Cheat Work Thursday

(Continued from this post .) 2) Dear John, Nicholas Sparks (This contains spoilers. Skip it if you don't like spoilers, because I love spoilers. They keep my heart rate in check.) The blurb did make me curious enough to read more. Going through the first several pages, I wished the story had moved a lil' faster. (By this time, I was already scanning for spoilers on the last few pages of the book but couldn't really grab what was happening.) The story started to pick up for a bit, until we reached the 100+th page at which point I was annoyed with Savannah. Do you really have to cry like that ? I mean, you've only known this boy for a week here...? Then Savannah surprised me with her finding, and the story continued to be okay for a while, until John's father fell ill and died. In my defense, I was reading the book on a quiet early morning on a holiday week, alone at home, and I'm always homesick. But I promise you that part was sad 🤷🏻‍♀️. The first b...

I'd shop, then go home and spend the following hours mixing and matching my new acquisition with the existing pieces in my wardrobe, parading them in front of the mirror and all. Just one of my many outstanding habits. Especially if it is a steal rather than a splurge, I'd then start to think, "What an awesome shopper I am. I should write a blog (a separate one than this one), specializing in smart shopping. I'll share my findings and help the whole of KL get the best deals in town. My readers (plural) and I will have a super fun time exploring new shops and ways to mix and match. For example, we'll find a piece of black pencil skirt from a totally unknown shop and find at least 76 different ways to style it! Maybe I'll have a regular feature called 'Dress Like Victoria Beckham for RM200 And Less!' and major stylists will catch my posts, instantly adore my stylings, and they will call me to advise for their campaigns..." Mmmthen... the words ...

Working on my own (because the other phrase that I wanted to use is very misleading, I tell you), I operate by the word 'persistence'. In fact, I think it has paid most of my bills. The other portion of the bills has been paid -- I'd like to believe -- by my charm. Or credit card? Sometimes I get these two blurred. And skills. Of course, skills and knowledge. You can't live without skills and knowledge, can you? But this is not exactly a straightforward path. It's not a complaint, but sometimes my ego strategic thinking would set in. Sometimes I'd turn my back on a door slammed in my face with a four-letter word -- fine. "Fine, clients. It's your loss. You have the best talent in town (obviously, thank you) at your doorstep, but you'd rather be stuck without it. One day you'll wake up realizing just how awesome I am, scrambling to reach me on the phone, desperately wanting to pay me for my work (I hope it's soon. I mean, I can't wa...

Some of the books that have kept me occupied for the past few weeks: 1) Dead Until Dark, Charlaine Harris — I thought I'd given up reading the rest of the series , then I felt very un-loyal , like I'd disappointed Sookie and Bill and the whole vampire community. So I picked this one up. One thing about the series, it's neither totally I-can't-read-another-page-of-this nor I-can't-put-this-down-it'll-keep-me-up-all-night. So it's a good read before bed. Three down, six more to go. 2) Dear John, Nicholas Sparks — It's a pretty long confession , thought I'd write it here . 3) Twenties Girl, Sophie Kinsella — Finally. Read it. And I love it. Kinsella always manages to paint each scene in her books very clearly in reader's mind, everything is animated. The book is mainly about Lara and the ghost of her great aunt Sadie, but the parts about Lara's struggles running her company make me nod, grin and chuckle. (I may or may not be in the m...

(*one point for each) 1) have watched The Hangover and love it. 2) have read The Host, love Ian and now wish you were an alien. 3) are in service and deliver your service not in a way as if you're hating your job and your whole existence (if you do otherwise, try unemployment).  4) use the word 'slaphappy' after your favourite Saturday brunch. 5) read my favourite reading list on the sidebar -- from the beginning. 6) knew that The Blair Witch Project wasn't real the first time you watched it 10 years ago. 7) are my cousin and elope.

I would love to get some sleep right now. It's almost 5AM and I'm wide awake. I went to bed before midnight and was awake at 2. I do usually have problem sleeping the night before a huge meeting or busy day because I'll be all anxious about it. (I'd also use the word 'huge' loosely here if I were you.) But nothing is extraordinary about tomorrow's schedule, I didn't have any coffee today, and I've tired myself out working out last night: running and doing XX crunches and XX push-ups. (I take my count seriously. I use a calculator. And it was supposed to be XX each, but I couldn't finish it. By that count, I was already sprawling on the floor...) And now I'm still having trouble sleeping, despite having tried my usual tricks whenever I couldn't sleep: sleeping in the living room with the TV or music on, or lying flat on the floor (can't find the logic behind the latter but it usually works). Alright, I'm going to try to read ...

One of my favourite blogs just wrote about her trip to Vegas, and one of the places that she stopped by was Madame Tussauds. In one of the pictures, she was sitting next to 'Cameron Diaz', having a good time. The post reminds me of my trip to HK a few years back during which I went to its Madame Tussauds. I didn't know that HK had one until about 20 minutes before I stepped into the museum while climbing the hill, well, by bus up the Island Road. I thought only London had Madame Tussauds. Anyway, I was all excited because I've always wanted to see a wax museum. I think wax sculptors are geniuses. I doubt meeting the actual people is as exciting. During that time, I didn't have my own camera, so I borrowed my sister's. Hers was a digital one that used AA batteries, which, I learned during the trip, needed to be replaced every three steps I took in the city. So I went inside the museum, all eager to be amazed by the wax figures and to take equally amazing pic...

I'm currently watching Hung. It's a story about your average neighbourhood prostitute, with tons of branding lessons. (It's on HBO, Mondays 10PM / Tuesdays 5AM / Saturdays 12.45AM.) Can't wait for Idol season 9 to start. The one show that makes you clear your schedule 6PM Wednesdays and Thursdays because watching the repeat just isn't the same. Speaking of Idol, I'm listening to Adam Lambert right now. Was not a fan of his when he was on the show. Thought he screamed a lot. Also, can't wait for The Vampire Diaries to finally air here. Although, I heard that the vampires on TVD change faces and have fangs... So maybe I'm a little less excited now compared to the first time I heard about the show. Can't they just have superpowers and good faces, like all vampires are supposed to? Will probably jump on the Glee bandwagon too. Have a good weekend.

I took Accounting in uni because life in general isn't complicated enough. I tolerated Finance and Investment the most out of the 160 credit hours but found the concept of time value of money an eye-opener. Before that, Economics contributed the most points to my A-Levels, which tbf were not many anyway. Then I took financial planning classes after uni and now subscribe to Personal Money (and Harper's Bazaar too, just to confuse myself), read only about 1/10 of them and have yet to make my first million. Yes, just like everyone else, I'm still dreaming of inventing a product that can just be scraped off my living room and sold for a million. No? Only me? 🤷🏻‍♀️ Regardless of how my own personal money practice is actually going, I pretend the field makes sense to me. For the past one and a half months, besides the Working Girl blog that I've been following since last March, I've been spending hours reading over 300 (and counting) other blog posts on career an...

It always scares amazes me how an outfit seems to work on some people but not on others. How a top or skirt makes a 30-(or 40-)something look good while the same outfit makes another look like she's stealing her daughter's clothes. When I want to sound correct, I'd say we should dress (or wear our hair) in something that we are comfortable with, that is in our own style, and for the occasion. I do believe it too. At the risk of sounding shallow, if I haven't already, the first thing that usually pops into my head, however, is 'clothes work better on a healthy body shape'. While the phrase 'healthy body image' sounds healthy and... comforting, throw a stone and guess the probability it'll hit a person who doesn't want to change anything about their body. It is the first few days of the new year. We promised to eat better and hit the gym last week with no intention to be  in shape at all.