Bedroom Concert

There are so many things you can do in the privacy of your bedroom. Such as singing and dancing in your undies. ('Tis not my example. Just AN example.)

My favourite bedroom activity is to hold a Bedroom Concert.

Gasp! You mean you have never held a bedroom concert??! I tell you, it's the shiok-est thing!

You have never pranced around the room holding a hairbrush as a microphone? Or jumped on the bed belting out your favourite songs? It would be half-hearted if you just mouthed the words with the actual song playing on laptop. You need to sing every note with gusto to show that you are a serious singer. By the end of it, you should be feeling as breathless as you would have been if the concert was held in the Singapore Indoor Stadium.

That night, I had an encore segment that overran the time limit. My fans were so enthusiastic I couldn't disappoint them right? :D

Meow!

Eating alone by the riverside has always been a romantic concept to me. I always feel happily lost in the great city, thinking of the million big dreams to fulfill, and countless distances to conquered. It is always nice to sit by the bank and listen to the waves.

Doesn't The Sail look utterly unspectacular? It is dwarfed by the neighbouring office blocks. I remember its sales pitch was to draw people to stay in the city, above the city. And the artists' impressions showed that it stood above the sparkling lights of the city, and everything else. Hmm...

I digress. I actually wanted to say how I enjoyed Cats The Musical. See, I got a really close view of the stage :)

Spoiler alert!

The opening act began with a long sequence of orchestra music. We were anticipating the performers to appear on stage, until one by one, we felt something breathing down their necks. Hordes of Cats had swarmed the theatre without warning, and were prowling among the audience. Although I clearly knew they were actors in disguise, I had to breathe hard and keep still to stop myself panicking. See how close they got:

Don't judge me for being afraid of actors dressed as cats, cos they were really life-like!

And of course, the rest of the musical was breathtaking. I enjoyed every bit of it.

So glad I insisted on watching it even when no one could accompany me :))

Reading on Rainy Days

Just felt like spending time with myself today after work. Usually that means window shopping and book browsing.

I went to Parkway for dinner and spied on my colleagues at my 3 outlets there. After paying my bills and doing some banking, I walked over to the Marine Parade library. I vowed not to buy books for the next 12 months in an effort to save money. To show my determination, I had refused to renew my Borders membership. Why spend on books when you can borrow from our wonderful libraries? And note, our libraries really do carry a good collection of books, even new ones.

Referring to my list of "wanted books" which I kept in my handphone, I went browsing at the shelves. I have the list with me wherever I go, in case I have a sudden urge to visit the book store or library and I dunno what to look for.

I made a beeline for Chuck Palaniuk just to check out the available books there, although my list pointed me to David Mitchell. I cannot resist a Chuck P. book. I've read a number of his books and none failed to entertain me. Just check out my Visual Bookshelf on Facebook. You can imagine how I look forward to his next book.

At home, I have American Gods by Neil Gaiman. While he is the hottest writer among my friends, I have yet to get past Chapter 4 of the book even after repeated attempts. I found it incredibly boring, or I'm just not interested in adult fantasy tales. (If there's anyone who wants to buy it from me at a cheaper price, please sms me. Price negotiable.)

Speaking of fantasies, I'm a huge fan of children fantasy, I'm sure you know already :)

There's a Youtube clip of someone giving a literary analysis of how Harry Potter is gay. Personally, I think he's reading too much into it, if I ignore the jarring clue related to Stonewall High. Play the clip to see what I mean.




By the way, did Dan Brown come up with a new book? Hui and I spotted an unfamiliar title on the faraway shores of Tioman but I couldn't find it on the web.

Anyway, back to the library, I cleared my debt before checking out the 2 books. Do you know you gotta clear your fines before you can borrow? I was amazed it took NLB so long to come up with the idea.

Now, I've got 2 books to tide me through the rainy season. Pure bliss :)

Same Old Stuff

Why do I always happen to watch the same episodes on Discovery when I'm home? Since 12 noon, I'm watching the same episodes I saw at least a year ago. Gah, I'm going to the library.

ME Time @ SAM

Being an aspiring art connoisseur, I'm always on the lookout for notable exhibitions and events. (Whether I attend or not is another matter. After all, I'm only aspiring. During every year's Art Fest, I would take the event guide and circle the shows that I wanna watch. Then I will forget about them.)

The girls and I hold a soft spot for the SAM among the other museums for reasons only we will understand (not entirely coincidentally, Tay's holding her wedding there). And I have a penchant for art pieces compared to heritage exhibits.

So one Sunday afternoon, when I strolled down Bras Basah Road alone, I decided to pop by SAM planning to see the Xu Beihong exhibit.



Recently, many of Xu Beihong's paintings are in the spotlight. Each going for record prices at auctions. I only knew of him when reading the newspapers and learnt that a number of his pieces were produced in Singapore (Nanyang).



It's fascinating to see not just how each stroke on the painting is perfect, but also to understand the story behind each piece, what the artist wanted to express and how the painting reflected his emotions at that time.



Xu Beihong is well known for his drawings of horses as each was drawn with simple yet definitive strokes. And all of them portrayed Xu's feelings of hope, lost, remorse. To be able to express your thoughts feelings through art is really the highest form of personal expression. And I truly admire those who are articulate enough to do so.

I really enjoy spending time by myself like this :) Not to say I don't like being with people la.

从出江湖

As a parting gift to Crush, I've been asked to pen the four characters 金台夕照 for a Creative presentation. It's a property ad, hence the adequacy of the words.

I've hung up my calligraphy brush since Sec 4 and I wasn't an expert to begin with. Luckily my tools (brush, ink, writing guide) were in working condition but it took me a while to regain the hang of writing calligraphy.

It's strangely therapeutic writing calligraphy. When you're concentrating hard on injecting strength into the characters with the soft brush and make sure every stroke is flawless, you'll block out every sound and every thought. And at the end of it, you'll see the results of your hard work.

I was rather happy with my piece. I hope it was good enough for the Art Director :)

It's a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Serene and the calligraphy girls, when you are free, let's get together and 切磋切磋 :)

Birthday Musings

I don't have a fancy car; to get to you, I'd walk a thousand miles.

- All I Have To Give, BSB

Sometimes a girl just needs a hopeless romantic. It's my secret girly dream to marry Nick Carter. I don't care that you think he's fat, or he's dumb or he has dated Paris Hilton. Nothing matters as long as he would walk a thousand miles to me. Every girl needs a a man who would venture into unknown realms just to retrieve a fallen star for her. :)

Damn. My favourite track in the album is jumping. I think I overplayed it.

*****

It's been pouring cats and dogs and mice for days. And I love it. I can stare out of the window all day and muse about the world. I fantasise about jumping into the puddles while holding my frilly umbrella and singing in the rain.

Just not in my precious new shoes. Which unfortunately got soaked today.

*****

Was watching the Golden Horse Awards, the performance segment where an orchestra played the sound tracks of some popular films. And I pointed out to Baby, Hey do you recognise this? It's from the God of Gamblers!

She shrugged and remarked, I don't know. It's from your generation.

Am I old enough to belong to a generation of my own already??

*****

I confess. I'm secretly in love with Stephen Chow's films. I used to hate them cos I thought they were stupid. But I realise sometimes you just need to laugh yourself silly. There's no need to be so high and mighty all the time.

*****

Friday kickstarted the birthday celebrations. From boogie-ing at Butter, dining as posh Oosh, feasting on seafood, meeting the girls to romancing at Clarke Quay.

The stars are shining on me. I'll be signing the contract, setting my future in cast and stone. I'll be collecting my long overdue degree too. It's gonna be a great week :)

Only problem is there's a pimple on the underside of my eyelid, making it impossible for me to open my eye to its maximum size. And it's rather uncomfortable to close it too. How to take pretty pictures with a swollen eye??

On MC

I got at least ten calls yesterday when I was trying to rest. And all about work too. Hate it! Anyway, I have been on medical leave most of the week. And clients are taking the opportunity to be unfair and speak untruths to my colleagues who are taking over my stuff. Things they claim they told me but never actually did. Grrr!!

Well, here are some of my helpful colleagues on a Friday night out :)

On Leave 27/9 - 2/10

What a glorious afternoon. I got the afternoon off and came home to rest. Was helping my boss on a mega pitch the whole of last weekend (By whole, I mean morning till 11pm on both days). Finally managed to replenish my lack of sleep. Plus it was raining heavily. Me likey :)

From tomorrow onwards, I'll be on official leave till next Tuesday. My boo (fave phrase of the moment) is having his birthday soon. So I thought I'll take the chance to clear leave. He's taking me on a beach getaway this weekend :) We got a fantastic deal at the Natas fair.

When I said I was going to the Natas fair, Baby thought I was going see some aerospace show. I think she meant NASA.

Jetstar is having a promotion for travel Jan-Mar. My Papa wants to go. Means I'm going to HK (again) next CNY. Yay!

Before I go away, I'll be catching up on some reading. Dylan has been lending some comics and the most interesting of all is this series called The Books of Magic, by Neil Gaiman, which Dylan claimed to be extremely similar to the Harry Potter saga. In other words, he's saying that the richest woman in England was just a lowly plagiariser. It does seem pretty suspicious. I'm going to check it out.

I love being on leave, being at home all by myself in the afternoons. I like to imagine myself as a poor poet in 17th century Paris, with the bustling marketplace on the cobblestone streets below. I like the feeling of a little person lost in the big world, yet enjoying the seclusion. I get weird feelings like this sometimes. Since I'm not in 17th century Paris, I go to watch movies by myself. My boo couldn't understand why I do that. *chuckles* I'm an enigma :)

Think I'll be blogging a bit as well.

To Market, To Market

I spent the whole Tuesday morning in the kitchen attempting to whip up a tasty edible meal for the Sir Dewei in return for his chivalry. More importantly, I wanted to make good old Cantonese soup for Her Highness Agnes who needed all the nourishment she could get for a speedy recovery. (My mum had to ask, "Are you making the soup for boy or girl?")

For the first time, I had to go the the neighbourhood market to get fresh ingredients for the meal I was going to prepare. I have not been to the market for so long that I did not realise it was upgraded. I could no longer locate the butcher my mum frequented.

Although the new layout was unexpected, it was neat. Veggie sellers, chicken sellers, butchers, fishmongers, florists were each given an alley to sell their wares. Thinking like a smart (first-time) homemaker, I made a beeline for the stalls with the most customers.

Veggie stall
I picked out two healthy looking onions (which later turned out to be 4 times too much for a two person meal) and paid twenty cents for them. They cost next to nothing! And that made me happy. See, I am a domestic goddess.

Butcher's
The butcher with the most customers looked really experienced so I ordered in Cantonese, as instructed by my mum (also partly cos I didn't know how to order what I wanted in Mandarin). I had other instructions as well i.e. remove the skin and the fats but the assistant didn't seem to understand me. In the end, despite my attempt to speak polished Cantonese, I had to mix in some Mandarin to make sure my message got across. Totally unglam.

Later I got home to realise the two different parts of the pig that I bought looked pretty much the same. I could only dump both into the pot without following the procedure of boiling one first and complicated instructions like that.

Chicken stall
I needed to get chicken wings and chicken feet. Unfortunately for me, none of the chicken sellers had customers (I guess 9 plus was a pretty late hour for grocery shoppers at the wet market) at that moment. I chose to buy from the most kindly looking uncle who, of course, turned out to be a very shrewd man.

He told me each chicken wing cost 40 cents. I pondered that for a second when he said, "Five for 2 dollars." To the amateur domestic goddess, it sounded like a good bargain. To the marketing student, it sounded like bundled pricing, i.e a good bargain. Only after paying, I realised five 40 cents chicken wings cost exactly 2 dollars; it was simple Math, not exactly a bargain...

Then I told him I wanted chicken feet, about 10 pieces. The uncle said, "Give me fifty cents. You will get more than 10 pieces. Other people here sell chicken feet at 5 cents a piece (must be an attempt to confuse me with the prices again)." The packet of chicken feet which he threw at me contained 20 pieces. I didn't know what to do with so many pieces, so I chucked a couple of ugly looking ones away when I got home.

At the end of bustling and being clumsy in the kitchen, I came up with 1. oyster sauce (overcooked and too salty) chicken wings, 2. (messy pile of) fried egg with onion, 3. (not rich enough) chicken feet with peanut soup, 4. rice. At least I got the rice right. And Dewei was kind enough to comment that the food smelled fragrant. And Agnes was very touched by my soup.

Oh well, it was fun nonetheless.

A Day As A Geek

The day has come for me to spend the day outside in my geeky spectacles. The geeky specs with super thick, and badly scratched lenses, fading frame colour and bits of algae. Gross. The geeky specs that should never see the light of day.

I want to get a new pair of specs this week, thus I need to relieve my eyes from contact lenses for a couple of days for an accurate eye examination. With one more library book left to read, I planned to spend the two days hibernating at home. Until I remembered I was meeting Siyi for lunch today.

For a moment, I thought of cancelling the lunch date but decided not to, since we were only meeting at neighbourly Tampines. Besides, Siyi has seen me in my geeky getup before; I figured that she wouldn't mind the fugly specs.

On the way to lunch, a hot girl boarded the bus. I thought, Darn, without my specs, I am as hot as her lor. But with the specs, my hotness level plunged to near zero, so I attempted to blend into the bus seat.

Other than Siyi, I vowed to run into no one familiar. If I were to see someone I knew coming my way, I was to head in the other direction. Good plan! But not workable if the person I knew was in the same lift as me, which was what happened. Okay... that person was only a parent from the RC... But who knows, she might be planning to introduce her handsome and eligible nephew to me. Now, my golden opportunity has been thwarted by my ugly specs, and the ugly outfit that went with the ugly specs!

After (a yucky) lunch, Siyi returned to work. I milled around the area, asked Agnes if she needed me to buy lunch for her (an offer which she politely declined), and made my way to the regional library. There was no where better to spend the blazing afternoon in geeky specs other than our cosy library, right?

It was in this wonderful library that I chanced upon some gems that were usually on loan and under reservation. What luck! Skipping happily, I returned home armed with, among others, Soseki's I Am A Cat and The Time Traveler's Wife. If The Time Traveler's Wife is as wonderful as what Wanqing claimed ("Better than Life of Pi and Middlesex"), I am in for a treat! For I love the two books. Incidentally, if you want to read Life Of Pi and/or Middlesex, especially Ong Hui, get it from me. Spread the bookness~

And speaking of spreading the bookness, I am collecting a second set of Harry Potter books for my little cousin back in HK. If you want to sell yours (I cannot fathom why), any of the books, at a price lower than the bookstores, let me know.

Okay, the next friend who sees me in my fugly specs can only be Hui Ding who is taking me to her optician. Oh, and knight in shining armour, Sir Dewei, who will be protecting bespectacled and nerdy looking Princess Xiangxiang (title conferred by Her Highness Agnes) from the cable techinician tomorrow morning :D

Uncle Oscar Humped The Mountain Till Its Back Broke

Title courtesy of Qing

Y'all, fans of Brokeback, congratulations~

It's amusing to know that so many of my friends love Brokeback when they have never seen another Ang Lee or Oscar worthy show (besides Titanic). And amusing to watch the beefy men in singlets and shorts clustered together in the cinema. Rare sight, I say. But h-o-t.

It's not the hot sex in the tent that moved us all, right? Must be the heartwrenching love between two people. It doesn't matter whether the love's between men and women, or solely men or women. It's the power of love that matters.

Oh alright, I guess the sex scenes helped. Which reminds me - Must there be a sexual relationship between two men before they're considered to be in love? Been trying to answer this for ages, because a girl and a boy can be in love without sex. So can two girls. Just wondering about two guys.

And I think it is unfair to suspect the director to be gay simply because he has shot more than one good film based on this theme. I think it's because portraying emotions is Ang Lee's forte and gay theme films is the genre that can best express the most intense emotions.

Thumbs up for Crash too. Have you seen it? It's showing again at GVs. And George Clooney was superduper delectable~