This is a long overdue post.

I did something rather out of the blue the other day.

It was spontaneous, unprecedented (at least for me), and totally reckless.

I took up an old friend's offer and posed at a low-budget photoshoot for her company.

It was quite unnerving, posing for all you're worth in a room full of strangers and some young models with bodalicious figures.

The girls were all sexily dressed in low-cut jeans and mid-riff baring T-shirts.

Me? Dressed in my signature office attire (I went down after a day of work with no spare clothes to change into) of a white shirt and black pants.

It was just wrong for a photoshoot for a new beer brand, but my friend insisted that they wanted people from all walks of life to model.

Honestly, I was just delighted to have free beer, which I took hearty swigs of whilst posing with a bottle in my hand.

As it turned out, I got SO DARN red in my face and neck that I'm very sure my photos turned out like crap.

Photos of a lobster, really.

But it was still a fresh, novel experience, and though it wasn't a super glamorous shoot, I walked away with the experience of doing something I've never thought I'll possibly do.

If they like what they see in the pics, you might just see some of the photos in a certain men's magazine, but who knows, really?

For me, I just liked my hair which they did in huge curls with a curling-iron, and played up my eyes with super dark, intense eyeshadow.

I didn't look like me. More like some Jap or Taiwanese girl who OD-ed on eye makeup.

Which brings me to this.

This motivates me to get my hair professionally curled at a salon come Dec.

Hello, curls.

I've been to the Journey of Faith exhibition at Asian Civilisation Museum recently.

For the ill-informed, it's an exhibition of Vatican artifacts, with pieces from Rome to China to India to Vietnam and even Singapore.

I've never been to any seriously arty-farty kinda exhibitions, much less to the actual places of culture and the arts.

So that small exhibition was enough to impress the pants off me.

I love the paintings and the sculptures the most.

Although the pieces of Vatican-related items were impressive - the tiara, the throne, the garment worn by the Pope himself, etc, all that gold reflecting the spotlights off - what really caught my eye were the items that look old and ARE old.

They speak of so much more history and character.

There's this amazing mosaic painting that I remember most clearly.

Think of it as a painting, a painting that was originally on the ceiling of St Peter's Basilica (I think it was St Peter's Basilica) and, due to some rebuilding, they actually had to remove the mosaic off the ceiling, and whilst they were doing that, they used paper and some substance to go over the mosaic to create a "copy" of the mosaic itself, and thereafter pieced all the tiny pieces of paper together to form a mosaic of a mosaic.

Cool, ain't it?

It doesn't look that impressive compared to all the glorious paintings in their vibrant, vivid colours, but it's an interesting piece.

And you learn.

This spurs me on to start saving some serious money to visit ROME, GREECE, TURKEY, SPAIN, SOUTH AFRICA, and all those places one must go to at least once in their lifetime or it's considered one huge abominable irreversible sin.

First stop: Vietnam in Dec.

START SAVING MONEY.

Last count: 4 times.

I am Emily. Emily is me.


**


My office is freezing these days.

I've got a new nickname.

Chubs.

As in Chubby.

It sounds cute, but I'd rather not associate myself with chubbiness or skinny-ness, thank you very much.

The nickname came about when a few of my colleagues saw my childhood photo and decided that I was a chubby kid.

And cute.

One asked, "Whatever happened to you now?"

As if it was positively criminal to lose both the chubbiness and the cute-ness.

I admit it. I'm neither now.

Everyone loves a chubby, cute kid. No one likes a skinny, morose lass.

Did I say I'm Emily?

I got a giant HUGE movie poster of Tim Burton's Corpse Bride.

For free.

I'm unbeatable. Muahaha.


**


Been reading this book by the title of "Seven Types of Ambiguity" by this guy called Eliot Perlman. Seriously, never heard of him.

But it's such an amazing book, I just dunno where to start.

It's like all those thoughts that're trapped within me, those words for which I cannot find any voice, nor give them any face, they come to life in the lines of this very book.

Many a time I just can't help but let out a gasp whilst reading.

Or give a knowing smile.


There are so many lines in this book that make me catch my breath and wonder how this genius was created, but I can't list all of them here. Let's still give you a little teaser for effect.

How many people around the world who have not yet fallen off Alex's graph are eating dinner night after night after night on their own? There are the divorced. There are widows and widowers, of course. We think of them as old. They are not all old but even those who are - are they in some way meant to eat dinner each night on their own? Do they deserve it? Have they earned it? How many nights must you spend alone for every night you were not on your own?

It feels ridiculous to make a salad for yourself. You wash the lettuce, tear it apart, cut up the tomatoes, add a little dressing and wonder whether it will feel less ridiculous, hollow, artificial, with the passage of time. Don't add dressing. No one is watching. Try to cover the hum of the flourescent strip light and the refrigerator with the radio. The radio is worse. It shouts at you, advertisements, drum and bass, little girl or boy groups voicing perfectly timed musical cliches to computerised accompaniments, right-wing shock jocks with switchboards lit up by fear, hate and ignorance, or New Age flatulence masquerading as enlightenment. Turn it off and that leaves you the hum and the salad. If you don't add dressing, it will be over that much faster. Then you try leaving out the tomatoes.... the idea that there is a definite warning sign for people living by themselves - the salad dressing stops appearing in the salad, then the tomatoes, then the salad itself. Then you're just left with a bowl which, sooner or later, you fill with cereal and milk and then - for the hell of it - you start to add a little scotch to the milk.

I knew this was it. It's now or never.

What better time than this? With something I love so much on-screen.

And so without thinking too much about it, without dwelling too long over it, without allowing myself time for regret and doubt to eat their way through, I challenged myself and just went ahead with it.

It wasn't at all too bad, really.

Somewhat daunting, but not unbearable daunting.

And look, I survived.

For the first time yesterday, I entered a theatre on my own and sat through the entire film.

The plus point was that I wasn't disturbed - I had the entire row to myself, could sit in whichever fashion I liked, I didn't have to worry about my neighbours disturbing me with trivial comments, I didn't have to bother with ceaseless munching all around me, I didn't have to put up with flashing handphone lights and constant messaging.

And the best plus point?

I could really focus on the film and ponder and analyze over whether was the film really stop-motion or did Tim Burton pull a fast one on us?

I appreciated all the little details in the film much more, because it was the second time I was watching it, and because I was alone to fully enjoy it.

And was I proved right?

Yes, it was liberating.

Now, I really have abolished all reason for human companionship.

I could climb Mount Everest, survive Vietnam, embark on a dangerous mission to aid Palestinians in Isreal, whatever, just throw it at me.

I could be the next Angelina Jolie.

There's nothing stopping you now. No, not really.