I was one of the few personalities Cole Haan invited to style the new LunarGrand shoes.
The mood board and some of my personal items the Melium team set up
Quite a few people thought my white holey top interesting. I got it from online blogshop Beautiful Disaster, they’ve got some of the craziest pieces i’ve seen online. Blue top underneath from Bangkok designer The Kiss Principle, and leggings from Topshop.
Blink, Goldfish, Jane & i. I can’t say the three of them are morning people… 😀 Oh gosh i just realized what a SHORTY i am next to Jane -.- Ok next time i’m not standing next to her. Or Alvin.
Serena emceed the event. She tempted/guilted me into window-shopping after that, which of course, NEVER TURNS out to be JUST window-shopping. However, i have been VERY good of late and not bought anything new so i don’t feel guilty much.
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Last Sunday i got quite semangat, picked Stephy & Nick up, and went for Deer Society’s Arcade Party at 4pm. I learnt that: 1) Saturday afternoon parties usually means i won’t be bothered to eat dinner cos of all the drinking. 2) I suck at arcade games.
With birthday boy Rudy! Happy birthday to both him and Sean!
This is a REALLY long post with almost 100 pictures cos there are SO many things to see in LEGOLAND®! The first LEGOLAND® in Asia has finally opened, and in Malaysia no less! It’s the 6th LEGOLAND® in the world (the first five situated in Denmark, UK, Germany, California and Florida), and what makes the Malaysian one special is that it’s tailored to the local environment from food to landscaping.
Seeing the launch was taking place on Saturday 15th Sept 2012, Tianna and i took a bus down on Friday, the day before. We were advised to pack sunblock and brollies cos it can get really hot in the park. Look at the massive umbrella Tianna brought -_-
It looks like a magical umbrella what with the sparkly effect filter my Olympus camera has.
In the bus, each couple was given a box of LEGO® so that we could participate in some challenges and hype ourselves up for LEGOLAND®. At first Ti and i were like, yeah sure, we’ll make some things cos we’re not unsporting. But after winning the first challenge of making a bee, we got really into making stuff and included a walrus and tree to our portfolio.
COME ON. You have to admit that’s a great-looking walrus! He even has a tiny tail.
Our tree. We even made a bird to sit on it. Talk about dedication.
The next morning i woke up really early to catch the LEGOLAND® launch.
With the very talented Sue Anna Joe, whose work i used to follow since my college days!
Special opening activities went on for an hour before doors were open to public; so there were clowns, dancers, stilt-walkers, Legoman, some dinosaur and other characters running, dancing, waving, and jumping all over the place.
The Billund Marching Band, which performs at the LEGOLAND® Park in Denmark, were specially flown down for the launch.
That’s Sigfried Boerst, the General Manager for LEGOLAND® Malaysia. He was part of the pioneer team that opened the first LEGOLAND® in Denmark!
Months ago, i got invited to join ChurpOut in their Marketplace and thought, why not? It’s been ages since i opened a booth and i have WAY TOO MANY CLOTHES IN MY WARDROBE! I’ll be selling a lot of the outfits you see on my blog, so if you’re a size UK8, methinks you should drop by my booth! (i’ll be placed indoors, phew!)
ChurpOut has gathered some of the top fashion bloggers in Malaysia to each open a booth at the Marketplace (Fashion Icon Wardrobe Raid), so it looks like Publika is gonna be the one-stop point to stalk all your favourite female bloggers.
A portion of our sales will be donated to support Breast Cancer Awareness and we’ll be there all day!
The first 1000 RSVPs at ChurpOut’s Facebook event page will receive shopping bags stuffed full of goodies, so people should RSVP by 6pm on Oct 12th.
FOR A LOT more info on what’s happening at the Stage, Inspiration and Marketplace, click *HERE* and wander around!
This is the second post i’m writing on Marina Bay Sands. If you haven’t read the first post yet, click *HERE*.
Our second day in Singapore turned out to be a VERY educational and exciting, as we were a select group who were invited to:
– have breakfast and lunch at Sky on 57 and meet celebrity chef Justin Quek himself
– experience cooking demonstrations in cult restaurants Guy Savoy and Waku Ghin
– have an insider tour of the resort’s underground network and how MBS organizes 9,000 staff (i feel like putting an exclamation mark behind every sentence cos i’m really ecstatic while typing this but i shall refrain) – meet and chat with Tamir Shanel, the Vice President of F&B
This was an AWESOME day. Just looking back at the pictures reminded me how much i saw, learnt and ATE that day. I happened to glance at a digital scale in my hotel bathroom the night before, and stepped on it to read: 42.00kg. The next evening i stepped on it again and saw: 43.40kg. For someone my height and frame, i think putting on 1.4kg in less than 24 hours is a lot! Not that i’m complaining… i’d eat like this any day someone wants to feed me!
My stomach’s journey started with breakfast at Sky on 57, the 12,000 sq. ft. restaurant helmed by Singaporean celebrity chef Jusin Quek. He’s famous for presenting Asian dishes fused with premium Western ingredients; such as the Maine lobster hokkien mee, wagyu beef cheek rendang, and foie gras Xiao Long Bao. Doesn’t that sound crazy? Being a huge fan of curry and laksa, i couldn’t help but have his laksa for breakfast.
The laksa soup had the right amount of spicy and savoury flavours i love about the dish, and it was thick enough as well. One of the top 5 laksas i’ve had. I wasn’t feeling too hungry (unusual for me, that) in the morning (might be due to all the eating the day before!) but i still managed to lick the bowl clean. -_-
Took pictures of what the others had for breakfast.
We had breakfast with Tamir Shanel, the Vice President of F&B in Marina Bay Sands. I was a little bit in awe of this man… can you imagine – he oversees the planning, development and operations of ALL THE F&B activities in the entire resort and 2,000 team members, and 60 food concepts! Before coming to Singapore, Mr. Shanel was the Executive Director of F&B at the Venetian and Palazzo in Las Vegas, which is the largest Five-Diamond resort in the world.
He’s a very authoritative yet kind figure, and enthusiastically talked to us about his past and current projects for MBS. One of the interesting stories he told us was how he, the MBS sommelier, and his partner, all sat down to figure out which wine should be bottled exclusively as Marina Bay Sands’ house wine. They impulsively mixed two wines they liked very much together… and it worked, so came to be the Pirramimma Cabernet Petit Verdot 2007.
What is amazing was that this unique wine ended up winning the Silver Medal in its category at the International Wine Challenge in London. Also described by wine critic James Halliday as “a very powerful and complex full-bodied wine”, he gave the wine a score of 94 out of 100.
Mr. Shanel got a bottle opened for us to try that morning. 10am seemed a tad early but i wasn’t one to say no to their award-winning wine! I also must add that two sommeliers at Marina Bay Sands clinched awards at the Southeast Asia Best Sommelier Competition. Rajeshwaran Gopal (from db Bistro Moderne) was named Best Sommelier in Southeast Asia, while Alan Au (from Osteria Mozza) got the second place of the same title.
After breakfast at Sky on 57, we had what is called the ‘Heart Of House’ tour, where we got to see the underground level at which 9,000 staff members are organized and how all the food for room service and staff meals are prepared. Exciting! Like a school trip but even bettah!
All staff in MBS enter the resort area via this huge tunnel in the basement. It has an entrance that looks like that at an MRT station cos there must be so many people coming and going at peak hour!
This is where they swipe their ID tags to enter. Once they enter, there are eight different doors on the left. Each staff is assigned a particular door, where by swiping their ID tag, their individual garment bag and uniform comes swiveling right to the door opening. Once they get their uniform, they change in locker rooms, put their personal clothes back into the garment bags, and personal belongings into assigned lockers. Incredibly efficient!
Each of the eight doors comes with a narrow window so you can look into the giant laundry and uniform area. We got brought into the area to have a look tho!
This is just a small portion of all the uniforms we saw hanging everywhere… Each staff have three uniforms provided and laundered for them (chefs have four), so there are 30,000 uniforms altogether?! There’s even a team of seamstresses working in a row to mend and alter the clothes. Every uniform also comes with an RFID chip sewn in, so they know at any given time who it belongs to, when it was last washed (and potentially, where you/it is!).
Kubz and i were supposed to go for lunch on Wednesday, but he asked whether i wanted to follow him to Dusun on Thursday instead. I checked my schedule, and miraculously – had no meetings/events planned… SO OF COURSE I SAID YES. In fact, i replied ‘YES YES YESSSSSSS’ in our whatsapp chat. I was so happy packing my suntan oil, pareo, present for Haanim’s baby (not a baby anymore..!), my spinner, snacks, book, pastels and sketchbook. At first i had this insane idea of bringing my laptop to work for a couple of hours there. But when push came to shove, i thought, “Really? Do i really want to bring work to Dusun? I go there to ESCAPE, not to bring work!” So i left my work stuff at home. I felt a bit guilty… but stubbornly pushed the emotion aside – cos what’s the point of being a freelancer if i don’t pretend Thursdays are Saturdays?!
I discovered that Cee is the household chef, and planned to cook us squid pasta for lunch. Kubz and i tried to be as useful as possible and helped chop the garlic and onion. I chopped two onions in the same span of time Kubz did three cloves of garlic. Just sayin. XD
I got to meet Haanim and Cee’s baby properly for the first time! He’s already a year and a half old, and is called Hansi! He’s SO FREAKING CUTE OKAY. Like, not ‘i’m polite and i’ll say all babies are cute’ but ‘YOUR BABY IS SO PRECIOUS I WANT TO EAT HIM UP NOW’.
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Hansi wearing the sun hat i brought him. It’s got vintage cartoon space kids on it.
As we all sat down to sexy steaming pasta with our glasses of red wine, Haanim said, “How lucky we are to do this on a Thursday!” And indeed we are… Eleanor and her sister Isobel joined us too so we were in a nice little group of seven. The squid pasta was great… i had two helpings and greedily felt like a third.
Haanim, Hansi & Cee
GAHHHH Hanging out with Hansi has made me go temporarily baby-crazy. I went home to Clem that night and went, ‘I WANT A BABY!’ and he was like, “Yeah, but we can’t get it in one day!”
Okay we did other stuff that day, like have a look at the new house Haanim and Cee are building for themselves, and the new swimming pool and guesthouses that can sleep two more couples. It’s becoming quite a little town! But i just took lots of pictures of Hansi…. >.<
We also went swimming, hung out by the pool and snacked for hours, talking about Fierce Curry House at Urbanscapes. Cee is going to perform on the first day at Urbanscapes too so Hansi might be making his first festival appearance there! Oh my god. I just went back to talking about Hansi didn’t i.
