Change?

I'm thinking of changing my blog's layout.

Green is good and all, but personally I still prefer black backgrounds with light-coloured text.
I'm basically a mini perfectionist, so it's gonna be a real pain the in ass to do a complete blog makeover. >_<

Tell me what you think, please? :)

My "Mei-chan no Shitsuji" Craze

You know that I'm in trouble when you see me dedicate a whole post to something in particular.

Well, let me get straight to the point.
Lately I've been obsessed with watching メイちゃんの執事 Mei-chan no Shitsuji, a live action J-Drama from a manga with the same name.

Synopsis:
After her parents' death, Shinonome Mei finds out that she is the heiress to the extremely wealthy Hongo family. Shibata Rihito, an extremely handsome S-ranked [highest-ranked] butler, is appointed by her grandfather to serve her. Her ordinary life turns upside down when she is sent to St. Lucia's Girls' Academy, where every student has their own personal butler! Her childhood friend Shibata Kento (Rihito's younger brother) decides to enroll as an apprentice butler so that he can stay close to her.
Once at St. Lucia's, Mei has to face various obstacles in the form of catty classmates, bizarre lessons, weird traditions and much more besides. However, somebody in the academy has malicious plans to kill her! Will she be able to adapt to her new life and face the challenges that lie ahead with the help of her best friend, her amazing (+ hot!!) butler and her own strong determination?

I must say, the drama is quite different from the original manga. First of all, the characters are much older in the drama (the original Mei-chan is a 13-year-old loli shota -_-"). Secondly, the storyline has some main aspects from the manga, but it can be said to be almost completely different. So far I have only read until chapter 19 of the manga, it doesn't seem to be following the original plot. Third, an important character has been drastically changed in the drama. Manga Grandpa was a jovial, friendly, cat-loving old man, but drama Grandpa seems to be a heartless, scheming, uncaring old geezer. O_o And the Kento in the manga was waaaay more bishie than drama Kento. Oh well, we'll just have to see how it turns out.

Now that we have all the wordy parts outta the way, it's time to share my favourite section - the pictures!!

Mizushima Hiro as the super hot S-ranked butler, Shibata Rihito

Eikura Nana as the female lead, Shinonome Mei

Sato Takeru as Mei's best friend, Rihito's younger brother and apprentice butler, Shibata Kento

So basically, in the first episode you have this...
...who then turns into this!
Of course, where would drama be without the usual bunch of catty classmates that Mei-sama will have to gradually win over. XD

Episode 5 will definitely have fangirls like me screaming for joy at this scene and hitting the rewind button to watch over and over again.

Such a sweet scene. ^o^
(*click* picture for animation)

Oh no! St. Lucia has this "ironclad law" that might cause them some trouble:
"Love between a lady and a butler is prohibited !!"

How is it possible to not fall in love with such a nice + hot guy?! Not to mention almost all of the other students have similar complexes going on too.

I wouldn't mind having one of those virtual reality glasses Miruku-chan made though. The ones that make you see this when you put them on.

OMG! *nosebleeds* XD
(Note: To enjoy the animated version of this particular image, please click on the picture. Due to the size of the image, uploading it here has been a real pain. >_< Sorry!)

Yup, so that's about it. I am officially a Mizushima Hiro and Mei-chan no Shitsuji fan now.

I am so doomed.

Seeing Red, But Damn Happy About It !

Well, my brothers and I have this tradition whereby we only open our ang paos after Chinese New Year.
Sure, we can open them and take a look inside, but definitely NO taking out the money to use before then. What we do after that is none of your business. =PSo anyway, due to the economic crisis, financial downturn and whatnot, our annual stack of ang paos have been greatly diminished since the 1990s. Nevertheless, who am I to complain about getting free money? XD I was expecting to pull out a whole bunch of blue (RM1) notes, but to my surprise, many of the ang paos actually contained red (RM10) notes inside them! Talk about seeing red, hahaha~ The relatives must've been more generous than I thought. XD Better yet, there were even a few blue-green (RM50) notes! O_O Sweeeet!

As for the other stuff in the photo, well, I did not use my Chinese New Year money to buy them. The mangas and novel made my wallet RM120 lighter ^^" but the Code Geass Characters book was bought in Singapore before Christmas.

(Random note: My faith in Borders has been restored! Thank you, Borders Bookstores! *muacks* Now be a good lil' store and stock Junjo Romantica Vol. 8 for me, okie?)

Ah, sorry, I went off track a bit there. *cough*

Hmm... what else is there to blog about today? Nothing more, I think.
Time for me to get some rest, I hate having the flu. >_<

Till next time,
- Laura

Dancing Lions - They're So Cute!

Well, today's the 15th day of the lunar calendar, which is the last day of Chinese New Year, also known as "chap goh meh" 十五暝, "yuan xiao jie" 元宵节 or Chinese Valentine's Day.

So, despite being attacked by the flu (me) and lack of sleep (also me), all of us went to have a vegetarian lunch at some house-turned-religious-temple place. After that, we stopped at several (3, I think) proper temples to pray.

We were lucky today. The first temple we stopped at had hired a lion dance troupe and we were just in time to watch them go around the temple. I used to be scared of lion dances when I was small, but now I think they're positively cute! ^o^
It was pretty hot out though, those guys playing the lion must've been stifled under all that cloth (not to mention the super heavy lion's head O.o). Nevertheless, they did a great job, and the chief monk looked pretty happy. The funniest part was when, instead of giving out the oranges and sweets like usual, the lion dance people started throwing it to the audience. At least I managed to nab 2 sweets. -lolz-

I like this pic, it's like the lion is saying "Hi!"

The 3 lions and the chief monk.

A Series of Bloody Damn Unfortunate Events

That's just putting it mildly.

The day started off just fine, with a steamboat lunch at Aunty Ho's [my kai ma] house. I got RM50 for correcting some documents for her and we lingered until around 4.30 p.m.
Then we went home to get some rest before going out again, this time to Taman Sri Manja (Old Klang Road area) for dinner with my aunt, cousin, his girlfriend and her mother. Arrived there around 7 p.m. due to a bit of traffic congestion and rain. Everybody piled into one car (my dad's) and went straight to the restaurant.

Turned out they didn't have their curry fish head during Chinese New Year. Boo-hoo. [Event #1] So we ordered some other dishes and had a pretty good meal. Fortunately, they had "fa shang wu" (peanut cream soup) as dessert during CNY so we had some of that.
After hunting around for newspaper(s) in the area and failing to do so, we went to Eva's house to sit and relax for a bit. Everything was just fine and dandy, watching CNY videos and stuff, when suddenly a call came from my bro.

He said that the car had some problems with the clutch and he was stuck somewhere near our house. [Event #2] So, as usual, my dad went from cheerful to thunderstorm-cloudy [Event #3] and started talking about -bla bla bla bla-. In short, it was not nice on the ears. So naturally, everybody became less happy and you could literally see the 'cheer-o-meter' going downwards.
A lot more -bla bla bla- later and we were hurriedly eating up our 'mee suah' and saying goodbye to everybody. We arrived where my bro was parked and mum and I went to the car to sit inside with my bro while my dad went back to the house to get the AAM card. Then my dad came back to the site and not long afterwards the AAM staff came. So I went to sit in dad's car for the air-cond and also to make sure nobody drove off with it. =.=

Imagine my surprise when I got a phone call from my aunt, asking if my cousin's car keys were anywhere in the car. Lo and behold! They really were on the back seat. [Event #4] So she told me they were coming over to pick them up.
In the end, my cousin came to get his car keys, my bro's car had to be towed and everybody's in a foul mood. So much for Chinese New Year and dong dong chiangs.

Oh wait, nearly forgot Event #5. I'm typing this in Notepad coz bloody Firefox isn't working whereas my MSN and bot are just fine. I can't even get to my Google main page.

What the fuck?!