A weekend to remember

After weeks of lulling around, I’ve finally had an active week!

The Body Worlds exhibition is in town again so decided to go check it out on Saturday. I visited the exhibition previously when it came to Singapore about five years ago and was thoroughly fascinated by it. I must say I was still fascinated this time around – there are new exhibits of course, including animals!

Some people have asked if the corpses are scary – all I can say is, you’ve gotta go see for yourself to determine. I personally didn’t think it was a scary experience, in fact I believe it is highly educational… for adults and kids who are OLD ENOUGH.

Why am I stressing on this, you may ask? Well that’s because there were these very fragile exhibits where foetuses were cradled by a small black cushion. I was appalled to see how a maid/parent would allow her toddler to stand on the seat of her pram and climb all over these exhibits. There is completely no respect for the exhibits or the real human foetuses on display. Then there was another teenage boy who purposely knocked right into the exhibit which made it shake and almost topple the foetus off the cushion! Was super pissed off.

Other than that, I have seen a few responsible parents educating their young primary school-aged children, who looked like they knew how to respect the dead themselves. I attribute it all to good upbringing.

Nonetheless, I really enjoyed the exhibitions. My experience was enhanced by one of the four volunteers who provided us quite a bit of information. Kudos to her! One of the things we asked was, how did they get some of the bodies to balance only on one foot? Apparently, there is a weight holding the foot down, but to ensure the body stays balanced, the centre of gravity is calculated and the body is positioned in such a way that it does not topple. This volunteer also informed us that the exhibitors were planning to display a Noah’s Ark in the future… Looking forward to that!

We spent Sunday at Steph’s place eating and eating and joking and watching a movie.  We celebrated my mum’s birthday and had chocolate cheese cake. That was interesting.  And as usual I fell asleep on the couch… Had a very long day – in my books.

I’m off from work this Friday, can’t wait!

Michael Learns To (soft) Rock

Friday was a day full of surprises.

Our GM decided to donate his MLTR concert tickets to HR so that they could give them to one of the staff. HR sent out an email to say whoever got back to them first would get the tickets. Someone got the tickets – but it wasn’t me. Obviously I had no clue what went on since I was out of the office at the time.

When I got back to my desk, I found a note on my desk saying:

“Dear Cheryl, are you free tonight? Uncle Matt would like to date you to go Fort Canning Park.”

I screamed… Because I knew that MLTR would be playing at Fort Canning Park that evening. (By the way, ‘Uncle Matt’ is our graphic designer)

I found out a while later that while I was out, my other colleague had replied to HR saying I (as in me, Cheryl) wanted the tickets because she knows I like MLTR. But she was a few seconds too late. Someone else got the tickets. So she and ‘Uncle Matt’ stormed over to this person’s department and demanded he gave up the tickets to me and ‘Uncle Matt’ (‘cos he likes MLTR too).

We were so excited for the whole time after that. I even literally hopped around the department like an energiser bunny ‘cos I couldn’t stop being excitable.

Well, later on we reached Fort Canning Park, but realised to our dismay that we entered by the wrong area (the cordoned off VIP area) – we looked to the far front and realised that people were starting to stream in. Just then, we caught sight of another colleague (she was in charge of the catering for VIPs) who was wearing a crew member pass. So we called out to her and explained our predicament – and the guards let us through without checking our tickets at all! So we ran all across the field… and managed to get a place right in front of the stage!

In case you were wondering, the music and singing were awesome. Obviously. I had expected lesser, but to my surprise, MLTR seriously rocked… And I mean, they rocked so hard that the speakers, the barricades and even the ground were shaking! They turned out to be more talented musicians than I thought they were. Anyway, my experience at the MLTR would not have been complete without photos (and the boasting rights):-

Click HERE to watch the videos I took at the concert!

Alright, seeing MLTR on stage in concert was one thing. But the better thing is I actually got to be at their press conference (in my hotel’s club lounge) while they were walking past me like nobody’s business (glee!), and they even stood what felt like a hair’s breadth away from me… (well alright, 50cm okay?) I was star struck!

The funny thing about Jascha (lead singer/keyboardist) was that he’s really quiet and stoned in real life, but he’s so cheery and chatty on stage (and he has a paunch)! Mikkel (guitarist) was gorgeous (and chatty) and he had such stunning blue eyes… Oh, and I think he shaved his chest for the concert -  I remember seeing a whole lot of chest hair in their Eternity Tour poster. Kare (drummer) looked serious but he was friendly… And he kept LOOKING at me during the press interview. I felt so awkward.

Our club lounge.

With the interviewer from Razor TV – yes, it was a live video recording!

From left: Kare (drummer), Mikkel (guitarist) and Jascha (lead singer/keyboardist).

Paper Hearts & Dettol Loving

When Jonathan and I boarded bus 162 on Saturday evening, I met a friend’s JC-aged brother. I waved to him while walking past and sat two seats behind. The boyfriend was on the phone and I was looking out the window when B attracted my attention. He passed me a paper heart which he made – “for you,” he said  – and told me not to unfold it because it “looks nice” the way it was.

The boyfriend was on the phone at the time, but he saw what happened. After he got off the phone and when B alighted, the boyfriend expressed – albeit in few words – that he was annoyed that another guy would pass me a paper heart right in front of him. “Ahh… Jealousy,” I thought to myself. It was cute though.

Remembering a long time back when the boyfriend had folded a ten-dollar paper heart and given it to me – which I ended up using at one time because I was short of cash – I then offered him my old one-dollar note (which Van had refused to let me use at Esteller) to fold into a heart. The boyfriend lapped up the offer. He happily took the dollar note and folded it into a heart and instructed me to put it into my wallet (and it was understood that under no circumstances was I to use it).

Being a girl, I naturally welcomed the attention – from two guys nonetheless! At the expense of sounding conceited, I have to confess that it’s rather flattering having guys tussle over my ‘affections’. (Yes, an actual physical fight between two guys took place because of me once)

… You were probably wondering what “Dettol loving” in the heading meant. It is a different story and has nothing to do with the paper hearts…

You see, because of H1N1, my colleague Matt and I have been taking turns spraying our department with Dettol to sanitize the air. As you can probably tell by now, I’ve been very paranoid and the Dettol smell assures me that the air I breathe in is clean.

My other colleague LL gets a little scared at my zealous attempt at trying to sanitize the entire department. So I threatened her via Facebook just now that I would “spring a Dettol-ish surprise” on her. When she left work, I carried out my threat. I stuck the following up on her already-crowded wall.

Then I left a note on her computer monitor…

I can’t wait to see the look on her face tomorrow.