Majolica Majorca Lip Gloss in BE131

To match my nude Bobbi Brown lip colour.

On a separate but related matter, who out there prefers the gloss to come in tube form too? Do you not think it makes for better application over lip colour? I find the brush and sponge applicators always tend to mash up the ruin the lip colour so using the fingers to tap lightly does better.

I hate my lip colour, finding that it is too dark. So to lighten or better yet, change its colour, I walked into Bobbi Brown today telling the makeup advisor I want to have nude lips and as light as my complexion allows! She recommended the shade Nude Beige and a gloss over called Buff. It worked great! My lip colour now comes out a nice pale coral and a far different shade from my natural.

Are you like me too, who needs help to improve what genes have gifted us?

The weather here is really shit for wearing tweed. As nice and Chanel-ish as it is, I was sweaty and sticky five minutes into walking out in the sun. Sticky jacket lining equals uncomfortable ewwww. I spent the rest of the day without the jacket, which kind of defeated the purpose since the jacket makes the outfit here. What is a girl to do?

And I am keeping details of the DIY chain harness under wraps for now. It is not quite complete! I will definitely do a proper post in due course, afterall, I did go through a whole load of squinting and pain to get it out.

My lousy photography and camera does not do justice to this great lace confection. The whimsical and ethereal magic of the top is lost! Regardless, I did get quite a bit of compliments (or was it because I so rarely wear separates?). It was an oddly nice balance in the shirt as the lace sleeves did let air flow through (cooling!) while being long sleeved, it did keep me reasonably comfortable in the air conditioning.

I’ll attempt another better photo when I wear next, this I promise or I will die trying!

P has informed me that the flight and accommodations have all been confirmed and we will be in Hong Kong for 8 days to enjoy the city which “eats and shops and eats and shops”! Itinerary planning has fallen to me and I am populating it with the Lantau Island hike, a trip to the Joyce boutiques for my McQueen and Westwood fixes, some Macau gambling and lots of siu yoke!

But before that, I will attempt to learn and hopefully speak some bit of Cantonese that will hopefully get me through the 8 days. Either I get it, or I don’t and send the locals into hysterics listening to this Hokkien girl’s abysmal pronunciation. I first approached my Cantonese friends for help and the first line they taught me was “Ngoh mou qin” (我没钱), which I pffft-ed off as the useless statement of the day. So I am to go around Hong Kong announcing that I have no money? Like I said, useless.

I figured my best bet so far is to pick up the basics through this website called Learn Chinese EZ, which provides not just the pin yin but also audio files for reference (useful maximus). I can count now (yat, yee, san, see, mm, lok, tchart, baht, gau, sup)! And manage some sentences. VERY. VERY. VERY. SLOWLY. I will preside over Cantonese dammit. I have to.

By the way, methinks that Cantonese is not meant for pin yin. It has resulted in some really funny instances. For example above, tchart? tzchart? OMG, poor number 7. Not only are the sounds hard to capture, the tone is way more than the 4 levels in regular Chinese.

Righto, back to learning! And I will definitely pen a post full of Cantonese pin yin (haham happy reading and figuring then) when I get the hang of the language!

Pretty decent acting but really bad casting. Where is the chemistry????????

Usually by mid-series I’ll be bawling my eyes out over love lost. This time, I am merely looking forward to all the funny moments. No tissue was expensed! Which is not a good thing, in my books, when it comes to idol series like these.

The best chemistry is probably the pairing of Yang Guo and Liang Zhi Hao. Best comedic couple in a long time! =D

1   Entrance! It was suitably dark and mysterious. We are discovering the Egyptian land of life and death afterall.

2   Greeted with a mirrored hallway of sphinxes. Some of them are are pretty damaged.

3   Statue of Sekhmet, who is an Egyptian sort-of goddess of war and strategy (hey, Athena incarnation!). What caught my eye was the ankh on her left hand, which symbolises life as well as balance. Been looking for a decent ankh necklace for the longest time and the Met store used to carry them. Where are they now? Are there any other good places to get Egyptian inspired jewelry?

4   Statue of King Horemheb and Horus, god of the sky or sun (hey, erm…. mix of Zeus and Apollo?).

5   Ancient script on parchment as well as stone

6   Osiris, god of the dead and afterlife, or to me, hellooooo Hades! As you can probably tell by now, I can never leave Greek mythology well and alone.

7   The star that is Anubis. He is the jackel-headed god of embalming and mummification and the patron god of the embalmers. He also has added responsibilities as guardian of the dead and as a guide to the underworld. Busy, busy.

8   A mummified cat. well, except for the nose, which exposed. See near the top left of this picture. I kind of remembered seeing a mummified falcon too…

9   Inner shell of a sarcophagus. Below the painting of the winged scarab, you can see Anubis at work, in the process of embalming and mummifying a body.

10   A real mummy covered with a bead net. The bead net is suppose to represent the sky and by laying the net on the mummy, places the mummy under the protection of Nut, goddess of the sky.

11   The winged scarab is used to protect the heart, hence its strategic position not just on the mummy proper but also in the paintings on the inner coffins (see picture 9 too for the position of the winged scarab!).

12   Anubis at work, with all his necessary jars around him.

13   In mummification, the internal organs are always removed and stored separately. The falcon-headed jar contains intestines, the jackel-headed jar contains the stomach, the human-headed jar contains the liver and the baboon-headed jar holds the lungs. I was wondering if these were just representations or if the real organs were inside.

That is about all of the better pictures I took. It was dark (but appropriately so) and with the weekend crowd jostling me about, it was hard to get any decent pictures.

Still, it was a really educational trip down and there were some excellent quotes from the Book of the Dead and write ups on the exhibits and history. Is it just me or did the exhibition gallery smell funny too?

After that, it was nice and cloudy out so I spent the rest of my Sunday afternoon at Novus, the museum cafe, reading my latest book, Wicked by Gregory Maguire. With me throughout was a tall glass of peach tea (stir, people, stir. I didn’t and got a novocaine sugar blast when I accidentally stuck my straw at the bottom of the glass and took a sip) and an awesome of the awesome key lime pie. You MUST try the lime pie. The sweet and sour of the filling is so yummy! And the digestive crumb is…. perfectly crumbly. OMG I want one now.

Nice slow Sunday!

Dress from Coax, short trench from Dorothy Perkins, unknown weave belt from the back of my wardrobe and pumps from Aldo

This is so unlike me. Where are all the frills and flowers and girliness?

I’ve never done up my trench jacket like this before – it always seems like a bad idea to chop my body into different portions and the belt plus the length of the trench (just below the hips) does exactly that. Usually it is left unbelted and merely draped across my frame.

Plus, it is scorching hot here so all the trench did was make me sweat buckets. What was I thinking again?

That is why I never expected the perks! Other than accumulating points in your accounts with every purchase, your birthday month entitles you to some freebies! At first, I thought it was just a marketing gimmick (not very trusting, am I) and that we would be given sample sized pieces or even worse, fobbed off with the last season’s stuff.

But no! This year, I got the full-sized White Perfect toner and cleanser. I vaguely remembered receiving lipstick as last year’s gift (which I passed on to my mom. It wasn’t my colour).

I am feeling extremely gleeful over the free haul. I am a huge fan of L’oreal and am looking forward to giving these two products a try.

Who needs to rid some dead cells off her person?

Me!

I just tried the L’oreal Exfotonic and there are lots to like about it.

The microbeads are sufficiently large and grainy so it provides just the right amount of friction against the skin to provide an utterly satisfying experience exfoliating those dead cells off. Not painful though. It leaves the skin so soft and smooth that I can’t help stroking my arm (nyah nyah… mind out of gutter please). In fact, I liked the scrub so much I squeezed out a little more and gave my feet an all round scrub while in the shower too.

The citrus smell is pleasant and pleasing on application and adds to the whole bath experience. For someone like me who likes things light on the nose, or better yet, fragrance free, the smell is what appeals most, since it does not linger. It leaves me smelling clean and fresh, so I can apply my perfume without worrying about clashing notes!

It might be a seemingly small issue, but I like the packaging too! I have no love for bottles and jars. It just seems so  unhygienic to dip the fingers again and again into the mix and adding more bacteria with each dip! A definite turn of for me so here, I give two thumbs up for the tube form!

This is defintely a winner and something I will return to again and again.