Melisasa

During my entire exchange and travel period, I meticulously recorded down every spending and categorised it. This wasn't hard with the Pocket Expense app. This app makes everything a piece of cake and even provides chart and percentage breakdown. It's highly customisable too, and one can add categories and accounts. Unfortunately all the data is locked in the app, and I had to manually transfer the data to my computer to generate this inforgraphic.

This infographic is awesome by the way, totally user friendly and has just the right amount of functions needed to create the perfect infographic. 

So, I've been really looking forward to Chinese New Year since I came back, because it's a time where I meet with all my relatives and eat lots of steamboat and chinese new year goodies. And with all these excitement, I thought I should throw in more effort to decorate the house this year. At the same time, I thought I should regain my crafting hobby and was really excited to start with this idea I found on pinterest.

 I missed out UHU glue and blue tack which I used in the last step. For the white cotton thread, I would not recommend using  sewing threads, for I think those threads are weaker and could snap easily when weaving. For the photo frame, I'm actually using the classic IKEA ones.

Everything I think of NYC, the first thing that comes to mind is Gossip Girl. I would dream of the Grand Central Station, and how the girls were always hanging around upper east side and the steps of the New York Public Library. And then there were the TedTalks the spoke about public spaces and all the beautiful parks in NYC. I was more than excited to see all these for myself.

In all, we traveled around NYC for 8 days and took a day trip out to the Jersey Short Outlet for a day. The $31 one week travel card was a great discount (until I lost mine and had to buy another) and we never used any of the city passes. We weren't interested in most of the observation decks stuff and the museums we visited went by donations, which meant we could pay as much/little as we liked. The only tour we took was a walking tour that went by donations as well. We could pay as much as we wanted at the end of the tour and that left us with much more budget for food.

While we were there, we stayed at an airbnb apartment in Harlem. It's a black people neighbourhood and it was generally safe as long as we didn't return too late at night. Ed said he heard gunshots and saw drunks on New Year's Eve after the countdown, so celebrations might be an exception. Otherwise, the house was wonderful and cosy and located just 20 mins (or less) by metro to everything.

 The exterior facade of the Grand Central Terminal and the Chrysler building

On 8 Jan, I returned home, back to Singapore, back home, into the arms of my mum and dad <3 And I am just starting to feel the pressure of school work. (I already have a meeting scheduled on 9 jan at 9am) Otherwise, it feels strangely good to be home.