Carrot in a bottle!

I was never a fan of carrots growing up, despite my mother's eager lies about how eating carrots gives me super-vision. Little does she know that she has to start worrying if I was 6 and wanted carrots for its super-vision abilities - what? A 6 year old wanting X-Ray vision? (Yeah, super vision, x-ray vision...same same............................but different.)

Anyways, a few years ago, like 10, actually, we, as a family, started falling in love with this drink... For various reasons of course, I just the fact that the consistency of the drink looks like something out of the drain. (I am kidding of course.)

So while getting lunch from our trusty coffee shop, I spotted this can and made it mine! Made my day. A very uneventful day, obviously.

Cracking Butt Crack!

When you see a photo like this, please bear in mind that we love each other VERY much in the office. Which is why we are confident enough to do shit like this.

This is Mark talking to Deb, while flashing his butt crack at Terence who is being weird.

There, this is the space where quality work gets produced. No joke.

Durian in a bowl??

Shan had an extra ticket to Victor/Victoria and invited me along, so when Mom said she was going to Swissotel, I decided to tag along. The Plaza Market Cafe at Swissotel is a place that Mom goes really often because Keith and family loves that place. Well in my opinion, the food is good and the buffet has a huge variety of choices.

On this day, I reignited my love for the Durian Pengat (they translated it as Durian Pudding, which I guess is fair enough but still not enough justice). I love durian in a bowl!

In sickness and in health...

Today, Eunice's elder got married, and for some weird reason we were all superbly excited and all went to the wedding. (I know, don't ask me why) Our dear Eunice looked so pretty that day! :)

I can't wait for one of us to get married and we can do all that shebang. :)

Nestled in the tropical rainforest....

Our office is located in a pretty sweet location, outskirts of the city - means lower rent but still near the city and kinda accessible, affordable food of walking distance, its an office's haven!

There's this rainforest that is growing on the wall by the back door - right opposite the construction site that gives us no peace...The juxtaposition is so stark!

Go clubbing? I say lets raid the bar!!!!

I was invited to the launch of a new magazine that was held at Velvet Underground - a club. In fact, back in the day, it was the cool go to place..I guess it still is. I was never a frequent occurrence at the place. Anyways, so I was craving for some clubbin' - okay who am I kidding, I was craving for some good old alcohol, you know the stuff you drink to make the world a better place? Yeah, so I asked Dionne along and even though the party was dead. Well no not really, it was dead initially, but it picked up as the night progressed, Di and I were just not having fun. But I did have 3 lychee martinis to myself - that was happifying.

I think Dionne and I had more fun watching each other than actually enjoying the club. And we're both happily attached. Great party guys.

This guy is really weird - take 2.

This is a usual occurrence - I look up from my table and there's Terence, stood behind Mark, 'working with' him. I call this creative hand over hand. Basically, Terence has these weird ideas about how things should look. Well no, he has amazing ideas. But its hard to understand how to get it done if you are not him, hence, he has the habit of talking us through his ideas - also known as training or 'experiential learning' if you are fancy.

But once in a while you get a picture like this and no one knows what is going on. Yeap.....weirdo. But these are the people I work with, and boy, do I love them. :)

And this road belongs to you??

The construction of a new condominium behind our office has been the bane of our lives since we've moved here, the non-stop drilling, yelling, construction noises and not to mention the random construction worker chilling by the backdoor. (Once I was going out of the backdoor to grab a drink from the corner shop, one of the workers was just chilling by the door, and when I opened the door to get in, I totally banged into him -how was I to know if he was gonna be there??!) Anyways, and today they like closed the road (that does NOT belong to them) just because.

I hate that construction site.

Red Bull gives you WINGS!

While Mark momentarily disappeared today, we all thought that the aliens had kidnapped him. Turns out that he'd forgotten to eat lunch and had went out to try to get some food, but didn't find anything he fancies. So, the logical thing to do is to grab a can of old school red bull, because thats what people do.

As he cracked open that can of red bull, and my oh my! We could smell the aroma (yes, I am calling it aroma) of that sugar filled energy drink. Very nice.

Lin on ze drums...

Okay so this is not a proper photo, its a snapshot of a video. But thats only cuz I forgot to take a photo today! And Lyn took a video...so I figured...why not. But do not check out the video, I can't believe that she uploaded this video!

Nevertheless, Rock Band was super fun and I am definitely hanging out at Lyn's more often now. =D

Strange and Stranger....

Okay so this is seriously strange. We were at Shaw, and this is after we watched 2012. We were waiting for the queue to the bathrooms to ease up, and Alvin saw the giant poster of 'Alvin & the Chipmunks' and his eyes lit up. So he stood under the poster and posed for us even though no one asked him to..... Anyways, so in order to take a photo of him standing under the poster, I needed to take a photo from an awkward angle...which resulted in the above atrocity.

Can you spot me among all them cards?

I was putting together a list for a client today, so I had to breakout the name card tray and attack them. Its my very inefficient style of working.

This is what I should have done, I should have had a database list, tag each contact accordingly and when I need them. just go to the list and pull out contacts. Of course, its easy to say what I should have done, the key is that I didn't do that. HA.

They cook for me......

Well not really..but they cook for us! They are the 10 chefs who will be making an appearance at Chefs For A Cause. I can't reveal the photos now, because they have to do into the cook book...so I'll have to wait.

Now you see it...Now its all dark.

Did not do anything fun today, so when Dave dropped by to help Terence pack the stuff for training, I snapped this photo cuz I thought it was funny.

My life is really not fun huh. lol.

Iced Milk Tea with Grass Jelly

We went to the Hong Kong Cafe at City Square Mall today for dinner and this drink comes with my meal. I really enjoyed the drink, in a weird way. It was Iced Milk Tea with Grass Jelly. It felt kinda weird really, like grass jelly instead of pearls in bubble tea.

But I like it, I guess I am a milktea/milkcoffee (totally just coined that) person.

Can I eat that?

Today was the photoshoot (food) for Chefs and it was so fun! I got to meet all the amazing chefs and get to interview them and watch them put together the amazing dishes that they have contributed for the cookbook, and, I was lucky enough to be able to taste some of them - SO NICE.

Now I can't wait for the actual event. :)

WHART?!!

Today Mom dragged us into an organic shop after breakfast, when I saw this interesting product. WHO DARES TO DRINK SOMETHING LIKE THIS??!

-shivers-

The day Nat Geo paid us a visit...well, not really.

Today, a locust decided to pay us a visit. Which was kinda cool because it was overcast and going to rain, which is why (we suspect) that it chose to pay us a visit. But no matter how we knocked at the plane, it just stayed there, in all its majesty. When I say majesty, I am so not kidding. The patterns on its body is so intricate and its legs are so strong, the joints are so nicely chiseled.

I am in awe.

The diamond of my heart

:) I totally did not set this up to shoot! I woke up and found the heart all upright (well not really) on its own. Either it decided to do that to surprise me, or I was totally silly and did not realise that I'd left it there the night before.

Either way, it made me smile. =)

Free rides for three years?

Once again, I haven't done anything remotely exciting today. I was on the bus home when I saw this poster. And that got me thinking...wouldn't it be nice if I had free rides for three whole years? I'd save a shitload of money.....

Singapore's first Eco-mall?

We decided to venture out of the office for lunch today. It was hot, we were brave. (Even though Terence grabbed an umbrella along the way.....for some weird reason unknown to mankind.) So, we walked all the way to CitySquare Mall behind the train station.

This photo was taken when I was at the food court, buying drinks for everyone. I thought it was interesting that they are planting grass on top of a building. Kinda cool. I'm excited to see how this would turn out.

'Dude...Billy Bombers!'

'Dude...Billy Bombers!' was what I said to Lyn when we walked into Cineleisure in search for food. And dear Lyn replied, 'OMG! Lets!' and in we went. :)

I had 2 free back massages at TrueSpa and I'd invited Lyn along... so after the back massage (we totally were almost sucked in to sign a 36mth deal with TruSpa!) we decided to grab some food, we'd decided to go Japanese until Lyn said she 'kinda want meat' and I said, 'Jack's Place The Heeren, lets go, it'll be empty!' So on route to The Heeren we realised that there was this huge facade outside of it (I'd thought it was closed), so we decided to go to Cineleisure instead.

But isn't it great that I caught Lyn right under the American flag? =) Thats a HUGE hint.

The day of 2 breakfasts

Today, being a usual Sunday, I woke up to a pot of steaming beehoon for breakfast. Which I really do enjoy. But then halfway thru the morning, Mom asked if I wanted to go for breakfast with Keith... of course I said yes, anything to get out of the house by that time.

And tada! This was what's in store for me! Ngoh Hiang... & Bee Hoon! Not that I am complaining, I am a fan of ngoh hiang. Its one of the many local delicacies that I am proud of. I am proud of Singaporean food, which is more than I can say for other parts of the country.

Scariest Places on Earth

When you see photos of the TV is when you should know that I did nothing exciting today. Which is exactly the case here. I absolutely did not do anything exciting at all today.

But the sister and I did watch Scariest Places on Earth together and boy it was scary. Kinda random too because why would anyone put themselves through all that trouble just to scare themselves?! This episode was of the story of an American family who travelled all the way to Romania to spend a night in a notoriously haunted old castle to then freak out and did not spend the entire night there.... hmmmm......

On another note, I caught up with all my TV today. How bittersweet and how am I supposed to continue with my life now??!

Here rattie rattie rattie....!

So in a bid to find out if there is, indeed, another rat in the office, or if the snacks were holed by the rat (more affectionately known as THAT DAMN RAT) that the boys caught. Deb and I came up with this swanky idea of leaving a bait. So, we left this on the floor last night.

(Imagine Mark's horror when he finds that on the ground this morning.)

As expected, we don't really have a family of rats living in our office (even though I really think we do), this bag of Mamee noodles was left untouched. See we even left a note for the rat, from us with love!

Perhaps the rat has become smarter this time round, we'll need smarter ways to combat it. Or perhaps there is no rat at all.......

We don't really know, do we.

Who's the rat?!

So being a hungry monster this afternoon, I went to rumage through our box of snacks and to my horror found the above!! There were holes in the packets of snacks. I almost died.

It was then that Deb and I concluded that either the rat that the boys caught the other day had been living in our midst for a long long time, or that there was another rat in the office!! In order to find out....we took radical steps.

Stay tuned to find out.

This guy is really weird.

So today was Terence's JCI Award Ceremony thingum and the dress code was black tie, so of course, to a lot of people that is 'damn I have to wear a suit??!' but to my dear Boss it is, 'Yay! Any excuse to break out the tux!' And of course, he looks suitably out of place here in this picture while he poses for the camera and an indifferent ALvin trying to work on my computer.

Just another day in my office.

YOU BOUGHT A F*CKING MERCEDES????

That was literally my response when Gary told me that he'd bought a Mercedes, I thought he was going nuts. But then we met for supper and I had a chance to ride in his new swanky car...I was impressed. Like I told Martin, I feel like I had a huge dick just sitting in it.

His car does the whole blue tooth phone syncing thingum where he syncs his phone to his car and when he needs to take a call while driving, the call is broadcasted through his stereo. HOW FUCKING COOL IS THAT???!?

Now I want to learn how to drive and buy a Mercedes. (Hear that, Martin?)

Where did the subtitles go?

So today was my last official interview for the festival - I had to take Mr Taichi Yamada (who wrote 'I haven't Dreamt of Flying in a While' etc) to Hello Radio for an interview. Catch is, the interview will be conducted in Japanese. Nice.

So while they were having that pre-interview discussion, I was sat there thinking, 'Where did they subtitles go?' I used to watch a lot of Japanese drama series on TV, hence looking for subtitles when hearing Japanese comes as a second nature to me, I guess......

This is my 'I'm just standing here, waiting for someone to come marry me' look

After all that madness at Festival today, I ended it off with a lovely dinner with Wena, Terence & Alvin. Courtesy of Wena of course, she drew this coupon at Blackout. But not before coordinating the photoshoot for Amanda.

And while you might be confused after reading the title of this post, Amanda was in a velvety cheongsam dress and said that it was her 'I'm just standing here, waiting for someone to come marry me look'. Nice.

But the photo was of her other look - the wild 'fuckedup' look. (I didn't say that, she said it herself!)

Meeting Amanda was really cool, I like her music and I like her style, I like that she doesn't usually give a fuck about a lot of things (or at least gives the impression that she doesn't). And I like that she can put Gaiman in his place.

Indeed, they are so in love. But who isn't? :)

And you're saying....?

So today was the first day Neil Gaiman gets to Singapore and the first thing he does is go to Mediacorp for 2 interviews, one with Primetime Morning and another with Hamish Brown on Gold 90.5.

And we'd all been waiting for this moment to arrive, partly because it means the festival is finally coming to an end, but mainly because we've all been so excited to have Gaiman come to Singapore. A lot of preparations have been made, a lot of people were looking forward to this and I am one of them.

Meeting Gaiman is everything they make it out to be, he is funny, witty, lovely and charming. He is everything you want in a writer. He is funny. But we all already know that. I remember reading Good Omens (by Neil Gaiman & Terry Prechett) and thinking: 'These are really funny men!'

Anyways, I am glad that I got to meet Mr Gaiman at least once in my lifetime. It has been a great experience and he signed American Gods for me! Another reason to spend money on books: The award winning writer is RIGHT HERE, and if I bought a book, he'll sign it and I will have an autographed copy!!

Of course, that is the reason everyone else buy books - right right right??

Golden Point Award

The title is pretty self explanatory... I mean I didn't really do anything else exciting today..

Sign my SHOEEEEEEEEE

So today is Blackout day, and I'd invited Wena (Poon) and she'd invited Miguel (Syjuco) and his girlfriend, Edith. As Miguel was having an interview with ST Life! at the Arts House before that, we all decided to meet there and go together.

And apparently, Miguel's brother owns the Havaiannas shop in ION Orchard and Wena went and bought a pair and wanted Miguel to sign them. Oh how random. How fun. What great memories. :)

A good meal....,

It is not like I had nothing to post today, I had plenty. But this was chosen because this meal is SO DARN GOOD. Seriously.

This is the Holland XO Fish Noodle place, and before I went to the UK, we used to go at least a couple of times a year. So today when Mom picked me up from the office with Keith & Jon in her car, I suggested we go there again because I was craving the great San Lao Mien.

So I decided to take a photo of the empty table. heehee.

An Evening with Edwin Thumboo

Today was the day we honour Prof Edwin Thumboo for his great contributions to the Singaporean literature scene. While I really enjoyed all the readings, the only one I felt remotely moved was by his granddaughter. The girl picked a poem she really liked, read it and then said why she thought her Grandpa was great and special.

I really didn't like the fact that everyone else read one of their own poems after reading Prof's poems. Perhaps I am just being anal. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the session.

Primetime Morning!

Today saw me waking up before 7am - something that I'd thought I'd waved goodbye to after I left JC. I mean, listen to the moans when we had to wake up for 9:15am classes back in York. And then the next few times I had to wake before 7am was when I get to fly to California (yay) and do other exciting stuff.

(Okay, I am really just exaggerating. It is not that bad.)

But ask why me why I had to rise before the sun did? Because we had to go to Mediacorp for the Primetime Morning shoot! :)

I really enjoyed every bit of it. Even though as soon as the excitement died down I went back to being the grouchy old woman who got awoken for no rhyme or reason and couldnt get back to sleep.

I was nasty.

You sign my book, yes?

At the risk of being seen as 'unprofessional' I bought a copy of The Proper Care of Foxes by Wena Poon, and very unabashedly ambushed Wena and asked her to sign my book. Which she did. :)

I mean I bought this, instead of Lions in Winter because Wena said Foxes is a book for fighters. When she first met me and after I shared with her my story about bigtallwhiteguyIusedtoworkwithatthebar she said, 'You are a fighter, and fighters must write.' Which is probably the largest inspiration to me all year. (And we are already in October, so you know how much this means to me..)

And incidentally, one of the stories in the book was set in Palo Alto, and its about an lesbian Asian barista. How can one not love it.

The Proper Care of Foxes, you have to read it.

I am your biggest fan....!

The thing about writers is that they might be eccentric, but they are REAL. Here's a photo of Miguel Syjuco and Wena Poon queuing up to get Dai Sijie's signature. How Cool Is That?

The good thing about persuading the gang in the office to take this project is that I do, honestly feel very very honoured to get the chance to meet these awesome writers. Wena Poon is just cool. She is real, she is personable, she is talented and she is witty. What else can you ask for in a writer (I hear some of you say 'Alcoholism', but no, we're not talking about that today..)

Dai Sijie on another hand, is just a lovely lovely man. Obviously a person who has endured hardship and has seen the Cultural Revolution and its ugly sides while being 're-educated' in China, Dai Sijie is very much a storyteller. Full of anecdotes, this man is just a pleasure to be around.

There's no wonder why both Miguel & Wena are queuing up for his autographs...!

Light up that gigantic book! (Not burn it...)

Yay, Singapore Writers Festival 2009 opens today! The opening mechanism for the launch was lighting up (with lights, not fire) a gigantic book structure. We got a few 'You mean you are going to light it on fire?!?!'

er...No. We're promoting reading, not demolishing it. eek.

Caffeine any one?

Its the day before the official opening of the Singapore Writers Festival 2009, and it was non-stop maniac in the office, in my life... and as you can see, it was cups of coffee after cups of coffee.

Today was such a bad day though, from not having ALBH after walking all the freaking way there, to everything that could possibly go wrong...siiiigh. Oh well.

What's that on your screen?!

Its been a crazy week for me, well its only Wednesday and it already feels like its been an ENTIRE week! But dear Alvin was giving me a hand to do all that scanning stuff that was needed to be done. A few hours later, I'd totally forgotten that he's doing all that and had caught a glimpse of his screen which was on some model-type-person..and went, 'OMG Alvin, is that porn you are watching??!?!??!' But on closer examination, found out that he was not surfing porn, but giving me a huge hand, thus I was suitably embarrassed.

For some reason, I thought it was a good idea to photo that.....

The Driving Boss

Today was an unbelievably hot day here in this part of the world, and while Mark and I were wrecking our brains, thinking of what to eat for lunch, Terence rang and asked if we wanted lunch, and I had a moan about how its hot and we're hungry blahblah, and the Boss decided to drive us to Novena for lunch! (Yay!) So this is us, at Kopitiam in Velocity. After usual lunch Terence decided that it was not fulfilling enough and he wanted 'happy food' so we headed to BK for coke and fries, seriously, the weather was so hot it was unbearable. Nothing like a cook glass of coke to make our day. =)

The power of Advertisements

Before the iPhone days I used to listen to the radio on my mobile on my way to work, and my choice of morning radio show is The Morning Express on Class 95. And they'd play the advertisement with the OCBC jingle 'Get extra cash....for the important things in life....~~' and even ran a competition thingy on air.

Seriously, like now, I am considering going to sign up with OCBC...I mean the last time I saw the SunSilk adverts by Habour Front, I went to buy myself a thing of the shampoo from SunSilk. I am such a sucker for adverts.

Stage - Where the stories are told

So today the girls came over to play a few games of mahjong, since Lyn drove, we decided to drive out for bubble tea after ordering pastamania delivery - don't ask me why. So really this picture should have been one of the mahjong session or the pasta-eating session OR the bubble tea-ing. But as usual, I tend to forget to whip out Natasha and snap a photo when we're having fun.... Yes, I suck.

Nevertheless, this is a picture of my television. (Yeah, it is hard for some people to realise that it is a television and not a painting.) But I was watching 超级星光大道 loosely translated as 'One Million Stars'. More like the Taiwanese counterpart of American Idol, less of a public voting gimmick, but more of a industry experts decide the fate of the wannabes. ANYWAYS. I really enjoyed tonight's programme because it was not just the usual singing thingum, but more of a musical-type-thingum, which I thought showed a lot of potential in the few contestants. Next week is the final round and I am afraid that I won't be able to catch it because its an SWF weekend, but hey, fingers crossed. :)

Decriminalise Marijuana

I was on my way to the office today as we've got that radio show this evening, when I realised that the train was really really crowded - even for a Saturday. Thats when it dawned on me that it was Deepavali (Happy Deepavali people!!), so I decided to people watch. Thats when I spotted this dude. I have never been one to snap pictures of people on the train, but this dude's shirt is so damn cool, I simply cannot let it go without snapping a photo and make it history on my 365.

I mean, check out that T-shirt --- in Singapore! I wonder if he knows what it all means. Or did he just grabbed that out of a basket-full of shirts on sale and bought it cuz it fits him just right. Nevertheless, it did make my day seeing that on the train.

The Mess That Is My Table

Day one after the KL Press Conference means an endless day of follow ups, put that into Lin's world, it means messy table!! My work desk is never neat when I'm sitting at it anyways. But I thought I'd document my lack of order/organisation. (Yes, I hear everyone cheering)

Skipping the jam

Today was the day of the Singapore Writers Festival 2009 KL Press Conference and while the event went well and relatively without a hitch, we needed to rush back to the airport to catch our flight back to Singapore. (And to quote Mark, flying to KL is just like rush to wait, wait to rush..)

So we took a taxi from Mid Valley to KL Sentral so that we can catch the KLIA Express Train to the airport. And being on a train is so nostalgic for me, it reminds me of my English days. I loved taking the train on my own, be it a 30min ride to Leeds from York or the 3 hrs down to London, I enjoy all of that. I just wished it was a little more affordable so that I could take a lot more train rides. (Remember the 6hr coach rides to London to catch a 13hr flight to California, yeah those were painful.)

But anyways, I decided to take a photo of the insides of the train because it was nice and comfy and it seriously helped us skip the jam, like it took us all of 40mins to get from Mid Valley to KLIA - by taxi would take us like 1 hr and thats with no traffic. =) Gotta love trains.

Like rain falling down on bare skin

Today is the day we head to Kuala Lumpur for the Singapore Writers Festival 2009 Press Conference in KL, and Terence and I had to be at the airport by 5:30am to check in for our 7:30am flight. And bless dear Alvin who woke up at 4am to come pick us up to send us to the airport.

So anyways, we went about doing our jobs and when we could finally check into our hotel rooms, I was very excited to find out that the bathrooms came with a bath (not that I'll have anytime to use the bath...) but also that the shower cabin came with a rain shower! Hence the above photo, granted, it is not the most exciting thing that I could photograph and share, but it was the one element that got me really excited.

So I just took a shower and it totally and absolutely refreshed and relaxed me.. It literally felt like rain falling on bare skin. I recall that Martin and I once had a discussion about shower heads and we both love (and I mean lurrrrrrrve) rain shower heads. =)

The Diary of Our Lives

It was a long long day today and there were just so much to do before going to Kuala Lumpur tomorrow for the Singapore Writers Festival 2009 Press Conference in KL. But I'd scheduled to meet Wei for dinner and I didn't want to cancel that, besides, we had some work stuff to talk about and I had some important news to share with her.

So as I was rushing out of the office to go see her, Alvin was at the dining table putting the materials together for a particular event that we are assisting with. And boy has to manually place each slip/divider into each of the diary! What a mundane job, brainless work, we call it. But that was just like that time when we had to fold the boxes and sharpen the pencils etc etc, and I quite enjoyed doing that - even though I was seriously jetlagged.

Nevertheless, I thought that it was a pretty interesting photo to take so I snapped it, to remember how much effort we put into servicing our clients, and how much of ourselves we are ready to commit - and are happy doing it.

Knead your pains away

Today, while at work, I felt excruciating pains shooting through my right shoulder and my entire right arm. It was so bad that lifting my arm felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, so I decided that I needed to do something about it - pronto. So I googled, (well, I used Givoogle) 'Massage, Holland Village, Singapore', and I came across this very affordable place, Knead, and decided to make an appointment for after work.

This was a sweet sweet place, nice and cosy, clean and relaxing. The masseuse was great, she used the right amount of pressure on the spots that hurt and stopped right pressure points and really got the blood flowing around. After she was done, I literally felt like my back could finally breathe, like a huge ton of weight had been lifted from my back. Even the most stubborn knots were released.

Project 365 - Resurrected

Today is the day I decide to resurrect the Project 365. I had one that I'd started in year 2 of uni, and that one lasted for about 200 days. I had a reason though! I'd went to California for camp and had little to none internet connection and did not have a personal computer to work with, so posting and writing blogs is out of the question.

But in view of the fact that I've recently become a proud owner of an iPhone with a kick-ass camera (okay, not that kick-ass, but a good camera nevertheless), I should be taking photos more often and seeing as how I am addicted to wifi, posting and writing blogs should not be a problem since I actually have a subject if I posted photos.

So there, consider this a resurrection of the 365 blog. Well, not quite a resurrection, more like a re-birth. =)