My face without make-up deserves a 12A rating.

Although if Fairy Tale: Dragon Cry is anything to go by, other parts of my anatomy in that picture merit a 15 rating. #banter

Tale as old as time... (that Emma Watson can't act)

Out of tune singing is out of tune, and clunky guitar-playing is clunky, but at least it's not quite as questionable as the other two Emma's, Watson and Stone.

That was the first take, so a bit rubbish. I preferred this audio recording, but annoyingly, couldn't upload it as a video, so if you're not too bored, give that superior version a listen. 😎

I saw Beauty and the Beast on Thursday, and whilst being predictably bored by Emma Watson's blank, passionless face in all her scenes, actually quite enjoyed it. Some of the musical numbers were very entertaining, especially 'Gaston', a song which aptly sums up the mentality of the vast majority of clown guys who I've had the misfortune of having gone on dates with in London.

Only difference is Gaston has more humility.

Greetings from Paris.

Had my caricature drawn this evening, which I found amusing:

A caricature. Like Jennifer Lawrence's unbearable performance in American Hustle.

My best friend Anna said the look on my face in this picture is identical to the look on my face when I'm talking to someone who's boring me. Ehehe.

The French get Park Chan-Wook's Handmaiden, my most anticipated movie of 2016, three months before the British do! No fair.

By the way, I like that France has stayed true to the literal meaning of the film's title, Agassi in their translation, rather than giving a slightly more specific meaning to the title, as we've done.

And finally, a side-by-side of the The Accountant poster in the metro in Paris and the underground in London:

Strange how despite staying true to Agassi's title, they decided to re-brand The Accountant with a new title of their own!

Outfit of the Day: Cowboy Chic.

Shirt: Hollister

Shorts: Oasis

Hoodie: GAP
Glasses: Twiggy for Aurora

Trainers: Adidas

It's possible I may play with my hair a bit too much. #DatNarcissism

Bonus photo: elegance in motion. Ahem.

I don't think the hottest cowboy of all time, aka Leonardo DiCaprio in The Quick and the Dead, needs to worry about a competitor to his title, haha

ohai!

Review: BlackBerry Bold 9790

Before I got my BlackBerry back in April, I had had a Samsung Tocco for almost four years, a phone that served me extraordinarily well, but, obviously, having had it for four years, it was seeing the end of its days. I’m not hugely materialistic and into my labels so I would have gladly carried on using it until it stopped working (it was pink, my favourite colour, I liked the touch screen, and Samsung sponsor a certain football team which I believe I’ve quite fond of :p), but the sides were peeling off and my mum said she felt second-hand embarrassment seeing me using it. So my parents insisted on me getting a new phone, and I certainly wasn’t going to quibble with that.

In terms of aesthetics, I really enjoy looking at my phone. Some previous BlackBerries have been far too brick-like in their appearance, and their buttons have been clunky and completely unsexy. The BlackBerry Bold 9790 is both shorter and wider than an iPhone, so in that sense, not as sleek, but I genuinely adore the way they managed to fit a keypad on the bottom. The multi-usage of touchscreen and QWERTY keypad is extremely helpful (and the keys are so comfortable to press, something this newer version of the BlackBerry has over its previous antiquated editions) – I was used to using a touchscreen from my Samsung Tocco, but when I want to send a quick message, I write much faster using keys. It also means that, when I’m arguing with certain boys on WhatsApp, I can get my smartarse responses in more swiftly than they do, as I have the advantage of being able to touch-type, whilst they have to use one finger at a time, typing their comebacks to one diss when I’m already onto the next one. Mwuahahaha.

Other things I like about my BlackBerry Bold is the general element of ~swag and je ne sais quoi it brings. This might be an idea I have incepted in my own head and carry no truth whatsoever, but there are some phones which are ~cooler than others, and iPhones and BlackBerries are at the top of the food chain, though the Samsung Galaxy is a strong competitor (needless to say, the Noka 3310 comes last, if they still exist trololololo). The screen and display are all slick, and the icons are the perfect size for your finger to touch it without interfering with another. The Blackerry 9790 is also very straightforward and easy to use – BlackBerry messenger was something I avoided for the best part of two months, but when finally shown how to use it at a house party, I couldn’t get enough of it. AppWorld comes ready installed on the phone, so you can download to your heart’s desire. An App I wholeheartedly recommend is ScreenGrab – the BlackBerry, unlike the iPhone, doesn’t have an in-built function that allows you to take Printscreens, but there are half a dozen free apps which, once installed, do the job.

Something else that I find hugely handy about the Blackberry 9790 is that, if you're into your social networks, as I am, it's a dream. Once you've hooked up to Twitter, e-mail and Facebook, the phone is faster at receiving new tweets and the like faster than Twitter is on the PC! This doesn't extend to Facebook, which it's a bit more temperamental with; the delay between receiving a new Facebook notification and getting alerted via phone can vary between 0.5 seconds to several hours, and, furthermore, my phone sometimes omits telling me I've received a new FB message altogether. So it's worth keeping an eye on your Facebook account on the PC with this phone. But, as I said, with Twitter and e-mail, the speed at which it updates you is infalliable, and as such, I've been able to become a lot closer with many of my Twitter followers (good lord that sounds sad) since getting this phone.

However, the flaws of the BlackBerry 9790 are gaping. Firstly, the battery life is a disgrace. I leave it charged overnight and by about three in the afternoon (due to limited usage as well, most of the time I just leave it there on standby) I’m down to one bar of five. Even the iPhone, which I’ve heard has quite a low battery life, can at least attempt to make it through an entire day. As such, I’ve had to keep my BlackBerry charger in my drawer at work, and charge the phone at home using my dad’s BlackBerry charger. The other main flaw is how the phone just sporadically freezes on you. Very, very, very annoying. There’s a little clock sign that comes up when the BlackBerry is still loading doing something, and for minutes at a time, my phone can just stay frozen on that.

In terms of tariff, I’m on O2 and I pay £18.50 for unlimited texts, 100 minutes and 100MB bandwidth. I’ve never exceeded bandwidth and due to WhatsApp and BBM I don’t use my phone for phone calls all that much, so I think I have myself a pretty decent deal there. (I have a few less complementary words I could say about O2’s service on the whole, but that’s an essay for another day). I am fond of my BlackBerry – it’s not pink, so I had to buy it a pink case to carry on the tradition of my favourite colour being somehow affiliated with my mode of contact, and I nickname it Lana after my number one girlcrush Lana del Rey. Like the singer itself, it is very pretty to look at, full of genius inventions, but often lets itself down when it needs to work the most.

Grade: B.

Without a care in the world.

Would give anything to go back to these days, to be honest.

Sibling Narcissism.

My top 10 favourite photos with both me and my brother Tom in. Because it's Saturday and I'm not working for once.

Runners up:
Barcelona
when I was 16
ten

I'm said to look the same age as him in this one!

nine

there's something captivating about the lighting in this one.

eight

*chuckles* Gotta love the odd baby photo.

seven

for the lulz. And also the look of concentration on Tom's face in feeding me the ice cream.

six

Daww

five

The way Tom pushes his face against the lamb is so precious

four

er, he's in his Spurs strip. Me in my Chelsea one. That's it really.

three

My brother is somewhat of a chess champion. And also, I like to look back to remind myself what I looked like before I ballooned up hugely.

two

haha

one

Whey! Get us.

That's really. Ha.

Too much of anything can make you sick.

Four outfits I've worn recently. Thoughts/comments/requests for me to stop being such a dick welcome:

01. Who is your favourite American president of all time?
02. Did you watch the Eurovision song contest this year? If not, why? If yes, who was your fave?
03. What is the most ridiculous statement you've put in exam?



04. Unfunniest "funny" film?
05. (self-centred question) What's the first adjective that comes to mind when you think of me? (be honest, I won't take offence.) :P

Ha.

#1

*giggles*

I'm cleaning up all my floppy disks from yonks ago (oh, and Anahita, I've found two more ridiculously written film scripts for us to lol at! :)), and one of the treasures I've dugged up is a poem I wrote, I think it was for a Geography assignment, on immigration.

Anyway, the sentiment's there, I just don't think I should have introduced rhyme. It sounds funny. And the last sentence is a blatant steal from the Fargo tagline!

Tired and hungry,
Dying for food.
My brother is crying,
In a gloomy mood.

I cry for help,
They don’t understand.
I’m speaking another language,
They don’t lend their hand.

I steal some scraps.
It’s nowhere near enough.
But I am used to it now,
Living this life rough.

I’m lost in this planet,
On the run from the law.
I can’t find a home,
Living this poor.

My parents are missing,
I miss them a lot.
My heart feels like stone.
My legs tied in a knot.

But yet I keep on running,
Never looking behind.
Just me and my brother,
And my cunning and my mind.

I escaped at a young age,
I was forced to run away.
I would have been murdered,
Had I chosen to stay?

I’m now at a new place.
Somewhere I haven’t already been.
But I must be careful,
I cannot be seen.

Each road is an option,
Which way do I lead?
Will I end up in circles?
What are these signs that I can’t read?

When I entered this new country,
I thought we’d be safe.
But there are problems, here too;
They guide us away.

So I cross the border,
Wondering what this new area will bring.
A lot can happen
In the middle of nothing.

Four brief book reviews.

I’ve been a bit behind on the whole “a book a day” thing, as well as reviewing them for the blog. But anyway, here’s four books I read this week:

Memories of My Melancholy Whores (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
Underwhelming, to say the least. It was turgid, dull and extreeeeeeemely unsexy (I don’t want to hear about a 90-year-old man’s waning libido, cheers). Marquez, you can and have done so much better.

Dumb Witness (Agatha Christie)
One of my favourite Agatha Christie mysteries. Not quite up there with The ABC Murders and And Then There Were None, but certainly one of her finest, in terms of plot, character development, and narration. The idea - of Poirot investigating the murder of a woman who sent him a letter long before she died - is ingenious, and there are various twists and turns throughout.

Star Struck (Val McDermid)
Emma 4-xing loves this book!!! After I ploughed through my own “script” of Butterfly, I thought the two words “crime comedy” would instil nothing but a shudder in me. I was wrong, for Star Struck has got crime and humour in spades. It’s about Kate Brannigan, a P.I. in Manchester who has been hired to be the bodyguard of famous TV star Gloria Kendel, who has been getting death threats. But once she takes on the job, it's more than just scary letters that she has to contend with as a celebrity mystic-meg type gets murdered. 

The book encapsulates all of Kate’s life, from her employees who are getting arrested or hooking up in cyberspace, to her brooding boyfriend, to all the eccentric people she meets on the job. Kate Brannigan is an amazing role model. Honestly, with the influx of wags and empty-headed glamour models that we're seeing in the Media, reading about Kate, with her Thai-boxing, Chinese food eating, fast-talking ways was an absolute breath of fresh air. 

Star Struck is very clever, well-written and insightful, it played a bit like an episode of Jonathan Creek as written by Sophie Kinsella. I absolutely adored it. (And I've just found out that there are about 5 more Kate Brannigan books written! *is happy*)

The Lady and the Unicorn (Tracy Chevalier)
If anyone can make the process of painting and creating and weaving a tapestry interesting to a complete art-phobic like me, it’s Tracy Chevalier. 

Girl with a Pearl Earring was one of the most beautiful and underratedly sexy books I’ve ever read. TLATU is a little less subtle in its characters’ carnal desires, and I for one couldn’t see what all the women in the book saw in Nicholas (who didn’t sound that fit, imo) and why they were willing to run the risk of getting pregnant by him. 

That said, the narration, which jumps from character to character, is really well done – their inner monologues are completely believable and it’s refreshing to hear a story from different angles. And a tapestry of a unicorn sounds sublime.

What this is.

I absolutely adore films, so here's my lil' blog for 'em! It's gonna be an exercise in mediocrity, but oh well. I love to write!~~