My Russian Whore is still out of commission, having her innards ripped out and replaced (again) by some incompetent asshole in the Nokia factory. After a fortnight without her, I realized that I have lost my sense of direction (kindly provided by gothere.sg via the Interweb ) so I borrowed Tangs’s French phone aka the phone he used prior to the monster that is the 8giga N95.

Voilà – SlimJim. When he’s closed, he feels reassuringly like My Russian Whore. After a deafening conversation with Bibik, I finally figured out where the volume control is. What is annoying me is his error sound which is jarring and all too frequent with my clumsy fingers and unfamiliarity with his operating system. It also takes me 7 clicks to send a text. Options →Send → Phonebook → Choose contact → Select contact → Options → Send. Phew.

was experimenting with textorizer2 last night.

Hell Week came about from my undergrad days where we would be scrambling to prepare submit 5 term papers and revise for 5 tests and prepare for our finals which were just around the corner. Now Hell Week seems to be induced by really bad bouts of PMS.

My last Hell Week was in February. It started off innocently enough and I couldn’t tell it was PMS, I thought it was just plain old insomnia and missing Tangs who was away in France. I remember calling Vonne frequently in hysterics, overreacting to an incident or another. My mood was simply out of control and well, that somehow culminated in a pre-dawn drive around Changi with a guy I barely knew (whom I was just introduced to on that Saturday night itself), a lost wallet (with my identity card and all) and a lost cellphone.

This time around, Hell Week was not as intense but followed a similar course – insomnia, being overly emotional and highly frustrated. It was accompanied by wet weather, apartment hunting and a job that required me to wake up at 7am daily only to face 13 semi-to-full-fledged delinquents. Anyway that somehow culminated in a moldy toenail, lost ring, malfunctioning phone and lost tempers.

I’d rather live with the university prescribed Hell Weeks.

This week has been rather crazy as it’s the week where I’m changing jobs. Unfortunately due to the urgent nature of the new job, everything overlapped. I had to finish up my work on MIS (Mon & Thu), do my usual slots at RT (Wed, Fri & Sat) and relief-teach for my new job at HLC (Tue & Fri). Was super anxious last Sunday night since it’s been over half a year since I’ve last taught a class.  Starting in Aug, I’ll be teaching 5 days a week at HLC and I have yet to decide whether to continue with RT. RT’s management and operations sucks but I’m rather attached to my students, Amy and Hayun

So although I’ve been talking about this French trip since the beginning of this year and with the e-airtickets in my email and our French Railpass in my drawer, I still can’t quite believe that I’ll be leaving for France in 5 days. I guess part of this disbelief stems from us getting our airtickets on the 21st of June and our railpass on the 23rd. Tongs has to work this weekend and we will only have time to do our giftshopping on the 1st of July. Eek! I have to start packing before that since I’ve gotta bring more stuff for the wedding.

So this will be the first time where I actually have to bring a pair (actually two) of heels with me. I remember Vonne and I contemplated it last year but after packing our backpacks, we decided it wasn’t a good idea, it was kinda incongruous with our backpacker image ;) Nah, actually we didn’t see a point of bringing such a bulky thing which we would only probably wear once or twice.

Have gotten the perfect pair of shoes for the rather sedate black & white dress. Many thanks to Vonne for her boundless energy, patience and advice. For the record, it’s technically a cocktail dress if I didn’t misremember the information on the site.  Now I’ve been evening bag-shopping. This is even tougher than shoe shopping it seems as the evening bags tend to be so… vulgar-looking, all shiny and encrusted with diamantes (yes, I’m talking about Unipel which is found in department stores islandwide) or in faux alligator/patent leather which I’m not a big fan of. However, I was strangely attracted to a clutch from Charles & Keith. I can’t find a picture of it as their online boutique is being updated.  It’s available in black and white, and has plastic pyramid studs of different sizes covering the front in the same color.

So, my to-do list is getting pretty long and thank god(dess) I’ll have Monday to myself  so I’ve time to meet up with Vonne and catch up on annoying personal errands, and Tuesday’ll be the first day of Tongs’s unemployment before we head off so we can go gift-shopping together.

This might be the most inconsequential post ever! I’ll be attending a wedding in July when I’m in France. Basically I’m Tongs’s ‘plus-one’ and I have never attended any weddings (save for my cousins’ wedding dinners, local or foreign. I’m kinda worried about appropriateness of my choice of attire. I’ve also given up on the idea of wearing a cheongsam (although it might be fun to play the role of the submissive Chinese woman) because it’ll be hot and uncomfortable to be in for a long period of time.

I’ve decided to wear my copy of this dress to the day/churchy bit. I think I can pair it with my white peep-toe heels, so it’s not a problem. However, is it inappropriate to be bare-shouldered?  Tongs’s extremely taken with the idea of me wearing a hat but I don’t think I can get a nice one without spending a fortune and I’m not a fan of buying an expensive hat which I’ll only wear once (or wear it ad nauseum to all your future weddings!) Advice, anybody?

I’ll probably wear this for the dinner bit and despite my inclinations to be coordinated from head to toe, I really don’t want look like I’m going to the (hypothetical) office or a funeral so I need a pop of color somewhere. The problem is that Tongs seems to be determined to drink and dance till the wee hours so I need a pair of comfortable shoes (unless I want to kick them off and risk losing them).  Blah.

Houston, we have a problem. I desperately need to go shopping but on a very tight budget.

Little Man goes to Koh Samui, now available online.

Canelé should really have some kind of loyalty card. Tongs and I are there roughly once every week. The reason for this craziness (crazy because their menu is tiny compared to other places) is…

Last evening he gave up all pretenses of going there for “dinner” and dove straight into what he was after – Nougatine Crepes.

We’re back from Koh Samui. Unlike what the weathermen predicted – daily thunderstorms and cloudiness – we experienced blazing hot sun everyday. The pictures’ll be up as soon as I get the rest from Tongs’s camera (yes, a change in spelling to reflect the pronunciation and also my love of shopping has confused some people whenever i talk about Tangs).

My face has broken out; zit Australia is gone but New Zealand has returned and is joined by Borneo, India, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Argentina and Peru. I think I should have named them after stars instead of countries because I’ll run out of countries at the rate I’m going.

So anyway, just a couple of photos from Little Man Goes to Koh Samui (and comes back).

This is Little Man showing you the view from our usual breakfast table, which was situated by the resort’s private stretch of beach.

The path we use to get to the breakfast, loads of lush greenery, the dazzling blue of the pool all overlooking the sea.

Last Sunday at the Botanic Gardens for a free concert by Thomson Jazz, followed by a dinner and Ironman at Lido. I want to boycott Lido! Its halls are dilapidated and the toilets smell of a mix of diarrhoea, vomit and popcorn. However, it was the closest to the Botanic Gardens so we just settled for that before it got too late. The movie was surprisingly good, perhaps I should refund Tangs the cost of the ticket.

earwig of the week (possibly for the fortnight and the month)

the nutty squirrels’ uh-oh!