新年快樂!

新年快樂, 年年有餘, �喜發財, 歲歲平安!

Actually I copied and pasted these greetings from Wikipedia. Haha… cause I don’t have a chinese erm, typing system so I had to go online to get greetings.

Hey did you know on the 2nd day of the lunar new year ‘the Chinese offer prayers to their ancestors as well as to all the deities. They are extra kind to dogs and feed them well. It is also believed that the second day is the birthday of all dogs.’ (From Wikipedia) So cute right! Birthday of all dogs…

I wish I had a dog…

Anyway, yesterday was better than expected. For all the bitching on NYeve, it was really better than expected, bar the awkward small talk with some cousins (and the need to act demure… haha). As usual, all the guys prayed to the god of

But this year I won’t be detered! So I joined in! Although (1)I didn’t play (2)I was relegated to the ‘old school’ gameboy. Haha… okay la. I thought it was quite funny how they liked to make fun of WQ. Cause he is the youngest of all cousins, a good 8 years younger than the next youngest, and he is kind of spoilt. So when X was playing some car racing game, WQ was complaining… so J plugged in the other controller and told him ‘Hey you’re playing too… look, you’re the other passenger in the car, you have to help him steer’

As he gets older, it’s harder to lie to him. Haha…

We didn’t eat overpriced prata this year! We went to Little India to eat overpriced curry. Some restaurant beside Muthu’s Curry (which isn’t all that nice).

(Aftermath)

Yummy!

Then went to play pool.

Anyway, what I really wanna say is… sometimes I forget the happiness. Cause I think I’m actually quite lucky that my maternal side family is quite close… And I always bitch about them (making small talk, overachiever cousin, cousin’s creepy gf etc) but in fact, I secretly love all of it. Okay maybe not love, cause it’s creepy. Maybe I secretly like my extended family a lot. Like it’s a kind of good natured ribbing… Like of course I go around telling people oh I hate it when my aunts tell me to get married soon blah blah blah, but actually don’t you think it’s pretty sweet? Haha.

For the record, I spoke to cousin’s creepy girlfriend. Okay la, spoke is kind of a stretch. I asked her what her name is, cause we have never been formally introduced (she just appeared at family gatherings one day). We spoke like a maximum of 20 words before I had to leave to eat overpriced yummy curry. And played pool with overachiever cousin, who was very nice to me everytime I missed a simple shot (which is pretty much all the time).

Butterfly malt candy thingy!!

Oh ya! I wonder what they call me… I mean refer to me as. Cause I go around refering to all my cousins by their name sake and (only this year) I realised that they don’t refer to me as Christine. Or Chris. Or even Pei Shan. Do you know what they call me! *horrified* My godmum calls me ‘baby’ (*hides), my godcousins call me ‘jie’, my other aunts and uncles and cousins call me ‘girl ar’. Wtf?! Haha… I don’t understand it… I have 2 other female cousins! Okay so maybe I’m the youngest female in the family, but still!!! How come the rest of them get to be called by their own names when I’m referred to as a generic gender?!!?!?

Seriously, none of my extended family calls me by my real name or even a variation of it. Okay even my own family doesn’t call me by Chris/Shan etc. In fact, the only people who use the name printed on my IC are the people outside my extended family. (ie friends and acquaintances. Although I’m also known as peanut to some… haha)

Huh!!

I’d like to think it’s a kind of endearment. Seriously… cause the other reason would be that they totally forgot my real name.

Oh ya, the lion people come today… Did the whole dance thingy and stuff. Can you believe I was in bed until they arrived at the door step?! I had like 2 minutes to throw on some decent clothes, brush my teeth, wash my face and comb my hair. Was barely out of the room when they started the dance. Huh.

There’s never been an oyster so divine

Huh. I’m supposed to be helping out with the new year stuff, being the good daughter, god daughter etc but I pleaded assignment and now I’m here pretending to frown at the screen but actually writing blog. Hoho. And Garbage is playing, (Garbage as in the band, not the noun/verb) hence the title of this entry.

Huh!! About 3 more days to February and the calender will be filled with Snow White (January’s Aurora)… I don’t like Snow White! :/
There are many perks to being a god daughter really. Like more money to buy New Year’s clothes, more money in general and also 2 god parents who really dote on you. Downside is… well there is no downside, but I haven’t been a good god daughter.

So I tried on Wednesday, playing the good god daughter role and did the whole ’send new year goods’ thing to my god parent’s place. Difference being – previous years it’s always been my mum doing it, but this year she’s not free to drive me down, so I have to go alone.

Who knew that there will be so much stuff??!?!?!

There is a good 8 kg of stuff I have to lug TO SENGKANG… which is like the other side of Singapore! Seriously. I experiementally tried to carry them down the steps and by the time I was at the bus stop I was already half gone. The thought of having to lug them on to a bus, the train, then change to the North East line… *shudder. So I took cab there.

Good idea except it made me really broke.

Anyway, I’m pleased with myself. Not bad right! Good god daughter!

*

Arghghgh. But I never liked the first day of chinese new year. I mean, I like CNY, but I don’t like the whole going to the extended family place and make small talk thing. For one, I am almost always bored.

And this year, deciding that Potong Pasir isn’t far enough from Bukit Batok, the extended family has decided to move further up the north east line to PONGGOL.

…

Okay, so now the extended family’s at Ponggol, 2 of my married cousins are at Ponggol, some of them at Pasir Ris, a couple of my aunts are at Hougang, my godparents are at Sengkang. The closest will be my aunt staying in Tiong Bahru.
So visually, it will look like this -

Fantastic.

So tomorrow will be another 7 hours of sitting on a sofa, watching tv, eating over priced prata, saying approximately 15 words per hour. The guys will ignore me and pray to the god of dota/ps2/basketball. My only 2 other female cousins – well one decidedly swings the other way, so I cannot talk about girly stuff with her… the other belong to the married with babies crowd already and I have nothing to contribute to the virtues of breast feeding as compared to formula milk. Ackkkkk. And I don’t like my cousin’s girlfriend cause she is creepily happy all the time. *shrug.

Sigh. I am so dreading tomorrow. Seriously. Sometimes I feel that nobody will miss me if I disappear from CNY celebrations. I’ll just be known as ‘the creepy girl who sits there smiling at the television and never talks’.

Haute Couture S/S 06

Oh my god, I’m so excited, I can’t contain my excitment as I type this! I’ll probably come back later to edit this entry, but arhghhgh I am so in love with Givenchy’s Spring/Summer 06 Couture collection! I thought Chanel was nice, Dior was fascinating, Elie Saab was sexy but arghghhhh!!! Givenchy just took my breath away. I don’t know, it’s just beautiful, it’s not shocking like Dior, but I don’t know… maybe because instead of a catwalk, Tisci used the art installation style to display the clothes.

Ok, just a picture first, I’ll talk about the rest later. (Pictures from Vogue.co.uk)

Givenchy HC SS 06

MariaCarla Boscono in a stunning white dress

Natasha Poly and Doutzen Kroes! My 2 favourite models for the moment (you might also remember them from the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show… Natasha’s the one whose shoe fell off) Man, I have an urge to wear those geeky glasses now although I’ll look totally stupid. Haha. Librarian Chic is in!

Carmen Kass

Isn’t it amazing how a simply cut dress without any fussy embellishments can look so beautiful?

(Don’t know this model)

My favourite dress of the whole show! Simply gorgeous.

On other Haute Couture shows, I quite like Elie Saab’s stuff… his clothes are always very feminine and pretty and wearable. I would love to see these dresses in the Academy Awards…

Ai Tominaga/Caroline Winberg

Romina Lanaro/Alexandra Argoston
So pretty! Sometimes you look at the horrible stuff people wear on the red carpet and wonder… with so many beautiful gowns available… why oh why don’t they wear one of the 57 gorgeous dresses in any collection?

Chanel has quite nice stuff also, but sometimes I think with Chanel, one you see one collection the rest won’t really surprise you anymore… they are quite conservative in this sense.

Natasha Poly/Anna Catherine Lacroix

Hana Soukupova/(Not sure who)

But I love the way they did the hair and makeup! I spent a while trying to emulate this hairstyle at home… haha, and it kind of worked except I was lacking the really pretty hair accessories so I’m gonna buy them!

As opposed to Dior, which scared the heck out of me, until I realised Galliano’s vision for the French Revolution. I mean, it’s not hard to gather that, what with the huge ‘1789′ splashed everywhere.

Hana Soukupova/Romina Lanaro

Morgane Dubled/Irina

I know Galliano was trying to make a show, so the makeup and stuff had to be in tune. But does he have to make them so scary??!! It’s so zombie like… I mean, compare Romina Lanaro from the Elie Saab show and this… it’s scary! And Hana Soukupova from the Chanel show and this… Or even Morgane Dubled in the Christian Dior makeup advertisements and here….

Sasha Pivorarova would have been perfect for this show… haha. But she was in another show… JPG…
Anyway, I also love JPG, what with the Jasmine Disney princess vibe/ Audrey Hepburn / Bond Girl thingy they have going on…

Michelle Buswell/Erin O’Connor

Sasha Pivorarova/Lesly Masson

Lesly Masson’s outfit is absolutely gorgeous, seriously. I love the gold chain belt thingy…

Other shows are good too… I just find these couple of shows better…

Happy Daer Birthdays!

After 2 years, us all in different majors and timetables, I’m glad we are still close.

Our group won all three times! Yay!

I wanted to buy this top, but S is too loose.

Sketches dinner, balcony and one

Supposed to eat steamboat, but we ended up at Bugis instead cause it was raining donkies.

Saturday anywhere is crazy crowded! We ended up eating at Sketches, the pasta’s good! And ya, some stuff are painfully obvious. But I think we tried. Nevermind.

Later went with Mel and Jh to meet Hching and Jason at Balcony. It was fun! I had something called the screaming multiple orgasm. Was told to act like my drink. Haha. (Pictures from Hching’s flickr)

Not very orgasm like (Hoho) but the background effect looks quite nice!

We tried again using my drink again. Huh. I look constipated.

Me trying on Hching’s glasses

Oh ya! The girls are so nice to write a really sweet post card for me! (: We wrote for each other actually

Then to One, this new club (ex Centro). It’s quite nice, but then again I’ve always had something for One Fullerton, I think the view’s really nice. It was actually quite fun, bar the weird ass guy talking to me, which is actually kind of horrifying.

Makeup, peanuts and kittens!

‘Baby Baby’ Amy Grant

I love how early 90s songs are so uplifting! Not in terms of lyrics, but the tune!

Went for some Lancome makeup thingy yesterday (courtesy of Sam) and wah! I’ve just confirmed again, the fact that I cannot ever wear thick makeup. I look like plastic. I’ll post a picture when I get the 675 photos from Sam haha. The woman was also quite nice to give us the photo passport thing without purchase.

(I saw the photos on Sam’s blog but I look disgusting in it! So I will not post it! )

I should have done my project for CAM at IndoChine! We had to call them thrice JUST to pay the bill! And also I told them like 2 times I was allergic to peanuts, so can they not spinkle any peanuts on my glass noodles but peanuts just magically appear on my glass noodles! The food’s good though, I quite like it.

Then went to look at the kitten they picked up. Photo from Sam’s flickr.

Arghhh! Love love love. It was quite hard to get it to drink milk though, so we had to try lots of ways to cajole / threaten it to drink, including invoking the ‘goodbye kitty’ threat. Haha.

Standard of Engrish

Okay, I am not an English major, nor do I not profess to be an exceptional english speaker who can sprout of fanciful launguage at will, and I kind of like it when people slip into spoonerisms – I think it’s funny.
But omg, I need to share some stuff with you guys before I go back to do my research (2 weeks into school and I am working overnight on a project! wth). It’s not VERY wrong, but it’s really quite funny.

• From the X:odus webpage (the last sentence of the page)

‘At X:odus, shopping is never made easier’

Yup, I bet they go all out to make it a difficult process… haha.

• From ThaiExpress (one of the little cards they put on the table promoting the member birthday specials)
  

‘… voucher can be redeemed 5 days before or after your actual birth date’

Gee, that will be in 2nd March 1984, so I guess I won’t be redeeming it.Ya ya… I’m mean. So much stuff to blog about! I’ve bought a new bikini. Yay! Okay got to go do some work.

Wake up baby, you’re so totally deluded

‘Good Luck‘ Basement Jaxx

I hate to say this but I am deluded. I’m under the impression that I’m actually intellectual. Oh but I’m not. (This is where you guys can step in and say something like ‘oh no chris what are you talking about!’)

Was talking to Cher yesterday, and got on the topic of when W sent me back that night. Basically the gist was he was talking about his career path and such, and I was really impressed with his clear plans and focus. Then he asked me ‘So what do you want to do after you graduate?’

I stammered.

Erm… I really want to be a wedding planner…

‘Wow that’s good’

Ya, but you have to have like capital and stuff, so it’s not easy…

‘Do you really need a lot of capital for that?’

Erm, well, you know. You need to have like wedding dresses and stuff. I’m not talking wedding planning as in only planning, but like with everything… like a one stop wedding center… erm, ya, something like that.

‘Oh…’

I sound like an idiot.

Maybe that’s why all of a sudden he started driving a bit faster. So he can dump off this stupid girl as soon as possible.

Sigh. I’ve recently come to realise that I cannot remember the last time I had a serious face to face conversation with anyone. Honestly. Not serious stuff like politics, ‘what do you think about the situation in the middle east’ kind of serious. More of ‘Oh so what do you want to do for the rest of your life’, ‘I really want to have a husband and 2.5 kids’ kind of serious. And I realised that most of my conversations have centered about (1)clothes and fashion and perfumes and shoes and bags (2)how some people really annoy me (3)how sienna miller is famous for no apparent reason (4)where to club next (5)how there are no more dateable guys left in the universe etc…

Not that they aren’t stimulating and intelligent conversations.

It just feels like sometimes I am being judged all the time. I am not comfortable with that – I acknowledge that this is how life is like, it doesn’t mean I have to like it. I know there are people who look at me and at my lifestyle and shake their heads at how useless my thoughts are. ‘Look at her. How superficial. How meaningless.’

I’ve spent a part of my life trying to gain approval from people like that.
Maybe some things are supposed to be meaningless. Maybe some people don’t like to talk about heavy stuff. Maybe they do, just not to you… does it give you the right to make snide remarks? Everyone is different, I just hate it when people get all high and mighty on me when they don’t know me.
Argh, look at me, getting worked up for no reason at all. Blah.

A little affected

Just saw some photos from Time and Reuters.
I kind of choked several times when I was looking at the photos, especially those from reuters. The malnourished baby hand was heart breaking. A devastated woman with a child in Banda Aceh and a father holding his daughter surveying his wrecked home after Katrina and Rita.

It seems that it’s always children who (sorry for the cliche) tug on your heartstrings…

I think I broke when I saw the picture of an Iraqi man holding up a child… who was killed when some U.S. troops opened fire at a minibus. (picture 15/40 from Reuters)

I thought the most interesting and perhaps symbolic was picture 13/40 from Reuters.
Isn’t it ironic how the ‘best photos of the year’ are mainly ones that deal with death / war / destruction / disasters?

Stuff that happened

Lots of happy stuff happened during the week, I was preparing to blog about them. I still will, but I’m a little affected now, so it will not be as cheery as I was planning to be.

*

Photos from long time ago at Zouk here. (Courtesy of Chris… long overdue! )

Photos from Aloha Changi here. (I’m so efficient!)

*

Friday was good… went for facial at Mary Chia. I’m quite happy I’m not going back there anymore actually. Don’t really like the way they deal with facials; think I’m gonna go bioskin or something. I left Mary Chia with a few tiny little scars from the pricking… but I really like the way my facial-ist (facial person? beautician?) deals with my eye brows. It’s nice.

Met Yanmei for early dinner before going for law class. I really like Dr. St*nley Lai. Haha. He’s very funny, and it’s not really a lecture… I kind of felt it was like a discussion of sorts, where you still learn. I like it. Anyhoo, yay! Ym was telling me something she was getting… the Dior bracelet and lip gloss thing … Printemps? I’m not sure what it’s called. And I’m getting it! Wheee! It’s so pretty.

Caleb Mel and Hching came down to Law to pick me up, then we headed to Aloha Changi, which is VERY FAR. And Chalet K which is VERY ISOLATED. Haha. Missed seeing the crew and it was a great time to catch up. They are so sneaky! Made us confess about the most disgusting thing about ourselves (I like eating chicken skin) and the most embarrassing thing (I fell down … basically everywhere). Was a bit tempted to stay over, but the toilet’s a mess (ya ya I’m fussy) and I didn’t have my contact lens case.

And also I’m going to Ritz to meet Cher and her friends from UT for drinks. Now that I think of it, we never did finish the caramel thingy we ordered which was actually quite yummy. This is going to sound so nerdy but I’ve never seen someone smoke a cigar… not in real life. I like the band.

I thought it was quite funny how Cher called the next day ‘So how was the ride home?‘ Haha… sorry girl, no interesting details.