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!)
uber sob-ness
I’m sure all of you have heard about my rather huge and chunky solid black brick-like IBM Thinkpad (one of the last of its kind, i tell you! Lenovo took over the company’s notebook business soon after). Well, I’d managed to make the previous one last 4-5 years before giving it up for this laptop. However, while typing out the last post for your reading pleasure, all of a sudden my screen went black. Then I realised that in fact the laptop itself had turned off!
A few days later I dug out one of our old IBM power cords, wondering whether that had fizzled out on me. I plugged it into the wall socket, into the laptop, and saw the little green light of hope light up on my beloved. However, any pleasure fizzled when I saw the green light fade, and I realised that it indeed was the laptop which had gone kapoot 
Now i have to find a thinkpad repair centre and send it in (it’s only 3.5 years old! I’m determined to resuscitate it!!!!
To add onto this despair, on my way home on Friday, I found out that Federer crashed out during the first round of the Toronto Mastersl
And to top it off, I went to a Starbucks outlet on Friday (wanted to celebrate a not-disastrous yearly review at work). Much to my despair, I discovered that they had stopped selling the Dark Mocha Frappuccino!!!!! Ugh.
So I picked up a bunch of satays from a foodcourt near my house on the way home instead. Small consolation, but it sort of did the job.
Of gluttony, entertainment and stuff
I’ve had an incredibly busy weekend, one which requires an extra day (or three) to sleep it off and recover, not that i’ve had that luxury.
I’ve decided to buck the regular trend of listing events chronologically, and instead am going to list them thematically.
If that doesn’t float your boat, i don’t know what will.
Exercise
I woke up ridiculously early on saturday, and decided that while i’m up, i might as well go get some exercise! So i drove (yes, drove, i do get the irony, thank you), to the gym and got in a solid 40+min session. A happy, aching start to a busy day!
On Sunday, I had to wake up at 6am (groan) to reach the Padang for the 7.30am start of the Shape run. As usual, Sam was already there and waiting (I had to take an alternate route because my regular one was blocked off due to above mention run), and finally managed to make it to the starting point, yawning and ready for bed. Sam also said that we should try running part of the run at least. I told her I was going for the Shape Walk, not the Shape Run, and asserted that she was crazy.
Having said that, I did run a teeny bit (started and ended the route running), and finished the run in 51 minutes! (I was predicting my taking an hour and a half, quite honestly). After this we lined up to pick up the goodie bags, and some other tshirt, and went home happy, all set for a well-deserved shower.
Beautifying
After the burst of exercise on Saturday, I ran home for a shower, and rushed out again for my facial. Now my skin is smooth and glowing! (for the next half day at least!)
In the afternoon, I met up with Sam (yes, she features a lot in this weekend’s happenings), for a pedicure, where we made life changing decisions (which nail colour to get?), and important observations (Sam’s magazine told her liquid eyeliner is in, mine told me that in the summers, it’s okay to leave the house wearing next to nothing, because it’s fashion!)
People sightings
After the pedicure, we waited for miss koh in Plaza Singapura, and while there we saw Baxter (our MD!). We also popped back into our office to use the loos (The ones at PS were nasty), and to our surprise, saw that the lights were on. Sam went to investigate, and we learned that Danny was in the office. We also bumped into Snigdha (another Weber person) at the bbq later in the evening.
On Sunday, while dad and i are lounging in the living room, reading the paper/books and listening to music, dressed super casually (i was in a tshirt and pyjamas), we heard the lift door open, and an uncle stepped in, looking rather bemused. He had wanted to stop by to give us a little box to sweets to celebrate his son’s engagement, and somehow managed to end up in our house. Creepy. We thanked him and all, and when the lift door closed, my dad looked and I looked at eachother, and smiled sheepishly.
Oops.
Fooding
I decided that for Lucas’ 3rd birthday party, which I was attending on Saturday night, I should make cute little cookies for the kiddies. So i decided on these little jam sandwiched cookies, and after my gym trip, I mixed together the dough, and put it in the fridge to harden while i popped out for my facial. I came back and got to rolling out the dough, cutting the shapes, baking them, rolling the remaining dough, cutting shapes, popping them in the oven, rolling the dough…(you get the idea).
Turns out that little sandwich cookies are rather time-consuming! I finished just in time to put them in a box, put the box in a bag, to grab my things and the car keys, and make a run for my pedicure!
Two little kiddies in particular enjoyed my cookies. So much so, that I had to stop sam and johju’s little grubby hands from constantly reaching into the box while I was driving them to the birthday boy’s party!
And at the bbq, i stuffed myself to the point where i couldn’t really move off my seat, and in a half daze started to make really dumb(er) comments on life in general. Which also lead me to think about what kind of drunk I would be. (I can’t remember what conclusion we got at, but whatever it was, Alvin agreed it would be a rather scary version of me to come across).
At some point on Sunday, I said to my father, “Dad, I’ve got bad news for you.”
Dad: *doesn’t look up from the paper he’s reading* “hmm, which is?”
Me: “I bought some wholewheat flour. Which means that I’m going to start using it in my baking.”
Dad: “And…?”
Me: “And that means that I’m going to test them on you, so you’re going to have to eat them”
Dad: “Oh. that’s not all that bad to hear!”
Entertainment
Ruha’s in town these days, so met up with her on Friday night, and had dinner, at a Spanish (i think) restaurant at Clarke Quay. Also then tried to figure out how she should get herself home, by examining bus maps, and through phone calls to her mother.
I dragged father to see the Dark Knight after dinner. Batman is only there as a prop, he’s barely in the movie (loved his motorbike though), and the main character in the movie is the Joker, followed by Harvey Dent. Although looking at what our hero gets up to (Batman, not Joker), it’s no wonder all these people need disguises. Can you imagine the huge bills these guys would be smacked with to restore destroyed cities if the authorities knew where these guys lived???
But i digress, the movie as a whole rocked! go see!
Literature
I read the Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid. He previously wrote “Moth Smoke”, which I strongly recommend everyone to read. His latest offering is ok lah, but then I guess it would be kind of hard to top his first book, so i forgive him.
Health
A lot of us have gotten into the health kick recently, what with concerns over general health, fitness, weight, funny tummies, and other things.
I myself have signed up for the Shape run (walk), the Nike+ Human Race, and am thinking of taking up Pilates as well. Folks have also changed their eating habits, and making plans to exercise, and fixing their work life balance, so now instead of:
work = life
it’s now shifting to a
time at work = time doing other things
I applaud all of you, and even those of you who are still thinking about thinking about maybe doing something. There’s always a silver lining to look out for:
