The Witchblade's Ian Nottingham... He can already wear those suits and do martial arts and gun fights, that's so him!!!


Aside from that, me and a bunch of friends are going to see Miyavi in Toronto on June 24th. It's our province's National Holiday, but we'll be spending it in the neighbours' province, seeing a foreign artist, we are bad! But MYV's totally worth it!

Yesterday was Nick's friend Jade's birthday. They celebrated it today by going bowling. Here's some pictures her dad sent me. (Birthday girl in purple, Nick with the red shirt, Zack, Jad'es brother is the cute grinning toddler in black). Seems like they had fun; Nick was still all psyched about it when he got home. They gave him Bakkugans and candies as attendee gift I could have done without the Bakkugans...
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I got rave comments about my wrapping this year. I used transparent printed plastic sheets, silk paper and Christmas ornaments instead of the usual boring ribbon bows.

Did I ever mention that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is my favorite American actor?
Not only does he play real intense characters (like in Gregg Araki's Mysterious Skin), but he's gonna play in the Live Action movie of Akira! And now, I learned he's also having a new movie out next year in which he looks really Jesus-y; it's called Hesher.


If you have me on Twitter or Facebook, you may have noticed that I've gotten myself quite smitten with Will Pan's works, lately. Why didn't I discover him sooner?!?
That just made me come to the realisation that my favorite guys these days are all "ABCs" (American Born/grown Chinese)...
And I saw a clip of him and Jay Chou singing Ting Mama de Hua and I'm in love. So cuuuuuute and lovable and heartwarming... My bestfriend from high school commented on my facebook "Oh you like that?I thought only Chinese people loved that crappy sentimental stuff.!"... To which I kindly reminded him that even back in high school, I was always an Auntie at heart. And I guess he forgot who he came to see when he wanted to learn to knit...*cough cough*




Aside from that, I went to the Passeport yesterday and it was the "Golden Aged Goths School Reunion" event, and it was fun, although I did not take pictures. My outfit was killing me and I thought it was my corset that was too tight, but it turns out it was my "Mana skirt"'s corsets boning that went through the fabric and were bruising my skin. I don't remember ever feeling so relieved to take off clothes that I didn't sweat all that much in... I also hung with Clé and X-Ray at L2. X-Ray was in her own little fantasy world daydreaming about my friend Simon while Clé and I were talking about ex-staff members and Asian idols...I'm very weary but not sleepy, which is annoying considering I have to get up at 4am tomorrow and work until 6-7pm before I take the transits back home... But then I have two weeks in which I'll only work Mondays, so what am I complaining about?? LOL

I got this message in my inbox today:

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They liked the picture I took of the Westin Hotel when I went to Long Beach, it seems.
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1299/763164821_d389a1b3b0.jpg?v=0<http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1299/763164821_d389a1b3b0.jpg?v=0>

That was unexpected!
I'm glad they liked my picture, though... Too bad it's unremunerated!


BTW, sorry for the lack of updates, lately, I've been busy, busy, busy and very much sleep deprived!

I'm posting a few pictures of the Loli Skating meetup at Galeries de La Capitale in Québec City 2 weeks ago and of the family cinema outing (we saw G-Force and it was better than I expected) with Nick and his "step family", or said otherwise, some of the neighbours from accross the fence, including his friend Jade and her brother. Their dad knows my cousin Mélanie, that was an ackward conversation for me...


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