August has been busy but quite fun up till now...

On National Day, I met up with xtina and bei for coffee and chat. Xtina had actually wanted to check out more museums but bei preferred a chat. Meeting was short but nonetheless, comforting. It is such a simple pleasure to just sit with your buddies and chat about anything under the sun, from gossips to politics.

The very filial bei decided to spend dinner with her family. After that, xtina and I went shopping while waiting for tiff to arrive so that we could all go as a group and wait there for geral to knock off. In the meantime, I bought two pairs of shoes. Hehe I’ve spent money again but I forgave myself as I seldom buy shoes.

We were to go to SUBA for the guys invited us as they said CNA was interviewing them that evening. We couldn’t care about being featured on TV so we dilly dallied and strolled there when night had fallen.

Each time we walk past this water feature on our way to SUBA, we would agree unanimously that we should take a picture with this as the background. Yet each time, we always arrive separately and by the time we trot home together, some of us would be too high and seh to take a proper shot.

That night there were so many people taking photos. They might have all come from the national stadium. So we did not hesitate any longer. Die die also must take photo there.

Us


I hate the stupid wind. Instead of having model-like shots with wind-blown hair, we looked like drabs. Then, we spotted geral at the entrance with a new hairdo (rare that she was early), squealed and pulled her into the picture.

The bimbo sistas sans zanne who was out with her boy.




Clockwise from top left: our drinks, chocolate coated strawberries, playing with fire, showing off their bartending skills with fire.

Ah Pui jiak liao bee was so thoughtful. He brought a whole plate of chocolate coated strawberries to our table. That was the first time we managed to sink our teeth into those delectable strawberries. All the other time we were there, they had run out of strawberries. But our hazard guess was coz xtina was the main pulling power. He also bought xtina a Tour De France cap when he flew over for his bro’s convocation and all we got were keychains. Haha… Well at least he got the heart to bribe us with keychains. Tsktsk.

xtina with her very funky yellow Tour De France cap.


Us eating and drinking merrily.


Some ang mo patrons were decked in red and white, wearing caps with lights adorning the Singapore flag and waving Singapore flags. So patriotic… unlike us. But hey at least, we don’t belong to the group of Singaporeans who flock to Malaysia on National Day. Haha…

We are proud to be Singaporeans and will definitely not lose out.

Me being patriotic


xtina being patriotic


geral being patriotic


tiff tried to be patriotic too but she complained that her patriotic individual shots don’t look nice so I shan’t post any up.

She dumped the cap on my head and said I looked better as a patriot.



geral said she could solve tiff’s problem…
and the end product was this.


HAHAHAHAHAHA…

geral thought it was cool and followed suit.


Too bad the lights on the flag could not be captured on camera.

We shared sooooooooooooo many gossips that night and talked about things we had never talked about as a group. We suspect that xtina got too excited that she accidentally kicked the table resulting in spilt drinks, broken glasses, scattered ice, soaked birkies and shattered glass in tiff’s shoe.

A collage of shoes

Clockwise from top left: 4 shoes, soaked to the bone birkies, my new shoe, my new shoes with my not so new birkies.

That was the first time my birkies touched anything wet. Before that, I even tried not to wear them out on rainy days. Sobz sobz… but never mind la. It gave me a chance to put on my new shoes which coordinated with my outfit that night.

Flowers for xtina by jiak liao bee.


Carved flower strawberry for xtina by jiak liao bee.


Next we went to Forbidden City (coincidentally my D&D 2 weeks later would be held there) as tiff’s friends were there.

Along the way, we fooled around with sculptures.



I think we looked really like those hao3 xiong1 di4, especially on the lunar 7th month!





Forbidden city looks very forbidden so we went to MOS next. For suaku me, it was my 1st time there as all my friends who had been there before warned me that it sucks. It didn’t quite suck that night. Along the way we got accosted by 2 ang mo guys. The whole group conversation and dynamics were quite comical.

It started off with them enquiring the way to dblo. We pointed backwards and told them it would be a long walk and so they requested for us to show them the way. How forthright! We told them that we were going the opposite direction and could not possibly show them the way in a very you-are-going-that-way-but-we-are-going-this-way kinda manner. We casually asked them to join us at MOS instead but unfortunately (for them, and fortunately for us) they just came from there. We then started engaging in a very well… engaging conversation.

Snippets of our conversation include:
[Read dialogue of “Them” in heavy ang mo accent and read dialogue of “Us” in fake ang mo twang to inject more tones and vibrancy in this written conversation.]

Them: We are not tourists. We are here on a business.
Us: OH really? What kinda business?
Them: You would laugh if we told you.
Us: Oh come on… we won’t.
Them: Yeah? We sell condoms.
Us: [pregnant pause] Oh yeahyeah…
Them: Serious. No joke. We are trying to curb AIDS.
Us: Oh wow… That’s for a good cause… That’s very meaningful. [trying very hard to think of what else to say]
Tiff: Oh are you with Durex?

Tiff was indeed trying her best.

blablabla
:
:
:
blablabla

Them: So how old are you ladies?
Me: I think we might just be older than both of you.
Them: No joke! That can’t be possible.
Geral: We are forever 18.

Later we found out that one of them were of the same age and the other, a year older. But seriously, they looked younger than us.

Leo: I’m Leo.
Geral: And I’m Aries.

Next, we found out that one is Leo and the other is Alex.

blablabla
:
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:
blablabla

They were quite surprised that we weren’t studying but working and enquired about our jobs.

Tiff: I’m in advertising………………… Blablabla……………
Geral: I’m an optometrist and freelance hairstylist. My charges are very high. I charge $50 per hair cut. [Geral was obviously trying to rip them off should they approach her for a hair cut.]
Them: That’s not expensive. In Switzerland, I paid SG$60 for my haircut. For the girls, haircuts could cost a $100 over.

I was wondering if geral regretted not quoting a higher price.

Them: And you?
Me: You have to make a guess coz I think you would never be able to guess.
Them: Let me see… Doctor?
Me: No.
Them: Lawyer?
Me: No.
Them: Teacher?
Me: Wow! I look like one?
Them: You see, we are actually guessing the impossible.

blablabla
:
:
:
blablabla

Them: There is a Chinese term that Asians always refer us to.
Us: Ang Mo? It’s not Chinese it’s dialect.
Them: Does it mean anything good or bad?
Us: It just means Caucasians in general.
Them: It simply translates to that?

Me: No it literally means “red hair”. “Ang” is red and “Mo” is “hair”.

Leo and Alex had a look of disbelief in their eyes, turned to me and exclaimed…

Them: I must say that your hair is even redder than mine!

My hair is not ang lor.. It’s ng.

We also taught them some Chinese pick up lines. It was quite funny and Leo learnt very fast with the correct tone and all.

blablabla
:
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blablabla

Them: Why don’t you join us at Dblo? We have got 2 friends there, plus us, that makes 4 guys. And you are 4 girls here. So that makes 4 boys and 4 girls.
Us: Uh huh. But you see, we have got 2 friends at MOS waiting for us. They were actually walking in front of us when you stopped us. And we are wondering why hadn’t they come to rescue us?

That last line was of course not verbalized but thought by 4 of us in unison.

I don’t think the rest really enjoyed the conversation, but I thought it was quite comical. Another (should I say funny) incident happened in MOS too. In the R&B room, this two guys approached us, introduced themselves as consultants of MOS and asked if we should like to go into the enclosed bar there to give some feedbacks on the décor. We thought that the fake people on the ceiling looked very eerie and aired our views. One of the guy’s face dropped and said it was his idea. [Oops!] When we found out how expensive the sculptures cost, our eyes popped and said they looked like they do not cost much [Oops!] and enquired about the material. STYROFOAM! And we had this look of shock and disbelief in our eyes. [Oops!] He had wanted to give us this so called “privilege” card for access to enclosed bar initially. But after our triple oops, he just gave the whole group diluted booze and left us at the bar. Haha… But that is fine coz other people approached our group and so we do not look like the consultants of MOS just left us stranded.

That night was fun and please let’s keep to our promise of hanging out on Halloween this year ya? Together with last year’s group of small khakis. If you all onz to rent costumes, read on.

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Throughout my short stay in my current company, I progressed from being very indifferent to liking it to falling in love. It is really a fun place to be in and our boss firmly believes in having good relationship with his staff and to as far as possible, accommodate our welfare. For example, we have our monthly Tuesday meetings and training which goes on the whole day and a recreation night of mahjong and ktv thereafter at the company itself.

In addition, my zone happens to be the committee for this year’s D&D and my boss being SUPER ONZ, has “tailor-made” a series of activities to go with the Qing Dynasty theme. Another colleague of mine and I are in charge of sieving out the costumes.

We were supposed to look for gege (princess), ci xi tai ho and tai jian (eunuch) costumes. However, at the first shop Costumes and Mascots, my colleague could not resist trying on the very elegant Chang Er’s costume. Her hair wasn’t done up, it was just some fake hair attached to a hair band.


She looks so sweet whereas this gege looks so constipated.


No choice. The head gear was slipping off my head every 3 seconds even though the strings were knotted firmly under my chin. So it was hard to capture this shot. ;P

The olden shoes and the pseudo olden shoes.


The pink pair is the authentic Qing Dynasty shoes where the “heels” are located in the middle of the shoes. It’s so damn difficult to walk with heels at the arch of the feet. My colleague commented that people in the past “jin jiak pai mia” (loosely translated to “very bad life”)

Costumes and Mascots is indeed very big. From the size of their shop, I thought they had monopolized the whole costume shop market in our tiny Singapore. A pity the service wasn’t that good. I can’t stand the guy who attended to us. He slurred like Jay Chou and refuted certain things we said. He could have done so in a more polite manner. Moreover, they did not have enough gege costumes for us as he boasted that another company has rented many gege suits and will only be returning them at the end of the month. *rolls eyes*

It was fun touring around that the North Bridge Road area. Lined with quaint little shophouses, I felt as if I was transported back into time. We were getting so hungry by 4pm that we settled down for briyani in this Malay eatery. It’s called The Briyani House if I’m not wrong. The service was warm and pleasant.

My very huge plate of mutton briyani.


I could only finish 3 quarter of what was on my plate.

The warm and pleasing décor.


Proceeded to Masquerade, the next best costume shop on our list. I love this shop! The wooden stairway to the 2nd floor of the shop house was so steep, it was almost like climbing a ladder which leads to a little attic! I never knew such place still exists in Singapore. Upon reaching the top, we were greeted with cool air for the place was air-conditioned (Yeah silly me was expecting a warm and stuffy little attic)

The condition of the costumes looked better and their prices were more reasonable. Both uncle and aunty were very friendly and even took photos for us. We then found out that they have been in operation for 15 years! Their service must have been really good and they take pride in keeping their costumes in good condition.

2 geges.


I decided I would dye my hair a darker shade before this event. Whoever heard of golden hair gege? Moreover, the company has been gently reminding me that my hair colour isn’t too suitable for a teacher. But hey my biggest boss said it's cool and all my students love it. =)

I saw this gold and black cheongsam and thought it was very elegant. The cut was also very flattering. It emphasizes the front and the back when actually I don’t have any behind to boot.


The rental fee for this chengsam is the same as the gege costume! Uncle said no choice, they have been charging flat rate all along. FLAT RATE??? I’m so gonna rent elaborate costumes this Halloween.

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There was an un-meet-up session with another bunch of pals. Basically, I met up with them through their photos and they met up with an imaginery me. They had to meet on a Saturday afternoon (when I have to work) to have dim sum.

They claimed they saved a seat for me.


They claimed they saved food for me as well.


How thoughtful! The food looks obviously unfinished. -_- |||

This was their share…


And this was their order list.


Thanx… I appreciate that my presence was missed.

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Kh had deferred studies coz of his bond and is finally going back to school. Deardear, this picture is dedicated to you!


Study hard and jia you!