2016 In Review

First of all, Happy New Year! 🎊 May 2017 be full of love, luck and good fortune for you, my dear reader! 💞

Contrary to most people, 2016 was a actually a great year for me. I mean, a lot of bad things happened in the world, too many to count, but for me, I think I can say I had quite a lot of great opportunities and experiences this year. 2017 has arrived, so I thought I'd share with you guys some of my highlights of 2016, both personally and as a blogger.

I started getting sponsorships! 💕

I think that even though writing your experiences and sharing your stories/knowledge on your blog is fun, deep inside every blogger dreams of getting their very first sponsorship. It may sound materialistic to some, but from a blogger's point of view, its kind of like an indicator of success. Getting a sponsorship means that people are actually reading your blog and someone thinks you have influence, and to me getting sponsorships is both a humbling and rewarding experience. 

I started blogging about my life in 2010, but I only started focusing on posting skincare/beauty posts in 2015. In February this year (2016). Hermo.my recognized my reviews and actually approached me to be one of the bloggers featured on their site!

Click here to see the full post!

It was really humbling because Hermo is a very big beauty site in Malaysia (if not the biggest). They didn't just simply sponsor me a few products to review, but they actually offered a part of their site to feature me. I remember really thinking about my flatlays & posts because to me, it was such a huge thing (I think I worked on it for a month leh!). Looking back at it now I wanna kill myself because OMG my flatlays look so ugly and my pictures look so cheesy hahahahaha

I think they discontinued the Excuse My Beauty series because there hasn't been any new featured bloggers (Idk if that's because my post sucked or what hahaha). If you go on Hermo's site now (especially on mobile), you can still see my picture below, and a few people actually recognized me solely from seeing me on Hermo!

So thanks to the people at Hermo for making my first collab a special and memorable one!

After Hermo I've gotten a few more sponsorships and collabs this year, and I'm thankful for each and every one of them. I hope to get better so I can take nicer photos for you guys!

If I had to choose a favourite collab, it would probably be the ones with Althea.kr. Althea is also a big beauty site active in Southeast Asia, and although Althea isn't as big as Hermo, it was still a privilege for me to collaborate with them. They have so many loyal fans and users, and I really love how they're very user based and customer friendly. So far Althea has been very generous to me, and I look forward to working with Althea more in the future!

What I love about Althea is that they're very supportive of my "antics" hahaha. They had no problems with me making themes and taking quite some time to take pictures for my posts. My Althea collabs have all been fun and have helped me experiment a bit more on what I can do as a photographer and what I can achieve conceptually as a blogger. If you know me, you'll know that I really look up to Yutaki James. I really like how his posts have themes and concepts, and that's one thing I definitely want to incorporate into my posts as well.

With Althea, so far I've done 3 concepts: a pink one, a cafe one & a picnic one (tbh they're basic af, like compared to Yutaki I'm a preschooler and he has a PhD already hahaha). 

So I'd also like to thank the Althea team so much for being so generous to me and supportive of me trying to be aesthetic and everything haha. Thanks Tammy, Sydney, Anis and team!

I plan on experimenting more and creating more aesthetic content for you guys so do keep a look out for my posts in 2017! May I have better posts!

I posted my first YouTube Video

In my first collab with Hermo, I actually made my first YouTube video as well. I wanted to make it really special so I pretended to be a YouTuber lol. I was actually sick at the time, and I can't stop cringing whenever I rewatch that video!

I can barely keep my eyes open, my nose is clogged and you can barely understand what I'm saying hahaha. I do intend to take more videos, so that's one more thing I'll work on in 2017. Thank you to all 194 people who've subscribed to me so far!

I started attending blogger events!

Another thing bloggers all want to do is attend events! I recently joined The Butterfly Project and I've been invited to a couple of events already. Its so good meeting other bloggers! Although I have to work on my resting bitch face + my social skills, I think I can say I've been pretty friendly so far. I hope I get to meet and know more people in 2017!

FISHMEATDIE hit 700k pageviews!

Although I'm not sure how accurate Blogger's pageview counter is, I'm still glad that it says I hit 700k views! It means that people actually read the trash/mess that are my posts hahaha. I'll come up with better and more interesting content in 2017!

And that about sums up my blogging life in 2016. I feel very accomplished because I managed to use my noodle and come up with creative content that people like to read, and in the end that's really all I wanna do :) To more quality content in 2017!

I finished my Diploma in Mass Communication! 🎓

I'm finally done with my diploma! 7 semesters just flew by and I can't believe I've finished my course. I do want to continue and take a degree in the future, but after thinking about it, I think there's not much rush. So far my plan is to work for a while and maybe continue studying next year (or maybe even the year after that). I am only 20 after all. Maybe I'll travel or something~

I'm so glad to have met my friends and although this sounds cheesy, I really do hope we all keep in touch and stay friends forever 🙈

My graduation isn't until October though 😅 I got my semester results the other day and got a final grade/CGPA of 3.4 😭 so close to my aim of 3.5!

I've tasted working life 💼

I started interning in  August and I think I understand more how working life works (lol). It really is different from school and I was lucky enough to intern at a good company. I know that if I entered another company I probably would have been sacked haha. Not that I'm bad, it just that I feel like I'm too blur sometimes. And some days I just want to not come to work at all. Last time whenever adults would say "enjoy your studying life, it'll be the best times of your life", I was like ehhhh. Now I finally understand why they say that and omg I can't believe I'm at the stage where I'm the one telling people to enjoy their schooling life~

I moved from Penang to KL 🌊 -> 🏢

As iPrice is in KL, I obvi had to move to the big city. Although KL is more crowded, more expensive and has more air pollution than I would prefer, I actually like it more than Penang. Not in terms of food (Penang wins hands down in that), but in terms of opportunities and lifestyle. I feel like in KL there's so many things you can find and do compared to Penang. Just imagine all the opportunities in bigger cities like Seoul!

I look forward to KL will bring me in 2017, and hopefully I get to start my Rachel Berry life and find a great apartment to stay in.

I dyed my hair gray & blue!

My brother has always told me to be more adventurous with my hair and this year, I took the plunge and dyed my hair gray and blue! (Not together of course)

I stuck to my blonde for so long that I didn't want to take risks with any other colour. Gray was still kinda safe but I was so shocked to find that blue looked so nice on me!


I've started playing with makeup 😻

Another milestone for me this year is to actually have the courage to use and go out wearing makeup (mostly thanks to my friend Fufy and YouTube for encouraging me). I don't have to edit my images that much (lol) and it truly is fun. Mind you I only do the basics, I can't imagine how much fun those pro MUA have.

I was noticed by senpai Yutakis!

This was such a big thing for me. Call it trivial or stupid, but I really do look up to Yutakis and his work. Althea reposted one of my posts on their Insta and Yutaki actually liked my stuff! (Although I was kinda embarrassed that my feed wasn't on fleek at the time)

And I guess that's it. I didn't really travel that much in 2016 (because all I did was buy stuff hahaha). I have high hopes that 2017 will be a great year for me again! I know now that if you want results, you gotta set goals and work hard to hit/achieve those goals.

Was your 2016 as good as mine? I'd love to know, so do comment below! 😊 *This is me being more interactive so please don't leave me hanging hahaha 😅*


As always, thanks so much for reading this short diary post of mine 🙈 see y'all in the next post!