I’m blue da ba dee
BOO!
I apologise for the major close up of my brilliant skin (above you can see the scar of where I randomly managed to scratch myself too), but I walked into Tangs at VivoCity and on a whim asked the good people at MAC to try out a hideously bright eyeliner (that’s right, not eyeshadow, but eyeliner).
It’s ELECTRIC bright! And I totally fell in love with the very bright look that I grinned at the salesperson and said “YES! gimme gimme!” (paraphrased here slightly). I tried it again yesterday, and scared quite a few folks awake (they’ll thank me later, I’m sure). The colour makes me happy happy happy!
The only issue i have now is, this colour is from MACs LiquidLast range – this makes it more than a little difficult to remove my makeup without having bright blue bits still stuck to the base of my eyelashes!
Happy birthday Pakistan
Pakistan is 62! They all grow up so fast *wipes tear trickling down face*
(didn’t have a chance to take a better photo of the national green and white, unfortunately 
)
Welcome to Karachi!
For those of you who don’t know, I’m in Karachi until the 19th of August, where my boss has kindly allowed me to work remotely (also for those of you who don’t know, I’ve been very efficient in using up all my leave for the year – using up my full allowance by March).
In the meantime, I’m rather impressed with my schedule here – pulling in a full day at “the office” (more on that below), and then piling in a full evening of Karachi stuff, which includes:
- Checking out materials
- Going to boutiques
- Visiting family
- Going to weddings
- Going to tailors
- Arguing with tailors
- Visiting the salon to get beautified
- Getting materials dyed
- Going back to the tailors
- Tea parties
- Dinners
Sometimes all of the above in one day! I know it sounds like a very atas, tai-tai* lifestyle, shame about the office part, eh?
My office, FYI, is a corner of the sofa in my grandmother’s TV lounge, with the power cord sprawled very inconveniently (for everyone else) across the white tiled floor (highlighted in yellow below). Unfortunately, the rest of the area NOT being an office, I still have to contend with granddaughterly duties such as having to answer my grandmother’s random questions, running between the lounge and the kitchen, and answering the phone. I’ve found a great way to get over this though – “I’m in the office!” To this however, my mother “visits me at work” by gleefully and deliberately leaning over the yellow line to poke me.
Having nothing better in life to do (hey, I’ve had enough time to think about reviving this blog (again) and then dig out its password and actually upload photos!), I’ve actually been taken some photos (albeit from my camera phone), so you folks have both blog posts, and photos to look forward to!
*Singlish definitions
- atas – (ah-tahs) – Malay for “upstairs”, it describes someone as snobbish, hoity-toity, affected or arrogant.
- tai tai – applies to citizens of the world with an Asian viewpoint who have bounds of time and money. A Tai Tai is a privileged lady of means.
fly me to the moon!
Having done nothing except to sleep, eat and sleep some more, o Sunday, the Singapore contingent of the Hasan family decided to get its act together at 8.30pm and do something to mark mother’s day.
So we pile into the car, and the car pushes off. And we were still deciding where to go. Then mom says: “wow, look at how big the moon is tonight!”
Dad’s head whips to the left and he says, “are you thinking of going there tonight?”
Mom: “well it certainly looks closer than usual”
Dad: “True, it looks like its just above Changi Airport”
Mom: “you figure we can just take a shuttle over from there?”
Dad: “I figure they have some going from the budget terminal”
Me: “it’s probably peak time now anyways, seeing how the moon disappears during the day and all…”
The Hasans: *contemplatively* “Hmmmmmmm”
We ended up going to Vivo City instead. Pity.
Seeing double?
I was at PageOne (bookstore) yesterday, killing some time before regrouping with the parents for a coffee session at VivoCity, and I chanced upon this big book of business card designs. One design in particular caught my eye. WS/ex-WS folks, tell me if something strikes you about this card design:
different, differenter, differentest
I know the below post is rather monumental, but i figured you guys would be still hankering for more, so you’ll be pleased to read that what follows is a regular sized post (courtesy of some inspiration that comes from a scoop of Haagen Dazs Belgian Chocolate ice cream.)
The last time I posted, I was typing on a different laptop, in a different house in a different part of Singapore and in a different position at work. With all those changes, it was only fair to reflect the (happier) changes with a happier look to my page! Hence the rather citrusy fresh template here! *poses with a colgate grin*
Since my last post I’ve also taken approximately 4283764145 trips (give or take a few) to Karachi, but have also been to Dubai and London. More recently, I’ve also bought a 32-inch plasma LG TV, which I hook up to my even newer laptop (a Lenovo Thinkpad x200, for those of you interested 
*gloat*).
Also in the meanwhile, I have managed to bang up my mother’s car twice (am not going to go into details). This (plus all the above) means that I am also significantly poorer than I was when I was visiting this space more often as well. sigh.
gifty monday!
as a rule, Mondays generally suck. But the world is out to contradict everything I say, it seems.
The day started with a little packet on my table, which turned out to be a magnet from a colleague who had just returned from China! Following which, another colleague, also on her first day back from her holiday, handed me a little bag with a lip balm from Kiehl’s, and Maybelline’s new fancy super lengthening mascara (not available in Singapore, folks!) – so I promised I would test it out tomorrow, and am going to layer that stuff until my lashes are too heavy to lift!
I stepped out alone during lunch to run some chores, and then decided to have a nice quiet cup of coffee at Starbucks at Centrepoint with lunch (picked up some sushi from Cold Storage). I managed to find me a cosy little spot, and flipped through a home decor magazine (I’m still looking for ideas to decorate my new room with), and all in all, left with a warm fuzzy feeling (it had nothing to do with the coffee I had). On my way back, while crossing a traffic junction (mid-way through too, I should add), I slowed down, and squinted my eyes, stopped, and then looking at this person walking by, said, “Addy??”
Thankfully this person didn’t look at me like I was a nutcase (well, she could have, what with my new haircut and all, but more about that in a seperate post), but instead said “OMG! Mehreen!!” It turned out she had just stopped at the office to drop off some things, and was on her way to the hairdressers. So sure, other people may have met her at work, but I don’t share addys. (muahahaha). Anyways, after getting (further) beautified, addy came back us poor things in the office, and came to distribute MORE gifties!! So from this haul, I got a little handphone danglies, with my name written on a tiny little grain of rice, and that put into a little tube. I also got a cigarette lighter, in the shape and design of the Olympic torch!!
Overall, not too bad a Monday after all!
Errr…
I saw this piece of news scrolling across the BBC ticker last night:
Women try to open door mid-flight
A plane was forced to make an emergency landing in Germany after two British women tried to open a cabin door mid-flight, police have said.
You can read the rest of the article here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7527058.stm
**UPDATE**
omg, it’s contagious!! Came across this piece of news in Travel Daily Asia:
Drunk man tries to open plane door
A drunken passenger tried to open the door of a plane while the plane was fl ying at 35,000 feet, The Daily Telegraph has reported. The First Choice Airways fl ight was en route from London Gatwick to Havana, Cuba, when the British man decided he wanted to get off. The plane made an unscheduled landing in Bermuda where the man was removed from the fl ight. Police in Bermuda said the man had not been charged but was “under security watch” at a motel.
Mehreen with a social life? gasp!
It turns out that contrary to popular belief, I do have more than “one friend” in Singapore. (fret not Harleen, you can still keep the title.)
On tuesday, i met up with the original “one friend” and Ruha, for lunch. (which is when it hits all of us again that we’re not in school any longer and how much we have changed since then) (uncomfortable heels and stiff office clothes tend to help)
Shivani and I pencilled in Amna into our calendars, gracing her with our presence during lunch. Amazing how interesting gossip about people you don’t even know can be!!!
*ahem*
During the second half of Wednesday, Ima sent me an SMS that she was in the area and could hang around until I knocked off work. I looked at my to-do list and told her not to stay around on my account. However when it hit 6, i decided to throw caution in the wind, called up Ima (who was coincidentally/conveniently in Plaza Singapura) and made a run from the office. Yay spontaneity!
Sat was solo-time with Harleen for dinner and coffee at Clarke Quay, where thankfully we didn’t bump into anyone we knew (we’ve had a pretty bad track record with that so far), and I had a coffee after SO long, I stayed up until 4am, watching really bad TV, and stuff on YouTube. (ah, it’s just like being back in uni *heart*)
Also went and saw HellBoy 2 on Sunday with Dad, in a rather impromptu plan (he was looking at the movies section of the paper, asked whether I was interested, found the next soonest timing, and went for it!). Also, we did something rather unusual in this day and age of movie watching. We *didn’t* pre-book the tickets online. We just drove to the cinema, stood in the walk-in queue, and bought our tickets the old-fashioned way. Brave, eh?
I rather enjoyed the movie (I didn’t watch the first one), and it was NOTHING like what I expected. It was fun, action-filled, light-hearted, and with good special effects. I came out of the cinema with a big grin on my face (the (intentionally) silly song at the end may have helped). In the same vein of movies, I’m also rather looking forward to The Mummy: Curse of the Dragon Emperor, seems like it will also be a fun movie.
While on the weekend, I also made those healthy muffins I’d threatened my dad with last weekend. I don’t know what the verdict is yet, but they smell gosh darn good!!! (orange cranberry muffins!).
Some things i didn’t get up to this weekend:
- exercise
- packing
- some errands
- prep to get into Harvard’s School of Divinity.
(well, couldn’t have a perfect weekend, otherwise the rest of you would feel bad!)
