the entry about a year-end getaway

i'm whiling away at a foreign airport, listening to the intermittent public announcement that commences with "tuan tuan dan puan puan" and other incoherent bahasa melayu-esque bulletin. the morning airport is littered with the occasional traveller who is either a) beleaguered with huge loads of carrying luggage b) burdened with children in tow.

two hour hours in transit till my destination holiday. hands outstretched, yawn beckons.. so thus, i've hogging on the public terminal so long a snaking queue is forming behind me. i swear someone's sticking their middle finger at me. can't wait till my fiesta of a holiday begins.

peace out!

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the entry about christmas presents and such

it's christmas eve and i can hardly contain my excitement about the hols. i was never a sucker for festivities. in plain dumb english vernacular, it's depressingly boring. however, i fathom that this year might be a tad different. what with me turning three-tenths of a century, i might have a disparate perspective about caroling around pine trees lit with gazillion bulbous lights.

there are always hordes of people thronging the city streets clamoring for a little bit of the feverish christmas-season-gift-buying bug, and i had to bludgeon my way through get a crowd deep to get my own fair share of presents for my cronies. these are the list of gifts i got in reciprocation (and in no order of price-worth):

a clam card-holder from paul that doubles up as a marquee standee

avant garde spoon kartell rollers from eric

a puma-inspired printed pumps from gabe

stussy bomber from kevin

thoughtful thrift gifts from my family.

every shrewd christmas shopper knows that buying of gifts doesn't stop at just for friends, or for family, so logically, i schlepped around a little longer and after much consideration and tenacious conviction, i got myself a real nice present that is da bomb, practically.

pimp my new ride.

a mercedes benz c180, finally!

a juxtaposition of my old car and my new one.

and in all truisms of truths, the saying you'll never know what you're missing out on till you've really lost it couldn't be farther from the, well, truth. i'm missing my old car already. so, in remembrance of it, here's a look-it before it's sent away to the scrappers. thanks for all the good-old fond memories, old car.

once mine, the volkswagen golf 1.6 fsi

adieu, old car...

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the entry puma rocks k.l.

i've been moping around doing anything other than work too much it's disgusting. being on the ball during office hours is one thing, but practically thwarting my gym sessions and thus, throwing caution to the wind about my nonetheless expanding waistline, and virtually flat-lining my blogging activities is quite another. gone are the party-boy days; behold, herald the incoming workaholic.

so, anyways, i've decided to take some time off my 24/7 business-as-usual dogma of a spiel, and spend some quality me-time with the puma folks in upstart fashion city, kuala lumpur. if you know your sports apparel well, you'd be in the loop about puma's crazy-ass of a world campaign called "create your own style". what it entails is essentially this: randomly grabbing folks off the streets and getting them to pen their ingenious creativity about puma onto a white board and pose a picture with it.

this way to budget-ville

prepping up for a fiery year of the tiger 2010.

suffice to say, i was put up at the millennium grand hotel, albeit being hoisted via the third-class-meets-cargo-friendly airline. it was an atrociously short shuttle between the two cities (singapore and kuala lumpur), but the journey from the airport to town was so unbearably long it lulled me into a deep slumber.




by the time i arrived, it was a little past midnight, and no sooner i had checked in, i slipped on my eyeshades and knocked myself out. so much for day one of sabbatical.

the next morning, it was meeting with some of the regional celebs who would be gracing the event the following evening. first on the list: the doyenne of asia models aka leon lai's wife, gayle lai. a phalanx of people, otherwise known as the entourage, or unceremoniously known as nannies, surrounded her whenever she went. well, or at least for the first fifteen minutes.

then, there was the up-and-rising taiwanese star eddie peng. you might think he's your typical poster-calibre, mega-watt grin, sunshine boy-next-door, but he's so much more than that. it was an awesome time hanging out with him, we drank some awesome beer (well, i drank), and soaked up in each others' awesomeness. here's pictures:

third from left: doe-eyed gayle

me with puma marketing manager gabriel

good things come in small packages, nicole

last look at meself before my locks get chopped off by the banger of a prepubescent stylist

me and the ever efferverscent eddie

day three was pretty unfortunate for me. with half my follicles snipped off (no thanks to the stylist at spa@esprit; seems like a trim and a cut was just a fine line she couldn't distinguish), i was too busy speed-running through the day's itinerary to get a more representative example of the event per se. anyway, this is how i spent my day. in eyelet 'n' denim pieces, muted grey dukes, preppy yellow-meets-blue tie. blogging, photog-ing, posin' a grin. dignified-like. expect little photos of me showing bald-pate-esque hair.

get that guy out of the concrete already.

the one and only picture i took of myself during the event. i hate my hair!

supper with pal sk low before calling it a night.

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the entry that's a little grey

we spend our whole lives worrying about the future, planning it, but at some point, you start to realise, your life is happening now. not after your next fat paycheck. not after your next promotion. it's happening right now. this is it. it's here. blink, and you will miss it.

the future is the home of our deepest abject fears, but yet it also houses our wildest hopes. yet one thing is certain: when it finally reveals itself, the future, is never the way we imagined it. for better or for worse, cest la vie.

so today, i stood in the wind, carefree, and let it run through my skin and hair. it's just one of those impossibly little quirks i have amassed, like staring into the vast openness of the night sky or listening to the ebbs and flows of the waves. the solidarity, thoughts awash with nothing and simply taking in the esoteric beauty of it all. the leaves, roused up in cyclical patterns, as they make gentle ruffling sounds. a harmless vortex. and for a moment, for that moment, nothing else really matters so much after all. not the workload, not any stressors or pressures of life. the wind helps me unwind.

i need to stand more in the wind.

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the entry about blocking up an ad shoot

i am a rock, i am an island. that's pretty much the mantra that was going through my mind. in fact, this was but one of the many thoughts that were racing in my head when i arrived at the set the very afternoon. what if i wasn't exactly what they were looking for? what if they didn't like how i posed? what if i broke wind? it was making me batshit with anxiety and panicky all over.

to cut the long story short, i had a modelling job and was scheduled to pose for an upcoming sunblock advert. i was faced with the task of looking fresh, sunshine-boy-meets-boy-next-door, and modelly right in the midst of switching careers, the most strenuous and grungy of human endeavors. the ad for the new series of sun tan care products, aptly named blockup!, necessitated me changing into my "beach outfitter" mien, i.e. stripped down to bare nothing, save but a pair of board shorts. so here i was in the fitting room. the dig was a makeshift one, i gathered, which was made of a billowy velvet curtain and suspiciously feeble-looking rings that were supporting the drape.

i stepped onto the set, and it was a pretty awkward experience: the crew were carefully scrutinizing me from head to toe. sure, i love attention and all (read: megalomaniac), but never have i felt so exposed and surveyed like a study object. one crew suggested that i did military push-ups before the shoot; i guess he wanted my man-boobs to swell up like i was doing a lingerie ad. another crew was tasked to spray squirts of water on my body to enhance the look of the tan appeal, but she was so shy she didn't look where she was spraying, my face endured a bukake-esque squirtful. and i thought i was supposed to be the sheepish one.

fast forward an hour and half later, i was all swarthy from the mix of the suntan lotion and water spray, i smelled exactly like freshly extracted coconut oil. great. so anyhows, here are a couple pictures taken during the set and also photos from the official website, www.blockup.com.sg. there aren't exactly that many, because i was still recovering from the shock of having my topless photo taken in front of a set crew. nevertheless, here's it:

a pedestal for the vertically challenged, yours truly.

the crew sifting through some of the shots.

extreme left: the ever-bashful water-squirter, jac.

the lineup of sun-care products from blockup!

the final product, on blockup.com.sg

p.s.: check out their facebook app at http://apps.facebook.com/blockup/.

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the entry about an afternoon nosh and thereafter

i admonish myself for mismanaging my meal schedules so badly these days, i'm having a bad time with bowel movements. i endeavored remedying the farce situation with consuming loads of fibre from fruits such as banana and papaya and downing tons of water; it didn't work. i even tried fybogel, and imagined myself sitting atop the throne later excreting the unspeakable, but it was pretty much a fiasco. i'm thinking laxatives next.

folks, never underestimate the power of inflation. a two-dollar bill fifteen years ago would have bought me a bowl of egg noodles and vending coke at the local school's tuckshop, and with change to spare. fast forward to now, and it's hardly enough to cover for even the entree, let alone a scrumptious budgeted full-course meal. miser-warts, beware. gone are the days of economical food.

so, a friend brought me for an afternoon delight of noodles-slurping affair. well, technically, i drove, i led the way, and i demanded he gave me a treat, but what gives? anyways, as i was chopsticking my plate of springy eggy noodles, enjoying the treasure find of wanton dumplings that was few and far between, i heard a massive cacophony of blaring percussions of the orient, represented by the likes of cymbals and large drums.

indulge in savoury eggy nosh from the likes of kok kee

the vendor's new kicks: waterproof and abundant

apparently, the hawker has just been retrofitted and refurbished, and a procession was in place to celebrate the brand-new facade of the center. amidst the sea of dizzying new beige tables were these lion mock-ups sluggishly batting their eyelids to the almost-tuneless music played by "the orange band". they are so called "the orange band", because i could think no other name suited it better. it was such a hot mess: the sweltering weather was beating down mercilessly and the ruckus wasn't letting up at all. the masquerade of lions nearly ruined an otherwise sumptuous feed.

the din was apparently too much for crony kevin

we moved on to something even more delectable: test-drive! get a load of my potentially new ride, a mercedes c-180.

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