Not My Style

I picked up a new phrase over the winter break at home, and influenced Dasiy Hoo into using it during one of our many conversations recently.

"It's not my style."

Since then this phrase has cropped up countless times in my conversations with numerous individuals, mainly, of course, about fashion and the way I dress. And at times, about various other subjects which were breached as well.

Last year when I picked up a beige leather jacket, which I spent ages standing in front of the mirror with a salesgirl by my side offering a zillion and one tips, trying to decide which colour and style suited me best, I was offered the following:

"Yes, you are very girly, aren't you?"

To which I replied, "Yeah. I'm not really into the biker chick look."

Today, while picking up my bow messenger, I decided that 'very girly' wasn't entirely my style either. I was definitely not girly enough to pull off a lavender pink bag, despite agreeing with Daphne a while ago that that colour was indeed oh-so-pretty. I ended up going for a pale bluish-grey tone, to which I thought definitely suited me better.

I am definitely into colours. I love colour blocks and jazzing up an outfit with bits of colour or accessories, but there is just a huge difference between liking pink as a colour and actually wearing a pink bag. Later, I tried defining with Hanna the exact parameters of my sense of style, and could only come up with a couple of negatives. Definitely not low-key. Definitely not understated. Definitely not biker chick. Definitely not cutesy teeny-bopper. Definitely not British-rock-model-KateMoss-esque. Definitely not dowdy.

All I can say is that I like structured stuff. I am versatile (well, to a certain extent). And as much as I know my sense of style is never Vogue-worthy or always perfect, I like it because it makes me comfortable in my own skin.

There are hardly that many items of clothing that one can spot in a store or on a mannequin and exclaim that that is 'soooo Shing'. Simply because there are certain styles that I have a weak spot for (This would be where Daisy Hoo goes: ahempuffedsleevesahem) but it is also a well-known fact that I hardly ever stick to the same style ALL the time. I'm always up for modifying new trends to suit my own style, and not just go with the typical British High Street Fashion TopshopMissSelfridgeEverythingElse Flow.

As much as I try to sound like I am some contributor for a High Fashion magazine, I can hardly deny that my sixth sense of fashion is going rapidly down the drain.

How can it not be when I wake up bleary-eyed and grab the first thing I see, spending most of my days in slacks, shirts and cardigans? Plus, my most recent encounter with Norovirus was pleasant as hell indeed, and sure did contribute even more to my unplanned agenda of shedding more weight. Something that has been happening ever since I got here. Ah well, what can you say? The grass is always greener on the other side. A couple of years ago, I had to have JH lie through his teeth to tell me I was 'oh-so-thin' because I was determined to lose weight on my water diet. Now, I wonder everyday how it is that I try to eat more junk but the opposite happens.

That's what always happens, people. Life.

Happy Birthday, Superstar

Because this turned out to be one of the better birthdays I've had so far, out of my expectations.... thanks to all my BFF's :)

And because all this could not have been possible if I didn't have a superstar BFF like you.

Highlight of The Week :)

The Liangster on BBM :)

I swear this is the best thing that has happened to me all week. Nobody can put a smile on my face like you do. Thank God for BB Messenger and the new Blackberry Bold 9700.

BFF's indeed ;)

XX

Memoirs II

I once blogged about the power of the mind and the incredible, almost tangible picture that one can relive by fusing the mere memory of something with pictures and words.

Then I realised I had forgotten one major element in the recreation of this 'picture'.

Music.

There are a great many songs on my iTunes playlists that can transport me back to a certain scene and recreate that very picture right before my eyes, larger than life. And not just those labelled 'Our Song' or 'The Song That Reminds Me Of You' but random snippets of music where I can actually see, remember....and feel.

I revealed to a friend recently that BoyzIIMen's 'Four Seasons of Loneliness' will always remain one of my all time favourites. Simply because it has travelled with me through 5 years of my life and watched a great love turn into horrendously ugly drama and then settle back into an unbreakable bond of friendship.

This is the song that saw me through the days of 'Alyssa's Songs' on our iPods, the days of DJ-ing, of chatting in the dead of night till the sun rose, and more recently, of you being the selfless friend you were and comforting me in the most ironic of situations when I needed you most. And so it is that when I listen now... instead of the choked-back feelings and pent-up emotions that could not be expressed....I listen with an open heart, and smile back on the good, colourful moments of it all.

Then again, there are a great many things that can evoke the strangest and most irrational of emotions in one's mind, overruling the universal fact of mind over body. Because it is only human for your heart to react completely differently from the way you plan it to.

For a day or two, it was the blatant thought of having only yourself to rely on that struck in a place where the wound couldn't be seen. The emptiness of that gloved hand in the cold December rain. The purple umbrella and the swirl of events that came to play prior and latter to that. All these reignited this feeling of choking-back a zillion emotions, of choking back bile, and of that sheer emptiness somewhere within.

For a good 3 days, I avoided listening to 'Superhuman' on my player. The story of how I got to know of this song, how I came to love it, how we listened to it on repeat - this was a long story that I would easily have let to brew in the past. But age and experience have taught me to bottle up my thoughts and sweep them under a rug, and to not talk about them - or rather, to choose not to talk about them.

And so I decided point blank that there is a time to cease all silly obsessions. At the end of the day, when I have decided enough is enough and I will only shed this many tears for this man of the moment, because this is all it is worth, I realise it is easier achieved than I had deemed possible.

So I listened to the song for a good many times, determined to halt this phobia of songs which had the ability of planting an array of moments I had once deemed 'happy' before my very eyes. Happy moments which were no longer to be, and never to be.

And when I felt nothing, I took that step further. Stripping off all my sheets and finally changing them because I knew.....I knew that that wafting scent of Hugo Boss in my room was a mere phantom smell, and that there is a time to stop recreating memory as such in your head. Especially when these memories have been induced by a broken heart.

When the cloud has lifted and you see, you SEE clearly. There is a time to do what is right rather than what you would preferrably wallow in. What is meant to be or not meant to be. I may be a skeptic for now and will forever be guarded against further matters of the heart, but maybe....maybe one day I will believe again, and hopefully along the way I will cease to meet people who continuously obliterate all that is left of those few shreds of optimism within.

This Feeling

"When I was a little girl, my life was just music that was getting louder and louder.

Everything moved me.

A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much.

A calendar showing the wrong month. I could have cried over it.

Where the smoke from a chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested on the edge of the table."

- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

I spent my latter years after that trying to feel less.

Everyday was about feeling less. Everyday I feel less.

Is it growing old? Or is it something worse?

They say you can't protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.

Maybe it's time to let that go.

Leaving

Last night I turned down going to dinner because I was knackered from a gung-ho afternoon of teaching at the hospital and I basically had not finished my ACS Presentation for my consultant tomorrow yet. And also because I had been misinformed or misunderstood somehow and thought that K was leaving on Saturday instead.

A part of me was horrified that he was leaving today instead, and that I would probably never see him again. Then again, a part of me silently agreed that I had done the right thing and had not gone to see him 'one last time' before he left.

I called K last night to talk to him before he left and for some reason, my voice broke off halfway and wavered dangerously in the midst of my sentence.

"I can't believe you're leaving for good. It seems like just yesterday that I met you and we became such good friends."

Sporadic though I must admit our conversations have been over the past 2 years or so, it is impossible to deny that he was always there for me, through my darkest moments, through tears and laughter, and through the quotes he left me for encouragement that sometimes did not make sense at all!

So many people enter and leave your life.

Hundreds of thousands of people.

You have to keep your door open so they can come in.

But it also means you have to let them go.

So much for never being an emo wreck when it comes to friends.

Thank you for everything all these years xxx

Walking On

Just came back from a Liverpool vs Man Utd match, which ended in a victorious 2-0! WOOTS! I had gone with little hope of a win, saying that I would be happy with a 0-0 draw, as Liverpool's run had been horrendous before this with 4 defeats in a row. But who knew, Man Utd was shyte today.

Like JH said, I should definitely watch more football from now onwards and give Liverpool all my good luck vibes.

Saw 'The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus' the night before with Hanna and Hugo, of which I did not understand one bit at all. I had to run off halfway for a booze session in honour of my Daisy Hoo's birthday, which did not end well at all because I was completely wasted by the end of it. The worst I've ever experienced so far. Thank God for a friend like her who took care of me and patiently attended to my needs although I was a total mess. No more booze for a while now.

And the booze has also made me lose my voice, almost completely. How am I supposed to clerk patients this week now?

ARGH.