It has been raining heavily these few days. My birthday on Sunday, and then Monday and Tuesday when I was on leave. I woke up with a swollen eye on Monday morning and decided to go out with one red eye in the late afternoon to do Christmas shopping. The swelling had gone down but the redness was still there. It is still slightly red today. I got a headache after coming home from the shopping and had to endure the bus ride home, with my hands full of shopping bags. Now my left arm is still aching from yesterday.

Not what I really wanted for this break. Haha. But it's okay. It wasn't too bad I guess. At least I slept quite a lot during these few days. Tomorrow, I'm going back to work. It'll be good.

---

11 December 2006

Met up with Au and DT. Hehe. I think Hehe sums up what I always feel when I meet up with them. =) We had dinner at Asian Kitchen, then dessert at the Hongkong cafe. Hope we can continue to meet up frequently.

12 December 2006

Oh I said I would talk more about my birthday. Think I'll start with my mom's birthday which was on the 12th. That day, I brought her out to lunch at Mandarin Hotel. The food was quite disappointing and my mom is still talking about the food we had. Haha. Anyway, after we shopped around a bit, we took a cab and she got off first to go home. I went to Bugis Junction to get a haircut. Actually I wanted to go back to Chinatown outlet I go to but it was closed for renovation. So I decided to go to Bugis Junction for a haircut as I figured I wouldn't have much time to do so before Christmas.

It was between Jean Yip and Reds. I tried the Jean Yip there a couple of years back so I decided to try Reds this time. I sat at the waiting area as I had no appointment. They have this computer with their intranet, with these pictures of their customers' haircuts. It's some competition where you choose the hairstyle of the month or something. So I was clicking on the pictures to get some idea of what I wanted to do but the pictures were mostly that of women with curls, which is still quite "in" now. My hair length was not suitable for curls so as I looked for more pictures, this guy who would be cutting my hair came to me.

My first thought when I saw him was that "Ah, why a guy? I don't go to guy hairdressers." Then as he spoke, I thought, "Ah, not local. I can't really place that accent." And then my third thought was, "He's quite cute!". Just to digress a bit, you don't really get to read about me ever meeting cute guys because well, I really never meet any. So read on and be amused. Haha.

So he asked me the usual question of what I wanted to do. I said, "Probably straighten it and cut." He gave a semi-incredulous look and said, "Straighten? But your hair doesn't need straightening." At this point, I sat up and listened carefully to what he was saying. This guy is different from my kimage hairdresser who always tries to get me to do the expensive stuff like rebonding and curling. Well, he then said he would just colour my hair since the roots are growing out and give me a different haircut.

There was this other guy assisting him. Even so, I think I must have sat there from 4.30 p.m. till 7.45 p.m. because I was waiting for this and that. Wait for the colour to set in, wait for him to be free to do the haircut, wait for the hair treatment to set in, etc etc. I drank a lot of water in that few hours and it was damn embarrassing to have to go to the toilet when my hair was wrapped up and the gown on me. The assistant told me I could probably take it off but he told me it was better for me to go in full gear. Embarrassing because the toilet was not in the salon itself but outside.

It was not the worst thing because when I went back to the salon, I saw this cockroach fly onto the wall in front of me when I sat down. It walked around and at one point, it climbed into the space where the hairdryer was. I told the assistant that there was a cockroach but he couldnt' find it. I thought it could have been in the hairdryer and imagined it flying out onto my hair when the hairdryer was switched on but heng, we finally found the cockroach and with a quick twisting of the assistant's foot, the cockroach was dead.

Next, the assistant squeezed the treatment mousse onto my head. I don't know why but he left it like turd on my head. I couldn't help but smile at that sight because it was quite funny. Hairdresser came by and said, "Huh? Christmas?" and embarrassed assistant quickly spread it over my hair.

Time passed and Hairdresser started to cut my hair. I noticed that this other woman hairdresser started to stand and watch us. When he finished and started to blow dry my hair, she stooped down and said, "When you go home, you should take a picture. They (Japanese) blow hair differently from us". Ah, that explained the accent. I should have known since my teachers in uni speak with a similar accent! I said, "Wow, he's actually Japanese!", to which she replied, "Yes, he'll be on tv tonight. Catch him on the Fann Wong show."

I was quite impressed and as he walked me to the front to make payment, I said, "So you're Japanese!". He responded with a smile and nodded his head. He waited for me to finish payment and handed me his name card and a sweet. Haha. I was so tempted to speak some Japanese like "Thank you" blah blah but decided against it because of some incident at Lau Pa Sat. That, I'll leave the story telling in another entry.

Anyway, it's a pretty nice haircut, not as expensive as Kimage, there's eye candy, it's near home, and I can go shopping! Many reasons for me to go back for my next haircut. Hopefully he doesn't go back to Japan or be transferred to the new branches in the next few months. Then I'll have another haircut story to tell because, I will interview him during my next haircut. Questions like, why is he in Singapore as a hairstylist? I'm seriously intrigued because most Japanese here are either housewives or businessmen or working in Japanese companies.

Okay, okay. Enough of the Japanese thing. Hahaha. After the haircut, I met my starving sister for dinner. Came home to a mom who had been having diarrhoea all afternoon after the lunch. I didn't have any stomachache so I guess it shouldn't be food poisoning?

13 December 2006

I attended a course at City Bayview Hotel on creating innovative places. It was pretty good although I think quite a few concepts aren't new. Met some interesting folks there and there's this guy who is my ex-colleague's ex-colleague. Heard from him that my ex-colleague is now pregnant. Wow!

After the course, I went to CK's graduation exhibition at Mandarin Hotel (again!). Saw the singer Shi Kangjun who was also graduating, Diana Ser if I'm not mistaken, radio DJ Shan Wee and music teacher Peter Chen. It was quite fun actually because other than seeing CK's graduation work, I got to see a real fashion show where models strutted down the runway in the fashion students' graduation pieces.

14 December 2006

I went back to work. This was the day the girls surprised me when I was doing work. When I turned to face them, they held out a present and said Happy Birthday. =)

15 December 2006

I thought I had already been surprised but in the late morning, those in the office came to my workstation with a powerpuff girls cake and a bouquet. They also sang me a birthday song. Actually it was the highlight of this birthday. I was very happy. =)

16 December 2006

On Saturday, I went to Corrinne May's Christmas concert at the esplanade with Hrin. I think this should be the fifth time I've watched her live. This time, I was a bit bored because most of the songd she sang were Christmas songs. But it was enjoyable. I liked the strings accompaniment and the choir was a surprise. =)

When I got home, I ordered pizza because I felt a bit hungry. It was fun lah, eating pizza alone. It was a quiet morning and I got smses from WW and sis who wished me at midnight.

17 December 2006

Smses, messages, two phone calls from C. He called when I was sleeping. Second time he called and I was awoken. We spoke for a while and ended the call. After that, he called a third time because I hadn't any plans on my birthday. Talked for about 40 minutes, with a lot of "pardons", "sorry" and pauses in between. I wondered if I spoke really bad english. LOL. Oh, C is my friend in Vancouver.

My mom cooked soup for my birthday dinner. Steamboat style. Okay, what she did was to throw a lot of stuff into chicken soup and cook it. It was nice, especially since I ate leftovers from the previous night's pizza meal for lunch. Haha.

This year, I was pleasantly surprised to get a birthday sms from a friend I hadn't met in ages.

Thanks.