digital life

Kicking butt in the media

- Sheylara 24 Comments

I received an SMS from a friend today.

He wanted to know why the phrase “kick butt” is always used in association with me in media interviews.

Sheylara in Digital Life

I told him I didn’t know.

But I guess this is what comes from having a reputation as a gamer girl. People like to picture you sitting in LAN shops, peering intently at the screen, fragging the sh*t out of your male friends and crying “PWNZORZZZZZZ!” every time you score a kill.

I wish lah.

I may be a hardcore gamer (when I have time to be) but I’m a carebear at heart. I feel bad when I kill people and I feel bad when people kill me.

Still, I can’t deny there is a certain satisfaction when you reduce someone to a pile bloody mess. I would love to have the time to work on living up to my kick-butt reputation.

Who wants to be target practice for me? =D

Sheylara with curls (rare photos)

- Sheylara 41 Comments

Sitting in the makeup seat in an SPH photo studio, I was horrified when the makeup-artist-cum-hairstylist announced, “I will give her curls.”

It wasn’t armageddon-degree horror, but close enough.

Not that I have anything against curly hair, but it’s just not me. And in this particular photoshoot, I was supposed to be me and not some generic model.

A bunch of people had been invited to be featured in a Christmas special (I think) for Digital Life and we were told to wear a black jacket with a white top and a black bottom.

But I didn’t know what the interview was going to be about because it was arranged for me by a third party and I just had to turn up. When I was there, I found out the theme was “corporate”, which added another degree of horror to my state of mind.

Things that are not me: Corporate, elegant, graceful, curly hair.

The adventurous me delighted in my new look, of course, but the me me felt fake and uncomfortable.

It’s fortunate that I have a split personality or I would have been traumatised beyond recovery a long time ago, since I do chance to get a funny new look every once in a while.

Well, I suppose I don’t look too bad like this. Just different. (And not me.)

I went home in this get-up (by MRT) feeling weird, knowing it was just pointless paranoia but still feeling it.

I would have felt more comfortable going home in a bunny suit complete with floppy ears and a bob tail.

I’m serious.

I can be crazy and nutty and psychotic but I can never be a graceful, mature lady.

I felt a little unnatural and awkward posing for the photographs because I never know how to behave when I’m dressed corporate or elegant.

They wanted me to look like a confident career woman, and cheerful. It was a tall order.

I know how to look cute and cheerful, though!!! But, of course, that was wrong for the theme.

I hope my photos turn out okay in the papers, I think tomorrow.

The stress of appearing in the media

- Sheylara 25 Comments

Whenever I flip open a magazine or newspaper, knowing I will find a write-up about me inside, it is always with a lot of trepidation.

I fear to find myself quoted out of context or, worse, misquoted totally. I fear to see ugly photos of me. I fear to see that I’ve been stashed in a dingy corner of a publication between an ad selling used carpets and another selling egg-beaters.

My interview in today’s Digital Life isn’t too bad. It only has a photo that makes me look like a gerbil with spastic limbs.

I hope people won’t look at it too much. I hope they’ll be distracted by all the other colourful, screaming pictures of games and cartoon fonts and Lara Croft’s assets in the 16-page X08 supplement.

If not, I will kick their butts.

Well, anyway, what’s done is done. See you at X08!