Toyko Day Four

In a cat cafe! I'm so happy, been trying to pet the cats and get them
to play with me.

Japan Day Three #I've lost track

Vote Happiness Realization Party! Reminds me of a Time magazine
article I read about how there are more female politicians in the
parliament now, due to the unhappiness with the incumbent party and
its handling of the economic crisis.

Well the incumbent Democratic Party of Japan got kicked out in the
recent elections anyway.

Japan Day Three #4

Tommy Lee Jones as a spokesperson
for Boss Coffee. Possibly the most irrelevant celebrity ever.

Japan Day Three #3

Not much to blog about today, since it's mostly electronic shopping.
So posting up another photo from Kyoto of a statue of a famous geisha
against the sunset.

Japan Day Four

Second bowl of ramen on the trip

Japan Day Three #2

Sashimi on a stick!

Japan Day Three

At a temple / zen garden in pretty Kyoto.

Japan Day Two

Big tuna at Tsukiji market!!!

Japan Day One #5

The view from our restaurant, where I am currently stealing the wifi
from. :)

Japan Day One #5

First dinner in Japan!

Japan Day One #4

From what I gather, this seems to be a cat cafe!!!

Japan Day One #3

Japan Day One #2

Japan Day One

Toy camera

Trying out the camera app, toy camera, which I bought on Sio's
recommendation. But so far it hasn't produced photographs as pretty as
hers.. Hmm.

Pitstop #2

At Joshua's house, talking about an elite society and all that it
entails.

Christmas Day 2009

First stop: Jurong aunties' house

We have a tree!

Soren actually brought a tree out for our Christmas dinner!

You know readers have been dumbed down..

When Sarah Palin's memoirs actually makes it to the non-fiction
bestseller list.

Seriously?

A book about zombie raccoons and killer bunnies? What will they think of next?

Food for thought

Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability
to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to
engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone
else's head - even if in the end you conclude that someone else's head
is not a place you'd really like to be.

- Malcolm Gladwell, What the dog saw

Branding FAIL

Chocolate bouquet

A chocolate bouquet that my intern, whose last day was today, made for
me. :)

3.04am

Still here in the office, listening to Camp Out on endless loop. I love it.

The waiting game

Just waiting for the designers and Mel to give me back my pages. I should be doing something productive, like replying to work emails. But fuck it, I'm half dead.

Also, the official news went out today. I haven't really thought about what it means for me, because firstly, I don't know what it means for me. I know what business objectives I have to achieve next year, but what does it really mean for me? I have no idea. Maybe I'll think about it over the break, that is, if I ever get there.

Give me my magazine pages now so I can get the fuck outta here! RAWR.

Heavy-duty listening: Camp out

I've heard about An Horse sometime ago but never paid them any attention until I chanced upon a video of Sara (from Tegan & Sara) interviewing the members of An Horse. Somehow, lead singer Kate Cooper came across as a really affable and chilled-out human being, which then led to me checking their music out on YouTube.

Camp Out is my favourite song so far, which is no surprise since it's now a single.

Holiday cuteness

The Christmas loot has been poor this year. Too many calendars (don't
need them anymore since I started using google cal), some notebooks
(very handy and practical) and a whole lotta sweets and cookies which
helped me make it through my 70-hour ordeal this week.

But the polar bear just arrived today, and I am smitten. He is so cute
with his big black nose! I wuff you little polar bear!

Car-free on North Bridge Road

Taken at 1.40am while standing in between the car lanes.

On parting ways with incompetent employees

Meh.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Things we <3

Shirts that start with 'I <3', obviously. And this was completely
unplanned and coincidental as well, since neither one of us stayed at
the other homes last night..

Lofi app

Just fooling around with a new 'lomo' app that I just downloaded for
my iPhone. So far so cool..

5 days

5 working days, 2.5 magazines to produce, namely the December issue, the Vendors of the Year special and half of the January issue.

I can't fucking wait for Saturday to roll around, I swear.

What?!

We're scaling THAT wall?! Eeps!

Itty bitty kitteh

I love how when this kitteh looked at me, it cocked it's head to the side wondering what the hell I was doing.

Naive

Waiting for the boy at Naive. I've always wanted to try this
vegetarian restaurant, especially after several people have raved to
be about the food here.

Naive has a really nice minimalist decor, too bad about the seating
space though. Right now my back is towards the glass panel where I
can't see people walking by.

But already this is my second seat as I initially chose the seat that
faces the passersby but has my back towards the rest of the restaurant
and the lovely decor. That unnerves me because then I can't see the
waiters coming up behind me.

Yea I'm finnicky like that..

Buddha says OHAI

Noms in Hong Kong

Your typical 'Western' breakfast.

Mucking around

Mucking around while waiting for the plane.

How cute is this cat?

That is all.

Wow?

This is the view overlooking a hotel group's office waiting area. My
jaw dropped when I walked in. A pool on the eighth floor? Wow.

And mind you, this isn't even an upmarket hotel group like the Ritz or
the Shang..

I want!

The dude has a Kindle! Jealous.

Plot for Bright Star

I wrote this down on a friend's wall in Facebook, but it made me laugh so I thought I would reproduce it.

The plot for Jane Campion's Bright Star, as told by me.

Warning: Spoilers ahead!

~ Beginning of Bright Star ~

Fanny: Oh I love you John Keats!
John Keats: I love you but I have no money....
Fanny: I'll stare at you from outside your window then!
John Keats: Here's a poem for you. Oh wait, my friend is getting angry!
Fanny: I'll pine for you anyway! And catch butterflies!
John Keats: *cough* *dies*
Fanny: Noooooooooooooooooo!

~ The End~

Needless to say, I didn't find the movie very interesting when I watched it in Cannes earlier this year. In fact, the more exciting part of it was that Quentin Tarintino was sitting behind us during the movie! (Yes, I am going to repeat that QT story until the day I die, I'm sorry.)

The house is on fire!

I had my first real panic attack last night. My first in 25 years.

And it happened all so fast as well. One minute I'm on the phone with Dave, the next minute I'm in tears, I can't breathe properly, my head is woozy and I feel the constant need to puke.

Then of course, supermom comes in and ever so nicely (NOT!) says that I'm not handling my work and stress all too well. "But it's always like this every month, what!"

Uh, thanks for your understanding mom. And no, the end-year crunch is worse than the usual year.

But strangely enough, I feel a lot better today despite only having a couple of hours of sleep. Maybe it was because I delegated a few tasks this morning, maybe it was me not putting up with the intern's shitty writing anymore and making her re-write her crap, but I feel very zenned out right now.

Whatever will be will be. Just take it as it comes.

Let's see how long this feeling will last, shall we.

Quad cam part three

Us at Food #03 sharing vegetarian pizzas and my favourite eggplant
laksa pesto pasta.

Lady Gaga's sartorial influences emerges in mysterious ways

Why yes, that is indeed a hat made out of three plushies! Fashioned by yours truly while Dave was busy shooting skegs and zombies in Borderlands.

Quad part deux

More quad cam pics taken over the weekend!

Quad cam

Playing with my new quad cam app. <3!

Woolly sheep!

Mark's fantastic woollen socks that have sheep on it.. How awesome is
that!

Delayed gratification

Check out my box of Old Navy clothes and bags worth close to US$80.
(All sale items as well!)

Problem is I want to open the box right now, but it's only 4:20pm and
I've agreed to wait till 6:05pm to open my goodies with the rest of my
colleagues.

Delayed gratification is so not a good look for me. :(

Muddy

Feeling a lot of things right now, each of the emotions even more
muddled than the one before. It's a combination of feeling trapped,
stressed, worried, apathetic, underappreciated and jealous.

The Ocean

So, it's been so long since you said: "Well, I know what I want, and what I want is right here with you." - Tegan and Sara

I love that sentence so much!

Pandemonium

I can't decide if this panda is stoned, sleepy or giving out a sultry
come-hither look.

Baby you can drive my car

Me, Soren and F1 driver Kazuki Nakajima from AT&T Williams.

1.10am

While healthier people are tucked in and soundly asleep in their beds,
one Mcdonald's in Jurong plays host to football fans looking to watch
a match of the 2010 World Cup qualifiers.

Worry kitteh

Don't you worry little kitteh, everything will be all right!

Fire! Fire!

The remains of the fire that took place a couple of shops from my
office this afternoon. Thankfully no one was hurt, as the business was
not in operation yet.

But being the kaypoh Singaporean that I am, after hearing about the
fire, I ran out to watch it.. Says so much about the Singaporean
pysche in me..

Blood

Just recently, one of my aunts found out that she had contracted lung cancer. The news isn't earth-shattering to me, only because I am not close to that particular aunt. (The same does not hold true for my godmother though.)

There was a family falling out many years ago, and even though I spent many hours with her when I was younger, it wasn't until my grandma's death in '05 did our families finally decide to spend more time together. (That meant the obligatory family trips to their apartment every Chinese New Year since.)

But buried underneath my patchy memories, I can still remember being a young tot when she bought me the best Strawberry Cupcake doll. While the doll had a regular upper torso (the kind that all dolls have), it had no legs. In its place, she had a big rubbery poofy skirt that reached to the floor. But the magic of it was that the skirt could be turned upside down and it would transform into a cupcake base. Add a muffin top and you have a doll hidden inside a cupcake.

It was awesome.

Last night I instantly fell in love with the song Blood by Aussie band, The Middle East and I've been playing it on loop ever since. I finally got around to reading the lyrics and somewhere along the lines, I started getting really emotional and wanted to cry from the sheer loss that comes along with losing nothing but feeling like everything's gone.

"it was the only woman you ever loved
that got burnt by the sun too often when she was young
and the cancer spread and it ran into her body and her blood
and there's nothing you can do about it now"

'Blood' The Middle East

Ohai I'm the birthday boy

After what was an hour of getting lost and taking the wrong buses,
this is us at The French Stall on serangoon road having a really good
meal of French onion soup, mussels in white wine, steak, lamb and
chocolate soufflé.

Happy birthday boy!

Birthday card!

My birthday card, shaped in a form of a cat!

Panda bears!!

Panda bears sleeping, or what is the highlight of an otherwise
disappointing Ocean Park, the latter of which was hot, crowded, sticky
and exploitative. :(

Hong kong day 1

Man to dave's dad seems to be saying: You came to Hong Kong to do
WHAT?!?

Actually I lie, I have no idea what he's saying.

But the dim sum is great! :)

Personal reminder

Personal reminder to be nice to people, even when I don't feel like
it. Strangers included too.

The pen was given to me by a taxi driver because I rushed out of the
office and had forgotten to bring a pen along. (I actually had two in
my bag but just couldn't find it at that point in time.) so the taxi
driver very generously gave me his genting resort pen even though I
offered to pay for it twice.

I'm always taken by surprise when people do nice things or go out of
their way to help. Is it because I think too little of people? Or is
it because I might be to proud to ask for help?

I wonder.