Diva Blood+

so i decided to make a costume that i can take for winter. :> yay! after looking around, i settled on this. heheh. diva is the eccentric and sadistically crazed character that fits me just nice.

and i decided to follow this as it has a lot more flowery details. mwhaha.

so i worked over the weekends and decided to modify my cloche costume. there were glue stains where i plucked out the details so i covered them with lace patterns. well, i'm certainly not one for accuracy but considering the personality and lifestyle of diva, it's safe to say that she looks like someone fancy enough for laces. (self-reasoning)

the back

i used velvet for the cloak, since it's gonna be cooooold. but i doubt this will protect me from the harsh winter. =_=

made laces out of purple satin for the trimmings

then i spent like 4hours beading this to decorate the lace T_T 

sewed them on at intervals...

doesn't look like the effect is that great though *cries* maybe i won't do it for all the other skirt trimmings. will die. not completed since i lack the cloth. bleahs.

oh and i colored my rose and sprayed a silver tint.

added a bit of gems for the sparkly water effect. then the ribbons for her rose brooch. done!

The Coveted 13th Month 'Bonus' In Singapore

It's that time of the year where we're all waiting for the 13th month... but is it what it really is? For me though, I may not even be able to get this T____T

13th Month Bonus

There is only 12 months in a year. When you get paid a '13th month' of wages, you will feel delighted, no? No. Why do you think footballers in the English Premier League are paid weekly? 

Ponder over these points. 

Unless you are on commission or special bonus wage schemes, chances are you are paid a fixed amount of money monthly in Singapore. 

Is there a possibility you get paid $10/hour on some days and $12/hour on some days in your course of work over the year? Of course not. You get paid the same rate year in year out, until you get a raise. If that's the case, 

"Why are you paid the some amount of money in January and February?" 

If you still don't get it. There are 31 days in January and there are 28 (normally) days in February. The question now - are you overpaid for February or underpaid in January? You choose what you want to believe in. 

To me, February is the only month you get paid correctly in the whole year in Singapore. Employers in Singapore will never overpay you in February. Fat hope and you know it. There are four weeks in a month and we get paid for 28 days in a month. that's it. Straightforward. 

In short we are underpaid in every other month other than February. 

January - 3 days 
March - 3 days 
April - 2 days 
May - 3 days 
June - 2 days 
July - 3 days 
August - 3 days 
September - 2 days 
October - 3 days 
November - 2 days 
December - 3 days 

3 + 3 + 2 + 3 + 2 + 3 + 3 + 2 + 3 + 2 + 3 = 29 days. 

The shorter way to calculate this would be: 

1 month 4 weeks. 
You get paid 12 times a year = 12 x 4 = 48 weeks. 
There are 52 weeks in a year. 52 - 48 = 4 weeks unpaid 

The fact is that Singapore employers hold 29 days of your pay over the year and could refuse to pay you your rightful money if you did not 'perform'. Even if they do it, that meant many employees in Singapore did not get any bonuses from their companies at all. The 13th month is your pay. It is Not a bonus! 

In reality, if they pay us back the '13th month bonus', they employer still owe us 1 day's wages (29 - 2 and get away with it year after year, decade after decade. If you leave the company before the year is up your '13th month bonus' is forfeited instead of pro-rated. That's robbery. 

This is ridiculous. The manpower laws in Singapore are not stopping the businesses against such unfair practices and the NTUC is not doing their job fighting for the rights of workers. 
The next time you receive your "13th month bonus", ask yourself why are you feeling so happy getting back what you deserve in the first place? 

Trading Yesterday - Shattered ~ Twilight ~

Sorry i can't help but post 2 twilight videos cos these are just so well-made. and the song is just so so befitting

From batam to singapore

we had a lovely buffet breakfast at 8am. and i do mean like, really awesome because all the food we picked tasted good! much better than a lot of breakfast at hotels that i've had. there was croissants, cereal (typical western), japanese curry, dim sum (although we only saw baos and lotus rice), and asian-styled breakfast.

live cooking for scrambled eggs and sunny side ups!

oops, only had leftovers. too busy eating to remember to take a photo. 

thereafter, we went back to our hotel rooms, watched fashion tv and nua-ed till 1130, where our bus came to pick us up.

sadly, it started pouring like mad so we couldn't really do anything except hand around the ferry terminal, grab some last minute souvenirs, and nua at a waffle cafe, talking till the ferry came around 3pm.

queued for half an hour and boarded aroudn 330pm. it was so packed we couldn't get a seat together T_T. and the aircon in the basement of the ship was SO SUPER COLD. thankfully we reached around 530pm, sparing us of the freezing torture.

and it was hi singapore-with-toilets-that-actually-has-toilet-paper again~

honestly i wouldn't mind going back just for the hotel again. and maybe the miniature country / go karts maybe since i didn't see it. but none of all those food crap again. pfft.

121202-03 Batam Trip

Ssssso i went to batam with yvonne over the weekends.

woke up at 5am to get ready and left to meet yvonne at 7am harbourfront. yawns. the ferry took about 45 mins to arrive and only set off around 815am. wonder why we needed to be there so early =_=

our tour guide brought us to a lot of souvenir + local products shop, so we practically ate the whole day. first was the choco factory. well, there's indonesian chocos but i wasn't too attracted by things i could buy in singapore. we basically went around tasting all the flavours.

then was the polo shirt place. supposed to have some grand sale but the designs weren't all that fantastic. and it wasn't as cheap as those at the terminal. and i realised the 50,000 rupiahs my mom gave me were expired money so i couldn't really buy anything anyway. (not to mention it's only about $6-7. lol)

then we were brought to eat kueh lapis at a home factory. wow the slabs of butter for the thousand layers.. even though it smelt so good. this was the only thing i bought for the whole journey, at $25/cake. though i heard you could get them at the terminal for $18. oh well.

next up was an otah feast. same, went around tasting. the houseflies are irritating. $9 for 25 otahs wasn't so bad, since they have a lot of seafood flavours that are generally expensive in singapore. it was gonna be lunch after this anyway so didn't buy any.

after this it was finally our seafood lunch.

they have some cute kissing fishes in their aquarium. look it's kissing the butt!

ooh and then it goes for the lips!

ok lunch. to be honest, it wasn't all that fantastic. the portions were not big, but ok for our table. since we all ate otahs and chocolates and whatnots, we weren't really that hungry (it was all part of the tour guide's ploy). yvonne couldn't take seafood, and they gave her a huge bowl of clear soup with tofu, tomatoes and some raw vege. they also gave her 2 plates of greens that she rejected. where's the chicken that she could eat??? poor yvonne. in the end she couldn't really eat anything except the beehoon soup and those greens. owww.

we were supposed to have free coconut drinks with the meal too, but it was so terrible - the coconuts they gave had almost no flesh at all and tasted sour. thank goodness we could exchange for one. bleah. see the one on the right - no flesh and the one we finally got at the corner with the flesh. what a difference.

thankfully we got to skip the temple trip and some random stuff because we weren't really interested in all the sightseeing and it was drizzling. so no miniature country for me. we went for our 1hour massage (only $10!) and then took a taxi back to the hotel around 3+pm. 

what me and yvonne were only looking for was our hotel shoot actually. lol. 

and we were pleasantly surprised by how awesome our hotel is!! harmoni one~~

and some xmas decorations are up!

here's the floor of the guest rooms.

and finally our bedrooms (sorry, this was taken on day 2 so it looks messy. oops)

we prepared ourselves for our photoshoot, then ordered a hotel dinner of chicken teriyaki. slept around 1030pm since we finished off early. (or rather, our lapis kueh came and someone had to collect it, and my cam ran outta battery) wheee~

Trading Yesterday - May I

came across this song while on youtube, they don't seem to have an MV but there's an FF version. really like the song, enjoy!!

121128 Marketing Mag Awards

and then for the 3rd time in a row, i'm having another course meal at the marketing magazine awards night. not that i'm complaining!

it was a very last minute thing as they had vacancy so i got to knock off around 4pm to go home and prepare for the night. i was pretty excited about it as it was the first time i was attending an awards ceremony, and i heard it was a black tie formal kind of event. wheee!

however, the rain really got to me. i didn't have an umbrella and when i was on the way home, the flashes of lighting and sounds of thunder was pretty scary. i was practically running all the way, scared that i might get struck =_= luckily, i was home safe!

prepared myself in an hour and got out... while it was still raining. ugh. my shoes... managed to reach redhill in one piece to hitch a ride on nat's car towards shangri-la hotel.

hung out the area for cocktail and to drink a while. it was really packed (these photos were taken post event so it looked empty lol)

nice hotel!!

and this is our table of people, with our Veolia clients

the lightings sort of made all our food looks bluish-green.

but with some flash, it got better!

every single dish is good and i filled myself with lots of wines again. white one this time. (was red at vivi's/azel's wedding)

the award giving was in between the servings of all the dishes. our company project, Veolia, was nominated for the category Excellence in Integrated Marketing and we got the bronze award!! NICE!!! here's joel, nat and our client going up to receive the award.

and here's the 2kg trophy! it is really 2kg, no kidding. not sure why they made it so heavy. because it is an item that weighs on your company..??

and here's all of us with our award! think i nipped this picture off their fb page.

and then it was good night~! yep, i'm in the christmas-sy kinda mood.

121127 Hip Hop Class

the next day was the last lesson of my hip hop class. after 1year of chasing ocean butterflies they finally found my receipt and placed me in this class. our instructor is pretty cute and looks super taiwanese (but he insists he's a singaporean with a little malaysian blood). our class is pretty small, only 5 of us and 1 didn't come that day.

after that i got a free ride from johnny around orchard road to look at the lightings. whoo!!!

haven't sat on a bike for so long so it was really nice to feel the breeze again. took a little video too.


except it was raining pretty much recently so it was slightly dangerous on a bike. but still! i like to laugh at all the cars stuck in jams around us. lol. and that's it for the night.