Happy Bloody Anniversary

Today, August 28th 2008, marks my 1 year anniversary of moving back to Bangkok.

Exactly last year, I had lunch with Chris, had a teary goodbye with Kathy, and I distinctly remember at the customs:

Officer: Are you returning to Singapore? *glances and sees me with my guitar case, 2 carry ons and 2 layers of clothing*

Me: Yes.

I am such an optimist.

I don’t feel I like Bangkok any more, or any less. Life is the same. My room is the same, I haven’t moved into it nor have I made it more homey.  This morning I woke up extremely groggy, watched Joe Bidden on CNN and left the house for work extremely teary (what a touching speech! I’d vote for him as President next term!)

When I got to the office, it was the type of day where everything was haywire, and I fell into an extremely bitter mood. Bitter that I’m in Bangkok, I sincerely hate Bangkok, I hate how my life has changed so much 540 degrees. I would never on my own accord choose to live in Bangkok, this place is chaotic, dirty and foney (sp?).

Granted that I am not fluent in Thai, and I don’t have many Thai friends, I shouldn’t talk. But also, my personality doesn’t match Thai people, I find it a chore to go out there and develop meaningful relationships. And hence I just retreat and drown myself in my small world. As my wise soon-to-be-married friend told me, It’s a prison that you’ve imprisoned yourself in.   

It’s one of those things where, I know the solution to my problem in detail, the solution is within my reach, but I don’t have the heart to grab it.

I’ve dropped 2 dress sizes. Hurrah! My face is clear of any trace of acne thanks to my dermatologist, and I have to say that my health is so far good, I haven’t fallen ill once.

I was extremely bitter this morning, but when I left the office for the acupuncturist (Mom and Dad were worried about me, so took me to see a Chinese Doctor, they both sat with me in his office and told him about my dizzy spells) and during the drive home…I had a pensive moment.

My life is better in Bangkok. I did make the right choice to move back. And whenever I doubt my choice, I need only to look at my parents, and see how happy they are that I am home, and I feel much better. 

Let’s say if I stayed in Singapore, I don’t see how my life would be extra ordinary different as it was then. I was a party princess, a social butterfly, an womens-right activist, and on the road to becoming a successful banker. Looking at my future alternative life path – August 28th 2008, I am working too much OT at a private bank, having a blast with my friends, and I am still single.

No regrets. I made solid friendship bonds in Singapore that distance doesn’t matter.

So, despite the 5 emotional breakdowns, the lack of social life, the lack of human interaction…I know I made the right choice in coming home. My happiness comes from realising that my life is more meaningful when its spent with my family.

Happy Bloody Anniversary.

Quotes of August 26th 2008

I have to say there is a tie for the best quote of August 26th 2008

between the super oxymoron sentence:

PAD core leader Sondhi Limthongkul denied that the men were carrying weapons, saying the break in was done peacefully (Bangkok Post) 

break-ins can be peacefully meh?

and Seduction Singapore’s paraphrase of ‘ bad men’

In the “attraction sense”, ‘bad’ is NOT about nastiness or ill-doing. It’s just a guy who gives women a perceived feeling of “thrill”. Another way to phrase it (as described to me by a female) is such
men are “naughty in a charming way”.

I like how that phrase rolls off my tongue. naughty in a charming way….

Chaos day

So August 26th 2008 will go down a very chaotic day in Bangkok.

(note: starting today I’m dropping the Dear Readers, see if this style is better)

There is so much to blog about that I will just write random things that pop up into my head.

First thing is, in the morning we took another route to work because of protests. I didn’t think much of it. Bangkok is HUGE. If there are protests going on near Rachadamri (the court house) then it wouldn’t affect me in Silom, and it for SURE wouldn’t affect me where my house is.

As we were winding down our business lunch, Mr. Network (I am not going to use any real names anymore. I read some blogs in wordpress and they have  “cast lists” so interesting! I never thought it would be offensive to write about people in my blog, but just in case ppl mind, I’ll be using nicknames. I’ll leave you to deduce their actual identities.)

- as I was saying. Mr. Network, receives this phone call, and all of a sudden he is the most urgent man alive (ho gun cheung, 太紧张）the mob situation was getting more serious. He must leave at once. And knowing me, as he was getting his jacket at the back of the chair I just had to ask, is it very serious? is it dangerous?

His reply: not very safe, we don’t know. please take care of your family. *makes his exit by DASHING out of the restaurant. leaving me with my mouth agape*

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH 

Anyhoo, once I got back into the office, Ms Uh-huh told me that they closed Siam, and they broke into the national TV station NBT. And that there were 10 separate locations for protests.

Mom was out of the office near one of the protest areas, so I was so so nervous, and Mr.Celebrity was making me more nervous asking where she was, what time will she be back, and to rub salt into the wound, when I was having my afternoon meeting with Dad, Mr. Celebrity interupted with

I don’t want to worry you, but where is your Mother, the protests are getting worse, they over took the PM house and they are blocking roads

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH Protests Intensifies!

anyhoo, we still planned our day as scheduled. Dad was nice, closed the office early, and we headed to the lovely farmers Market – Seacon Square. I went to Fitness First for Body Jam and Body combat.

And… I did it again, I don’t know WHAT move I did exactly, but after the mambo track, I felt my ankle a bit wobbly. And now I’m limping. I have to master mambo with stilettos.

Note to everyone: To guarantee a more intense work out, you must 1. Stand in front of the mirror, and 2. Wear dancers clothing. Today I did the whole flash dance getup, with leggings, tank top, and off the shoulder shirt along with a sweat band. *thumbs up* now that’s style.

After class I went up to the instructor (she wasn’t very good) and asked her the name of that song, and all we saw was “Body Jam Track 34″!!! Disappointing, but after googling, and looking in my media library, I have that song!! “Cha Cha Heels Rosabel Big Room VX mix.” Yay.

I’m posting the link so you can hear it, I love the break down when its like “1…2…*music* …cha cha cha…let me put my heels on!”

After gyming (oh for Body Combat I wore my gym gloves, super intense – again having to do with the wardrobe), I went on a hunt to print business cards, tum tum chuen around the gok fa yuen. Ended up not printing. 

I met Mom at JASPAL – Chaos – JASPAL 70% discount!!! I went straight for the undergarments, because they are very pretty and relatively affordable. We saw two tourist, (Mom says they were russian) and I’ve never seen such distasteful entire lack-of-social graces/shopping etiquette EVER.

You see, during the sales period you cannot try on clothes, so most of us do the amazing neck test (where you take the pants or skirt and wrap it around your neck, if it fits, it fits. try it) These two size-2 (UK size 8)blondes were really trying on the clothes, as in stripping down their pants, trying on shorts, leggings, skirts, dresses and all the thai men were GAWKING. The lowest point was I saw her try on PANTIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (very pretty magenta silk ones)

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And she even had the audacity to lift up her dress and ask her friend how they looked, and there was this tall thai-chinese man with his jaw dropped to the FLOOR. I caught him staring! hahaha

I looked at my set, then I looked at mom, and told her, “SEE this is WHY WE WASH OUR CLOTHES BEFORE WE WEAR THEM!” She laughed and nodded.

Wahh i just had to blog about it.

So I’m home now, just watched 2 movies on TCM, and found this youtube clip of the original Cha Cha Heels version, by Eartha Kitt (gotta love Cat Woman!) it is so chaotic. A nice soundtrack to end this post.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vGAa4Fdww8

Good Feedback!

Dear Readers,

The feedback for our first TV appearance was FABULOUS!!!

If today’s show is successful, it will fully cement our marketing strategy (live TV).

Yay!

Grego and I stayed up to watch the replay online yesterday. A very embarassing experience.

Hey that's me!

Yay!

I have to sleep now, our TV shoot is at 12 tomorrow, meaning that I have to be in the studio at 10am.

*yawns* will definitely have dark circles tomorrow.

I’m a very happy camper,
Stacy

Destination Addict

Dear Readers,

I was watching the ever-insightful Oprah. The topic of today was “Happiness” and they interviewed the author of “Happiness Now.”

The book rings a bell because someone bought it for Alvin on his birthday, he told me it was quite good.

I learnt a new term for people like me. I am a destination addict. I say things like “When I have more money, I’m going to do this,” or.. “When I lose 5 kgs, I will be happier”, or “When I have a car, I’ll socialise more”

I’m not living in the present! So it is good that I’m aware of what I am, now comes to the point of frankly doing something about it.

So I will try to be happier, and see happiness within myself, and not pursue it.

Oooh I just took the Oprah Happiness quiz.

My result:

***

Your total score is 23.

If you scored 15 or under, you are dissatisfied with your life. If you scored 31 or higher, you are extremely satisfied with your life.

If you scored somewhere in the middle, happiness expert Dr. Robert Holden has some advice on how to live a more satisfying life. Dr. Holden says the key to being happy is overcoming “destination addiction,” which he defines as “living in the not-now.”

“It’s always about tomorrow, so you’re chasing ‘more,’ ‘next’ and ‘there,’” he says. “You promise yourself that when you get there, you’ll be happy. And I promise you, you won’t, because you’ll always set another destination to go for.”

Instead, Dr. Holden says if you are unhappy with your life or looking to improve your score, there are two things you can do. “We have to learn to let go of our past, we have to give up all hopes for a perfect past. Let the past go, it’s gone.” After that, he says, “Take a vow of kindness. Be kinder to yourself and to others.

“It’s never too late to be happy,” he says.

*** 

Trying to overcome addictions,

Stacy

Look Mom, I’m a TV Star!

This is me, after the tv shoot.

Dear Readers,

I’m also known to exaggerate. I like to tell interesting stories.

Anyhoo, I’m far from a TV star. More that, I appeared on TV today.

One of the privilege (this is debatable) of being the owner’s daughter is that you get to go on TV to act as a figure head of the company.  We had a 15-minute segment on H+ Health Show, which is a channel on the TCC Thai Cable Network. I don’t subscribe to TCC, I subscribe to TrueVisions, but TCC is quite popular. The subscriber base is 1,000,000 viewers.

But to begin this story, I have to tell you that the night before I slept at 11pm. That’s early. SUPER early for me, and I forced myself to sleep early because I found that if I sleep more than 8 hours, my dark circles fade.

You wouldn’t believe it, but at first the TV Channel told me that they wouldn’t be putting on makeup for Joy and I. WHAT!?!?!? Because that was the case, Mom helped me put on makeup. Thanks Mom!

Turns out that TCC did put on makeup on their guest before they went on the show. YAY! but when the makeup artist did not do much for me, he just put on anti-shine powder and a bit more eyeshadow. So Mom was very on the ball.

This is me and the makeup artists. And this is Joy and I, I look like a huge fat cow next to her, but I’m uploading it anyways because she looks fabulous.

This is after the tv shoot.

They gave us a rough script, in THAI, and the talk show host were going to alternate between asking Joy and me. My thai is HORRENDOUS. So for 45 minutes before our shoot, Joy and Sandy kept on repeating the thai phrase so that I can remember what to answer them. The idea was for me to answer back in English, and for Joy to translate.

The beauty of this plan was if I fumbled, Joy would translate the proper answer. *thumbs up*

It was very nerve-wrecking actually. Joy was nervous, and I had to be ‘un-nervous’ so that she wouldn’t be nervous. And the Talkshow hosts were such pros that they were so non-chalant about the whole thing.

They introduced us very well, spoke first about hair loss, how many of us experience it and may not know what to do about it. And that TODAY their special host is the owner of HAIR2Centre, here to talk about HAIR2.

If the interview was in English I would had totally creamed it. But it was in thai, so I didn’t do much, I smiled and nodded when appropriate, and tried to participate as much as possible. Joy was a SUPERSTAR! She was calm and spoke very eloquently, and thank goodness for that. The cameras were focused on her alot, and I didn’t have many closeups (yay!) but I did look like a huge hippo next to Joy, and also next to the small Male host.

The camera really does put on 10lbs! I’ve been working so hard to lose weight, and I thought that I got it nabbed in the bag (only 5 more KGS to go!) but seeing myself on air, it felt like I was back to square one!

We had live callers, and it was quite exciting to hear the phone ringing and to literally SEE calls on hold while we were answering questions. We could only take 3 calls, boo. But all the other calls were directed to our call centre 1577.

Overall it was a very good experience. If the feedback is good then I will be going more often.

The next show is scheduled for Friday morning, 12:30-14:00 Bangkok Time

http://mvtv.co.th/th/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=35 (select H+)

Oooh, the rerun will be on in 10 minutes! I have to run!

Your mini-celebrity (a term coined by Mark.)

Stacy

I moved!

Dear Readers,

I officially moved to:

www.stacyinbangkok.wordpress.com

See you there,
Stacy

It’s time for a change

Dear Readers,

I finally did it. Moved to wordpress. It is much MUCH better than Blogger, but I’m having difficulty importing my previous posts. Will import the rest of my blog posts tomorrow.

Times are changing, or is life really just moving forward?

My last post was about my love for X-files and MULDER especially – he shaped my ‘type’.

Well, actually, I don’t know what came first, whether I liked Mulder then noticed the small but significant similarities between him and Philip or liked Philip first and then started to like Mulder. I feel it was the latter.

Anyways, Philip, was my first ever like-crush.

The first boy I held hands with…during the swimming gala.

The first boy I shut out…a bunch of my girlfriends made me cry because they said that I liked someone else’s boy (who was my good friend and in my ‘gang’ of friends) when the only person I liked was Philip. 

I have this vivid memory of me walking up the school flight of stairs bawling my eyes out, and he caught up to me and asked me what was wrong, and I said ‘nothing’.

And just like that, the ‘nothing’ killed it. Even when I was 12, I had the ‘it’s my problem and you can’t help me’ mentality.

It was one of those grade 8 idiotic things where, I like you and you like me, and we talk on the phone 24/7 but we never say anything about it.

He was such a sweetheart. Quiet, but if you press the right buttons he would talk alot.  He had that shy- whitty quality to him. And yes, he looked like Mulder.

Anyways, during our Uniphyll (company product) commercial shoot, one of the production people looked like him. And TODAY he messaged me on MSN. Which is not huge…but just really rare. We’ve kept in contact on and off for the past 6 years.

We did the usual, wow how have you been! I haven’t spoken to you in ages!!!!

And then came the

“I’m engaged!!!”

….

He’s engaged to his long-time girlfriend. Yay for him! No seriously, that’s how I feel.

At first it was a bit shocking (just because friends around my age aren’t getting married), and then there was a bit of a ‘tinge’ feeling in my heart. Not that I’m madly in love with him (NO.) More that, I do have a soft spot for him, or rather did.

Have you ever experienced that, like…you aren’t with that person you used to like/love but somehow you always end up caring for them?

It took me a long time to get over my Philip saga, and I’m happy to say that that beginning chapter has been shut for the past 2 years. (Hurrah!)

He sounded so happy and excited about it, told me about how he proposed, and mentioned briefly about his wedding plans. When he had to go, he said something along the lines of…”I wanted to tell you because you are one of the only UCC friends I keep in touch with and I didn’t want you to hear it from anybody else.”

A few years ago he spoke to me about Tiffany, and he couldn’t get over her. It is so fitting that they end up happily married. I wish them all the best, and I put my daydream of – Philip and I randomly meeting in 10 years and hitting it off – to rest. (*nodd*)

Life is moving forward fast. It was like yesterday I was hanging out with Grace, Adrian, Arun and Matt in the park, joking around, vandalising the MTR system and just having thoughtless fun.

Now all of us are working. All the future careers, future life plans we were talking about are all playing out.

Watching from the sidelines,

Stacy

X-Files

Dear Readers,

I never mentioned it, but I am a HUGE X-files fan. MEGA. For my birthday (forgot which one) Vick bought me an X-files encloypedia – I read it like a novel. (demonstrates how much I loved it)

And when I moved to Bangkok in 1998, there was no X-Files here, so Grace actually taped 4 seasons for me on TVB Pearl and Star World. So I have all the seasons (except Season 8 & 9 and note – I seriously disapprove of the add in of Agent Dogget and Agent Reyes)

Anyhoo, in my room I have our old VCR, and so recently I’ve been having X-files marathons. THANK YOU GRACE!!!!! I was just thinking the other day how she is so amazing to have done this for me. A true devoted friend who always understands me.

Come to think of it, Mulder (David Duchovny) was the first actor I actually liked (whereas YOU KNOW WHO is the first actor i LOVED) and while daydreaming a few days ago, I came across a relevation that most probably Mulder shaped/or played a major part, in determining my ‘type’.

Andrea would agree, I vividly remember her exasperated in my dorm room at Tatham Hall saying, “you have a thing for noses!!” haha.

I’d love to be Scully and have Mulder as my partner. mmm…

I should be working.
Stacy

Mouldy Moon cake

Dear Readers,

Guess what, I don’t remember if I told you that Dad and I bought a box of moon cake (yum) when we were in KL.

Uncle David took us to buy Malaysia’s most famous 月饼, it cost us 46RM for 4 lotus paste with one yolk moon cake. (My family LOVES MOONCAKE!! and Thai moon cake is HORRIBLE) The cake is nothing compared to HK, but better than Thailand, but the most shocking is that for one of the moon cakes, we opened the box and found MOULD on it!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

*****

TT Resources Bhd., Malaysia

Product: Tai Thong Moon Cakes

Re: Quality Complaint – Mouldy Moon cakes.

To whom it may concern:

On July 31st I was visiting KL, and purchased one box of moon cake (lotus paste with one yolk) at your Kiosk outside your restaurant. Yesterday when I presented it to my parents, we were so shocked to find one of the mooncake with MOULD growth on it. The expiration date said October 31st 2008. The other 3 mooncakes had no problem, but I am a bit concerned because they have the same batch number: 1023 0614 0824

I am very disappointed with your company because my friend told me you were the best moon cake makers in Malaysia and I was surprised when this happened, also embarassed because it was a present to my parents.I hope that in KL you, your customers will not need to go through the same problem as me.
Please advise how you will solve this complaint.
Best wishes,

Stacy

***

Let’s see how they reply.

Stacy