Please help me pray for my goddaughter Charmaine

I’ve been MIA on the internet realm over the weekend as my hubby had booked us a weekend stay at a hotel here. I’m now back where I’ve got more time to use the internet.

On Friday evening, I was shocked beyond words when I received a call from Charlene telling me about Charmaine’s emergency operation of her spinal cord. Charmaine woke up that morning not being able to move her lower body and to urinate. The cancer has attacked her spinal cord and the doctors advised an emergency operation which had a degree of fatality.

Two hours away from Singapore, I kept praying and sending positive energy to Charmaine. When an sms from Charlene came beeping again at about half past ten, my heart was pounding hysterically as my cold hand pressed onto the buttons of my handphone. A wave of relief washed over me when I saw her good news of the op being a success and that char was to be wheeled in the ICU ward.

Right now, Charmaine is in pain especially in her legs and gradually, her wound. Cynthia has asked for fewer doses of drugs and thus, char is beginning to feel the pain. She is still unable to urinate and her nervous system would take some time to heal. She’s in a very foul mood and didn’t want to talk to me over the phone just now.

I ask of all my friends and readers to help me pray for Charmaine’s smoother and less painful recovery, for the tumours to miraculously disappear and for her to be able to move her lower body again.

Your kind thoughts and gestures are deeply appreciated.

Love,
Jolene

PS:
I seem to be having problems commenting on some blogger blogs. This is especially so if your comment box is displayed as embedded below your post. I’m not too sure if it’s due to my current location. Does anyone of you experience the same problem this past week? I had to keep logging in and posting in my Google/Blogger name only to be brought back to the log in page again and again. My comment would only be successfully posted on my own blog, on blogs with anonymous-enabled commenting or on blogs whose comment form appears as a full page or pop up form and on disqus as well. For once, I’m thankful for disqus. Rinny, Winnie, Sugar etc whom I’ve always whined to you about disliking disqus, I’m taking back my words now.

Happy birthday to me

[pic credit: via weheartit]


I'm doing a scheduled post here. By the time this is published, I would either be on the plane, in the airport or in the car with my hubby 2 hours away from Singapore.

Take care everyone. Till then!

xoxo,
Jo

Guilt

I’ve been feeling a tinge of guilt towards different individuals and groups of people for different reasons.

I’ve been told so often to love myself more. Yet by loving myself more, I’ve to love others less. Some of these “others” are the very same who advised me to love myself more.

The guilt is killing me.

I hope that the people affected would be able to understand my situation, my feelings and my concerns. I’m not very sure they would be able to, yet there isn’t a need for me to over explain. I’m only comforted to know that most of the people dear to me understand and support me.

It’s been a 50+ hour work week for quite a while now. By the time I leave my office, I do not have time for anyone else. I feel the guilt but I’m glad the people involved understand. Still, it doesn’t clear the deep seated guilt in my heart.

I’m so busy with work that I don’t even think of my hubby at all. The work distraction is good in a way to prevent myself from missing him but I think it’s not very healthy for the relationship. We are going to put things right and so here I am trying to complete all the necessary things so that I could fly over and join him for a week. He asked for two, I said no. I hope he understands, I think he does. It only makes me feel more guilty.

In order to go for this break, I’ve also affected some people at work and out. Many people think I’m going for a holiday but I’m not. I only wished they knew.

Sacrifices have to be made. For a long time, it has been me. I believe I have the ability to change that but the price to pay is long working hours and not to forget, guilt.

I'm exhausted but I've to make sure I'm sleepy enough to turn in such that I would KO immediately once my head hits the pillow.

My subconscious mind takes precedence over my positive mindset as the latter grows weaker. I thought I could sleep and toss my guilt aside but nightmare tend to wrap its straggley fingers around it and toss it back into my dreamscape. I can't sleep well and I sometimes wake up in tears, often wondering what I dreamt of.

I wish to be somebody else for a day. Or maybe I just have to find that me that has left me a long time ago.

Happy 7th Birthday Jase!

Jase, you're the most wonderful godson a godma could ever have. You have shown in your sister's illness that you're such an extraordinary son to your mum and the best brother a sister could ever have. Mummy has said it very well in her message to you and I can agree no more with mummy's words:

To mama, you are more than a son and most definitely more than 7 years of
age. YOU keep me strong, happy and sane when times are tough. YOU protect me and give me strength. YOU are amazing in ways others cannot fathom. I am proud of you and I just know you will do well wherever you are and whatever you do. I
love you, my son, my friend and my protector. Happy Birthday!

I'm sorry that I haven't been visiting you and Charmaine the past 2 months. I'm sorry that I was not able to rush down to give you a surprise visit just now. I'm sorry that I might not be able to celebrate the actual day with you today...

BUT... I promise we would par-tay together in June!

A lovely parcel & a lovely person

Don’t you love receiving parcels? I certainly do! Whenever I do online shopping, I can’t wait for my parcels to arrive.

Last month, I received a parcel even when I didn’t order anything off the internet.



The parcel came all the way from the UK.



It was sent by my blogger friend, Peh Sun aka Squeeze the Pug.

When I opened the parcel, I saw a handwritten note and something lovingly wrapped with pink wrapper and a cute little pink ribbon.



She drew in the tall hat, tuxedo and sleek boots for the puggy pug pug. How cute!



Unwrapping the pink package, a mini La Mer jar peeked at me. When I saw it, I just could not help exclaiming how cute it was that my hubby thought I was quite mad squealing at a jar.



It’s so lovely of Peh Sun to send me a mini La Mer for no rhyme or reason at all. Ok, she did have a reason. As seen from the handwritten note, she was inspired by my Lamer La Mer post a while back and decided to give me a surprise.



Isn’t she such a lovely and thoughtful lady?

If you haven’t already visited Peh Sun’s blog, you should. She’s a beautiful doctor who has a great penchant for Chanel. In fact, what led me to her blog was her very detailed post on the Chanel black classic flap. I’m in awe of her Chanel collection.

She’s really very sweet and sincere and you could definitely tell from the way she writes her comments. I’ll always look forward to reading what she has to say coz she always puts a smile on my face. After a few exchanges over blogger and emails, we realised how much we have in common. It’s really uncanny yet absolutely remarkable to have found someone on the internet with so many similarities. We both joked about how we could be related.

To rub her love for Chanel onto her readers, Peh Sun has this amazing giveaway with lots of Chanel goodies from the skincare and make up range. (Of course you weren’t expecting a classic flap, were you?) This is the most generous and coveted giveaway I’ve ever seen in the blogosphere.



THE Winner's prize:
Chanel Precision Lotion Confort Toner (full sized 200ml sealed bottle with box)
Chanel Travel Makeup palette (Full sized, new and boxed, complete with Chanel mirror compact, makeup tools/brushes and velvet black Chanel pouch)
Chanel No.5 Soap bar (full-sized & sealed)
Chanel Vitalumiere Ecalt Confort Radiance Compact Makeup B20 beige SPF 10 (mini powder compact with sponge)
Chanel Precision Purette Matifying Fluid (mini pot, 4ml)
Chanel Precision Ultra Correction Lift, firming Day cream (mini tube, boxed)
Chanel Precision Ultra Correction Lift, firming Night cream (mini tube, boxed)
Chanel Precision Ultra Sculpting Firming Concentrate (mini tube, boxed)
Chanel white hard box (from the No5 Chanel Paris, this box smells strongly of the iconic Chanel No.5)
Chanel white paper bag

What an impressive list! She has really set a very high benchmark for giveaways eh? After reading so many blogs, I realise it’s common for people to hold giveaways once they hit a certain number of followers and I thought of holding one when I hit 100. By then, I’ve to wrack my brains to come up with decent gifts.

I’m a bird that goes cheap cheap cheap when it comes to make up and skincare. Most of the low and middle range drugstore products work very well on me. Not counting gifts from friends, my most expensive skincare product is SK-II Facial Treatment Essence whereas my most expensive make up is SK-II Cellumination Pancake. I’ve thought of trying out some from the Chanel range when my skin gets more mature and just not long after that, I saw Peh Sun’s awesome giveaway.

I’ve to confess very honestly that I may not use some of the items in the giveaway but should I win, I would definitely know how to put them into good use even if I don’t use them for myself. So here I am spreading the word for Peh Sun.

If you’re a blogger and you want to try your luck in winning these items, why don’t you hop over to her blog, follow her and leave a comment? It’s open to international readers as well. The closing date is still far (12 July 2011) so no worries about being late.

And... even if you do not want to participate, visiting her blog will be a fruitful trip coz her entries are interesting to read.

And and... If you follow me and leave me a comment, I might put in a good word for you too. Nah... You didn't fall for that did you?

And the droning engine throbs in time with your beating heart

I stumbled upon some really great videos when I first knew about Vancouver Film School (VFS) three years back. I remember that I spent nights after nights watching all their students’ creations and marvelled at how talented these students were.

I’ve always thought of sharing some of these videos with my friends and readers and did some drafts here and there on my analysis of certain videos. Unfortunately my computer crashed and many of my draft blog entries which I had saved in Word doc went down with it. I got too lazy to rewrite them. Many photos which were in the process of being edited, together with their originals, sank into the deep abyss. I totally gave up blogging about those events while grieving for the demise of my photos.

Just now, this song "The Chauffer" came to mind all of a sudden. I just had to search for the VFS video that has this song in it and relish in the melancholic beauty of the video. I like how the the lyrics of the song doesn’t really go with the animation yet it is this imperfection that makes the pairing of the audio and visual so perfect. So here’s sharing my favourite video from VFS:



I don’t know about you but there is this part of me that love anything out of the mainstream and I know many people would not appreciate this video as much as I do. Despite being titled “Guernica”, there are many other artists’ works in the film and I find joy being able to recognise their works.

The main character in his deformed body wakes up from his nightmare in Vincent Van Gogh’s Room at Arles, only to be thrown into the insanity of his conciousness. Then, he wanders about aimlessly in Salvador Dali’s surrealistic dreamscape The Persistence of Memory, better known in my dictionary as Melting Clocks. The landscape switches to M.C Escher’s Relativity where he is put through further torment of perpetually walking to nowehere. He finally jumps to his death, his deformed body fitting like the missing jigsaw piece in Picasso’s Guernica.


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Notes on this post:
This is a repost. Thank god that I saved my draft in Word doc. I actually posted this 2 days back but it seemed like blogger removed it for no rhyme or reason. I wasn’t able to log into blogger for a while and once I logged in, I realised this post simply vanished. I hope this one gets through. Any of you had your most recent post being removed by blogger as well?

Comments to this post have also disappeared and are not reflected on my dashboard . If you don’t mind, please leave them again. Thank you.

Edited to add:
I realised that all comments left after I experienced the blogger log-in problem disappeared too. Argh... I’ll slowly reply all of you in the previous post soon.

Unfolding November's Folder

WARNING: Long long, picture-ful post. Go get your drinks and popcorn while waiting for the pictures to load.

If I update backdated entries at a rate of one per month, I guess I would forever be backdating my posts. =P

Sigh...

What to do? There's been a lot to accomplish at work nowadays with the slack in the pace during teambuilding last week and I've been bringing work home to do. It's a state-declared public holiday in Singapore today due to the General Elections but as soon as I've cast my vote and have lunch with my family, I drove down to the office to try to complete as much work as possible.

And...

Whenever I'm not doing work at home, I would be reading or watching videos on our General Elections. I was one of those apathetic young Singaporeans when I was eligible to vote 5 years ago. This year, I do not want to be apathetic about politics anymore but to be an informed voter. After casting my vote earlier today, I think I've made a wise choice.

I'm currently updating this post while watching the "Vote 2011 Singapore -- Results" on tv now. I can't really concentrate as I'm quite nervous about the results. I pray and hope that the political anomaly in Singapore would be dissipated and we would have a maturing and truly democratic society in time to come.



Enough said, I'm back to the blogging planet for more backdated stuff again!


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~*Dinner at Pu Tien Restaurant*~

For my FIL and BIL combined birthday celebration, we went to Pu Tien for dinner.

It was my first time dining there. For family-friendly Chinese restaurants in Singapore, one would usually opt for any Crystal Jade chains, Dian Xiao Er, Soup Restaurant etc which would never disappoint. Pu Tien was something quite unknown in my vocabulary of Chinese restaurants. Their dishes were unique and rather appetising. With so many unique dishes, my favourite was actually the most simple dish of green vegetables.

My in-laws have gotten used to me snapping pictures of my food. As usual, my FIL would ask me in Mandarin what I did with all these photos. So here's what I did with them.







Photos of humans are all in my BIL's slr and if you've been reading long enough, you would know that I never ever get to see those photos.

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~*Char & Josh Solemnization*~

It was the solemnization of one of my dear friend, Charlene. It was held by the poolside of Swissotel Merchant Court.



We were only 5 minutes late but we missed the exchanging of vows. By the time we arrived, the Mr and Mrs was already posing for photograph with their signed cert.








I love her nudish shoes but I hate how tall she looked in them. An additional of 5-6 inch inclusive of the front platform. Hmmph!



Next it was buffet lunch at Swissotel Ellenborough Market Cafe which was having a crab buffet then. The bride and groom sat with us and we had a fun time chatting and gossiping.







Congrats to the sweet couple. I'm so happy that they've tied the knot. Josh had gotten a huge approval stamp from me in my mental book of great other half for my friends. LoLz



Outfit of the day:
♥ Audrey Layered Dress from ClubCouture
♥ Tribal bead necklace from Diva
♥ LV bag


I've blogged about this dress before. You can read more about it here.

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~*Tiff's birthday dinner at Don Quijote*~



Having read favourable reviews on Spanish restaurant Don Quijote (pronounced as Don Kee-yo-tay), I decided to arrange tiffy's advanced birthday dinner meet up there. We went to the Dempsey branch for a more cozy ambience and it turned out that there were only 3 other groups of people at the restaurant on a weekday evening. Whatever that we talked and laughed about reverberated through the entire place.

What we ordered to share:



Uglifying ourselves with squid ink from the pasta.





After our mains, we popped a surprise cake for tiffy. From the photo, she looked really eager to eat the cake. Well, actually she was deluding herself that she was only one year young.



We were trying to test the burning length of the candle.



The pretty babes.



The pretty boy joined in.



Tiff made a long long wish, blew the 1 single candle and started demonstrating her love for all of us by distributing the pieces in the order of size indicating preference.



The cake was so good that even though we were full, we finished the whole cake. From the sizes of the slices you could see whom she loved the most. LoLz.. Zanne looked disgruntled with her share and we just had to immortalise this gross piece of evidence in print.



After dinner, we went in search of the largest freshwater fish in Singapore (not kept in a zoo) -- the arapaima of Dempsey which is longer than any of us. I was amazed by its size. Its shape reminded me of a dugong except that it looked kinda scary. After googling "arapaima" though, I realised that the giant fish in Dempsey pond is nothing compared to its counterparts in other parts of the world.



Outfit of the day:
♥ mocha dress top from Tokyo Fashion or Mayuki tw
♥ shorts worn underneath
♥ hand made chanel inspired necklace by fayfey
♥ salvatore ferragamo bag


On the way to meet jq to buy the cake, I got myself a classic looking brown leather watch from a push cart at a steal for only SGD$10. It features the 12 Chinese zodiac animals.



Since I mentioned Tokyo Fashion above, I must say that their pretty models really help to sell their apparels. I wouldn't have bought this mocha dress top if not for the pictures of this pretty model modelling it.



I love this mocha dress top a lot and you would see this dress top again later on. I bought many other clothing items from Tokyo Fashion all because the models look so darn good in them. I don't wish to post the rest of the pretty models modelling the clothes here or you would never ever be able to draw the comparison with the clothes on the models as opposed to the clothes on me.

You know I have serious girl crush problem at times. I actually right clicked and saved so many pictures of these models. Well, it sure beats saving lots of photos of guys with the hubby right beside me.

And also since I mentioned fayfey, I've to say that I really really love her handmade items a lot. I hope to do a shopping haul post from fayfey coz her stuff are all so whimsical and fairytale-like that I was quite glued to her page for quite a few days back then. She's also such an awfully sweet seller. A pity that she wouldn't be creating many more handmade accessories since she would be busy working.

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~*10 @ Claymore*~

For my 2nd sis's belated birthday, we had buffet dinner at 10 @ Claymore.

We were all impressed foremost by their service and secondly the food.







We always make it a point to celebrate one another's birthday as a family and now that we've all been working for years, we would decide on higher end buffet dinners to treat my parents and the birthday person. My parents always love to eat good food once in a while and we would specially choose places that serve fresh oysters for my dad loves eating them. He could eat 20 at a go! My mum is a little of an anything goes as long as she's adventurous to try out different foods.



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~*A & B's house*~

A & B invited us over for an informal house warming one Saturday evening. Bruce whipped up a feast in the kitchen while he tasked april to get out of the kitchen to entertain us.





We were served some really delicious bresaola, goat cheeese and crackers for appetizers. Not to mentioned, some really sweet and strong wine. I love the salad with vinaigrette dressing a lot.



Fish and spinach for mains. A little too salty but yummy! By the time the lava cake was ready, we were all so full.



Thanx bruce for whipping up such a feast!

Besides the feast, there was another main attraction-- PetPet the cat. We love PetPet so much! He's such a sweet sweet cat. Bruce hates PetPet though. He's always bullying him.







There was lots of laughter snapping these shots. Bruce suggested "throwing" Petpet into the picture so he literally picked PetPet up and "threw" him in front of us. However, bruce and kh could not coordinate the timing and so PetPet was out of the picture before kh could say "snap". Finally for the last picture, we see PetPet bounding through the air across us. He looked like he was kicking april's face.



It was so difficult to take a good shot of PetPet since he was always moving.





For the group shot, bruce insisted on holding his lucky elephant instead of PetPet. So, Petpet is some few cm down the south border of this photo.



It was an enjoyable night. Thank you A&B for being such good hosts.

Outfit of the day:
♥ plaid tartan shirt which I bought off a forum (paird with brown rope belt)
♥ shorts worn underneath




I recycled this photo from my fremantle seafood dinner with my family here. However that Saturday, I wore the shirt tucked out with jeans and paired it with a rope belt for work. I hate wearing jeans indoors. At A&B's place, I changed into shorts and hence the kinky tucked out look that some of you don't approve of in that October post was born. This plaid tartan shirt has also become a favourite wardrobe staple for a casual day out. I've been wearing this shirt a lot.

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~*Vivocity & Fong Seng Prata*~

I met up with the girls at vivocity for Japanese lunch, dunch or linner actually since we ate from 3--5pm. Even though I'd already eaten before I met them, I ate again for they had ordered too much. Just as well coz the food was delicious. I love the garlic rice.



Sushi gave reg an advanced bday present before the former went into confinement. It was a moomoo rug which actually isn't real cow's hide. Reg has this penchant for moomoo rugs.



After that, melva joined us. We went shopping and then ate again at Pacific Coffee. Our last stop was at Fong Seng where we tucked into oily prata and sinful Milo Dinosaur.



Outfit of the day:
♥ same mocha dress top from Tokyo Fashion again
♥ shorts worn underneath
♥ green petal bird and rose necklace (wore the scarf in 2 different ways but the 2nd way could not feature the exquisite necklace)






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~*Scars are still there*~

Remember my railway exploration post a while back?

I got badly bitten by sandflies. The itch and pain was so unbearable that I had to see a doctor for them. Those on my left ankle felt as painful as a sprain.





Due to the fact that I'm such a vain person, I tried as hard as possible not to scratch them as I always hear people saying that sandflies bites scars are more or less permanent. I'm so sad that some of the scars are still visible now even after a period of 7 months.


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~*Shopping hauls & other random stuff*~

Seeing so many beauty bloggers showing off beautiful nail art and uploading videos on how they use konad, I was curious to try this product. It was offered as a package with 2 nail polish colours, 2 design plates of one's choice, a double side stamper and scraper set.



I'm not very good at this and would definitely need a lot more practice.

I bought lots of pairs of shoes at one go.

The comfort shoes --Americaya



The affordable shoes at no more than $20 each. The black pair is from ViVie and it was only $9.90. It was really cheap and comfortable but...



Look what happened after less than 10 times of wearing them. I guess that's why they were on sale.



Green Petals haul yet again. Whenever I buy Green Petals for my friends, I end up buying for myself too.





Very belated random farewell gift from cyn -- accessories hanger. I lurve it! I love the wedding gown details. She really knows my taste well.



Totally random! Food at work. Aren't you envious of our pantry?



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I've started updating this post at 9.30pm when the election results programme started and the time is 4.30am now. It was only half an hour ago that the programme ended.

I could hardly concentrate on blogging coz I was half watching TV, half checking the elections website, half FB-ing the whole time with all the rest who were watching the show, which is I think almost the whole of Singapore. It was even more talked about than the World Cup, someting really noteworthy. 2011 is a year that Singaporeans would never forget as never before had so many young Singaporeans shown interest in politics. Social media really plays a huge role here. I shan’t start any political discourse on my blog as whatever I’ve to say have been mentioned in FB in real time.

GE 2011 has been a memorable one which has excited many. Even at this time, there are still a number of Singaporeans awake and yakking about the results on FB. I should turn in soon.

Good night or good morning!