3 old photos and 3 new photos

Wed, 19 October 2011Wed, 19 October 2011 - Sheylara 9 Comments

I was looking through my old photos cos I’m going to chop off a lot of hair on Thursday and need to check what hairstyles I look okay or horrible in.

While flipping through my folders, I found some holiday photos of me and Nanny Wen wearing each other’s clothes. It was hilarious. We generally didn’t like each other’s wardrobes, so it was quite a challenge.

It was an impromptu bit of fun. We were in Genting Highlands for a few days and, on our second day there, we decided to swap clothes for the day! This was in March 2007.

Sheylara

The main thing I didn’t like about this outfit was the top because it was stretchy skintight, had a hole at the chest (see photo below) and was turtleneck.

Turtlenecks make my face look fat and short, stretchy skintights make me look slutty, and holes at chest advertise my non-existent cleavage.

The skirt was nice, but I wasn’t into big belts, although I suppose that suited the outfit. Boots were my own cos I couldn’t fit into Nanny Wen’s shoes.

Nanny Wen

Nanny Wen was soooo uncomfortable in my outfit, haha. It was very anime-costumy and she just doesn’t wear stuff like that. I thought she looked cute enough to eat, though.

Then again, she always does!

Two uncomfortable people

Anyway, that was a stupid hairstyle I had, but bangs give me a lot of freedom and peace. With long fringes, I’m always (95% of the time) annoyed by rebellious hair getting into my face. Even if I stuff all my hair behind my ears, I have strands of hair in the front that are like three inches long and never ever grow longer, so they’re always hovering about, tickling my forehead and generally looking ugly.

Stupid hateful hair.

Anyway, fast forward.

Piers just sent me a couple of photos of us taken at his company dinner. Took them so long to release the official photos (more than three weeks)!

Eeeee!

In other news, I’m back in Singapore and trying to not be jetlagged but it’s a bit hard when you’re staying up all night chatting with your partner because of time zone differences.

I need to cut my hair very badly. Half of it is severely damaged due to perming and colouring and dry weather in England. Cutting off the damaged parts will mean my hair will be shoulder length at best. Just nice for Singapore weather, I guess.

Anyway, looking at my photos didn’t help. I think I look horrible in all my hairstyles. My hair can’t be styled in the ways that I like because it’s stupid and stubborn, so I’m sad.

Okay enough about my hair.

We’ll see on Thursday!

I hate my hair. I’m going to buy a wig

Wed, 11 May 2011 - Sheylara 14 Comments

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):

Stupid hair

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):

Good hair

Bad, evil bangs (me):

Stupid hair

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:

Stupid hair

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?

Wig!

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!

Wig!

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.

Inside the dressing room

Sat, 7 June 2008Wed, 9 December 2009 - Sheylara 15 Comments

There is no feeling in the world better than performing in front of a responsive live audience (well, with the exception of savouring a very tasty bbq chicken wing).

Gads, I shouldn’t have said that. Now I’m hungry.

I shall attempt to distract myself by…

Actually, I am very distracted today. I have been attempting to get this blogpost going since 40 minutes ago and I’m still at the fourth line now because I keep going away to FB chat and MSN chat and watch stupid YouTube videos that the silly people I’m chatting with keep linking to me.

Dammit!

Well, it’s a Saturday and I’m in quite a relaxed mood. I’m allowing myself a few hours to relax and ignore deadlines before I go bonkers.

And now, a photo to break the wall of text I’m unintentionally creating.

Dressing room!

[We love big bright light bulbs that blind us and heat up the room]

For this week’s performance, the dressing room is shared by about 12 actresses. (The guys get another room.) There are toilets and bathrooms and even a washing machine in here, which is nice.

It can get pretty crowded when everyone’s inside but, averagely, we have four or five in here at any given time because the rest are backstage standing by.

It can also get smelly. All kinds of smells I don’t really want to describe, including a raw meat smell because one of the props for one of the plays is a real raw chicken.

And it gets really noisy.

At all times, a monitor is feeding us footage from the stage while actresses are either busy making very loud and strange noises to warm up the vocals or busy chatting, though I don’t know how they can hear each other through that din.

Of course, there is also one actress busy camwhoring.

[She decided to take photo evidence of the mess]

That’s my costume. I think I look like a lawyer. Haha.

I know I don’t look ugly in that suit, like I have been accused of falsely advertising. But I haven’t shown you the hair and makeup yet!

Like I mentioned before, I’m acting as a rat.

Some of you might protest that rats don’t wear suits. Others of you who have a perverse sense of humour might agree that some rats wear suits.

That I leave entirely up to you.

And, now, the ratifying transformation.

Ta-dah!

[The whiskers want for some trimming]

LOL.

Okay lah, it’s not that ugly. It’s more funny, I guess. It’s only ugly when I make those crazy expressions on stage.

Most people think I’m supposed to be a cat when they first see this. Well, short of attaching fake incisors, which would really impede my speech (and my character is one garrulous rat), I don’t know how I can make myself look more ratty than catty.

Doesn’t really matter. It all becomes clear in the play, anyway.

Smiley rat!

[He was lulled into a false sense of security]

Which won’t be seen in the performance because my character doesn’t smile and doesn’t act cute.

My character is a bitch.

And so fun to play.

Ah, acting can be so fun!

The downside to this makeup is that the black stuff used to draw my nose gets into my pores and, even after I clean it with four different kinds of cleansers, I still look like I have a bad case of blackheads. Haha. I think I have to go for a good, long facial after this is over.

And I have to wash my hair when I get home late each night because it’s all gelled stiff to make me look very severe.

Right profile:

[Being a statue is very tiring]

Left profile:

[The bright lights are very hypnotising]

Room profile:

[They were all terrified of her]

Intriguing, eh?

There are still three more performances to go. Ticketing details here if you’re interested.

The whole show actually runs for about 2.5 hours because some plays drag on longer than 10 minutes. Mine is the last play and I think it’s pretty much about 10 minutes!

Come watch and remember to bring your sense of humour! It’s always sweet for actors when their jokes get laughed at.

See you!

The ninja squad strikes fear into your heart

Thu, 8 May 2008Wed, 9 December 2009 - Sheylara 20 Comments

The Goonfather tells me that kunoichi (female ninja) always have hair dangling down the sides of their faces. So, for yesterday’s ninja patrol, I let down one side of my hair.

[Kunoichi wannabe]

I know the hair clip is a little unglam but my hair refuses to stay up otherwise.

Then again, who says hair clips are unglam? Kuchiki Byakuya from Bleach has like 10,000 clips on his head.

[Kuchiki Byakuya the dreamboat]

I used to hate Byakuya because I thought he looked faggoty plus he was so evil. But he started getting cooler and cooler in the later episodes and his Bankai is so super cool, so now I love him. But that’s beside the point, so let’s get back to topic.

We started our patrol at Rivervale Mall at 12 pm.

Rivervale Mall is a ghost town, even at 12 pm, so we headed straight for the food court. In Singapore, you can always find people in a food court during lunch hour, even in the most godforsaken corners of the country.

[The lunch crowd lost its appetite]

Our instructions were: “Don’t give the flyers to children below 18 (Ninja Gaiden II is rated M18) and old aunties.”

That left us practically no one to give our flyers to, because RM seems to only stock that species of humans.

So we descended upon the small smattering of harmless old uncles, making them spurt their coffee out in shock at being confronted by dubious-looking aliens from mysterious planets.

That was mildly fun.

We left the building half an hour before time because we ran out of people to shock.

We figured that Temasek Polytechnic would have more likely victims for us to terrorise.

[The ninja patrol squad goes to school]

We were quite right.

The bridge alone yielded an unlimited number of victims.

[The ninja patrol squad camps the bridge]

I tried to emulate Ryu Hayabusa’s meditative posture, but I think I just succeeded in looking silly.

[Pretend meditation]

Which inspired everyone to get silly. We spent 10 minutes fooling around, allowing lucky victims to pass us by unmolested.

[Pretend ninja]

[Nobody told her the banner was upside down

With our sacred mission successfully completed, it was time for us to leave the place.

Because cost-cutting is a fashionable activity these days, the ninja management decreed that we had to take public transport like regular peons, so we trooped down to the TP bus stop to wait for a bus.

Except that we were so untrained in the skill of taking public transport that we tried to flag a bus from the wrong direction.

[Ninja taking bus

But we still managed to arrived unscathed at Tampines Mall, our final stop for the day.

[People people people!

I was so tired by that time, but I remained professional and continued to display my glazed kunoichi stare.

We also entertained a stunned crowd with our leet ninja skillz.

[Ryu Hayabusa was tired after standing all day

[The ninja patrol squad strikes

[The ninja patrol squad strikes again

Everyone broke into applause because they were so impressed by our death-defying stunts.

We must have sold a zillion copies of Ninja Gaiden II for the Xbox 360 on this day.

Have you pre-ordered your copy yet?

You get to decide the fate of my hair

Fri, 2 May 2008Tue, 7 April 2009 - Sheylara 29 Comments

By the way, I’m feeling okay today. Well, I said I would. Thanks for all your concern. I just needed to rant, is all.

Besides being really really sleepy and fatigued (but still having to go to Ikea and IMM and carry heavy things to and fro all day), my mood is considerably good.

So, that’s done.

I’m not surprised that I got some comments asking me not to cut my hair. But WHY?

I think I look old and haggard with long hair. I feel old and haggard with long hair.

So, here’s a chance for you to tell me whether you prefer my hair long or short. (Actually, either way, my hair is always the same style… ramrod straight. So, like, it probably doesn’t make much of a difference, anyway. Haha. Sorry, my hair can’t be any other way.)

Photos for reference.

SHORT TO MEDIUM HAIR