I just received a phone call with an invitation to attend a Dior christmas party (presumably because I’m a Dior member and not because I’m a blogger.)

I was first told the date of the party, then a list of highlights, including makeup and fashion shows, food and drinks, limited edition products on sale, and a door gift, all of these read off a page in monotone.

Then silence.

“Is that all?” I asked.

“The price is $50. If you want to bring a friend, it’s $80. But you can redeem products with your tickets.”

“Oh, okay. I’m not interested, but thanks.”

The caller asked for a reason, so I said I wasn’t interested in buying any Dior products at the moment. Parties are okay, but having to pay to attend one where they will try to make you spend even more money is plain ridiculous.

She said, “Oh, you don’t have to buy anything.”

“But I have to pay to attend the party,” I said.

She then went on to inform me that I can redeem other stuff with the price of my ticket, but neglected to explain what she meant.

I wasn’t interested, anyway, so I just said, “No, thanks.”

But she wouldn’t give up.

“You can have fun at the party with your friends,” she persuaded.

“No, it’s okay, thanks.”

“You’ll also get a door gift.”

“No, I’m not really keen, but thanks.”

“There’ll be free refreshments, and you can just come and have fun with your friends.”

“Erm… no, thanks.”

She finally accepted my polite refusal and allowed me to hang up.

Although I hate telemarketing, I can kind of understand why companies would use this channel to sell, for example, insurance policies. But telemarketing for parties? I think it’s a new low.

Not very impressed with Dior now.

A bit off-topic, but some time in the beginning of this year, they sent me my membership card with a letter asking me to go pick up a welcome gift at any Dior counter.

I went to pick it up.

The gift was a welcome letter and a brochure.

Thanks, Dior. What I always wanted.

Just thought I should pop in to say that I’m stil alive and kicking and gaming too much for my own good.

(I do have to assert for the record that the right games promote mental acuity, so there is something to be said for gaming too much.)

Well, the thing is, once in a while I get into a kind of mental block that prevents me from writing. It’s not writers’ block; it’s a block which I can explain more adequately by sharing with you the following internal dialogue:

Sheylara 1: What shall we write about today?

Sheylara 2: We could do X, Y, Z or A.

Sheylara 1: We could, but I don’t want to.

Sheylara 2: Why not?

Sheylara 1: They’re all boring.

Sheylara 2: No way. People are waiting to read them.

Sheylara 1: They’re boring to write. And if they’re boring to write, they must be boring to read.

Sheylara 2: Just write one of them, anyway.

Sheylara 1: I don’t want to write for the sake of writing. I want to make some changes to my blog.

Sheylara 2: Like what?

Sheylara 1: I don’t know. I have a million ideas but they’re all not sustainable and I don’t want to start work on half-baked ideas only to regret and then want to change again.

Sheylara 2: Okay, keep on incubating ideas but in the meantime write something or everyone will think we’ve quit and gone to live in Tibet.

Sheylara 1: I can’t! I just can’t work on something I don’t believe in anymore. I want a new direction. I want to change everything. I NEED to change everything!

Sheylara 2: Do it gradually.

Sheylara 1: I can’t! Because if I continue in this vein, I will keep on continuing in this vein! There needs to be a sudden, drastic change for anything to happen for real! And for that to take place, I need to stop doing whatever’s not working! Don’t you understand?!!

Sheylara 2: …

Sheylara 1: I need to change NOW! I can’t wait! My blog is getting stupid and boring!!

Sheylara 2: Erm… I think we should get back to our game.

Sheylara 1: Okay.

This happens a lot.

In fact, this happens regularly my entire life.

Occasionally, Sheylara 1 gets a breakthrough and something life-changing happens and then we are happy for a time. But, more often than not, Sheylara 2 wins by appealing to the mature, sensible adult hiding somewhere in our DNA, and then life goes on in a mundane but safe cycle until such a time as Sheylara 1 decides to halfheartedly rebel again.

In other news, I am taking my IELTS tomorrow. That’s the stupid English test we are forced to pass in order to apply to colleges and universities in Western countries.

I hate it because it makes you study stupid charts showing how many Japanese people travelled abroad each year over a 10-year period and how many of them chose to go to Australia in each of those years.

You then have to write your findings in 150 words or more.

Among other things, you also have to read long, wordy essays on the boring history of cartography and then answer a series of trick questions which are impossible to answer because you fell asleep while reading the essay.

The IELTS is a three-hour ordeal that will only prove, if you pass, that you have the mental fortitude required to withstand prolonged torture to your brain.

Well, don’t mind me. I’m just grumpy.

My hair is the bane of my life!

I’m getting mighty fed up with it. It’s so annoyingly straight and down-hanging, even when permed.

I did kind of enjoy it for a while after perming and colouring it about two years ago because it is easier to style your hair when it’s drier and coarser. At least, when you do a ponytail, it doesn’t start falling apart the moment you get up and walk, which was what happened with my old hair.

This is how I look immediately after a session at the salon (cut + perm + dye):

See how the front hangs downwards, covering half my face?

No one in the world can do anything about it, not the best stylist in the world. Because that’s just how my stupid hair grows. Nobody can understand how very infuriating angry I am about it!

Even when I get bangs so that I can have my eyes uncovered, the stupid strands hang down straight like toothpicks instead of curling around the forehead attractively.

Good bangs (Korean actress Koo Hye Sun):

Bad, evil bangs (me):

In order to keep hair off my face so that people don’t mistake me for a broom or a wookiee, I’m forced to either have bangs or wear a hairclip to hold my fringe up. For the rest of my life.

It makes me pretty damned disheartened whenever I think about it.

Poor clipped hair, unable to fly freely:

People claim to envy my long hair, but what’s the use of long hair when you can’t style it any way you want?

Recently, though, I realised that I have a third option.

I could wear a wig!

Then I could have any hairstyle I wanted, something I’ve always wanted but have never been able to achieve because of the stubborn nature of my hair.

So brilliant, right?

I’ve mentioned to Piers a few times about buying a wig or three and he always thinks I’m joking. Or he thinks I’m just saying it and not really going to do it.

Like, I gtalked him the other day saying, “I found a nice wig shop!!” and he went, “Hahahaha. Oh. Uh, you’re not really going to buy a wig, are you??”

He thinks I’m crazy, saying I have no reason to wear a wig because he loves my hair.

That’s fine and good, but he doesn’t have to spend two hours washing it, blow-drying and styling it every time he wants to go out. It was worse before I permed it and had to use a curling tong, which would take ages.

What’s wrong with straight hair, you ask?

My natural straight hair looks more like a wig than an actual wig does!

Anyway, everyone fashionable wears a wig these days. I try telling Piers that but he won’t believe me.

I think I’ll buy one, anyway.

It will take some time because shopping for a good wig is like shopping for a good handbag. You have to take the time to choose something that you won’t regret buying.

And I’m going to England this Friday, not enough time to shop anymore. Don’t think I’ll be able to find fashionable wig shops there like we have in Singapore.

Oh, Friday!

Can’t come soon enough!

=)

My wig can wait, I suppose.

Remember I sent Piers a parcel a few weeks ago? In it were an iPad 2 case and an Angry Birds stuffed toy.

Yesterday, he got slapped with an invoice by the courier company for £25.

And it wasn’t even for courier services. It was for gift tax and deferment proc fee!

SO RIDICULOUS.

The gift was worth S$103 (£50).

In the UK, when you receive goods above £38 from overseas, you have to pay 20% VAT (equivalent of our GST). Doesn’t matter whether it’s a gift or a purchase; you have to pay tax for it.

(Shouldn’t they warn gift senders about this at the post office?)

Usually, the recipient would receive a note to collect his gift at the post office and make payment then.

For Piers’ parcel, maybe because I had paid premium postage so he could get it sooner, courier company TNT was tasked to deliver the package to him.

They presumed to pay the £10 on his behalf, then slap him with a £25 bill two weeks later.

£10 for the VAT.
£15 for helping him pay the VAT first.

So he ends up having to pay £25 for receiving a £50 gift!

FFFFFFFFffffffff!

Firstly, being slapped with VAT for a gift is already bad enough.

What if some well-meaning rich friend sent you a £3,000 monstrosity of a gift (like maybe some ugly antique ornament) and you ended up having to pay £600 tax for something you can’t even sell off because nobody can bear to look at it?

On top of that, to be slapped with a service fee for a service you didn’t request! And not at all warned about it!

It’s a small amount to be sure, but it’s so annoying when big companies exploit people like that! How much money do they make invoicing people like that every day?

Piers tried calling TNT this morning to talk about it but no one answered the phone.

What kind of a shady operation is that!

Anyway, I felt really bad about the whole thing and wanted to pay the fees but he refused to let me. Even refused to let me buy him a nice meal to make up for it.

He wasn’t even going to tell me about it in the first place. But today, I said I didn’t have anything I wanted to blog about so he thought maybe this would give me something to blog about.

I’ll say!

I don’t like to rant on my blog too much but I think this is something useful for people to know. Especially for people who intend to send presents to your UK friends. Know that your friend will have to pay for the gift!

Oh, takeaway snack-size Peking duck and suckling pig! I’m glad someone finally thought of this.

Seems like it’s been around for a year or more (at Ion Orchard) but I only just discovered it last night at VivoCity. It’s prepared on the spot and nicely rolled up in egg crepe for you to take away.

I’ve always loved Peking duck but seldom eat it cos it’s so expensive and you can’t just walk into a restaurant on your own and order a duck. And, most people, when you suggest to them, “Hey, let’s go eat Peking duck today!” will look at you funny and say, “Siao ah!”

So, anyway, I gave this Modern Peking Duck a try despite already being quite full from dinner.

Kay bought both the duck and pig, but I only tried the duck because, well, I was full. And, because I had really high hopes for it, I was a little disappointed by the result.

The taste is similar to what you’d get at restaurants, with the egg wrap and sweet sauce. But what’s wrong with it is the skin-meat ratio.

In restaurants, you get a larger slice of skin with no meat. That’s what I like. A big chunk of crispy skin. In this takeaway version, it’s mostly meat and very little skin, so it just doesn’t feel the same.

I unwrapped one to show an example.

The amount of skin is a bit pathetic. When eating it, I could only taste meat and hardly skin. I suppose, for $1.20 per piece, I can’t ask for too much?

Anyway, check this out. The outlet is trying to have its suckling pig replace turkey for Christmas! Heheh.

Kay took a look at the poster and said, “Ooh, I could eat that whole thing myself!”

So I said, “Let’s get it for our Christmas dinner!”

We had originally planned to order turkey for our little get-together with two other friends. But we only decided that two days ago. By then, all Christmas orders everywhere had closed.

But Kay replied, “Siao lah! How to finish!”

I do declare, men have absolutely zero for logic. They say the most illogical things and contradict themselves all the time.

And it’s all the more annoying because I try to only date smart, intelligent men because I enjoy intelligent conversation. But all my smart, intelligent men say the most illogical things.

So I beat Kay up (metaphorically) over this until he revealed that what he was thinking was more along the lines of suckling pig for Christmas is wrong.

So why didn’t he just say that, instead?

I don’t know why men always have to complicate things by never saying exactly what they really mean!

And I don’t know why women put up with it! I always beat my partners up when they’re being illogical.

And men have the cheek to claim that women are the ones who never say what they mean! Huh!

Well, okay, women do that, too, but it’s usually out of shyness about expressing their feelings. Men do it because they just can’t be bothered to tell the truth and will just say the most convenient thing that pops out in their heads just to get you off their back because they’re lazy to answer questions.

Wouldn’t you agree?

Anyway, Modern Peking Duck is at Ion Orchard (B4-75) and VivoCity (B2-K15).

Merry Christmas, everyone! =)