First things first, you know how your seniors will always say how Outward Bound Singapore (OBS) is so so amazing, life-changing and FUN? Well, that's so far from the truth I want to puke. (literally haha)

I was so excited and happy to go to OBS and I didn't understand why some of friends insisted on not going. My dad actually foreshadowed that I would hate OBS since I'm so anti-adventurous but I was too happy to bother. Now I regret my decision of not doing Service Learning (my school's alternate choice to OBS) badly.

I mean, other campers and watches (OBS term for groups with about 14-16 people each) probably had tons of fun (some people liked it so much they posted group shots with their instructors on instagram omg bless them) but for me it was unpleasant.

Let's start off with the packing list as I'm sure some of the readers might be kiasu teenagers who are unsure of what to pack and went to Google.  I did that too, it's perfectly alright! (Check out this blog post, it helped a lot and the writer is really funny: link) 

For those who have already been to OBS, you can scroll pass this and go straight to Day 1.



Pack everything in the list above with the recommended amount except for these useless items:

Reusable plastic bottle for drinking purposes (at least 1.5L) - I brought along 2 but it was so useless since we only need 1 normal water bottle when playing games and when we were row boating each of us carried 2 2L Water Jugs onto the row boat. Not sure if it was necessary for those who trekked or kayaked but you can just use the camp's bottles.

There's no need to fill the water bottles before you go, it's going to be so heavy! They have drinkable water from the taps at both camps. Many people say it tastes disgusting but it just tastes slightly chlorine-y because it is from Pulau Ubin's reservoir but it is drinkable.

Hand Sanitizer for hygiene - don't need to bring unless you are very scared of getting your hands dirty. You can just wash your hands.

Writing materials - small notebook and pen - the notebook will waste storage space and you can just borrow your friend's pen for reflections.

Pocket Knife - No mention of this at all during the camp.

Camera & Film - Who will waste storage space for a heavy Polaroid and films? It's going to be the least of your priorities, trust me.

Personal First Aid items - just bring your prescriptions if you have any. If you suffer from any injuries during the camp you can just go to the medical centre. Don't need to be so kiasu!

Lighters/Matches - Only need it to light up solid fuel when cooking, one watch only need one.

Swimwear (Optional) - You'll be crazy to bring it.

Cotton twine - My watch didn't even use it but other watches only used it to tie around their glasses in case it drops off when you're in the sea. Only a small bit is used so you can share with your friends.

Solid Fuel - For every meal, one watch needs about 9 solid fuel. You may discuss with your watch mates on who's the one to buy (it's available at Beach Road) or just depend on them again haha

Some other things that are important:

Recycled Supermarket Plastic Bags/trash bag/zip lock bag - this is very important to keep your personal belongings and wet clothes. Bring at least 5!

Torchlight and spare batteries - you need it to pitch your tent in the dark and for trekking and when walking in the forest. It's very important! 

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Now you might be thinking, how am I supposed to fit all this into my bag? I manage to do it with only 1 haversack and a sleeping bag. I saw some girls carrying luggage or 2 to 3 huge bags + sleeping bags and shoe bags. How they manage to carry so many bags without falling, I don't know.

First sort your clothes and put them in separate zip lock bags. What I did was to categorise my clothes into tops, bottoms, undergarments and socks, and towels. Only 5 zip lock bags. You can also try to put them based on what you are going to wear, example day 1's clothes and undergarments in zip lock bag 1 and same for day 2 and more so you can just grab the entire zip lock bag when you want to bathe since it's a race for the shower cubicles.

How to save storage space:

After making your clothes into a rectangle shape like how you normal fold your clothes, roll it up like a sushi roll. Tip is to roll it as tight and small as possible. This is useful not only for OBS but also for traveling.

Put your rolled clothes in your zip lock bag. Zip up but leave a small opening. To keep this small opening in place you can use a paper clip. Then you press on the bag with all your strength and sit on both sides of the zip lock bag to squeeze out all the air and zip it up fully. It'll be much easier to slot these zip lock bags into your haversack!

For your Shoes for Wet Activities, you can put them in a shoe bag and just clip it onto your haversack.

Here's what I carried! Was quite proud of myself after seeing how much baggage (burden) some people have.

Took the bus from school to Singapore jetty, then boat to Pulau Ubin jetty. Boat experience was quite fun with the sea breeze in your face when you open the window.



The school bus took forever to come...



I didn't sleep well so I didn't look so good :(





Took pictures as if I was on a holiday. Hahaha if only!

First essential when I reached was to spray mosquito repellent everywhere on myself because no one wants to deal with an itch for the next 4 days.

We surrendered our phones and wallets, containing our moneys and identification. I was so excited to start having fun but nothing much happened that day.

We gathered at a void deck shelter and the instructors plagiarised Harry Potter! (a bit of a hyperbole but ya) They split the cohort into half and my camp, Camp 1 Chicken (whoever's genius idea was it to name us after a term for cowards) was designated 'Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Slytherin and Hufflepuff' through the drawing of lots. And we had to call our instructors Professors. My watch was Ravenclaw which isn't that bad, I guess. So throughout the 4 days they referred to normal things as 'Nimbus 2000' 'Firebolt' and more kept making up spells which was at least tolerable since I absolutely adore Harry Potter.

So how is that a problem since I'm a huge Potterhead? Well, because of this they created a lot of competitive games between the Hogwarts 'Houses' and changed some of the itinerary of the camp so we couldn't do the more fun activities the other half of the cohort did.

Not really a big-scale problem but it gets worse later on due to this.

The next thing we did was to divide a big bunch of food equally into 15 pax and it was our 'Happy Food' that we could eat anytime we want. There would be no refilling of food for the next days though and there was only 1 packet of milo :( And the Happy Food was our LUNCH! So sad, I wished there was a proper meal since most of were so hungry already. It is mostly unhealthy snacks and some stale bread, so how did MOE approve this :(

Afterwards, we were tasked to draw a map of the entire OBS campus so my watch split up to cover the different points. It took us one hour to do that! Then our Instructor marked out the points on our not very accurate hand-drawn map and we split up to search for the puzzle pieces. Because our map wasn't accurate, some of us had trouble finding the pieces and in the end we took 2 hours for what the instructor said was supposed to be a 30 minutes activity. Sigh...

The puzzle pieces made up to form what Ravenclaw's special value was and we analysed correctly that it was Humility. In the books, Hufflepuff was the house with Humility and we were supposed to be intelligent but okay?? Did they just used TKGS' school values... We were supposed to show through our actions to other houses what our value was without telling them. I don't even know how that was supposed to be possible but okay(?).

Next we played competitive games against other houses. 12 people had to walk in synchronisation with a bamboo pole ('Nimbus 2000') between our thighs to reach the other side. Then using this sponge-like puzzle piece thing, the ones little kids play with with an alphabet on each piece, we had to form a bridge formation over the 'water' while always keeping contact with the watch mates still on 'land'. It sounds easy but it was so hard! And they had to set an unrealistic rule of completing this + everyone throwing the balls into the air and catching the next person's ball two consecutive times in a row without dropping a single ball in less than 200 seconds (3 minutes and 20 seconds) it was impossible so after a while they just cancelled that rule. Slytherin won followed by Ravenclaw then Hufflepuff and Gryffindor was last. What a plot twist haha it was quite fun actually.

When we finally thought that we would be doing something more adventurous, we went to clear our store :( I was chosen as the store IC (In-Charge) and together my watch and I had to check if all our cooking, tent and water equipments were in correct amounts.

Then we went to have dinner! We cooked ourselves with can food such as Sardines, Peanuts and Vegetarian Mix. We were given too much rice but the pot was too small so the bottom portion of the rice was burnt and the top part was porridge-like. I was too hungry so I just ate it until the instructor said that he bought us rice from the canteen and we should throw away the burned cooked rice. At that point I actually ate quite a lot of the bad rice already, so that's probably why I fell sick later on. 

After that we had to clean up after ourselves at a shared tap area with all the other watches so it was really crowded and hard work since we had to wash a lot of mass tins (what we use as our plates) and the water level in the area was high so our shoes got wet. My back ached badly after that and the drain got choked so some of us went to clean up the super disgusting leftovers with cardboard paper :(

After showering (our watch has two toilets with heaters, thank goodness) we trekked to our campsite which was in the jungle. Bad luck again, our lot was the one right deep in the jungle above steep slopes and our campsite was probably the most rocky and steep one. Other watches' campsite were just beyond the gates! So lucky! It was so scary to go up there with thick roots and branches everywhere but the watch stuck together and we all used our flashlights. 

We pitched our tents in the dark (we learnt how to do so before we trekked) and since I was too short to reach the top part of the tent I mostly shone the light for my 2 other tent mates. There were approximately 3-4 people in a tent although it can fit up to 6 people.

Some people couldn't sleep well and rested for only 2 hours but I thought I slept relatively quite well since I only woke up to adjust my sleeping bag.

We slept at 11+ and had to wake up, trek back to the camp and wash up by 5.55AM! I was so not used to it because on school days I usually sleep at 9.30 and wake up at 5.30, catching at least 8 hours of sleep. I was super giddy (signs of getting sick which I overlooked) but we still had to do morning exercises like stretching, sit-ups, squats, planks and push ups with the enthusiastic instructors, or should I say 'Professors' in the Mulit-Purpose Hall.

For breakfast, we had a proper meal! Yay! We ate beehoon with sausage at the canteen. It wasn't very nice and we couldn't get second servings but better than happy food. There wasn't Milo but there was Ovaltine, again better than nothing. We cleaned up after ourselves again and this time there was a huge sink, better detergent and sponge.

I forgot what we did here but I think we just played some more games. We also wore Lifevests, interlocked our arms and hands with our watchmates and instructor and went into the cooling sea in a circle. It was quite fun to go under and float on our backs until we came up and our shoes and clothes were dripping wet.

Because of the 'Harry Potter' game, they told us to rowboat instead of Kayak which was what we were supposed to do because the rowboat would be like our 'Nimbus 2000' in the 'Triwizard Tournament' against an imaginary 'Drumstrang'. We went to OBS looking forward and thinking we would be learning how to kayak but no! Disappointment.

Also, rowboats require 6 people rowing, 1 helmsman (Captain) controlling the direction of the rowboat and for those with extra members, someone sitting at the front of the boat warning the others of any impending danger since everyone except the Captain at the back of the boat is facing backwards to the front of the boat. This means that a lot of corporation is needed. When we first tried row boating, the team was naturally gifted at row boating and since I was the 8th member, I sat at the front of the boat and warned them if we were getting too close to other boats. I actually dozed off a bit haha :P My boat mates let me try row boating a few times until I got tired. They rowed from Camp 1 to Camp 2 which wasn't too far away so it was okay.

My boat won the first mini-competition where we race to touch the instructor's speed boat safety ring but for the second competition we were 5th! That doesn't even make sense, the boats didn't even start at the same spot! And I was so sure that my group's boat was the 3rd but no, the instructors said that from their point of view we were not. They weren't even looking at us when we rowed past the finishing point! I thought it was pretty biased of them since the top 3 ended up to be from the judging instructors' own watch. The rest of us had to push our rowboats and load from the super muddy, rocky slope at camp 2 while the winners get to stop at the jetty. 

Our shoes finally dried when we were row boating in the hot sun, but we had to get it wet again and our shoes and shoelaces turned BROWN. Great. I was so annoyed especially since we were one of the winners! 

We were told that we couldn't shower so we didn't bring any towels and soap so we just borrowed them from other watches. So nice of them :) We then pitched our tents and cooked dinner on the beach with better food this time round. Maggi mee, curry chicken and corn! No one liked the corn. My watch mates did a really good job cooking so we all ate a lot but I think some of the sand got into the food. 

When I went to get my torch light after eating so I can go to the toilet which is a 15 minutes walk away, my watch mates shouted at me to wash the pots and mass tins and clear the rubbish. I was starting to get annoyed why did the scream at me in an unpleasant manner? It's not like I wouldn't help after I washed my own mass tin first! Especially since I wasn't good with opening the cans and cooking, of course I will clean up! 

This + the fact that for the past two days they kept teasing me about a joke that they made and I played along to. When I asked where we going when walking somewhere in day 1, one girl said sarcastically "back to Singapore" so I just played along and she told everyone about this and everyone kept teasing me about "trekking/swimming/row boating/kayaking back to Singapore". And many times they talked about me behind my back, I just ignored it. The same girl and her friends like to call me 'stupid' when I did something they dislike or don't understand. They were literally being so childish and obvious! My own friends were either in Singapore doing Service Learning or in other watches far away from us and I was homesick so that made me feel even worse. 

It got to a point where I was depressed and started to think that the entire watch hates me. (which is kind of true)

I felt so so sad that they liked to make me feel like crap and treated me so badly, that I couldn't take it and I cried. My eyes and nose got all swollen while I was walking back and forth to the wash area cleaning what they told me to clean and folding up the tarp (like our picnic mat) alone with someone from another watch. I would have felt better after crying to myself and telling myself they're just immature, but the school teachers saw me and asked me what happened. The people who bullied me walked past and saw everything. Then the instructor pulled me out from the watch and talked to me about the situation while the rest of them were left alone to gossip about me crying.

After that they pretended to be kind and asked me if "I was okay" when they were they one that made me cry in the first place. We went to sleep and the ground was flat with less roots and rocks so we slept well even without our sleeping bags.

We had sentry duty and each tent had to wake up for 30 mins to make sure that the speedboats and rowboats don't drift away and no wild boars from the jungle beside us entered our campsite. The tent beside us woke us up at 4.10 instead of 4.30 saying that they were woken up early too because some tents were irresponsible and didn't do their duty.

After having a hard time waking up my tent mates we did our watch for about 30 minutes (none of us had a watch) and went back to sleep. 

We were all supposed to wake up at 5, wash up, unpitch tents and place our belongings in the bins that will be loaded onto the instructors' speedboat.


During the loading, I wanted to help and asked if there was anything to do. One of my watch mates told me to carry the back pack carrying 14 mass tins + the cooking pot. It was too heavy so I fell down and slipped on the grass. I cried for help to my watch mates standing at the camp site talking and they ignored me. Luckily, my drama friend from another watch helped me carry it to the speed boat. She's so nice omg. I was irritated that there were people just standing there though.


We were supposed to start our journey back to Camp 1 at 7.30AM, but many of us overslept (my tent included) and we left only at 8.

We were in different groupings and different rowboats than the previous day's one so I was in a group with people from other watches. 

They rowed quite well, although lacking compared to yesterday's row boat group. Since the rowboat ores are super heavy and since my physical strength is very weak, I couldn't carry it and can only row for like 10 minutes before I felt like dying.

Thus, I was the helmsman and because of my giddiness from the high fever I didn't know I was having, I kept steering in the wrong direction and that affected the speed of the boat :( My boat mates were not rowing in syncronisation since they were so tired but I couldn't help them and I felt so bad asking them to row better since I had no right to do so when I was not helping at all :( I'm sorry!!

The only 'fun' thing was that I went to pee in the sea and the water pressure made it hard to do so but the instructors say it was 'change you for life'. Kind of disgusting, actually. And it's so hard and painful to climb back onto the boat.

After everyone got tired for rowing the boat for so many hours, the speed of the boat slowed down so much our estimated 9 hours journey dragged to  11 hours and the instructor said we 'couldn't MI (make it)' and dragged us back to shore by tying a rope to the row boats to their speed boat. It was so humiliating sigh.

As if the situation couldn't get worse, the vomiting started! I don't usually get seasick but I've vomited due to motion sickness on a long flight before. I vomited 4 times, 4 TIMES! And the instructors said that it was NORMAL and okay and didn't even care. This female instructor kept pointing me out as 'The Girl in Red', I get it that I wasn't doing a good job as the helmsman but come on, I vomited 4 times, cut me some slack please! It got so bad I was vomiting the gastric juices in my stomach out and it was so painful I couldn't stand...

The first time I vomited this one girl from my watch was having the time of her life making fun of how disgusting it was and laughing with her friends. We were told to vomit into the sea, if not vomit where, onto boat mates ah? Also never asked to see... When I said "Is it very funny that I'm sick?" She shut up and asked me if I was okay when I vomited the second time. But after more vomiting, she and some others who were annoyed with rowing for so long told my boat mates to continue rowing faster when they were kind enough to stop for me to vomit into the sea. If she's the one vomiting, I'm sure the ENTIRE fleet would have stopped for her, ugh. However, most people were nice and asked if I was okay, but what can I say? My stomach hurts so much I want to die? Just say I'm okay lorh.

When we finally reached and we helped to unload the instructors' speedboat carrying all our shared food, personal belongings and cooking utensils, I vomited again. My school teacher saw and told me to ask the instructor if I could go to the Medial Centre (sick bay) and he say I just needed to rest, drink water and that it is just NORMAL SEASICKNESS! So I stood at a side awkwardly while everyone else was moving the load. It felt so embarrassing and I felt bad for not helping again. Thank goodness, kind Mr M told the instructor to take me to the Medical Centre.

Then I spent the next few days in the Medical Centre, where I vomited more of my gastric juices, a really nice cup of Milo the training nurse who thought I just had mere high fever and all my medicine out again. At least I got to sleep early and on a bed that night! Hahaha... The training nurse was not very well trained and she complained about having so many patients to take care of when she haven't had her dinner but she was quite kind...

We took a boat back to Singapore, went to Sengkang Polyclinic and unfortunately returned back to Pulau Ubin :( I just packed my bags and stayed in the Medical Centre to rest after eating my medicine. My watch did more fun activities like height elements such as log climbing and belaying but by that point the doctor already gave me an MC saying that I shouldn't participate in OBS anymore (thank goodness) and I didn't really want to go back to my watch who will probably make fun of me again anyways.

The other girls who weren't feeling well and I talked quite a bit and we joined the rest of the cohort at the end and took the first bus to the jetty and the first boat to Singapore. Although I disliked OBS I wanted to buy the Outward Bound Singapore shirt which was quite pretty but one of the staff members escorting us back said it was sold out :(

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WE WERE FINALLY BACK IN SINGAPORE! I was so happy but I was in the bus with people from other watches so I didn't talk to anyone. I didn't go to school the next day since I was told to rest and guess what, I was right, they gossiped some MORE about me.



Looking so bad after being stuck in the medical centre. I was wearing an oversized khaki shirt with the word 'SURF' at the back and knee-length pants with a buckle in front from the Medical Centre and I didn't even comb my hair! The worst appearance of me has been exposed to my fellow school mates :( But by that time I was too sick and tired to care much, as you can probably tell from the selfie, I looked the worse for wear.

I heard that my watch mates twisted the story so that they were like the victims of the story and I went to tattletale to the teachers. I didn't even say any names when I told them what happened! I just said 'someone' or 'a popular girl'. The instructor asked for name so I had no choice but to say but I said 'I don't want to get them into trouble' which they didn't. Some of my classmates did ask me if I was okay, but I think they talked about other things about me which made everyone dislike me more. Oh well, I am used to it already.

So moral of the story: if your watch hates you, your OBS will be hell. If they are nice to you, it will at least be tolerable. All in all, the class really did bond during OBS, we got to know more about each other, I learnt so much about the people who were mean to me and those who were nice and have a good heart. However, never in my right mind again will I go for OBS, I'm just not cut out for it. I'm not adventurous and this is just simply to physically and mentally exhausting.

I think all of us really learnt to be more appreciative of the little things in our lives. Example when I went home, home food has never tasted so good before and I am so thankful for my family. Beds, air-conditioners and water heater are privileges I won't take for granted anymore :)

So that's how Outward Bound Singapore was like for me! To be honest, I'm kind of sad that my OBS experience wasn't fun, I'm envious of those that had fun, they can remember it positively for the rest of their lives while I cringe about how badly it hurt when I was vomiting :( Thanks for reading everything, be it the good or bad! 

What did you think of my blog post? If you've been to OBS, I would love to read how it was like for you! What did you do? Did you have fun? If you haven't been to OBS yet, did my not-to-pack list help you? I hope it did! Comments down below with your gmail accounts or remain anonymous :)

P.S. If you think I am indirecting you, if the shoe fits, wear it. At least I didn't outrightly mention you.

❤,

Jermainex

Happy New Year!☺


Before school reopens tomorrow (cues crying in agony), I've decided to blog about why I think it's perfectly alright to photo edit our own pictures, as you have read from the title, be it selfies or 'groupfies'. Or is 'wefies' now, I'm not sure. Anyways, this is a topic that I've been contemplating with myself about whether or not to write about. After finishing, I then took weeks to decide if I should post it and now I'll just like to get it off my chest although I'm completely aware of all the potential hate. 

I got first got inspiration for this post from an anonymous ask.fm question so I guess I'll have to thank her! 

The mosaic part is redundant in this context.

Firstly let's go into details of WHY I edit my pictures.

I don't drastically change most parts of my appearance and make myself look slimmer (you can see what I actually do later down below) but if you do that, I still believe that it is alright.

People say altering an aspect of the photograph is called 'Photoshop' (from the Abode Photoshop software) but I prefer to use the term 'Photo Editing'. Now before you all start judging me, hear me out. Even professional photographers edit their photos. Not only do they play around with the brightness, contrast and saturation they may also make their clients look better. If you think it's merely as simple as adding a filter, you've thought wrong! No one will like to see a picture reflecting the imperfections of oneself, it's only normal!

If you're STILL feel judgemental or just simply can't understand, here are some pondering questions for you:

DO YOU AGREE THAT MOST GIRLS WANT TO LOOK PRETTIER?

WHAT GIRL (BOYS TOO) WOULDN'T WANT TO FEEL BETTER AND BE MORE CONFIDENT OF ONESELF?

IS THERE A PART(S) OF YOURSELF THAT YOU ARE INSECURE OF?

People who are rich enough to go for plastic surgery to make their nose sharper or get double eyelids, face-lift, remove eye bags and etc era. So why can't people use the gifts bestowed upon us in this 21st century to digitally change parts of them not permanently but just in the moment?

Walking along a street I bet you'll see most female (maybe male?) teenagers and adults wearing makeup to enhance their features. BB Cream, Foundation, Concealer to hide your pimples, blemishes and blackheads. Eye make up to widen our eyes and define the eyebrows. Face contouring to make parts of your face sharper. Blusher and lipstick to help look more radiant. Make up is wore in general to hide the not so nice parts of the face and show off the rest. 

I find it too troublesome to put on makeup then have to go through the tedious process of removing it entirely afterwards so if I want to look as pretty in a photo as if I was wearing make up that day I can just simply edit makeup on myself, no problem there and it's much less worrisome.

If someone can go for plastic surgery, why can't someone else alter their appearance temporarily in a photo?

If it's a norm to wear make up to hide and enhance your features, what's wrong with doing the same by editing?

Make up and plastic surgery makes one feel less insecure, more confident, happier. Some may frown upon it but after all, it's their choice, their face. Same goes for editing pictures.

Some might argue that photo editing a photo is like deceiving others but it wouldn't be if it has been outrightly admitted that the picture has been edited.

When I say that I think there is nothing wrong with editing your pictures is because I believe it's normal to want to look more beautiful. That is my opinion. HOWEVER, to lie about not doing so when you did is an entirety on it's own. I don't mind people knowing because I think it's nothing to be ashamed of but if you are scared of what people think then simply don't do it. 

Of course, to the people who have high self-esteem and are proud of the way they look, I salute you and can you teach me how you look and feel good without trying??

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Now onto the slightly more exciting and interesting part of HOW I actually edit selfies! Mainly for reasons that you can laugh at how precise I am about this and realise that editing selfies is not as bad as you might think it is! I am, of course, in no way encouraging anyone to edit their photos, but by all means they should feel free to do :)

And fine I'll post a Before-After pic just to show you that I don't look like an entire different person after editing so if you want to hate on me saying that, your argument would be invalid. Think of something else to hate on haha

And for people asking how I edit my selfies without making it look that obvious that it's edited, it took me years of learning and common sense to master it okay so I consider it a skill! I'll just share it to you step-by-step like it's a tutorial so none of you can assume that I change parts of myself that I clearly didn't.

Example of a VERY VERY VERY badly and obviously edited selfie:

The selfie itself plays a key role as there are limits to what you can change. If you look horrible, there's no way you can make yourself look fantastic. But don't worry, if you take take 10 selfies under good lighting conditions (natural sunlight is the best with the sun facing you), one of them is bound to look good.


The front camera for most phones are not ideal for selfies as the lighting and contrast is weird thus I've been using a selfie camera app called Wondercam for a few years already.



I don't use camera filters such as 'Selfie mode' on Camera360 or 'Natural', 'Whiten', 'Smooth' filters in other camera apps because the skin usually looks as if it is glowing and it's pretty obvious that it's unnatural, no matter that the camera app says it doesn't. The iPhone front camera also flips all the pictures around so if it's a selfie you should probably flip them back. Unless your face is perfectly symmetrical, bless you. 

(Be prepared to see a lot of my face as I start the tutorial)

Using PhotoWonder, I first 'Better Skin' under 'Beautify' and I adjust the scale to 1/7 (The most 1/5). Actually it doesn't really do much because the effect is so little but it just makes the skin look smoother, I guess.

Then I 'Anti-Acne' because I'm 14 and am currently going through puberty, my skin condition isn't the best so of course, I'll have pimples that I'm not happy about. 

After which I will get rid of blackened pimples (after you squeeze them lol), uneven lighting and my dark eye circles with 'Dark-Rim'.

I USED to use the 'Slim' function to make my nose look slightly smaller because I'm insecure about that part of my face. But the difference is so little and after a few updates there are glitches beside the spot you which to touch up on so I stopped using it.

On the Perfect365 app I make my skin look even smoother by adjusting the scale to about 15-25%,





 add about 20-30% contouring to my nose, this is such a self-esteem booster for me.




30-35% of eyeliner and eyelashes



and 20% of whitening my teeth.

I don't usually add lipstick as it's hard to ensure the colour doesn't come out of your lip shape but surprisingly, the lipstick function for this edit worked out well so I added 25% of pale pink. I don't really see the difference, to be honest.

Another function I quite like but don't use is the eye colour function. There are many color choices and is pretty realistic and good to use if like me, you're too poor to get color and design contacts. Just make sure the overlay is on your pupil and it's not like popping out, it'll look weird if it is so it's quite clear cut. The percentage depends on how obvious you want it to look and most importantly, the lighting.

Just to show you how the eye color function should look like:

Overall I think Photowonder is 8/10. It used to be better before a ton of updates and now it takes up a lot of storage space. But the functions are really really useful! (They even have one where they can make your legs look slimmer omg) The quality of the pictures does drop but it's still acceptable.

However, I can only give Perfect365 a 7/10 rating because it does the job well but after some updates when the app got popular, I find that the picture quality decreases drastically.  Especially since saved image for does not exceed 1mg. There were also an incident where there was like a glitch at the side of my edited photo. But hey, it's free! And if someone is really desperate they buy the in-app purchase. 

I've recently found an app called 'YouCam Makeup' that does the job and work just like Perfect365. It's better in terms of eye color (more and better), lipstick (placement is more accurate) and eyelashes (prettier choices). But I find the nose sharpening/contouring to look awkward and the eyeliner designs all look similar so it's a limited choice. Unfortunately, I found out that it does not recognise all the photos in my gallery thus I can't edit it. I tried to share the picture I want to edit into the app but it didn't work too.


Why do I feel like I'm writing an advertorial for the above applications haha...


Lastly, as some may have wondered why I am steering away from the subject of editing the body shape, it's because I don't do that. But I mean, isn't it like a smarter, one-step method instead of going to the gym or dieting to look better? Hahaha but when doing that you should take notice of the background and make sure it doesn't bend or swirl as you push in a part of your body. 

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And with all that I have finally finished expressing my thoughts and feelings on the idea of photo editing photos! I do hope that you have understood my point and not be like those who 'eww' at confessions and actions like this. If you still think editing photos are lying and cheating to the world when so many people say they do it, fine by me, feel free to believe what you want to believe! 

It took me quite an amount of courage to post this and share some before-editing selfies... Knowing that I'll be hated and judged on, I still want to speak up. I'm just that type of person that won't shut up when I have an opinion! So if you still want to send hate to me, you know where to find me, (social website links at the side of my blog) I'm waiting for you with my arms wide open :)

Please do tell me what you thought of this blog post! Do you agree or disagree? Why? Do you edit your selfies? What should I blog about next? Tell me everything and anything down in the comment section! (You can remain anonymous if you want)