April Updates from LittleMissMeen :)

Dear all,

How are you all doing? Hope everyone is doing great. Oh dear, I have literally been waiting for the next time I have a chance to sit down peacefully and blog. In between my busy routine, I always think of what I want to write next and here I am again after a month. After university life is completed insyaAllah, I hope to blog more often. So many things in mind to write but today I chose to introduce a blog series titled 'London Diaries' that I will start writing soon to share different parts of my journey in the United Kingdom and specifically in London. I want to write about my perspective as an international student living in London and how it changed from my first year to my fourth year now. To me, this is a major chapter in my life and I would like to share my stories with hope it will be beneficial to anyone in the same position or anyone thinking of studying abroad. It is definitely not easy living alone in a foreign country and my first year of university in London was my first time ever in the UK. Alhamdulillah I am now on my final MSci year and I am so humbly proud of myself. I went through so much to be where I am today. I persevered so much, I worked hard, I stayed positive, I had a good attitude towards whatever challenge I faced next, I was patient and thankful and I found reasons to be happy in life. The first year I was in the UK was literally one of the most challenging times of my life. Today when I look at my pictures back in 2013 and 2014, I wanted to tell my younger self to not worry and everything will be ok. It is not very long ago, just about 3 to 4 years ago but I feel like I have grown so much since then. I am proud of the person I was then and proud of the person I have turned out to be today. There are so many things I can work on and I want to continue to improve. I believe that life is a journey and we can never stop learning new things and becoming a better person. During that time of difficulty, I also believe that Allah was taking care of me and watching over me. During that same year, I met a special someone who loves me so much at the time when I needed someone the most and I am forever blessed for all the rezeki that Allah gives me. To me, I always believe it is His plan and He knows what I am capable and not capable of doing so He plans it all perfectly. Trust His plans even if at the beginning you see it all dark and gloomy. At the end of that first year, I also made a decision to do something that has been so difficult for me before which was wearing the hijab. I realised that in the end, good things do come out of a difficult situation insyaAllah. You just need positive perspective. Over time and now in my fourth year, I feel so different and I actually enjoy staying here in London. I actually feel warmth here even when I am alone now and this warmth I did not feel in the early days when I was here. So these  'London Diaries' are aimed to also help provide some motivation on changing your perspective about things that seem negative at the start but eventually good in the end. Apart from that, I will share some bits/tips of things I think people who plan to live or study in London will find useful. I simply wanted to share my experience and provide some motivation and hopefully a beneficial read to those who might be in a similar position. 

Exams

First of all, a quick update. It's exam time now. I usually write exam tips for SPM students and now its LittleMissMeen who will be sitting for exams soon. Congratulations to Nasha for her SPM results!!! I received an email from her while I was on a short holiday in Germany end of last month. Thank you for updating me and good job on your hard work. Speaking of emails, I am receiving so many emails, comments and questions regarding people who want to rebond their hair. Ok I will share with you some statistics. The article titled 'What You Need to Know Before Rebonding Your Hair' received 174 991 views and 193 comments and my blog post 'Simple Beauty Tips at Home' received 282 673 +1 clicks. So what are these Google +1 clicks? I did not know myself and this blog has been teaching me to be more technology friendly. So it's a way that the reader recommends it to the Google Search Engine and from the Blogger Help Forum, it says that it helps your blog to get a bit of a reputation on Google Search. Thank you everyone who clicked +1 for all of my posts, I appreciate it so much. It really motivates me to keep writing when I receive such wonderful feedback, kind words and hearing that I helped someone whether in a motivation sense or by the study tips I give. I recently received an email from someone enquiring about rebonding and by chance I was on my email at that time so I replied right away. She replied back within minutes and the first thing she said was 'Thank you for noticing me'. In my heart, I was like aww I am just a normal person too and I do not think my advice on rebonding will be that significant to what she can find online but the fact that she really appreciated my reply made me feel like it's important to connect with my readers and respond to them. I will try my best, I promise. I know there are unreplied comments and maybe emails I have not had a chance to check. But please send me an email at littlemissmeencollections@gmail.com if I do not reply to your comment. It does not mean I am ignoring you, it is just that I do not check my blog frequent enough but my email is synced to my phone so I will get the notification immediately and I can easily reply through my phone. 

Also if you have any request on blog topics, please just write it in the chatbox that I created. I will be more than happy to write on any topics you request or you can just comment here. 

Another improvement I want to make for my blog is to add more pictures. It has been the longest process ever whenever I wanted to add pictures but I have an alternative method which I shall try. 

Exam time now so I have been studying everyday. Something funny happened. Two weekends ago, I decided that I wanted to become invisible and hibernate with my books and hopefully nobody will notice or ask where I went. I was so busy at that time and I wanted to get off social media temporarily to reduce procrastination. The moment I decided to become 'invisible' I got a text from a friend the next day asking how I was and if I wanted to meet. The following day another friend from Malaysia. The following day another friend who already graduated. The following day 2 other friends until 7 complete days. Imagine each day a different person contacting you at the same time you wanted to go invisible (hehehe I need Whatsapp smileys now, the one laughing with tears). What happened to going invisible and hibernating with my books? Nope not happening. They love me a lot and I love them too so I decided to reply everyone and tell them I had exams etc and will catchup after exams. I really am not a chatty person during exam times. That is something I expect people who are close to me to understand. There are things you need to compromise and understand about your friend and to me, this is something people need to accept about me. I am not perfect and will try to improve but I cannot and do not want to commit too much and put extra pressure on myself close to exams. When people want to meet etc, you will need planning and chatting about it and I do not want to discuss things like that too much when the main thing on my mind is sitting in the examination hall and answering the questions. Exams are a very important time for me and I do not like discussing problems too much or any negative things. I just talk about light topics, I watch what I eat carefully, I make sure during my break times I exercise or do yoga. I do go out with my friends and family sometimes. Like last weekend I visited my cousins and we played basketball, badminton, football and relaxed in the park. We ate watermelon, pineapple and ice cream it was so fun to see them. Then the Sunday I had a picnic in Holland Park with my Malaysian friends. Then last Thursday I went to a Lebanese restaurant with a friend for lunch. Last night I visited a friend at her flat and brought fruits and chocolates for us. She had been feeling lonely and down so I just came briefly to cheer her up. And today I went to Hyde Park with another friend to feed ducks, parrots, squirrels and just enjoy the relaxing park. It is my favourite place to go in my free time- the park. During exams, I mostly like to spend time to myself and with my books. It has been like this since SPM. I do not go out too much and actually, it has improved now. Before I was even more extreme hehe ;) This is my last exam of my life insyaAllah all goes well. Do pray for me. 

I wish all of you a beautiful start of the week. Do take care and start your week with a positive mindset. 

Lots of love xxxx