31 Dec 2012

Best of 2012

I foresee a bloody long post ahead in summarizing and penning down my insight on awesome 2012. 

2012 new year resolutions
Out of my sixteen 2012 new year resolutions set on 5th Jan, I can safely conclude that I achieved majority of them! To be exact, I have checked 11.5 out of 16 of them! Woohoo! :D On top of that, 2012 has also surprised me pleasantly with many other new encounters and experiences which were beyond my expectations. Friends, heed my advice, setting practical new year resolutions at the start of the year really aids you in progressing in your steps to achieve your short and long term goals in life. Some of you might think that there's no point in setting any because eventually you will tend to neglect them as the year proceeds on. I, too, used to suffer from the frustration of not having the determination to achieve my past year resolutions, but look at my achievement now! My resolutions became more practical and more attainable even. 

Insight
Honestly, I don't think it's because of the resolutions that changed me to be better at self discipline, but conversely it's the gradual internal change in perspective and mindset (or you can even call it the growth in maturity) that led to my success in my attainment of goals set ahead. I cannot explain the mechanisms behind it. It might be due to the greater understanding of myself after experiencing more events and occasions across the year or/and a better look at the reality from interacting with a variety of people in my enlarged social circle. All in all, my point is I think all of us should write down our new year resolutions somewhere we will not forget so that we can bring it out after a year of ups and downs to analyze how much we have grown as individuals. :) It can work as a personal check on whether you're still being true to yourself or have deviated from your true original goals. Then, it would also be helpful to question yourself and evaluate if you're still advancing on the "right path". 

Alright. Enough of my self-inspiring monologue. 

Again, I shall break down the 2012 resolutions into larger unit categories: 

Family
In my opinion, the family aspect has been pretty well taken care of under my conscious effort to juggle all my commitments. Even though I doubt that we've become more well-off monetarily, I know the family has bonded more strongly over the year. This definitely matters more than the financial part now as I'm sure, in a year's time, we can all worry even less since i'd be contributing to the family income then. I guess the next challenge for us would be to handle my brother who is entering the adolescent age but he has all of us to count on.

Academic
No matter how much my grades in school have fluctuated, I'm glad to be finally able to take a rest from all those struggles with the bell curve. I'm immensely thankful and satisfied to have obtained a bachelor's degree with a pass with merit, just like an average university student after 18 years of education under MOE. Wrote more about my NUS journey over at Bye NUS. 

Love
Many a times, I questioned myself and Leonard about this relationship we had held on and maintained over the past 4+ years. He doesn't match the perfect catch I have in mind, but neither do I. The 2012 journey with him had been a relatively smooth-sailing one as compared to past years despite the episodes of arguments which we would both regret to have sparked them off in the first place. What's for sure in the year of 2013 is that both of us will become better at loving each other. Thank you bee for being the most loyal boyfriend anyone can ask for. :) I'm looking forward to strengthening our r/s and growing to become more mature as a couple with you for another glorious year ahead. May our soft toy collection increase! HAHAH. <3

Friendship
The once-neglected aspect of my life became one of the highlights this year. I must thank each and everyone of you for putting up with my imperfect personality and my failure to be a friend whom you can count on at all times. Nonetheless, the crazy surge in the number of meet-ups with you guys that were organized are still heartwarming when recalled. Even though we are not omnipresent in one another's lives, I know you guys are true friends whom I can count on and seek comfort in for the rest of my life. :) I shall not mention names because it's only more meaningful when you read this and know I'm referring to you. <3 you all. 

Work
In the year of 2012, what I would consider as my work would only be my part time tuition jobs that I took up while schooling in NUS. I didn't achieve 1 of my resolutions which is to help my P6 students obtain a PSLE score of 250 and above. But, they didn't do badly at all if you consider 240 and 245 as pretty remarkable PSLE scores. :) I'm so proud of both of them even though I didn't express my contentment to them dramatically like OMG I'M SO PROUD OF YOU! But i am really really happy that they performed so impressively. 

Recently, I've a new addition to my "work" - blogging. I'm surprised to find out that everyday I've an average of about 3000-4500 unique visitors and 7500 pageviews per month and the number keeps increasing even though ZiweiSandy.com has only been around for less than 1 year. It's really heartening cos it means that my effort to record down my personal 2-cents' worth of reviews and recommendations are acknowledged by my friends and readers who keep coming back for more. ^^ Thanks soooo much for your unspoken support! However, in other news, I'd like to officially announce that ZiweiSandy.com will be focused  mainly on music and my covers, as well as other noteworthy snippets/updates of my post-graduation life for the next year. Of course, I'd still welcome advertisers to come forth if they're interested in sponsorship/advertorials/reviews. :) Just email me (ziweisandy@gmail.com) for negotiation if what you would like me to publicize is related to events, travel, beauty, fashion and food~ 

Driving 
I started my driving lessons this year and took 1 test which I failed due to inadequate practice in the driving circuit. So, it means I didn't attain my 2012 new year resolution which is to pass driving by mid of 2012. But,  now i'm already quite decent driver on the roads, so I'm actually more than halfway there in getting my driving license! :) 

Travel
Even though I didn't manage to travel to Taiwan, I left Singapore 4 times this year, with 3 out of 4 of them sponsored! :) Bangkok in May, Genting in July, Bintan in Oct and Genting in Nov ;)

Youtube
I think my most commendable personal achievement would be the setting up of my youtube channel: Ziweisandy. It consists of a mix of English and Chinese songs, of which some are song requests from friends and others are songs that i loved. If you haven't heard, click on the links below! :) Audio wise, my personal favourite is Safe & sound, which is also my most recent cover before I lost my voice). Overall, I think the more well done videos are the 2 Chinese songs: æˆ‘也很想他 and çº¢è±† (which is also my first and only music video to date). 

Sponsored events

Sponsorship
Dejavu (yet to blog)

Reviews 
Choupinette @ Bt Timah
Hatched @ Holland V
Sapore Italiano @ NUS Utown
Barracks Cafe @ Dempsey Rd
Food for Thought @ Botanic Gardens
Roadhouse @ Dempsey Rd 
Marugoto Shokudou @ Ang Mo Kio
Bai Mi Fen @ Sembawang
Saveur @Bugis
Incanto @RWS


Performance and featured opportunities 

Besides all these once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for an amateur blogger like me, I'd conclude that 2012 is the best year that I've had thus far, especially notable in the fantastic luck I enjoyed this year in my big and small wins from the games of poker and mahjong with my friends and relatives. I'm now a devout believer of luck after this year. lol.

To my friends and readers:
In the upcoming 2013, I wish everyone to be presented with many precious opportunities that are useful in your path to success, greater wealth and happiness, maturity and rationality, best of health, strengthened friendship and more bonded family kinship and a smooth-sailing love life ahead. 

HAPPY 2013 TO ALL!!!!! :D




P/s: I'm gonna take awhile to come up with my 2013 new year resolutions as this year will be a watershed for me since academia and school will no longer be part of my life YESAH!! 
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30 Dec 2012

Christmas updates.

Hey guyssssss!

Sorry for the relatively long break from blogging for the past 1 week ++.
Had been down with a really bad sore throat and I was sooooo depressed I couldn't produce the X'mas song which I was looking forward to covering. :( I guess it's no longer appropriate to do the X'mas cover now. Sigh. Hmm even though that's one huge regret of 2012, I did awe some of my friends, including myself, with this X'mas song by Mariah Carey at the Sports Clubs welfare treat performance. I honestly didn't think I would impress anyone that day, but some of them told  me it was the best song I put forward for them among the 3 songs I did. Right now, my voice is still in the midst of recuperating and the short rest from blogging and singing has gotten me up and determined to bring forward better songs and covers for a start in 2013. :)

More music updates and I really need to rejoice in this!!!
Not-so-coincidentally, I sang "All I want for Christmas is you" for Impressario 2013 qualifying audition on the 2nd week of December. I was instructed to head to the Lee Wei Song school of music for trial since I am not an NTU student. Honestly, that day I prepared 2 songs and was more prepared for the other song, but I'm really not sure what got over me (probably the Christmas season) that I decided to sing this Christmas song for audition instead. O.O right. Anyway, i thought it was a fiasco as I didn't do the technical checks properly and ended up having the song cut off halfway in the midst of my solo. I carried on nonetheless, singing it acapella. The music chop-off did influence me negatively as the judges told me my pitching went off and became unsteady when I was singing without music. Frankly, that didn't really tackle my confidence much as both of them also commented that my voice is powerful and they liked it!! :D After all the drama, anxiety and worrisome days of waiting, I received an email from the organizing committee, congratulating me about getting in the next round, the quarter finals! :) I checked online and realised that there were freaking 40+ other people who got in too. -.- Yet, I will treat the next round as my final round and put in my very best. Congratulations to Marcus and Siyi on getting into the Semis for the vocal group category! Hope to see them at the finals!

The next good news is that I got into the 2nd round for an audition to join a music school performing team.
I need a great deal of luck and practice! I'll work hard and I really don't mind spending a lot of time and effort on it. Hopefully, my voice collaborates and revives itself fully in time. :)

By the way, how was Christmas for all of you?? :)
I had soooooo many Christmas parties to attend this year but I had to forego 2 of them because my sore throat and cough got in the way and I was so ill that I could get out of bed for the 2 days. I'm seeing it in the perspective that it is a blessing in disguise because I was "forced" into reading (which I never liked) and finished 1 book during the sickly period. I will refrain from delving deeper into doing another (book) review. I must say this read, the perks of being a wallflower got me back into reading cos I love how introspective it is as it's written in the style of letter/diary. It got me down to reading another book, Life of Pi. I'm a really slow reader, really really slow one. Whatever la right, all i have now is loads of time. To enjoy. :p

ANYWAY, HAVE YOU GUYS WATCHED THE LAST 2 EPISODES OF REELITY SHOWDOWN!!
GUESS WHICH TEAM IS THE WINNER!!! :D


Semi-finals: Episode 3
"Have a meal. Our way."
As funny as it sounds, the challenge of this episode is to finish a 3-course meal which includes a starter, main course and dessert. Well, I'm not a vegetable-person and unfortunately the starter was a really disgusting vegetable salad dish which consists of all raw vegetables. Thank goodness, I fancy chocolate. (If you don't understand this, you gotta watch the above video!!) Juli, my awesome taitai-to-be partner (who is recently engaged. CONGATS~), actually loved vege and I'm lucky to have her cheering me on while i was attacking the salad dish. The other 2 dishes weren't so bad: Chicken curry noodles and fruit wraps - I loved the both!! I must say Bunzi is extremely fortunate to not have picked the more difficult cutlery tools for the completion of the meals. Heng arh~ 2 wins out of 3 challenges simply because Bunzi has such awesome affinity and chemistry! <3

 Finals: Episode 4.
"Scavenger hunt/Running man"
This final challenge requires each team to complete 4 tasks at 4 different venues spread out across Resorts World Genting and the team that beats the other in the time duration of tasks completion would win. Honestly, I think the clues are pretty obvious for both teams but I don't agree it was a fair match between the 2 groups. Team Bambam's tasks were more time-consuming (and exciting), therefore they had the thrill and fun at the expense of another fully-sponsored (food, travel and lodging) trip to Genting. I guess the production team was thoughtful in the sense that they gave us tasks that don't require Juli to take rides which might potentially put her in tears again. :p All in all, this experience to be partnered to Juli and to go through 5 days of activities together with some other girls from Reelity Showdown season 2 was super enriching and eventful. I got more familiar with Joshua Ang and the production crew behind Reelity.tv, understood some of their work procedures and also got to know the personalities, interests, sense of humour and way of life of the different individuals I met during this trip! :) No regrets skipping that one week of school. :p

REELITY.TV and RWGenting are sooo kind to reward their viewers and fans with a fully-sponsored trip to Genting! 6 lucky viewers who leave a comment on the videos at their website (pls scroll to the bottom of the website) stand the chance to win themselves a free-of-charge getaway to Genting! Looking at the number of commenters, you still stand a high chance of winning the free trip! Hurry up! Read about my recommendations on food and activities if you happen to be a lucky winner k! :)


I will end off with some pictures taken during the Christmas period to share my joy with you guys! :):)


Salad-making with Qian! 

Christmas buffet at Amara Hotel, The elements with Leo's family. 


 Orchard Road with my family


Christmas gathering with 4G~

 Steak-cooking experiment and B-zai/dog-loving at CK's
 
 

Daddy's bday + my first time cooking!


I love my family and my friends. ^^

Hearts,
Support my fb and my passion will you? :)

Other channels to stalk me:
Twitter: @ZiweiSandy
Instagram: ZiweiSandy
Youtube: Ziweisandy 

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21 Dec 2012

Picnic & staycation with Reelity Showdown Girls!

Finally, i get some time to blog about my personal life.
There're too much going on in my life and it's a pity that my blogging efficiency is not high enough to produce a blog post daily for memory's keepsake on my (open) online diary. 

The past 2 meetups of Reelity Showdown girls hadn't been complete as we took turns to be busy. -.- 2 weekends ago, we finally successfully got everyone's asses down for a picnic. Jessica was so kind to invite us to an MBS hotel staycation even though she could have reserved the room for her bf and herself. Thanks so much dear for having us on your mind! <3 

2nd time at Marina Barrage for a picnic with girlfriends and the experience was still as awesome. 
The group of girls are relative new friends to me but the 6 of us could click so well with our overlapping interests and hobbies.

Even though not everyone stick to the block colours / floral print theme set by Juli, the natural greens and blues at Marina barrage compensated for the colours. :) I'm so loving the colours in all our picnic pics! :) Gotta thank Jess for the awesome DSLR to enhance the colours of the photos!

Left to right: Juli, Amanda, Jayme, Diana and Jessica 

Picture was taken before the sun came hard mercilessly on us later in the afternoon. 
Lesson learnt: 4pm till 7pm is the best time for picnic because not only can you escape the sun, the evening breeze and the decent amount of not-so-scorching sunlight gives you perfect photo effects! <3 I gotta say I don't really look good in photos amidst the wind. Got my hair all over the face and disclosing my very huge face. zz.

Foodie. 
I prepared cheese tofu and egg mayonnaise sandwiches (as usual) and brought a full bottle of hersheys syrup and california cheesy cream dip. Unfortunately, my cheese tofu became a lil soggy cos of condensation but everyone still finished my full container of them! ^^ Juli contributed her Korean rice wine and damn i love them! Sweet, creamy with a little tinge of sourness. Where to buy them! I wants!! Jessica baked chocolate mint brownies and even tho they looked crushed up and messy, the flavour was heavenly. I'm sure le bf will love it, but sorry hor i can't bake. Can't wait to try Shiberty's salted caramel cupcake which was claimed to be her BEST CUPCAKE flavour which is prelaunched. Amanda brought loads of healthy bites like carrots, cherry tomatoes, ham and salad. (Y) Jayme and Diana bought the most important utensils, plates and drinks, which were much needed especially under the killer sun. 

And of course, we ordered a 15-piece crispy chicken from KFC. This is the least popular food out of all surprisingly due to some direction issues of the delivery man. -.- Apparently, he only learnt that Marina barrage and Gardens by the bay are different places. Okay can. By the time he arrived, our chicken pieces had already became soft, thus causing all of us to lose the mood to eat them cos we had already filled ourselves up with the other food.

Jess goofing around with her cool umbrella. Unique isn't it?
This new technology flips upwards to capture the sunrays. Ok bullshit. HAHA. 

Perfect backdrop with the pretty ladies. <3
(minus the kids and unglam uncles and aunties)

Perfect jump shot.
Well-trained bloggers. haha.

Glittering under the sun. 

Would photoshop away the bags if i know how. 
Aiyo Amanda so hiao here. keke.

Cute aren't they! Juli and her dancer style pose. At the expense of Jess. LOL.

HAHA Jayme mad cute here. And Diana's skin looks milky under the sun. 

Hair-whipping. Whoosh~

Trying the alternative angle. LOL at Jayme. 


Hugeass octopus kite! OMGBBQWTF!

Jayme and Diana had to leave for their other appointments. So, we chopchop headed back to our amazingly beautiful room at MBS for our.....:D


We made plans to do an early pre-christmas present exchange and all of the girls are soooo thoughtful in their presents prepartion. I love all of handmade presents, as well as the makeup and beauty products. Well, guess it wasn't so hard to think of what presents to get for the fellow girls huh.

Just look at them all. So well-wrapped up with heart shapes, ribbons and pretty present wrappers. Mine was just the ugly block of white cloth at the corner. Ooops.




My share of presents. Even though my present wasn't the prettiest, but it's full of sincerity ok cos I personally imprinted everyone's url name on the totes I bought from Muji. It came in handy for all of us as an extra bag to keep all the wonderful presents heavy and loaded with love! Makeup from Juli and Jess, useful cardholder and nail polish from Manda, handmade hair accessories from Diana and a huge practical bottle of pink shower gel from Jayme. All sho girlie!!! <3


Modeling the pretty handmade ribbons from Diana! :)

Wore the ribbons up to the infinity pool to act chio (not swim lol)

A shot together before we head up! Aiyo all sho pretty, i can't even.

We were all lazy to bring our cameras down cos we wanted to capture the beautiful scenery of the MBS infinity pool without having to worry about our valuables. So, no pictures of the swimming session. In fact, I'm kinda regretting it now because the picturesque view was really breathtaking and such a waste of not camwhoring with the majestic view as our backdrop! Nonetheless, our time spent together at the infinity pool was true quality bonding time. We were stripped down to our minimum wear in the chilly pool and pouring our dirty secrets and flaunting sexy dance moves (only the dancer, guess who) to one another. It's really really heartening. I'd love love love to have another round of memorable HTHT with them again!!! :)

Following the dip in the most beautiful pool in Singapore, it was supper time at Makan Sutra~
Damn, that was quite a loong walk from MBS across the Helix Bridge towards the Esplanade area.
Loads of exercising that night also equates to the excuse to indulge in sinful local delights. Oyster omelette, bbq chicken wings, carrot cake, lime juice, satay, hokkien mee, you name it, we ate it. :p

Ceaseless events following one after the other.
By the time we finished supper it was already 1am? But to maximize the usage of the hotel room for our girlie gathering, we fought the ZZZ monster and stayed on. Juli brought her entire cutie minnie mouse luggage and we were wondering what she brought to the staycation. HER ENTIRE COLLECTION OF OPI + CHINA GLAZE nail polishes!!! We've always claimed that both of us have some type of affinity and chemistry from the very start after being teamed up for Reelity Showdown and realising that we have the same best-angle, same love for makeup (though she's more professional), same passion for bright colours, same interest in singing and sometimes only she could catch my humour (others were being slow ok, i am funny sometimes. :p). Anw, digessed. My point here is, I LOVE HER NAIL POLISH COLOURS SO MUCH!! Not as much as Jessica though. She wanted to bring the 3 entire bags of nail polishes home at first sight. Lol.

Flabbergasted.

Actually, in the end I didn't get too involved in the manicure session because I still had gelish nail polish on. (if you're not into manicure, gelish nail polish are those that can stay on your nails without getting chipped off for 1 month and will only look ugly when the nails grow out) 

Very quickly, we proceeded on to the very last activity of the night at about 3+am.
MAKEUP SESSION!!! OUR FAVOURITE!!! Which rapidly culminated to a disastrous time for our faces that night. You'll get to see why. 

Naked face. 

Looking naive cos I didn't know what would happen to my face when i put it in the hands of 3 vicious women. :x 

So everyone had to back-face the mirror during the makeup session and was only allowed to turn our heads to get the shock of our lives after the 'masterpiece' was done.
I was instructed not to open my eyes at all throughout the entire session. You can't imagine how anxious I was about how my face would turn out when I was staring into emptiness and holding that precious but badly-abused eye shadow palette of Juli's. (Pst, thanks for sacrificing your beauty palette with us that night. It was really so much fun!! Hope it wassn't a bitch to clean it up. Love ya!) 

I couldn't see anything but they commentated until like my face quite chio after the crazy face-painting. 

Never has my face been in this colourful state before. Lol.
Looking like a sexy foxy vixen somemore.
The perks of being the first before the rest figure out how to exploit makeup on faces.
Mine fortunately had the least damage done because the 2 main artists are a professional makeup and beauty blogger and the other a cake designer.
What do you think? HAHAHA.

I've always taken pride in my art in primary and secondary school. So i was confident to transform Manda's face into something abstract yet artistic. LOL.

Only did the brows, ribbon and the anime tearstream.

Quite nice eh. I like. HAHAH. 

We were quite shagged out by the time it was Jess's turn. So sorry, forgot to take pics of the process of your face-painting! Anw, we realised that everyone's face has a theme by then!
Jess was le WEATHER GIRL, chiefly designed by Juli. HAHA.
LOOK AT JULI'S FACE HERE!!! Last in the row and totally dreading what might become of her face.
MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA..

And so, the project commenced and it honorably had the most effort, time and dedication contributed on.
Can you already guess what theme it is? LOL.
Amanda totally mocking the cute poor thing waiting impatiently for the process to be over.  

Masterpiece of the night was themed MERRY CHRISTMASS!!

HOPE YOU ENJOYED THIS POST AS MUCH AS I ENJOYED PRODUCING IT. <3

MERRY CHRISTMAS IN ADVANCE. 
TILL THE NEXT SEXCITING MEETUP WITH THE REELITY SHOWDOWN GIRLIES! 
XOXO


P/s: I'm in the midst of recording my Christmas cover despite my very serious sore throat and cough. I'm hoping that it wouldn't turn out awesome even though my voice sounds a lil different and weak. :/ WHY DOES MY VOICE HAS TO GO ON A HOLIDAY BEFORE CHRISTMAS!? :( Wish me the best man.

Anyway, here's my fb page! Support please! xo 




Other channels to stalk me:
Twitter: @ZiweiSandy
Instagram: ZiweiSandy
Youtube: Ziweisandy 




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