yes i know i am wasted.

and thats exactly why i need a haven from doing absoeffinglutely nothing. (thanks to ms chanwan for helping me to master the art of swearing so well.)

like i've said in my first post, i need this blog so badly, cos one of the reasons is that my article got rejected, and therefore I am here to be my own publisher! and here it is - i have to start using material from my little storage:

When Fashion Goes Eco-Friendly

What does newspaper mean to you? News, news and more news, literally papers of news? A subscription that you are made to make? Or some scrap paper to wrap up food remains before

sposing of? To Mr. Wong, newspaper has become his innovation in his bag-making career.

In the midst of city-wandering on a chilly Sunday with scattered showers, a few friends of mine and I got lost in the middle of the SoHo district in Central, trying to figure out where the famous-for-antique Hollywood Road is. Instead of looking for a map, my friend led us to try an error by passing through a narrow alley while I was still wondering if that is safe, especially when the street is utterly quiet with trucks unloading goods. Most of the shops were closed, but except one – a bright little shop with glaring florescent lighting out of the dark lane, with some tote bags dangling at the front of the store and a simple charcoal logo that reads “RECYCLED” with the first ‘E’ flipped to the left and uniquely in green.

We went into the shop out of curiosity, and as we took a closer look, these bags are no ordinary totes. The bags indeed were outlined by leather and buckles, but surprisingly you will be able to find large and small fonts here and there upside-down. If you are lucky, you may even find images like Obama’s big-headed pictures. The shop has got its name right – the bags are in fact made of newspapers, literally recycling uncontaminated, wasted papers.

A lot of bags these days are claimed to be made of eco-friendly materials that can be completely dissolved when discarded into soil, or even written boldly in fancy fonts to tell it is not a plastic bag. But these newspaper bags themselves have already carried the message – one that is much stronger, crystal-clear and more obvious to be easily understood in a glance.

‘You can feel the weather getting hot. Christmas in Hong Kong used to be cold, and I’m wearing T-shirts these days.’ said Mr. Max Wong, the shopkeeper as well as inventor of RECYCLED Bags, ‘Newspaper is something every family will use and everyone accepts. Who doesn’t? And it can be recycled. We could have saved a lot of paper by making good use of it. I just got these (newspapers) from the hotel next door. They (his products) turn out to be quite fashionable, don’t they?’

Not only is newspaper used for Mr. Wong’s bags, but a wide variety of recycled material ranges from traditional Cantonese rice bags to the red-white-blue canvas bag. If you still find these too dull and conventional, you can try the purses with bright tropic colours and shiny surface which are made of DHL express card boxes.

‘We are now also having Kowloon Dairy’s sponsorship.’ he said, as he showed me cardboards printed with the green skimmed-milk cartons we see every day in supermarkets. ‘They are sponsoring us for free, asking if we can turn these into bags.’

True, RECYCLED may be a small creative industry, but its sale is surprisingly fair. Celebrities like famous singer Nicolas Tse, the elder twin of the local ‘maverick film directors’ Peng Shun, Model Ankie Beilke have also shown their support for RECYCLED bags by purchasing several purses all at a time. ‘Westerners like the design. I guess they find it meaningful with traces of the Hong Kong style.’

Well, who knows? Maybe recycled materials and eco-friendly purses will be the vogue for the new decade. Girls, save yourselves some quotas from bland branded designers – an insightful yet chic design awaiting your appreciation and, of course, guilt-free usage!

(oh and you can actually carry Obama around! :P)

edit: after serious consideration and a revisit to the shop, i have decided not to advertise the shop, and therefore the address of the shop is deleted. i'll further explain on that in the next post. pls note that the focus of uploading this article to share my hardwork and to seek recognition of my dedication to writing. thank you so much, my fellow subscribers and passers-by.

oh fmsl.

and you're wondering what does the S stands for. bahaha afterall i have to swear. this is part of my language. duh.

and this is the greatest irony ever - i'm starting my 'fashion blog' (its not quite one yet) beginning with my school uniform.

it has been 12 years. 12 years living, studying, growing up in this everything-blue school. and for the ever first time in my life as a blue monster, i can feel the tiny little extent of freedom for grooming myself up before school without guilt or risk taken.

i guess it is some kind of reward for being loyal to the school for so long, that after all these years of traditional chinese styled education method, you now deserved to be not too explicitly liberated for a tad bit. and teachers are now your supposedly closer friends, so i guess it will be awkward to pick on every tiny details.

yes thats how i've been wrapping myself up with my scarf for...4 years. eh, yea, 4 years. (yes i know i am getting old. seriously, who doesn't?) oh i've never really looked at it this closely and wow surprisingly it doesnt look too grostesque, outrageous or colloquial (right i know thats everyone's wrapping themselves, but then this does look different, doesn't it?).

and there's this bun - the controversial part of my school outfit (ahemmm) - while some say it's like a flower, some say its a exploding bomb. a-ha-ha. and in the end i was suggested by disciplinary persons to be tidier.

and if you look closely, i'm actually wearing earrings to school (recently picked up my old earrings - more blogging on that to come), and if you look even closer, they are actually blingbling golden little hearts - even more controversial (wtf?!?) since our school, a very traditional one, restricts all sorts of accessories except a pair of round golden studs no bigger than 5mm right in the middle of one's earlobes ('oh puh-lease.' 'yea i know, but thats my school.'). but hey, it turns out not that tacky, and most importantly it brightens up feminine features, dont you think? :)

by now you should know why i'm saying fmsl. but then, if its never this suppressive, we'd all ended up mix-and-matching our daily outfits, pouring (very likely slutty - look at the past school picnics and funfairs) make-up on ourselves every single day (and gradually deteriorating our skin eww), flaunting designer clothes (let's admit it - we all are brand-crazy), wasting time on unnecessary extravaganzas while the time spent in total is good enough for revising the whole curriculum twice or thrice. and only by that you will truly treasure every single weekend you have and think carefully before you wear anything.

and still, there are still some ways to brighten up your look at school, aren't there? at least i feel better with my fluffy bun and shaped studs.

p.s. bahahaha credits to mrs lee for helping her daughter to order ORABRUSHES! now i owe this blog a product review.

redemption.

well i guess its not that serious. at least i dont feel sorry lol

this is a post to clear out one of the p.s.sss i've listed last night (technically this morning).

okay. this is more urgent and of higher importance-

top 5 reasons not to sleep late:

(yes you may say i'm a hypocrite, but give me some time, i'm trying not to be one. i promise.)

1. you look terribly gross the next day - panda eyes are a given, but what's worse is that you will have water retention. (well at least that applies to me.) New term, eh? (What is that?) it means you will have a puffy, round and faaat face when you wake up. Eh, gross enough to be the top 1 reason, i guess? i mean, it will be so unfair when you didn't gain any weight and seems to have when you have some your everyday female classmates/an uncle who just loooves to make fun of you new people (like your relative's new gf. you know who you are, my dear relative. lol.)/important people/to meet the next day. "Ooh, Kylie, you look chubbier than I last saw you!" Ouch.
2. you are actually deteriorating your liver at a slow pace in long terms. this (haha) i know the theory behind. since the human body begins to produce blood (cells?) and repair dead cells at 1am, you have to sleep to rest so that such biological processes can take place. and if you don't, obviously the outcome won't be good. the most apparent sign/greatest drawback of nocturnal animals is that their skin will turn pale and yellowish (since they lack blood and their livers will gradually fail). Again, gross enough!
3. you're basically daydreaming/sleepwalking when you wake up the next day. your brains is completely stuck and won't be able to think at all. my 2nd post is the epitome to that. and in long terms, you become stupid cos you can hardly think. yes, usually you will feel like you're not even sleepy anymore after 3am, but, firstly, you dont know what you're thinking, and secondly, you aren't even thinking. so....no no no no, babe, no no no no, don't lieee. plus, good night sleeps bring you higher efficiency. higher efficiency brings you satisfaction. satisfaction makes you love yourself and your work. loving yourself will break the vicious cycle of sleeping late while loving your work makes you stick to your work. sticking to your work = no more procastinating. ahahah. anyways we all need some good night sleep.
4. have you ever experienced insomnia due to hunger. haha i mean, usually that happened when you had your supper early and sleep late. but now, regardless of when you're having your supper, and you're procastinating (my favourite word atm lol) your sleeping time to evermore late night hours, it is inevitable your belly will go grrrrrrrrr. then you start to scrap out all the junk food and chocolate you have at home to comfort your aching stomach regardless of how much weight you are going to gain, work a bit more, and jump into bed straight after you're done...oh did i mention the later you eat the more weight you'll gain cos you didnt have 4 hours to completely digest your food?
5. if there are sorts of debts existing, sleeping debt must be the worst and evilest type. simply because it. is. never. completely. redempted. one day, you'll find yourself sleeping everywhere. your desk at school, on your chair, buses, anywhere at all. i've even seen people managed to sleep while standing in the tube. two main problems - a. again, you suck and look gross, and b. you are directly putting yourself into physical dangers if in public: being robbed, sexually harassed without knowing, getting lost when you overslept and missed your station, unable to escape from dangers like...eh let's just stop here before it got too unpleasant.

i think that sounds, eh, reasonable enough.

more to come, again, i promise.

and maintenant i really really should get back to my literature. xx

edits (with credits lol):

corrected by my huge-fan-of-biology friend. livers DON'T produce blood cells cos they are produced in bone marrows. instead, livers remove toxins in one's body. and still, delaying sleeping hours is bad cos you're procrastinating liver's work to be done. it does the best while you're resting. ;)

Donnez-moi une leçon de sorryology

Okay. seriously. what's so wrong with saying sorry?

I know sometimes I'm saying sorry a lot, but then, why is it even wrong when it is necessary (to me) and when everyone's interpretation and definition of "sorry" is different?

Let's put it this way.

Let Sorry be "dui ng ju"

Let Excusez-moi be "ng goi"

and Let ThankYou be "ng goi"/"doh jeh"

"ng goi" is always how i start my conversations. i mean, even in english, you would say "excuse me" to grap someone's attention. ...or am i wrong? it doesnt mean i'm feeling sorry for bothering you, but it was necessary to grap someon's attention. like, you won't go to an macdonald's counter and say, "Oy/Yo/Hey, can you fetch me a cheese burger combo?", no?

and when you bumped someone, or failed to help someone when being asked to do a favour, my habit is to say "ng ho yee see" but then, you won't say "excuse me" in that situation if you happened to be speaking in english. so instead i said sorry! i mean, you failed your friend, you wouldn't even say a word just to tell her you feel bad for failing her? please.

well at least i do care if it is me being failed by my friend. or a thank you from you if it is me helping you the tiniest bit of stuff. cos they are simple, very frequently used words. you're intelligent and comprehensive. you're civilized. you're nice. and you'll say it for the sake of provening that you are civilized and nice. and that's etiquette.

and that is why sorry to me has always been light-hearted. not that i'm using it casually, but it is because i've defined it as something like "oops/... (i was just about to type sorry again)". Seriously, its not that serious. if you get what i mean.

I understand everyone's definition for sorry/excuse me is more serious than mine, and because of that, and because of my beloved friends and my beloved mom's reminders, i'm changing catchphrases. atm i can see progress in myself. verbally i still cant really stop it, but its becoming less frequent in my casual writing and typing. just give me some time.

and its now almost 2am again. oh darn. i've completely ruined my perfect plan for tomorow. oops if you will excuse meee, i must go for now xx

p.s. okay no more late night sleep. and i have a list of reasons to share.

p.p.s. i still owe my blog something fashion-related. OOPS lol

p.p.p.s. yes i just a family dinner just now and if possible, there are loads to tell as well. oh god maybe i'm just too talkative.

blahblahblah *yawn*

it is now 2.25am.

and i was working on my short story very very hard.

and to be very honest, my mind is not even functioning properly.

i really wish to write. you dont know how much i've missed my blog today at school. it was as if daydreaming about it whenever i had a break (and sometimes even when i didn't). but then, it's kind of pointless to write a piece of crap without much proper thought put into it, or simply turning this into a haven where i can swear as much as i want or complaining how bad my day has been.

i once thought today, technically yesterday, was going to be one of the best days ever with fine weather, a good start of the day and most importantly, i've started my blog!! until i had a little quarrel and some, ahem, human relations issues to deal with. aha. i know my day was bad. and this is not what i wanted to be on my lovelayy blog.

promise. tomorrow. photos. real kick start of something lily-ish. xx

p.s. i'm indeed quite happy with my short story, though i do doubt if anyone will have the patience to read through the whole thing thoroughly...but the passion never dies. and i'm not going to waste my plot at all. so pur-lease, look forward to it, s'il vous plait.

lily.kylie proudly presents

Behind the Veils

Foreword (Synopsis)

“I break tradition, sometimes my tries, are outside the lines
We've been conditioned to not make mistakes, but I can't live that way."

Natalie Bedingfield, “Unwritten”

That was the lyrics that I was listening to when I was taking my flight to Washington, D.C., in hopes of changing, or perhaps trying to change, a tiny bit of the world and bring some justice to it with the limited power a teenager has.

Looking back, that was the greatest irony ever in my life.

To myself - for recording my first glimpse of the world.

coming soon. very soon in fact.

prologue.

it has been an urging hunger for a few months. and no matter how hard i tried to force myself sleep earlier (since today is the last day of easter holiday BOO!), nothing is going to stop me from starting a blog - a proper one - tonight. i've told myself, kylie lee, if your not starting one tonight, you never are going to.

so here i am!

have you seen harry potter's 6th volume? remember how harry and dumbledore went to search for voldemort's horcruxes? i never realised how brilliant this idea was until i found myself multi-charactered and i need some private spaces to hide my very own feelings at scatter corners. the original idea was to start a series of blogs with different usernames (and probably with different blogging devices), each blog represents a horcrux, a part of my soul.

another push factor of making myself start a blog was my pathetic start as a junior freelance writer at a local newspaper for the youth. it was indeed pathetic cos my articles were either unreceived, rejected or ignored. and so i told myself, you dont need a publisher. you yourself can be a publisher. well i guess it is happening now!

and of course there's this inspiration from successful bloggists like tavi, bryanboy etc...afterall it is the little fame monster luring me isnt it.

but anyhows, i just wish to say that i have a die-hard passion for this blog (i've never spent 15 mins staring at the screen just to think of a decent name) and i'm determined to give it some wow factors. its going to be something related my wacky style, my sentiments and thoughts, my daily life, bits and bobs of everything. its going to be experimental, risk-taking, but most importantly, genuine. let's see how far this is going to take me to.

hmm today's a good day...i can feel rebirth in me

loads of wordlove

lily xx