Mid-Year Resolutions

Having New Year's resolutions is like the Thais declaring a war against their state, or Linsey Lohan announcing that she found a cure for cancer- there is a lot of fanfare but nobody actually takes them seriously.

Remember my one of my earlier resolutions to go to New Zealand to pick apples? Well, like any New Year's resolutions, it never materialised.

But Mid-Year's resolutions are goals that are precipitated as a result of observations and experiences from the first half of the year, and then forecasted onto the next half a year. Simply said, they are the more realistic and trustworthy brothers of New Year's resolutions.

So here are my top 4 and I can assure you that they are not your usual run-of-the-mill list:

1) Learn Bahasa

I am seriously thinking of signing up for the Bahasa classes at the Community Club.

Already I hear guffaws from all you fancy schmucks. But what's the point of learning French and fancy German when I'm probably only going there once, at most twice in my entire life. When I took up Japanese, it was because I used to travel to the country a lot with my dad, and hence a basic grasp of the language was useful.

Nevermind the 'Hellos' and the 'How do you dos', I need to at least learn how to swear, say "I understand what you're saying" or act blur with a "I don't understand Bahasa" when I want to amuse myself with the kind of things that people say aloud when they think you do not understand their language.

Besides, coming from someone who made a boo-boo in Indonesia when I ordered "Selamat satay" and the guy just stared at me like his face would crack.

I only found out later that while I wanted to buy 10 satays, whatever I said actually meant something like "Greetings satay!" which not only doesn't make sense, it made me look really stupid. It's going to be a fantastic face-saving language if I travel out into the region in the next couple of months, and I expect to be doing that quite a bit.

2) Pick up Poker and be damn good at it
I wanna hold em like they do in Texas Plays, fold em let em hit me raise it baby stay with me, luck and intuition play the cards with Spades to start...

Alright, I'll admit that the Gaga fever got to me, but what with the 2 new casinos opening in Singapore at the Integrated Sentosa Resorts and the Marina Bay Sands, I think it's time I do my part as a proud Singaporean to win back some worthy "foreign investment" - One. Game. At. A. Time.


3) Learn to play golf
Like snorting noodles through your nostrils or bungee jumping, I'll bet that learning to play golf is one of those evergreen items on everyone's list of "Things to do before you turn 30". Well, it is on mine.

Who cares if Mark Twain once said that golf is “a good walk spoiled”, and nevermind that I'd probably golf a grand total of ONCE a year. Golfing is just one of those things that at the ripe young age of 24, you don't really know why you want to do it, but you simply have to have the badge on your sleeve.

Besides, it's way cooler than telling people that you have the Certificate of Achievement for scaling the Great Wall of China, which nobody actually gives a fly about.


4) Join a gym/ dance class
Before my ass sags like a duffel bag and before I get thrown into TAF club. Nuff said.

Look who's been misbehaving!

Rarely am I ever denied entry into clubs without an ID for looking underaged.

But when the door bitch of a certain popular club in town decidedly accused one of us for being a jailbait, we hiked up our already-too-short Herve Leger and BCBGMAXAZRIA dresses, slung on our lambskin Chanel 2.55 purses and brought our perfected mega-watt smiles to St James Powerhouse.




Then we proceeded to paint the already scarlett-coloured mega-club red.

We first popped into Powerhouse. Now, there isn't much to complain about Powerhouse. There was awesome R&B music, the people were less posey and more dancey, and there were not many whales who would attempt to do a somersault on the podium after one too many apple vodka. In fact, it was perfect, until someone came up to us:


[Guy] Hey it's my friend's 21st birthday and we are breaking a bottle to celebrate. Thought you ladies might like to join us?

I've never felt more like a cougar in my life.

But at the brink of inebriation, anything and everything seemed like a valid reason for us to clink our wine glasses together in celebration. And so I fibbed, telling the guy that we got kicked out of the other club for being underaged, a story which he readily lapped it up.

After about 4 hours and 2 bottles of champagnes, I was still left with a lot of mileage to party. But then the fluorescent lights came on, and I was left with the choice adjourning to Dragonfly for some cheesy CantoPop, or risk looking like a mime performer basking in Orchard if I didn't get off the podium.

Clearly I chose neither...Siao!

So here's to my awesome friends, who gamely allowed me to post some of our photos on my blog. We were many things that night, but above all, we had fun.

But to the door bitch at the first club: If I had a cheaper Chanel bag, I'd swing it into your oily face and bloody your pug nose. May we look younger than you forever.

Happy Easter Ya'll

I spent the Easter Holiday in exactly the same way I'd spend celebrating Deepavali.

But to all of you, whom the holiday meant something more, Happy Easter to ya'll!

Dress from Sophisticate: A dash of colour for a cheerful occassion.

Latest Fashion Trend in Hong Kong

If intelligence is a determinant of one's sex appeal, then there is no clearer indication of one's brain size than the size of one's glasses.

While I am not a big fashion experimenter on a daily basis, sticking to slim-cut basics and 4-inch heels, the same way Tiger Woods stick to blond women, every once in a while, I go overboard experimenting with new looks.

A while ago it was the Blair Waldorf look, for which I bought a headband that came with plumes of feather and a ribbon so huge that it will put the headgear of a Qing Dynasty princess to shame. Even then, I only enacted scenes from the Case of the Siao Overaged Teenager within the confines of my own room.

In Hong Kong, it was the studious, preppy look. The main ingredient of this look: huge, thick-rimmed vintage spectacles. Students wore it, the working class wore it, bankers walking towards the Central subway wore it. The trend was said to have started in London, then spread to Hong Kong, Korea and Japan. While the geeky-specs appeal got picked up in Singapore, the more conservative local dressers did not adopt it in a big way.

So I while in Hong Kong, I went all out, and treated myself to a giant pair of cow print spectacles. And in my understated geeky glamour that is both intense and uncontrived, I reigned the streets of Hong Kong, charming people into divulging their most well-kept dimsum enclaves.

After all, like all things related to sex appeal, the bigger the better, isn't it so?

If I were a book...

If I were a book, I'll be one of those giant collection of short stories that begin abruptly, burn brightly, and end abruptly in unexpected ways. Every story would be somewhat disengaged, with different complex characters, yet strangely resonating with the previous. There will be unflinchingly sealed pages hardened with dried up glue, with secrets that no one other than the author would know.

It took me more than a week and 2 pints of Erdinger for me to see the simplicity of this question.

Check out my interview with Social PR here.

Yours Mathematically, Best Boy Slave

Sometimes in life, mathematics theories are applied to the most unthinkable of situations, like gambling, picking up chicks, shoe shopping, and rush hours in the morning. Over an MSN conversation on Sunday, it was a proposition.

I have a weakness for well-arched, painfully skinny 4 inch heels in a way as if my intelligence depended on them. Inevitably, I have amassed legions of Foot-philes with a soft spot for my well-heeled appendages. And what do they say about shoe-philes; is that beneath the heel of every successful Shoe-phile is a dedicated Footphile.

A Footphile, like people with most forms of philism, are attracted to feet, in the same way some men are to big boobs, rebonded hair and plastic nails. I wouldn't call a Footphile a Fetishist, because then you'd conjure up the images of strange men with froth at the corner of their mouth, wear their pants at chest-level, and who overdosed on colgate and peanut shells as an infant.

No, in fact they are well-heeled, god-fearing and normal looking professionals who would make my obsession with stealing toilet papers from library toilets look dangerous and abnormal.

So on a lazy Sunday afternoon, I was having a normal serious conversation with a Footphile when it expectedly steered towards him volunteering to bring me shoe-shopping. My dwindling collection of kick-ass boots and 4-inch heels has to be replenished just so that he can polish them for me. Talk about taking boot-licking to a whole new level, which I basically interpreted as:

"Free fashion advice, new sinful heels. Oh and being unconditionally worshipped."

With that part of the conversation starting with "You are the enigma of Goddess Isabelle", I was pretty much sold on the idea.

Footphile: I want to be your BBS - Best Boy Slave. That is how it's meant to be. Damn, maybe it shld be BBSF.

Me: Huh? What is BBSF?

Footphile: You know, it's like BBF, Best Friends Forever.
Mathematically, B(BS)F, where F is substituted by BS, and the outside B and F remain constant.
So that makes me your Best Boy Slave Forever.

Spotted: Sophisticated Executive Fashion Boutique at China Square

Blair Waldorf from Gossip Girl with the exquisite sense of style and a treasure trove of beautiful clothes will probably never have a case of "I've-got-nothing-nice-to-wear-for-work" (not that she has to work), but mere mortals like us with only a fraction of her clothing money would have lamented at the lack of non-mass executive wears available in the market at some point in time.

And chances are, at some point in time, we'd have experience the humiliation of turing up at work in the same blouse from G2000 as the office receptionist.

Sophisticate is a boutique tucked in a corner of the Raffles Place area that caters to the fashion needs of working fashion afficionados who loves to dress up in well-tailored non-mass dresses in rich fabrics.

Owner and designer of the label, Wendy, invited me to check out her new Spring 2010 collection, and I must say, that she has outdone herself again.

The tweed square necked dress that I was wearing in the photo above is one of my favourites in her new collection.

Exuding vintage glamour and feminine details, the dresses at Sophisticate are something that even Blair Waldorf would approve of.

You can check out part of her new collection on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/#/album.php?aid=175467&id=785744851

From now till this Sunday, 17 Jan 2010, Sophisticate will have a booth in Isetan Parkway Parade. Isetan shoppers will be entitled to a 20% discount off the new collection, and a whopping 50% off Sophisticate's older collection.

PS: I had to sneak a photo of me in that dress in the dresser, so it's chopped off where my hand with the camera is. LOL.