trick or treat

As Halloween approaches, the denizens of Chip Bee Gardens start taking on otherworldly personalities...


There is the little girl from Japanese horror movies...


The girl-turned-vampire from next door...


And presenting the one-eyed cat.

located located located

I'll be the first to admit that I am not very good at keeping in touch with friends.

I don't know where all my primary school friends are, except for a psycho who once had a crush on my neighbour and calls me now and then to ask if I know where he is now. Another long-lost primary school friend emailed me after seeing something I wrote, and I emailed back with the obligatory "let's meet up". But we never did.

I only keep in touch with two secondary school friends. A third one, I know what she's up to only through her blog.

My JC friends have all drifted off to god knows where. The last time we had a reunion was three years ago. But last week, two old friends whom I hadn't seen in more than 10 years turned up at the shop. They had seen the article in Today and came to look for me. Amazingly, I could recognise them instantly.

My clique in uni still maintain a email list but they're all so busy with kids and career that we never manage to meet up.

Then there are the miscellaneous friends from different faculties and weird activities from my misspent youth, such as MUD. A mudder friend came by the shop to look for me yesterday, but I wasn't there. He came again, specially, today. I hadn't seen him for five years at least, and I was quite wary, espcially when he told me he had tried to call me to wish me happy birthday in January, but I'd changed my number. This is the same guy who once folded a whole box of paper cranes -- How nostalgic! Same era as those paper stars! -- for me.

But I needn't have thought too much of it, even when he politely and none too subtly asked about my "boyfriend". For he then proceeded to tell me that he was planning to get married in December. Phew. I think.

cupcake is the new black

Check out these cute cupcakes! And more adorable stuff made from recycled sweaters here.

Makes the curly wurly scarf I'm knitting at the moment seem so dull.

saturday swirl shenanigans

HIM: What's the address of your shop?
ME: Stamford House. Why?
HIM: I'm telling my friends. May drop by later.
ME: Who you coming with?
HIM: Some friends... and my girlfriend. Would it be weird?
ME: Why would it be weird?
HIM: Well... you know... you sure it won't be weird?
ME: I'll be fine.

I'm fine. Because he didn't turn up. It would have been weird.

But quite a few friends did turn up, so it was a fun Saturday in the shop. We had tea, we ate piglets, we played with the giant Swirl chop, we caught up.

So, come visit if you're in the area.

10 times 10 things

I turned on the telly this morning to find cable repeating 10 Things I Hate About You. I had to watch it. I even taped it, even though I'd seen it 10 times at least, for future rewatching.

How can anyone resist Alison Janney as Ms Perky the guidance counsellor? Or any movie that has an opening scene with the words "pulsating bratwurst"? And Heath Ledger, butofcos!

The Weakness In Me

I'm not the sort of person who falls in and quickly out of love
But to you, I give my affection, right from the start.
I have a lover who loves me - how could I break such a heart?
Yet still you get my attention.

Why do you come here, when you know I've got troubles enough?
Why do you call me, when you know I can't answer the phone?
And make me lie when I don't want to,
And make someone else some kind of an unknowing fool?
Make me stay when I should not?
If you're so strong then resolve the weakness in me.
Why do you come here, and pretend to be just passing by?
I need to see you - I need to hold you - tightly.

Feeling guilty,
And I'm worried, and I'm waking from a tormented sleep
'Cause this old love, you know it has me bound,
But this new love cuts so deep.
If I choose now, I'm bound to lose out;
One of you is gonna have to fall...
I need you, baby.

Why do you come here, when you know I've got troubles enough?
Why do you call me, when you know I can't answer the phone?
And make me lie when I don't want to,
And make someone else some kind of an unknowing fool?
Make me stay when I should not?
If you're so strong then resolve the weakness in me.
Why do you come here, and pretend to be just passing by?
I need to see you - I need to hold you - tightly.

cheese

Fooling around with the nifty Photo Booth application on my new baby. Coneheads look normal compared with what we subsequently came up with...


We think we look like those baboons with red asses.




But these two really crack us up. We look like figments of Tim Burton's imagination. We considered uploading them onto the Swirl site, but then got worried that it would scare off customers.

dot dot dot

One day after the Swirl launch, Dot launches her Dotted Line. I love her Anna's Blouse, but somehow, I look horribly washed out in the peachy-pink colour. Or perhaps it was just my tired complexion.

You can see her lovely clothes in person at the Maad market, Red Dot Museum, Maxwell Road, this coming Sunday, 15 Oct, from 11am to 6pm.

She is also offering 15% off that day, so hurry!

Swirling good time

The Swirl boutique is finally open.

s w i r l
stamford house 02-05
39 stamford road
tel: 6338 5020
monday ~ saturday
12pm ~ 830pm



We had a little tea party yesterday, a soft launch of sorts. No, no, no ribbon cutting or lion dance. Thank you, all who came and for all the marvellous shop-warming gifts.


See more photos here.

Please help spread the word. Tell your girl friends about our pretty frocks, and your guy friends about them too. Who knows, they may want to buy something for their girlfriends. Or they may be closet cross-dressers. I need all the customers I can get.

"What keeps you awake at night?" Ms Midori likes to ask her interviewees. For me, for now, it's the thought of not making the shop rental.

ready, get set...

The clothes have been taken down for the move to the shop.


The Swirl Girls are excited over their new mirrors.


The mirror uncle is amused by the enthusiasm over shiny reflective surfaces.


Sneak preview of the shop decor.


Gee Wee Goes To New York's new display.


The glass cabinet we got for $30.


You do know pink is our favourite colour? And this is just one of the four chandeliers we have.


We're so poor, we're making our own paperbags. All 500 of them.

bali hai hai

Welcome to my villa at the Bvlgari Resort. I was the first one to ever stay in it -- and the very first guest to arrive at the resort.


I spent more time in the bathroom than in the bedroom.


The biggest bathroom I've ever been in. And I adore the tub and the outdoor shower (straight ahead, just beyond the glass doors).


View from the deck by day...


...and by night.


The, erm, pool. Duh.


At the private beach. Which we were brought to by helicopter. How decadent is that.


This is the best my lousy camera can do. I've always preferred sunsets -- a time to reflect on the day past.

bali hai

Feeling right at ommm at the Como Shambhala Estate.


Water ballet performance.

seoul searching

Missy and me.


Korean pancake and me.

shady business

This is so genius I have to share it asap. I can't believe it's made of Post-Its! Reminds me of Lady Liberty's torch.

I'm now looking around my place for any lampshade and leftover Post-Its I can use to experiment.

where's wally?

This is fun. Find 100 movie titles hidden in this picture. Now, go entertain yourself while I slog over the shop opening.

pr offensive

Lately, I've been dealing with this PR girl.

She's poised and perfectly groomed. Good dress sense too. Not conventionally pretty, but feminine and sweet. Long-haired and slim, butofcos.

From past experience, I expect PR girls to be incompetent airheads or fake air-kissing wannabes, but she is none of those. Intelligent, well-spoken, always polite and helpful even when I forget to email her my questions as promised. Or when I can't be bothered to give her the time of the day when she calls. Like today, for instance.

For, despite how inoffensive she is, I hate hate hate her. I imagine this is how his girlfriend to be -- she is exactly his type. And he told me before that she works in PR.

I feel an insane and irrational urge to be truly nasty every time I have to deal with this poor innocent PR girl.

Clearly, I have unresolved issues.

absence makes the heart grow something

More fragments from my brief blogging hiatus this month.

The same guy who wheeled me through the "Walk" of Shame at the Bali airport was assigned to escort me through Customs on my second visit. We eyed each other uncertainly when we met again. Him not sure if he recognised me merely from the top of my head, since that was what he spent a good 15 minutes staring at while pushing the wheelchair. Me equally unsure, as I only remember his cheery voice. Finally, after casting surretitious glances at each other for a good five minutes at the conveyor belt, he asked apologetically, "This is not your first trip to Bali, is it?"

Finally, I can stop moonlighting as a property agent. I have a new housemate at last. Her name is Claire, she's a teacher from south London -- not far from where I used to live! -- who now teaches at a private school. We're still at the super-polite stage, still sussing each other out, not unlike the way scaredy cat Memphis is going about it. So far, she seems easy-going and friendly and clean.

It's terribly disconcerting to walk around a resort and have every bellboy, chambermaid and butler you run into greet you as "Miss Suzanne" in a singsong voice. How do they even know my name? And amazingly, no one calls me "Susan", even though my seamstress -- who has known me for more than a year -- still calls me that. Mousey constantly says my name to her in an attempt to subliminally correct her, but it hasn't worked. Oh, and my theme song should be Whitney Houston's My Name Is Not Susan.

We have two more mannequins to name. There is already Jaime -- sexually ambiguous name for a sexually ambiguous doll -- and Aubrey, our first girl mannequin. What to name the other two girls?

I got Skype and my webcam working, so talk to me! You can also watch me pottering around my room. So far, the only person I've used it with is my sissy who's in China.

rumours of my demise have been greatly exaggerated

I'm back -- in more ways than you can imagine.

[Frazzled fragments of memory listed below in lieu of a proper post.]

Back from a whirl-wind junket to Seoul for adidas to interview Missy Elliott, which I must confess I knew little about pre-trip. But good hardworking journo that I am, I did my research and I managed to bluff my way through, with lots of help from Wikipedia.

The misnamed Misdemeanour was thoroughly nice, though completely air-brushed in her publicity pix. In person, she reminds me of a giant brown raisin. And she is, like, double my size. [Pix to come to prove my point.]

Midnight in Seoul and we [three journos and one adidas guy] decided we had to have ginseng chicken soup before we left the next afternoon. Or rather, one journo insisted and the rest of us were too nice to object to the wild chicken chase. Along the way, we learnt what it is called in Korean -- say "sang geng tung" or something close to that, and the helpful Korean people will put you in a cab and direct the driver to bring you to a restaurant.

A distracted dinner on the flight home from Seoul resulted in food poisoning. I swear it was the smoked salmon I absent-mindedly ate while watching X-Men 3 [which once again reinforced my opinion that I really don't miss much with my self-imposed cinema ban], but SQ begged to differ.

This was the reply to my complain letter:

"Thank you for sharing with us your experience on flight SQ 17 from Seoul to Singapore on 8 September 2006.

I am very sorry and concerned to learn that you had taken ill after your flight and I appreciate the tremendous discomfort and inconvenience you experienced on this occasion. Upon receiving your email, I had initiated an investigation into the matter with our In-flight Services Manager and our caterers in Seoul and I hope you will allow me to share my findings.

May I firstly share with you that we regularly conduct food-sampling tests on our in-flight meals to ensure that they meet our stringent standards of food quality and hygiene. When there is a breach, it will usually show up in the tests. As we prepare our in-flight meals in batches rather than individually, one indicator of a breach is the incidence of several cases of food poisoning from passengers on the same flight.

To this date, we have not received similar reports of food poisoning from other passengers on this flight. Also, our laboratory sampling tests for the smoked salmon you had consumed are shown to be microbiologically satisfactory, without any irregularities.

Nonetheless, please be assured that I have personally shared your experience with our Food & Beverage Manager, who will review it with our caterers concerned to continue ensuring that our stringent standards of food hygiene are adhered to strictly."

In other words, SQ is implying that I didn't get food poisoning from their single-serving meal but from some rubbish I ate instead. I have yet to formulate a reply because my retort is an infuriated, "So you saying I lied izzit?"

The dreadful smoked salmon, which I am now forever turn off by, left me retching at 6am into the toilet bowl. And I had another plane to catch to Bali in three hours. It's tough being a high-flying jet-setter.

I had to see a doctor at the airport before flying and was knocked out throughout the flight. In my weakened state, upon arrival, I needed a wheelchair to go through immigration. My lurve, who had so kindly asked me to be her plus one for the trip which she had won, snapped photos of my chagrined face as the friendly guide wheeled me through the airport. [Photos to come when my lurve, another jet-setter, returns from cavorting with cute Italian boys in Portofino.]

I made a miraculous recovery in the wonderfully luxurious Como Shambhala resort. We had an entire two-storey villa to ourselves. The size of the bathroom was bigger than my bedroom at home. [Pix to make you turn green to come.]

Received an SMS which informed me that he dreamt of me, which I filed under "Annoying/Interesting" in my mental cabinet.

Came back reluctantly and guiltily to the mad rush of preparing the shop for opening. Did a faintly ridiculous opening-of-doors ceremony, which involved throwing rice and salt in the corners, muttering auspicious "fa" words while giggling, and placing four extremely large oranges in the middle of the shop.

Lots of aggravating phone calls to banks about credit card facilities and corporate accounts. Did you know you need to maintain $10,000 for a corporate account? And you only get interest if you have more than $100,000 in the bank? Preposterous!

We bought some essentials for the shop -- mirrors, mannequins -- and also some frivolous items, such as a swing. Did some painting [Mousey did the bulk of it and she claims that she is now "more stupider" from inhaling the fumes], installed some chandeliers. [There will be four in total in the shop! How extravagant!]

There was a laidback Hawaii 3-4 birthday party with so much tender lamb and beef that I couldn't sleep well that night, the weight of all those dead sheep and cows were weighing on my conscience -- and my stomach.

Then it was off to Bali -- again. This time it was for a junket for a new resort by Bvlgari. I thought nothing could top Como Shambhala, already one of the most expensive resorts on the island, but I was wrong.

There was a US$5,000 ocean-view villas, an in-house jewellery store, gourmet meals, and helicopter rides to the beach. But really, I wished my lurve had been there with me. [Pix to come. Don't hate me for living the high life, if only for three days. The reason pix have yet to be uploaded is that I got my new MacBook -- at last! -- and I've yet to sort it out to my liking. I'm very anal about how my desktop looks and all those preferences.]

I dreamt of him while in Bali and texted to inform him. Somehow, he thinks I'm having an affair with someone, so I let him continue thinking it. Filed that under "Annoying/Interesting" as well.

More elf work to be done. Packing the stuff for movers on Thursday. Will be exciting to see all the furniture and lights and fixtures in the shop. Fixing patterns and samples to be ready for party season. Making signage and stamps and namecards and paper bags and a million other things. Any elf volunteers would be greatly appreciated.

Anyway. I'm back.

see through me

On Monday, to stave off the blues, I wore an OZOC dress that I had stun from my sissy, seeing that she's away in China again.

It was a diaphanous dark navy blue, all chiffony, really lurvely, with cream piping and a silky ribbon, and a nude-coloured lining below.

Unbeknownst to me, however, it was also translucent, horrendously so.

Only the forthright Ms C was frank enough to tell me that she could see my G-string when I bent over. But I didn't realise it was that bad until I happened catch a glimpse of myself in the loo, with little left to the imagination.

But by then, it was too late. I had already shown half the office my skimpy black underthings.

[No photos accompanying this post, for obvious reasons.]

Post script: My sissy says, "At least you were wearing nice undies!"

send her packing

What do you wear to a press conference slash fashion show slash hiphop party? On a car showroom rooftop? Which will go on till midnight? In chilly autumn? In Seoul?

Pile on the bling? That's so not me. Velour purple hoodie, courtesy of L? A bit too snug, I don't want to stretch it irreversibly. Clubby clothes? Too skimpy and unprofessional. Heels? Cold feet, literally. Skinny jeans? Water retention, so can't fit. Tiny clutch? Nah, have to carry shorthand pad.

That was what kept me awake last night after trying to pack. When I should have been racking my brains over intelligent-sounding questions to ask Missy Elliott.

smile 101

Enough of being a crybaby over spilt milk. I cheered myself up with a new dress from Lipstick Bandit.


The Girl Next Door cheered me up with these pretty beads from Bali.


Mini flamingo perched among basil leaves, which makes me smile everytime I look at it while I do the dishes.


Flamingo pen, which is too cute to use.


Saltest should be a word, even though I'm not sure what it should mean.


My Wabbit Book I bought on a whim [cos how can anyone resist a bunny in tighty whiteys], which will be used to record all happy/nice/pretty/pink things to cheer me up when I feel down.