Confessions of a City Slicker

Choir practice for Christmas started last weekend. As usual, during these early stages, the attendance was really poor, with only us faithful members.

This pretty much puts a damper in our practice session. I think even the most passionate person will feel the sting of disappointment when they see the handful of people who really made the effort to show up and practice.

The attendance will only improve closer to the date when people will make more effort to come for practice.

It’s just that when these people do come, we have to spend the time to get them up to speed first, when we could be using that time to polish up our act.

It seems to be the same thing with our belly dance practice. With barely 2 months to our performance date, the number of people who do show up for the practice sessions sure is disappointing.

Yeah, we understand that some people need to work and may have other plans during the evenings. That is why we have the practice sessions twice a week so that we can accommodate as many people as possible. Yet, it’s always same bunch of people who do come for practice.

If we can make the effort to show up, why can’t these people?

I wonder if it’s that very familiar syndrome of people winging it at the last minute? You know, digging that proverbial whole only after you have shit?

Sigh……

Sure, we can practice on our own, but it is still important to practice with the group as well so that we can get used to the group dynamics. Otherwise, people will be able to see that there is no synergy in the group performance.

There is also the issue of our costumes. I know that E and M have been going to practically every tailor they can think of to see which one can give us the best price to make the costumes. But there will be people who complain that it is too expensive.

I did tell them that you can’t please everybody. Besides, they are not the ones who have to face the frustrations of bargaining with these people.

Time is running out and with the festive season around the corner, it will be very hard to find tailors who will be available to take up our orders. The only other option is to get the generic costumes from R which will probably come to about the same price anyway.

Hopefully, we can come to an agreement during the next class

By the way, I noticed that the new Friendster blog no longer sends out email notifications when our friends’ blogs are updated. Not good

I knew that I was going to pay for this. But I still went ahead and did it anyway.

I developed an allergy for “M” brand lipstick a few years ago. Using this lipstick made the outlines of my lips red and sensitive. Applying lip balm on my lips feels like rubbing acid on them.

It’s a shame because I used to love M brand lipstick. They have so many colors to choose from and are so affordable.

Of course, knowing my fetish for lipstick and how I can wear a few colors a day, it was only recently that I managed to isolate the cause of this condition. At one time, I actually thought I had contracted herpies!

Well, today, because I couldn’t decide what color to wear, and seeing as my lips seem to be in good condition, I decided to take a chance and used the M brand that I had in my bag.

Bad move. I only wore it for half a day and now my lips are swollen >.<

That’s how bad the allergy is.

I’ve applied some ointment on them and the swelling seems to have gone down but it still stings every time I stretch or contract my lips.

Serves me right for being hiao >.<

I visited my blog today and saw that it has been upgraded to the new Beta 2.0 version.  Sweet!

I haven’t had the time to go check out all the nifty new features yet, but I’ll definitely be spending a lot of time familiarizing myself in the next few weeks ^_^

Of course, the first thing I did was to check out the design options.  There were so many new themes with beautiful headers.  I liked Misty but it doesn’t jive with the tile.  Also, I find with this theme, pictures get cropped off >.<

So I settled for Mandigo mainly because the header space is big enough to accommodate my fave New York skyline picture.  After I checked out the other options for this theme, I found that you can actually change the color scheme randomly.

Wow!  How cool is that?

I’m not really familiar with CSS coding to be able to do any extensive customization, so I’ll stick with I have right now.  You might see new changes to the look of this space in weeks to come as I explore the many features available.

I also noticed that I can blog in HTML format as well, so this is something worth learning up on.

Maybe I should borrow my colleague’s HTML and CSS Bible to check out all the cool stuff I can do ^_^

This is the cafe that I like to go buy my lunch, back when I do eat lunch, that is.  I still go there occassionally when I feel like having something for dinner other than leftovers.

It’s the cafe in Island Glades behind Delima Mas.  It has the usual fare that we find in cafes everywhere but their char hor fun sure is heavenly with the most sensational smokey flavor.

There is also a stall in front of the cafe that sells stuff like bread, kuih, curry puffs, back chang and other stuff suitable for breakfast.  Sometimes if I’m lucky, the stall selling chicken porridge will be open, but that seems to be a rare occassion.

It’s too bad that since the opening of another cafe nearby, business has been slow there.  Even the seafood porridge/bee hoon stall has cut down on its varieties of ingredients.

The new cafe is more spacious and offers more varieties of foods.  It also has better ventilation than Pearl.

Still, where quality of food is concerned, I find it sorely lacking.  Their food prices are also much more expensive compared to Pearl.

I sure hope this is a temporary thing and once people get tired of the new "toilet", they will go back to where there is really good food to eat.  Otherwise, I don’t know how long the hawkers in Pearl will be able to survive.

Sure enough, with the price hike in everything, they will have to make twice as much, if not more sales to breakeven.

Let’s just say that I’m not too keen to go hunt elsewhere for good char hor fun.

I was driving home after a night of clubbing when I noticed that some people were apparently doing some maintenance work on the underground reservoir near my apartment.

Water was gushing out of the floodgates causing a mini flood on the road.  Just a very small stretch of the road was flooded, but the force of the water was so strong, there was a few minutes when I thought my daughter was going to stall.

But putting my foot on the accelerator got her going again.

My question is, if these people were supposed to do maintenance work, why are they just standing at the side of the road and watching while all that precious water goes to waste on the road?

Surely there must be something they can do to stem the flow.  Just because the rainy season is here, it doesn’t mean that we can afford to waste water like that.

It was a déjà vu moment for me of sorts because I had dreamt of a similar situation the night before, driving along a torrent of water while the dam next to me was overflowing.

Hehehe, of course, the next morning I went straight to the Toto and Magnum shops to buy my lucky number.  But my number didn’t win