Soul in a Slump, Heart in a Pinch

Ok it’s official. I’m in a slump.

I admit; I’ve been half-assing my way the past couple of days. I should be clearing my freelance articles as soon as possible, but I’d get down to like an hour of “research” and then I’d call it a day. I’m ridiculous.

How the fuck do I get out of this slump and feel motivation? My room is the most unproductive day to be and would it be bullshit to say my mind’s not been in a right state these days? Self, I am utterly disappointed in you, you should be downright ashamed of yourself.

Know what’s coming up? Halloween, multiple birthdays, bloody hell Hong Kong. I do not deserve any of those because I can’t even get down to do work when I have the time.

And you know that feeling of wanting to do work, then someone creeps himself into your head and you end up grinning to yourself like a damn fool and your heart is in a pinch? YES, KILL ME NOW I HAVE BECOME THE GIRL I HATE. The last time I felt this way, the boy dumped me because “I’m too nice.” True story, fuck my nice life.

GIRLFRIEND, SLAP SOME SENSE INTO YOSELF AND MOVE YO ASS.

Read this: Five Realizations That Helped Me Write Regularly

Get Off Your Butt

How To Master the Art Of Looking Busy (Haha. But made a whole lot of sense.)

Beat procrastination with Getting Started is Everything

 

This is an insane ‘recipe’, and if I’m desperate enough (and I almost am) I might just try it: Try this “recipe” to increase productivity Over the Next Week 

And finally. Time to seriously consider the Seinfeld Productivity Secret

Bring it, bitches

Aww hell, my brain is fried. I’m just about done simply email PR/marketing personnel and prepping for my articles, haven’t even begun any actual writing yet. Life of a writer by night, eh? I’ve been feeling like a headless chicken recently, trying to balance my day job and freelance work. But nope, not going to let go my freelance opportunities. With a chockful of discipline and a heart brimming in passion, anything is possible, I say.

Balance is ever important, so I’ve set up a little work schedule.

Monday to Thursday, it’s straight home after work and onto my articles. Wednesday would be the least strenuous, because I have yoga. Yoga is always good. Friday is party day heeey. Either a whole Saturday or Sunday, writing articles. And a promise to myself that I will stop all work at 11pm.

Very rough scheduling, but of course. If day job gets too crazy and I need an after-work stipple, who’s to judge eh, heh.

Best work productivity survival tool? LISTS. God I love lists. Want to make lists more effective? Prepare them the day BEFORE.

Upside to having no life? Less spending, more money! And I get to do what I love most; write. What comes after is the satisfying feeling of purpose. BAM. Feel powerful.

Main motivation: Paris 2013. It’s a definite go. Closer to home, I’m looking forward to Hong Kong come end November. SEXCITED is understating how giddily happy I feel about it.

So yes, life’s busy, but very, very good.

L’Etoile Cafe

Food post! I’m a terrible food descriptor; my food opinions are restricted to only ‘awesome’, ‘nice’, ‘not nice’, ‘disgusting’. Just a heads up.

Had brunch at L’Etoile Cafe last week.Gorgeous place with adorable vintage quirks as decor, and the location is fantastic. It’s just slightly off the beaten track, but still accessible via public transport. At Farrer Park MRT, come out from Exit D, and it’s a little under 10 minutes away. Helps that there are lovely sights in the shophouse atmosphere along the walk.

I didn’t enjoy the food though. I ordered the Big Breakfast ($14.90) and a hot Cappuccino ($4.50), my big breakfast was sad-looking with no notably quality ingredients. I don’t understand the salad, although to be fair, I don’t look well towards any salad which has no rocket (No arugula? I say, sir, that is blasphemous!) The sausages tasted… fishy. The scrambled eggs were dry, unless you count the odd sweetness which came from the salad dressing, yuck. I love eggs so very much. They’re the easiest type of food anyone can ever make and scrambled eggs are suppose to be foolproof. So. Why.

Mushroooms were decent though. Salmon slices were fortunately palatable. Not a coffee connoisseur, but the cappuccino gave me the perk I needed.

We also ordered the truffle fries ($8), which was… nice (kindly refer to beginning of post.). I have a love-hate relationship with truffle fries; sometimes I think the gasoline-ish aftertaste is gross, sometimes I think there’s not enough truffle oil drenched onto my fries.

We ordered the Seafood Vongole ($18.90). I liked this, ingredients were fresh. The prawns were cooked to that just-nice slightly translucent quality, and it had a crisp, yummy bite to it. Mmm.

Our table also ordered the French Toast ($8.50). It has honey on it, and when it comes to french toast I’m a strict maple syrup type of girl. Sorry. Plus, maple syrup amps up the taste of cinnamon (which the toast supposedly has but I didn’t notice any) way better.

Verdict: It’s a fab locale to hang out at with a couple of friends and while the day away over a cup of coffee, but if you’re expecting a satisfying, hearty brunch, I suggest you settle elsewhere first. For solo cafe-dwellers, this place is perfect too, they have books for your reading pleasure, and everyone leaves you alone there.

Also, it’s a surprisingly great place to people-watch; we saw many stylish people there. Talking about you, girl with turquoise eyeliner and sparkly gold shoes, and you, cool man with jesus hair rocking clashing printed shirt and pants.

Wish I’d knew about this spot just a couple of months back when I was jobless and wanted to feel like I’m living life like a chill bill when in actual fact I was just very bored.

L’Etoile Cafe, 160 Owen Road, tel: 6298 2872.

Ombre Hombre

Oh ombre.

Let me just get this out of the way so we can all move with life yes?

I hate. Ombre. Ok, more like ombre hates me. Two years ago before I left for Australia to study, I decided, the trend whore that I was (fine, still am.) that I was going to have deliciously sweet pink ombre hair.  Because back then, the ombre that came up were the baby pink blondes. Much like this.

“Pssh. So what if I’m not white, or have icy blonde hair? Gurrrlll you better believe that I can so totes pull this off,” I thought.

My stylist got down to stripping all the dark pigment off the bottom half of my black (heavily dyed brunette) Asian hair. Two bleach treatments later, she declared my hair untreatable. If I were to put anything else on top of it, my hair would get fried, and shrivel, and look like fluffy wire. Hence. I left with ombre blonde hair. It was an atrocious mess.

Anyway. Looks like ombre’s not going away anytime soon. If you’ve dark hair and you want inspiration, like I was so looking for back then, here you go.

But you know who rocked ombre before anyone else did?

That’s right, one and only Justin Hawkins from The Darkness. Damn I miss them in all their tacky glory. I believe in a thing called love, just listen to the rhythm of my heart!

Yoga time!

Shapeshifter Eyes

I’ve always been aware that how you put eyeliner affects the shape and look of your eye, but it has never hit me how different the looks are till I stumbled across this:

[Source]

Super interesting. When I line my eyes I naturally flick the ends for a cat eye, but on certain days that I want a more natural-ish rounder eye, I would just omit eyeliner altogether. And then I’d have naked eyes and it’s just not fabulous sometimes. Definitely going to give the top right eye a go.

While we’re doing interesting eye diagrams, this would also help:

Although to be perfectly honest, I always use just one neutral shimmery champagne colour splashed all over my lids up to my brow bone everyday, no matter the occasion. Eyeshadow blending is like the hip best friend I’d love to have, but we fight like catty schoolgirls every time we meet.

I HAVE ARTICLES TO FINISH BUT I’VE NARY A START!!! It’s strange the things you can get up to when you’re procrastinating. Ok fine, tomorrow I shall start. Fo sho. Yeah.

I miss you, Susan

Susan Miller’s readings are finally up! YES I LOVE ME SOME ASTROLOGY AND I DON’T CARE WHO JUDGES!

Seriously, I use to do that hesitate bit when people shoot me furtive wtf-she-been-smoking glances, but these days I really don’t give a crap how many eye rolls I get as I wax lyrical about astrology and numerology. The stuff fascinates me to no end.

I’ve also had an odd past week, and so did a bunch of other people around me. For reals. It’s like. The world can’t function proper wiithout Susan’s readings.

I was born right smack in the middle of two signs – Scorpio and Sagittarius, and I’ve always been, uh, privileged, to pick and choose my fortunes. HAHA. In recent years though, I definitely identify better with my Sagittarius side.

Wildly optimistic, freedom-loving, incurable travel disease. Yep that would be I.

Cheers to the start of the work week.

 

Susan Miller’s mom died last week :( Because I love Susan Miller, I am obligated to share her sweet tribute to Little Mom.

 

White is Not Might

My life sucks because I can’t ever make white tshirts work for me.

Same thing all the time: What the fuck is that stain?! When did that even happen?! Why can’t I keep food in my mouth?! Why won’t food leave my butt alone?! Why am I such a failure in life?!

Why hello there, Black Tshirt, looks like you can’t get rid of me, not in a long while.

Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-maaad maaad maad

I can’t ever say ‘mad’ and its other forms without following up with the hook of Muse’s Madness now.

And recently I’ve been saying “This is madness!” a lot. *followed by spirit finger claw action to head to indicate mind is blown*

Muse’s sixth album, The 2nd Law, is patently epic, and Matthew Bellamy’s melancholic drawls and high-pitched nuances never fail to take me to that other place.

Madness is awesome, Follow Me is beautiful, Unsustainable is the perfect theatrical head-banger.

 

But Two Door Cinema Club’s Beacon and their awesome kick-ass live set is still my go-to loop.

Keep the money, bro.

Today I lost my wallet and didn’t realise until lunchtime when my boss called to ask why I’ve left my wallet in the office mailbox. “OMG WTF?!” I said, as I scrambled my hands frantically in my bag.

“I’m such a lucky girl,” I thought with a broad smile on my face, to have such angels walk with my everyday to work. How my heart glowed.

When I got back to the office, my traipse to my desk broke out into a mini skip as I saw my wallet in its complete glory on my desk. Tenderly I held it in my hands and opened it, ID, license, debit card, all safe. I was about to announce to my amused colleagues that drinks are on me, and spread opened the cash flap.

“WOW. Angel decided to take a proactive approach to rewards… helped himself to all my cash, all $70+.”

Haha. But seriously, it’s cool. Take my cash, please, but let me have my cards back.

 

Money is petty. You can always earn back the money, but you can’t earn back the time and heartache and effort it would have taken to cancel cards and replace IDs.

From the bottom of my heart, thanks bro! I won’t even question how the fuck you know where I work.

 

And with this little incident, I doubt I’m getting anything AdRxH&M collection. I mean… It has to be a sign right? First day launch of the collection and I had to do an unwilling donation.

I do want the bag though. The paper bag I meant.

Final word: There is ALWAYS a bright side. Focus on that.

 

Hipster Princesses

First world problem: If I dress up as Hipster Ariel for Halloween, will people get me?

I think Hipster Ariel was one the first few memes that got me to understand what a meme even is. ( I sense a hipster-inception type thing coming out of that…)

Hipster Snow White works so well for me (Apple? Do I even need to go there?), and Hipster Belle makes so much sense! I mean… she was a book nerd, and she ditches douchey mainstream Gaston types for hairy men with fangs, and she uses tea cups.

Hipster Cinderella is redundant because bitch is just cray cray, talking to animals and imaginary old ladies with glitter dust.

Where’s the exotic hipster princess yo? Jasmine – pet tiger, seafoam turquoise? Mulan – Asian Andro boygirl? Pocahontas?!? Omgosh organic everything, tribal wear before music festivals even existed, hellooo?!

If you haven’t already guessed, my rambling is because I AM SEXCITED FOR HALLOWEENzZXZX.

Seriously. I have a million things I want to dress up as, and none of them are remotely doable. Fml.

 

Here’s another first world problem: I can’t decide if I should schedule in a massage tomorrow after work, or go for yoga.

I’ve been rolling on the bed all day, to sleep off this sick I’m getting, and my back is really sore. Also I’ve found the perfect doctor; he’s nice, he doesn’t shoot me judgmental looks, and the medicine he gives are my favourite kind… The kind that knocks you out.

I also really need to get started on my writing assignments. I think when I get down to it, I will find this incredibly useful: 4 Ways to Write Faster

Drowsy drugs kicking in, NIGHT woo!