I decided to shift my blog to Blogger as it allows me to link to my friends who are using all sorts of blogging machines.

In a frenzy attempt to reverse the work of time on my skin, I smeared on layers of creams in hope of getting more supple, more even-tone and firmer skin. Alas to my horror, my skin turned patchy red the next day. It felt so tight as if I’ve put on a thick layer of clay mask. Whenever I opened my mouth to eat or drink, I can feel my skin being stretched. Lucky me still had some cream from my previous visit to Dr SK Tan. Anyhow, I found later that the cream he gave me was no miracle formula; I can get it at pharmacy at 260% cheaper! Aye…sometimes, it is good to do some research. Imagine the amount of money saved.

And so, I didn’t put on make-up to work this whole week. Well, to put it in another way, I did color my brows slightly and I used minimal eyeliner and eye shadow. But I skipped face powder and blush totally which is a big thing for me as my fave make up after brow pencil is my blusher. I paid more attention when people talked to me, observing if they noticed that I am powder-less & blush-less. AHA! No one looked really hard at me or commented that I look different.

Today, Carol said that my face was not so red anymore asked if I’m feeling better. I was happy and told her that most likely I can put on make up again this weekend. She then examined my face and continued, “You should keep it this way, without powder. Makes you look better and less oily also.” HEE…I wondered if the Estee set had already start to perform its miracles.

He is no longer in my MSN list of friends. Suddenly, his nick popped up and he asked if I am interested to watch Cabaret (since his gf is climbing mountain in china). So I was also chatting with Fang & Law and I shared with them what happened. Immediately, my close pals had such violent reactions that I laughed out really loud.

-           u shdnt at any point in this world communicate in one way or another wif him

-           treat him like shit... flush down the toilet...

-           ASK XXX GO EAT SHIT

-           wah lao... ask him to die lah

-           we go watch koi (fish) better rite?

-           everyday so many people die, why he dun die................

-           change hp no...or divert his call to pizzahut <which law actually did it to his uni friend till the poor chap got to find him and  asked him face to face, how come when I call you, pizzehut picked up the phone?? HAHAHA>

-           He's dumb... u forgot

-           some people r dumb or perhaps eq n iq not as high u cant blame them though

-           …

Seriously, my close friends had never once mentioned their discontentment or disapproval of him while we were together. But after the separation, I’m shocked at the way they unveiled their true feelings about him. When I said I was depressed at the initial stage, one of them looked at me in shock and said you should be very happy that you are finally free from him!! Sometimes, no matter how much you disapprove of a certain person or behavior or situation, as long as the one you cared about is happy as it is, we should let it be. Truth will reveal on its own.

1. fave antiseptic : tea tree oil. i use it on pimples, cuts, bites and so on. works wonderfully well and it's soothing, not biting at all.
2. fave whitening mask (so far...I'm still trying other brands) : neutrogena fine fairness deep whitening mask
3. fave skin care : previously it was kiehl's. now I'm an estee convert. currently using the cyber white range
4. fave hand cream : kiehl's ultimate strength hand slave. works well as foot creme too.

I've started a book list. It's funny how I've never thought about keep a record of the list of books that I've read until a colleague shared with me her book list. I need to read before I sleep. I read when I'm commuting to and fro work. I read when I am alone. It keeps me sane in this busy, cruel and nonsensical world.

Last Friday, I attended my first Fashion Show - Nokia presents L’Amour featuring ck Calvin Klein @ the Fashion Festival 2006. This is one of the “perks” in working with my current company. We managed to get the Media VIP Tickets which meant that we are invited to the pre-event cocktail party. At the cocktail party, ms jellybeano & me helped ourselves to shark fins dumplings, crab cakes, champagne & lotsa chocolates. As ms jellybeano is not your typical networking missy, we ended up standing kinda awkwardly amidst the “hip” media crowd. Alas, we also ran the risk of being followed by the chocolate waiter, who had somehow arrowed us and kept tailing us, offering us chocolates from his tray with an eager smile every 15 mins. When ms jellybeano tried to take my pic, she couldn’t help but to burst out laughing as mr choco-waiter was waving to her as he peeped behind me, trying to get her attention to try his chocos for the 6^th time. Aye…nevertheless, we did took some interesting pics - including shots with babelicous denise keller.

We met up with Sandy after the show. As ms jellybeano continued her part 2; de-to with J-sen, Sandy & I headed down to ICB to join Clara’s farewell bash. Clara’s my colleague from corporate marketing. Since Sandy knows some of my colleagues who were at the party, she didn’t mind coming along. After Clara made me down ¼ pint of hoegaarden, we went to Newton Circus for dinner. We rounded up the night by partying at Thumpers. It was quite fun as most of the models from the CK Fashion Show was at Thumpers as well, including the one that David Gan (& ms jellybeano) keep bioing throughout the show.

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It was mummy’s birthday on Saturday. After my pilates in the morning, we met up and lunched at the turf city. Ah yak dim sum had become one of my fave place for cheap & good dim sum. We stuffed ourselves silly with yummy dim sum. I think we ordered at least 80% of all the available dim sum. Even the waitress commented: “Wah…order so much, can finish anot? Here don’t allow ta bao one le.” Well, we did manage to finish eating all that we ordered. After the meal, we walked around turf city which resembles some ulu shopping centre in johor. Being girls, we still managed to spot some nice stuff – cheap surf shorts and running shorts. I was encouraging sis to buy more so that I won’t have missing shorts every Sunday. All of us napped after we got home, including puffy, who didn’t go for the lunch but napped together with us anyway. 

When I logged on in the evening, ms jellybeano buzzed me on IM and asked if I was interested in going The Butter Factory. As it is a new club and the site is quite cool, I tagged along. It turned out to be pretty interesting. We took a lot of pics too. The graffiti walls are so cool! The music ain’t exactly my type but I did have fun. Reuben kept feeding us drinks, most of which I had not tasted before. There was this strong chocolaty shot and this jug of ginger sweet-tasting cocktail. I must have gulped too many alcoholic concoctions too fast; I actually puked after I reached home. In fact, that was the first time I puked after drinking. Surprisingly, I was neither drunk nor high, I just had a slight headache and felt weird in my tum tum. Oh well, so many first experiences in a weekend. More to come!  ;)

Everyone is so jittery in office these days. The problem with big organizations is that somewhere along the growth, bosses lost count of the number of headcounts that they have, until one day, they got a rude shock when they realized they are spending x% of the expenditure in paying their employees. And so the centralization begins. Along marched in retrenchment. Oh well, I don’t know my fate yet. In order not to take the risk, I’ve decided not to pursue my Egypt trip. It is always better to have some liquidity on hand. You never know when cash comes in useful.

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Janice called me up early this morning to ask about ACRES. Well she was showing keen interest when I shared with her ACRES projects early this year. But since she left my company, I’ve not been able to keep in touch with her. Left her some sms to ask if she is interested to attend our discussions, but there is no reply. Silly me only found out today that all along I’ve entered the wrong number in my for her mobile…of coz she won’t reply. It’s good for someone to take some initiative sometimes. Else I would have lost a good working partner by a silly mistake.

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I went for ACRES meeting after work. It was a good meeting. Short and sweet. There are some conclusions as well as action items. Seems like we gonna get this fund raising thing going, else all the efforts in the past months would have gone down the drain. It’s cool to put my expertise in an area that will bring good to the society and the animals that I cared so much about (eh…i still like shark fins a lot and I’m still not eating veges...)

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After ACRES meeting, I met up with Jessecca at cali for power yoga. It’s my 2^nd trip to the cali at raffles although I’m a cali member for almost 4 years. It’s kinda nice to change the environment in which I worked out…well, I got lost in the changing room. Ok…I can’t find the toilets. And I walked a few rounds to get to my locker. Other than that, it’s cool to work out in a new place.

I’m starting to feel a teenie weenie trapped in the corporate world. Perhaps due to the recent movements at the top levels, even the middle management are feeling threatened. I’m starting to feel like a puppet – playing the role of the baddie with each pull and push of the bosses. Life’s much simpler from where I came from, at least I do no need to read between the lines. Less guessing work = less wrinkles on my forehead. Is this part and parcel of climbing the corporate ladder? When bosses deemed you are dependable, you will be entrusted with chores that are accompanied by lotsa risks – risk of backstabbing your colleagues when you are not tactful, risk of letting the cat out of the bag, risk of sacrificing other colleagues, risk of currying favor, risk of telling multiple white lies, risk of putting forth a false front, risk of trying to be in a perfect happy state 24 by 7 (depressed girls are definitely not termed as dependable) and the list goes on. Perhaps this is the reason that although I love what I am doing now, it is still draining.

Although I’m a loner by nature, I open up to people pretty quickly once they’ve proved to be sociable and approachable. The thing about Candi is that I will never make the first move (unless it is at corporate networking events where I must die die get some name cards or introduce myself to a particular CEO).

I usually gym alone, workout like a robot for ah hour or so, drag my feet into the shower, clean up and go home. There is absolutely no interaction with other humans, and the only thing I would have said in that 2 hours is “thanks” to the towel boy. I seldom gym with a partner. Well but yesterday’s experience at the gym was refreshing. I went with Jullia. So instead of bodypump class, I did free weights. Fabian told me that he might be going. So it’s no surprise when I saw him. We yakked on and off when I was training. Then I bumped into Adrian, we exchanged greetings. Halfway through, Julia spotted David, a chap whom we met in bala some time ago. He was quite entertaining. He remembered that I commented bala had no cute guys that night and he kept asking me if I spotted any cuties in gym. So I asked him to help me test. “David, if I see a cutie, will you go and help me test if he is gay?” During my last set of lower abs workout, Irving was using the machine that I wanted to use. Irving is an old friend and he is usually shy around me. But surprisingly, he was being really friendly and we chatted for a while. I left gym happier than normal. Even when Julia refused to go to Spice with me to eat the beef burger, I was not affected.

It makes me reflect on some statements I’ve read in “The 7 habits of highly effective people”. People who are secure with high self-esteem will not be affected by others’ behavior towards him. People who are insecure with low self-esteem build their emotional lives around the behavior of others, empowering the weakness of other people to control them. So in this instance, whereby I’m happier because I have more interactions with people (more ppl paid attention to me), is this feeling the result of a boosted low self-esteem?