Self-trimmed Bangs

My friend who is a hair stylist taught me a trick to keep my bangs in shape. That is to trim a little bit once a week so that it looks like it hasn’t grown out. It’s fun but i usually ended up chopping off more than intended. However, i’m hooked onto it and its a weekly affair now! I think i’m getting better each week.

Onto something big

Am working on something big (in my own context) –re-skinning my mood board at work. Hurray! This may take awhile though.

8.23am on Monday Morning

I shuffled to work.

Donating to buy coffins in Bangkok

By now you would have been tired of me talking about Bangkok. Hear me out! There’s something interesting I must share.

We did a short trip to Bangkok during the Lunar New Year and did something quite interesting – donating money to buy coffins for the people who can’t afford to or for unclaimed bodies found. Upon hearing “donating money to buy coffin”, the image casted in our heads was of a dark, scary, secluded place under an humongous old tree, where stray dogs circle around you cautiously as you walk into the temple and an old man with the longest and whitest hair waits for you at the door… What a morbid thing to do during the Chinese New Year.

The truth is far from it. It turns out that Ruamkatanyu Foundation is a simple yet crowded hall next to a temple and at the side of many others that stood out majestically against the blue skies. There is no old man with long white hair but regular people took seats behind a row of counters filling up paperwork for each donation. You will be given two pieces of documents, the first to stick on the empty coffin and the other to burn after prayers. Once the paperwork is done, the nice caretakers of the temple guided us through the sequence of offering prayers to the deities. And we were done!

It’s good to know that the less fortunate are being taken care at the final stage of their lives. Just a little something I wanted to share.

The brotherhood of the lamppost

I’ve witness this many times. There are so many streetlights, but why do the birds need to huddle up and squeeze on just one? Is it a family of one husband with two wives and five children or merely a bunch of friends gossiping on the lamppost? Maybe they are waiting for the 56th car to crap on. Otherwise, why?

Customised sticky notes

I recently came across a free sticky note printable on How About Orange and it reminded me of all the little notes we used to print and stuck them on the documents at work. And i thought maybe i should customise my own ‘to-do’ stickies to brighten up my workspace. I somehow got carried away. With some free vectors and awesome fonts, TADA! Sticky greetings for my colleagues! I hope it perked up their day. You can make some of yours today!

Postcard Perfect Switzerland

The last leg of our trip zoomed by really quickly. It was 2°c and we shivered all the way from sunny Nice to freezing Interlaken. It was sleeting and we were really lucky to catch the first snowfall of the season. Our cozy little room at Hotel Interlaken had some really ‘OMG!’ views of the surrounding mountains especially in the morning when snow was all around. Naturally, we jumped like two excited little kids and had snowball fights, because sunny Singapore only has an indoor compound somewhere near the edge of the island where artificial snow is being generated by machine.

It wasn’t the season for skiing or anything, so we almost had the beautiful place to ourselves. The fresh air and dreamy surroundings is so unreal. It felt like we are sucked into a different fantasy world where the seven dwarfs will emerge from little huts, reindeers will greet you by tossing you on their backs trotting off to your hotel where Gandalf will serve you hot cocoa.

 After close to two weeks without spicy food, we were swooned over by a touching meal of spicy Korean BBQ. It was deadly spicy and delicious.

As it was foggy and snowing heavily on the mountains, we only went as far as Grindelwald, where we found pasta with pork chop and mushroom sauce – my favourite so far. The feeling of having that in such a cold weather really made me want to cry. It’s too yummy and the German/Swiss music playing in the background just made it even more desirable. 

While waiting for our train, we made our virgin snowman. Not much of a snowman, but it was fun!

Although I wish we didn’t have to leave this place forever, we had to train off to a beautiful calm city – Lucerne. Each old town has lures you with a different kind of charm, and Lucerne’s draws you with its unique buildings and shopping! The casual walk in the light breezy cold, watching duckies and swans swimming in the lake made it feel like I’m on a proper holiday.

Our Europe tour is really like those on travel programmes on TV (it might even be better), only minus the background music, the tiredness and extreme luxury. I wonder where we are going next.