The Very Messy Blog

Out of all the blogs that I have had since I started blogging about 14 years ago, this one shileejwel.blogspot.com really has to take the cake for being the messiest, and the most colorful. 

It wasn't deliberate. 

I did not wake up one morning and decide that hey ho, I'll change the format of my blog such that one part will have articles beginning with pictures, and the other will have articles beginning with words.

Neither did I go and muck around with the font colors to make it such that some articles would have paragraphs of green above and below whilst  paragraphs of brown would be strategically slotted right between. 

These things just happened. 

Okay, so maybe I did forget that once upon a time I had intended to begin my articles with words and not pictures. 

And maybe when I migrated the blog over from IE 11 to Chrome I did attempt to play around with the font colors because during that transition period, Blogspot only had green-no brown- and I thought that font color selection up there on the bar was going to be permanent.

Of course, what happened is that I clicked on an article from 2018 and lo and behold, there was a paragraph of words right up on top followed by the series of pictures below.

And Blogspot has migrated everything over to their new platform, including the font color selections that contain two shades of brown. 

Now, I could make a U-turn and restructure my blog articles- but we are in the third quarter of this year and to make them all centralized I would have to go back all the way to (I think) the middle of last year.

I don't have time.

So I shall just keep it as it is and accept that there are times in our lives when we make bumbly boo-boos and it is happier for our souls that we would stop aiming for perfection but embrace those boo-boos with light-hearted, cheerful glee.

One Farrer's 19th

A few months it has been since I stayed at the One Farrer Hotel and Spa along Race Course Road in the vicinity of Little India.

Now that I think about it, what a long time ago that one overnight stay seems to be.

It might be due the events of the circuit breaker, it might be due the impact of the Coronavirus upon the worlds' economies, but 2020 is certainly turning out to feel like an extremely, extremely long year.

Not only do we have no international travel, there is limited domestic travel, and hotels in our country have (more or less) been repurposed for the sake of quarantine 

Maybe it is this sense of disquiet that makes the memory of my stay here a very precious one. 

To begin with, One Farrer Hotel and Spa is an unusual one. It is likely (to date) the only hotel property that has located itself right next to a hospital, near a mega department store open 24 hours, and yet, keeping well within the boundaries of a rich cultural enclave. 

To stay here means you're literally above the Farrer Park MRT station, less than five minutes away from the shopping of Mustafa and City Square Mall, right in the heart of Little India, and a short stroll away from the Pek Kio Market and Hawker Center. 

There is much to appreciate at this property, especially the fact that there are three categories of rooms, out of which the 20th floor is a penthouse kind of suite, the 19th floor is the suite, and the rest of the floors are the executive. It makes the decision-making process much simpler.

My stay this time was on the 19th floor. 

And so surprised was I by the design of the room that I completely forgot to take the picture. 

 

 

 

 

Never had it been thus far in many of my stays that I'd seen a room specially designed for the use of a wheelchair. 

I wish I had a picture. 

But I don't, so let's just imagine a long corridor sort of design that marks the length of the foyer to the space beside the bed, the entrance of the bathroom so wide, to the size of the shower area also so wide.  

Simply put, the foyer is long enough for one to zip into the room after closing the door (no awkward turns there). The space beside the bed houses the mini bar and the kettle pot and is convenient for one to make a spinabout between the working table, the kettle pot, and the bed. No problem when you want to get a cup of coffee or a Coke whilst typing up a paper, or sending an email.

 

The entrance to the bathroom is a little tight (and which did make me wonder for a while) but depending on the need, it is doable with transfer chairs. What strikes me is that the bathroom has dual sliding doors- one between the room and the sink space, the other between the toilet and the shower area. The sink space is huge, the toiletries and bath amenities are a soothing green, and the wardrobe opens up right inside the bathroom so the convenience of dress for the guest is thoughtful, and remarkable. There is no glass door at the shower area, by the way, so the chair can go smoothly in, and everything lies within an easy hands' reach. 

I like the full-scale amenities that One Farrer provides. On one hand the muted, soothing colors make it a place for rest and recuperation. On the other hand there is a place for (professional) work with a good writing table, comfortable chair, writing planner, stationery set and coffee table books. You don't have to worry about missing out on toiletries- they provide an adequate supply, mouthwash and vanity kit included. And they have bathrobes, slippers and hair dryer. Hungry, peckish guests have Tai Sun peanuts, Jack and Jill's potato chips, gummy bears(!), Nespresso capsules and soft drinks. 

 

It's as if they've thought of everything for the guest who needs, or wants, to stay all day in the room for rest and respite, and whom may not wish to go out at all. 

Or, even if they do, that all they need is to head down to the lovely, clear waters of the swimming pool with a book, a magazine, the soft drinks, the nuts and the gummy sweets.

Selfies 2020

These pictures have been sitting in my phone for at least half a year. 

I should know- I know that I took a heck lot of selfies after having gone to rebond my hair at the salon late last year. 

What I didn't know, however, was that even though I had all these pictures in my phone, I actually hadn't transferred them over, and so hadn't written about them at all. 

Imagine my shock, therefore, when I found out that the last time I'd written about my face and my selfies was in the July of last year. 

We're in the July of this year. 

Which means, I have not written about my selfies for ONE WHOLE YEAR. 

And I write a lot here some more. 

But the date doesn't lie, and so I have to ashamedly accept the fact that, yes, for twelve whole months I really did fail to write about what is a very important and very personal topic to me. 

Selfies, to me, are a confidence booster. 

Especially if you're someone who isn't photogenic and who thinks she doesn't look pretty in pictures at all. 

Now, it might be that I don't know how to pose, how to smile, how to look natural, how to this, how to that, but the fact is I'm camera shy, and I get nervous when the lens is trained on me. 

It's not that I don't practice. 

I do- with the mirror at home. 

But there goes whatever I've rehearsed the moment the time comes to take a picture. 

Once I'm told to gather together for a group shot, or even "let's take a wefie", right away I forget which angle works best for me, I forget how I should smile, I forget everything, and in the end, all that comes out of the final picture is a lopsided, awkward looking, goofy-faced me. 

It's fine if you're body-confident and you love what you see in the mirror.

I don't always do. 

Like most women, I do get insecure about my looks. I do have days that I can't "rock it", and I do have days that I can't "go get it gurl". 

There are the days where I don't like what I see in the mirror, and there are the days when I feel like s*** and think I look like s*** as well.

But that's where the beauty of selfies come in. 

Because it is these little portraiture style pictures of myself that, over time, will become an album which I can refer to when my confidence is ebbing and my self-esteem is down in the dumps. 

On days that I look good I take a selfie. 

On days that I don't look so good I also try to take a selfie.

And I don't stop until I get a good one. 

Just so that I can in all times and in all circumstances remind myself that I am always beautiful because I AM ALWAYS BEAUTIFUL. 

the CB diet: More Takeaways

You know you're an introverted soul when the sight of these pictures start giving you serious nostalgic vibes. 

I didn't think I would miss my takeaways this much.

But apparently I do. 

Is it the comfort of having my meals in the quiet of my own home? Is it the ease of being able to just eat and converse without having to hear the conversations of diners close by? Is it the joy of eating out of takeaway boxes- an experience which I find incredibly fun? 

Whatever it is, I'm actually missing the way I had these meals during the circuit breaker. For some reason lunch and dinner times seemed slower, the food tasted nicer and I learnt to appreciate the aesthetics of some meals better. 

Now first I have to say that I'm not usually particular about garnishing and plating. I'm a street food kind of person. As long as the food is presented neatly and with that bit of appetizing vibe, I'm good. It matters not to me about about the pattern of the plate or the nicely carved carrot at the side (unless I've paid astronomical prices for it) 

But shall we say that I got suitably impressed when my meals from Ichiban turned up looking appetizing and aesthetically beautiful even though they were served in a plain-looking, inexpensive plastic bowl? 

Shall we say too that I loved how the servers arranged the roast duck as neat as they would have on their plates in their restaurant, and that it felt no different picking up the piece from the plastic tray as I would have from their plate?  

Every takeaway I had during the circuit breaker was memorable. 

Whether it was the green curry beef, the tom yum soup, the tom kha soup or the pad thai from a Thai restaurant somewhere in Beach Road, whether it was the dim sum from Swee Choon, the XO roast duck rice from Tembeling, or the salmon don from I-can't-recall-where, I really loved them all- and I won't hesitate to do a Grab for any of these again. 

East Coast to Changi V

As much as I'm a soul who loves cool, grey skies and bracing, chilly winds, I have to say that the light near the Coast on this particular afternoon was one of the most beautiful I had ever seen. 

It was a light that reminded me of Los Angeles. 

It was a light that reminded me of San Francisco. 

It was a light that I knew I'd seen in places where the oceans meet. 

People often assume that we're like Maldives or the Virgin Islands or Fiji. They assume that we have nice sandy beaches, waving coconut trees and clear blue skies. 

But we don't. 

Well, we do have the sandy beaches and the coconut trees, but we certainly are a land of skyscrapers, steel and glass, and we do not walk around in sundresses, sandals and sun-kissed hair.

That being said, we do tend to spend our days in flip flops and shorts when we're not clad in shirts, jackets, heels, shoes and ties. 

Yet, we are a land of tropical skies. 

Make no doubt about that. 

But unlike those places where their skies are blue and their seas are also blue, our humidity often grants us a scenery of sky that can range from the overcast white to the overcast grey to the pale blue to the bluest of blue. 

You never know how the day will bring. 

The morning might start out as humid and overcast, but the afternoon might bring about clear blue skies. On the other hand, we might have a morning of clear blue skies followed by sheets of rain in the afternoon right after. 

So a blessing it was that the skies on this afternoon where I cycled from East Coast Park to Changi Village were of the bluest of the blue. 

It didn't matter that the time was then two o' clock in the afternoon. 

It didn't matter that I would come back from the ride looking tanned in places here and there. 

It didn't matter that the heat might make the ride a very puffy, red-faced, sweating-buckets one.

I was happy to be out on Daffy under a light so clear, sharp and bright. 

You see, there's something about such a light that makes everything look gloriously beautiful. 

And the curious thing is that you won't notice it until you're there. 

You can be happily making you way along, and then all of a sudden, you find yourself starting to take notice of the trees along the path, you start to admire the artistic shadows their canopies throw upon the ground, and you start to realize just how bright and pure and clear and green the leaves on their branches are. 

I cannot tell how many times I wanted to stop and take pictures of the scenery all around me. 

I cannot tell you how amazed I was at the 'summer-forever' sight of Changi Coastal Park in the late afternoon light. 

And even though I knew it would be another twenty plus kilometer ride back from this side (in the hot sun!), the quiet of this place, the presence of the lovely blue sea, the existence of these majestically waving trees, and the beauty of all this green made this ride very, very worthwhile.