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.

7:30 am

We are on the way to Leeds for Piers’ annual company dinner. It’s a 4.5-hour drive.

So early, we were bound to forget things. I forgot to bring Tofu, my pink mini bolster (who looks like a pink tofu). I totally forgot my dress and Piers almost forgot his suit. We’d had them stored in garment bags, ready to go.

Piers had already packed our suitcase in the car earlier, then only remembered the outfits just before we were leaving for the last time.

8:00 am

The network coverage in England highways is bad. It’s on GPRS most of the time, sometimes EDGE, so I can’t tweet. Am typing this on my iPad and will post on my blog later.

8:20 am

We’re driving in convoy with two of Piers’ colleagues, Steve and David. They have walkie talkies and they’re playing with it excitedly, pretending to be secret agents or something and chattering useless things over the channel.

It’s good to know that people never really grow up.

8:30 am

We just drove past a structure. It’s a short and wide cylindrical building with two or three thinner buildings around it. Piers went, “Honey! That’s a nuclear plant!”

“It is not!” I said, “You haven’t got nuclear facilities in England!”

“Google it!” he said, “We’re now in Oxford.”

I told him I can’t google because the network sucks and we’re still on GPRS. You can try loading a webpage but it takes forever to load and then it times out before it loads.

“Yeah,” said Piers, “That’s because of the radiation from the nuclear.”

You should know that we are currently watching 24. We just finished with Season 6 last night. I think Piers fancies himself to be living in one of Jack Bauer’s crises.

8:45 am

We’ve stopped for breakfast at a Waitrose rest stop. It has a small Waitrose supermarket, a KFC and a Starbucks. I ate precooked buttermilk pancakes, which were horrible.

The boys got fresh batteries for their walkies. Oh dear.

9:35 am

We’re off again. Walkie talkies now have fresh batteries and the boys are playing at outlaws and cops. They each have a code name. I suppose I shouldn’t tell you the names cos I could get killed.

Luckily, David has brought his wife, Ellie, so there’s at least one other sane person in the convoy.

Approximately 3.5 hours more to destination.

9:50 am

Piers just swerved to avoid a pheasant that was crossing the road. I didn’t see it because I actually can’t see the road from where I’m sat.

Olive’s car seat is kinda low (or maybe the dashboard high) so when I’m comfortably settled in it, all I can see are the horizon and sky.

Anyway, the pheasant managed to cross the road safely, narrowly avoiding all the cars that went its way.

10:00 am

Walkie talkie talk:

“Snowman! Scout ahead and keep your eyes peeled for smokies. Copy that?”

Oops. Did I just give away one of their code names?

10:05 am

Morrison’s truck spotted.

“We are nearing our destination. We haven’t got scum supermarkets in the South.”

10:10 am

“I recommend you all keep your windows shut and doors locked. We are now entering the North.”

I find the friendly rivalry between different states or regions in large countries very amusing.

10:18 am

Oh dear. I need the toilet again. ETA to destination is at least 2.5 hours from now.

10:32 am

Dare I hope the boys have tired of their game? They are talking like normal human beings again.

10:35 am

Maybe not. Just heard Piers say something about driving in formation when the traffic gets lighter.

11:06 am

No formation driving. The traffic has been quite heavy all the way. Not jam-packed heavy, but enough so we have to go at just below speed limit.

We’ve lost Steve. Last time we saw him, he was 10 cars behind.

11:08 am

I typed just a bit too soon. Piers just weaved into the middle lane to let David pass him, then he quickly closed back into the fast lane. He claimed that that was formation driving.

11:09 am

“Snowman! Snowman! Come in! Do you read me, Snowman!”

Silence.

“We have lost visual and radio contact with Snowman.”

Oops, did I give away Snowman’s identity?

11:11 am

Snowman has reappeared.

“We have reestablished radio contact with Snowman!”

“Welcome back, Snowman!”

11:17 am

“Smokey alert!”

“Smokey to the left overhead!”

“All teams break radio contact until Smokey is gone!”

11:18 am

“Smokey is turning out at next rest stop!”

“Smokey’s gone to get a doughnut.”

11:23 am

We’re passing by Sherwood Forest, where Robin Hood lives. “Lives”, as according to Piers.

Me: “Does he still live there now?”

Him: “Yes.”

Piers also tells me the forest is haunted.

11:27 am

55 miles to Leeds!

I have no idea what that is in kilometres. Okay a scant idea: Something like x1.5?

I also don’t know why England uses miles instead of kilometres. The English seem a bit half hearted about adopting the metric system.

11:35 am

We just passed by a smelly area and my mind thinks cow dung. But I can’t be sure it is.

That’s one reason I’m scared to have kids. Parents are supposed to know everything, right, because children ask questions all the time?

I’m not sure kids can grow up feeling safe and secure if their parents, in trying not to misinform them, always appear unsure by saying “I don’t know, maybe this or that”.

And what if I tell them them the wrong answers and they grow up believing the wrong facts? I couldn’t bear that responsibility.

11:57 am

“It’s getting very dark and scummy. We must be close to Leeds now.”

12:13 pm

We have arrived!

Leeds has plain industrial-looking buildings interspersed with old Victorian buildings.

It must be a lot colder here. More people are wearing thick leather or fleece jackets here than in Bournemouth.

12:25 pm

The boys have to go to a company lunch, leaving us girls to our own devices. It’s still too early to check in.

What do girls do when left on their own?

Answer: Shopping.

Well, Ellie needs to buy a dress and shoes for the dinner, so that can’t be helped. Talk about last minute, lol.

I hope we don’t get lost. The shopping area is big and crowded.

3:05 pm

We didn’t get lost. Ellie is ace, leading us safely to the hotel. We’ve had our lunch and we’re finally able to get to our rooms.

We’re staying at The Met, Leeds. It’s a smallish hotel with smallish rooms but it looks quite posh and businessy.

The boys are at a company seminar thingy so I’m going to rest a bit now and then get ready for tonight!

Over and out.

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.