Her Pandora’s Box

Dear Sugarplum Fairy,

I had another splendid weekend and it made me feel better about being at work today, right now.

My saturday morning was spent in the salon amidst the smell of hair spray and funky chinese take-away. I’ve a new shade of blonde on me. Much darker than the few tones i tried out over the past year. I like this one much, much better. The girls and i got our toes done afterwards because we knew so god damn well, we needed it. We’ve been.. urm, i don’t know what to say about us anymore. Slacky’s an understatement.

Lately, I’ve been hanging out with Samantha alot. In fact, i’ve been making a lot of effort to catch up with friends, both new and old. Sam and I have been talking about moving in together for the longest time and it’s still something we tend to discuss. About a year back, I brought this up to my folks and asked what they thought of it and if they’d allow me to. After a few hours of weighing the idea out, my parents said they were totally cool with it but i must be able to work out the finances myself. Also stressed upon the policy that they must to be able to drop by anytime they feel like. Just to make sure that… (insert any possibility of wrong here).

I see moving out as nothing less than a priceless experience. I hate to be too confident about this but i like to believe that i am capable of it. I just have a problem waking up without my mom’s help but i’ll sort that out (yea right).

Bumped into Beck and Ross in town yesterday and we managed to squeeze in a quick chat. The talented duo’s teaching drama in a few primary schools as part of the kids’ English curriculum. Neat. They mentioned that they’re moving to London, not exactly, they’ll be about 3 counties away from Central London probably for a few months just to see if anything works out for them.

I almost jumped when I heard that.

Here’s why. A few entries ago, i mentioned quite a bit about going to school abroad. Well, in my recent homework, i found a school that offered a combination of subjects i’ve been looking for. And.. it’s in London. Okay, about ten minutes away from Central London. I have some friends and family there which is a plus point and now that there’s a chance that Beck and Ross would be there too, i don’t know, i’m just thrilled.

But..

Sterling pounds sounds like murder. Kaa-ching for a gun shot. How’s that?

Dear Sugarplum Fairy,

A saturday ago, I hosted a dinner party at my place which turned out to be a major success. It was really just a spontaneous little event that came out of nowhere. No wait, not exactly. Well, my folks were out of town that weekend and I seeked permission to organize a potluck dinner while they were away. My folks thought it’ll be fun so they urged me to go ahead and said my friends could stay for as long as they liked. I got so excited. And this was two days prior to the party.

As a bonus, everyone on my guestlist didn’t quite have anything planned for the weekends and the girls were really excited about cooking and putting everything together. We agreed to have a western dinner only because it was way more convenient and it isn’t too heavy for a potluck (considering everyone is coming with at least one dish).

So Nini and steakhouse chef boyfriend made spaghetti bolognaise and meatballs, Salina made honey glazed chicken wings and some finger sandwiches, Sally and her chef sister made mashed potatoes and mushroom soup and as for me, I made penne alfredo. Oh and as for dessert, Fae brought whip cream and ice cream, Sally’s sister made us all strawberries dipped in chocolate which was evidently, the most sought after. And the guys, knowing how capable they are, we got them to bring tons of drinks. Hahaha!

Everything went really well and we had everything set up outside of my house. I switched off the lights, turned on my table lamps, burned a scented candle and made sure that nothing was getting too messy anywhere. I really enjoyed the fact that there was only about 15 of us close friends, so it was really intimate and everyone got to catch up and talk around the dinner table. We even had sparkling juice served in champagne glasses just to set the mood. It was excellent.

The party officially ended at 6am leaving most of us exhausted and overloaded with all the good food from dinner. The cleaning up wasn’t too bad, which was a nice surprise. We even had some portion of leftovers for breakfast. Loved it.

What’s sad was, no one brought a camera to photograph all of this! Pfft!

Tips: When organizing a house party, be sure that you don’t write out a guest list too long. This can be really suffocating at the point of dinner (unless of course you live in a mansion) and could also make your guests feel restless and uncomfortable. Even more so when it is a potluck dinner. You’d have too many dishes, clashing cuisines and too much work to do (think clean up period!).

Also, it’ll be great to think up a theme. A certain degree of uniformity can be instrumental in getting things more organized. Apart from that, it spices up your little event too. Theme your food, or dress code, or even the atmosphere. For my party, we wanted it to look like a ‘cook out’.

Lastly, utilize your time and divide it carefully between cleaning, stocking up and mingling with your guests. Its not nice to be too busy to mingle with your guests and equally not impressive to be chatting over dirty plates and leftovers!

Good luck!

Dear Sugarplum Fairy,

I wish this was held on a Saturday. Friday even. I’m not crazy about Skapunk but when all of your friends are coincidentally performing for one gig, you’re pretty obliged to go.

But it’s a Sunday and I consider that a weeknight.

Perhaps, perhaps..

Dear sugarplum fairy,

I spent my weeks after returning home from ‘the island of Gods’ being nothing more than awfully busy. And i am owing an entry to the dozens of people whose been continuously and patiently asking me, "Maria, how was your trip?". I turned them down by saying that i’ll have it blogged and they can come read at their own time. For the record, it’s already been two weeks. I am sorry..

I haven’t found the time to sit my ass down and upload some pictures and do a little day-to-day account of my great vacation in Bali. Very soon, i promise.

When I got back, I spent an entire week catching up with both school and work which sucked really bad. To add to that, I hung out with friends almost every other night just catching up, talking about my trip and making plans for the next couple of weeks/months.

Some of the great things that happened:

Girls Night Out
The usual suspects and i organized a ‘girls night out’ and went dancing in dresses. It was so much fun! I haven’t been partying for the longest time and i hated how my life suggests that i was retiring from everything fun. So that night, we danced, hopped from club to club and pretended we were the pussycat dolls. Oh, and that was my postponed birthday gig we’ve been planning. Swell.

After that weekend, i was busy all over again.

First Take
Monday- Headed to The Substation to catch the screening of Shafiq’s film that he’s been working on for his graduation project. It was a tribute/documentary/film-art of P. Ramlee, his works and the legendary studio on Jalan Ampas. For those who don’t know who Shafiq is, he’s the vocalist for The Sally’s and also the guy who I worked with and is responsible for, the Lady Marmalade video. I do wish to write a little review on his work and that gig but here’s one already: Di Manakan Ku Cari Ganti.

Radio & Juliet
Tuesday- I caught up with Audrey to watch Radio & Juliet at The Esplanade, staged as part of the Singapore Arts Festival this year. It was a contemporary dance piece performed by The Slovene National Theatre and choreographed by dance genius, Edward Clug. Radio & Juliet is a dance masterpiece of Shakespeare’s tragedy, Romeo & Juliet danced to RADIOHEAD (don’t we all love Radiohead?). It was a sick combination, if you asked me. True enough, it was jaw-dropping, mind-blowing and simply orgasmic. I hope to blog in details on that too. Meanwhile, have read about it here.
p.s Gorgeous Audrey takes a full page in this month’s JUICE at which i once bet that she would someday. Told ya, drey.

Carnivore
My department’s favourite London bloke was leaving for home that Friday and we all took him out to Chijmes for a nice dinner at Carnivore, which turned out to be an awesome Brazilian Restaurant serving everything MEAT! I was given a black plate to cater to ‘no-pork-please’ Maria. I am also a very meat person so the unique dining concept absolutely worked for me. The salad and pasta buffet got us busy during the first bit of dinner but as soon as our fellow brazilian chefs came out of the kitchen offering skew after skew of awesome stuff, we knew we were going nowhere. If you’d like to try something new, have a look here: Carnivore. Overall, it was the ’shizzle’ and here’s some pictures from Friday:

Carnivore @ Chijmes

What did I tell you about the meat?

Fish. Yea, all things meat.

My favourite ladies: Jenn and Jo.

Quaruba’r

A handful of us got bored after watching some friends performing at a gig in town and decided we should head to somewhere quieter and just chill the saturday away. I was lucky to have worn something appropriate so we headed to Dempsey Hill to have drinks. I’d like to introduce Maria Grasnick in the entry so to not confuse  the existence of another Maria. Maria is Spike’s german wondergirl and the bunch’s new sidekick. Backtrack. Maria works at Quaruba’r and we made the clever decision to head that way at about midnight. I loved it! The band played alot of jazz and everybody knows I am a sucker for jazz so i was taken ‘into the zone’ by it. I adoorreee laid-back places. Located right next to Harry’s, here’s Quaruba’r.

I should really get some sleep. Oh and Barrack Obama will rock the White House. Fii and I had this crazy image of him painting the White House, black. That would’ve been so rad. Goodnight everyone!