Vichy Essentielles

Vichy has some new stuff in Watsons aka my shrine and it's the Essentielles range and I "accidentally" bought the Body Cream-Milk..mostly cos it's got some nice bright pink and white packaging but also cos it's kinda affordable at $14.90. So why not right? Always good to have moisturizer for my super dry skin....

So what do I say? Hmmm...okay, it's good in terms of texture cos it's smooth and creamy but not too sticky BUT...yes, the Buts here...BUT I have some issue with the scent. Thing is, when you just sniff it, it's got a nice light floral scent but the dry down has got this dodgy musky after-smell (is that even a proper word? I mean aftertaste is a proper word...so yeah)....it's the typical musky after that that's very common among French products and I don't like that lingering musky scent......It's just kinda okay for the French cos my French friends never thought it's an issue but it kinda bugs me...so I'm a bit disappointed at the scent cos I'm mostly about the scent! But then for the texture, it's good for my very dry skin but I would imagine it to be a bit rich for the not-so-dry skin. My skin drink up the moisture quite well and it's quite lasting too cos normally, when I slap on body lotion, they get sucked in so fast and they just disappear without a trace and my skin looks and feels dry again...but this one is lingering so it kinda gets my thumbs up...but the scent!!! Okay, I won't complain that much but I'm gonna keep it at work cos I won't use it at home for the simple reason that when I'm home after a long day's work, every single product of mine will have to be perfect in terms of texture, scent and function...so it's good to be kept in the office...I would recommend this to someone who's got very dry skin and isn't too fuss about smell...then it would be perfect :) But will I buy it again? Erm....maybe not...it's the smell issue.....Maybe I should try out their other product in the same range...we'll see....actually, I bought another Vichy product other than this...but that'll be for another time, after some lengthy testing first....till then!

Pack Rat

OMG, Scott shared this super useful youtube clip on how to pack everything but the kitchen sink into a backpack and I've definitely learned a trick or two and it's gonna be useful if you're gonna take budget air and are only allowed hand carry....now watch and learn!

Notable Quotable

‎"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. 

Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity." 

—Gilda Radner

Immortality

Yet another great product alert....this time it's the L'Occitane Immortelle Brightening Moisture Cream...it's simply wonderful....

Uncle Josh gave me this some couple of months back from his press stash and he totally missed out a great product. I kinda waited for awhile to use it cos I have so many jars and bottles of cream left but then I couldn't resist anymore and just awhile ago, I opened it and I feel the need to praise and wax lyrical about the cream!!! First up, the smell is lovely! It's a citrusy scent with a hint of beautiful orange blossom and how I LOVE the smell! Then the texture! It's light yet rich and it gets absorbed super quickly to leave my skin velvety smooth!! The whole experience of applying the cream was so damn delightful that I can't wait to apply it again cos the aroma of the cream is simply heavenly and the cream just melts into your skin. The skin is soft and despite the fact that it gets quickly and completely absorbed, it's very moisture rich too and it's great for my dry skin.

Other than having brightening property, the cream is also an anti-aging cream to fight wrinkles and help firm the skin. I know I've just applied it and I dunno if it delivers all the promises but then the fact that it's oh so delightful to use has totally won me over and I don't really care if it fully delivers all the promises or not cos the great scent and wonderful wonderful texture are great enough reasons for me to be totally hooked and devoted to this cream! It's a winner! And I really didn't expect such great texture from L'Occitane cos I've always thought that they're better known for their aromatic body products. Who would have thought that their face skin products are so great! I think I'm gonna try some of their other stuff!

Nourish Naturally!

I found a new beauty spot that is totally awesome! Thanks to Joanie!
It's Nourish Naturally and it's at the nice quaint row of shop houses along Thomson (before Thomson Plaza). And as the name suggests, they have a great range of natural and organic products and beauty treatments for some serious pampering time. If you have a "no-nasty" approach to your beauty products, you'll be happy to find out that they use tons of organic, paraben-free, and SLS-free. Even for their manicure and pedicure, you can opt for non-toxic range from Mavala which is free from Tolueue, Formaldehyde, and Dibutyl Phalate, Collophane, Camphor, Parabens and animal ingredients, all of which could be harmful to our health (they do have the normal options like OPI too). 

Joanie brought me there for the awesome luxurious pedicure with special treatment from the Organic Spa range that not only smells so damn divine (I was kinda salivating cos it smells good enough for me to eat it), but it left my super dry, parched and scaly legs soft and totally hydrated. And the result is pretty long-lasting cos even after I showered, my legs still feel very hydrated (and yes, I did wash properly okay!). And the place is lovely too cos it's on the top floor of the 2-storey shop house with a big glass window you can look out. It's a perfect place for a girlie catch-up.


And Joanie swears by their facials, which uses Maria Galland product. The first time she had her facial done, she was so impressed that she texted me immediately saying "I just had facial and OMG, I'm seriously glowing"...haha...looks like their facial is the next thing I'm gonna try...but that day, I bought some kick-ass beauty serum from them and it's called the Jyunka Miracle Fluid (only distributed and sold in beauty salon but it's developed in Japan). I've kinda read about it in some Hong Kong magazine but never got to try it until now. It costs a bomb (argh!!!) but you use only ONE teeny drop each time and it's a pure vitamin C cocktail that works on giving you glowing supple skin, reducing wrinkles and spots. Joanie swears by it too and I did read some raving reviews about it before, so I relented and bought one. I'll write about it a little later cos I've only been using it for about a little more than a week. So far so good...great potential I must say...Click here to check it out


Anyway, Nourish Naturally is definitely worth checking out for all the beauty buffs out there! You'll love it as much as I do...Click here to find out more....And NO, I'm not paid to write this...I truly like that place! 

Awwwww...things I love about IKEA

Apparently not so much of their furniture (with the exception of the pink cabinet I have and some book shelves that is), but their oh-so bloody cute ad with the feline of the specie.....Ah Meow (how apt) showed me this ad and I just watched it over and over again....It's so very well shot too with nice music too...somehow it reminds me of Christmas I dunno why...might be the nice light and cozy feel of it...I love it...Mr Bond says he wanna guest-star in the ad too! Meow....

Real Phone Conversation....

This is hilarious...and courtesy of HL who told me about this....3 different wrong number calls and the real conversations that followed...

No.1
Caller: Hello Mr Chua?
Me: Wrong number
Caller: Hey, you are not Mr Chua
Me: Is it that obvious? ...
Caller: Aiyoh, then why you holding his phone?

No.2

auntie: hello.... 是黎明吗？
me: 不是
auntie: 你不是黎明？为什么？
me: 因为我是舒淇，黎明在冲凉.

No.3

Weird caller: "Hello, are you kumar kumar?"
Me: "No, this is the Singapore Casket."

There're lots of weird people around........

If you're happy and you know....

"The first thing to do to become happier, paradoxically, is to accept painful emotions, to accept them as a part of being alive. You know, there are two kinds of people who don’t experience painful emotions such as anxiety or disappointment, sadness, envy; two kinds of people who don’t experience these painful emotions. They are the psychopaths and the dead. So if we experience painful emotions at time, it’s actually a good sign. It means that we’re not a psychopath and we’re alive. The paradox is that when we give ourselves the permission to be human, the permission to experience the full gamut of human emotion. We open ourselves up to positive emotions as well,"

– Tal Ben-Shahar, Psychology Lecturer at Harvard

Back to Baby Basic

Every now and then, I get tired of all the fancy body lotion....okay, actually I get so damn lazy that I kinda stop applying body lotion and my skin gets so dry that it got all scaly like a crocodile....but then when that happens, I always go back to basic with Johnson's Baby lotion....I dunno why....I think there's something comforting about very basic baby stuff cos it conjures happy shiny pictures of nourishing goodness...but to make sure I'm back to basic Miss B's style....I bought 3 different baby lotion from Johnson's so I get a good variety...here're the holy trinity...

Ohhhh how I love it now....Let's hope that I'll stick to the routine for the sake of my very parched skin...I think my favorite is still the Johnson's Body Care 24 Hour Lasting Moisture Body Lotion....smells divine and slightly more moisturizing than the other two....with the nice peachy scent, it makes me more diligent at slathering it on...I'm kinda addicted cos I found myself rubbing the classic pink baby lotion at work a lot...and it smells so nice and soothing....

Books Galore

I can't stop buying books, I'm a nerd at heart I know...last week, I blew about $150 bucks on books (2 of which I've had before but happened to given away to friends, Joanie thought I was mad) but then I'm brought up in the culture that books are okay to spend money on cos my dad has always been encouraging us to read.

I remember when I was young, I would get scolding from my mom if I recklessly spend money on useless stuff and there's once, I bought a book of riddles or something like that from the supermarket...(yes, the supermarket...they do sell stuff like that anyway) and my mom took a look and started nagging and I recall very clearly that my dad came to my rescue and said it's fine cos it's a book....and I was encouraged to read as much as I can from then on....

Funny thing is, I hated reading while I was younger but then since about 15, I started making up for lost time and I went nuts with books and I couldn't stop since....I'm proud to say I have pretty decent taste in quality literature cos I'm a purist who don't read chick lit...but then again, at the rate I'm going, my room might just end up looking like the picture about with books EVERYWHERE....I can't stop buying or reading! But then again, if you look at the picture above, it's kinda pretty...haha.....I'm hopeless I know....

Hilarious Psychosis

Scott sent me this really funny youtubes of this series called Psychotic Girlfriend...I couldn't stop laughing...it's quite typical of women in general...only they exaggerated it 10 times or something...I couldn't stop laughing....

September Muse

Reading: Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert...ever since Eat, Pray, Love has become my personal bible (me and scotty always quote it by chapter!), I've bought the next book by Gilbert and Committed is an anthropological approach to dissect the institution of marriage and debunk certain myths of the holy matrimony...it's not so much as a novel cos it reads a bit like a sociology book but it's really interesting...I love Liz Gilbert!

Listening to: Johnny Cash...There's something very charming about old songs and Johnny Cash has that deep dark voice and the song Ring of Fire keeps churning in my head...

Wearing: Chloe eau de parfum....oh I so love this scent....I think I won't be getting tired of it any time soon

Eating: KFC Portuguese Egg Tarts...oh this little things are pure evil cos they taste so damn divine. Thing is, I never thought much of it cos how can a chicken place make good egg tart right? Wrong!  One boring Friday afternoon, I bought 2 of these babies for fun and the rest is history cos it's so damn good....the crust is totally thin and crispy....I really have no idea how they manage to make such good egg tarts....seriously....

Drinking: Rooibos tea...also known as the Red Bush tea, this is caffeine free and full of very healthy antioxidant (apparently more than green tea and even helps weight loss) and I love its nice warm earthy flavor (though a lot of people don't like it). It's a very calming drink and it helps you sleep and improve your energy level. Apparently a lot of mothers in Africa feed this to their babies for colic problems cos it soothes the tummy. Been drinking it on and off but now I'm back on it

Using: Benefit Erase Paste....it's an under-eye concealer that's rich and creamy, meaning it doesn't crease and dry up to give you that ugly wrinkly pasty texture. It's got the right texture for people with dry skin and the color is just nice to brighten up and banish the panda eyes. Gotta set it with powder though cos of the creamy texture but it stays put pretty well....it's almost, yes, ALMOST as good as Cle de Peau Beaute concealer...that one really take the cake...

Loving: My long black glossy hair! I've gone black and I'm not even thinking of coloring it any time soon but I did do a touch up cos my first black color faded off to a brown and I couldn't stand it and I used L'Oreal Casting Creme Gloss in Deep Blue Black to really give it a very black boost...lovely....now I just keep my hair glossy and healthy

Waiting for: Fifi Lapin's book....I dunno if it'll be coming to Singapore but it's launching online soon. Contemplating ordering it online...I love Fifi...she's my bunny doppelgengar aka my alter ego...Ian and some of my peeps still call me Fifi...hahaha...

Lusting after: Lululemon Define Jacket in grey with pink trimmings...I think I won't be lusting more cos this Saturday, it looks like I'll just be ordering it online with Joanie...she's a very bad influence...but I loooove Lululemon (though Joanie is still the no.1 fan with her impossibly big Lululemon collection enough to clothe the whole village)....yes, it's super pricey but their stuff lasts forever. I bought 3 pairs of yoga pants about 5 years ago and they're still in mint condition despite me wearing them all the time....

Aussi Belle Qu'une Balle

Couldn't get this song out of my head...Aussi Belle Qu'une Balle by Nouvelle Vague....it lulled me to sleep last night.....very dreamy and whimsical......