Jo's Jumbled Jardinière

Out of town for the next four days...

2012-01-28T03:34:00.000+08:00

to the land of Tom Yam and Thai iced tea.

[Picture credit: weheartit]

Santa Claus Is Late!

2012-01-25T06:40:00.002+08:00

Why am I blogging about Christmas which was exactly a month ago when it's still Chinese New Year now?

Well, that is because Santa Jo or rather Santarina Jo is really late for Christmas gift giving/exchange with dear friends in 2011.

Due to my London-Paris trip in December, I simply had no time to shop for Christmas gifts last year. On top of that, I stubbornly refused to join the mad Christmas rush in town and squeeze in with the last minute shopping crowd. Hence, I told my friends that I would be santarina only after I get back from my trip at the beginning of January.

I got some gifts beforehand and also some in Paris. As for the rest of the gifts, I shopped for them online snug and comfy in my PJs, bedhead, nerdy glasses and all.

Thank goodness for Little Little Gifts which saved me lots of hassle in getting the perfect last minute gifts for my friends. Some of you may remember my pleasant experience with them which I blogged about here.

Free wrapping service was provided for all customers during the Christmas season and boy was I glad for that.

If you've ever received presents from me, you would already be aware of my style of wrapping.

I merely make use of "wrappers" at home existing in the form of glossy magazine paper and thick catalogue pages.
I don't cut in straight lines and simply fold the excess "wrapper" in.
I stick scotch tape hapzardly.
When the wrapping is finally done, I stare at my masterpiece with great pride and choosing to believe that the shoddy piece of work is actually art.

Hence, you could imagine how I squealed and gasped when I saw the gifts I bought all exquisitely wrapped and delivered to my doorstep!

The ribbons are tied in such perfect little bows that I felt like passing my Tiffany boxes and white ribbons to the littles elves or whoever who did the wrapping at Little Little Gifts to tie them all up in perfect little white bows too.

I like how even the same items of different colour or design are wrapped with different wrapper so as to differentiate them.

Before delivery, a gift wrap detail email was sent so I could easily distinguish which gifts were beneath which wrappers. Really thoughtful of them!

Special gift for my godson Jase.

Seriously, I would never have thought of using Christmas ornaments as part of the wrapping. Ok or maybe it's just me being plain lazy and having a lack of creativity.

I've since met up with some groups of friends to exchange presents and some of them were really impressed by the wrapping, asking me excitedly if I wrapped them. As for the rest of my friends, I would slowly find a common time in our schedule to meet them. I'm sure they would be thrilled to receive gifts which are so beautifully wrapped.

Happy Dragon New Year!

2012-01-24T02:42:00.002+08:00

I know I'm really late in my Lunar New Year wishes but it's only Day 2 and there are 15 days of Chinese New Year, no?

Since it's the year of the dragon (龍 "long"), I hereby wish all of you
Long Zong Hua Hee!

Using the Chinese pronunciation of dragon "long" as a pun, that means "Everyone Happy" when literally translated from Hokkien.

I made an anigif of my family when we had a simple but delicious home-cooked lunch at my parents' place earlier in the afternoon.

I hope all my Chinese readers enjoy themselves this new year. I'm never one who looks forward to CNY but I'll try to enjoy the whole process and it always didn't turn out too bad.

Project: fleurfaerie

2012-01-16T09:19:00.002+08:00

"Once upon a silver moonbeam, a dreamy damsel drew at her desk: faeries, faeries and more faeries. There, she had lofty dreams about faeries. Since she loved all things beautiful, she dreamt of imbuing the people around her with beautiful things as well. Adorning individuals with beautiful clothes and accessories to complement a beautiful heart was what she envisioned. Searching for other like-minded individuals to embark on this journey with her, the concept of Fleurfaerie was thus born.

Many people don’t believe in faeries. See with your heart; they’re always there: dancing in the meadows, flitting about the flowers and hiding in the woods. If we open our minds, we might find tranquil pleasures softly caressing us. We exist with the angels that visit us on every sunbeam, and sit with the fairies who wait on every flower."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Dear beautiful friends and readers,

After some faerie frenzy, my faerie frenz and I would be doing a soft launch for our website: http://www.fleurfaerie.com/

Take a sneak peak at some of the items available at fleurfaerie!

We are currently featuring accessories but do look out for more beautiful stuff from us in time to come!

If you have a beautiful heart, would you be so kind as to like our facebook page at:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fleur-Faerie/288159541232877

Who knows, there may be some beautiful things coming along your way!

Love all of you,
Jo

tête-à-tête Volume 3 -- Jo the Spy Wife

2012-01-12T12:12:00.003+08:00

My dear hubby was studying (while playing World of Warcraft) the past two days for what he called a professional quiz for his job.

~
Aside:
Don't ask me how he studies while playing WoW. Apparently he did that during his university days and scored quite well, much to the annoyance of his peers.
~

I glanced at his papers but could not decipher any logic from the overload of information in cryptic language.

Once he spotted me glancing at his papers, our conversation went like this:-

kh: This contains secret information. If you read it, I would have to kill you.
jo: It's ok. I don't even understand a single thing except the word "Cessna".
kh: Who knows, you might be a spy wife who married me for the sake of obtaining secret information.

Jo gave a bewildered expression.

jo: Ya right! A very lousy spy who passed driving not too long ago.
kh: No, you're pretending to be lousy. Actually you can drive like a pro and do stunts with the car. You can ride motorbike and operate a plane. But...
jo: But...?
kh: You are just pretending to be a stupid bimbo for the sake of spying.

-_-|||

Yeah yeah, I'm a spy wife.

A diamond in the rough.

And on most occasions, I perform stunts like this.

But right now I'm nothing but a stupid bimbo.

Credit: All images from weheartit.com

Today I've decided to be happy

2012-01-10T03:56:00.004+08:00

It's not that I've been upset or anything but there are some things which haven't been going my way.

I have also been busy embarking on my project and met with some obstacles time and again.

In addition, I also discovered two shocking revelation and though affected, I decided not to give a shiet about them anymore.

So I was taking a break from working on my laptop and was viewing some photos.

I really love this picture taken by hubby in Paris outside Arc de Triomphe.

It was supposed to be an artistic shadow shot of the both of us. When he told me to turn my head and faced the side, I didn't expect myself to be in the shot. I thought it was quite cool my non-artistic-eye hubby did that.

I've run out of edited pictures which I could use to craft my backdated entries from May last year and I don't think I would be able to update my blog with backdated posts for some time to come until I finished up till a certain part in my project.

I'm still reading your comments with a smile so keep them coming in. =)

The Last Train Ride

2012-01-06T04:49:00.005+08:00

Back to updating backdated entries yet again.

~~~

In the month of May last year, evan and I took our last train ride on the KTM from the Tanjong Pagar railway station before this nostalgic piece of Singapore gets gazetted as a national monument.

I've written a little about Singapore's railway history in this post back when we were exploring the stations and parts of the railway tracks when the trains were still in service.

This post features our last train ride on the KTM from Singapore where we made a half-day trip to Malaysia, Johor Bahru.

Even though nostalgia has to be seen and experienced and not read about, I hope my words add more colour to these pictures.

~~~

I awoke to a beautiful sunlit sky with fluffy pink cotton candy clouds,

accompanied by my brother-in-law's notti cat who saw me to the gate like a loyal servant, only to sit down and lick itself without looking at me once when I stopped walking.

Finally evan and I reached the Tanjong Pagar Railway station and bought our tickets.

The station was really crowded as everyone was scrambling to take their last train ride for the next few weekends till the station officially closed.

We decided to dress up to the theme of retro in order to imbibe the "blast from the past" nostalgia.

To curb our hunger, we bought ourselves curry puffs to munch on the train.

Taking in all the sights in and outside the train, I had wanted to snap a picture of my old school but it went by in a flash before I could say snap.

We finally reached JB and since most of the shops were closed, we headed to Old Town for some caffeine fix.

We walked and shopped around when the shops started to open. We wandered around till it was time for lunch and decided to have ramen at this place.

It was a huge mistake as the ramen was bland and tasted like instant noodles. No in fact, I love instant noodles way better than this. The toufu was fine.

Evan got an S95 after seeing how good mine was so there we were toying with our pretty new s95 back then.

After that, we shopped again. We initially planned to walk about till we could catch the evening train back to Singapore. However, the mall was a pretty boring place and so we took a bus home in the afternoon.

evan had never been to this side of Singapore and got so excited snapping the scenes at Marsiling MRT station. She was also thrilled taking the LRT from Choa Chu Kang and was amazed at the automatic blurring of windows as the LRT passed by the HDB flats.

We decided to check out the last level crossing and also talk to the attendant there.

Alas the person in the hut at the level crossing was engaged in a conversation with a photo enthusiast. We stood by a little while to listen and join in the conversation when appropriate.

We were told by the photo enthusiast who translated a part of their conversation in Malay to us that it was best not to post any pictures of the hut till the trains discontinued service as he did not want any trouble with any authorities.

In my mind I thought: "That's great. My blog posts are always backdated anyway."

After some exchanges with the friendly attendant and photo enthusiast, we decided to head to Bukit Timah Station to watch the handing over of key token.

Many people thronged the quaint little station, awaiting the crucial moment of handing the key.

The huge key was put into the pouch to be handed over to the train master while the train passed.

I positioned myself for a few minutes at a great spot to snap the passing of key and smirked to myself for having found such a good spot. However as soon as the train roared and rumbled past the station, the girl you see on the right side of every picture below, stepped to her left in limbo, blocked my view and I missed capturing the crucial shot where the train driver whipped the key off the station master's hand. I looked at her DLSR and surrendered.

Girl in grey and red, if you happen to be reading this, I would appreciate if you could send me some pictures from your DLSR. =P

The photo of the fiery sunset below has not been edited. It was the camera angle. It was actually a lot brighter when we made our way for some gratifying local mee pok noodles.

After that we caught a double-decker bus back to an MRT station. It was the first time I took a double decker bus in years.

It was quite an experience and evan and I were only glad to have caught our very last train ride on the KTM as adults. Let's just hope that with this heritage gone, the future generation would still know what trains are instead of terming our MRT as trains.

Happy 2012!

2012-01-01T14:45:00.003+08:00

Happy new year to all of you! May you live, love and laugh your way through 2012!

2011 flew by yet again like any other year. There had been many ups and downs and I tried to

live, love and laugh

my way like what I always tell myself to do. Life isn't worth moping the minute details.

For a period of time,

I cried a lot too but I cried and picked myself up as quickly as I could.

I had wanted to do a 2011 reflection post but I guess that I can hardly even keep up with the pace of my life and blogging that I'm currently only backdating May 2011 posts. My trip and my illness had put my other project on hold too and besides trying to catch up with my posts, I have to focus on that as well.

It's 6.29am now and I'm back in London once more.

The reason why I'm not sleeping yet is due to the fact that my hair is wet. No actually more importantly, we have to pay for internet usage in this hotel at 15pounds for a 24-hour continuous connection. I've been uploading videos after videos on Youtube and Facebook to make sure I get our money's worth of internet usage.

I'm glad for the change in temperature. It's much warmer than the first leg of our trip at more than 10 degree Celsius here. My cold and cough seem to have gotten worse though but I'm glad that at least my body doesn't have to brave the cold outdoors. I just hope it doesn't rain too much.

It's such a bummer to rain coz it makes me wanna nestle myself up indoors in bed with my pinkie pink laptop coz I believe in pink.

After we reached London from Paris, we had high tea at Harrods. At close to 7pm, we tried our luck at Apollo Victoria Theatre and snagged 2 last minute dress circle seats for Wicked at less than half the price! We were like 2 happy larks after getting the tickets. I have been wanting to catch that musical in ages and last night was the only night left that we could catch it since it is no-show Sunday and we would be leaving London early Monday morning.

Wicked was wickedly GOOD! Even the hubby who didn't know what I was hyping about found it really wicked.

After the show, we decided to head back to the hotel to deposit our bags and to imbue in the new year's mood by travelling light only with our coats and everything else in the pockets.

At the eleventh hour (in all essence of that phrase), we left our hotel at 11.45pm to try to catch the new year's revelry in a foreign land.

The atmosphere was already built up right from the tube.

Once the tube reached Leicester Square Station, it was about 4 minutes to midnight. Everyone screamed in unison, ran out of the doors and dashed all the way to goodness know where at Leicester Square (we merely followed) to view the fireworks from a little slit in between 2 buildings.

I kept smiling to myself and laughing to kh while half running and half brisk walking. I've stopped going out into the crowd for NYE since many years ago and always prefer a quiet turn of the year. This time, it felt really good to imbibe the whole atmosphere into every pore of mine.

I love the people here! I love their spontaneity a lot. I love it that we're here in London over the turn of 2011 to 2012 though I must say that kh and I both miss home a lot.

Here's part if the fireworks display we saw from where we were. Not too bad for a last minute rush down.

And here's a shout out from the hubby and me from the merry streets of London.

Still sick but trying to look on the bright side of things

2011-12-30T10:07:00.003+08:00

Thanks to all who showed concern for my illness whether here or on Facebook or in text. I'm really touched by all the love around me.

Well, I'm relieved to say that my gastric flu and nausea are officially gone but in the process, cold/flu took their place. There were days when everything was altogether ravaging my body that it was quite unbearable.

The Paris leg of the trip has been pretty jinxed so far. I felt almost sorry to kh for spoiling so much of the trip.

Kh and I had to forgo quite a number of places to visit as I was sleeping for about 1.5 days here. In addition, I could not take the cold for too long and had to cut short the outdoor sightseeing. The sun sets at about 5pm here in Paris (and 2.50pm in London) during winter and by then many places would have been closed too. It was also a torture to go out in the cold with blocked and runny nose at the same time, together with sore throat and a cough building up. I was practically freezing through my nose and brain and blowing bits of blood out due to the cold dry weather.

So here's how I look with Rudolph nose. Not a pleasant sight at all.

Other than the hubby being so sweet and understanding, the other positive aspect of the trip would be the shopping. What with every designer item being up to 30% cheaper than in Singapore on top of tax refund, I was tempted to buy so many things here.

I kept telling kh that I'm helping him to save money by buying these designer labels here. Of course, he thinks I would actually save money by not buying but I'm sticking by MY logic.

Here's kh looking so miserable.

Here's how certain "medicine" could put a smile on sickly Jo's face.

Note: I've to clarify that not all the items in the paper bags shown above belong to me. The rest are gifts for family etc.

In case I don't get to log on again, here's wishing everyone a Merry Christmas once more and a splendid 2012!

One of my good friend tagged me this quote by Audrey Hepburn and I love how I'm trying to live by it all this while. I hope this sticks by with all of you too. =)

“I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles.”

Sick at Paris

2011-12-24T06:25:00.000+08:00

Day 1 Paris:
Lady Scarlet visited, causing much pain and loss of energy.
Fever and bedridden.
Gastric flu and nauseous.
Spent the whole damn day sleeping in such a beautiful city. This sux; I totally spoilt the trip. =(

Hello from London

2011-12-22T09:22:00.002+08:00

It's Day 4 of London and only now am I dropping a hello to all my readers using the hotel's very unstable wifi.

The past few days, I would K.O before midnight; I was just thinking that this trip is so gonna cure my insomnia.

It's a quarter after one in the morning over here now so I'm gonna sing Lady Antebellum's Need You Now.

Ok I think I'm in such a sleepy state that I'm blabbering nonsense.

Catch up with all of you soon!

For the Love of Japanese Food

2011-12-19T07:00:00.005+08:00

This is a scheduled post.

Like many people out there following the latest trend of snapping food pictures, I love to take pictures of food too. Sometimes I wind up having folders of outings with food as the only pictures taken. Hence, the explanation for the title of this post.

~*Nanbantei*~

After having dined at Nanbantei for Regina's birthday last year, I decided to bring kh to try out their food.

Kh is always the one introducing me to quaint and authentic Japanese haunts rather than those franchise kind like Sakae Sushi or Sushi Tei as he has a rather good friend who is a Japanese. This time, I did a reversal of roles.

It was very crowded and hence we were ushered to the counter seats where every couple would be.

I hate counter seats.

Though I love the savoury smokey smell of yakitori, I could not bear for the smell to linger on me.

Over here, the smoke and all was immediately "sucked up" by those cooking hood above. Great for us!

The sizzling hot savoury items were yummilicious!

The cold stuff

I still love the food but kh thinks they're not up to his standard of "quaint, authentic" Japanese haunts.

Hmm... on normal basis, he's always the one saying I'm very picky about food.

~~~

~*MOF*~

Before we caught Thor, kh and I decided to fill our rumbling bellies with food that are quick to gobble so as not to run late for the show.

We ended up at MOF. a place which offers mass culture Japanese cuisine with a little local twist.

As usual, I would always order macha green tea whenever I see them on the menu. The laksa you see up there was mine. As far as I love my laksa full of cockles (or better known to Singaporeans as "humps"), this wasn't too bad too.

Pasta could never go wrong for kh. Personally, Japanese pastas do not quite appeal to my tastebuds.

I was trying to be as grumpy as Grumpy Bear while kh refused to do the same action. He actually loves to fold his arms and say "no" in a grumpily cute way whenever I asks him to do something he doesn't like. Sometimes, he simply loves to fold his arm and say "no" to every single thing I say. Before that shot was taken, I asked him to pose like Grumpy Bear and needless to say, he folded his arms and said "no". What irony! But before I could catch that with my camera, he changed his pose.

~~~

~*Menichi*~

I met up with my 2nd sis at the neighbourhood mall since she needed company for dinner. We ended up at Menichi.

Menichi is one of the more affordable ramen place which dishes out good ramen (considering the price). I know of it coz I used to frequent the outlet in the Jurong Point. I'm quite particular about ramen and the one at this outlet wasn't up to standard at all.

We ordered the normal char siu ramen with chicken karaage and fried ice cream. Bet you couldn't tell that the fried thing with "tomato" sauce on the bottom right corner was actually fried ice cream with fruit sauce right?

Speaking of ramen, one of kh's buddy wanted to do a ramen review session with us since we're all fans of great ramen (aka Santouka).

He suggested trying out the various ramen haunts, take some pictures or even record some video. From the hunt of the best ramen, a mental ranking list would be created in our heads so that we could spread the word.

One year later, we have yet to embark on our ramen hunt.

I've wanted to cry so much for you

2011-12-17T01:04:00.001+08:00

Was talking to char char so happily but when I told her about the new star-studded cast of a movie New Year's Eve which portrays scenes in NYC, my voice started to quiver and then the floodgates opened. Within seconds, I was sobbing uncontrollably and could not speak. =(

Char char, I've wanted to cry so much for you but I couldn't for a very long time. I'm finally a human! But... I've kinda grown accustomed to my abnormal no-tears mode and since you do not like seeing us cry, could you sprinkle your fairy dust into my eyes again?

Company's Retreat at Malaysia, Desaru

2011-12-15T10:00:00.016+08:00

This is a scheduled post.

Back to updating backdated entries yet again.

~~~

In my many years of blogging, I've neither written or post a gazillion photos about my ex company's annual team building event

I'm not sure why but I just did not think of sharing them here. I've always have a love-hate relationship with team building events. While I love the team-related activities a lot, I hated the emotional ones coz I never fail to shed tears at those activities that ripped the flesh of our hearts and broke us down. Added to that fact is that I don't snap lots of pictures on my camera during team building events.

This year is my last year as a full time staff at my ex company and as I'm writing this post, I'm reminiscing on the good old days. How I miss so many of my colleagues.

For this year, some changes were made. Instead of calling it a team building event, it was termed as a company retreat. In addition, it was the first time the two-day event was held out of the country.

It was anything but a retreat though. The activities were mentally and physically exhausting. Though I would say, gimme the latter any time.

On our way to Malaysia, Desaru via the coach.

We settled down for buffet lunch before the activities began.

Some activities that took place during the two days.

Buffet dinner was a grand feast with seafood like crabs and fresh oysters. The oysters were really not bad. I'm one who is very picky about oysters and I must say they were really quite fresh.

Rooms were assigned according to departments. Here's taking a peek into my department's room.

I spent the night with the Math Department.

By sun rise, I was back with my lovely English Department. Sigh... I'm already missing them while I'm typing this.

The ground was bathed in rain from the wee hours.

Day 2 consisted of some forest adventure and so we needed loads of carb for energy.

Group S.

We were the first group to complete the forest tasks which included building a raft, constructing jungle survivor stuff from raw materials, overcoming our phobia for heights by walking on obstacles high above the ground and peeling coconuts.

The obligatory shot with the company's banner. Did you really think the banner depicted smiley faces? I was blotting out my ex company's name.

I'm aware that my blog is a lot more boring with mere text and no photos

2011-12-10T20:23:00.002+08:00

My photos are not displayed once more. The first time it happened after using Photobucket for years was last month and I was quite peeved about the photos not showing here. Hence, I sent a message to Photobucket and here was their automated reply:

Bandwidth is used when digital content is viewed from a link you posted on another website or sent in an email (e.g., MySpace, eBay, message boards, etc.). Bandwidth is a measure of the number of bytes passed over time via direct linking. It is calculated by adding up the size of each of your images or videos as they are sent from Photobucket. The “Monthly Bandwidth" number is the amount of bandwidth you have used within the last month. The month is determined by the day of the month you registered your account.
EXAMPLE:
You have various images of 25K each in size that are viewed by 100 users on your favorite message board in one day. You also have one video of 15000K that is viewed by 10 users in one day. 25K * 100 requests = 2500K (or 2.5 MB). 15000K * 10 requests = 150000K (or 1500 MB). When you add the two together, you have used 152.5 MB of bandwidth in one day.
Important! Do not confuse bandwidth with your album size.

I've set it such that clicking onto the photos uploaded using Photobucket would only lead you to their homepage.

So everyone, please help me not to exceed bandwidth by avoiding clicking onto my photo links but to view them straight off my blog instead.

Since Photobucket says that bandwidth resets each month on the anniversary of the day a member originally registered, my bandwidth usage will be reset on the 19th of December which is a long way to go from today. I was already planning to do some photo story posts this coming week before I fly off to London on the 17th. I guess I would have to do scheduled posts which would publish after the 19th then.

It is my final week in Singapore before I see all my friends back here next year. I have lots and lots to catch up on so my dear blogger friends, forgive me if I haven't been visiting or commenting much on your blogs.

Stealing my picture

2011-12-08T15:38:00.003+08:00

I never thought this would happen to me but after so many incidents that happened in my life when I said "never", I've learned to never say never.

Despite watermarking my pictures and all, my photo ended up as someone else's profile picture on youtube. I wouldn't have known this if not for my friend asking me if I am known as "elva" on youtube.

This is the imposter's link:
http://www.youtube.com/user/elva

If I could publicly write on her/his youtube public page, I would. However, I can't find the button to post a public comment.

I've since reported the profile image and warned her/him over private message. I hope she/he would have enough sense to do something.

Gosh, I'm boiling mad right now. Kh helped alleviate my anger by saying that I've already known that whatever I put on the world wide web do not belong to me anymore so just treat it as a flattery... Like you know the adage? Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. wtf! Ok he didn't really say that but the implications were there.

I still can't help feeling violated that my picture has been misused in this manner. It does seem like my hubby is displaying a nonchalant attitude towards this little saga and I'm beginning to worry if he's really my hubby. lol.

Updated:
"Elva" has already taken down my image as her profile picture. No reply to my private message nor any word of apology. I guess it's only natural not to reply when you've been found out that you've done something wrong right?

Pot Luck & Games Night

2011-12-08T12:00:00.003+08:00

This is a scheduled post.

Back to updating backdated entries yet again.

We always had such fun playing games at Karen's place that she organized a pot luck dinner and games night at her place yet again. It sure seems like Karen's house is synonymous to a game station!

We made new friends and caught up with the old. Everyone brought lots of delicious food like pies, tarts, skinny pizzas, home made tortillas, and more! Kh and I brought fried Taiwanese skewer snacks.

Karen baked some lovely cupcakes with hand made fondant.

I've yet to savour her cupcakes again coz whenever I bring cakes back from her home, my brother-in-law would have finished them up the next morning.

This time, we played a new game -- Gift Trap. How I hated that game. Lol... I didn't understand how to play it at first and lost big time coz I'm one who hate to guess.

While playing, we kept feasting on various snacks. When Karen brought out the treat she bought from Japan, I squealed like a 4-year-old high on glucose. I just had to snap a photo of this packet of Care Bears sweets.

Ok, if you're not a huge fan of Care Bears in the 80s and 90s, you would never ever understand my immense joy when I saw this. These Care Bears pictured here are the traditional ones!

The purple bear on the far right is called Share Bear and I have that soft toy when I was about 4 years old. I love the ice cream sundae on her tummy. The new Share Bear has two lollipops on its tummy instead. I say it's laziness on the manufacturer's part coz the ice cream sundae embroidery on the tummy was really exquisite. I should go snap a picture of the toy which is in my parents' place coz I'm quite sure not a single one of you reading this would know what I'm talking about, except maybe for my sisters.

The current Funshine Bear, Cheer Bear, Bedtime Bear, Love-a-lot Bear and Good Luck Bear (fr left to right) also don't look quite like their original selves anymore. Damn, some were even taken off the shelves and being replaced by some gaudy bears. How I hate the new Care Bears. They are a complete joke!

Right, I've ranted enough about the new Care Bears. Back to the topic...

I forgot what other games we played but we had such great fun.

Other than being entertained by games, we were constantly being entertained by Louis, Emmie. Like most dinner at Karen's place, the night ended really late with the last of us leaving at 5am.

Here's what I wore that night:

Hubby's Invitation

2011-12-06T00:58:00.002+08:00

The hubby kept pestering me to check my email just now. This was what he was up to:

[click to enlarge]

Birthdays in April

2011-12-04T03:52:00.039+08:00

Back to updating backdated entries yet again!

~*April's Birthday Meet Up at Ootoya*~

It is so difficult to catch April the busy bee that she actually had to take leave every year in order to meet viv and me for her belated birthday lunch. This time round, she was a little sick and so took medical leave. Poor gal!

We met up at one of my favourite Japanese haunt-- Ootoya Japanese Restaurant 大戶屋 at Orchard Central.

As usual, we had our mains and also food to share coz what's food when you can't share it with great pals?

I absolutely love their Japanese Tofu Salad. It's so yummy yet healthy.

Of course when it came to desserts, we simply could not decide what we wanted. Hence, we ordered 3 different desserts so we could indulge in a variety of flavours. Our 3 choices were great! You could really tell from the photos right?

We wanted a shot of the 3 of us but when kh saw this photo, he insisted, "Don't lie. I know April's Chanel is the main focus here."

Sidetrack:
Well, I hadn't intended for it to be that way but you know what? He was godamn right! I love her beige jumbo classic flap in gold hardware but logic got the better of me and so I got the black medium one in gold hardware instead. I think I would cherish the bag more than my life should I get a light coloured one and I would kill that person who spill red wine on my beige should I get a beige.

I will blog about my bag in time to come. I know some of you have been waiting for me to write about my dream bag for the longest time ever. For those of you who own so many Chanels like my one of my favourite blogger friend Peh Sun, don't scoff at the poor peasant me who could only afford one ok? =D

Btw, Peh Sun wrote an absolutely touching tribute to me and a few other lovely ladies some time back. Click on the link to read it!

Enough of digression...

Right, so we have a proper 3-of-us shot with no timeless Chanel to interfere with our timeless friendship.

We attempted a proper self-taken 3-of-us shot which failed miserably, leading to some fun shots in the process. I hope we look cute instead of annoying!

Parting shot!

~*2nd Brother-in-law Birthday Dinner at Peach Garden*~

After having Japanese cuisine for lunch, I had Chinese cuisine at Peach Garden with hubby kh and his family for dinner to celebrate my 2nd bil's birthday.

That was one of the rare occasions when I felt so full halfway into dinner. My parents-in-law were somewhat used to me gorging so much that they thought it was pretty abnormal for me to be nibbling so little that evening.

Chinese restaurant food would most of the time never go wrong. I'm so hungry typing this while looking at the succulent prawns!

Feeling all happy after a sumptuous meal!

Here's what I wore that day:

♥ M)Phosis white top
♥ Clubcouture sleeveless draped vest
♥ Coax denim shorts
♥ DMK grey mesh shoes
♥ Brown leather watch
♥ Fayfey heart tag and key necklace

The F4 Gang at Nabins

2011-11-30T01:11:00.002+08:00

This is a scheduled post.

Back to updating backdated entries yet again.

One evening in April, the F4 gang --em, hs and wy-- decided to meet at Nabins after work to immerse in the quintessence of Arabic fantasies. Besides catching up with one another, it was also meant as a dinner meet up to celebrate em's birthday.

How I miss these gals!

We got em an adidas sports bag which she liked a lot. Now she has a gym bag so she has no excuse not to go the gym. =P

Then, the sneaky gals caught me by surprise when hs suddenly pushed a recyclable brown bag with flower motif across the table saying it was my advanced birthday gift. It was early April then and my birthday falls on the later part of May. So the dinner meet up was meant to be a celebration for both em and me!

You could see how surprised I looked below.

They knew I was into some arty phase and got me lots of DIY craft stuff. How thoughtful of them! They also knew I was into the caring for our environment so they put everything into a recyclable bag which I could use instead of wrapping the gifts. Thoughtful to the max!

The next gift cracked me up. They wanted to get me something I could use for Halloween since it's an event that I would never miss each year.

They got me glow in the dark nail polish! I did not use it for this year's Halloween for it didn't quite gel with my whole image but I would definitely use it in time to come.

We ordered lots of food to share.

Like really lots...

and lots of food.

Then came the desserts. I didn't quite like all the dates. They were too sweet for my liking couple with the fact that they looked like shrivelled cockroaches. Lol.

After eating, we chatted till we had to catch the last trains. I really really love these girls a lot!

A parting shot before my camera battery died. Em was commenting how rare it was that all of us were sporting a full head of our natural black hair then.

Aside: Canon S95 is good for low light but the original and compatible battery sux big time!

The waiter forgot to zoom so we had to use wy's camera to snap.

This is after increasing the exposure by a lot.

My birthday wishes message board is currently sitting my the side of my desk.

I realise I seldom post my work outfits (they're quite boring cos I don't possess a fanciful wardrobe for working clothes) so here's one for an Outfit of the Day shot.

Dear hs is one of the close friend whom I was referring to whose wedding fell in November. What a coincidence that she just sent us some gorgeous pictures of her wedding day over email when I was doing up this post. Here's a bridesmaids picture to share with all of you. The theme was pink.

I will blog about her wedding when I manage to catch up with writing about November.

An Intensive November

2011-11-29T02:11:00.002+08:00

As mentioned before, November has been a whirlwind month.

With the weddings of two very close friends and being part of the bridesmaid entourage for both weddings, I've been really busy. In between was my Phuket trip with the BFF. All other pockets of November were filled with meet ups to discuss and plan for parts of the wedding, impromptu meet ups with various groups of people and many many errands --both planned and impromptu-- to run almost every single free day. There isn't a single day where I stayed at home and lazed for the whole damn day. I've been getting 2, 3, 4 hours of sleep each day without replenishing them with naps and frankly speaking, I'm really exhausted.

The hubby would finally be back from the seas on the last day of November and I foresee spending lots of time with him to make up for the lost time the past 3 months. Then half a month later, we would be going on our long-awaited honeymoon to London and Paris! Wee!

Actually I'm sorta bumped that our trip got postponed due to his sudden unforseen circumstances at work. If he had not been delayed, it would have been our 3rd day in London today.

I have planned the timing to fit into my schedule without affecting the weddings, my classes and some personal goals too much. Nevertheless, it is fine to embrace change, the unforseen circumstances and the random happenings in life. Things haven't been going their way but no matter what, we would always be able to work our way around them at the end of the day. =)

I'm having a really full plate but I would continue churning out some posts. Gosh... I stopped backdating from April's updates. At this rate I'm going, I wonder when I would ever be on time for my blog.

I would also attempt to do some scheduled post to keep my blog running during my trip so that you lovely friends and readers would not see virtual cobwebs here.

Thank you all for your heartfelt comments on my dream of Charmaine. I really enjoyed reading what some of you shared.

Like a true blue Gemini when it comes to split personality, I would be emo one minute and happy the next so please do not worry too much for me.

Look out for more regular posts in time to come... I HOPE.

Dreamt of you...

2011-11-27T20:56:00.005+08:00

I think I'm ready to share my flashes of dream about Charmaine.

Before I continue, I've to say that my tear ducts have been malfunctioning till now since Charmaine's cremation on the Sunday of 23rd October.

I simply have no more tears in me, not even tears from yawning.

I simply have no more tears in me, not even when I listen or read about sad news.

I simply have no more tears in me, not even tears to lubricate my eyes when my contact lens got stuck one night. My whole eye was red but stil, there was nary a drop of tear.

I'm one with such active tear ducts that my tears would streak down my face even from yawning. I cry when I watch sad movies. I sob when I read or listen to sad stories. I tear very easily even when I don't feel sad at all which I hated coz I hated my tearing to be associated with weakness until I realise and come to embrace the fact that strong people cry too.

It's only human to cry.

I felt a little abnormal when I had no more tears in me the next day. For a period of time, I tried looking and relooking at the tons of photos we have taken throughout the years. I rewatched all our crazy videos from when Jase and Charmaine were just toddlers to pre cancer days and after. I read ourfeistyprincess.blogspot.com coz Cyn has never ever failed to move me to tears with all her emotive words.

I felt like an android devoid of human feelings when I attempted to rediscover my lost emotions.

I've not told anyone snippets of the dream except to Cyn mommy coz I wanted her to be the first one to hear of it, not caring whether she would cry from it or not. Anyway, she has been laughing and crying every other day which is pretty normal. I thought that by relating to her the dream face to face, my floodgates would open. It didn't.

On to the dream.

I don't exactly know where we were in the dream, probably in Cyn's house. Putting myself in dreamscape, I knew it was cyn's house but I don't have any recollection of the setting at all.

Somehow in the dream, we all know that Charmaine had passed away but she was still around at times. When I reached their place, Cyn told me charchar was still around and so I asked her where.

"You will be able to see her if you use your heart to feel," cyn answered.

I felt my emotions stirring and as if magic dust was sprinkled into my eyes, there char was sitting on the sofa with her cheeky little grin and waving to me.

"I CAN SEE HER! I CAN SEE YOU CHAR! Can I hug you?"

I was delirious to be able to see char in her cheeky self, healthy and all.

"You have to keep using your heart and everything would be real," Cyn reminded.

I kept my feelings there and went over to hug charchar.

I could feel her in my arms. I felt her physical body. I felt her warmth. Then, everything seemed to gravitate away from me.

I woke up and stared a while in the dark room, making out the silhoutte of the things in my room. The hubby wasn't around and I was all alone on the bed, feeling so lost and lonely. I think I felt a little tear drop on the outer corner of my right eye; just a tiny little drop before I drifted off to sleep.

I didn't remember my dream immediately; but when I awoke, I knew I dreamt of her. There were hazy images but after a week, I was finally able to put them all together now.

I'm expecting myself to cry when I get all of these out in words.

I don't feel the tears coming and I don't like it.

I do feel the detachment and the distance and I don't like it.

Despite all these, it doesn't change the fact that I still love you, charchar. I prefer to think of it as you sprinkling some magic dust on me and healing my rather active tear ducts, giving me the strength not to cry at every little thing anymore.

Thank you Charmaine for doing so.

Godma Jolene will always love you.

You know blogging has taken you to a whole new level when...

2011-11-26T03:12:00.001+08:00

you go to one of your bestie's house only to have her godbrother/ cousin asking,

"You're that famous blogger right?"

*flips a backward fall and faints*

I've to keep emphasizing that I blog but I'm not a famous blogger so now he addresses me NaFB aka Not-a-Famous-Blogger. -_-|||

As requested... My not so drastic new look

2011-11-24T06:11:00.004+08:00

Some blabbers and sleepy state talk

I've been meaning to get this post up since I got home but I was settling so many impromptu stuff with my in laws that I've only managed to just settle down to blog with my eyelids half opened.

My domestic helper is flying back to her hometown tomorrow, no actually in a few hour's time but heck my "tomorrow" only starts when I wake up. I dunno if any of you even know what I'm blabbering about.

I've really grown quite fond of my domestic helper. She's really quite cute and I started to talk to her a lot recently. She's also very honest and I could safely let her clean my room and NOTHING would be stolen, quite unlike the many previous domestic helpers whom my in laws employed over the years.

So I'm sending her to the airport tomorrow as both my in laws could not make it and that would mark the start of my 1st errand to run for tomorrow. I've got 4 errands and meet ups in total tomorrow that would take me from morning till night. Have I already mentioned that the time now is SGT5.52am?

November has been a month of randomness and a whole lot of excitement which started right up from Halloween at the end of October to the wedding of 2 very good friends and being their bridesmaids, to the random last minute fun in Phuket with the bff and to all other randomness in life. I'm actually exhausted by all these random fun in life and how I CRAVE for a mundane life now! Like really C.R.A.V.E. and M.U.N.D.A.N.E in capz.

Our new look

It was such a fun filled day today with cyn mommy and godson jase and there's simply too much to write about the entire outing. I will do the entire post another day. I entrusted my camera to Jase who took loads and loads of artistic shots and inane videos so you can expect a post chock-full of photos that do not make sense.

Meanwhile, here are some before and after pictures of cyn mommy and me as requested.

Before... black hair was becoming boring and fringe too was untidy.

Before... Actually cyn already looked kinda pretty even with inches of natural regrowth hair at the scalp.

I only dyed and cut my bangs... Not much of a great transformation much to the chagrin/ relief [Circle correct answer] of many.

After...

This colour I chose would fade to an ash tone after 2 weeks. It was evident on the stylist's hair and I opted for it coz of the after-fade colour effect. Let's hope it works the same for my hair!

I love how the stylist managed to cut the bangs and wispy sides which I want! I absolutely love it that I kept tying up my hair. Jase loves it too! He was actually quite horrified initially after the hair wash.

He shook his head and said gravely, "Godma Jolene, you look too Americany!"

Yeah, new vocab from him!

Then after my hair was blown straight, he squealed, "Look like straight hair Japanese girl! I like."

This boy seriously better not become a smooth talker and heartbreaker next time.

After... Pretty mommy and godma with our new hair! Mommy also cut bangs coz her hair was flattening out.

Once you go black you'll never go back

2011-11-22T15:23:00.011+08:00

I risk assigning such a provocative title to this post. If you even knew the meaning to that phrase up there.

Fear not, this post has got no kinky connotation at all.

After going long, straight black for quite a long time, I've decided to change my hair colour/ style/ whatever you call it.

In case you've forgotten how I really look after all the Halloween make up and all, just click on my recent posts or look at my profile picture on the right side bar.

Yes, I used to sport un-black hair since I was 15years old. All shades of brown, blonde, golden lion tamarin, red with blonde streaks, any colours that did not require bleaching, all sorts of length, rebonded, permed, natural, with bangs, side swept, long, I've tried them.

Been spotting a light brown hair phase for the longest time ever with varying lengths and bangs.

I don't have digital photos of those from schooling days so yes, you don't get to see the red and the streaks.

2006 was the year I tried everything, totally spoilt my hair and got depression. Yes, only bimbos can fall into depression because of hair. lol

I dyed the lightest shade of blondish brown I've ever tried which led to people calling me golden lion tamarin. Actually those people were so wrong coz a golden lion tamarin has fur which is not golden but reddish like this.

Hubby Kh love my long blondish brown straight hair with bangs back then coz it matched my tan a lot and he loved it when I tied it into a ponytail.

And then when he went overseas, I got it permed the old fashion way and totally spoilt my hair. He hated me with curls but I didn't care coz it's MY hair. That was the time I got hair depression. lol... coz the perm plus recent colouring was so damaging, my hair was breaking mid sections. Moreover the curls weren't as lovely as the tonged kinda curls you see in top left photo of the collage below. They looked bad like the bottom ones.

That year, I also got accepted into a new company which once again entailed teaching and the bosses were initially unsure about my hair colour. However, I must say my inner teacher persona outshone some physical ah lian hair colour. Students loved me not only for being their cool teacher but for my teaching itself.

By the end of 2006, I got so sick of my dry-looking blondish brown that I dyed blue black. (I think... I can't really remember which black came first)

My friends were so used to my non-black Chinese hair that nobody could quite imagine how I looked like with black hair and advised me against dyeing black then. They thought I would look really weird. Even after I dyed blue black and subsequently ash black, the black would just fade like crazy on me after some time and I would wind up with coloured hair again and people would ask, "I thought you said you dyed your hair black?"

It seems like black isn't the way to go for me back then.

Here's how the blue black faded... and then I rebonded my hair and cut bangs coz I was sick of my curls.

I didn't know what went wrong but the straightness did not last and soon my hair became like this. Needless to say, I fell into a hair depression again. My hair then was neither straight nor wavy so I just had to wear my hair in a self-twirled manner or tong it during special occasions. The black also faded like crazy and I wound up with non-black hair again.

More black roots growing which still looked fine. I hated black roots back then but I found these acceptable coz at least my hair looked healthier then. Had bangs, grew them out, had bangs again.

Then I itchy fingers went to perm my hair once more. This time digital perm. I dunno why my hair looked brown in the bottom left picture. I think I dyed an ash black here.

I stopped colouring my hair after that and began to embrace that black is the new black.

I didn't look too bad in black hair with side swept bangs right?

After that I rebonded my hair again and sported blunt bangs. During this time, more people from friends to relatives started saying I look like Fann Wong once more. Yeah, Fann Wong also spotted the ugly blunt bangs look that year so I took that as an insult. lol... On normal occasions, that would be a compliment to which I always reply, "Yeah, I'm the uglified version of Fann Wong." The last time someone said I looked like her was like in year 2000?

Then I had to colour my hair again for my bridal photoshoot as all the people at the bridal studio asserted that brown hair looked better in photos. I didn't wanna go back to my blondish days so I opted for a darker shade of brown which I liked a lot. I'm done with dumb blonde days.

Kept a side swept fringe for the photoshoot...

but cut them again for my actual wedding day. I didn't exactly like my bangs on my wedding day but I like it when they grew out as seen in the other pictures below.

After many years of not using DIY hair dye, I decided to give Liese Bubble hair dye in ash brown a go and I absolutely LURVE the way it turned out! It's exactly the kinda brown I like. Check out all my NYC travel entries.

But after a few months, it faded to orange which I absolutely detested! I didn't include the ugly orangey shade photos here but you could click on beginning 2010 to see pictures of the ugly orange.

I also had the most expensive bangs and sides cut in my life. USD$30 not inclusive of tips yet but I absolute loved it. None of my SGD$2.50 -- $5 fringe cut salon could imitate the same cut I did at a hip Japanese salon in New York.

From end 2009 onwards, I stopped chemically treating my hair and allowed my natural black hair to grow without rebonding or perming and I love the state it is now.

Now that I've been sporting a full head of naturally black hair, every group of friends who met me would comment on how they like me with my healthy black hair and how this look suits me so much, using flattering adjectives like "posh", "classy", "chic", "elegant", "mature" etc.

All the past positive adjectives used to describe my un-black days like "sporty", "fun-loving", "cool", "beach babe" etcs have since been replaced by "You used to look like a/an __________________________." [Fill in the blank with SPG, ah lian, wild child, unserious playgirl... wtf is a playgirl?]

Ever since my god daughter Charmaine's passing, I made a pact with cyn mommy to go do our hair together. She was really in dire need of prettifying and pampering herself after 2.5 years of looking after Charchar and never leaving her side.

Doing our hair together was something which we've always planned to do so we're both really excited about it. Cyn mommy has already booked an appointment for us tomorrow afternoon and we simply cannot wait for tomorrow to come. J~~ase has been going round telling everyone that mommy and godma are going to do hair together and leaving him at home coz he would be bored at the salon.~~ lol... Jase had promised us that he would be good and would not mind waiting even 5 hours at the salon for us. What a sweet gentleman! There would be so much to catch up on just within a span of a few weeks of not meeting.

Kh loves my current look a lot and asked if there was really a need to change something. In fact, all the friends I met up with recently except for a clique were in the same voice as kh.

To quote somebody close, "I love your current straight black hair with bangs look to match your bitchy but smoking grey eyes."

Bitchy? Thanx ah. Smoking grey? Yeah!

I wonder what would be my decision at the salon tomorrow!

Snippets from Phuket

2011-11-15T15:39:00.001+08:00

It's Day 4 of Phuket and it's a lazy day for both of us after 3 very hectic days before this. My bff is lying on the couch with a book while here I am testing out the intermittent wifi in all parts of the room.

Here's sharing some of my memories here with all of you in the meantime.

~*Our room at Indochine, Phuket*~

Via latestay.com, we managed to snag this Gaya Studio (Indochine) at a good rate the night before we flew. Unfortunately, we had to put up at a not-as-nice-as-gaya Studio due to unavailability of Gaya Studios on our 1st day here.

We're really ecstatic about this room (upgrade). Enjoy the amateurish commentary yet again!

~*Our first elephant ride*~

With the goal of taking a new piece of experience home from every trip, my bff and I decided to try riding on an elephant at Phuket. Of course, there were too many new experiences to choose from like riding a horse, a scooter etc but riding on an elephant seems the safest for now.

We did the ride at Pang Chang Sai Yuan. Our elephant's name is "BiBua" and she really loves to eat. I like this place coz the elephants are all treated quite well, as if they are part of the family. Only gripe was that we paid for a 45min ride but got 30min inclusive of BiBua eating. Well, I guess we can't really control how an elephant walks.

Hope all of you enjoy the videos! I will catch up on all your blogs when I'm back in Singapore.

Hello from Indochine Phuket

2011-11-13T01:28:00.001+08:00

Just a short note here.

I'm so glad that there's free wifi in our hotel!

Well, two very garang gals had been letting our hair down and exploring the place on our own. Sometimes, travelling is all about the side trips.

After receiving some of your feedback, I'm aware that all my photos are not showing here. I dunno what's the problem with Photobucket. Argh... Island hopping is on the agenda tomorrow. We've got to be up by 6.00am and I'll try to figure out what's wrong with Photobucket when I've got the time. I feel so bummed that the photos are all not showing but it's ok, we're on VACAY!

I'll miss all of you!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Updated -- Message from Photobucket

Bandwidth is used when digital content is viewed from a link you posted on another website or sent in an email (e.g., MySpace, eBay, message boards, etc.). Bandwidth is a measure of the number of bytes passed over time via direct linking. It is calculated by adding up the size of each of your images or videos as they are sent from Photobucket. The “Monthly Bandwidth" number is the amount of bandwidth you have used within the last month. The month is determined by the day of the month you registered your account.

EXAMPLE:
You have various images of 25K each in size that are viewed by 100 users on your favorite message board in one day. You also have one video of 15000K that is viewed by 10 users in one day. 25K * 100 requests = 2500K (or 2.5 MB). 15000K * 10 requests = 150000K (or 1500 MB). When you add the two together, you have used 152.5 MB of bandwidth in one day.

Important! Do not confuse bandwidth with your album size.

So everyone, please help me not to exceed bandwidth by avoiding clicking onto my photo links but to view them straight off my blog instead.

Since Photobucket says that bandwidth resets each month on the anniversary of the day a member originally registered, my bandwidth usage will be reset on the 19th. Hopefully by then, pictures would be displayed again. I would really cry if that doesn't happen as photos from 2007 till now would be affected.

Halloween 2011 - Terrorising guests at a private house party [Final Cut]

2011-11-11T11:11:00.013+08:00

Scheduled post on 11/11/11 at 11:11am.

Inspired by my Facebook status, Bei my very old friend of 16 years decided to throw a basement Halloween party at her newly renovated house on the actual day of Halloween.

She extended the invitation to the rest of my motley crew as she had always been awed by our yearly Halloween events and was looking forward to be acquainted with my Halloween gang.

Since it was a Monday and everyone came from work, we did our make up in Bei's bathroom.

Here's Gera and I smearing our faces with stage white foundation but before we blended, we decided we could transform from a human to a kitty cat first. Meow...

Note: I'm wearing FreshKon contact lens in Groovy Green which had the greyish effect I've always adore.

1st transformation as seen from the preview post a few days ago. I was trying to achieve a ghost-appearing-from-behind-the-bathroom-wall effect.

When my make up was more or less done, I racked my brains for a character to assume. With that, Gera suggested that I could still be mad Lady Heather from Saturday for she could not think of any other characters which suited my look then. Hence, I decided I would be the ghost of Lady Heather that night.

Gera helped to tease/backcomb my hair without spritzing on hairspray for she did not want to damage my hair. I love this untidy look so much!

I finished my make up before my friends and immediately got into the ghostly character of Lady Heather. I stopped talking completely. Sometimes laughing hysterically, I would slink myself from wall to wall and appear behind my friends through the mirror. Even when my friends talked to me, I would tilt my head and look right into their faces, simply staring at them like some ghost with transparent soul-less eyes.

Needless to say, they were all so annoyed by this ghost. Gera very much wanted to punch me for being so much into character. lol

With nothing better to do, I slid my way out of the bathroom to snap a photo with the lovely devil host, Bei. When she talked to me, I completely ignored her too and she was pretty amused by my antics.

After some rounds of introduction to new friends, my hair had completely lost its untidy volume and I had to go back to gera for a quick fix. This time she teased my hair and spritzed lots of hairspray while cautioning me not to look for her should my hair get stuck while washing that night.

How's this for adding more volume to the hair?

Soon, my eyes bled which signified my full transformation for the night. In case you're wondering, Lady Heather committed suicide by slashing her wrist. Could you see the slash?

A mixture of spooky and cute Halloween decor

Finally, all of us were ready to terrorise the guests.

Tiff's alter ego: Evil Black Swan
Gera's alter ego: Measle-ly/ Miserly
Evan's alter ego: Messenger of Death
Jo's alter ego: Ghost of Lady Heather

Aside: bimbotic moment... my untidy volumised hair lost its volume again despite the hairspray... Guess my hair is much too smooth and healthy. lol.

Of course, the lovely devil host wanted a shot with the whole motley crew.

Soon, we got hungry for fresh meat. Hence, we killed some of the guests and started eating them part by part.

We made a new friend and decided not to eat her up coz she's such a sweetie.

Erm yes... this was just one of Lady Heather's ghostly antics. Evil Black Swan hated it.

Jo and Tiff --> bff for 22 years...
Oops! I forgot we were into character. Ahem... Lady Heather and Evil Black Swan pitted each other in a staring contest.

I concede defeat. Check out Evil Black Swan's missing iris!

The beginnings of the Messenger of Death--
As a human, she was brutally murdered and chopped up. Vowing revenge, she sold her soul to the devil who transformed her into the Messenger of Death.

The Messenger of Death returned from the dead with a mauled left foot to remind her of her ghastly death.

Measle-ly loved colours! You would have known by the gaudy bright colours and those measles red dots on her.

Bei got a DJ from Lantern (a club located at The Fullerton Bay Hotel Singapore) to play some really cool Halloween dance tunes.

Leaving his disc to spin, he sneaked behind us for some photo moments. Even Austin Powers wanted a share in the photos.

More people joined in the photo.

Did you see the F1 driver up there? It was really hilarious coz we bumped into him outside Bei's gate and he came in a cab. So when he got out I quipped, "I assume we're going to the same party but where's your Ferrari?" He returned the jest and claimed it was under repairs. lol...

When humans and ghosts mixed...

Evil black Swan stole Devil Bei's pitchfork and started playing pool with it.

The Messenger of Death seemed to have met with many deaths.

Candid moments...

Wanna check out the crime scene of Measle-ly and Lady Heather?

Crime Scene Photo #1

Crime Scene Photo #2

Crime Scene Photo #3

Crime Scene Photo #4

Crime Scene Photo #5

[I was seriously thrilled at how spooky my eyes looked up there.]

The Messenger of Death Saved my head.

Groovy Baby! Austin Powers kept annoying Measle-ly that she gave him a piece of her mind... and her fist... and her fingers... and a severed foot.

Taking a break in the home theatre.

Come on everybody, let's join in!

Ok whoever who was behind the camera wanted some fun shots and gave some cue to which we would spontaneously interpret what actions to take.

[Hope the animated gif is displaying]

Whoever behind the camera was going trigger happy. We could practically do a stop motion animation with with some of these shots.

[Hope the animated gif is displaying]

The ghosts and ghouls decided to drop our scary image by doing the cutesy Asian 1,2,3 poses right up to 10.

[Hope the animated gif is displaying]

You could see that all the ghosts were quite ~~bimbotic and~~ familiar with the various poses. Our devil host was rendered clueless from 6 onwards.

4 of us by the end of the night with some make up slicking off.

We had a ball of a time at Bei's smashing party and we were glad to have made soooo many new friends from all walks of life.

On the cab, I decided to call home to let my parents-in-law know that I was coming back from a Halloween party. They since knew the drill of my friends and I dressing up but they did not witness our make up process. I felt this look could be eerie in the middle of the night (as compared to Lady Heather when she was a human). Hence, I decided to inform them beforehand.

Loosely translated from Mandarin, my conversation with my father-in-law went like this:

Jo: Papa, I'm on my way home in the cab in Halloween make up so please don't be freaked out by me later.

FIL: Ok, do you look really scary? I better get Mama to sleep upstairs. She has fallen asleep on the sofa downstairs and you know how she would always stir and wake up whenever the door opens. She would definitely be scared out of her wits by you.

When I got home, my FIL was staring at me from upstairs, waiting to see my look. Once I looked up, he exclaimed "Aiyo 吓死人" meaning I could scare someone to death.

My MIL was awoken and so the both of them started talking to me. She's short-sighted and could not really see my look from her position. My FIL teasingly asked me to go closer to her though she hurriedly brushed me away and talked to me with her eyes closed. After talking for about 5 minutes, my FIL said in Mandarin, "Hurry up go to your room and wash up. The more I look at you, the more you creep me out."

I thought that was really amusing.

I look more like Jo here already right? Say byebye to the ghost of Lady Heather.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

This post is chock-full with inane pictures which take up space that all my recent posts have been relegated to page 2 of the older posts. Remember to check them out:

Out of town again
Being proud of my hubby and his team

After receiving some of your feedback, I'm aware that all my photos are not showing here due to bandwidth being exceeded. I dunno what's the problem with Photobucket. Argh...

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Updated -- Message from Photobucket

Bandwidth is used when digital content is viewed from a link you posted on another website or sent in an email (e.g., MySpace, eBay, message boards, etc.). Bandwidth is a measure of the number of bytes passed over time via direct linking. It is calculated by adding up the size of each of your images or videos as they are sent from Photobucket. The “Monthly Bandwidth" number is the amount of bandwidth you have used within the last month. The month is determined by the day of the month you registered your account.

EXAMPLE:
You have various images of 25K each in size that are viewed by 100 users on your favorite message board in one day. You also have one video of 15000K that is viewed by 10 users in one day. 25K * 100 requests = 2500K (or 2.5 MB). 15000K * 10 requests = 150000K (or 1500 MB). When you add the two together, you have used 152.5 MB of bandwidth in one day.

Important! Do not confuse bandwidth with your album size.

So everyone, please help me not to exceed bandwidth by avoiding clicking onto my photo links but to view them straight off my blog instead.

Since Photobucket says that bandwidth resets each month on the anniversary of the day a member originally registered, my bandwidth usage will be reset on the 19th. Hopefully by then, pictures would be displayed again. I would really cry if that doesn't happen as photos from 2007 till now would be affected.

Out of town again

2011-11-11T02:07:00.001+08:00

I've been meaning to write about the Halloween's private house party within the past few days when Halloween is still considered fresh but time really wasn't at my side.

Further hindering my progress of churning out this post was the fact that some of the photos either took a long time or were not able to be uploaded onto Photobucket and I don't quite understand why.

I'm currently squeezing lots of last minute tasks to accomplish within these 2 days before I fly off to Phuket this Saturday with my oldest friend --one of my bestest bff ever-- for her birthday celebration. It was a rather impromptu decision and I only booked the tickets yesterday. We haven't even booked accommodation yet but thank God for latestay.com.

Some of you loyal readers who have been following me would know that Thailand (Bangkok) was intially on the agenda. After postponing the trip which was supposed to take place last week and monitoring the flood situation, my bff and I decided to switch destination and put Bangkok on hold for now.

One of the tasks on my agenda would be to churn out some scheduled posts but as usual, I'm always too ambitious in putting too many tasks on my list.

Well in any case, this could be my last post till I come back or continue watching this space in case I managed to do some scheduled posts.

I will miss all of you lovely friends and readers.

Being proud of my hubby and his team

2011-11-10T02:34:00.001+08:00

Dear hubby,

This is the longest time you've been away from home after our marriage but I feel so proud of you to be part of this mission.

If not for your consideration for others and "sacrifice" together with my understanding, we would have been reunited later today. It's perfectly fine to postpone our Europe trip. Everything happens for a reason. Let's hope this reason is good.

Love you,
Your darling always

PS: Comments from the past few posts replied! I realised an influx of newcomers and passers-by visiting my blog. Thank you for taking the time to leave me lovely comments. I will check out your blogs soon after my bout of tasks and errands are done.

Halloween 2011 - Terrorising guests at a private house party [Preview]

2011-11-06T01:13:00.003+08:00

Judging by the number of tasks undone, I don't think I can churn out Part 2 of Halloween over this weekend.

So here's a preview of my almost complete look on the actual day of Halloween when the eyes hadn't bled yet.

I hope I didn't scare anyone appearing this big on your screen. Don't worry, I won't crawl out of your screen like Sadako.

Sweet dreams, humans!

Halloween 2011 - A last minute spontaneous affair

2011-11-03T05:25:00.005+08:00

In Singapore, Halloween is commonly celebrated in clubs and pubs, not on the actual day but on the Saturday closest to 31 October. Unlike in the West where children go trick or treating, Halloween in Singapore is pretty much a grown-up event at clubs, pubs or private house parties. The children here may dress up but they don't go trick or treating around the neighbourhood.

This year was pretty much a last minute affair as the usual gang I often Halloween-ed with all had no ideas on what themed dress-up we were going to do. In the end, we went on being clueless and slowly built up a character in progression to our make up process.

Evan came over to my place to make up. To us, the fun in Halloween starts right from the make up process.

Here's us before -- already in our halloween dress with our daily make up look.

Sidetrack a little...

I'm so glad that this assymetrical neckline dress finally saw the light and saw its use after being hidden in my wardrobe for so long. Yes, the neckline is asymmetrical on purpose. It's not a defect but somehow after buying, I felt that it looked too much like a defect and decided not to wear it out then. I'm always glad for Halloween coz nobody would question your dressing.

Molly in transformation

Lady Heather in transformation

Have I already told you? I've got a ghost in my bathroom.

Lady Heather's not so complete look. We still had to have dinner first before applying our lipsticks.

Split personality -- Mad Lady Heather taking over Sane Jo (you can read it as Saint Jo... lol)

Drinking blood is good for the complexion. Just ask Countess Elizabeth Báthory.

Note: Lady Heather actually mutilated her lips. It was supposed to be those kinda wound that split the right lip apart but I guess the wound wasn't really visible so you could take it as she was drinking blood with some flowing down on the right.

Molly's complete look

Mad Lady Heather's full transformation

Lady Heather and Molly are ready for the kill.

Clarke Quay was extremely crowded. The maddening crowd made it feel as if it was New Year's Day countdown. That was how packed it was.

We finally met up with the rest of the motley crew which comprised of my usual gang and some new friends.

The boys -- Catman from Kiss, Prophecy of Death, Edward Scissorhands, Jester/Joker whatever.

Team Black minus 1

Full force Team Black

Team Singapore. I meant Team Red and White. Red and white reminds me of our national colours.

Time to party in Attica.

We had a couple of failed group shots coz the place was too dark and smokey.

Spotted this on lifestyleasia.com... Hmm they should do some editing to the photo. It looks so washed out.

I think we are really getting too old to party. The young punks nowadays have got no clubbing ethics at all. The evil Lady Heather had a whale of a time, pushing, shoving, stepping and kicking people. She even gave a good dressing down to someone who infiltrated her space.

Some of us got fed up and headed outside for a breather where we had a lot of fun communicating with so many different characters as they walked past us.

A dishevelled Gandalf walked by and Edward Scissorhand hollered, "Yo Gandalf! You seriously need a haircut." Gandalf responded by attempting to cast Edward away with his staff. lol

It is really funny how Halloween could provide such great ambiance to strike up conversations with strangers. We just shouted out and waved to people who would respond to us in their characters. It was such fun. We often get stopped by people coz many were thronging to get a picture with our Edward Scissorhands.

The frequency of being stopped for Edward was so high that we decided to act as his agents and told everyone that each photo cost $10. We also contemplated placing a basket in front of him so people could throw their money in.

Everyone thought we were funny; we were actually serious.

People also liked to take photos with Jester though Edward Scissorhands beat him hands down.

It's a wonder how so many people could just worm their way into our photos whenever we take group shots. The guy in green is tagged on FB as a "chao bugger". Not me, not me. Jo is not a meanie.

Finally the girls had their individual photo taking chance with the boys without anyone bugging us.

We ended the night with roti prata for supper at a 24-hour joint far away from town area. The patrons there found us entertaining even though our 2 "hottest" mascots for the night, Edward and Jester, were already out of costume.

By the end of the day, Jo was fighting hard to emerge centrestage once more.

So long Lady Heather!

This is Part 1 of Halloween 2011. Look out for Part 2 where we terrorised guests at a private house party thrown by my old friend on the actual day itself. It might take some time though as I'm busy with some tasks on hand.

Madness has taken its toll. Please have exact change.

2011-10-29T00:34:00.003+08:00

insanity in sanity --
part of being sane is to be insane

abnormality in normality --
in order to be normal is to become abnormal

Shakespeare says:
There's method in his madness.

She says:
Her madness is inexplicable.

Darkness has consumed. Evil has risen. She has vanished.

Little Little Surprises from Little Little Gifts

2011-10-27T13:00:00.005+08:00

I really love receiving parcels in the mail!

When I came back from Hong Kong, I saw a huge parcel sitting by the side of my bed. I knew at once that my parcel from Little Little Gifts had arrived.

When I first knew of this website, I spent almost two hours clicking around the site and marvelling at the many cute stuff there.

Little Little Gifts is company based in Singapore. With their cute tag line of little little gifts, big big thoughts, they believe that no gift is too small and that it is indeed the big thoughts that count. In the act of gifting and paying it forward, Little Little Gifts aims to spread the joy locally and to other parts of the world. Yay for my international blogger friends!

Everything was bubble wrapped with newspaper cushioning the spaces in between.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the items have been gift wrapped.

Upon checking out at their site, gift wrapping arrangement could be arranged in the special request field. I did not opt for the gift wrapping service; hence, imagine my pleasant surprise when I saw the items being wrapped. I'm pretty impressed with their good service.

Wanna see what I got from them?

~* Mini Fridge Pen Stand *~

Here's unveiling a mini fridge pen stand. It's actually a stationery holder. If I were still at the Barbie playing age, I would use this as Barbie's fridge.

Various designs like Cola, Coke Zero, Pepsi etc are available. I was like a kid in a candy store deciding on which design to choose. In the end, I chose this cute Cola fridge.

Like a little girl (or should I say a bimbotic lady), I was rather thrilled that the vegetable crisper compartment could be pulled out.

I did not snap a picture of the top part of the fridge. It could act as a coin bank when the cover is closed with the coin slot at the top or as a pen holder when the cover is slid to the back. Click here to see the pictures.

~* Merci! La Vie! Key Ring *~

Next was the Merci! La Vie! Key Ring. I was particularly drawn to the antique-looking key that came along with it. My current feng shui key ring had lost its "charm" and it's time for me to change a new key chain.

I love the vintage feel of this key ring. Oh yes, it is stated that the strap is made of natural cow hide leather. I could smell the leather as soon as I opened the box.

They have other designs available too but I'm only drawn to the antique key design.

~* Sunny-Side-Up Frying Pan Clock *~

Next on the list is this quirky sunny-side-up frying pan clock. I opted for the red one coz I've been conditioned to think that frying pans are red. lol...

I could not snap a good picture of the frying pan so here's one which I ripped off little little gifts website.

It is available in many other colours and they're having a sale now. Great to give to that chef friend of yours! I'm giving this to my jovial uncle who happens to be a really great cook. It will match the wall in his dining room very well.

~* Touch Stylus Pencil *~

I also got this old-school-looking touch stylus pencil which I intend to give to either of my sisters as I'm an iDiot with no iPhone or iPad.

Wait, I think I would keep it for myself and use it on my hubby's iPad when he's back from the seas or probably when we decided not to be iDiots anymore and get iPhone 4s or something.

The pencil mimics the natural conductive qualities of the human finger using a special electro conductive rubber which works with both capacitive and resistive screens.

Did you know? I have a little pet peeve. I simply cannot stand products with bad English on them. I was reading the back of the packaging for the stylus pencil, trying to pick up all the bad English to laugh at but I found none. This sort of gave me a good impression of the product even though I haven't tried it yet.

Don't laugh at me, don't you do that too? You don't? Sigh... I'm gonna sit in the corner and eat some worms now.

~* Chi Cat Handphone Strap *~

I have a soft spot for furry animals especially cats and I instantly fell in love with this lovable sad-looking Chi cat handphone strap which was used as this product's main picture.

It reminds me of my late Simba looking at us with sad eyes when we did not give her food as we thought she was too fat and should cut down on food.

There were so many different expressions of Chi cat which nudged at my soft spot that I could not quite decide which to choose.

In the end, I chose B, C, E and G.

My 4 cuties came wrapped like this.

Presenting my 4 cuties.

Happy Chi, Depressed Chi, Angry Chi and Sad Chi which I shall call Planking Chi.

My only problem now is that I can't decide which Chi cat to keep for myself and which to give my sisters.

I'm really pleased with all my items and the whole shopping experience at Little Little Gifts was truly a pleasant and fuss-free one. Queries which I posted on their Facebook page was promptly answered within the same day.

Quality items at affordable prices with top-notch service all at one-stop, I'm very sure I would be a return customer at Little Little Gifts.

Disclaimer: All pictures are taken by me except for those with Little Little Gifts watermark. Thank you Little Little Gifts for allowing me to use your pictures.

Smashed

2011-10-26T18:05:00.005+08:00

Thank you all who asked after Charmaine's family and me. The days flew by really quickly while we grieved upon Charmaine's passing and prepared for her ~~wake~~ Celebration of Life party right after I touched down in Singapore from a delayed flight from Hong Kong.

It had been quite a tiring four days.

It didn't help that the day after Charmaine's party, I had to send the hubby's car to the workshop for a spoilt radiator and smashed back windscreen. Both my brothers-in-law drove the car with smoke coming out from the engine but I've not experienced that during the same period of time we drove. I wonder if I was lucky or what.

As for the smashed windscreen, my father-in-law (FIL) suspected sabotage due to the nature of the crack. We usually kept to our own area outside the house but there was this driver which particularly loved parking somewhere near our lot. Yet, it did not make sense as my FIL's car was parked directly behind my hubby's car. No way someone would sabotage our old car and leave my FIL's new car alone.

My FIL said it looked like somebody used an ax to slash the glass rather than it being hit by some fallen rock or debris. I too had my suspicion on sabotage, except that it could also have been caused by some kids playing boomerang when I parked at my parents' place the previous day. But, Singaporean kids play frisbee, not boomerang right?

The bottom edge of the glass was splitting like nobody's business. Anymore impact and the whole windscreen might just collapse.

The flap as seen from the inside.

After leaving the car at the workshop, I spent some time at the police station and with that almost the whole day was gone. I kept requesting for the police to check the tape from the void deck camera of the block facing the field to see if any kid threw anything but they maintained that the camera could not capture anything as far as the field.

I suspect the windscreen was probably already cracked when I parked at my parents' place the previous night. However, I was in such a daze at night after Charmaine's cremation that I got into the car and wondered why there was so much condensation or raindrops on the glass. I even calmly switched on the demister in the hope of clearing these condensation or raindrops.

From the photo below, do you see what I mean by condensation or raindrops? I could not even see the slash from the rear view mirror.

So how did I drive home with such a view? It was late with not many cars and I could still make out the vehicles behind from their headlights. This explains why I only discovered the smashed windscreen the following morning.

Oh well, the car is finally back but I felt quite bad as my FIL had advised me not to drive the car with the spoilt radiator. I thought nothing could go wrong with the engine during the short drive from my place to my parents' place. The smashed windscreen certainly taught me a lesson though I wished I could teach the rascal(s) who did this to my hubby's car a lesson too.

The many miracles behind Charmaine’s passing

2011-10-24T22:42:00.007+08:00

On Sunday evening, clad in Charmaine's favourite colours of yellow, pink and green, we set off balloons of the same colours flying up into the sky. We sent Charmaine off with smiles amidst tears. We told her to fly... like a fairy.

She had always wanted to be one.

Somehow, the balloons all flew towards the sun and a friend told us it was a sign from Charmaine to tell us that she is fine. We were in tears but we felt a sense of peace knowing that Charmaine is in a better place now.

The logical side of me actually wondered about why balloons float towards the sun but a search on Google warrants no results. I must say that the spiritual side of me is telling me that it’s really a sign and that not everything could be explained by science.

Charmaine’s miraculous smile

For people I know who visited Charmaine at her wake or rather Celebration of Life party as what Cyn mommy termed it, I made it a point to tell them the story behind Charmaine’s phenomenon smile when she passed on. The New Paper (Saturday, 22 October 2011) did not have a report on her smile. Only the Chinese newspaper Shin Min Daily News ( 新明日报) on the same day had a little section on it but since they wrote Cynthia’s Chinese name wrongly in that little section, some people read that portion with some doubt and actually asked me if the reporter was exaggerating.

Ever since Charmaine was brought home from the ICU to say goodbye (Monday, 3 October 2011), new tumours had been popping up everywhere on her little body. The cancer was spreading at an alarming rate but yet, she still fought on in immense pain. By then, she was rendered almost immobile. Her body was degenerating by the days but still, she continued her battle in spirits.

The last tumour popped up on Thursday (20 October 2011) in Charmaine’s mouth on the inside of her cheek. It was raw and bleeding nonstop till her whole mouth was full of blood. With her little lung failing and her mouth full of blood, she could not even close her mouth.

On this very same day, Cyn mommy for the first time was begging the heavens to take Charmaine away for she did not want her to suffer anymore. She hoped for Charmaine to be free and be the happy girl she had always been.

As if knowing that cyn mommy was finally ready for her to go and only upon the arrival of her beloved gong gong, po po, ku ku and godma, Charmaine slowly left us with cyn mommy hugging her and sobbing. All this while, Jase kor kor was lying face down on the bed, holding onto Charmaine and wailing for her to come back. He slowly cried himself to sleep while still holding onto Charmaine.

Much to my sorrow, Charmaine’s mouth was still opened when she passed on. To put it very graphically, her mouth was like a little O-shape. I wetted some gauze while cyn mommy used them to clean the blood inside her mouth. Cyn continued hugging her and talking to her in a soothing voice. Well knowing that she’s gone, some of us family and friends alike continued stroking and talking to her too, saying lots of positive words and at times even joking amidst tears.

About an hour later, a good friend of ours told us that Charmaine seemed to be smiling. True enough, she was indeed smiling! Her mouth seemed to have relaxed and the little O-shape actually transformed into her usual toothy grin while her lips slowly pursed into a smile! It was AMAZING to have actually witnessed such a phenomenon with my own eyes!

Could this be explained by science? I guess so but I prefer to think of her smile in the abstract way.

I really have no idea how it happened but I must say that I’ve actually witnessed many miracles in Charmaine’s short life story.

The last miracle

Today, Cyn mommy went to collect Charmaine’s ashes and to her utter delight, three relics were found in Charmaine’s ashes! Being a Christian, the first time I ever heard about relics in ashes was when my hubby’s paternal grandma passed away. She was such a good person and if I remember correctly, she had a few relics! According to Chinese Buddhism, saints or very highly practiced monks may have them. Special people or people with very good karma (basically a very good heart) may have them too. For Charmaine to have 3 in her little body is truly amazing.

Charmaine is really a special girl and I’m not bragging about it just because I'm her Godma. I could go on about Charmaine’s legacy that she has left behind and how Charmaine is such a courageous, loving and thoughtful little girl even right up to her final moments but I would probably leave that for another day.

Some digital articles on Charmaine's passing

The New Paper online version:

No more pain as little fighter dies with a smile

Don't mourn her death, celebrate little Charmaine's life

I'll look at photo when I miss her

Full story available only for the print version.

Charmaine is flying freely now

2011-10-21T04:57:00.003+08:00

My god daughter Charmaine has left us with a smile on her face. She is in a pain-free place where she could walk, run and jump around and do all the things she wants to do. We may have lost her but she lives in our hearts.

Charmaine,
Thank you for waiting for Godma to come back to Singapore before saying your last goodbye. You are ever so considerate to the people around you.

I know you're having lots of fun in the world you are in right now. I know you are watching us from above with your toothy grin and cheeky smile. Are there lots of rainbows there? Is there a Sentosa there? Is there your favourite Universal Studios with roller coasters there too? Will you tell me the answer in my dreams later? Will you give me some sign to tell me whenever you are around?

We know that you have finally found peace and happiness after this long and hard battle. You know what? You have already won the "monster" a long time ago by showing "monster" how tough you are.

You are our little warrior.

You are our champion.

You are our feisty little princess.

Miss You Simba!

2011-10-15T19:18:00.002+08:00

Today, 15 October 2011, is the 4th year death anniversary of my beloved cat Simba. How I miss that cutie.

Click on the picture to read my tribute to her written in 2008.

Yes, she has one black paw and one white paw. Even the paw pads too, one side is black and the other side soft pink.

I will be away to Hong Kong from Sunday early morning (16th Oct) till Thursday evening(20th Oct).

Pardon the lack of visits and replies in the meantime.

I may or may not be doing scheduled posts. It depends on how much work I can complete within these few hours and how quickly I could pack my luggage. Some photos are already done but it takes some time to craft the posts out.

To the citizens of the United States of America from Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II:

2011-10-14T12:28:00.003+08:00

To the citizens of the United States of America from Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II:

In light of your immediate failure to financially manage yourselves and also in recent years your tendency to elect incompetent Presidents of the USA and therefore not able to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. (You should look up 'revocation' in the Oxford English Dictionary.)

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas , which she does not fancy).

Your new Prime Minister, David Cameron, will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections.

Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated sometime next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'colour,' 'favour,' 'labour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters, and the suffix '-ize' will be replaced by the suffix '-ise.'Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up 'vocabulary'). (I love that one)

Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as ''like' and 'you know' is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as U.S. English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take into account the reinstated letter 'u'' and the elimination of '-ize.' ' (I love that one too)

3. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.

4. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not quite ready to be independent. Guns should only be used for shooting grouse. If you can't sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist, then you're not ready to shoot grouse.

5. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. Although a permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

6. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left side with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

7. The former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline) of roughly $10/US gallon. Get used to it.)

8.You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.

9. The cold, tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. New Zealand beer is also acceptable, as New Zealand is pound for pound the greatest sporting nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer. They are also part of the British Commonwealth - see what it did for them. American brands will be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.

10. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie Macdowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.

11. You will cease playing American football. There are only two kinds of proper football; one you call soccer, and rugby (dominated by the New Zealanders). Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies).

12. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America . Since only 2.1% of you are aware there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the Australians (World dominators) first to take the sting out of their deliveries.

13. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.

14. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).

15. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 p.m. with proper cups, with saucers, and never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; plus strawberries (with cream) when in season.

God Save the Queen!

I got this off one of the Facebook shares which has been circulating wildly around the world and getting lots of thumbs up. I hope I don't lose my US blogger friends after this post. I don't think I will though, coz all my US blogger friends are such magnanimous people... right? Erm... right?

Being born and bred in a British colony, I really nodded in agreement at so many of the points brought up. I've got native American friends who don't get some of their own culture too and could laugh at themselves and I know my US blogger friends will let loose and take this lightly too.

US and non US bloggers alike, shout out your thoughts to me in the comments section. I would love to hear what you have to say.

The one with the clothes, dogs & a simple 4-course dinner

2011-10-13T06:02:00.002+08:00

Edited to add:

Louis and Emmie are NOT MY dogs. They are my gal pal's dogs. I felt the compelling need to add this line in after reading all the comments.

One Sunday, a group of us met up at East Coast Park for a really late lunch. I forgot the name of the place but it served pretty awesome beach bar food.

Regina's friend Jun came along with her bf and it turned out that kh and her knew each other from school. I managed to get along quite well with Jun and am always happy to be acquainted with new people.

Even though my dear hubby kh and I had already taken our lunch, he being a regular dude could not help ordering some "finger food" other than drinks. He explained that it was for all to share but I knew that he just wanted to much on something.

He ordered nachos and it came topped with lip-smacking cheese with spicy salsa beef dip. It was so heavenly that I could not scold him for binging.

After that, we proceeded to our main agenda for the day -- to help Karen to clear her clothes.

She had got so many huge recyclable bags full of clothes (both new and gently worn) that she was letting go. Hence we as all good gal pals are, were tasked with the mission of trying to help clear some space in her house while our significant others shook their heads and played big boys' games.

Louis and Emmie love visitors as they would be spoilt by the many people showering attention on them.

Louis the intelligent Spaniel

Emmie the loving "slutty" Pomeranian

Before you start lambasting me for being a bitch and calling a bitch a slut, do note that this is a term of endearment which Karen also uses. Emmie really loves to be petted and would not hesitate to flip over for us to stroke her belly.

They really love to be petted and have their tummies rubbed and would fight to squirm their way near us.

Actually it was more of Emmie doing the squirming and manja-ing while Louis would coolly let her be if she squirmed to take his space.

Whenever Louis got affection from one of us, Emmie had to do the same.

She would nestle herself at the other side. Really cute!

Besides playing with dogs, we also had one more "toy" to amuse ourselves with -- HAMSTERS!

The hamsters you see here are currently in my house and they are the fattest little dwarfs I've ever seen. Not fattened by me though. Long story as to why they are in my house.

Louis and Emmie are such sweet creatures and they would not hurt the hamsters. We learnt that we could even let the hamsters run all over them.

We were hesitant to try such dangerous stunt though so the most dangerous stunt that kh tried was this.

Seeing that we would stay at her place till late, Karen decided to start whipping up what she deemed "a simple fare" for us.

It was anything but simple! It was a 4-course affair consisting of salad for starters, curry baked chicken wings for sides, olive chicken pasta for mains and French styled flourless dark chocolate cake for dessert.

She is definitely the hostess with the most-est. I could never ever be a hostess like this.

It was great that we had late lunch coz by the time we girls picked out the clothes we wanted, the boys finished playing their games and Karen finished cooking, it was 10pm. It was actually really a dinner cum supper.

I love desserts that aren't too sweet and this dark chocolate cake definitely sat in well with my taste buds when served with whipped cream.

I would end this post with a comment made by kh:
"Paiseh leh. Come here let my wife take free clothes, play free games and eat free food."
-_-|||

For my international blogger friends, "paiseh" is a term in Hokkien to signify that we are embarrassed.

Revamping My Blogger Template

2011-10-12T15:17:00.003+08:00

I'm getting a little frustrated trying to widen the the main body of my blog template.

There's too much wasted black wooden panel space that could be utilised well.

[click to enlarge]

I'm thinking of widening the white main body like this:

[click to enlarge]

I'm able to widen it but the following problem would occur:

[click to enlarge]

The flower motif header is fixed at that width and whether widening it or increasing it in proportion would result in the problems mentioned in the image above.

Furthermore, the pink bar with tabs has to fit the main body's width too.

SOLVED!
~~Also, I'm trying to increase the distance between each widget on the sidebar.~~

[click to enlarge]

I find that everything at the side looks kinda squeezed and not very pleasing to the eye. It is not about including too many widgets at my side bar as I've seen so many blogs with spacious and clean sidebar even though they've got many widgets there.

If any of you know how to solve these, kindly leave me a comment. I would really appreciate your help.

On a separate note, did anyone see the Google animation on its home page? I like it when Google does such stuff. No, you won't hear such cute music on google.com. The music and information in the video was added by the person who uploaded the video.

Stuffing Ourselves with Garlic to Ward Off Victoria

2011-10-11T16:19:00.002+08:00

In case you don't know, Victoria is the name of one of the evil vampires in Twilight. And no I'm not a twilighter, I just happened to catch part of the movie on Warner TV on cable.

Anyway, does anyone know the name given to fans of Twilight? I've been pondering about this for a while and a search on Google didn't provide me with the latest answer.

Before I trail off topic, I've to clarify that this post is not about Twilight but about GARLICS.

*hears the sigh of die-hard Twilighters and the clicking of the x button at the top right hand corner*

Dear evan had got some discount vouchers for Mad for Garlic and since reviews on that place were favourable, we decided to stuff ourselves and stink our breath with garlic dishes to ward off Victoria that evening.

"Originated in Korea in 2001, Mad For Garlic is one of Korea’s most popular restaurant chains known for its unique and innovative menu with garlic-specialized Italian cuisine served in an atmosphere of medieval European rustic tavern."

We met up with her fiance at the restaurant itself after we were done with camera shopping. (Yes! She got the Canon S95 too, after playing around with mine and realising what a good point and shoot it is.)

The decor is reminiscent of a rustic European tavern.

For main dish, there were pizzas...

and then there were pastas.

For appetizers, we had Dracula Killer which is a dish of soft bread served with garlic cooked in olive oil and anchovies. It was a rather unique dish. I would have loved it better if the garlic was more salty and not so bitter. I've got a soft spot for the soft bread. I'm tired of hurting my very weak teeth trying to gnaw off hard bread at most eateries.

For mains, we had the Calzone Pizza...

...served with garlic dip. I love the dip!

We also had the Garlic Snowing Pizza topped with shrimps and pineapple dice which was one of the recommended dishes.

The snowing pizza was good except for the fact that after eating a few slices, we hoped that the pieces of garlic were chunks of juicy tangy pineapple instead. All the bitter garlic after taste with not much salt was beginning to be a little too overpowering for our tastebuds.

The final mains was Lobster Pasta topped with fish roe.

All the dishes were actually not bad if we were to savour them individually but because they weren't really too salty, the cooked bitter garlic aftertaste was a little overpowering. I guess we ordered too much but still we finished up everything, except some cloves of garlic.

Enough of mouth-watering food shots. Now for some people shots coz we're delicious too ok?

I just trimmed and neaten my hair as you could see how bad my bangs looked in the previous post though it was a little too layered for my liking.

I always marvel at how alike they look! 夫妻相!

Being inspired by Nelah, I shall end this post with an acid jazz tune.

An Earth Hour Outing That Wasn't

2011-10-11T00:30:00.004+08:00

Back to updating backdated entries yet again.

On the 26th of March, the night of Earth Hour, tiff, gera and I had wanted to meet for dinner at some eateries that participated in the lights out. Alas, we missed the hour due to everyone's lateness.

If I remember correctly I think gera and I had work and had to go home to change out from work clothes since we were in very warm attire that would not fit the humid weather and a long night out. Our contingency plan was to have steamboat at 国府珍锅 (Guo Fu Steamboat) which is located at China Square Central.

It was the first time I was there but tiff and gera had been there a few times and nodded in agreement that it is a humble place that offers comfort soupy food.

I like the herbal soup base and the beef slice combo that I chose. We each chose different kind of meat so that we could grab some slices from one another. The little side dishes were quite good too.

As I'm typing this, I feel like eating soupy steamboat!

A tacky feature about this place was/is the Santa Claus at the entrance. Pardon the grainy feel of the photo. I've to up the exposure to show all of you the Santa by the entrance.

It was already March at that time! The reason why I put a choice of "was" and "is" in the sentence above is due to the fact that we returned to that place again in June and the Santa Claus was still there so I'm not sure if it is there still as you know, it's October now and very close to Christmas.

Who needs to watch comedy for laughs when in real life, you have crazy friends like gera and tiff to make me laugh? I was just gonna capture the beautiful night scene of Boat Quay when gera pretended to dive and tiffy followed suit.

That was the first night I was testing out the various functions of my canon S95. I was still a noob then and had a hard time trying to find the right mode to fit the dim lighting. In the end, I've to adjust the ISO on the auto mode and the night shots look grainy as usual.

You know how many girls and ladies have this very useful talent of taking self shots?

Yeah, we had to undergo many trials and errors on our own cameras before we got to the level of taking perfect self shots such that everyone's in the frame. It's the same for this new camera. We took quite a few shots to get us all into the frame.

I think this is the best?

Next, we wanted to go shopping but all major shopping centres were closed by the time it was 12 midnight so where do we head to but MUSTAFA where we met up with zanne, jq and his friend!

I love that place! Despite catering mostly to the Indian residents, lots of locals, expatriates and tourists alike love the shopping experience there. In Mustafa, you won't have an inkling how late the night is as at 2am everyone seemed to be shopping as though it was only 9pm.

I bought 2 very classic DVDs there at only $6.90 each. One was War and Peace with cast like Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda and Mel Ferrer. The other was The Last Time I Saw Paris with Elizabeth Taylor and Van Johnson. I'm not too sure about the quality as I haven't watched them yet.

At 3am, the boys were hungry so we headed to Scissor-Cut Curry Rice for supper. What a mouthful of a name!

While the boy ate, the girls not only pinched food from them but also amused ourselves silly with this FatBooth iPhone application.

My fat looks transformation is quite credible eh?

Tiff and gera's faces look a little outta shape.

Zanne too and jq too. I guess it's the angle.

All of us laughed at jq's friend coz his fat transformation looked genuinely credible, like if we did not know him and know his thin self, we would really believe that his fat self exists. I'm not too sure if I'm making myself clear here.

At 5am, we decided to call it a day and headed back home with eyes wide opened.

I move back to my maiden home that time with only 6 sets of work clothes and outing clothes combined thinking that I was only going to stay for a week. I stayed for a month till the hubby came home from overseas and so I've to raid my sister's wardrobe for casual clothes.It's really funny coz I raided her wardrobe to find MY clothes inside so here's what I wore that night.

♥ Alano plaid shirt
♥ Alano wool shorts
♥ vintagey-looking crossbody sling bag from Far East Plaza.

How's that for looking retro and village-like to fit into the theme of no-lights-that-night outing?

The shoes on the rack and the shoe boxes do not belong to me. My mother has conveniently converted part of my room to her shoe walk-in closet. How nice would it be if I had a daughter moving out so that I could convert her room into my walk-in closet too!

Nails, Lace, Satins & Bows

2011-10-07T14:10:00.001+08:00

Remember my post about Clara's farewell?

Yay for Melbourne dwellers coz Clara H Fabulous Nails is now opened in Melbourne officially!

For yet more information and gallery of her works, go to clarahnails.com now!

~~~

Another dear friend of mine, Regina, was given the opportunity to design her dream dress as part of the ClubCouture ambassadorship program. If you like what you see and have a Facebook account, click here to vote for her by liking the photo.

A total of 5 designs have been submitted by the respective ClubCouture ambassadors and the top 2 designs will eventually be manufactured by ClubCouture! One lucky voter per dress will also win the dress they voted for. I personally love the combination of pink and black as well as satin and lace so this is a definite choice for me. Voting ends on 17 October.

For those who remember me being an ambassador for ClubCouture as well, I need to announce that I'm no longer an ambassador due to some personal issues. Though it was only for a short period of time, it has been a great pleasure working with the lovely team at ClubCouture.

I did draw out some sketches of my dress too and I may or may not be sharing them on my blog coz you know I'm no fashion designer and I can't capture texture very well. I'm not so sure if my sketches would be laughed at. I'll see how it goes.

Gathering for a buffet spread

2011-10-07T04:14:00.003+08:00

Back to updating backdated entries!

Looking at my March 2011 folder, I realised that I've got only a few albums and I cannot remember lots of events that happened then. This is what happens when my camera died totally and it also goes to show how reliant I am on a camera in capturing the moments in images and for documenting these memories in words.

Some time in March this year, a bunch of colleagues from the same zone gathered for a buffet lunch at Merchant Court Ellenborough Market Cafe on our common off day.

That was the first time I made an appearance when it came to such gatherings of zones. In the past, my off days were always spent giving 2 to 3 sessions of tuition. I had to make an exception this time as it was a gathering cum farewell for one of my colleague whom I had great working relationship at the branch.

The following photos are taken from my tagged photos on Facebook.

It was a pretty huge turn out.

While updating this post, I realised that for one of the rare occasions, I do not have photos of the food! All the photos are in viv's camera and I did not even get them from her till now.

I've been to Ellenborough Market Cafe twice before this and you can see more of the food spread here and here.

Here's what I wore:
♥ Tokyo Fashion double layer flutter sleeves dress

I'm sure you're wise enough to know that the model above isn't me.

Accessories:
♥ Green Petals bird and flower necklace
♥ DMK nude chunky heels/ clogs

As you can see from the outfit photo above:

1. I seriously don't look as good as the model in that dress.

2. The dress looks a tad sheer and lightweight.
I've to wear a pair of shorts underneath just in case a gust of wind blew.

3. I've gotten my Canon S95 to replace Fujifilm Loyal Pink Bimbo.
I felt so handicapped without a camera that I just had to head down to buy a camera after the buffet.

4. If you're observant enough, you would also see that the background of my mirror outfit shots look different.
I moved back to my maiden home when the hubby was overseas at that time and that's my bedroom with the many bottles of Absolute Vodka (not mine ok?) lining the headboard.

Since you've seen a little of my bedroom from the mirror, I'll let you in on one more view of my room -- the ceiling.

The collection of vodka which signifies someone of legal age to drink is a stark contrast to the ceiling of my room which seems to hint at a child's room.

Glow-in-the-dark stars and planets dusted the path from the door to the the light in what I imagined as the "blackhole".

I put these childish stuff up when I was still in school and even though I've outgrown them, I would not want to waste time and effort climbing up and down the ladder taking them down. Maybe my future kids would love to visit my parents' place coz of these glow-in-the-dark stars.

I'm a little too used to updating events by the month on my blog and since I've switched to updating events as each individual event for 2011, I find myself writing about so many random stuff that trails off topic.

Steve Jobs' words remain even after he has passed on

2011-10-06T14:11:00.001+08:00

Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

I've watched this and read the transcripts before and I'm sure many of you have too. I always tell people I'm an i-Diot coz I don't own any i-stuff except for the very under-utilized 2nd hand i-Pod that my sister gave me but I totally live by many of his words which I'm very sure my good friends and some of you who have been reading me would know.

The video is 15 minutes but it's well worth 15 minutes of your life to watch this video. If you want to save 15 minutes, you could watch this video with subtitles while brushing your teeth, slapping on your skincare, eating in front of your screen as what I did each time I watched this or wtf, most of you could just watch this off your i-Phone or i-Pad coz you're not an i-Diot like me.

Charlene's Wedding Banquet

2011-10-05T13:26:00.013+08:00

This draft was almost completed on Saturday and I'd initially wanted to post this up over the weekend after I was done with "stealing" some the photos from Charlene's Facebook account. Alas, I was caught up with some stuff the past few days and also with Charmaine's condition. So I'm back to posting photo-story updates of my life for now.

For those of you who found your way here searching for "Charmaine's Godma's blog" after the latest post on ourfeistyprincess, hello to all of you. (I've got a tracker k? So I know which search words you used on Google to find me.) I would like a small little request from all of you. Leave me a comment only if you have positive words for Charmaine and family, if not I would really appreciate if you read me silently. Also, please do not spread my personal blog link on forums and websites. Thank you very much. =)

~~~

Four months after her solemnization, my dear friend Charlene held her wedding dinner banquet at Grand Shanghai which was a rather charming place.

What Charlene did not know was that Cyn mommy, Jase and Charmaine would be popping by for a short while to give her a surprise.

With Charmaine's condition, Cyn mommy had to make sure that they avoided crowded places unless absolutely necessary. Hence, Charlene had the impression that she would not be seeing the trio at her wedding.

We sprang a surprise at the hotel suite where Charlene was doing her make up. Boy was she surprised!

Josh was trying to get Jase to overcome his shyness. The silly boy was overwhelmed by too many relatives in the suite.

It was also a surprise that coincidentally, one of my childhood gal friend, Gera, was there as the 2nd make up artist. Charlene related to me how she recognised Gera from photos on my blog and asked her if she was my friend! I thought that was really funny.

Since Jase was being so "shy", the girls decided to take a snapshot without him.

Soon it was time for the dinner. Cyn and the kids had to go but Charlene insisted they stay to at least have a bit of food. I had to change seats in order to be at the same table with Cyn and the kids. Since they would not be able to stay for long, the plan was to switch back to my original table after cyn and the kids left.

The next collage shows the bride and groom giving their speech and popping the champagne. Charlene removed the long train, revealing a short dress as well as her endless legs during the champagne popping.

A bevy of lovely ladies. Ha!

The lady on the left whom I shall leave her initials as C.K is such a great lady! We first knew of her as a loyal reader and supporter of ourfeistyprincess (my god daughter's blog). It was only during the months prior to the wedding preparation that Charlene and C.K found out that they are distant relatives. It was all so coincidental when the family met up before the wedding and traced back how they are actually related. Yet another coincidence!

Feisty princess Charmaine!

I love these shots! They are a little grainy though as no flash was used and I've to adjust the brightness.

After the trio left, I switched to where I was supposed to sit originally. That was one of the rare wedding dinner where I did not have a clique of friends to sit with. In addition to the fact that the hubby was overseas at that time, I felt really lost.

Charlene had specially arranged for me to sit next to her colleague whom I knew and it was another coincidence that on the other side of my seat was the brother of an ex colleague of mine. He confirmed if I was who he thought I was (he recognised me from photos and stories) and we started chatting too though we have never met before this. So instead of being alien to the rest of the guests after the trio left, I had two friends to chat with on the left and on the right. The world is really small, or is it just Singapore?

At last, I found a privileged chance to take a picture with the busy bride.

Outfit of the day:
I wore a vintage dress from DustBunny Vintage.

My pink bimbotic Fujifilm officially quit on me that day. It could not even be switched on when I whipped it out to take photos during the dinner. All the photos you see in this post were taken using cyn's camera and I got some taken by Charlene's professional photographer off her facebook album. As for the photos of my dress above. I took it with the camera charger plugged in. That's the only time the camera could function.

Loving the coincidence in life,
Jo

Saying goodbye?

2011-10-04T09:06:00.009+08:00

I’m sorry for the lack of activity here, on my Facebook wall and messages, on ourfeistyprincess facebook group and ourfeistyprincess blog and on email. Comments, wall posts, emails, sms have all gone unanswered and I’m only in contact with a few people these two days. My sms line has also been misplaced. I can’t find it anywhere at home or in the car. When the rain stops, I’ll search the car once more so for those who know me, please text me on my main line instead.

I was sick with a very bad headache and nausea for the whole of yesterday and turned in before midnight (an unsually mean feat for me) after I got back from Cyn’s house.

I was awoken by the rumbling of one of the loudest thunder ever which shook the whole room just now and here I am being unable to sleep and deciding to surface on the internet after 2 days.

At about 4.40am on Sunday, Cyn mommy texted that my god daughter Charmaine was in ICU once more. It was the other lung which was not working this time round and that she was very scared.

About 3 hours later, cyn’s brother texted that it was not looking very good and that there was nothing much the doctors could do about Charmaine’s breathing difficulties. Unlike the last time when the condition could be alleviated by draining the blood out from her lungs, they were not able to do anything this time except to provide her with oxygen.

I turned in at about 3am that Saturday to Sunday morning so I completely slept through all the sms tone and saw everything only when I woke up. My mind drew a blank when I read the messages and I just lay there in a daze.

~

I’ve always had positive feelings about Charmaine.

When she was first diagnosed with stage 4 neuroblastoma in 2009 and was given only 10% chance of recovery, I believed that she would overcome this and she did. She had since outlived her age ceiling for neuroblastoma patients.

When she had to undergo her first major high risk surgery, I believed she would pull through and she did.

When she had to undergo another high risk surgery sometime in May this year, I was not in Singapore. Cynthia did not tell me about the risk as she knew I was overseas and did not want me to worry but I’m glad Charlene called to let me know exactly how risky the surgery was. Miles apart, I prayed for Charmaine and sent her some good energy and once more, she did not surprise me with her ability to overcome another obstacle yet again.

Throughout the whole 2.5 years of battling cancer, I’ve always BELIEVED and at the back of the mind KNEW that Charmaine being so feisty, would be able to overcome all the obstacle thrown in her way. Needless to say, I was always proven correct by Charmaine’s sheer determination and fighting spirits. I’m very sure that all the prayers and unfaltering words of encouragement from our family and friends as well as from our loyal readers and supporters helped tremendously too and we’re always grateful for all the support.

The last time Charmaine was in ICU a few weeks back, I did not have that little voice inside me telling me that it would be ok. I was so scared that the little voice would be right.

These few months, Charmaine has been really sick. She has lost the ability to walk as there are cancer cells and tumour in parts of her legs, her pelvic bone, nerves around her spinal cord and recently her lung and hand. She is bed-ridden and can’t move her swollen legs and the whole of her lower body at all due to the sheer pain of cancer eating her up.

Many a times, some people would advise Cyn mommy to do whatever that could keep Charmaine comfortable. Some very insensitive people also came and started to pray for God to take Charmaine with him rather than to pray for healing. At such times when a mother is in a highly depressed state, the least you could do is to offer some soothing words even if you know what’s in stall. This is not denial. This is empathy and compassion.

We kept asking for healing. We kept telling Charmaine to fight. We kept hoping for miracles. That doesn’t mean that we’re in a denial to the truth that Charmaine may say goodbye to us soon.

Some people have the gross misunderstanding that Cyn mommy is the one holding on and getting Charmaine to fight till the end without caring if she is leading a qualitative life. Some people suggested letting her go and not to hold on anymore. What these people do not know is that Charmaine herself is the one with such strong will and determination that she is fighting the monster with her every breath.

Many a times when there is an anguished decision to be made, Cyn mommy would be at a loss and doesn’t know if she is making the right decision for her daughter. However, Charmaine would be able to point Cyn mommy in the right direction by telling her what she wants and feels comfortable with.

Charmaine may only be 6 years old but she has the understanding and maturity of someone way beyond that age. Hence before Cyn made any decision, she would look at Charmaine and listen to her and be at least surer that she is making the right decision.

Some of us personally know that Cyn is not giving up precisely because Charmaine herself isn’t giving up yet. How could anyone have the right to rob the patient of her chance of fighting and telling her to give up when the patient herself is fighting so hard and isn’t giving up at all?

~

Then on Sunday, the little voice never came.

I was unsure yet reassured at the same time. It’s a weird feeling but at least I know that little voice did not give me any negativity and that itself gave me some hope. Hence at the back of my mind, I thought that Charmaine was going to show us that she would overcome this hurdle yet again.

However when I reached KKH, the situation looked really grim. Charmaine was having so much difficulty breathing with one lung not working and the other lung bleeding a while back. Looking at her little chest heaving up and down violently in short gasps and seeing how distressed she felt, I really don’t know what to think.

The situation was so grim that Cyn mommy had at last did her mother’s duty of letting Jase know that his little sister may leave us anytime. This was something which she found so difficult to do. Jase knows how sick his mei mei is but I think the thought of having to say goodbye to mei mei is simply too overwhelming for him. Tears started flowing and he was speaking incoherently that all I could so was to hug him real tight.

The situation was so grim that we were allowed into the ICU room without wearing our masks at all. The medical staff did not adhere to the two-people-at-a-time and no-children-in-ICU rule. Jase was also allowed into the room without having to be snuck in. A crowd of family and friends were also allowed to stand outside the room to see Charmaine. It was as if Charmaine was running the very last leg of the race and that everyone was allowed to utter their last goodbyes to her.

At a point of time, we were all holding her hand and crying bitterly as Cyn assured Charmaine that we were all around her and she should not be scared as she would be going to a pain-free place where she would be able to walk and run freely again. She also reassured Charmaine that if she was really tired, she could go and sleep and that mommy would be able to understand. I've never heard Cyn saying all these to her before and I know it pained her to be saying these words. Cyn even asked me to take a last photo of their family of 3 using her i-phone.
I did not want to believe that it would be the last time I was going to hold her hands even as tears were streaming down endlessly. Nevertheless, Charmaine was in so much agony that I thought she probably felt like she did not want to suffer anymore.

Charmaine was conscious though she did not talk much but she made her intentions clear that she did not want to remain in the ICU and so arrangement was made to shift her back to the cancer ward.

Her condition remained the same after I left KKH with the last remaining friends texting that her condition was status quo.

~

Yesterday (on Monday), there was a flurry of activities around Charmaine’s bed as various teams of doctors and nurses who have been taking care of Charmaine had talks with Cyn mommy on preparing Charmaine. After two months at KKH, Charmaine would finally be going home.

There’s an incredibly large amount of logistics and new things to learn for Cyn mommy and her family. A few of us stuck around to help out with the packing and transporting of equipment and supplies to cyn’s home.

In the meantime, Charmaine’s condition remained the same but she was able to utter one-word or few-words phrases through her oxygen mask and whenever she was in distress, she would cry a little and holler for mummy. Cyn would constantly be talking to her, encouraging her and she would always reply with a “mm?’’ in a rising ending tone.

After a few hours of frenzy, cyn’s bro and I finally got home to help set up the room for Charmaine’s ease in transferring. About half an hour later, the whole ambulance team with some nurses arrived. Even Dr Aung (whom many of us have utmost respect for) dropped by to visit Charmaine.

While waiting for the equipment to be set up and with Charmaine still on the ambulance stretcher, I patted her hand and reassured her that Cyn mommy was only leaving her side for a while to settle some things in the room.

These few days, Cyn had always been a hand away from Charmaine and even if the former left to go to the toilet, Char would feel ill at ease and would ask for Cyn mommy. During the whole time she had breathing difficulties the day before, she did not want to hold anyone’s hand for long and preferred for people not to touch her. Thus, I was taken by surprise when Charmaine reached out and held my hand and tried to say something which I could not really hear. She started touching my hair and caressing my face as if she has never felt my hair and face before. As usual, when I talked to her, she answered “mm?” in that same rising lilt.

Once she got settled onto her own bed, she started to feel like her normal self again. She was talking so much through the oxygen mask that we were all quite amazed. Nobody could ever talk that much through an oxygen mask!

With drinking only water the whole day, her appetite crept in and she started asking for Udon noodles, fried rice and even fried chicken from that Chinese restaurant in NYC! When she saw Jase kor kor drinking the last Yakult, she asked for one bottle too and por por (cyn’s mother) immediately went down to buy a packet. She started talking about wanting to make a head band with butterflies and to do some craftwork with cyn mommy.

It was really reassuring to see Charmaine’s improvement in condition. She was brought home to enjoy her last moments at home before saying goodbye but it seemed like her condition had improved tremendously!

I’m truly happy beyond words but alas my headache and nausea which was plaguing me the whole day got worse and worse. Retched but nothing came out and so I had to excuse myself when the next close friend popped over with her family to cyn’s place later in the night.

With some washing up, I crawled under the sheets and slept like a baby till the thunder rocked the room.

I’m glad that my headache and nausea is gone for now but I’ve only gotten 5 hours of sleep so I’ll be heading to bed once more and dropping by cyn’s place later. The weather is so good for sleeping in and I’m so glad that I’ve got the luxury to do so. I’ll go have positive thoughts and sweet dreams without the headache and nausea to mess with my mind.

I hope for a miracle to happen and I have much higher hopes after witnessing a change in Charmaine’s condition.

You know, as logical and as prepared as I can be, I still believe in miracles.

I just found out about this video which somebody made for Charmaine when she was still mobile.

Music on repeat

2011-10-01T23:44:00.000+08:00

Do any of you keep playing a certain song on repeat for the whole day or am I one of those annoying few who keep playing the same old song over and over again?

[Aside: I would like to think that I'm not being annoying to the people around me as I am actually playing beautiful music on repeat.]

I've been playing a certain 3 songs on repeat since last night and I would love to spread the annoyance to you.

~

(I)

I was driving one rainy night when this song came on the radio and it was so soothing that I just had to find out what song that was. I knew it is one of those 80s music but I didn't quite know the title. Thank God for Google. I just keyed in chunks of phrases and got the title of the song-- Love is Love by Culture Club.

Now if you don't know the band Culture Club, just tell yourself that it is the band with Boy George as the lead vocalist.

This song is taken from the 1984 film that depicts a love triangle a man, a woman and a personal computer.

I feel like catching this film after watching this video and reading the synopsis.

Pardon the resolution of the video. It's a video from the 80s after all.

~

(II)

I've always admired Bruno Mars' talents and I can't find any song by him that I do not like.

Take a listen to his latest song-- It Will Rain. It was recommended to me by YouTube as the top song under the category Music.

The tune, the words... they both reached out to every heart string in me. It's so painful and so good.

And then I found out the song would be used in Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1.

I'm not a Twilighter but I think for this song, I would head down to the cinema to see which part of the movie the song would fit into. After that, I might just start falling in love with the movie and with Cederic Diggory... I'm so sorry, I only like Rob as Cederic. I don't like Edward. He's too white for me. And then, I would start to read the books for a few hours or a full day straight in one sitting and feel so swooned by the love story and then maybe I would start to fall in love with Edward and then I would listen to the song over and over again.

~

(III)

The final song which I kept playing on repeat would probably get everyone dancing or at least I know I was grooving, whistling and mooooo-ving the whole time in my seat when this song came on... like now...

Moves Like Jagger by Maroon 5

Before you click the play button, take heed that I've embedded the uncensored UK release version. So if you're a prude, just click the x-button on the top right corner and go watch Barney.

I hope you would appreciate being annoyed.

Site of the Week -- Do you speak Engrish?

2011-10-01T01:37:00.002+08:00

This week, we shall be really mean and laugh at bad Engrish.

Some native English speakers simply wonder what in the world were these people thinking when they print such nonsensical Engrish words, phrases and sentences. In cases of bad English translation in China and Taiwan, it is always interesting for us Chinese speakers to look at the Chinese words and deduce how these bad Engrish words were derived.

Here is a menu taken in China and before we go on, let me just warn all of you that the four-letter word is inside so make sure you are above 18 before proceeding.

Another menu in China:

The Dutch cowboys dig up spell roast the turkey?

Annoys the taste turkey to approve?

The milk fish platoon?

I would so love the mystical gift. Thank you very much. Boy oh boy, I hope I find mystical powers inside.

Since there isn't the Chinese characters printed, I really wonder how some of these Engrish words came about.

Of course, not all bad Engrish comes from China. For examples of signs, menus, T shirts and other merchandise with bad Engrish all over the world, head over to http://www.engrish.com for a good laugh.

Old Friends

2011-09-30T02:30:00.001+08:00

(I)

A good old friend is one whom you could call when you're outside hungry but with no dinner partner and she would rush down to the neighbourhood mall just to have dinner with you.

A good old friend is one who would go to cheap coffee shops that serve local dishes like roti prata, chicken rice, prawn mee and the likes just because you feel like eating them or to more expensive cafe and restaurants just because after a week of hard work, you feel like spending more on yourself for a good dinner spread.

A good old friend is one who would rush down in her T shirt and shorts with her glasses on just to spend time with you coz she doesn't care if you care how she looks as long as her company soothes you.

Tiffy my first friend in Primary 1, cheers to 22 years of friendship.

I find it funny how we were both wearing white base T shirt with black and red prints which leads me to conclude that...

A good old friend is one who has telepathy with you.

~~~

(II)

Old friends are those who even after long periods of not meeting, would pick up where they left off.

Old friends are those who welcome a new member and treat her like she's an old friend.

I'm so glad to know this bunch of kh's old friends. Since I was together with kh some 10 years back, I would always join him for any gathering with this group of his friends from schooling days. Even though we may not be close and were from different schools, they treat me like I'm part of their clique and made me feel welcomed. The most welcomed feeling I ever got from them was when they were planning to go on a short trip together this year and after kh told them he would not be around during that time, they immediately turned to me and ask me to go even if he wasn't going.

Yet Another Games Night

2011-09-29T03:20:00.001+08:00

We had such great fun playing games last Christmas that Karen decided to hold a games night at her place again one Saturday.

First. we met up in the east for some Japanese dinner at Tonkichi.

We ended up reliving our childhood days and comparing notes on all the cartoons we had watched back then and the toys we played with in the 80s and 90s.

There was even a point of time when you could hear us singing tunes like "Denver the last dinosaur", "Captain Planet. He's the hero. Gonna take pollution down to zero." and "Care Bears Stare" amidst many more tunes and jingles. I think it was more of Karen, Ethan and I singing while Regina and jw looked at us eyes wide with bewilderment.

Note: Karen and I were really saying "Care Bears stare" up there while I supposed Regina's thought bubble read "crazy girls".

After dinner, we were supposed to drop by Sushi's place to visit her and her cute little Leo (my distant nephew) but alas she wasn't at home so we headed straight to Karen's place for Games Night.

Before we started playing any game, Karen decided to serve us some creme brulee that she had made. Unfortunately, the bottle of gas refill she bought did not fit her chef's torch and she was not able to caramelize the sugar coating on top.

Quick-witted and highly daring Ethan improvised on the spot with the stove lighter aiming it onto the path of the gas. Check out the flame below! I was actually feeling scared for him. Even their dogs Louise and Emmie sat up and watched the whole scene intently.

Poor Ethan burnt off the hair on one of his fingers while he was at it and we decided we should not allow him to "torture" himself just for us to savour creme brulee. Thus, we shared that one caramelized creme brulee out of the many that Karen had made.

On to the games...

We played this really silly and crazy game called Pictureka. You could tell how crazy it is from the illustrations which reminded me deeply of the crazy stupid show Cow & Chicken which aired on Cartoon Network some ten years back.

The ever suaku me had never played Cluedo before (yeah yeah I know, what happened to my childhood right) and so I was yearning to play it that night.

The final game we played was Monopoly.

Regina was supposed to bring her Monopoly card version but it slipped off her mind and so we played the traditional old school board version which Regina and jw absolutely dislike since it was a pretty no-brainer-luck-and-chance kind of game.

Luck and chance it was. We finally decided to pair up to combine resources as the game was getting no where in circles. Based on the matching of colours, Regina and jw formed a team while Karen and I formed another. Thanks to jw's greed, he became the ultimate loser and dragged Regina down while Karen and I kept collecting wads of cash.

Top right picture shows Karen and my title deeds and cash while it is clearly evident that jw was the ultimate loser with $3 left.

While we were playing, Karen and Ethan played the good host by fattening us up with lots of snacks and quenching our thirst with tea and a delicious lychee wine from Switzerland.

We played and chatted till about 5am before we called it a night. It seems like we never ever leave Karen's house before 5am.

Cheers to great friendship!

Valentino Retrospective: Past / Present / Future

2011-09-27T13:19:00.180+08:00

Sometime during the Chinese New Year period, Regina, Karen, Karen's sister Janice and I went to a curated fashion exhibition – Valentino, Retrospective: Past/Present/Future. Clara was supposed to go with us but she could not make it in the end and hence Janice took her place.

Held at the Resorts World Convention Centre, this exhibition boasts one hundred haute couture pieces from Valentino. These include works from early days of Valentino Garavani to contemporary designs by present Creative Directors Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli.

Valentino Garavani is a household name synonymous with dramatic, opulence and extravagance. He made his mark early with intricately detailed, luxurious gowns and tastefully body-conscious silhouettes. He also perfected his own shade of red when he came up with a line of brightly-hued red dresses. This was later coined by the fashion industry as “Valentino red”, and became his signature colour.

The pictures you see in this post were taken from Regina, Karen and Janice. Thank you so much for the pictures! I was still using my pink bimbotic camera at that time which was fast failing on me after a few years of loyalty. Hence, whenever I go out with Regina or Karen, I would simply keep my camera and let their canon S90 do the job.

I would love to have snapped more pictures but here are some of the pieces which caught my eye.

I really love the black and white combination (this explains my white and black wedding gown!) and I especially love the white bow at the back of this gown.

Also on exhibition were pieces worn by classic actresses like Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn and celebrities of the present like Cate Blanchett, Julia Roberts, Jennifer Aniston, Lucy Liu and more. Valentino's most famous client would be Jacqueline Kennedy, wife of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy.

There were simply too many gowns which were such a visual feast. Here, I've included this youtube video of the exhibition where a lot more gowns have been featured.

Here are my two most favourite gowns. Do you see the similarities? These reminds me of dresses that Greek goddesses and beautiful nymphs would wear.

I love the picture of the 3 lovely ladies at the bottom of this collage. They looked really amused by the pixels forming a clear picture when seen from afar.

Learning more about Valentino from the milestone board.

Being very ~~bimbotic~~ fashionable, we decided we should wear dresses to match the theme of the exhibition though it was rather spontaneous that we all wore varying shades of pastel colours. We only realised how colourful we looked when we took this photo. No wonder everywhere we walked outside of the exhibition, people turned to take a second look at us. Most of the people there were clad casually as they were there for Universal Studios and lounging about the island resort and we probably look like OTT aliens on the island.

After the exhibition, we went to Victoria's Secrets where we each bought something.

This is the first time Janice went out with Regina and me together and she was really so excited snapping so many photos.

After that, we headed to Dustbunny Vintage where I spent a bomb on a few pieces of beautiful vintage dresses and one-off pieces. I guess we were truly inspired by the many beautiful and fashionable gowns we saw in the morning.

I like how Janice edited this photo. It reminds me of a section of ViVi magazine where the photos have got a vintage washed out tone.

After shopping, we finally settled for tea at Old Town White Coffee where Regina left us for a date with the hubby while Clara joined us.

My final stop was a CNY home-cooked dinner with my family. I absolutely love my mum and dad's cooking. Yes, my dad can cook very well too. He learnt it from my grandmother and my mum. Now, I wonder if kh would be able to cook for the family next time too.

There was steamboat where the soup stock was pig's stomach soup. I really love my parents' pig's stomach soup and my mum's ngor hiang as well. She makes the best ngor hiang ever. It would always be dish which my relatives would wait for every reunion dinner.

A family portrait where we were all standing awkwardly. Maybe we should invest in a tripod... and an SLR probably. I'd wanted to snap a more proper one but my camera died after that.

Here's what I wore:
♥ Banana Republic silk & azlon tube dress
♥ No label scarf thrown on to add details to the simple dress

Accessories:
♥ Topshop ice cream earrings
♥ Fifi Lapin necklace (xmas gift from Regina)

Signing off in a bimbotic mode,
Jo

Site of the Week -- Failbook

2011-09-23T13:50:00.001+08:00

I really hate the whole new Facebook "facelift". Absolutely whining and bitching about it. But hey. I'm still using Facebook every day.

For today's site of the week (SOTW), I would introduce to you not Facebook but Failbook.

This site features some of the most hilarious status updates, replies, photo comments etc on Facebook.

There are so many things that got me laughing at my laptop screen and one such example posted yesterday was by someone called Rick.

"I have all my FB email settings turned off to avoid getting mail from them. This morning I received TWO emails from FB telling me that they'll be sending me less mail."

What made it funnier was that I instantly thought of my dear friend Rick aka RicAdeMus. That sounds just like something he would post. lol

Chinese New Year 2011 happenings in a humongous nutshell

2011-09-21T16:47:00.004+08:00

Writing a backdate post in September when all the leaves are withering in the upper hemisphere about Chinese New Year which happened in February where all the flowers were blooming happens once in a blue, pink and purple moon on other blogs.

Over here on Jo's Jumbled Jardinière, it is as common as missing the bus just when you're running late.

It's been so long so get ready for lots of photos.

~*Springcleaning and other preparations*~

This year's springcleaning included cleaning up both my current room and the room in my maiden home. The room in my maiden home had been left the way it was since my wedding and I had been very lazy to clean it up even though I go back home twice a week. My family had conveniently declutter the living room by cluttering my room and it was fast becoming a storeroom.

So anyway on that day, I was greeted by lots of knick knacks on the dining table as my parents were also decluttering their mess.

This musical box is older than I am. It produces tinkling sounds with no particular tune upon winding. I remember using it as stage for my toys and in my little cognitive world, this ballerina was supposedly a famous ballerina who had come to Toys Town to perform.

My parents old identity cards, together with lots of passport-sized photos were strewn all over the table. Don't you think my parents look so handsome and beautiful?

Back at home, I helped my mother-in-law to make pineapple tarts. She was the only one making while all the BOYS in the family only knew how to eat them in batches. Seeing how unhelpful the boys in the family were, I volunteered to help her by inserting the fillings and rolling the pastries.

I missed out the part in the day when she was making the filling from scratch. I heard that it is the most back-breaking part of making pineapple tarts.

We baked them in batches since my MIL used the microwave oven which did not have racks like conventional ovens.

We baked till 5am.

I know that the shapes and sizes aren't exactly standardised but they taste delicious. I was also experimenting with different amount of fillings and different ways of rolling the pastry which accounted for some of the ugly ones up there. We slowly made them smaller such that you could just pop them into your mouth without choking from the crumbles.

~*Pretty pretty nails by Clara*~

As mentioned in one of the recent post, I said I would feature Clara's work of art on my stubby fingers with short nail beds.

She could really do wonders to my sort of ugly nails without using fake tips or acrylic extensions. So what you see are cute 3d bows and crystals on my real nails and she did them with such speed and precision. I'm amazed at how fast she finished my nails while the other manicurist was still sticking crystals on a lady beside us who was there earlier.

And yes, I made pineapple tarts the very day I did my nails. Nobody chewed on any bow or crystals of course.

You could view more of Clara's work on her blog. Just click on the gallery and navigate from the different categories.

~*Day 1*~

Day 1 was spent visiting all the elders from my side and mainly the kh's side of the family.We went visiting at many of his distant relatives' houses that I got quite confused by the time we reached the last house.

Here's what I wore:

♥ A white lace cheongsam with a twist of modernity

Accessories:
♥ Return to Tiffany heart tag choker
♥ Green Petals mismatched earrings that came in 4
♥ Ling Jewellery roman wedding band
♥ Tiffany engagement ring
♥ Green Petal Faux pearl and diamond ring

For make up, I tend to focus a lot on my eyes. I tried this super drama lashes which I didn't quite like as you could see I look like Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street.

I'm not sure if it's obvious but I pasted tape for deeper crease so that it is easier to apply my Maybelline eyeshadow to create a glittery smokey eye effect. Lower waterline is lined with Koji Springheart retractable crayon pencil liner. I further rimmed the lower lash line with a glitter white pencil from Sasa.

I completed the whole look with greyish green contacts which were rather subtle. On my skin is Dr Young BB cream and I've since stopped using foundation.

This sums up my look for Day 1.

~*Day 2*~

Day 2 was more relaxed as we spent most of our time watching TV at just one family's house on both my side and his side each.

My little cousin came to me and plonked her hamster onto my palm.

Here's what I wore:

♥ Cotton On white spaghetti top
♥ La Luce lace skirt
♥ Some Japanese brand lace long vest from Isetan (that cost more than $100 and I regret spending so much on a lace vest which doesn't even have a label on it)
♥ Crochet elastic belt to cinch at the waist

Accessories:
♥ Fayfey broken heart and key necklace
♥ Topshop ice cream earrings (part of the xmas gift from Karen)

I love what my mum did to this fake tree. This tree used to have those plastic orangey autumn leaves. It got very old and the leaves kept dropping. Lots of the leaves were plucked off by my cat back then when she was still around. My mother made use of the wrappings from flower bouquets to create the 3 big "flowers" you see below. Hand that creativity award to my mum already, will you?

All the flowers outside my maiden house were in full bloom. That's my 2nd sis by the way who got a lift home from us while my happening parents and eldest sis went to other parties and gatherings of their own when it was already past midnight. There is a missing thought bubble at kh's head which says: "Why did I agree to my wife's request of taking pictures with fake flowers?"

My make up was pretty much the same as Day 1-- the drama mama eyes.

~*Day 3*~

We finished most relatives visiting by Day 2 and so Day 3 was spent watching Green Hornet with kh's cousins.

Here's what I wore:

♥ No label shirt dress
♥ Belt to cinch at waist

I kept my look simple so the only accessory I wore was my Tiffany choker.

Because kh is such an irritant by doing a photo bomb on purpose, I shall post up this photo of his annoying face. That would teach him not to be annoying or his ugly expression would be posted up on my blog.

I wanted to keep my make up simpler as compared to the previous 2 days and so I used my favourite and highly-utilised faux lashes which looked a lot more natural than the ones I've been using the past 2 days. I also skipped eye shadow and coloured contacts but continued to line my eyes as per normal. The photos you see below were taken at the end of the day so the make up isn't freshly applied.

[Photos at the top: without flash. Photos at the bottom: with flash.]

I really love the effect of this cheap no brand lashes but I can't seem to find any with similar effect and hence kept re-using this pair. I should check out Dolly Wink soon but I find their lashes not as natural too.

You could see that the stem of the lashes on the right (meaning my left eye) has been stained by lots of glittery eyeshadow and its shape is a little off. It's high time to throw them away but I'll continue to keep them till I find another pair which produces the same effect. You could also see how obvious the tape look when I close my eyes without blending in any eyeshadow that day. I'm still trying to master the art of pasting tape which appears invisible. I'm really amazed at how my wedding make up artist did it.

There was still quite a lot of pineapple filling left so my MIL kneaded some dough and we made pineapple tarts again. This time till 6am.

I'm one who hates doing repetitive stuff so I decided to mold a pig out from the dough just for fun.

My MIL was so amused by my pig that she asked if I could do the 12 zodiac animals. lol... It was rather difficult due to the dough's soft consistency and so I could only managed pairs of pigs, ox and mice. I had wanted to make rabbits since it's the year of the rabbit but their ears just wouldn't stand up.

The animals look a lot better before baking. After baking, the horns of the ox went down, the tail of the mouse broke and the pigs snouts had got no nostrils. I tried to test my youngest brother-in-law to see if he could identify all the animals I made.

He initially thought the oxen were the father and mother pigs while the pigs were the piglets. Fortunately after some prompting, he got all correct and as a reward he ate the pigs. He deemed the pigs cute and asked me to make more of them. I asked if he wanted to chip in his effort and he conveniently excused himself.

I told kh to help me take some candid shots of my MIL and I making pineapple tarts and he took a video instead.

~*Day 7*~

Traditionally, there are 15 days of CNY and so during this whole period, Chinese would still go visiting even though there is only 2 official holidays in Singapore designated for CNY.

Day 7 is known as "ren ri" (人日, literally translated to Human Day). It refers specially to the 7th day of zhengyue (正月, the first month in the Chinese calendar). According to Chinese customs, ren ri was the day human beings were created. It is celebrated not only in China, but also other regions influenced by Chinese culture.

It was a packed off day for me. First, I dropped by to visit Cyn mommy and my godkids.

I took a long time to have a proper shot with the 2 cheeky monkeys while cyn took a hilarious video of the whole process. I shan't post the video here.

I warned Jase not to drop any prawn roll crumbs on the bed and guess what happened? I was the one who dropped it when I plonked myself onto the mattress which tipped the opened jar of prawn rolls down.

These were taken in February when Char was still mobile at that time though walking with difficulty. Jase was wearing Char's wig for fun and we thought he looked like a pretty boy. Char hasn't worn the wig yet as she's fine with her current state. Like most little girls, she used to be very vain and had her hair tied in all sorts of styles pre cancer days. Currently, she would be upset about her hair every now and then but generally she is fine with the way it is.

We did some "stained glass" art.

My 2 lovely and cheeky godkids are just too adorable.

Charmaine is so sweet. She hugged Jase kor kor and said, "I love you!"

I had to cancel my facial appointment to spend more time with the kids. After that, I rushed to meet Karen as we had to do some fitting to our altered dresses at Dustbunny Vintage.

The day ended with a ren ri dinner at Holland Village Crystal Jade where jw and reg joined us.

We ordered a little too much as we thought the guy in our group would be able to finish everything. Little did we know that all the girls could eat more than jw. lol... Ethan and kh ought to be around to help finish the food!

Here's what I wore:

♥ No label white breezy beach top
♥ White bandeau tube worn inside
♥ Coax denim shorts

Accessories:
♥ Fayfey broken heart and key necklace
♥ Topshop white bow earrings (part of the xmas gift from Karen)
♥ Sheer Romance flower hair clip

~*Day 13*~

The company's CNY celebrations was held really late on Day 13 this year due to the directors' overseas schedule. My group was in charge of this event and we had great fun playing guessing the Chinese sayings and some play doh game.

I won a hamper in the lucky draw. I think it was the 3rd prize and I like it a lot more than the 1st and 2nd. Even though the goodies in the hamper weren't as good as the top 2 prizes, I love the picnic basket that came with it. I was only interested in the basket so I opened the hamper on the spot and donated the items to my office pantry and carried the empty basket home.

It looks like this after the goodies were emptied.

~*Day 14*~

We had dinner at Soup Restaurant 三盅两件 with my family. I've always loved the food there.

They had raw salmon slices for Yu Sheng. Salmon slices are fast replacing other raw fish slices in the recent years. I love to eat Yu Sheng and will never get tired of eating it during CNY.

My gorgeous parents... Quick do a comparison to their IC photos which I posted earlier in this post.

~*Other random CNY happenings*~

I can't recall when these had taken place as I got the photos off Facebook.

My short term lunch kakis at work and I had vegetarian Yu Sheng during lunch one day. Instead of fish slices, jelly which looked like salmon slices were used.

One of the Saturdays, we had a CNY bbq held at one of kh's distant relatives' place. We went at night after my work but in the day, games were played. One of the games included matching all our Chinese names to the really huge family tree.

Later on, kh's cousins related to me how someone from another family (distant relative) took my name slip and kept wondering who I was while our side of the cousins who knew me were rushing to place it on the tree.

I've blurred some of the characters out. No, I don't want anyone knowing our whole family tree.

I won an ang pow (red packet) in the lucky draw. Not too bad for a newcomer to the family.

This pretty much sums up CNY 2011. I hope I have not put anyone in the CNY mode after reading this post. ;P

Get busy living life to the fullest

2011-09-20T15:17:00.004+08:00

Taking the big step

One year shy of my big three O, I decided to finally put my foot down and do what I’ve been yearning to do while I’m still young. I’m going to fulfil as many of my dreams as possible and even if I don’t carry out any of these dreams to their full term, I would want to at least give them a shot and know that I’ve tried.

In order to fulfil many of my dreams, I had to make a huge decision.

I handed in my resignation letter.

Some of you who have been reading my blog since forever would have known that I’m constantly wavering over whether to leave. At the end of the day, I’m really very happy to be able to take this huge step.

Many of my close friends gave me strong support to leave my job and to pursue my dreams. I’m also glad that my hubby is supportive of my decision. My family was supportive too and I was pleasantly surprised that my mum did not flip when I told her my decision. She did nag and drop hints these few days though, about how I'm wasting my degree but I just hope she would be able to see where I'm coming from. After all, quitting without a job is something to be frowned on in a society like Singapore.

These loved ones who have been my pillar of support over the years felt that I was working too hard and that my life revolved too much around work. It got quite tiring for some people to have to constantly match my schedule. I missed many short weekend trips with friends, missed some important family occasions, lost contact with some people but I’m thankful beyond words by how my good friends would accommodate to my schedule and arranging meet ups on my off days.

My hubby would sometimes get annoyed by how we have to plan trips and outings such that I do not affect work too much. He thinks that I’m too responsible at times and I admit that this virtue had become a fault in more ways than I can list out.

You see my Maldives updates recently? Why I kept calling it my “so called honeymoon” and not my honeymoon is because I’ve always wanted to visit a few cities in Europe and I decided that Europe would be our honeymoon destination.

Unfortunately two years after our wedding, we still could not find a compromise to our schedules. Before the Maldives trip earlier this year, the last time my hubby and I travelled together was in January 2008 to the nearby Genting Highlands for a short trip. My hubby decided to just go ahead with Maldives and told me that he was going to book for a resort no matter what I said. It was only after this “threat” that I arranged my work schedule around the trip and not the other way round. You know what, I was still working that night we flew off. I reckoned that since it was a night flight, I would continue to work in the day. He shook his head in defeat to that.

It was actually me myself and I who was making my life harder than it really is and not the job or the company or the bosses per se because in reality, I do enjoy working in this company. Great bosses, great colleagues, great subordinates... Really, what more could I ask for?

Nevertheless, these should not be holding me back and in fact it is precisely because I’ve got such wonderful subordinates with great potential to grow and a really wonderful team which made it a lot easier for me to throw my responsibilities aside and live for myself now.

I talked to my bosses about my intention to take a break and even drew out a big concept map to show how everything connects and that I really had to take this step in order to fulfil my many dreams and goals. They were so understanding about my situation and were amazed (or should I say amused) by my whole thought process. I thought they seemed quite entertained by my concept map as I showed all the linkages. At last, they thanked me for holding on for so long, helping them throughout the years and shaping many things in the company. Though sad to see me go, they told me to go out and pursue my dreams.

What I’ve been doing the past 5.5 years

Since I’m out of the company as a full time staff, I think it is fine to let all of you know more about my job. Over the years, a few blogger friends had asked me what exactly I am doing when I say I’m in the education line. Some had the misconception that I’m a teacher since I talk about my students in my posts every now and then. Well, that’s half right. I’m not a teacher in a formal school. Together with my team, we create the worksheets for the primary English curriculum for the company. We are allocated classes to teach too. As for me, I’m in the management role as well so there are a lot more stuff to do at work besides curriculum and teaching.

What I’ve been up to recently

It has been two weeks since my last day and instead of giving myself a big break, I’m busier than ever. The only difference is that I'm sleeping a lot more per night now and I’m not as insomniac as I have been for years. I’m also busy doing things that I like and that itself is very fulfilling.

Working on a project while working part time

I’m still teaching my classes as a part time teacher for 3 days a week so marking and lesson preparation takes up quite a bit of time per week. I’m also doing lots of research every day for my mega project coming up. It is something which I’ve not done before so I’ve got a lot to learn and it takes immense time and effort to work towards this goal. I would definitely let all of you would know what it is when the time comes.

Enriching myself

In the personal development aspect, I’m going to pursue some art-related courses of my interest when I find out more about the next intake and whether these could fit into my current schedule. I’m also going to enrich myself more and equip myself with more skills. Yet, I’ve to also take note of my budget since my income has dipped significantly. There are simply too many things I want to learn but with only limited savings.

Travels

Many Singaporeans love to travel and would travel once or twice a year. I guess it’s due to our small country. It’s unlike in the States or in Europe where people travel within states and continents. All the Singaporeans I know from all walks of life and all income level travel a lot too. It makes me feel very ill-travelled.

There are a few trips lined up this year and I’m almost ecstatic that we are finally going on our true honeymoon to Europe. The only gripe is that instead of 3 weeks, the hubby could only afford 2 weeks but you know what? Better than not going at all.

The hubby is currently out at sea on a mission and so I’m left to do the planning for the whole trip. I’ve never ever planned a trip before coz I’m a rather impromptu kind of person when it comes to travelling. I only need a general itinerary and everything else is all about the side trips and wandering off from the beaten path. For Europe we can’t really do it this way coz we would be visiting cities in different countries and so planning and coordination is inevitable.

Is going to London, Paris and Rome too ambitious for 2 weeks? It would only be a touch and go thing right? I’ve to take into consideration that we’re going during winter and that the days would be much shorter.

I’ve been meeting up with friends these few days to get information and it seems like Paris and London itself would take up a full 2 weeks since I’m those who would spend days at museums. I haven’t even factored in Bath and Stonehenge and that quaint little book town Hay-on-Wye which is many miles away from London. (Google image Hay-on-Wye to see the many beautiful outdoor bookshelves lining the quaint streets. I wonder what happens when it rains.)

Not to mention, Italy itself seems like there is simply too many to see in the country besides Rome and Vatican City and I think I should just leave Rome out for now and concentrate on Paris and London.

Suddenly the long awaited honeymoon Europe trip seems to have shrunk with only 2 cities eh? On the one hand, I want to immerse myself in the whole experience and not touch and go, yet on the other hand I kept thinking that I would not be going Europe again for a long time to come and so I’ve to cover more cities. I’m in a bit of a dilemma here and it doesn’t help when the hubby is not able to receive calls at sea. Any advice from you is welcome too.

I would also be going to Hong Kong and Bangkok this year. It seems like the ill-travelled girl is finally gonna unleash her potential to travel more. Hong Kong is confirmed since tickets and hotels are booked. Bangkok is tentative but we’re gonna make it concrete soon. I will be travelling with friends and not the hubby and he’s totally cool about it. How lovely! I loved Hong Kong the last time round and I know I would love it again since I’m going in the cooler months. As for Bangkok, it would be my first time there. It’s almost a given that most Singaporean girls/ ladies have been to Bangkok a few times especially for those weekend shopping trips. I do not know of any other girls around me who haven’t been to Bangkok yet except myself so I’m looking forward to it too.

Doing volunteer work while travelling is something which I’ve always envisioned myself doing. Help out in a village, teach the children, build a school etc. Most of these require a few months commitment. Initially I had Vietnam in mind when I knew of its few days commitment but when my friend and I saw the cost needed just to volunteer, we got stumped. All research over the internet seem to signal the same high cost of doing volunteer work so I’m still on the look out for somewhere where I can lend a hand for a short period of time and without having to fork out too much from my pocket.

Spending more time with friends

I hope to be able to spend more time with friends during this period and I’ve already met up with a couple of them. Many of you upon looking at my pictures with so many activities and meet up with friends would think that my life is very happening. Well, it’s a challenge to balance work and social life and it can get so tiring that sometimes I just want to coop myself along at home with a good book to read or to catch up on blogging. Now that I've got a major responsibility being axed from my life, I hope that meeting up with friends would be done at a more leisurely pace.

I want to blog more

Needless to say, I need to find the time to blog more and catch up on all my backdated posts. This LOOOOONG post sorta make up for my many impromptu posts the past few weeks. I guess verbal diarrhoea is catching up on me again. I wish I could catch up with time too.

I wonder how many of you read up till here?

Please help me to pray for healing for my god daughter

2011-09-18T11:30:00.002+08:00

My god daughter Charmaine Lim has been in the ICU since last night due to bleeding in lung and difficulty in breathing. Doc in ICU told us to be mentally-prepared. Please help us to pray for healing.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

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Updated on 19 September 1:07am

Lung bleeding is caused by tumour growing there. Will have to clear the blood every now and then. Intubated and heavily sedated. Char is in discomfort. She is conscious but would drift off to sleep every now and then. She seems to be better towards the end of the day. She can't talk so she had to sign and could even "ask" for the smurfette happy meal toy that Jase kor kor bought for her and tried to comb the smurf's hair with her eyes half closed and all the tubes everywhere. She could even do a peace sign albeit with effort.

Thank you all for your prayers.

Clara's Farewell Dinner at Le Bistrot

2011-09-14T13:03:00.002+08:00

Clara is currently in Melbourne to further her studies but before she left a few months back, we gathered at Le Bistrot for her farewell dinner.

Even though Clara and I only knew each other for a short time, we knew of each other for a while and became fast friends quite quickly. I love Clara for her spunk, for being so real and for pursuing her dreams with such passion.

Did you know Singapore lost one very talented nail artist ever since Clara left? Boo for Singaporeans but yay for you Melbourne dwellers! I would feature the nail art she did for me in my next photojournal post!

Regina and I got to the restaurant first and we were simply charmed by the decor of the place. It felt as if we were transported to another era.

While waiting for the rest of the group to arrive, Regina and I snapped loads of pictures.

Regina love this candid back view shot of me browsing through the menu.

Upon closer inspection, you would realise that you could see my front view from the mirror too. I happen to think I look like a ghost from those Japanese horror flick. lol.

Soon Clara arrived with her DSLR and we started snapping pictures together. Pardon me, I was trying to look like an austere lady in those Victorian portrait shots (photo on the left).

The ghost from the frame connected with the real world!

The food was really scrumptious! Le Bistrot definitely offers affordable and delicious French fare. You could opt for the set of 3: entree, mains and desserts set of your choice for SG$60 or the set of 2: mains and entrees/desserts for SG$50. I made a mental note to go back to the restaurant with the hubby the next time.

Everyone ordered different dishes and we cut out portions for one another to share. Then again, it would be wise to go there as a group so you could savour more dishes. That is, if your friends are the sharing sort.

I opted for the generous slab of beef and the creamy (was it mushroom or cauliflower?) soup with foie gras. I was wondering where the foie gras was. It was inside the long pastry!

Yummy desserts! I forgot what I ordered but the creme brulee came in 3 with surprising flavours like Earl Grey and Chocolate to choose from. Of course we snapped up spoonfuls of creme brulee from Karen.

We spent the rest of the evening catching up and getting to know new friends. Everyone was in smiles and the air was punctuated with laughter every now and then. It definitely did not feel like a farewell party. I guess all of us knew that Clara would be very happy to be finally pursuing her dreams in fashion designing. She certainly has the gift for anything fashion-forward and creative.

When it was time for the restaurant to close, we took our conversation outside the restaurant which is located at the Singapore Indoor Stadium and guess who we bumped into?

Taylor Swift!

Some of you may have remember me mentioning in this post a while back that we saw Taylor Swift.

Shout out: Special thanks to Regina and Karen for the photos!

Remembering 911 & other random stuff in the busy bee's life

2011-09-11T23:45:00.000+08:00

I just finished watching the docudrama "The Flight that Fought Back" on Discovery Channel and surprisingly, I didn't cry this time. I first watched it a few years back when I was in a hotel in Hong Kong all curled up under the comforter and tearing nonstop.

It's one of the best docudrama I've ever watched and I could not help tearing as I watched the re-enactment, and listened to actual recordings interspersed with interviews of the loved ones of these individuals as they related all their last phone calls and voicemails. At that time, I was not aware of the courage these individuals possessed and how they attempted to fight till their very end in a bid to stop the plane from crashing into the terrorists' intended landmark. As opposed to images and footage shown repeatedly which sort of desensitized me, The Flight that Fought Back tugged at all my emotional strings even more since it's narrated in a story which made me feel for all these brave souls. It also helps a great deal when all the actors and actresses resemble the actual people to such a great extent.

Learning how some of these people should not have been on Flight 93, for example the lady who often missed her flight but managed to get onto this, the last man who ran all the way and boarded the plane just when the door was about to close, the pilot who made special arrangement with his colleagues so that he could fly this flight as it was his 5th wedding anniversary on Friday and that he needed to be back by then all the more made it all the more heartrending.

I've been real busy lately and I just can't seem to find the time to do the many things on my checklist. It seems like I'm even busier even though I've put one HUGE responsibility aside. I might just elaborate on that some other time. ;-)

It has been quite a while since I last did a blog post proper other than the few "filler" post just to make sure my blog keeps running and that virtual cobwebs don't grow on my blog. In the past, no matter how busy I was, I would at least browse or speed read through the recent posts of my friends with blogs and blogger friends might sometimes leave comments. Now I don't even have the time to read most blogs which I like and I can't even seem to find the time to reply to comments. I know I would have lots to catch up on when I've got the time. And yes, I do remember saying I would have more time on my hands and could even do timed post. Well, I overestimated myself.

I thought that by this coming week all the dust from my transition period would have settled but looking at my calendar of meet ups and meet ups and meet ups in between pockets of time, my other personal stuff would probably have to take a back seat for now.

So my blog has been lacking in photos eh? Here are some photos to show just one task on my checklist which I can strike off the list.

This is the mess I've been living in the past few days as I did not have the time to pack all the stuff I've brought home recently.

This is what made me feel so relieved at 3am.

You have a strong mind if you can read this

2011-09-09T02:07:00.000+08:00

7H15 M3554G3 53RV35 7O PR0V3 H0W 0UR M1ND5 C4N D0 4M4Z1NG 7H1NG5, 1MPR3551V3 7H1NG5! 1N 7H3 B3G1NN1NG 17 WA5 H4RD BU7 N0W, 0N 7H15 LIN3 Y0UR M1ND 1S R34D1NG 17 4U70M471C4LLY W17H 0U7 3V3N 7H1NK1NG 4B0U7 17. B3 PROUD! 0NLY C3R741N P30PL3 C4N R3AD 7H15. R3-P057 1F U C4N R35D 7H15 =)

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Not sure if any of you see this message circulating on Facebook. I guess the font of the blog would affect the results.

Let me know if you could read this too!

Site of the Week -- Jim's Pancakes

2011-09-03T02:51:00.001+08:00

Have you heard of this creative father who enjoys making pancakes for his beloved daughter?

Some of you may wonder: What's so great about making pancakes for my daughter? I could make pancakes too.

Well, Jim does his pancakes differently. He's one cool daddy who makes pancakes in all shapes and designs. 2D, 3D and standing upright, you have them all.

I am in awe with this 3D ferris wheel.

Besides drooling at his masterpieces, you could also drool at his gorgeous little girl.

There are really so many different creations that I can't possibly display them all here so click on the link (http://www.jimspancakes.com/) for more drool-worthy pictures.

Now I feel like eating pancakes.

100 Followers

2011-08-31T18:59:00.004+08:00

I've recently reached my 100th followers mark. Welcome to my blog Ling, my 100th follower! Also, thank you every single one of you for making up the numbers too.

100 is really a modest number for someone who has been blogging since 2004. I see many individuals hitting the few hundreds within the span of months.

I'm not too sure how many of you actually read about my journey on the blogosphere. If you haven't, click on "the author's journey" tab above. Most of what I want to say here would be what I've already mentioned in the tab.

My blog wasn't meant to be so public initially. It was only in 2009 that my blog was unearthed by more people after my god daughter's cancer plight became an internet sensation due to the fund raising and was reported in a few local newspapers. Even after it became more public, I did not really leave my blog link on public sites and I usually comment on strangers' blogs using my name but without a link to my blog. Hence, you could say that I truly started "public blogging" and leaving backtrack links only in 2009.

I'm pretty selective about whom I follow and I do not go round leaving cursory comments on people's blogs, asking them to follow, which is a trend I see on many popular blogs. I presume that I would have a lot more followers that way but this is not what I want. I would rather have a handful of blogger friends whom I can identify with leaving me heartfelt words and vice versa, as opposed to a few hundred followers leaving one-liners like "You're so cute!", "Great photos!" etc followed by "Follow me at...".

I'm currently opening myself on the internet realm and enjoying myself on blogophere. Strangers, passers-by, silent readers soon became friends. I've made many blogger friends all over the world, many of whom I have constant two-way communication with. I'm really thankful for having such lovely people around in blogosphere. I feel like dropping some names but I'm afraid that I might miss someone out. In your hearts, I'm very sure you know who you are! *winkz*

It seems to be a tradition to hold giveaways at the 100th mark so I would do the same in due time. Look out for it!

PS: I would also start to do all the blog award and tags that you've tagged me with. Just to make sure I don't miss out any, could you please drop me a comment if I haven't already done your tags yet?

New items added to my blogsale

2011-08-29T01:34:00.002+08:00

I've added 2 bottoms to my blogsale. There are still many more apparels coming up so stay tuned.

Silver Frills and Ruffles Tiered Skirt

Urban & Co Dreamy Floral Skirt

Maldives: Six Days in Paradise Final Volume

2011-08-26T03:06:00.010+08:00

~*Day 6: The Last Day in Paradise*~

That's us heading out for breakfast for the last time.

I can't help loving my golden tan in this photo and I find it amusing that the breeze had my hair parted in the centre unwittingly. I kinda look like blast from the past. I cringed at my mum's hairstyle which was exactly like this in the 70s and early 80s.

Outfit of the day:
♥ No label knitted lace top
♥ Shorts worn underneath
♥ Fendi shades
♥ Worn-to-death Pretty Fit embellished sandals

That would be the last time we ate breakfast with our feet buried in the sand having the same old buffet food, listening to the same old chillax music and looking at the same old couples eating daintily around us.

After that, we went for the last walk along the beach and in the shallow waters.

Pardon the overexposed shots, the sun's glare was reflecting off the sand and it was pretty difficult to correct this via photo editing.

The last time kh stood on this boat, the caption read:
"A boat had beached itself along with a lunatic who thought he was Captain Jack Sparrow."

If you would very kindly take this humorously, this caption would read:
"Jolene is not Helen of Troy and her face could launch just one boat."

Remember the tree that was planted with collective effort the previous day?

We tried and failed to get more up-close shots with the sharks but they kept avoiding us.

Try spotting the shark in all the pictures below!

So if you did a Photo-Hunt and tapped the screen, you would have this:

Sharks are no fun when you've got a gigantic water snake nearby.

That coy Maldivian bird kept escaping my clutches. Each step I advanced towards it, it took two steps away from me.

We decided to book a spa appointment while waiting for our seaplane to arrive. But before that, it was more lounging in the pool and tanning on the deck chairs.

Yes, our final parting shot of our water villa.

Parting shots of Constance Haleveli.

~*Day 6: Guided Tour Around & About Male*~

While waiting for our night flight back to Singapore, we embarked on a guided tour around Male island (pronounced as Ma-Lay) which is the capital of Maldives and the most populous island of Maldives chain of 1 192 islands. The guided tour was a complimentary service from Atoll Paradise from which we booked our package.

I learnt so much about Maldives from this guided tour. I think I could write a whole thesis on Maldives' focus on the environment and tourism, as well as some misconceptions about their culture and social issues. I've also gained immense reverence for Maldives current president-- Mohamed Nasheed and could go on writing about him. However, I don't think I want to bore all of you with my verbosity so I'll just do a photostory.

We took a walk through the market and saw many fruits and vegetables which did not look quite like the version we're used to back at home. Are you able to guess what these fruits and vegetables are?

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Don't cheat!

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Did you get any correct?

The fishing boats had sailed back.

Our cool guide walked like he owned the streets. Motorbikes are the major mode of transport and he seemed to be able to skilfully dodge these riders who rode perilously without helmets and some even with two kids in tow!

Most of the eateries are housed like this.

I did not snap many photos of the cultural places we visited as I was too engrossed in listening to the history of the place narrated by our guide as well as other guides who were there. Moreover, I did not feel it was appropriate to take photos of sacred places such as the tombs of the past sultans and their families.

I also did not snap the Sultan Park which is filled with a rich history and hence an important landmark of Maldives. It so happened that there were many foreign workers there chillaxing on their offday. It was impossible to capture the beauty of the park with so many people sitting on every ledge and every patch of grass. I learnt from our guide that almost half of Maldives population consist of foreign workers as many Maldivians do not envision themselves working long term in the tourism industry where they would be located on an island resort far away from their families and friends.

And all along in my ignorant mind, I thought tourism created jobs for many citizens of Maldives and how we would be helping their economy by boosting the revenue earned from the tourism sector.

After that, we dined at Lemongrass Restaurant.

Our drinks

I never knew Coke Float with chocolate ice cream could be delicious too.

Our Thai-influenced food.

Food was good but it was grossly overpriced.The total bill for the 3 of us added up to SGD$90+. Such dinner in Singapore would come up to say SGD$40+.

Even the guide was appalled and asked the waiter to check the final value again. Sadly, it was indeed correct as everything was calculated according to the prices stated on the menu. I guess we sort of miscalculated when we ordered since the currency displayed was the Maldivian Rufiyaa. In retrospect, even if we had known the price for each dish, we would have carried on ordering the same dishes.

It was time to bid our guide goodbye.

We waited in the Finifenmaa Lounge which was supposedly for the business and first class passengers. Before anyone gets the wrong impression, we are commoners who take the economy class.

It sure didn't look anywhere near first class but I saw photos of the other airport lounges and realised that this is truly a notch above the other lounges. Once again, the use of this lounge is inclusive in the package by atollparadise.

This is the reason why I could recall so many things that happened in a trip which occurred 7 months ago.

Yes, I'm pretty much a pen and notebook gal, jotting down notes in my trusty notebook. On a totally random note, I really love this pen which was a corporate gift from my company for my birthday last year.

Bye bye to Paradise!

The neverending posts about Maldives have finally come to a closure. I hope you've enjoyed reading all about my trip in the parts as much as I've enjoyed sharing the photos and experiences with you.

And just in case you want to refer back, I've included all the volumes as links below.

Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3
Volume 4
Volume 5

Site of the week -- Dear Photograph

2011-08-24T14:42:00.003+08:00

I'm easily inspired by every little thing which stirs feelings in me so I decided I would share with my friends and readers all the good reads and good sights/sites I come across on the world wide web. Labelling the post "Site of the week" compels me to be more consistent in my blogging too. I will be adding a new label SOTW on my sidebar to feature such posts.

Today I would share with you a site that juxtaposes then and now:

http://dearphotograph.com

This site invokes a bittersweet feeling in me with the accompanying words that go with the pictures.

Enjoy!

New items added to my blogsale

2011-08-22T05:13:00.001+08:00

I've added some tops to my blogsale. There would definitely be more coming up in time to come.

Tokyo Fashion Princess Chiffon Top with Sash

Bohemian Peasant Lace Blouse

Shimmery White Satin Smocked Tube Top with Huge Bow

Click on the individual hyperlink for more description of the tops or click on my blogsale banner on the sidebar to view all the items available.

Maldives: Six Days in Paradise Volume 5

2011-08-20T03:07:00.003+08:00

~*Day 5: The Supposedly Last Day in Paradise*~

It was supposedly our last day at Maldives.

Thus, we whacked the buffet table like some savages who had not eaten for days.

Of course, we did not do that. We did take lots of food but we did it with professional aplomb.

As usual, the dainty Japanese and Koreans would only fill half their plate and once again used their forks and knives ever so gracefully with such poise.

Over breakfast and bubbly champagne, kh decided to extend our stay.

We mused about how we had initially thought that 5 days would suffice for an island stay and how in actual fact time passed by in a flash. I for one, thought that I would very quickly get bored with 5 days on an island

After breakfast, kh made some enquiries and arrangement for a one-day extension. Everything was settled in a jiffy.

~*Day 5: Engaging in Many Last Activities*~

Besides lounging in the pool and making full use of our water villa for the last time, we also ventured out for some boat paddling.

I was still bumped about not being able to see any sea turtles or manta rays, sting rays whatever rays that I kept deluding myself that any grey diamond or triangular shape object on the sea bed was a sting ray. Some of these shapes looked like they were moving.

We were supposed to take the same seaplane and same SQ flight with our newfound HK friends, whom we knew from diving. Hence, the couple were surprised to see us paddling nonchalantly while they were heading for the last seaplane of the day.

~*Day 5: Exploring the Island*~

After some paddling, we decided to explore the island. The staff there informed us that it would take just 15 minutes to walk leisurely around the periphery of the island.

We uncovered a few beach villas. Some were single storey and some double. Whether the former or the latter, we could not help laughing at their gates for one could easily slip in through the open "cracks" at the sides. Of course, they were only for show-- to indicate where the entrance to each villa was.

Some distance away, we saw a single golf range and as usual, kh got into the king-of-pretenders mode and started hitting imaginary golf balls with imaginary putters. I can't help wondering where all the balls would go and if the golf balls were meant to be hit into the ocean, would anyone be picking up these plastic trash?

Somewhere in the middle of the island, quite hidden by greenery, we spotted what looked like the staff quarters. We also espied many tree planting plaques by couples who had wedded there. Back to where the main eateries were located, we saw a collective effort to plant a coconut tree and I smiled a little smile to myself.

I cannot help but wonder at how kh was so far away from the shore and yet the water level was still below his knees.

As the afternoon sun readied itself for sunset, our shadows stretched long and thin.

~*Day 5: Heavenly Dinner at Meeru Barefoot Grill*~

Soon the sun set and it was time for dinner.

This time, we managed to reserve seats at Meeru Barefoot Grill (the one which could only accommodate 20 people). The food was on par with that of JING where we dined on Day 3.

I thought that since it was a BAREFOOT grill place, I could dress down and headed off in my Tee shirt, dishevelled hair with no make up on. I didn't expect the food to be fine dining style and felt totally under dressed for the occasion. Then again, you could never be under dressed at a beach resort.

Our very last sunset and the clouds just wouldn't clear themselves from the horizon.

My camera which was better at low light shots was left charging in the room and so all the photos of the food you see here were taken with my BIL's spare camera and simply do not do justice to the food. The flash made the food look so washed out yet it was too dark not to use flash.

I love the salmon tataki and tuna, the yellow fin tuna loin and the angus beef tenderloin steak (in medium rare of course). All their raw food in the form of tartare, tataki etc were all scrumptious that I had cravings for them for the next few weeks.

Their sauteed and grilled vegetables were a little salty but delicious. And oh their desserts... they're to die for! I really love the honey glazed pear poached in red wine. It was served with Grand Marnier Sabayon and rum ice cream. The bitter chocolate sponge was topped by dulce latte mousse with crispy dark chocolate and vanilla ice cream. Do the mere description in words already make your mouth water?

Soon a blanket of darkness dusted with brilliant stars enveloped us.

In highly urbanized Singapore, every part of our country is lit by street lamps. It is quite difficult to spot stars in the sky in lighted places. On the other hand, it was really surreal to see so many stars in the night sky on a dark Maldives island, as if a frolick of fairies had waved their wands and sprinkle fairy dust onto the blanket of darkness.

The camera certainly could not capture it, but every part of the black you see is actually filled with stars.

The moon was exceptionally low that night. I'm pretty used to seeing the moon hanging high in the sky back in Singapore.

As usual, we'll watch movies in the lazy comfort of the bed.

~*The Disappointing Underwater Pictures*~

After complaining on a few occasions about the underwater pictures taken by the disposable camera, I've finally picked out the best from the worst to scan them into my laptop to share them with my friends and readers.

Could you see what I mean by murky blue waters and sea of corals that look like grey rocks?

Here are some from snorkelling:

Well, it's fortunate that they look a lot more vibrant when scanned as soft copies.

Here are the scuba diving ones:

We saw so many strange and colourful creatures but do you see them in the photos above? No.

It was great that the scanned photos looked a tonne better. Yet, they pale in comparison to what we perceived with our own eyes.

One more volume to go and we would wrap up Maldives.

Miss JoJo's Shop

2011-08-18T02:53:00.001+08:00

I've been clearing my wardrobe, cupboard and drawers the past few days as the floor space in my room is diminishing by the square foot. I need the space to put all the things which have been left lying on the floor .

So today I ran so many errands and came back with some inner drawer storage from Popular and a nice weaved basket-looking box from Ikea to be stacked under the table. I’ve got a lot more space and also a lot more “junk” which I’ve not used before or have gently used. Gonna slowly take photos of these items to sell.

I've also set up a separate blog to feature the items. I'm one of those who take forever to conjure up usernames and nicknames but the name of my shop just hit me when I was creating the url and checking its availability.

Presenting to all of you Miss JoJo's shop!

You behind the screen, don't laugh at my shop's name.

Currently I've only got time to put these 2 items up for sale.

Silver Dinner Purse with Bow

Black Ruched Clutch with Detachable Chains

Click on my shop link for more description.

A Country A Second

2011-08-16T01:38:00.005+08:00

I'm not too sure if this video has gone viral yet but I thought it would be nice to share it with my blog readers.

Guy travels the world and shoots one second of footage in each location

Ingenious concept aside, I like how there's continuity in his stride. But I do wish for him to hurry up to the camera so that I could see how cute he is.

Maldives updates would be taking the back seat for the time being. There are 101 things to do both at home and at work.

Maldives: Six Days in Paradise Volume 4

2011-08-12T04:09:00.007+08:00

~*Day 4: The Disappointing Sunrise Fishing*~

It had been four days in paradise and I had yet to catch the sun rising from the horizon.

On the first two days, I made sure I set my alarm clock to the sun rise timing just to catch a glimpse of how it looked. Alas, there were always clouds along the horizon shrouding the golden ball. Kh suggested we sign up for sunrise fishing so that we could once and for all catch the sunrise.

Apart from the staff, there were only us and another Japanese couple with their cute toddler son on board. We set off on the traditional Dhoni for line fishing when the sky was still dark. We were taught by the guides on how to use a line to fish. After about 15 minutes of bobbing on the choppy waters, a slight drizzle ensued. As I stared for quite some time at the rising and falling crest of water where my line was cast, I gradually felt nauseous. That was then that I realized that I was suffering from sea sickness.

I felt the world spinning around me and had to lie down. Any more vertigo and I would puke right into the ocean.

Hence, you could see that there aren't many photos of our fishing trip.

Kh caught a fish and the Japanese couple with the cute toddler son caught two. One of the fish was brightly-coloured in patterns of brilliant yellow and blue. I was quite surprised that that fish could actually be eaten.

Soon, the rain fell more heavily and we had to wrap up the fishing trip.

And you know what? I was disappointed with the sun rise yet again. I wish I could wave a magic wand and chant "evanesco" to chase those darn clouds away.

Some really powerful being cast the "ascendio" spell on the clouds instead for they rose higher and higher like this.

~*Day 4: Breakfast & Walk*~

I was still recovering from nausea and the savoury smell of food irked me.

In the end, I could only drink hot cocoa. Hot cocoa wasn't on the menu actually but the wait staff saw how pale I looked and offered it. I reached out for some KokoKrunch when I felt better.

Meanwhile, kh took a plate of food which he thought was perfect for my state but had to finish my share instead when I was still feeling nauseous.

After that, we strolled along the beautiful beach The water was crystal clear, turquoise where it was shallow and royal blue far out in the deep. The beach was a pristine sandy white peppered with pieces of seashells and marred only by our footprints.

Little fishes swam right up to the shoreline; I often wondered if they would be swept onto the shore and be beached.

A boat had beached itself along with a lunatic who thought he was Captain Jack Sparrow.

There I went destroying the smooth sandy canvas in reply to what kh drew in the sand two nights back.

Making our mark and leaving our footprints on the sand.

Like little children, we had a whale of a time playing with the little fishes in the water. I relish walking through them and seeing the colours of the water changed around me.

Minus the shadows of the palm trees, the darker parts of the water were where the fishes were. You could see how they form a circle around us.

Here's a video of how these little fishes reacted to stimuli above the water surface like shadows.

Here's another video depicting the fishes swimming all around us in the water. Kh kept suggesting we should bring our snorkelling masks just to take a peek at these fishes underwater.

If you're watching the video with audio, please excuse kh's "Here's my fit. I'm standing right in the bitch." lol

The most absurd thing happened right when the video space ran out-- A whole horde of silver fishes jumped up from the water, flew right across my waist and disappeared into the water all within split seconds. I was taken aback by the sudden gleam of silver before me as they reflected the sun's glare into my eyes. I was dumbfounded for a few moments before I screamed, "What just happened?"

The staff from the dive centre who happened to be on the bridge near us laughed and explained why.

Apparently, the little fishes were escaping from the bigger fishes. I guess I was standing in their way and so they had to jump out of the water and back in again. Kh and I were both kicking ourselves and the camera for not having recorded that down! You could see some splatters of water on my t-shirt.

Outfit of the morning:
♥ Heritage 1981 Carnivore T-shirt
♥ Oakley Dartboard shades in berry red
♥ Worn to death shorts and shoes

~*Day 4: 2nd Scuba dive*~

I've shared a lot on my experience, thoughts and feelings about my 1st dive in Volume 2. I was really fast falling in love with diving by then. My only gripe was that we did not manage to meet with any manta rays or sea turtles

Outfit before dive:
♥ Rip Curl bikini
♥ Sheer Romance beach outerwear
♥ Oakley Dartboard shades in berry red

~*Day 4: Cocktail Party & Dinner*~

When we got back to our room, we saw an invitation lying idly on our bed. It was an invitation to a cocktail party at Jahaz Bar that evening.

Being greedy pigs, the first thought that came to us was: Would there be food provided?

We wondered if the cocktail reception included food and did not know if we should make any dinner reservation thereafter.

After dining at JING the other time, we were both dying to try out the food at Meeru Barefoot Grill. As we were able to access the menu from the tv in our room, we could see that all the food on the menu sounded really appetizing. Seating capacity was however limited to 20 people and we could not possibly walk in with no reservation made.

Before we headed to the main island, we took some sun set shots.

Sunset on one side and moonrise on the other. I love the blends of grey and orange on side and the hues of blue, purple and pink on the other.

As we neared the main island, we could smell smoke and bbq in the air. From the distance, we could see that most of the outdoor seating at Jahaz Bar were already taken up.

Other than alcoholic drinks, there was this one other finger food and I was about to die in drunken hunger there and then.

We didn't exactly know what the cocktail reception was about but we hazard the guess that it was more for the staff to mingle with us and get to know their visitors better. Although Maldives Constance Haleveli Resort is an idyllic getaway, I cannot imagine myself as a staff working there long term. I guess the staff enjoyed themselves a lot more than the guests did. lol.

A Caucasian staff attended to us for a while and remarked that we spoke very good English for Japanese. In a joking manner, kh answered, "Ah, that's because we're not from Japan." He enquired where we were from, meekly apologized and then drifted away to attend to a Caucasian couple. I wondered if he was embarrassed or anything but we certainly didn't take offence at all.

Next a Filipino staff came forward to chat with us. We found out that he is the chief engineer for Constance Haleveli. He shared with us about how such water villas were built, how they distilled their own drinking water, the water filter system and about island life. We were filled with awe. As for me, I was deeply impressed with the piping and draininage system on the island.

We dug a little deeper about how employment works in the Maldives and soon found out that most people in the tourism sector are foreigners and that the local themselves do not enjoy working in the various resorts on the various islands for months without their families and friends.

I've gained many new insights about Maldives but I guess it would take a whole post to write about my new-found knowledge.

By the time cocktail ended, JING and Meeru were all fully booked that we had to settle for Jahaz restaurant. Instead of an Australian themed buffet like in Day 2, it was Japanese this time round.

So far, we had nothing but praises for the food at the resort. However that time round, they fared a little low with their Japanese food. The sashimi were not exactly cold and fresh. Some were a little mushy. The miso soup tasted like MSG with kelp and beansprouts (or were they mushrooms). As for the meats, the yakitori and tempura were a little overdone and tough. The only saving grace were their desserts.

I think we've been spoilt by good Japanese restaurants in Singapore and thus felt that the Japanese buffet was the most disappointing meal we had in Maldives.

What I like about Maldives is how they focus on eco-tourism. Every man-made structure is built around natural structure. If a tree was standing in the way of erecting a wall, a space would be made in the wall for the tree.

Kh thinks the lizards pictures above are one of the most disgusting pictures of our trip. I was thrilled to have captured 2 lizards mating to care about what he had said.

A little surprise greeted us when we returned to our villa. We had a little cake each in two bell jars by the sides of the bed. The staff also arranged a bottle of water and a glass by the bedside as if to remind us to drink more water. Mats were also laid out for our bedroom slippers.

The bathroom was bathed in a futuristic blue glow. I never once noticed that there was a switch to switch the blue lights on.

Like every other night, we watched lots of on-demand movies and was glad to have caught so many shows which I've missed in the cinema.

I would conclude Volume 4 with a picture of my outfit.

Outfit of the night:
♥ Prada embroidered silk lounge dress
♥ Sheer Romance flower clip

I've been a little caught up with lots of non work issues that have been keeping me really occupied recently so pardon me if I don't reply to your comments or visit your blogs as frequently. I will continue to keep up with the reading of some of my favourite blogs. Continue to keep those lovely comments coming in though coz I simply love reading them!

Happy 46th Birthday Singapore!

2011-08-09T03:49:00.004+08:00

Majulah Singapura!

I'm no manicurist or nail artist with no professional tools but I love Singapore enough to do bimbotic things like these mini Singapore flags for later's National Day Parade.

Whenever I post photos of my nails I've to mention that I've got stubby nails with small and short nail beds. It was difficult trying to paint within such a small "canvas" and the outer polish staining my skin should be gone after a good scrub so pardon all the flaws k?

As part of the National Education Programme, all Primary 5 pupils will be given the opportunity to attend the National Day Parade (NDP) Preview held on a few Saturdays before the actual day. My Primary 5 students have been telling me that I should go watch the NDP this year coz it's really good. I thought it was ok to miss it since tickets are virtually impossible to get but fortunately, dear reg got an extra ticket and invited me to watch with her mum and her brother on National Day itself. Hurray!

I love all the extremely nationalistic Singapore songs from the 25th anniversary tape.

When pop songs took over and I would always love Home sung by local talent Kit Chan

and We Will Get There by international sensation and local singer Stephanie Sun.

This year's theme song In A Heartbeat hasn't sunk into me yet but I hope attending the NDP later would.