Hairstyle changes

I chopped a good 5 inches off my waist grazing curls, and straightened it a little, and I don't feel so sexy anymore.

On the topic of hair, ever wondered how you'd look in the year book if you had lived in the 50's? Check THIS to find out.

In the 1950s



In 1960s





In 1970s.



Hair-spray bangs in 1980s


I look so HAWT that the only way I'd ever attract a man is if I put a paper bag over my head.

Perhaps I should try hitting the clubs in one of these get ups.
Or even better, I should turn up for a photoshoot looking like this. I'm sure if Singapore didn't have gun laws, I'd be shot.

The demise of Miss Singapore Universe

All these years, pageant girls representing Singapore for Miss Singapore Universe have been getting the blame for being unable to make Singapore smell a whiff of the Miss Universe prize.

But having dealt with its incumbant organiser just ONCE, it becomes pretty clear with whom the fault lies with.

I mean there must be a reason why no sponsors are willing to pool in their valuable advertsing dollars to be associated with the event. And I can safely tell you, it's not the lack of well-calibred girls we have on this island. Singapore is not lacking in beauties, unless your perception of beauty is restricted to those deathly pale Taiwanese/J-pop lookalikes who carries straw umbrellas everywhere they go.

The fact that we are a modern, cosmopolitan city, pretty much ensures that our girls here are (for the most part), well-groomed, well-travelled and knowledgeable. The fact that our country is wealthy, pretty much ensures that plastic surgery is commonplace, except that we don't embrace it as much as the Koreans. We may not have the most well-endowed girls in the chest department, but we make up for it with wit, grace, willowy-proportions and I dare say (surprise, surprise) we have quite pretty faces.

So why is it that the pageant do not attract as much well-qualified participattion as it intended to? Why is it that the sponsors are not convinced to park their dollars with the organizers? Why are the media all giving bad reviews towards the pageant? It can't be the girls, because the contestants change pretty much every year. You don't see Jade Seah and Eunice Olsen getting the prize year after year, only to be boo-ed down the stage and going back into the same competition the next year only to be boo-ed again.

By that equation, the contestants are variables, and so are the sponsors. There is only ONE FIXED CONSTANT year after year, and I believe that my point is pretty evident by now.

Why do I say so?
1) They are extremely unprofessional. So innumerous that it's gonna disrupt the flow of my thoughts if i were to list them all out.
2) They are extremely thick in the head. You would think that after the father stepped down from being the King of teekorpeks, the son that took over would be more energetic in reinstating reforms. But no, sad to say, our senior minister was right in his beliefs in Eugenics.
3) They are extremely lazy, so lazy that they cannot even check their email regularly, and have no corporate etiquette, which then links back to the point that they are not professional.
4) They are very bad liars. It's bad enough that you aren't accoutable for the things that you've done (or rather have not done), it's worse when you tell a lie for it, and cannot even account for the lie.

For all the above stated reasons, I'm surprise that they've never evaluated themselves as the cause of a dip in popularity.

Having said that, I must say that I am terribly displease with our Royal Highness 2008 as well. I was going to refrain from commenting about her on my blog initially, because even after she made "horse rearing look like our national sports and stomping our national dance" in Vietnam, because the interview session went ahead as planned despite a few glitches in the day. But her inability to follow, and the ineffectiveness in getting things doen really had me seething with fire. I thought I was the worse time keeper around, being perpetually late for 15-30 min. But being 6 hours late is a whole new world altogether, only to preach to me about her "rights" as MSU after I've sent in my statements to the media. Nabeh!

Back to the topic of her organizer. Sadly, he didn't back her up at all. Instead he pushed all the blame onto her, citing her lack of ability to follow clear instructions as the cause of all this chaos and misunderstanding. Despite the fact that she obviously had a part in me being very angry now, I believe that she should only bear 10% of the fault.

Lack of support for the queen from the country? Hell yea, especially when her court jester is the one who is slinging mud all over the gown behind her back.

Engineers and Nostalgia belong to different parellels

I was privileged enough to be part of the entourage that was invited to the Mint Museum of Toys, on the eve of my birthday, coutesy of my client. After a sumptuous dinner spread and plied with a lot of wine, we were given a private tour of the Museum.

Housed in a 5-story building along Seah Street, just opposite Raffles Hotel, the museum holds about 5000 pieces of the private collection by avid toy collector, Chang Yang Fa. Some of these antiques can be traced back to toy makers dating back to more than a century, from more than 25 countries, yet most of which are still in mint condition. Some of the iconic playthings include 1903 Steiff bear, a Batman dispatched in Superman packaging by mistake, a 1930s plush Mickey with creator Walt Disney's signature on its sole, and Golliwogs that were banned because of its perceived racial insensitiveness.




Allow me to digress from my story just so that I can make an insignificant, neutral-toned interjection that my client came from the IT industry, and to simplify my point, the party is pre-dominantly attended by engineers. Computer engineers, software-something-engineers, just engineers in general.

At first the tour didn't generate a lot of intereast amongst the group who made polite nods and lame attempt at small talk during it. Not because the displays were anything less than impressive, but let's just say that toy collection is a very niche past time, and even then, the most avid of toy collectors usually specialize in a particular line of toys, that they can relate to. I would know. So the bunch of engineers were basically just standing around clutching the stem of their tall wine glasses and making feeble attempts to crack some jokes.

Simply put, nostalgia and the historical significance of all these pop-culture relics on display were lost on the herd of C++ professionals present. It was not until the Operations manager started rolling out the value (very very high) of individual items of all these pieces, that engineers around me jolted to attention.

Operations Manager: "This Robot that you see in the display, it's now worth USD$30,000"

Engineer: "Where, where, where? I want to see the $13,000 robot." (Takes a picture for keepsake)I take picture to tell my son so that he can keep his robot.

Operations Manager: "This piece that I'm currently showing is the only one that you'll ever see in public display. The only other 2 in the world remains in private collection."

Engineer: "Is this expensive too? I want to see all the expensive pieces. Bring us to see the most expensive one."

Engineer in symphony:
-"How come this kind of things also can be so expensive ah?"
-"If I had known, I'd ask my mother to keep all my toys."
-"How much is the most expensive toy here? Bring us to see the most expensive one"

Dear engineers, can I just roll my eyes at you?

(i) Out of the 1000 toys that you have, you will probably only have 1 that is worth that much. And only a truly passionate toy lover would be discerning enough to spot it. Those drool-filled puzzles and plastic pirated spiderman figures that you bargain off the Pasar Malam at Chinatown, they might even be tossed out after being excavated by archaelogists 10,000 years later. It will only probably be worth something if human being morph into creatures with tentacles and are born with inverted fishbowls over our heads.

(ii) Toys and comics might just just junk to you, it is in many conscious or subconscious way, a reflection of the pop-culture and mass sentiments during the period. Did you know the implications of having a superman character during World War II? Did you know why the procelain monkey figurines from Hong Kong were patterned with flower prints that is faintly remniscent of the British country side? Did you know the social implications of a Golliwog?
Contrary to what you think, the showcasing of toys from the "good old days" doens't mean that "the rich culture of the past is dead". Culture never dies. It moves on, it changes form, and the shift from wooden, tin and cloth toys to the mass manufacture of plastic toys is a clear indication of that. There is nothing sad about toys made of plastic. They are durable and they can be made to look very good.

Perhaps its the snob in me that is looking down on their ignorance, but I think it's a shame for such colossal effort at sharing history to be undermined by people who measure everything in monetary terms.

Let me put it in a very crude way: it doens't matter how much money it fetches, because it will never be yours.

*PS: The owner of this toy collection happens to be an engineer too. :P So logically speaking I should put the adjective *MOST* in my title, but I think the title sound more catchy without.

The Ah Lian got busted

I just found out that I've been profiled as an Ah Lian blogger.

So much for hiding in the closet for so damn long.

Guess what they call you, readers of my blog?

Answer : Lian-lovers

I need a sugar daddy

Having to work your way through University to feed yourself, pay for your bills, pay for your brother's insurance, stay in hall, buy textbooks is depressing enough...But it gets worse when you receive a letter from CPF board after you've graduated for a year, asking you to pay back the damn sum of $18,816.76 that you owe them.

That is a gi-normous amount to think about. Hell, I've barely started working and the whole world is asking for money from me.

After the damn CPF freezes about a quarter of my pay-cheque to "assets" that I cannot touch until I'm too old to tell $5 from $50, I am still faced with financial concerns like...

My grandparents ask me how much am I paid every week I go to their place...

My parents are like an alarm clock that rings timely every that time of the month when people generally get their pay cheques...

My brother's insurance still automatically deducts a fat sum from my account at that time of the month, and it has been doing that even before I graduated.

On top of all those major bloody suckers, I still have my bills, medical, transport, food and whatnots...

And now CPF wants me to return $250 in installments, every fucking month for the next 12 years, to my dad's gahment controlled CPF account.

What is really depressing is I just found out that my parents had kept this piece of information from me all this while. They knew all along that I was expected to pay the sum back. All these while, they have conveniently leveraged on the "I slogged so hard to pay for your very expensive school fees so you'd better be grateful", or that "You start earning money and you keep forgetting to give us an allowance, don't forget who saw you through University."

Granted that I was aware of my family's un-rosy financial situation all these years, and I was expected to make a contribution to my family the moment I graudaute, tricking me into contributing to the family's gross income was wrong and so was leveraging on that idea to control my freedom and privacy all these while.

I blame it on Tradition. I know that if I were to call my parents lying scumbugs, I can be assured that I'd make my way into the top 10 most hated bloggers in the entire blogosphere. So I blame it on the deeply entrenched Asian-Singaporean Tradition, dictating that children have to contribute to their family's financial well-being the moment that they step out of school.

It doesn't matter what your own financial capability is. If you've gotta have to eat instant noodles (even cup noodles is too expensive) and drink plain water every day, then you've gotta do it. The bottom line is, you have to make your offerings at the end of every month, and your parents have every right to use whatever methods to pry that wad of hard earn money away from you. So tradition it is.

As for those who complain to me that you are constantly in their parents' debt because they need to have starbucks for breakfast, Crystal Jade for lunch and Lawry's for dinner, you really don't know the true meaning of being in a debt.

With reference to my title, no, I won't be picking up any of you losers from Butter, (or St James for that matter) even if you somehow managed to guess my chinese name correctly.

On my way to become a major PR bitch

Updates:

I've been so engrossed in checking out people's blog and scooping out master bloggers to complete my evil plan to dominate the Earth that I completely neglected my own blog.

Indulging she-who-makes-those-little-kaopei-noises......

*discreetly flicks ear wax at her*



After this post, I feel as dumb and as bimbotic as a certain Hanny Heng blogger

Contributing to the economy

It feels like Christmas when Pay Day coincides with a Weekend.

Now it's time for me to do my part as a good Singaporean by contributing to the economy, One.Dress.At.A.Time.

(P/S: Christmas in Singapore is just about shopping excessively)