Some gifts...

J's gift of different-flavoured chocolates from South Africa is WICKED! Love the Rose Geramium flavour and Cafe Latte flavour. Chilli was good mainly cos the dark chocolate was so finger-licking sinful. I still have many more flavours to go thru though. :)

Miss G provided a gift of soulfood today.
Thanks babe. It's an awesome, inspiring video. A really timely message for myself and other fresh graduates.

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005

It's love.... sweet love...

I'm in love....

With Bach Suite No. 1. It's amazing. Heard G play it on the cello and my jaws dropped. *He was the Saint-Saens Cello competition champion of US after all.*

Besides that, the natural beauties from Jewel of the Palace got me spellbound. Presenting my star finds of the loveliest, smartest, kindest(not all of them), sassy-est ladies from the palace courts:




How lovely! And it's such an awesome show! I've never really caught on the K-wave or any wave for that matter, but this serial just blows me away! Doesn't help that Mom got hooked as well and bought the whole VCD set...

One fine Saturday, mr D blew a neat 320 on tickets to Burn The Floor. And MY GOSH was it a blast!
And this pretty blonde bombshell of a dancer was there for autograph session. She's so PREETTAAYY!!!







Mr D and I both ran into people we were dating some time back at the show. And SURPRISE SURPRISE! They were dating as a couple too!

It's like playing musical chairs. Freaky... The whole thing freaked me out inexplicably. Our world suddenly seemed too small for comfort.

That aside, I'm so DYING to take up latin ballroom and brush up salsa now.

Life has been pretty good these days. For one, mr D and I are so very happy. I do miss being single and available at times, especially when I feel like having my bees ask me out, but there's always a tradeoff and I have come to see his worth and his importance to me and I banish these playerism thoughts. Can't have my cake and eat it right? okok, maybe I can, but I choose not to.

Love is always a choice, because passion will only last that long. After that, you need faith to glue the rs, and the conscious decision not to think of others. Love is rational in this way, and the way I see it, only the smart and rational will have lasting, loving relationships, because the overly-sentimental/hopelessly-romantic/falls head over heels at first sight kinda insane psycho will change partners like nobody's business. Case in point, all 'artistic' people with heightened awareness of 'beauty' are all casanovas, or end up being emotional wrecks in volatile/abusive/___ (fill in the blanks) relationships.

So I try to be very rational these days, which is working, really.

On the work-front, my new career's starting soon, and I'm so EXCITED about it. Can't disclose too much, cos we're not sposed to blog about work. All I can say it I've LOTS to learn and the textbooks are DARN thick. But I'll come out of it a better and smarter. :)

My FYP video got rave reviews from everyone, even the profs. My supervisor was happy but she's leaving the school. It's quite sad cos I've really grown quite fond of her. She's like a mother hen fussing over us, her brood.

Anyway, we just had a faculty happy hour at Brewerkz. It's interesting how many beautiful people there are there. You see the aging white population along the Attica stretch an wonder where all the white cuties are... well, they're at Brewerkz stretch! :)

Faculty night was eventful, not only cos it's my 1st time there, but cos my FYP prof is leaving. We're her last group *sob* The whole of my division (broadcast) was down that night to bid farewell. And here we are.... the UBER nice folks of my school... my companions for many a nights in editing and bitching ard about anything under the sun.

The party didn't end after 2 sodas (no beer for me!). J&J, my division seniors wanted to dance a bit so we hopped over to ONS and the band there's AWESOME! Much better than the one at Un*on S*uare. They play the most awesome salsa tracks and it's a shame nobody does salsa in ONS.

Actually, not true. I did see one girl trying to get her bf to salsa with her. She's obviously more experienced and her guy couldn't lead properly. It was funny the way he turned her, twisting her hand and she had that peeved expression on her face! *lol* And they gave up after one song. Wished S&E were there man.... they'll so bring down the house... Then there were a couple of aging whites doing their THANG totally. They're pretty good and sporty dancers!

Bali wedding rehearsal commenced on Friday and I was SO happy to play proper string works and Classical pieces again. Loved ensemble playing and the rich timbre of the quartet... and after such a long hiatus from music and venturing into dance, it's great to be able to play with S,W and KY again.

While playing, I thought about how comfortable it is to play and how nice it would to make this a living! :) the story goes that some years back, when lil CJ was in London on music exchange with the Royal Academy, she sat in during one of the Conductor's masterclass. There were only 5 students to one prof, and they formed a sort of chamber group and each player took turns to conduct. The prof will ask after each attempt on what was good and what didn't work; the musicians gave feedback for their conducting classmate. These people can spend like 5 hours just doing this and it's so interactive that lil CJ and friends though it quite a quaint idea to pursue music professionally. Few years down, she doesn't do it. And her mind is filled with possibilities of "What ifs".

Anyway, I'm just glad for the few musical companions I have in my life. These people are friends for life because we're bound by passion for music! Of course, I'll always adore my dance friends.

mr D brought me to watch Mirrormask. It's a Neil Gaiman film... he writes the most fantastic hilarious stories. Whimsical visuals, cool surreal music and the whole fantasy element made my day! Totally arty-farty! All graphic designers, 3-D artistes and animators and children storybook writers should watch it.

To celebrate J's bday, V gathered a few best mates and we headed down one fine evening to Vansh, this rather famous north-indian restaurant with to-die-for ambience. It's at the ultra-uluated Indoor stadium promenade which looked like Clarky Quay, with it's quaint al fresco riverside dining spots.

The flipside was: it's Vansh's mango week. EVERYTHING WE ORDERED HAD MANGO IN IT.

Of course, it's the Indian Mango, which had this distinctly sweet-sour flavour which wasn't entirely unpleasant. North-Indian cuisine is really VERY flavourful. Every dish was an experience and every mouthful was like analysing a perfume's top notes, middle tones and low notes... pretty cool.

I almost choked on one exceptionally spicy mushroom with mango bits on it though... teared like crazy cos it was so pungent.

So you see the 3 smiley faces with our mango drink lined with salt on the glass rims. :) The mango drink doesn't taste like your regular mango ice blended. It's sweet-sour and very distinctly tropical and fresh. You can almost imagine the ripe mangoes hanging from the trees and curvaceous Indian beauties in flowy saris dancing near it. (okok... so this is very cliche... blame Bollywood.)

And here's J and L with their drinks "Kama Sutra" and "Mango Lassi":

Had an awesome time catching up and celebrating the end of our schooling days. Cheers to our graduation, folks! *chink*

T'was Secret Bible Week on Nat Geo last week. Watched some docus on the Da Vinci code and some other theology-related stuff. It's so controversial because now they're telling us that there're people who healed millions and rose from the dead like Jesus?!?!?!

Nevertheless, these docus are really good and UBER FASCINATING! It actually promotes more religious awareness by making people want to delve into such studies and research, which can't be a bad thing right?

And wouldn't it be cool if one day, I could produce documentaries of such quality and education value? WICKED.

GE2006 came and went. I'm just glad my neighbours didn't become rabbits for the 100M carrot. Period.