What to wear for a friend's wedding?

In a few hours I will be attending my friend's wedding reception. She's a dear friend of mine whom I used to be bestest friends with in junior high. I'm honoured to attend her wedding and see what makes her happy.

However, I don't know what to wear. Actually, it's more like, I know I can wear something but I really don't want to wear it, because I have worn it to one wedding before, and another event already. I feel like I only have one dress to wear to formal events like weddings and corporate parties. It's accurately true.

I've been wearing this blue dress all the time. To be honest I only bought it because I had a 60% off coupon, and well I liked the A-line image it produced when I wore it. My pet peeve about this dress is that it shows way too much shoulder. It's one of those dresses that look really nice unworn, but when you put it on, it might as well look like a tank top dress.

I first wore it to my friend's wedding reception, with gold heels. I liked my outfit at that time. It was the Summer, so it was a perfect choice.

Secondly, I wore it to a corporate holiday party. Same style again. Even though it was winter, I still pulled out the gold heels.

Now yesterday, I did go dress shopping, but I bought casual dresses. They were cheap, what was I thinking? I should have purchased a formal/semi-formal dress to wear for a number of occasions.

I have an abundance of casual dresses, but of course I don't want to come under-dressed for a wedding.

I figured, I'll just wear my blue dress again, but this time instead of gold heels, I will wear black wedges. I thought about wearing tights, but honestly the dress is long on me... so tights would seem very out of place.

Technically, this is the third time I'd be wearing the dress, so I guess it's no biggy. In the future, I will take what I've learned and purchase some nice but affordable dresses that I could only wear a formal events... I have waaaaaay too many casual dresses!

I have one friend who I have never seen reuse a single dress. She always has tons of different styles. I could quickly go out and purchase a dress right now, but whatever, I'll do that later. The black wedge combination should look good. If not, then I can always go back to the gold heels. :)

Stressed :(

After three months of working part-time, I think the stress has finally gotten to me. The stress from not having a stable income, having people constantly remind you of your unemployment by asking you if you've been searching/reminding you that you quit your job/being negative about everything regarding finances, and from not being happy while working... it's really taking it's toll on me and it's not good. My eczema on my back has started to come back due to stress. I need to make the eczema go away again and find a new job... hopefully that will bring everyone else's stress level down and most importantly, mine.

January is overall a slow month at work now because our next major project won't be produced until the end of January, which meant I wouldn't have much work until then. However, I did ask my boss for more work... mostly for stuff outside of my main responsibility, but they were able to dig up some old projects for me to work on. I literally have piles of footage to work through until the next major project. Normally I would be totally happy with this, but to be honest, I've gotten board of my work. It's repetitive and it's time for someone else to try it. But I will take on this work since I need the hours/income.

However, that won't happen until I find a new job. Hopefully soon. I attended a meeting with a recruitment agency the other day after applying for a position. They set-up a profile for me to help me with my job search and said they would be looking at resumes next week for the position. They said they will give me a call regarding the position at that time. I've been applying to jobs everyday now... and now I am at the point where I'm leaning towards the admin side more. Because right now I am so focused on securing my finances and bringing my stress levels down. Also, I need more experience. I'm still applying to jobs that I'm really interested in too, so that's not out of the water.

I'm pretty sure my eczema will go away very soon. I just started the process like I used to, and after a few days it disappeared. I think I'm missing the moisturizing part though, so I need to start putting lotion on it like I used to.

Also once my stress levels go away, I won't cry anymore.

Here's hoping to a job opportunity!!!!! Add oil :D

Holidays~

I've got one more week of holidays until it's back to work! Well, I may have two weeks depending on if I have a project ready for me or not...

Unless I find a job soon and it starts right away?

My holidays have been relaxing and enjoyable so far. I feel like I'm spending a lot of time idling though, kind of miss working already.

On Christmas I spent time with the family, we had banh xeo and egg drop seafood soup for our Christmas dinner. It was fun!

Boxing Day - I just stayed home... slept in way too long because I was playing the new Phoenix Wright 3DS game. Soooo addictive. Was supposed to go out but it didn't happen because I woke up so late.

My bf came back from his hometown and we hit up the malls for some Boxing Week shopping. We just window shopped... but the deals were really nice! He couldn't decide if he should buy this one nice trench coat or not, so we put it off until he next day. We also hung out with a friend of ours who wanted to try this Malaysian restaurant, but when we got there they were already closed. We headed to Applebees for dinner instead, and when we got there we learned what a "Flash Freeze" warning was... the wind was blowing tons of snow dust at about 70 - 90km/hr... it was SO hard to open the door and when we finished our dinner we found it a challenge to maneuver our way onto the roads, but we were able to drop our friend off and head home. The next day I hung out with my friend and tried out a new bubbletea place we've never gone to, since we wanted to go for Korean food, but all of the Korean places nearby were closed for the holidays. The food was okay, we had Taiwanese chicken with rice and vegetables, along with some fish balls. The fish balls were really good, but the rice was kind of not fresh tasting. We also had some bubbletea as well and they were massive!! They both came in huge beer jugs lol.
Afterwards I went to the mall again with my bf... we window shopped again but were too hungry to keep going so we just went home.

Today we went to Best Buy to check out deals and buy some games. I bought some new Sony ear phones, since my iPod ones are broken. Luckily the ear phones were on sale :) My bf bought Mario Party for the 3DS and AC4 for the PS3. We went for bubbletea afterwards and had some fried chicken popcorn snacks and played Mario Party. Very fun!

Not sure what we'll be doing on NYE, I kind of want to have a get together with some friends to celebrate, or go to one of those elaborate parties, but they are a bit pricey.

I applied for a job today, I really hope I can get some call backs tomorrow. Having interviews ready for the new year would reassure me I haven't lost my skill in job hunting!

I think I'm going to make some Omuraisu tomorrow. I miss eating Japanese cuisine. Ahhh I want sushi...

New Year Resolutions!

I tried to see if I posted anything regarding resolutions for 2013, but it seems I haven't blogged about them since 2011... whoops!

Any way, before I get started on my resolutions this year, I just wanted to provide an update on my job search.

Turns out that someone internally got the position where I applied to with a referral. Ah... Also, I didn't get an interview for a marketing position and found out through a contact that the job has already been filled.

I still have a few other positions I'm waiting on... hopefully the ships haven't sailed on them yet! I applied for two positions today, both regarding ticket sales/coordination and for artsy fartsy places. :) I'm hoping to hear something after Christmas.

Now onto the resolutions...

1) Get a great job that pays well and makes me happy, by February 2014 - Of course you probably saw this one coming... but yeah, number one resolution right now. February 2014 is probably too much of an extension, but at the rate my next project is going, it's best for me to get a new job soon, train the new person and then enjoy my new job. Otherwise it might be hard to train someone while projects are continuously coming in/working full-time.

2) Workout more. - This year I have done lots of sports: badminton, rock climbing... okay there's no more to add to that, but I hope to do more exercise and sports stuff this new year. I'm thinking of taking up blogilates!!

3) Work on my website - Need to get my portfolio up and running again. For now it's up, but it needs to be tweaked to look nicer!

4) Bake and cook more - This year I've only baked some cookies recently, and I haven't cooked anything... lol.

5) Be a better communicator and be  more confident person - Lately I haven't been feeling like myself and I find it difficult to communicate in social situations, so I want to improve myself and be who I was before!! Outgoing and always fun to be with!

6) Study Japanese more frequently and become a better speaker! - I bought N3 books so I should definitely use them soon...

Need to find work, fast...

I know all I blog about nowadays is work and jobs... I can't help it since it's constantly on my mind, I'm being reminded about it constantly by others, and well it's getting hard to shoulder student loans and miscellaneous bills.

Work in general has been alright lately since I took on some full time hours. I've been doing mostly marketing/administrative tasks at work for the last week, but it keeps me busy and I learn a lot when I'm doing it. I also received the opportunity to be more creative with my work, so that is always a bonus!

I applied for two marketing positions so far, and decided to check out other job postings. I won't mind admin jobs as long as it doesn't have to do with accounting related stuff... I just couldn't stand the repetitive information and data entry tasks I had at my previous position, but I will do everything else while being positive. I'm going to apply for another marketing position, but this position isn't full-time... it's another contract, but it looks like it comes with benefits, so I wouldn't mind as much... but I should probably be looking more at full-time positions, anyway.

The other job I applied for with a referral... I haven't heard back from them. It's been 3 weeks... I'll wait two more weeks, hopefully I get a call soon.

As a new grad, it's hard to find something that's specific to my field, and with reasonable commute. There's one place I could apply to in the south, but they don't really have reliable public transportation to there... and I don't have a car.

I guess I'll apply for admin positions today. Right now I'm willing to work a year or two just to save up funds and pay off bills. I can always just do some freelancing on the weekend or other things, or take days off to do other work.

I'm hoping to find a full time position either before the new year, or before February. February marks the month I received my first full-time job... wow.

More jobs, more!

I attended the interview and don't think I performed at my best. My nerves got to me and I don't think I was able to answer questions as thoroughly as I could have...

I also learned something about the job that wasn't listed in the description. Now that's where I had a feeling I would get thrown off the consideration of even getting the position.

Fast forward a few days later, I find out I wasn't their chosen candidate.

Not going to be too disappointed about it... just hoping that I will get more calls for interviews soon.

There's that point where you get tired of constantly applying for jobs, writing cover letters, tweaking your resume, etc...

Maybe I'll apply to a job today, maybe I won't... It gets exhausting writing the same things over and over again.

Brighter!

Ah so my job hunt has finally paid off...

I received my first job interview in MONTHS just a while ago. The job interview is this weekend and I'm pretty excited for it. I've been prepping today and I will later tomorrow (technically today since it's already midnight) so that I can get the job.

The best thing about the job is that it's in my industry, and it's for something I care about/want to know more of in detail.

The only thing that irks me about it is that it's a part time position, a contract... and well, the position title isn't the best title (another admin job), but the position description outweighs these cons. There's so much valuable experience that I could gain from this position and also because it's within the industry that is why I feel like it would help me in my career goals.

I'm also very ecstatic that this would be a position that has consistent hours. At my current job, I work less than 10 hours each week, which is pretty low. And since I'm not a student anymore, I need to start paying things such as my student loans, wellness bills, food, etc. With the hours from this job, I think I would be able to sustain myself better, but that all depends on what the salary could be. I'm not sure what it is.. it's a very small company, so I'm not sure.

I also applied for another job and was able to get a referral for it. It's a job that's in the admin sector... but would be full time and it pays well. As for experience in the industry, it's definitely not in the industry, but it does have some relative skills that could come handy in the future.

The application hasn't met the deadline yet, but if I do get an interview and offers from both companies, it'll be hard to decide. I want a full time position but at the same time I really would like experience in my field.

It'll be a difficult decision when it comes to decide. For now, I'll put it aside and just focus on the interview and getting other interviews.

When I do need to decide though, I can either be happy at work, and would have more flexibility to do things, but may not have a lot of spending money, but I would get lots of experience in the industry and in many areas of interest. Or, I can be content at work (this is the mentality I have now for any admin position... after my last job, I just don't want to repeat it), have full time hours and benefits, better salary, some experience that would relate to my future career goals, and would probably have to pursue my interests on the weekends and the evenings...
(This would be easier with a full time position, since I'd have some money to invest in my interests)

I don't know.

I just hope I get an offer, or two! :)

If only there were a way to somehow convert the part-time contract into a full-time one instead... with benefits, that would be so awesome... but this is a very small company so I don't believe that will happen... or could it???