Gone Fishing

Cocoa Island, Maldives May 5 ~ 9

3 weeks later

attended the h&m kylie-glam party at the science & tech museum on wed.. "she looks good for her age" (1968 means she's 39y/o) .. god forbids that I ever get decribed like that..

..3 weeks later, I didn't even realize I was at a non-smoking venue!

B.Zero-1

it has been exactly 47 hours since the fateful ride on 2gg's BatMobWil to Chek lep Kok

apparently, after 12 hours most of the nicotine is outa ma system
and after 24 hours, the carbon monoxide in my blood has dropped dramatically, giving my more oxygen in my bloodstream...

so how come I was so sleepy last night??? maybe it was just the over-zealous screwdrivers, piper pink & lychee martinis at armani bar on Sat night??

B.Zero-1 by the way is NOT another cocktail concoction ordered by ninja-ew-turtle.

B.Zero-1 is my guiding light for the next 29 daysB.Zero-1 will be keeping me focused.

B is for brainwave, B is for bold, B is for brenda, B is for brilliance and oh yah.. B is for bvlgari!

cheer me up, NOW!

two birthdays and a wedding

I always cry at weddings. Crying after one?

bosphorus, where east first met west

after spending two intense days with my new italian family - inside the swissotel with an invitingly glorious view of the bosphorus, I finally got a take in a breath or two of Turkish air on Saturday afternoon, wandering around the old part of town, into the famous blue mosque that looks so much like something out of a fairy tale, where I half expected to see Rapunzal let her hair down..

one grand bazzaar and a shisha later, I was beginning to forget that I came to Istanbul for business - it helped that my peers were real people who like me, have a crazy appetite for life! Downtown in Taxim by the Mahmara, the traffic was buzzing with life at 3pm or 3am, where the snow doesn't dampen the spirits. And one brief hour in the Museum of Archeology takes you back into time, even before the Otterman, Constantinople and Alexander the Great, when the land was known as the Byzantine Empire.

happy birthday to me!

bang!

another new year's celebration with 2gg! as usual, she was a superstar from the moment she landed in PVG - always happy to trot along doing this & that, always loaded with amusing stories, always game for mid-afternoon champagne & always jolly to meet new friends.
this time, jennie & sophie came along with jolyn and for one night and we even had cousin heng & may with connie... just imagine, women from 20something to 30something to 40something to 50something to 60something creating havoc from guyi to jz!

new year's eve at glam bar was... pretty perfect! i think martha had more fun than arnold - but then again, she always does!

resolutions get harder every year for me... offer my opinion only when asked for it! which means this is my only outlet to air my royal views! thank god for blogs!

finally, the most impt event over the weekend, 2gg bonded with her god-daughter & her little brother k2.. and after she left... this is the sms i got:

"Actually missing them a tini tini bit"

black-out

6pm hh on thu with brenda... nothing unusual... 1 glass of red wine... massive download... nothing unusual... 3 glasses of bacardi coke... chatting with random people... nothing unusual... 10pm dropped off by brenda... nothing unusual...

6am woke up in bed with ZERO recollection of anything after 8pm... huh? complete black-out?! what was that about??? super scary stuff!

thank my lucky stars the girls at velvet kept my computer bag safe for me!

xmas with mgg

certainly dusseldorf is not a typical german city... even then, the excitement drove me to spend an entire day indoors to do mindless household chores for mgg!

but then again, given the chance to meet a nbf in the form of an syt... it was worth the trip!

thankfully we had the good sense to escape via choo-choo-train to amsterdam on christmas eve... window-shopping in the evening, self-administered facials, boots-a-hunting, pub-a-hopping, mad italian students, an american tourist of 6-years, a fireplace in the lobby of Hotel V, aimless wanderings from one square to another... the best parts of the trip? fighting over garbage & a farewell footrub!

so... the only 2 things I can moan about... not getting the chance to see amy & joel in london.

HOWEVER! Ryan Air did deliver my long-lost ex-wife to Milan for 9 british pounds! and as if it was at all possible, pam has become more entertaining & WORSE! even more beautiful post-sprogs... and so secure that she actually didn't get offended when I compared laura & audrey with my furry four-legged babies!

aida'd, nobu'd & milaned

stinged by la scala aida

finally on the long-overdue trip to milano... ciao!
seems my people are not connected with the seedy underworld to score me tickets for the most significant opera of the season, not even the Sting show at Santa Maria delle Grazie
hmphhhhh...
while I'm killing time.. maybe I can't try a brain exercise to remember names...
so... there were the Three Musketeers.. Marica, Christian and Anna
then there was prego-Valeria (intonated like malaria)
and preppy paolo of sao paulo.. and Beatrice the Bear for Disney
Susannah the reluctant porn-queen
Lucia.. the ONLY one who offered to go out for coffee or hh with us
(federico the fake-italian of course doesn't count)
then there's nontcio the can't-smoke-in-the-courtyard-guy..
this morning we had curly-hair Federica and very pretty Alice
then the Feverish-Francesco! Francesco! (sounds like a commercial)
then Scott the american (that's too easy)
And Frankenstein with his replacement .... excuse me, where can I get those gucci bags for under my eyes too? via nero? Grazie!

back with a vengeance

one month of not being able to access my account, I'm back! wonder how long this window will be open..

just saw The Departed (again) by Martin Scorsese and am now fully convinced Leo can act.. and decided to check out the original film Infernal Affairs (tho the recent dvd supply has been rather weird) that's why I watched Mr & Mrs Smith (again) & Fab Baker Boys (again & again)

on feeling like crap last month - the reason for feeling like crap has not gone away but que-sera-sera!

how far have I gone in the past month? by far the best month all year with meeting worthy new people in shanghai

.. there's zheng & chang who swept me a away, watch this space

.. there's my "dream girl" who's in my phone as "phoebe-virgin" & her number actally begins with 159

.. there's rae with the bedsheets & too-much-cleavage-for-my-sensibilities-at-lunch

.. then there's baby ralph who made robert a daddy and the first catwomen is now a real mama (there's hope in this world when people like them sprog)

hmmm.. I should stop my dumping & gather my thoughts.. maybe start contemplating my new year's resolution.. so many possibilities..

ARGGGGHHHHHH... it's my "RETIREMENT YEAR" ie spend the rest of my good years doing what I KNOW is important! ok.

f.o.c.u.s!

hot chick

Dragged my reluctant feet and Sok's lazy ass to the Lisa's gig for SH Tang. Somewhere in the midst of too many fashionable people, 2 bubbly ladies identified our accent & burst into the whole you-look-too-familar-which-school-did-you-go-to conversation.. poor girls were obviously missing Laksa..
But true enough, Germaine turned out to have gone to SAJC as well, one year my junior! According to her, I was the hot chick in school who was too cool to talk to anybody. And Brenda reassured her that I'm still quite the b*tch.
hah!

galivating with two young ladies

Jo (Jenni's daughter) and her friend Teresa (Jo's ex-roomie in college) needed a place to crash so I decided to be a nice aunty.. take them out for dinner
Turns out it was Teresa's 29th bday and after a jug of Cosmopolitans at Xintiandi, a round of Mojitos at Face, more cocktails with a Bund view.. young Bryan managed to redeem himself at Glamour Bar with a little chocolate thingie with a candle - we gave the bday girl 3 genie wishes and I think I managed to hijack the 3rd wish. After more rounds of whatever, I managed to coax rmb100 out of Miss L'Oreal, aka Jane-who-hates-Tarzan who insisted i haven't collected enough wrinkles to prove my age (god bless her poor eye-sight!)
even though it was only just past the witching hour when we got done.. I ended the lovely evening as bad aunty.. banishing them to "bed" with just a bare tatami floor and zero pillows! hopefully they too were too-happily-intoxicated to notice..

home alone

what do you do when you have rmb1280 (or usd162 = sgd256 = eur129) of credit on your spa card and it expires in a day?

stooopid options I was given at dragonfly:
(a) top up another rmb3,000 so you don't use your unused credit... doh!
(b) book a VIP room so you can blow it all on the private "Love Nest" charge

alternative options when you don't want to be ripped off
(c) bring 5 friends along for your fave treat of foot massage followed full body chinese massage, but seriously.. how can one orchestrate this at short-notice
(d) bring one friend (anita who is here from chicago on biz) along for a footsie followed by aroma-therapy by 2 masseuse at the same time... now how efficient is that!

hours later after a sip of wine with martha & jason at a blah blah wine place.. and unglam coke & water at glam bar with fritz... home alone.. at last!

meeeeow! how's dragon eye in down-gate??

1 + 2 + 3 + 4

How many thirty-somethings do you know that have been married for ten years??
This guy has done his window shopping, web-browsing and today, he'll be flying back from Shanghai to Tokyo to take his wife out to pick out that very special rock! He's obviously wise after ten years - to know not to venture out to buy jewelry on his own (all the other amateurs should learn). Hey in case you catch this before your anniversary is over, don't forget the flowers!

go hosogoe go!