Another Chanel

I have gone down a very, very, very dark path.

And I'm honestly SO SO SO SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!

Over 2 years later, and I finally found her. Albeit it was via the consignment route, but this is such a rare colour that I couldn't help it.

I would've gone the traditional black classic flap bag, but I wear dark clothing all the time. My wardrobe is pretty much like a funeral closet. I have a few bright coloured clothes but I never really wear them because it makes me look fat.

So of course I need bright accessories. And here she is. She has been found. More pictures will be released once I get my hands on her, but otherwise this has been a long journey. You may have read a couple years ago how I was trying to hunt one down and a douchebag got in my way and ruined my goals. Anyways, he can go kiss my ass.

Stay tuned for a full reveal my lovelies! AHHHH CAN'T WAIT!

Tax Season?!

You know time is going by so fast when it's tax season. Yes, it's that time again.

Obviously I won't reveal much about my salary and taxes, but at least it's done. It's a pain trying to find all the paperwork and get it together. Which sort of brings me to another topic.

I recently had a conversation with mom about donations and what not, since those add up to charitable deductions. I don't mind donating to organizations, but there are times you wonder, is my the money really going towards something good, or just to the pockets of the CEOs and the workers who help run the organization?

A lot of times, companies will issue receipts for income tax purposes, but there are some that don't. One notable one is the Toronto Humane Society. Every year, we make a donation to them, and every year we ask for a receipt. Every year, we NEVER have gotten a receipt. If you remember, there was an investigation into the organization about where the funds really go: into the pocket of the CEO. There was a huge backlash. Nowadays I don't know how they're doing but we halted donations to them because they never gave us any receipt as proof that we did donate.

Hence why when people ask, well if you can afford this and that, why don't you donate to the poor or to help animals or something? Yeah, we do but when companies don't do their part in issuing receipts to the donors, then that's a big problem when it comes to my taxes. It's not that I don't want to donate, but it's the big players who don't do their part in doing this the legal way. And then it screws me and every other hard working person out there who do take the time to donate, but can't get a proper tax deduction, thus it screws with how much is returned back to us.

This led to a conversation about waiters and waitresses. Yes, my conversations are never linear. I used to have this perception that waiters are uneducated people who couldn't find work except to collect dishes for a living. Or that they weren't good enough for a "real" job because they would get minimum wage, and rely on tips.

Maybe that was the perception a long time ago. Except we have to look at the current situation. Look at the housing market. The average single detached home is close to $1 million. Even someone who makes 100k a year is going to have a tough time paying that mortgage. Everything (and I mean everything from clothes to groceries to fuel) has skyrocketed. Everything EXCEPT our wages. Don't we all wish we had a 100% pay raise at our jobs?

The way I look at it now is your waiter may have a Masters or PhD degree in a specialized field, yet works the odd hours at a restaurant to make ends meet. They may already have an established career, but take on extra work to make extra side money. Perhaps they have a family to feed, or they're a single parent. And probably have to pay rent or mortgage on top of that, along with their monthly bills. Or perhaps, this is their third job trying to make ends meet.

You just never know.

Plus, waiters and waitresses need to have a mind of a machine. Trying to remember the little details when they're trying to deliver food, and one table requires a spoon, while another requires a beer. Then balancing all these dishes in one go. It's not an easy job. It requires the utmost patience, killer memory and people centred attitude, as well as social skills. Yet it's a minimum wage job.

If you asked me to do it, I would probably fail at it because my memory sucks. Plus I'm terrible at balancing things on my hands and arms. I would not qualify to be a waitress.

Some countries do not tip workers because it's not their policy to do so, whereas some places like North America rely on tips for extra cash. There are some assholes who will not tip because their waiters were not attentive during the night. Keep in mind that not everyone will be an expert at waitressing or waitering because perhaps it's their first day? Did you ever think of that? It's a learning experience.

I obviously look at things with compassion (most of the time) and I see people just like me who are working hard to climb up the ladder, or perhaps just working to survive. It's as basic as just living. I don't go out very often anymore, but now that I've at least established myself a bit more, I make sure to give generous tips to those who attend to me or friends for the night.

In Asian culture, it's pretty good if you tip 10%. In non-Asian restaurants, it's common that you go 13-18%. I'm not in the end of the Asian tipping but I do go higher, especially if they are working a weekend because hey, you could be at home with your kids or family but you're here feeding me instead. So of course, I'll tip more because of that. I may not be able to solve all the problems, but at least in one day it would hopefully help towards some contribution.

To me, I rather do this than donate huge portions of my salary to big corporations because I rather focus on those who are on the "same line" so to speak in terms of working. We all know what it's like to work like a dog and try to feed family. We all work hard for ourselves and our families. And that's where I'd like to focus. We focus on each other and help each other out. Not big corporations who already have millions for research.

To each their own though. I can't tell you what to do with your money. You can donate it to big corporations if you like. But I rather stay within the same line of helping fellow families out, someone that I can relate to, versus a corporation with a CEO who makes 10x more than I do.

Fake Chanel Earrings

I know there are people out there who are willing to shed out all their savings on an authentic item, and there are people who will pay very cheap prices for fake items. That's cool, whatever floats your boat (even though there have been links of fake bags/luxury items linked to terrorism and trafficking. One huge reason why NOT to buy fake items).

Then there are those who pay almost luxury prices, thinking they got a luxury item, but it turns out it was fake. So you got duped.

I got these Chanel CC stud earrings a while ago from a douchebag who, for whatever reason, thought he could buy people's friendship by buying expensive items for them. I had a feeling they were fake because 1) he didn't have a job 2) thus he had no income 3) he's an idiot.

I decided to see how long they would last. This is a good lesson for those out there who don't want to pay full price for an authentic item, but rather take the cheap way out. Seriously, just save your money. It's not worth buying a cheap item, because it WILL break on you. You will end up spending more in the long run if you keep on buying the same cheap piece of crap. Save up and buy the authentic piece from a boutique.

When you first look at it, it looks pretty. It's all shiny and what not. From what I've read, Chanel does use Swarovski crystals for some of their jewelry. When you first see it, you wouldn't think anything of it, except to say wow, CC!

It also comes with an authentic looking Chanel box. See below.

Just to see how long this thing would last, I would only wear this on occasion. It's not something to be worn daily. I can probably count on one hand the amount of times I've worn this, before I started noticing things:

1) The crystals have come off one by one. I remember I just wiped gently to shine it and DOINK! A crystal just came off so easily.

2) The stopper at the back fell apart. I've owned many earrings over the years, and this is the first time I've had a stopper completely fall apart.

3) The 'authentic' tag at the back fell off, for both earrings.

4) If you look eye level to look at how the crystals protrude, you can see they are not even. Some crystals are fit nicely, but some are completely engrained into the metal. Then there are some that are crooked.

Now, what's funny is that all the stuff that fell off or apart happened INSIDE the box. I hadn't even worn it yet. They started falling apart as I was taking them out of the box!

It was hard to capture, but you can see some missing crystals on the left one, as well as the right earring. The 'authentic' plates are placed at the front.

Says 'Made in France'. My ass.

This shows how the stopper is suppose to look normally.

This is the stopper that completely fell apart in 3 separate places.

Generally speaking, Chanel earrings are a bit heavy because of all the materials they use to generate a beautiful piece of art. These earrings felt very, very light and cheap. Like plastic. The back was not in any way beautiful but looked like a bunch of plastic had melted together and dried very quickly. So it was not smooth. It was hard to capture on camera, so I did not include it in the pictures. 

The crystals should be much more evenly placed, not have one low and one high. The inconsistency in this shows that from far away, it looks fine, but up close you can see the terrible workmanship. 

I don't have any other pair of Chanel earrings to compare, but after owning a couple of Chanel handbags, I can say the quality has been nothing but perfect. I've read some of the recent ones have had some bad runs, but I was fortunate enough to have two great handbags that are still in almost perfect condition and not falling apart like these earrings. 

Safe to say, these will be destroyed and gone to the garbage. 

April Fool's!

Wow, already April. Every time I write a new post, it's a new month. Craziness. Getting old sucks.

A lot of things have happened in between aside from the family emergency. One thing I wanted to talk about was fraud.

You may have read recently that a 22 year old kid from Ancaster, ON was arrested for allegedly being part of the largest hack of Yahoo. This kid lived in a big home by himself, drove luxury cars and had loud parties. It was found that he was paid by Russian hackers to hack into 80 email accounts of government officials. He also ran an ad for hacking jobs.

Basically, this guy was not working legally to earn his items.

It was also found that the house had a huge mortgage, and the cars still had loans on them. He was also all over social media, portraying a luxury party life. People who are his "friends" don't even know his last name, nor what he does as a job. There's one chick who came out in the public to defend this "good friend" of hers, yet she had no idea what he did as a job, nor did she know his last name.

Yet she calls him her best friend. LOL. Best friends with his so called money. She emphasized that he paid for meals and what not. So yeah, the way I see it, she's friend's with his money.

Anyways, point is, if you know you're a hacker and you've hacked into one of the world's biggest corporations, you shouldn't be flaunting your entire life on social media. You should be in hiding. This guy's a goon for flaunting his fake status all over, and fooling so many people. I have friends who know this guy and they're all like, what? That's impossible.

Then of course he posts on social media about how he got "rich" quick, and it all started with how he got expelled from school because 1) he threatened his friend and 2) he swore at his principal when she asked him if he learned his lesson. He used his time being suspended/expelled to start his "own business (i.e the hacker business). To me, that's not a positive influence on other people. It just makes you look like a bigger douchebag, and not the legal way to be making your money.

Now of course he may also be smart in ways that he knew this was going to happen, and being sent to the USA for trial, but afterwards having the government hire him to work for them. But honestly, why would a government trust people like these? If someone is able to do this behind your back, would you trust them to work for you? I wouldn't. I'd keep his ass in jail and make sure he stays there.

This guy is also part of those big car rally clubs, namely Northface Rally and Saturn Drives.

Which brings me to Northface Rally. Again.

You may have seen on the news today that members from the NFR club got their cars impounded and licenses suspended because they were driving like douchebags. When I heard about this, I couldn't help but laugh. They deserve it.

If you're going to drive like a douchebag and endanger the lives of other people on the highway/roads, then you deserve to lose your license and have your car impounded or crushed. I wish they would just automatically crush cars but that wouldn't be "fair". I guess it will have to take a lot of deaths before they decide to do that.

Anyways, they deserve it because 1) they're douchebags 2) they're the ones who were caught revving their cars because they were asked to leave a Wings place 3) disturbing the peace many times 4) they harass people for no apparent reason 5) they don't deserve the cars because earning money through insurance scams is by no means legal.

My handbags values may only buy a set of rims for your luxury cars, but at least the bank doesn't own my bags. Nor did I ask mommy or daddy to buy them for me.

Let me tell you from my perspective how I lost respect for them. It started last fall, when NFR decided to have a toy drive.

They started a toy drive, and asked others to donate toys for families (Toys for Tots). One member shared it on the GTR page and said let's do it. However, the GTR group had already had a drive happening so it was written that we will do a separate drive for Toys and Tots.

Then the NFR guys started going off about how they didn't appreciate that we wouldn't contribute to theirs and left the group. They posted photos and showed how many toys they bought/collected, and then posed with the police from OPP to get their name out there. Whoopee doo.

People think, well if we involve the cops, then they will be cool with us. You wish. If they were so cool with you, they wouldn't impound your fake cars.

Soon after that, that's when the NFR hate began. The harassments. The name calling. Constantly. It's worse than dealing with a 5 year old kid with a tantrum. So do I respect people associated with NFR? Not at all. They aren't a positive influence to anyone except their little brains. So they deserve every damn thing that comes to them. Too bad mommy and daddy will pay for the impound fees, then they will start all over again.

In other positive news, I finally got to visit the Coco Cafe. Today was the last day that the cafe would be up. I have seen pictures and thought, well there is coffee and tea, so maybe there might be snacks too along with their make up items?

Boy, was I wrong.

Coco Cafe at Holt Renfrew Toronto.

It turned out it was a pop up lip stick/nail polish salon where you get to sample pretty much everything. There was an area you could take pictures to Instagram it. Girlfriend and I spent a lot of time there, mainly because I was struggling to put on nail polish on myself.

After doing that, we were hungry but were approached by associates asking if we needed help with anything. I was debating between two shades of lip stick and so that took another century to figure out. We both bought Chanel lipstick and lipgloss at the end. Props to finally buying lipstick. Yes, sad to say all my lipsticks have been samples/free. It only took 30 years to buy a proper lipstick.

omg....so many options. Where do I even start?!

Upon showing mom, she asked what colour? I said it was something neutral. She said it was too red. Then she asked how much the lipstick cost. I said $43. She freaked. To be honest, I have no clue how much lip stick costs these days. But I figured if it's a Chanel lipstick, it ain't going to cost $10. She thought I was crazy, and so did I. 

Soon after we hit up Saks at Fifth Avenue. It was almost empty. It felt so weird walking into Saks and not have any shoppers in there. It was actually quite nice. If you know what item to buy, you can do it there in peace and not have to fight anyone to get anything. But since we had nothing to buy there, we quickly jetted out. It wasn't too impressive, but I found Nordstrom was much more busier.

The nice weather is finally coming, and hopefully it will start to stay. But I wouldn't be surprised if there's another snowstorm coming.

Great to say mom is also doing much better. There is still room for improvement, but it's encouraging to see her back to herself now, although the post concussion syndromes are still there. It is still difficult to head to the mall with all the lights and what not. Hopefully it shouldn't be too long until she can walk around the mall again.

Hoping you all have a great start to your week.