Shallow, Thy Name Is Man

Friday, 24 March 2006


Of course, not all.

I do wonder, sometimes, what men are looking for in a woman.

Quite often, I am asked what I am looking for in a man, so how about me turning the table around and ask you guys instead?

From these 5Bs, namely: Beauty, Body, Boobs, Butts, Brain, which will you be most interested in? Oh, don't give me the crap that personality is most important, coz I know more often than not, men are indeed shallow when it comes to women. Of course, not all.

Who doesn't like a pretty face? I will also take a second look if I walk past a 'pretty-face' man. Beauty, is subjective. Cliché, yes. What you think is beautiful may look like 'ship wreckage' to another! Truthfully, I think first impression counts. At least if I like how you look, I won't find you annoying to begin with!

Last week, I was at a pub with Ange. When she went to the ladies, a guy came over with his friend and started chatting me up. He asked me:

"What is a pretty girl like you doing here alone?"

"I am with a friend and she just happened to visit the ladies"

"Are you a local?"

(Well, well, I decide to play along a little . . .)

"No, not exactly"

"Where are you from?"

"Thailand" I answered.. (Not exactly a lie, that's my one-quarter heritage)

"No wonder. You have nice features and your eyes are big. Most Thai girls are very beautiful. So what are you doing here, on holiday or you're staying here?"

"Holiday with my family"

"Errrr… as in husband or?"

"Yes, with my husband"

"Oh..your husband is one lucky guy but where is he"

"He's with friends - boys nite out"

"Oh, you are not afraid he is out with girls"

"Sometimes it's best not to know too much. Ignorance is bliss"

"You are so pretty. If you are not married, I would love to date you. Actually, I don't mind you having a husband"

"But I MIND"

With that, he quickly excused himself . . . For all you know, that guy could well be married too!

Has the mariage institution became so insignificant these days that it has dropped to the lowest regards? Is it really that fun dallying in meaningless and frivolous affairs? Maybe so. Forbidden fruit is poisonous, deadly but yet has this natural appeal that most men desire to have just a little bite. Lust. One of the seven sins.

To put this across plainly: Apple tastes sweeter when it's stolen, is it?


N70, Quite Disappointing!

Wednesday, 15 March 2006


I'm disappointed with the quality of Nokia N70 photos . . .

shaneinashell

Shane in a Shell - Ikea . . . mar 14, 2006


shanewithcousins

Shane with cousins . . . feb 26, 2006



shanedindaifung1

Shane @ Din Tai Fung (Wisma) . . . feb 25, 2006

(I know, we ordered too much food for the two of us)



shanedindaifung1

the same pic, in a smaller size, still not sharp! hmmp!



shanemetaxi

We, taken in the cab . . . feb 25, 2006



shanetired

A grumpy Shane . . . feb 28, 2006


The pic below is taken with my previous Sony Ericsson K750i. Look at the picture quality compared to those above. The same enlarged size but the pic taken with K750i is definitely clearer and sharper. Bear in mind this pic is uploaded to bloggers website and the other ones taken with N70 were uploaded to Flickr. Actually, bloggers' pics resolution is not as good as Flickr, but from this comparison, you would think otherwise and I can only conclude that the problem lies in the cameras.

Taken with my K750i . . . Jan 25, 2006

What a huge difference right??? Both phones have the same 2 megapixel. Sony has an in-built autofocus function whereas Nokia is just a point-n-shoot phone camera. Also, N70 speaker's is a little muffled and now, I can't retrieve back all my Shane's pics taken with this phone and some mp3 songs my brother uploaded for me! They were there one day and completely gone the next!! I have given up all hopes of retrieving them now and I intend to use this phone until Sony Ericcson releases all their new up-coming cellphones.

Another beauty I'm eyeing - Sony Ericsson K800i!!

sony-ericsson-k800i


It’s a Cyber-shot™ 3.2 megapixel digital camera with autofocus, built-in xenon flash and image and video stabilizer function and a small and sophisticated feature-packed 3G mobile phone all in one. Ready for any moment, anytime.

Although it's only available in boring black color and quite business-like-looking but its features are definitely uber cool!


microstick


The only setback is that I have to get another memory stick as this K800i uses only Memory Stick Micro (aka M2). The ‘M2’ media is approximately one-quarter the volume of ‘Memory Stick PRO Duo’ media, yet only about 1.2mm thick. ‘M2’ media is designed as an externally removable media with a controlled eject function to prevent users losing the media. Following the trend of mobile phones which operate at 1.8 volts, the ‘M2’ has been designed as dual-voltage media. In addition to 1.8 volt support, the media offers 3.3 volt operation which is required for existing ‘Memory Stick PRO’ compatible products.

But I'm not complaining coz It's a Sony!!


Beautiful Sunny Day...I mean Sunday

Sunday, 12 March 2006



Sunday is my lazing around day...normally.


My Off Day, no cooking, that means no washing of dirty oily plates. Come to think of it, my plates are hardly oily, coz I hardly ever fry anything, except for those that oozes out from meats when I'm baking them in the oven. But I do fry eggs sometimes, but I used only olive oil.


I went to Geographer on Friday nite. Yes, it will be my favourite haunt for the next few months to come. Reason number One - It's another Thai Pub!! No more going to Golden Mile for the time being. The Thai Pub there has more or less lose its flavour... sigh, can someone bring back its former self please!


Geographer is located on 2nd level of Block D @ Clarke Quay. Started last October. I wasn't aware of its existence until last Sunny Day nite.. I mean Sunday nite when I received 3 missed calls...from a Singapore cellphone lah! As usual, I'm not in the habit of returning unknown missed calls, especially from a cellphone.


The caller called again and it turned out to be my bestest buddy - Ken! He is back in town and is performing @ Geographer.


I knew Ken the same time I knew Max. Or I knew them both together the same nite. Ken - the percussionist with my favourite Thai Band - NOVA, is a very nice gentleman! Max was the lead male singer in Nova Band back then when I knew him.


The Nova Band this time is a 'refurbished' one. Except for Ken, the other two guitarist and Lisa - the lead female singer, the rest are new faces to me.


I was busy with Shane during weekdays, and I only take a break on alternate Fridays or Saturdays, relaxing and chilling out with my friends, or just lazing by the pool. So I didn't have time to meet and catch up with Ken. In fact, Ken went Taiwan with Max last year after their stop in Singapore and it was him (Ken) who gave my blog the one-missed-call entry last year. He really is a good friend, always looking out for me when I go drinking at the Thai Pub back @ Golden Mile then. I remembered how he celebrated my birthday at the pub with Max and Ange, another bestest buddy (3 weeks in advance coz he and Max would be gone by the time I turned a year older), Ken got me a 'fishball' birthday cake, piping hot and fresh out of the fryer and God knows where he got the candles, lighted and planted them on the fishballs.

I remembered getting teary eyes when I said goodbye to him at the airport last year. So glad to have him back again. He is really a good friend. A great buddy. Cheers to Sisterhood! =)



Finally, I went to Geographer with Ange last Friday. Two silly drunkards!



Ken, deliberately looking dumb.







Pretty Lisa




Pole Dancing @ Geographer. The dancer on the right is prettier, sweeter than the one on the left. I was seated right in front where the action was!


********************************************

Saturday (March 11, 2006)

Our Silly Shots!


********************************************

And I finally completed my tour @ The IT Fair today!! Yippee.... got what I wanted, a new desktop!

I'm currently using IBM ThinkPad X40. It's for work. Like it, except it belongs to my firm. I deliberated for quite sometime, not knowing whether to get a laptop or desktop, checking around and finally decided on this deskstop - HP Pavillion A1377D. This set came with a free all-in-one color printer (HP PSC 1402) and they also gave me a free upgrade to 1024MB DDR-2 533MHz Ram. But its processor is only a Pentium 4 - 519K (3.06GHz; 1M L2 Cache; 533FSB). I actually wanted to get the one with Pentium 4 Processor 640 (3.2GHz; 2MB L2 Cache; 800FSB). I don't really know how big the different is, although the sales guy told me 'not much different lah' but the price sure is a lot 'different'. I opted out the free upgrade to 19" LCD, sticked to 17" and received a further $200 off.

So now I can finally install my Adobe Photoshop!! Yeh...bye bye wrinkles cha cha cha!!!!!

You know what, I love the Epson printer, the one which you can scan in old negatives and print them out, looking very nice! Maybe I'll get them next time for Dad. Dad has a huge collection of photographs, of us, his cute kids when we were young, since babes!! Taken with his all-time favourite Rolei camera. Dad loves Rolei cameras, he used to work in Rolei in Germany in his early twenties. He actually converted most of his photographs into slides, so very often, when we were younger, we would gather around our living room after dinner, eagerly waiting for Dad's projection show, eating ice-creams. We don't have a screen, and so Dad projected it onto the wall. We loved the in-between changing of trays moments, coz we can performed hand-shadows show on the wall! Dad is a camera/photography freak, like Me. Maybe I inherited this from him although he loves to take us as his model, unlike me, photographing myself most of the time! LOL.

I saw the new Sony W50, with ISO 1000 and 6 Mega Pixel. There's an inbuilt 32 mb internal memory as well, so you can at least save those last minute pics when you have max-out the capacity of your memory stick, although it may not save a lot, but if you don't mind the print-out quality, you can save quite a lot in VGA or 1 MP mode. It's very light though and it can take very good quality pics despite taking with shaky hands but the flash must be turned on. This acts like an anti-shake function and this is what we call High Sensitive ISO function. The higher it is, the better your prints will be, whether in low light or shooting fast moving subjects or with shaky hands! A pity it's not in the T-series, otherwise, I will surely get it. T-series are often very sleek and sexy and they come with internal folded-optics zoom lens.

Oh.. I bought the Osim Uzap... now see whether I can have a trimmer slimmer body or not. Give me six months!! Haha...

Little young man was pretty restless most of the time. Fortunately I brought along his stroller, so he can comfortably sit in it playing his PSP while his Mommy loses herself in all the gadgets! But I rewarded him with a Duckie Tour again later that evening. I was so exhausted, I actually dozed off!!! Shane had to wake me when we arrived back at Suntec. So embarrassing!!




Its cheaper when you are not a tourist! Half price okay. Just show your ID.


What's Cooking?

Saturday, 11 March 2006


(...two days ago news)

I enjoy cooking. Tremendously. But I really hate washing up after the big act.

Me and Shane have been eating out lately coz Mommy Bird was busy with work.

For dinner tonite, I decided to cook pasta for Shane and the same boring steak for myself. I bought too much tenderloin last week, and my mom-in-law (ex) kept reminding me to finish up whatever I have in my fridge before doing that grand pasar-shopping again.

She came to my current place before for dinner and she was shocked with the amount of food choking-up my cold-storage! So instead of boring steam vegetables, I decided to finish up all that were bought months ago. Except Shane's food. I made sure his were not more than a week old.

I ran out of spaghetti and decided to use Thai Rice Noodle instead. This rice noodle is often used to make the famous Phad Thai and now, I used it to make pasta for Shane!



You have to soak the noodle for at least 15 minutes before boiling them in hot water.




See, here's his favourite sausage and I'm slicing it up to attract him into eating later.

I used to buy Prego's pasta sauce for him, but as I often will refrigerate the unused portion, it'll take sometime before I used it all up. As Shane is the only one eating pasta, I'm kinda worried about keeping the sauce for too long, thus I'm now using Ayam brand pasta sauce. It has tuna, cheese and traces of mushroom in it. This small can is enough for me to cook one meal for Shane. No leftover.

Next for me, the same usual boring steak. This time, I used black peppercorns, salt, peppercorns meddley and dash of cayenne pepper, the super hot type. Topped it up with fresh garlic and baked in oven for max 15 minutes.





DADA....here's Shane's rice noodle pasta with sausage plus bits of bacon bites and my humble simple steak... Tuck in now!!






They said, the way to a man's heart is through his stomach! That is the most accurate statement ever. See how my handsome prince enjoyed his pasta - going straight for the sausages!! Yummy!




But I HATE this!!!! Arrgggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!!!




A grouchy Shane after dinner coz I refused to let him have his police car which was kept in the store.

Excuse Me, Are You A Model??

Tuesday, 7 March 2006


Nay, model I'm not. Not tall enough, end of story.

Not that anyone had ever asked me that but it's pretty obvious I'm not one.

But most people are curious as to what my occupation is. Hmmm... is that important?

The same with age. People like to ask: "How old are you?"...It's just figures I know, but is it really that important?

Somehow, I always ended up as a 'beauty consultant' or someone working in the 'beauty industry' to most people I meet.

Once, in a hair salon, I was asked, not once but THREE times by THREE different people, whether I'm in the beauty industry!!

I really cannot understand. Can't they be more creative? Perhaps I'm an engineer working in the PCB assembly solutions firm involving SMT, firmware & circuitary design and creating exciting prototypes...maybe for XXX-brand mobile phone or XXX-brand mini media player.

Or maybe I'm a food technologist for Yakult? Or perhaps I worked in the lab, specialising in genetic engineering? Or a nurse?? Or maybe I'm a CID?? LOL...!!!

But why beauty industry? I have no clue.

I once met this guy through a friend of mine, and we were at East Side. The same popular unintelligent questions will never ceased to form in everyone's mind, the same with this guy. He asked me my age, I mumbled a not-far-from-the-truth figures but when asked what I'm doing, I gave a very-far-from-the-truth answer. I told him I'm a lecturer!!

He was dumbfounded.

But of course, I gave very convincing answers to his interrogation. Endless actually.

Maybe I should be an actress instead. LOL!!


You Deserved It!!

Wednesday, 1 March 2006


TNP, Wed (March 1, 2006)



Isn't it obvious??


Maybe I'm looking at this article through stained broken glass or I may have grown cynical but I totally have no sympathy for such philandering disgusting creature. Even persuading his wife to allow his mistress to stay under the same roof? Has this man no respect for his wife at all? What kind of a man is this??

To this man = You Deserved It!!!


Me: A Gadget Queen

Sunday, 26 February 2006




I'm a gadget queen, but mind you, not those chain and whip type.


I'm talking about all the cutesy-thingy-techy-gadget. My magazine racks are filled with mostly Stuffs and T3. If you're lucky, you may be able to dig out some girlie mags though the chance is slim to none. Though i do love girlie mags like Her World, Cleo etc, but no thanks, i hardly buy them unless they have a section on how-to-grow-thick-beautiful-long-lashes-in-two-days or how-to-lengthen-your-legs-the-natural-way or trimmer-flatter-tummy-in-one-simple-exercise: Results Guaranteed in 5 Days!! Flipping thru them at Times or MPH or 7/11 is more than enough for me. These mags have more ads than anything, going thru them is like staring @ a non-stop commercial for 10 minutes!


But not Stuffs or T3. I so love reading them. I used to buy T3, the UK version. Not only are they more expensive, some gadgets featured may not even be available locally, but its such a fascinating feast to read about them!! Oh, what a joy.


Yesterday, went shopping with my young man. Supposedly to be only window-shopping. We were at Wisma Sony Gallery (I'm a Sony fan!!) looking at those super sexy Vaios and Digicams. i have bought 3 Sony Digicams so far, WS1, T1 and T3, all within one month of each other. WS1 is good and can run on normal alkaline batt and I thought it's good for travelling, don't have to lug those hateful cables and wires around but soon, i hated its huge bod and passed that down to Dad. T1 is good, except I don't quite like the sliding-down-cover-turn-on mode, so i passed that to my brother. I'm currently using T3. I like T3 but wish that it has a USB port on the body itself.


Shane was smittenned with the PSP though. I love PSP too but not that madly in love but Shane was hooked on it. He already had a Game Boy Advance at home, but the damn cartridge gets friggin hung every few minutes!! He love cars (is it a boy thing??) and was playing the Ridge Racer on the display PSP set. He was so super-glued to it.


Da... da... da..., di... di... di..., i bought for him!! Yeah, go ahead and said i spoilt my kid.


But now, i'm hooked on it as well!! The screen resolution is smashing!! And rumour has it that there's a new 8GB flash memory PSP in development!! Maybe i'll get one for myself next!! And oh, btw, the 1GB memory stick duo price has gone down to about S$140 and 2GB is now at S$270. Maybe this is old news to you but i just found out on Saturday!




I 'dressed-up' Shane's PSP with this skin from Decalgirl. You can get it at Takashimaya for S$19.90. They have skins for your ipod and Creative gadgets too. In various styles and colors. Smart!! The casing is from Logitech.




Btw, meet Shane's new friends: Jay Jay, Raven Evan & Tracy



Throw A Rotten Apple Away?

Sunday, 19 February 2006




Nay, I'm not stooopid too okay!!


Yep, finally caught this show. Alone. Shane went to Papa's place and will be back today (he's back!! XOXO).


Anyway, Mommy had a break. A holiday.


I like this INS2 show. Emotionally, it strikes a chord with me, hits me most of the times. If i were to watch this show in my teens, i guess i would not be feeling this way. Being a mother, a parent, it has changed my perspective of many things in life. It opened my eyes to see where my parents were coming from before.


I'm not shy to say this, but i was holding and clenching my tissues very hard and kept dabbing the corner of my eye. Yup, i was teary and easily at that all the time. Call me a crying barrel. The scene that made me use more than 3 tissues - when Jerry actually stole money to reach his $500 target to buy an hour of his Dad's time to watch him in his school performance as the lead! It left me thinking: have we as parents, more often than not, forgot to take a pause from our busy rat-race life to really spent some quality times with our kids? Are money really the best substitute for a parent's love?


These days, it is actually not easy being someone's Daddy or Mommy as compared to the older days. It’s much challenging than before. Children in the past or during my time were not being exposed to the many TV programmes or Cable TV or PSP or Xbox or iPod or Pokemon cards or Internet or Gaming or E-Zone or what-have-you-now. Teenagers or kids as young as nine years old in this age already owned a mobile phone, mind you, not the big heavy black-and-white-waterbottle type okay, but the latest 3G phone!! Naturally, being a parent, you can't help but feel the stress. Not only do you have to work hard to provide for them the best that you can, but you worried that they might be influenced by all these external forces which may slowly turn them into a pawn for the dark side. Parents worry too much for their kids. From every simple little things to applying leaves during PSLE to coach them. They will not stop worrying even if their kid is now a 50 year-old white hair old man/woman!


Being parents, we began nurturing our kids the day they were born. We started to mold them to what we think are good for them, for their future, so that they will live a better life than ourselves. By doing so, we tend to forget that kids are not robot, they are not someone whom you can control with just a few button pressing. Rather, they are humans, like us parents. Long gone are those i-am-your-father-and-so-you-must-do-as-i-said days.


Ahhh….so much, so much…..long short, it's not easy being parents, and it's also not easy being kids either.


Anyways, i spent a rather nice Saturday yesterday and a nice Sunday today!


Rushed to JB on Saturday morning to attend to something and came right out again. Watched INS2. After the show, i went on a mini shopping spree. Gee, i luuurvveee shopping, it just makes me very happy although my pockets were screaming murder at me!! That's easy, i put on ear plugs, freshly purchased too!! : )


Bought a few..okaylah, guilty, a lot! Best of all, I finally bought my Nokia N70! My Sony K750i was down, so that explains why i did not mms-blog @ Moblog but hey, watch out Moblog, i am gonna mms-drown' you soon!! But i realised that the N70 is quite retard, everything is so slow-motioned! The keypad is a bit too small and soft for my rough fat fingers. Know what, i'm now eyeing the K610i !! Going forward, should i have to leave town for work or anything, i can '3G' Shane from wherever i am!! He has memorized my mobile number and thanks to this, my mobile bill for last month was $300++... coz Shane kept dialling my number every 5 minutes for the first day when i was in Bangkok! But what's $300 if i can get to hear his sweet voice right??


Don't you think this is pure SEXY? I'm gonna get this model in RED!!


At nite, met up with a very good ‘sister’ who has the same name as me. Went to our favourite Thai Pub @ GM. It was our favourite place or rather, our ‘home ground’.


I like it there. Folks there are pretty much themselves, unpretentious and very at ease. But the place has gone under some sort of a complete makeover that it now looks completely different from before. Although it’s classier, cleaner, nicer, but I still prefer the run-down, dirty back alley look. That place holds a lot of memories for me.


The Thai Pub six months back was very much the Ratchada type. Now, with the new look, gone are the homely feelings but I still enjoy going there. The DJs are like old friends to me, they will play my favourite songs when i’m there. And seeing old familiar faces. Ahh...welcome back !! Do you know the song ‘Numa Numa’ – by Ozone was already been played there since end 2004?? It was only during the Chicken Little trailer that people started to take notice. Bet you didn't know that right!


And finally today i got to enjoy my birthday pressie from last year! My boss, whom all of us called affectionately, 'Champion', is the kindest, most forgiving and generous boss ever!! He employed me even though i was heavily pregnant with Shane. I was already in my 7th month then!! i looked like a clumsy cream puff (oily & fat) and was very much a little Miss Piggy or a baby Jumbo or what i used to tell my friends, a Bak-Chang!!! Champion paid me my salary in full when i was away on maternity leave although i was employed less than six months! Under the MOM regulations, the employer has a right not to pay salary when a female worker goes for her maternity leave if she is employed less than six months! I am very fortunate to meet such a nice kind boss and therefore, i don't mind working extra late hours for him.


This pressie from him was a delightful spa with massage!! The spa is located at River Valley and i had a nice rose scrub and a great massage!! Thanks Champion!!


Ahh..when Baby Bird is not around, Mommy Bird turned into a crazy narcissist again.