Bloatedness & Water retention

went to massage yesterday and having skipped the massage for 2 weeks, the moment my massage artist saw me, she exclaim : "Wah~! You put on so much weight!!!" I was like

But a check will show that my weight remain the same. Its my water retention up to mischief again. Haiz~~


But many people would say to reduce the amount of water intake. But in actual fact, water retention is not caused by an increase in water intake. In fact, its cause by the reduction in water intake as well as the sodium level in the body. I, for one, don't like to drink water. Sometimes I can drink only 500ml per day and on some days, even lesser. Tea, coffee and Apple cider not counted as they actually cause dehydration in the body even though they are good for health. Note: Coffee can be good for health only in little quantity. Hey! Caffeine in little qty improves our mood ok?


So now I have to eat lesser sodium which I am currently doing (except the salted nuts that day hmm~), as well as to constantly remind myself to drink water, drink water, drink water~

and I said Why Not??

Have you ever wanted to set up your own business but lack the money, organization and practically courage?

Have you ever had a great idea but were discouraged because someone asked you "Why do it?”



A lot of times, we had dreams about being our own bosses and earning a lot of money. Only few did managed to make the dreams come true. Some lack the money, some lack the ideas, and some lack the time and most lack the courage.


I have always wondered how did those few people make their dreams come true, where did their motivation come from? Inner self (character/values etc), close environment (friends / relatives) or the big environment (Government, Market demand etc)? Many will say that it’s the "inner-self" that determines the direction and decisions made. However as you think deeper, the 3 of them are linked. No doubt it’s true that the inner self directly affects the decisions of people but what also made up our character are the influences from the close environment and the big environment.


Have you thought about what factors can help you to fulfill your dreams to be an entrepreneur?


I have and I think a lot of my loyal readers would have known by now about my plans to set up business with a few other close friends. Now would be a great chance for me to find out more on entrepreneurship and putting ideas into reality.



In fact, Ace.sg is currently organizing a competition as an initiative to boost the entrepreneurship environment in Singapore. Have ideas on how to help entrepreneurs start, motivate and grow? You can enter the competition and stands to win up to $1,000 in cash~ Not only that, you can take the chance to think about what you need in order to start up your own business as well as take a good look of what factors are already available for you.



This advertisement is brought to you by BLOG2u. And why should you take part in the competition? Well~ Why Not?

Lightings affect your mood

Recently I found out that the lightings, will affect our mood for the day/night significantly. Just like how pubs play with dim lights, skin care centre play with white lights for the professional look and furniture shops play with warm/yellow lightings for the homely look. We can do some planning for our homes so that we will always be comfortable and happy at home. There is a Chinese saying that means when things go well at home and a person is happy, and then the person can excel in other areas such as health and work.

For example, good vanity lighting can relax our mind while bathing or compliment us as we make-up for a dinner night out. Warm yellow lights at the corner together with a bean bag or a cup of tea can help us to de-stress from a hard day's work. People who love the Victorian or Vintage look can go for Progress lighting. People with unique collections like figurines or utensils can draw more attention to their prized collections with under cabinet lighting. Doing up our homes the way we love is very important as our homes should be the place where we belong, feel at ease and would love to return to. Hence it’s very important to plan before renovation or choosing the furniture and lights.

Sounds Easy Perf at Jurong Point

Woo Hoot~! Woooo Hooooot~! Woooooooooo Hooooooooooot~!

Sounds Easy had the honor to be invited to sing for the Singapore Arts Festival 14 Jun 2008 at Jurong Point. "Arts on the Move" is one of the initiatives organized to bring Arts into the neighborhood to get more people interested and involved.



Although I won't brag that I've never had stage fright for performances before, I must say performing on stage hadn't been getting on my nerves before. However this time round I was more nervous than before. Its more difficult singing in A Capella groups. One of the obvious reason is that each individual is the voice and the accompaniment. Each error we make can be clearly seen or heard. Furthermore, we are a small group with only 1 or 2 person for each part. The amount of stress on each person is greater than being in a big group, each person is a soloist. Blending is of course a more difficult task when the number of singers reduce.


I kept making mistakes during the practices too... for my soloist/melody parts especially for "不想睡“ I keep getting the pitch wrong.... had problems remembering the words.... and all these add to my nervousness. Luckily the people around have been singing with me for a few years now and we are close friends. Having them there was a great morale support (anshin desu) before the big thing.


Even though I felt that we did not do very well for the performance especially for my solo parts and that we kept rushing our songs. A bit of flats here and sharps there. We can still see that most of the audiences enjoyed our performance as they stayed put throughout the performance and that is a good sign. We have experienced singing in the public and keeping audiences throughout, is tough and nearly uncontrollable. (Unless we tie them to the chair or they absolutely cannot leave the place e.g Weddings)





Despite some glitches in our singing and screams from the kids directly below the stage (potential 追星族 practicing for chasing idols in the future), some audiences were singing along with us for the more familiar songs like Kit Chan's "喜欢你“ or nodding when we sang "Stand By Me".



However, I would say people are still not accustomed to A capella, especially the more contemporary remixes like the arrangements that June did for “车站” and "最后一夜“.





Listening to the video recordings of our performances (Haha~! Cannot show you ~! Pending approval from higher Management *wink*) I kind of have a feel of what its like when we perform on stage. We had never recorded our performances before and I think this is a correct step to take.


Now I know co-operation and coordination among the members are very important, not only for the sound quality but also for the outlook of the whole group. The group will look strange when some of us look like we are enjoying while others are not. Looking at each other during the performance can help us communicate and also to calm ourselves down. Its real difficult to sing well when we are nervous wrecks. In fact we should actually be too busy on stage to think about being nervous. Thinking about the pitches, coordinating our pitches and blending with the others, our volume, quality of sound, feel of the songs, the mics and expressions.


All in all, we are glad for this performance opportunity. It also gives us a clearer guide to performing.

Also a big Thank You to all the friends who went to support us. Qian~~~~ Phil, Allan, Renshi, Alan, Jing Jing and Dawson. Arigatou~!

Save the earth~ Reduce the flyers~

Oops~ did I say ease the flyers?

Well, nothing on the yellow side. Just a feeling I got when I went to open my mail box just now.

Big hoo ha about saving the earth . . . Earth Day, Do not use plastic bags day, shut down computer day, switch off lights for X hrs day . .

How come there isn't a Do not give out/print flyers (paper advertisements) day?


I wonder how much papers we can save when we recycle all the advertisements we receive in our mail box. There was once I did not open the mail box for 1 week. The number of flyers there = 5 times the proper (important) mails addressed to me. I wonder how many trees can be saved if we did not print all those advertisements. Not to mention reduction of poisonous fumes used for the ink to print the advertisements.


If 2kg of paper used to print the advertisements for a block of flats, not printing for just my neighboring blocks can save 16kg of paper!


We can't blame those people giving out flyers since they are just trying to make a living. Can we blame the people who asked them to give out the flyers? Most probably can though they may argue that those flyers help in increasing their business. But by what percentage I ask.... perhaps 0.05%? I myself don't read those advertisements ... I wonder how many people does read through them.

Busy busy time to relax

Been real busy lately and feeling very down. Sickness, stress from work and choir made me feel rather lethargic. I really believe that when one is lethargic, one will become lazy. Not because they are lazy by nature. Imagine a runner who keeps sprinting and sprinting without rest. Not matter how strong the runner is, there will be some day he will run out of energy and wants to take a rest. If the runner takes a rest and continue his running, results may remain the same or improve. If however, there's no rest, then the result will most probably go downhill.

Just like a person who works and think too much. When I feel tired, lethargic, I will want a rest. If I am not able to get any, my work progress slows and I will loathe going to work or loathe thinking too much about things such as work procedures or the nitty gritty things.

A holiday will be nice. A chance to relax. If not to travel, a good rest, spa session, a dip in the hotel pool will be great too. We can go to Barcelona, my husband's dream because of his favorite soccer team. I would prefer a more historical, artsy place like Rome or a simple hotel by the beach. However, no matter where I go, I will prefer not to have too much strangers around. Not that I hate human. Just that where ever there are people, there is incidents so I would prefer a trip with just a few close friends or just with my husband. That will be lovely!

Cooking~!

I never used to cook before getting married. My mum is the type of person who believes she is the sole proprietor, the queen of the kitchen. She never allows us to use her kitchen and always lurks around to scrutinize us whenever we use her kitchen even to make salads for group outings. She will always rewash the food processors that we used and washed.

After getting married, cooking becomes part of my life. Cooking is easy. But cooking food that tastes nice is difficult. Especially when every thing, every step you use to process the food ingredients can affect the taste of the final product. I used to read comics on cooking. Those Japanese comics like Curry Addict and Cooking Master Boy often had me mesmerized with the way they process the food stuffs.

Both my husband and I work. Sometimes it’s very tiring to rush home to prepare the ingredients for cooking. Neither can I be like the cooks in the comics, prepare the dishes within a short time using minimal help. That’s where food Processors come into the picture. Although many may say that modern technology will not produce nice taste but that can be changed when you use suitable food Processors for the different ingredients like sauces, mincing meat etc.

I plan to buy a mini mincer. So that I don't have to spend too much time on chopping onions and garlic which I use a lot in my cooking. We can also have more variety of dishes like minced meat balls as compared to now.

Singapore Arts Festival 2008: Arts on the Move

*Copied from our Sounds Easy blog

WooOooOooHoooOooOOo!!!

Sounds Easy has the honour to perform at Jurong Point Shopping Mall on 14 June 2008 for SAF '08!!! This is a rare opportunity and Sounds Easy really appreciates it!!! We're definitely going to show everybody that..

"We Sounds Easy, but We Ain't!"

Eh..a little cliche..but that's our motto right!? And it Sounds nice and Easy to remember right?! Haha..enough of rubbish.

Our tentative repertoire for the event includes (but not restricted to):
Kokomo
Stand by Me
喜欢你
Where Do I Begin?
车站 (a Hokkien song)
Thank You

..and the list goes on. Our performance lasts for 30 minutes, and our item starts at 4pm. So if you're going to be in that area at around that time, do come and enjoy our Easy Sounds at the event.

Hanabi @ Bukit Timah

Hanabi Restaurant, situated at Bukit Timah Road King's Arcade. We went to this place on Sat for dinner. Read on Yebber's review that there will be a lot of people there so we decided to reserve a table for 3.


When we sat down, the waiter came over and ask us what drinks we want to order when we haven't even open our menu. Turned out its our fault as the buffet comes with complimentary hot or cold Ocha. So we ordered our drinks and sat to look through the menu.


Service was fast and polite. So fast that the moment some one saw my husband took up the menu, he came over and ask us whether we need to order. Not that this was bad. Service crew polite, food served fast and empty plates cleared fast.


Sashimi - I don't eat raw food as I find biting into raw meat very "恐怖“. But even to people like me, the sashimi looks absolutely fresh and portions given were generously large. My friends who ate this said the meat were succulent and fresh but they ought to put the pieces on cooler or ice to keep the taste there. 2nd portion of the Sashimi ordered were not as nice though. Freshness was still there just that the cuts were not that good. Fish scales can be found.


Tempura - Not that great though served piping hot. We ordered Yasai Tempura and I felt that the vegetables were cooked too throughly and lost their texture. Unagi tempura was not bad with the tempura coating crispy and the Unagi itself soft and sweet.


Grilled items - Definitely pre-cooked and re-warmed. Items came out warm and some were cold. Looks dry and uninviting. Grilled items were not too good which can be understood as grilled items take longer to cook. To serve fast, they must be pre-cooked.


Others - We definitely loved the Chiizu Chawanmushi. Though except for a piece of mushroom, there were no other ingredients inside, it was surprising that cheese and eggs blended well together. Not to mention the chewy pieces of cheese at the bottom of the cup.


We also ordered Goma ice-cream (Black Sesame) and Yuzu ice-cream (Jap Lemon?) and Chocolate ice-cream. Both Goma and Yuzu taste heavenly. Especially the Yuzu which is a sorbet ice-cream. Different from other sorbet ice-cream was that it wasn't too watery hence doesn't melt too fast. Pieces of fruits inside the ice-cream and its thick texture makes this item absolutely worthed its price of $4 (per scope)


Total bill for the buffet was $124. Definitely worthed the price but not to be eaten too often or it will burn a hole in the pocket~

Hey~! I am a FB!!

Alright, before you translate "FB" into Fat Bitch... I'll clarify that it means "Featured Blogger"


I'm being featured in Blog2u~!


Blog2u is a service that brings together advertisers and bloggers. Now, whats so special?


Like I've mentioned before in Yebber and other places, blog2u is unique and I did not say this because they featured me. These are my personal experiences.


It tries to ensure the best for bloggers by providing payment on the spot ie, transferring money right into your account once the advertisement/sponsored post/sponsored reviews were put up.
"So what?" you say? Well, this goes to shows that blog2u trusted in the maturity and integrity of bloggers. That bloggers would not go against their words once money was received. Now this is important especially for us bloggers as a lot of people don't really think much of bloggers.


2nd, blog2u provides great support for bloggers. I don't know about advertisers since I am not one. But bloggers can be expect replies and responses, apologies and remedies within short time frame. Blog2u recognizes that without bloggers, whatever online advertising platform will not work well.


3rd, blog2u deserves respect. Not only does it concentrate on online advertising business, it also believes that bloggers can form a community through it to help people/organizations in need. Besides featuring advertisers and bloggers, it also features non-profit organizations and other means for people to do charity work e.g the China Earthquake Appeal


I say again, I did not write this because they featured me. Rather, these are my own experiences and feelings. No doubt there were some glitches in the past and things are currently not that perfect. There are still rooms for improvements like the no. of advertisers to increase and perhaps more types of business advertisers. However, those who take notice can see how blog2u really work to solve the glitches as well as improve themselves.

That deserves thumbs up~! Ganbatte!!~!

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Lifelock can help you protect your identity. Especially with the current advancement of consumers' facilities, like the linkage of your bank account to numerous other facilities. Lifelock can help you deal with loss of any documents as well as replace them. Use Lifelock promotion code like RD32. Lifelock promo codes can help you obtain an even lower price from the already low priced protection. Do read up Lifelock reviews if you'll like so that you can learn more about how this service can help you.

Disney Naturally~

Alone again (Naturally) by Gilbert O'Sullivan

A song that touched my heart . .

I first got to know this song while watching 相聚一刻 or Maison Ikkoku a comic by 高橋留美子 (Rumiko Takahshi) . This 28 year old comic/anime was about a pre-U man 五代裕作 (Yusaku Godai) without a goal or aim in life and keep failing his exam for a University place. He moved into Ikkoku Condominium or 一刻馆 to prepare for his exam and ended up falling in love with the Condominium Manager 音無響子(Kyoko Otanashi). The comic was not just a normal love story but rather one about choosing one's life goal, the difficulty of getting into University and getting a job as well as traditional thinkings that prevented the lovers from getting together. (Yusaku was 4 years younger than Kyoko and Kyoko was a widow) No doubt this comic's graphics were simple and a bit outdated, its still one of my favorite besides 神劍闖江湖 (Samurai X). I've read this set of comics 3 times and watched the anime a few times.

Recommended!!

- - - - - -
So what has this got to do with the title of the post? Well, that song was the first to came to my mind when I received an email for this restaurant - - Disney Naturally

Situated a 370 Alexandra Road Anchorpoint, this restaurant became an instant hit. So when we decided to visit this restaurant after choir, we couldn't find a seat and had to wait for 10 mins at 3pm in the afternoon!! Ok, so since there are so many people patronizing this restaurant, we decided to wait.




When finally we got our seats, we ordered : Chocolate milk, Pineapple/Mango, Strawberry smoothies named after Disney Princesses, Macaroni and cheese spaghetti and Tomato Pasta.


Chocolate milk was alright. But still, its just normal chocolate milk that HL can do better.


Pasta, looks like a big portion. Then again, the size of the dish was small. Sure to say this portion wasn't big enough for my husband. He finished it in 4 mouthfuls and had to add that much cheese to get a flavor out of it.




Macaroni and Cheese ... looks nice but doesn't taste as nice. Too watery and lacking in flavor. Except for macaroni and watery cheese, other ingredients were few. This dish will taste nicer if the amount of ham and pineapple increase.


Menu was limited too~ with only 3 kinds of spaghetti/pasta (one was the pasta of the day). Some kinds of burgers, pizzas and drinks.

Smoothies were what we found tasty there. Interesting blend of fruits such as Mango and Pineapple, healthy and refreshing. Though they can be improved on by crushing the ice to smaller pieces cause as we took our drinks, we found some ice "cubes" at the bottom.





Pizzas were in the shaped of a Mickey's head. Some may find it cute but I just found it unnerving to eat up a Mickey's head. At the cost of $15.90, I don't find it worth the value as the taste of the pizza wasn't that great. Crust too dry and the tomato sauce on it made the pizza salty.


On the whole, I won't recommend this place unless you have a Disney-crazy kid. 3 of us spent a total of $63+ and ended with a half full, unsatisfied stomach. Disney Naturally has got good customer service though, the staffs being polite throughout.

However, it should change its ordering system. There were 2 counters there, one at the food area and another where they sell Disney merchandises. We were ushered to the payment counter at the Merchandise area to place order and pay for the food. However, we had to wait for very long as there were people paying for some toys in front of us. Seeing that the queue was slow, the man behind us went to the counter at the food area and placed his order. So in the first place, why were we ushered to the merchandise counter??

I would say I will not step into that place again though its good that they serve healthy meals and have hand washing areas to teach the kids to be healthy and good. But as an adult, I don't really appreciate the cute deco, small seats and confusing system.