Me! Hahaha.

Pretty and talented 7-year-old Misha gave me this award.

Thank you, babe! =)

It’s always nice to receive an award, and even nicer giving them out. I have to give this award to five other girl bloggers. Wah.

I wonder if there’s a Rockin’ Boy Blogger award, too. If not, half the boys will complain about inequality and the other half will invoke sour grapes. “Chey! Stupid award… we don’t need anything like that, thank you!”

Anyway, it’s nice to know that there are 7-year-olds who like reading my blog, although sometimes it makes me wonder if I should clean up my language, especially when I’m in my ranting moods.

But I think some kids can swear better than me nowadays. I swear. I heard a primary school boy spewing Hokkien vulgarities to his school mates when I was filming the kids’ drama. He looked to be about 9 years old.

Ok, enough of sidetracking. Time to present this award to five rockin’ girl bloggers!

Here you go…

1. Nanny Wen
2. Shelly
3. Nadnut
4. Yuwen
5. Faith

You ladies rock!

Not to say that my other lady friends don’t rock, but I can only name five people leh. Gomenasai!

Categories: Regular Blogs
11 Comments »

You know how people like to wish people “Happy Barfday” on their birthdays?

Well, today is my birthday and I am literally barfing. So go ahead and wish me a happy barfday. The irony makes me laugh.

Woke up with gastric pains today. But I had a lunch appointment followed by a work meeting, so I popped two pills and braved the rain to go out.

Was nauseous and didn’t have appetite, but forced myself to eat kaya toast with hot milo.

In the middle of my meeting, I had to run to the toilet to puke my lunch out.

Gritted my teeth and finished the meeting, which took more than an hour, then went to the doctor.

Dr Lee was quite envious that I woke up at 12pm today and that I can do that sort of thing quite regularly.

So he gave me four kinds of tablets and one bottle of chalky white liquid to torture me. Yuck! Disgusting. The diagnosis is gastric flu or intestinal flu, caused by food poisoning.

Yesterday, I had an English high tea at Goodwood Park Hotel with my friends. Today, three of us are sick, including Nanny Wen. Haha. I haven’t had a chance to find out the extent of their condition yet, but I feel a bit better knowing that I’m not alone. LOL.

It’s not that bad. I’ve had worse gastric flu once, when I puked four times in an hour even before eating. So, don’t worry! I will live to blog again!

Cheers.

Categories: Regular Blogs
35 Comments »

I’m happy today. I feel very productive.

I went for a shoot. I went for an audition. I went shopping for a birthday present and I attended a birthday party.

Then I came home and played a few rounds of Audition. (As if I don’t already have enough auditions in my life.)

Okay, that sounds kinda mundane, actually. But I like packing several events/activities all into one day because it makes me feel very productive and also leaves my other days free for total slackage at home. Haha.

* * *

My shoot went pretty well. It only over-ran 40 minutes, which is very good by normal standards. Easy lines and minimal hassle. By 2pm, I was off and free to engage in my other activities.

* * *

My audition went pretty well. I’m sure I had quite many cringe-worthy, lousy moments, but I also had an honest moment in which I was able to cry with genuine emotion. In the past, I always had to fake it when crying was required during auditions. But I think I’ve finally figured it out, after tons of acting classes, acting books and self-assessment. It’s still not easy, but I have the confidence now to resist the temptation of faking.

This is what I think actors live to feel. To be totally engrossed in the moment. To achieve that during a shoot is great but it’s really what’s expected of professional actors, anyway. But to achieve it during an audition (with no time for preparation, no sets, props and co-actors to engage you, with the stress of being judged) feels pretty amazing.

I won’t even mind if I don’t get the role because I’m totally fulfilled by what I did today. And I know that if I don’t get cast, it’s not because I sucked but because of other reasons. Like maybe I’m not the right height or not pretty enough or my earlobes are too big or some other thing. Or maybe there’s a prettier and more talented actress. But even that’s okay because I’m happy with my own performance.

* * *

The birthday present shopping was quite stressful because I only had 15 minutes in which to make a decision and make the purchase, and because I totally had no idea what the birthday boy likes.

To make matters worse, even his mother wasn’t able to clue me in. There was a “huh?” moment when I called her to ask her to give me some ideas what to buy and she was, like, honestly, I don’t know what my son likes, hahaha. Just get anything.

* * *

The party was great, held at a condo poolside. Free-flow wine. Roti prata for dinner (the famous Casuarina prata man came personally to make fresh prata, made to order, for guests. Lana chocolate cake for dessert. A friendly, personable MP among the guests who entertained us with stories and insights.

Sorry, no photos. I’m kinda taking a break from taking photos because I’ve been taking way too many photos lately and I’m very tired out by it. I wasn’t really planning to blog about today, anyway, because it’s such a mundane day.

But I’m feeling so happy that I just feel like talking about it before I go to bed. Maybe it’s because I drank one too many glasses. Haha.

Actually, if I had taken photos, this blog would probably be a week late because processing photos is a chore I tend to procrastinate doing.

So, my work is done today.

Off to bed!

Categories: Acting Journal, Regular Blogs
14 Comments »

It has come to my attention that people who read my blog through an RSS feed reader do not count as people.

OMG.

I mean, they don’t count towards my blog’s unique visitor count. Which is dumb, but that’s how it works.

For the longest time (since I started blogging in 2003), I never really cared about such things. I was happy enough that there were people reading my blog, never mind whether it’s 10 or 10,000.

But I realised recently that I have to care because that’s where the world is heading these days. Everyone has a blog and everyone has ads in their blogs. (I’m generalising, of course, but the stats are high on that.)

Everyone hopes to earn back a paltry amount of money from blog ads to pay for hosting and domain, at least. And more readers means more moolah because that’s how advertisers assess the worth of a blog.

So I have to care.

Because every bit of income is very important, especially to a struggling artiste.

So, can you feed readers please become “real people” by clicking to open my site whenever I have an update, instead of just reading from your reader?

I know it’s a lot to ask because I myself am a lazy reader and like to read from feeds.

But if I know a friend has ads on his site, I will click open his site to give him the count. Bloggers should help bloggers mah. After all, it doesn’t cost the reader anything except a muscle movement to help a blogger he likes. It’s the advertiser who will have to pay for the extra visitor, and rightly so.

A friend advised me to configure my feed to show only the first few sentences, so, if a reader wants to read on, he will have to click open my site.

But I don’t want to do that (not yet anyway) because I want my readers to have a choice. I just hope they choose to open my site to give me their count because they feel I deserve it for my effort of writing stuff that they enjoy reading.

Of course, my blogs aren’t entertaining all the time, but I try my best. I enjoy writing and I hope people enjoy reading.

Besides, it’s nicer to read from people’s sites than off feed readers because feed readers kill off formatting and make the content ugly and reader-unfriendly.

What is your viewpoint? Do you think I should take my friend’s advice, or not?

And, if you’re a feed reader, will you be a darling and help a poor blogger out? =)

Categories: Regular Blogs
20 Comments »

Busy practising.

I don’t really like singing that much. But it’s a necessary evil.

My fingers hurt from playing the guitar after a long hiatus.

Categories: Acting Journal
14 Comments »