“Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.”

2014 was a very Square Enix year. :D First of all there was the Distant Worlds Concert at the Royal Albert Hall back in November:

What else can I say? It was amazing to hear One Winged Angel and the theme from Final Fantasy VII live. Two hours is too short I say, too short.
Thanks to Joanne's info, I also managed to attend the launch of Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 Remix in London with Daniel and Eujin:

I mentally prepared a few lines of thank yous and similar appreciative words in Japanese to say to Nishi Rie and Yasue Tai but I was too starstruck and squeaked thank you in English instead when the moment came. Typical me.

Yes I am very proud of my loot (SQUEEE autographed card and Ventus phone charm!!). I love how they made this model of the Twilight Balcony and we could take pictures there. I just wish the sea salt ice creams were real.
Then last weekend I forced my lazy ass to go to KLCC for Comic Fiesta Day 2. I've missed it for more than 2 years now, because I've always been in the UK for winter holidays and my interest in CF has been waning too. Way back when it first started CF felt more fun, maybe I've just outgrown it. Now none of the cosplays really catch my eye (Have I become a snob?!) and there's a lot of going-ons that I find irrelevant like League of Legends gaming tournaments and Alienware exhibiting their products. No, not only have I outgrown it, CF has grown a lot too. It also doesn't work in my favour that I either hate or don't watch the current popular anime series i.e. Sword Art Online (Please stop. ), Haikyuu!, Free!, Kuroko no Basuke.

My view was like that most of the time.

Blast from the past.

Improvement from my first encounter with famous peeps: I managed to say something! I told both of them I was looking forward to FF15 and thanked Wan Hazmer for developing Type 0 and Hashimoto Shinji for coming to CF (In Japanese!). Wan Hazmer was really friendly but Hashimoto Shinji seemed kinda bored. Not sure if he even heard what I said. I'm guessing he hates all these meet and greet stuff.

The reason why I went to CF and forked out RM 25 for a ticket AND queued up for over an hour. This file's duties of storing my Chemical Reaction Engineering notes shall be no more. It shall exist only as a prized souvenir.

The only cosplay photo I took that day. Unless you count the Maple mushroom.
Oh yes, since mum is a Sunway employee, we got a huge discount for The Banjaran Hotsprings Retreat in Ipoh and we managed to persuade dad to come along (Dad really loves his couch at home. ), making it the Lees' year end family holiday (Missing Joanne. Do Photoshop yourself in. ). It is a glorious place at the foot of a cluster of lime stone caves, full of greenery and insects chirping, a prime example of natural Malaysian beauty. There's nothing much to do there besides soak in the hotspring and meditate in the caves and go for a spa if you can fork out 200 bucks but to be fair I think that IS the point, since it's a retreat. Doing nothing at all suits me just fine and I was contented to just doze off on the couch in our beautiful villa surrounded by the sights and sounds of nature, which I eventually did in the night after spending the entire day dipping in the hotspring, visiting the Crystal Cave, Meditation Cave and Steam Cave, exfoliating my skin in the fish spa (Interesting mutualism. ) and then soaking again in our private Jacuzzi. I can say that it's definitely the prettiest and swankiest hotel I've ever stayed in. Not that I've stayed in many, we Lees are of the middle class, "da gong zai" as mum calls it.

I was really excited. And look! Dad is smiling! That is a rare sight.

My house has to be something like this in the future, that shall be one of my life goals.

Yes like this too.

The hotspring lake bordered by the caves. The mist rising off the lake surfaces makes the whole place seem even more out of the world.

The Fish Spa. Mum didn't like the sensation but dad was very sporting.

Dad's leg not mine haha. Fishes sucking your feet feels like a very tickly sort of vibration. I had to control every nerve and fibre of my body from twitching and shaking the fishes off.
Oh yes, because I'm a greedy cat and food is of the utmost importance to me, I feel the need to comment that the buffet breakfast was excellent, they served us fresh fruit juice and even had soy milk for cereal.

I am sorry to say I was extremely sulky on the way back from the trip to Ipoh because dad didn't want to stop by Funny Mountain in Ipoh town for tau foo fah. Yes I tried it the day before but the tau foo fah was so smooth I really wanted to have some more. The only place I can think of with tau foo fah of comparable standards is the one in the Taman Tun Dr Ismail wet market and we haven't gone there in years. Sadly dad just wanted to rush back home as usual.

Funny Mountain, please consider having a branch in SS15. Or London, haha.
Right. Now that I'm on the topic of my greediness I must talk some more about food. Since I only get a few months a year to enjoy wonderful Malaysian cuisine and everything related to green tea, naturally I gorge myself silly whenever I'm back home. This time I tried out Milk Cow cause it looked amazing in photos and Yeaji told me it was really creamy. I ordered the one that came with a cube of honeycomb from the chirpy worker who anyeonghaseyo-ed me because I was under the impression that honeycomb would taste amazing (And looks good in photos to boot. ) but on that day humanity received a grim reminder I learnt that once you licked off the honey from the surface honeycomb tastes like nothing and eating it feels like chewing wire. The ice-cream itself I thought was nice, but nothing spectacular. I thought Amaretto and Snowflake (The gelato parlour in London not the Malaysian Taiwanese dessert store. ) gelato tasted just as good or maybe even better since they have amazing flavours not like Milk Cow which serves plain ice cream only.

Photobombed by someone's butt.
Snowflake's Uji Matcha Supreme on the other hand I really loved. My favourite taro balls with my favourite green tea ice cream with jeng jeng jeng my favourite matcha to pour over? Wow. Now it would be prefect if it didn't have those annoying red beans. Why does everyone insist on pairing green tea/matcha with red bean? But no big deal I can easily ask to remove it. Another reason why I'm not stuffing myself every week with Uji Matcha Supreme is because it costs 15 bucks for a bowl. It's a big portion I grant you that, but I really can't finish it on my own. I wish Snowflake would just make a smaller portion and charge me less.

Looking at this makes me hungry.
I have a bunch of stuff to finish before term starts but yes I decided to blog instead. I feel like changing the layout of this blog because I hate how its wideness always makes it looks like I've written so little when I feel like I've written a considerable amount, but changing blogskin is tedious considering I've blogged less than five times in the last two years.