REBOOT!



above is a painting of an advertisement by George E. Hughes which i just discovered.

in 2009:

1. my eldest sister will be a mrs and she's already moved all her stuff out because she's getting married ON SATURDAY!!! i loved that she was back last year doing her phd back home. i got great home-cooked meals after work some days.muahahah.

2. i will be a mrs with the sweetest husband in the whole wide world.

3. i will be moving from the north to the east. i liked the north but i like the east as well. i will like staying in my cute, quiet and white house. muji house things!

4. i will be attending many many weddings. so far i have 9 to attend next year. minus mine. actually 10 but couldn't make that one cos there's another one on that day. but no fret! i love it. a large number of my bestest pals are getting married. yvette, ying, sammie and brenda. woot! we can remember anniversary numbers together.

+++

set some resolutions. why not? it's always good to try and do better.

1. save money on shopping on clothes. so far it's been unanimously agreed by the ladies at home that i have the largest wardrobe. so that i can spend on house things and people.

2. be a nigella lawson. gotta start from scratch. i had two good cooks at home since i was born so i didn't have the incentive.

3. be a better worker at work. stay focused and work smart. part of that comes from sleeping properly.

4. spend more time with my family, especially my mama and papa.

okay enough.

RECAP!



question: summarise ten things in 2008 that made you feel wham bam fantastic!

1. i got myself a fiance and became a fiancee. my sweets designed a ring and surprised me by the runway and we got chased away by the police patrol on the other side of the fence

2. we got ourselves an apartment which is cute, quiet and white

3. i discovered chanel teint innocence liquid foundation which makes me glow/ shu uemura make up mousse base which lets my make up stay on forever and it is very light/ jurlique rose hand cream which is good for my getting-older hands and smells nice like bandung/ chanel inmitable mascara which doesn't clump and doesn't flake/ benefit posie tint which has currently taken over benetint because it leaves the lightest sheer pink on my cheeks and lips

4. i went to japan. i love japan! i love muji! i love harujuku! i love japanese food! i love japanese supermarkets! i love japanese roads! i love japanese cafe! i love japanese! i love japan!

5. i went to hong kong. i like hong kong. love the food. hate the air

6. my room mate/ second sister got married. i decided to be nicer to her instead of being a whiney mean younger sister before she got married. she was a beautiful bride. i made her bouquet.i was her bridesmaid. now i have my own room. and my magazines have shelves

7. i went to kl alot for work. i know klcc inside out. i learnt (i hope) how to handle stress better and had fun working with the people in my office who are awesome people

8. i got a new pair of massimmo dutti brown pumps for my birthday from mingyao who chose it and elevated my heel height tolerance a notch - the fiance with a good eye ; that is a very useful thing, especially now that we are going gown-hunting/designing.

9. my uk vogue magazine buying habit in university has evolved into an architecture/design magazine buying habit. this year my favourite is uk elle decoration and monocle which is unprecedented journalism for me. tyler brule rules. both mingyao and i area fans. brule writes in a back page column of mingyao's Financial Times and he's the editor of Monocle magazine. we're fans. i mean, buying the amadana toaster in japan was a no brainer after we found out he endorses the brand. i didn't read many books this year

10. i was a short hair girl this year. short hair all year round. i cut it again earlier in the year and it's taking a while to grow. maybe if i knew mingyao would propose i won't cut it. muahaha. i save alot of time on blowdrying my hair in the morning though. i'm trying to grow it longer for the wedding.


11. (token). ash concert! woot!

lazy hazy days





today we had a long long brunch with hannah at ps cafe at palais renaissance. i really like to go there, though not too often because i feel for the price the food is not great but for tea and cake it's an okay place - but i really love the decor; it's simple elements put together but the space is very uplifting and you can spend hours there. they were arranging fresh flowers in a huge vase when we came in; even the arrangement with just leaves is great in the space because the space is so simple. it was cool talking to hannah for quite a bit with easy conversation and we headed off to get a present for charlotte later.

yesterday we went to some bridal studios to start hunting; margaret from margaret bridal is so personal and nice. in the morning i went with ee jie to far east flora to get flowers for her practice bouquet for next weekend. we settled on white tulips and some small reddish wildflowers for a backdrop. the orchids there weren't very nice - the white ones were too big and the small ones were too yellow; initially she wanted orchids. tomorrow i have to buy white ribbons. i love ribbons and flowers. if i were a taitai i think i will be happy doing flower arrangments. maybe if i were a tai tai i will open a flower shop. but i don't think i can ever be a tai tai. haha.

next week will be super busy at work; ee jie's photoshoot with the family and the wedding itself. i have to start practicing the songs with hui because i'm the mc. work's super busy in that there are actually quite a lot to do these few days; i have to remind myself that i should put in my best and be positive about it all because i'm learning and i do like it- my choleric temperament sometimes lets people misunderstand that i'm not happy. so really as the year end comes i've to remind myself to be thankful for all i have - and i think i have alot in material and nonmaterial things and this afternoon we talked about resolutions with hannah and i think my new year's resolution will be that i spend more time with my parents and be more disciplined with my time and money so that i can give more to others and spend less on myself. it's always like this - the less you spend thinking about yourself the happier you will be. happiness is a contagious thing.

love

this christmas i didn't go for candlelight service and i stayed home on christmas becuase i was ill with a bad virus and tired and had work at the office to do which wasn't a nice thing cos my pills made me drowsy and slow but it sill had to get done; initially i was quite pissed about it but i thought of some things that made me think it's not so bad;

1. my family got together and exchaged presents at the salon cos my parents had to work late and i have a wonderful family 2. i spent time with mingyao and although we didn't do anything exciting and he had to come install things on my computer for me while i lay on the couch sleeping my flu away it was just nice we were in the same room together for most of the afternoon.

so i'm listening to christmas carols while working on computer just to round up the season. my eldest sister is getting married next weekend. i've just about to start look for my wedding gown. merry christmas everybody.

awesome guy

mingyao is the best. despite this week being his rest week after coming back from tokyo, he lugged my computer to sim lim and strategised with jiahui how to make it come back to life and spent the whole day today fixing it up in my house. yes my computer kaput again. and brought me his old speakers to replace the one my brother took to his room as well as bought me a cooler better mouse. and he fetched me to ee jie's wedding rehearsal too and spent dinner time with me and helped to check on the house renovations the whole week. awesome.

2 asahi beers at korean bbq for you!

home!



presenting our amadana toaster.

amadana!


today we walked to shimbashi and had some soup soba with tempura before taking the train to roppongi hills where we walked past tokyo midtown to the toto office where there was an exihibition by tadao ando about his works. we stopped at a police station on the way to ask for directions, expecting poor english but he surprised us when he asked us back, if we could speak english. haha. at toto the tadao ando exhibition was great - they actually did a one to one scale model of one of his earlier house projects- a row house in sumiyoshi, and used the rooms as the exhibits. they did the external courtyard space's concrete surfaces in plywood and made holes in them to stimulate the concrete surface. tadao ando's really poetic - even in his massive projects there is so much poetry and depth - his abu dhabi marine centre project that is being built was awesome. i think i'm going to buy one of his books when i get back home - when you read the ideas and inspirations behind the architecture, it is really inspiring and refreshing.

we separated from mf and sl and walked back down to tokyo midtown which is a huge development of offices and uppity shops - but on the top floor there were many design shops which sold interesting things - my favourite was the the idee shop parc which had a wonderful cafe with an outdoors terrace overlooking one of the midtown covered atriums. they had beautiful chairs and their planters were so cute. we were lured by the smells and shared a waffle and had some hot drinks. the japanese are amazing. the waitress came over and gave us a wool blanket each to cover our laps (some others had too) because it was outdoors so it was a little chilly. she replaced our water with new glasses without us asking. the service in tokyo is impeccable. it was very nice to sit there even though it was a little chilly, most people preferred to sit outside. the shop itself sold so many nice little things.

there was dean and deluca in the basement as well as a muji and a lot of uppity cafes. we walked out to the streets and towards the national art centre a few minutes away across the road, with the intention of looking at the architecture and hedading straight for the museum shop, which is always a great place to source for nice things. we had no care about being shallow - there's so much to explore in the streets in one week in tokyo we have no time for art.

today was quite sunny so we didn't bring too many layers - the weather forecast in the newspaper is pretty accurate. we walked to roppongi hills but i was a little disappointed it was mainly shops, high end ones, so we went back to roppongi station and took the hibiya line back to ginza where we checked out the sony building and also bought, a toaster! yes a very beautiful toaster endorsed by tyler brule.

we went back to the hotel to dump out things and crossed the road to a restaurant we had made reservations at yesterday to have dinner - many things at reasonable prices. we had toriyaki, pork yaki, dunno what that's really called, fried chicken, the thinnest pizza ever with cheese and tomatoes, a very delicious vegetable and chicken soup, grilled hotate....it was all delicious. loved the pizza and the soup, very very good stuff.

later we walked all over the small streets of shimbashi and marvelled at the millions of eateries before going to the supermarket to buy water and gifts to bring back home.

i wonder what's tomorrow's plans. most of them went to hakone today to the hot springs.

lost in translation!

today we walked to shimbashi station and had some katsu /curry katsu don in one of those slot coin/coupon small eateries - that was filled with men during office lunch time, i was the only lady in there. i loved the crispyness of the katsu and the plum sauce on top too. these eateries are quite value for money in general beacause it's expensive to eat in the restaurants in japan.

we took the train up to akihabra where mingyao wanted to look at some electronics. we chanced upon a furniture/lifestyle shop with 5 levels that brought in really nice things like walter knoll and artemide and artek and poliform and etcetc. anyway akihabra, the place is like a sim lim square with street shops outside as well. we spent about two hours there before walking to another metro station to take the train to ginza because we wanted to check out the toaster shop and we also checked out some other shops along the way - mainly itoya which sold 7 levels of stationery, which was kinda cool cept that it wasn't very new cos we're exposed to some jap and other pretty cool brands cept that the nice leather ones were so expensive. we had a drink at wendy's just to rest our feet and shared a beef and chilli fries watching the people cross the road and we walked to tokyu hands and then we walked back to ginza corridor to check out the shops for dinner but they were either too expensive or had no pictures or english so we couldn't make out what the menu was. we went back to the hotel to rest for an hour before going out to find dinner. walking for about half and hour before we chanced upon a delicious aroma from the basement of one of the alleyway shops we went downstairs and decided to just eat there cos the menu prices didn't look too scary and it was difficult to choose alot of the other shops because the menu was all in japanese.

it was quite entertaining because the waitress couldn't really understand english but she tried her very best in her apologetic and energetic mannerisms to explain the menu to us. we finally settled on some fish - not bad, tangy with lemon; grilled chicken - this was great, the skin was so fried it was almost like keropoke and we dipped it in this interesting green sauce that tasted very salty with a slight later spicy taste; some beef brisket kimchi soup and grilled sotong. i think it was actually a pub and these were bar food because we asked for rice and she was trying to explain, i think, that they didn't serve rice; she kept running back to and from the kitchen to try and translate our english with the staff behind and at one point when mingyao asked if the dish contained oninons she ran in and appeared with as huge spring onion to confirm with us.


on the way back we bought some ice cream wrapped in cream puff pastry at a shop for a hundred yen each - it wasn't as cold as yesterday.

we bought some japanese chips from the supermarket and tried this really interesting one - sweet potato flavour and it was sweet instead of salty.

franc franc!

yesterday we met mf and sl who took us to the fish market in tsukiji fish market and we arrived at...11am! the fishmongers were packing up already so we only saw one or two of them chopping up tuna. we walked along the dry market and saw alot more - crabs, seaweed, dried anchovies, etc. and puffer fish as well. we chanced upon a small shop where the guy was grilling scallop on charcoal so we had some each - the gravy was delicious and we held the shell and drank it all up. we saw a sushi place next to the shop and the set looked quite tempting so we went inside where they were playing jazz instrumental music of the more serious kind and we enquired and the chef said he was a fan of jazz.

later we took the metro to shinjuku and it started drizzling. we chanced upon queues of people at krispy kreme outside the station and went into a very nice shop called franc franc which sold household and quirky things and we saw a beautiful toaster which we admired for really long and later we went online and saw that the brand was endorsed by tyler brule - so of course we had to enquire more about it and actually today we went to the shop at ginza. we went into takashimiay times square across which was huge and walked about for several hours at kinokuniya where i bought faye her 'with' magazine and an interior magazine. it seemed like the departmental stores are a tad boring with the more exciting shops being at street level at the alleyways with all the lights and people, even with the mild rain. we found a cafe and had some hot coffee and drinks in there to escape from the cold - it was super cold yesterday with the rain and everybody was holding their transparent umbrellas.

we had dinner at one of the shops in the alleyways where you have to slot in coins in a machine at the entrance to get a coupon that you hand over to the people in the kitchen when you enter - apparently to deter drunkards, mf said, cos you paid for your meal first. the udon soup was delicious and so was the katsu don and tempura fishcakes.

shopping is really endless in japan, there are so many alleyways in each different district and the weather makes it great to walk the streets.

shibuya! harujuku!

this morning we met the others in the lobby and walked two blocks with sl and mf to find some breakfast. we found a coffee place - pronto and had a pastry/bread and coffee each. we went back to the hotel and met the rest and we walked to the supermarket/food mart next to shimbashi station where some of them had vege juices and mingyao and i found some sweet potatoes to munch on. we took the train to harujuku station and followed the rest to the meiji shrine because el and yh wanted to check it out. it's surrounded by a huge forest/park so the walk to the shrine was very nice - orange/yellow autumn trees surrounding us on both sides of the path. later we went to harujuku where el took us to a japanese pasta shop that they found great the last time - it was really nice and the portions were huge. i couldn't make up my mind for the longest time on what i wanted to eat and finally i decided on a pasta with olive oil base, garlic and chilli and seafood - that was good and it was toasty and warm inside the shop.

we walked down the streets of harujuku a bit and went to the shop that sold porter stuff and we saw some really nice wallets/bags. mf led us to the GA gallery which was a long walk away - past a residential/shop district. what i really love about walking about tokyo is looking at the architecture of the small to mid-scale buildings. the scale of things are generally more human - not just about huge lofty windows everywhere. and how they put things together is really fascinating to discover. people are really experimenting with green walls - it's done very tastefully here. the GA gallery was awesome really- i loved the concrete walls. we went to the GA exhibit featuring japanese architects like sejima and toyo ito - i didn't know toyo ito was designing a condo at oxley in singaore.

we walked back to harujuku and decided to split up from there - mingyao and i decided to walk down omotesando which was quite nice because of the scale of the buildings and the trees - we saw the tod's building and dior building and the chanel building/store that also contained the moma design store where i bought some realy cool things. we checked out h&m but i was more interested in the building and joinery rather than the clothes which weren't anything special - but the japs are crazy over it cos it just opened in japan so there are queue lines outside still. we decided it was still early and we walked about 15 minutes to shibuya where we were on a mission to find onisuka tiger - which we did in parco 3 building's basement and i saw the shoe i was looking for for years! the tiger mexico 66 blue/white/red shoe where they have the size for guys in singapore but i can never find the size for women so yeah it was rather costly but since i'm right here in japan and i've been looking for it for years mingyao decided it's a no questions asked and got it for me as my christmas present. so that's like, mission accomplished! we walked down shibuya some more after that - oh yeah we checked out the tower records too and hmv to find a particular music dvd but we didn't find it and we went to the shibuya crossing to take a look at the lights changing and crowds of people corssing and decided that was that for the day and took the ginza line back to shimbashi station.

we stumbled into tadao ando's omotesando hills mall by the back and were really fascinated by the interior - with his trademark concrete and i loved how he had the seats set into the walls with timber seats and the space was decorated quite magically with giant crystal chandeliers and disco balls that made the light move about the space in a magical way.

we went to the supermarket again and got some fruits and water - the japanese grapes looked beautiful and it was only six singapore dollars so we bought a packet and we bumped into aim and shimon who were holding some discounted sashimi so we decided to get a pack of sashimi too because it was going at 50% off. we also bought some yaki tori and headed back to the hotel with many plastic bags and had dinner.

tokyo!



i'm now back in the hotel in tokyo; we're in the ginza district and oppsosite the train tracks where there is this ginza corridor with lots of small eateries - we stumbled upon this while walking back from dinner, a small eatery in one of the small lanes where we had good katsu don - the pork was moist enough on the inside when you bit into the meat and still slightly crispy on the outside. today we took the train from narita airport to our hotel and yh and el took us to a ramen shop they found the last time which served delicious ramen - the broth was pork-based and really good for the cold weather; they served enough char siew slices and half and egg plus a huge slice of seaweed and some other crunchy thing which was quite nice.

after that we walked down ginza and checked out the swarovski building and the swatch building by shigeru ban with the internal green walls and we checked out the tokyo international forum and we headed onto muji where they had the muji house on exhibit. there are really nice things there and we liked a chair in walnut and some lamps but we figured it wasn't logical to bring them back. the muji house exhibit was really cool though - i liked the glossy mosaics that was used to tile the whole bathroom. there is a muji cafe, like the cafe in ikea and it was pretty crowded.

i think it's great to come at christmas because they light up the real small pine trees by the roadside or hang glittering stars on them and all the shops are decorated for christmas. while on the way back from dinner we chanced upon the LV building by Jun Aoki with the luminious skin. it's so cool to see it in reality other than in the JA magazines.

a japanese orchestra is now playing on tv and mingyao is commenting on the instruments.

tomorrow it's harujuku and shibuya!

somewhere in the east...

eight tile shops
nine bathroom shops
five lighting shops (i think)
12 shades/textures/prices of grey tiles
4 shades/textures of white tiles
4 brands/shades of walnut laminate

etc. etc. etc. to choose from.

and a million drawing revisions.

getting there...

site graffiti


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