I was considerably nervous about attending Piers’ company annual dinner until I saw photos from last year’s dinner.

Although declared black tie, an atmosphere of fun can be detected from the photos. There’s a Laurel and Hardy impersonating duo mingling with guests, a Michael Jackson impersonator as the night’s entertainment, and there’s disco dancing. Many women wore simple cocktail dresses instead of formal gowns.

So I went to this year’s event thinking I was going to be overdressed. (I had bought my dress before seeing the photos.)

I know it’s a bit weddingy.

“Is this for your wedding?” my alterations seamstress had asked.

“Oh, you look gorgeous. Are you getting married?” the greeters at the dinner event had quipped.

“Great! You don’t need to buy a wedding dress anymore!” Piers had said.

What, can’t a woman wear a white dress to any occasion apart from her own wedding?

This year’s dinner was a lot more formal than I had expected. This year’s theme, unbeknownst to us, was Phantom of the Opera, so everything looked really grand and majestic.

It started with a cocktail reception at the lobby of the Leeds Town Hall, a magnificent Victorian structure that hosts concerts, screenings and other events.

I don’t have a good photo of it so I’m going to borrow one from BBC. Here’s an amazing photo taken by photographer Adrian Wilson:

The lobby is not very big so the cocktail reception got a bit cramped with over 200 guests who, fortunately, did not all arrive at once.

We were served a few different versions of champagne punch. I only had one glass because I didn’t want to get drunk.

And also because I was having a drink with Invisalign on for the first time and I was uncomfortable about it. But I couldn’t remove them too early because dinner was going to be a long affair and I had a four-hours-a-day downtime to adhere to.

Just my luck that my Invisalign sponsorship came the very year I’ve got all these cool events to go to.

Steve chatting with a pretty lady I don’t know.

Ellie and David!

Me and Piers!

The reception lasted about an hour or so, during which time the boys (meaning Piers, Steve and David) kept running off to the bar (within the town hall) to buy beers.

The beer addiction in men is more severe than I thought if they choose to pay for beer when there’s free champagne.

The doors to the dining hall opened around 8 pm, revealing the magnificent sight of an old Victorian theatre turned ballroom for the evening.

Candelabras bearing slender black candles graced each of the 22 tables that awaited us as we marched in to the thunderous strains of the Phantom of the Opera theme song resounding off a giant pipe organ.

The effect was beautiful, filling me with an overwhelming sense of grandeur and adventure.

Seats had been pre-arranged, each marked with a personalised name plate. On the inside of each name plate showed the menu items that each guest had pre-selected prior to the event. We were told by our table captain to place the menu face up so the service staff would know what to serve each of us.

There were six bottles of wine on each table that we could immediately help ourselves to.

The dinner itself wasn’t particularly remarkable, being just like any other dinner. We had a three-course meal which was surprisingly tasty. I don’t have photos of my food because I didn’t think it was too appropriate to demonstrate blogger behaviour in the middle of a posh meal.

Between our courses, there were speeches, awards presentations and performances. Well, it was just one long performance by a female soprano singing all the popular Phantom of the Opera tracks.

It was quite nice, except when she sang Angel of Music, the duet between Christine and Meg. I love the song, but our singer sang both parts herself and that’s just weird because it sounds like she’s talking to herself.

Duets shouldn’t be sung solo, unless you’re in the bathroom.

A nice thing happened when the singing started and everyone turned their chairs to face the stage.

As I listened, entranced by the music, a male waiter came up behind me and whispered gently in my ear, “For you, madam.”

I turned around and saw him holding out a single stalk of red rose, smiling gallantly. As I accepted it and gave my thanks, I noticed that every other lady in the room was either receiving the same or had already received it.

At the end of the dinner, the lights went out and the disco started. There were quite a lot of drunk people eager to show their stuff on the dance floor.

Piers isn’t really into dancing. Neither am I, especially when I’m wearing a dress that kisses the floor, threatening to trip me at every turn. And Ellie, being pregnant, had to return to the hotel. So we didn’t stay too long.

Final photo before we said our good nights:

From left: Me, Piers, Steve, Charles, David, Ellie

The next annual dinner will be happening in April 2012 (this year’s dinner was delayed). If Piers sees fit to invite me again, I bet we’ll be having this following conversation some time in March:

Me: Time to shop for my new dress!

Piers: Why do you need a new dress?

Me: For the dinner, duh!

Piers: Didn’t you buy one last year?

Me: So? That was for last year!

Piers: Why can’t you wear the same one?

Me: ??!!!!?!!!!!??!!!

I leave you to imagine the rest of the strangulation conversation.

We’re going to Oxford this weekend.

I’ve wanted to go for months but, to be honest, I’m always a bit lazy about going sightseeing. I enjoy the sights and the experiences, but I so hate the travelling. Getting ready, getting packed (if necessary) and then braving the hours stuck in a car or train or ship or plane. All such a chore.

That’s why, after being in England for an accumulative total of five months, I’ve probably seen as many sights/attractions as someone who’s been here for a five-day tour.

But we’re going to Oxford this weekend.

It’s kind of on the way to Leeds, the venue of Piers’ annual company dinner. Since we’d be travelling anyway, might as well make the most of it and see a couple of things along the way.

Piers found us a nice hotel in Oxford. After Leeds, we’ll stay a night in Oxford before returning to the grind in Bournemouth — him going to the office for work, me staying home not blogging.

Now, I am in a bit of a dilemma.

On the way to Oxford from Leeds, there are like 50 attractions we can pop by.

The first attraction on the list that caught my eye was Bicester Village, a luxury outlet shopping centre for designer brands, with over 130 outlet boutiques.

I’ve been wanting to go there for months, but have been procrastinating because of the travelling.

It’s one of those situations where you think, “No hurry, right? I’ll be here for the discernable future and the village is not going anywhere, either.”

And then one day you realise that 10 years have passed and you still haven’t done it.

But that’s beside the point.

The point is that I will be passing through this Sunday, which gives me a great chance to make a stopover. Joy!

Then, my eyes scanned lower down the list and another attraction popped out at me: Cadbury World.

Without hesitation, Chocolate seized prime position in my mind, instantly banishing Shopping to the rotting parts of the brain we supposedly never use (a fact which is actually myth).

If we only have time to visit one attraction on our way back to Bournemouth, it has to be Chocolate.

I mean Cadbury World.

It is no secret that I’m really good at setting priorities.

Here’s an MSN conversation between me and Piers discussing our trip to Cadbury World:

As you can see, Piers is rubbish at setting priorities. He should have said, instead, “We’ll be in Oxford, home (sort of) of BICESTER VILLAGE!!! and you want to go to Cadbury World?”

Regardless, we are going to Cadbury World.

The tickets have been booked!

Cadbury is my favourite chocolate brand. I’m serious. I like it more than expensive gourmet chocolate brands. So this will be quite an exciting trip for me.

I suppose we could still go to Bicester Village, but then there’s also Oxford University. And the Royal Shakespeare Theatre!

But that is all secondary. Who can think about anything else when there’s chocolate!!

As some unknown wise person once said, “Man cannot live on chocolate alone, but women sure can!”

Now that I have lulled you into a (false) sense of security with my short break from blogging, it’s time to unleash upon you more scary bikini photos.

Yep. Just when you thought you were safe. I present to you… a diseased-looking Sheylara in bikini.

Okay, I’m not actually diseased, but merely covered in mud. It’s pure, natural mud taken from a cave in a region where pirates of old used to hang out and rest between rampageous naval battles.

That’s as natural a mud mask as you can get.

We were at Coll Baix, a tiny beach of gravel, hidden away from civilisation in Mallorca. You could get to it via a long trek through paths thick with vegetation and trees along the scary cliffs of the island, or you could get to it by boat.

We went by speed boat. It was Piers’ birthday and it was a surprise from his dad.

Yacht charters and boat rentals can be had just about everywhere in Mallorca. We booked our boat adventure at the Puerto Pollensa marina.

Our tanned, robust captain claimed to look younger than his supposed 67 years thanks to the mud from the caves. I’m not quite sure I believe him. He was trying to convince us to plaster the mud he had given us all over ourselves. But he did smear his entire head with that stuff.

His speed boat runs on a daily schedule for different sea tours. We did the Pirate Routes, a two-hour adventure that costs 60 Euros per person. Expensive, but so eye-poppingly fun!

When the boat goes on high speed, it kind of skips along the water, so the ride is kind of bumpy.

I found it scary at first because I was afraid I would get seasick, which I have a history of. But the seasickness never came and I began to enjoy myself. Fear quickly turned to exhilaration.

You’re bouncing on the water as if the water were a spring mattress. The wind is rushing at your face and rustling madly at your ears. Your eyes drink deeply the sights of unspoiled nature all around you.

It was just amazing.

Here’s a picture of the mud cave:

In this trip, we were supposed to enter the cave and bathe in the mud, then come outside to bake in the sun. But we couldn’t that day because the water was up and a bit choppy, therefore dangerous or something like that.

So our captain took us to Coll Baix beach and gave us a tupperware full of mud harvested from the cave.

The beach is made entirely of gravel, with stones and rocks in the water getting bigger as they head out to sea. The larger rocks are painful to walk on barefoot while the pebbles are uncomfortable. So all you really want to do is sit and bake in the sun.

Everyone had mud on their faces except me. I had makeup on my face and I didn’t think it was a good idea to have a apply a mask over makeup. Plus the mud was so pure that there were many tiny stones in them, some of which were sharp. I didn’t want to cut my face!

I don’t have a lot of photos on that beach. We had to anchor the boat 20 or 30 metres away and then jump into the water and swim to shore. Obviously, I couldn’t take my camera.

But Piers swam back to the boat at some point and took some photos for me from there.

He took this photo of himself before swimming back, lol.

We were on that beach for about an hour, I think. We had our mud bake, we swam around a bit and we played with the waves. It’s fun sitting on the shore. When the waves hit, you can’t help but fall over because the waves are quite strong.

The water was ridiculously beautiful, a rich turquoise colour. It felt so unreal swimming in that water.

But it’s not turquoise all the time. It depends on the area you’re at and the weather. As you travel across the sea, the colour changes from turquoise to emerald to cerulean to navy.

Regardless of the colour, it’s always clear and sparkling.

Well, everything was awesome, in a nutshell. If you ever go to Mallorca, a boat trip is highly recommended. See more photos at this Facebook page of other similar trips taken by our boat captain.

And that’s all I have for you today. Let me know if you want more Mallorca posts! (But then, I’ll probably do some more whether you like it or not, lol.)

I’m taking a short break from Mallorca posts because I’ve been kinda busy shopping for my outfit for Piers’ annual company dinner.

It’s a black-tie event and I haven’t got anything with me in England, so I have to buy everything: Dress, shoes, bag, shawl, jewellery, maybe gloves.

I kind of left it too late. There’s nothing decent in the shops so I had to go online. The problem is, all the dresses I like that suit me are made to measure and will take a month to be delivered. Even the shoes I have my eye on are made to measure.

But the dinner is next week!

It’s very hard for me to find dresses because I don’t look good in bustiers, V-shape necks and halters, which basically describe the style of most evening gowns.

So I had to finally settle for this cheap ready-to-go dress. Ordered it two days ago and it arrived today, but it’s 10 inches too long (even though it’s XS / UK size 6) so I’ll have take it to the tailor.

Dress: USD84
Shipping: USD29
Tailoring: GBP30 (estimated)
Total: SGD200

Turned out not so cheap after all, for the quality. The stitching around the beads looks a bit poorly done.

But what is done is done and I have to wear it.

After shopping, there’s still the business of retouching my hair, threading my face and doing my nails.

Yep, very busy.

Actually, I wanted to talk about a cake today but got sidetracked, sorry.

The supermarkets in England carry very pretty cakes that look inedible because they look more like decorative items than food.

Piers assured me time and time again that they taste awful.

But I can’t help being drawn to them, especially this one.

Do not trust a cake that you can stand upright.

I made Piers buy it because neither of us had a birthday cake this year so we needed to make up for it.

It’s so pretty it makes you happy, doesn’t it?

It’s so pretty it shouldn’t be edible.

Cut along the dotted lines.

Please unwrap me. Cos no one else would.

We should have just left it alone as a decorative item.

It tastes awful.

The description says:

“A Madeira sponge cake layered with plum and raspberry jam and vanilla flavour frosting covered with soft icing and decorated with a sugar plaque and candy flower.”

This is how I would describe it:

“A dry and hard cake with cough-syrup-flavoured jam filling, wrapped in a fatally thick layer of icing so sweet you could go into anaphylactic shock if you tried to eat it.”

Do not judge a cake by it’s icing. And ribbons. And harmless-looking teddy bears.

Well, I have learnt my lesson now.

Next time, I will get Piers to buy the Hello Kitty one instead of the Forever Friends one.

One of the things that surprises me about Piers is that he doesn’t kill pests. (I think it runs in his family.)

Everyone else I know would kill ants, cockroaches, flies or any unidentified creepy crawlies without a thought, by any means available (swatting, squishing, flushing down toilet, insecticide spraying, poisoning, burning).

Piers would rescue them.

Now, don’t get the wrong idea. He doesn’t like insects, especially in his home, but he will not kill them. He will capture them in a box and then set them free outdoors.

When we were at the villa in Mallorca, he offered biscuits to a trail of ants, and later helped them courier a dead wasp to their home.

Piers’ good deed for the day

The ants were about four feet away from home when he found them trying to cart their treasure along, but they were so slow and it would have taken them hours, so Piers just picked up the wasp and dropped it right at their doorstep, causing the carrying ants to get into a frenzy when their luggage vanished before their eyes.

The worker ants at the door quickly radioed for help and, soon, a whole bunch of them came to help drag the wasp through their doorway.

I think Piers has some kind of strange affinity with creatures. Not just insects, but also animals. He has a talent for spotting things. He’s always doing it and pointing them out to whomever’s around.

Spotted at a hill path to Bournemouth Beach.

In Mallorca, he spotted one silverfish, one ladybird, two praying mantids separately, a giant queen ant, a hummingbird, the first bat that flew across our villa, and two goats camouflaged on a mountain.

Ladybird finding refuge on his sleeve.

Praying mantis in a corner by the ceiling on the balcony of the villa.

He also rescued a bee who fell into our Coke can while trying to drink our Coke.

In comparison, I spotted only one baby cockroach who liked to use our bathroom in the villa in the middle of the night.

The goat spotting was really something else.

We were lying by the pool, reading, when he suddenly said, “Did you hear that?”

“No,” I said.

“Sounded like a goat,” he said.

I listened and heard nothing.

He listened some more, then ran off. I continued reading.

Fifteen minutes later, he ran back excitedly to tell everyone that he had spotted a small goat on the mountain behind the villa.

The goat was somewhere halfway up the mountain.

It was a bit hard to spot because the goats (we later discovered there were two) kept hiding behind tall grass and bushes, only walking out into view occasionally.

And they were really far away, so I had to max out the optical zoom on my camera (12x) to get a barely discernable image of them.

Goat moving through tall grass.

Goat looking straight at us!

Several months ago (I was in Singapore at that time) Piers was trying to fix his washing machine when he discovered a giant scary brown spider at the back of the machine.

He caught it in a disposable plastic container, took a photo of it, then set it free outside his apartment.

I looked at the photo and spent 15 minutes on Google trying to discover its breed to find out whether it’s deadly. Turned out it was a rustic wolf spider. Non fatal to humans but could potentially kill a dog.

Personally, I would want something scary like that dead if it’s living anywhere near me, but at the same time I respect Piers’ non-killing policy.

I suppose it doesn’t really matter too much. All that matters is that he does all the bug catching so I don’t have to.