Filed under: Blogging
Yay, it’s finally the Christmas holidays! Designed by yours truly. Reminds me of my I am Fashion days, when HG and I would brainstorm every half a year about what our banner should look like. Those were some very handy Photoshop skills I developed then! Can you believe that I took this picture using my iPhone4S? No editing needed. This is a close up pictures of the train displays they have sprinkled around Landmark in Central. Not bad, right?
Filed under: Fashion
One of the “prizes” I got from Paris over the summer was this wide belt from Sandro, a Parisian equivalent of Theory.
Since then, it was been staple in my wardrobe. The perfect item to accessorize my boring work dresses, without being too flashy.
So last night, when I sat down after dinner and it just SNAPPED. I was astounded and outraged! I’ve only worn it a handful of times. It’s almost NEW! 
I thought maybe it was the elastic. But upon closer examination, it was the METAL BUCKLE. How did that happen? I’m not a stick, but I’m not fat either. Nowhere near big enough to stretch metal to the point of rupture.
I can only attribute it to crappy quality. It seems to be a theme with Sandro. My first time at Sandro, I ended up with a cape that shedded everywhere. This time, I ended up with crappy metal, supposedly made in Italy. It’s really disappointing, since every time I go in there I want everything! And they are by no means cheap!!!!
Filed under: Fashion
That is, my contribution to helping retailers turning their accounts from red “into the black.” My wallet is definitely in the red.
Over lunch, I decided to go downstairs and check out the DVF private sale. Most items were 30% off plus another 10% for VIPs. Not bad for Hong Kong standards this time of the year (nothing compared to the crazy happenings in the US. You add an item to your basket, and the next moment it is sold out!). I tried on a few items, but nothing really stood out. This season quick frankly is kind of meh. In the end, I got a classic black marta pencil skirt, in this amazing stiff (yet flexible) fabric that doesn’t wrinkle. I’ve been looking for a pencil skirt for ages. I got one from Zara, but it doesn’t quite have the “feel good” fit that this one has, so I figured it was an investment.
While I was there, I spotted this Haruka jacket I’ve been stalking on Shopbop for ages, and decided to try it on. It looks pretty good! Perfect to go with both work dresses and pants (I’m getting a bit tired of my black blazers and gray cardian). So when I got back to my desk, I hit the button. Currently on 50% off, in addition to Shopbop’s buy $250 get $50 back promotion, I figured this was a deal. It’s like online shopping arbitrage! A very rare opportunity, since nice things online go very quickly. Things my size are almost never left till the 50% off mark.
After yoga-after-work, I had a hour to kill before dinner. So I decided to wander around and ended up in a jewelry shop I had visited ages ago, which had just moved to the area (Dearbell). I remember being really excited when I found the store, because some of the pieces there were edgy, versatile and most importantly affordable. I still frequently wear the necklace I bought there, because it is the most versatile accessory I have!
I went in there looking for something short and gold to match outfits with. When I found out that since the last time I’d been there, they’d marked the prices up 3 times, I was totally not going to buy anything. Not even when they said the materials they use are nicer now. But when we started chatting, and he started to twist and turn the necklace, showing me the many ways I can wear it to make it cooler, helping me make adhoc additions to it to make it more versatile and cute, and then offering me 30% off and saying that their prices will only go up from here as they start to “make it” and walk the higher end road…… I caved in. With the clarity of the hindsight, I have to admit, I am a sucker for the sales pitch (even though I’m a horrible sales myself). I paid double the price for the gold version of the first necklace I’d bought, which is very similar in style. From now on, I am NOT going to chat with the sales assistance anymore.
Ps. Happy thanksgiving everyone!
Filed under: Fashion
The idea started with Stella McCartney a few seasons ago, but was only recently cemented by the Duchess of Cambridge’s dark blue lace dress during her North America tour. She looked so feminine and elegant in it that my mind started shouting – I want a lacey black dress too!
The difficulty of course is to find the right dress in the right style and the right price. Lace dresses are just one of those items that toe the thin line between skanky and stylish. So when I came across this dress at the random boutique in Soho, I was ecstatic. It strikes the perfect balance between lacey and not too revealing.
It looks great on as well! I immediately bought it! The one thing is that the skirt part is a little snug and bunches up a bit, which makes me worry that it’ll border on skanky. My friend G suggested I go to a tailor and get it let out. I wonder if that will be worth it… or whether I should save my lace quota for a more Kate-like dress.
Filed under: Random Musings
They say that Hong Kong is the canary bird of China. Coalminers traditionally brought canary birds with them into coal mines, and if the bird died of noxious fumes, then they’d know that they needed to get out ASAP, because birds are more sensitive to these fumes than humans. Similarly, if China is going to be hit with high inflation, Hong Kong will likely be most susceptible to it.
There’s been a lot of talk about hyperinflation in Hong Kong. I’ve never noticed it until recently, when some of my consumption staples suddenly rose in price!
- Default lunch of choice: bbq pork rice noodles from Canteen went up from $33 to $36 (+9.1%)
- Favourite tea time snack: raison scones from the Mandarin Oriental rose from $15 to $18 (+20%)
- Weekend guilty pleasure: Sift cupcakes increased from $22 to $25 (+13.64%)
It is just a few dollars, but when you think of it in percentage terms, my standard of living has increased in a mere few months by an average of +14.2%, while my salary has remained the same! Maybe I do need to consider joining the July 1st protests next year to vent my outrage!
Filed under: Random Musings
Last night, we took an American friend from our of town to Peking Garden for dinner. One of those must-go touristy restaurants in Hong Kong (even though it is not really “Hong Kong” food, but hey we are a multi-cultural hodgepodge!), complete with a side show performance of making hand-pulled noodles. Despite being a “touristy” restaurant though, the food is pretty good. As a local, I find myself going there quite often. As he expounded on the best places to have peking duck in Beijing (I personally prefer the peking duck at Peking Garden, Hong Kong because I think they’re less oily), I thought he was a pretty Chinese savvy American.
When the performance started, I was only mildly surprised when he got up and started taking pictures (or was it videos?) using his Blackberry. Even I occasionally like to stare at the performance and wonder how they make such fine noodles without a knife, and why the dough doesn’t break from the stretching. Afterwards, we offered to order a bowl of the noodles for him to try, but he refused. I assumed he knew what it was, and didn’t care much for it. So when the waitress came around with a sample of the noodle dough from the performance for each table, and he immediately reached over for it, I thought he was just very eagered to play with it. But lo and behold, he very quickly stuffed it into his mouth!
Once we recovered from our momentary shock, we immediately told him to stop and that what he was trying to eat was raw! Uncooked! It just never occured to me that someone would not know what it is. It’s like… the Chinese version of freshly made pasta. One does not eat uncooked pasta! There were lots of flour used in the performance. Surely that was obvious? Even from just the picture I randomly grabbed off the net (above), it is obvious it is dough, no? Who eats something so man handled just like that?
Maybe it’s because I’m Chinese and I already have a preconcieved notion of what it is. The same thing would probably happen to me if I were to have …. Ethiopian food or something. But being PC aside, it was definitely had a good laugh 
Filed under: Books
Every Monday morning, I tell myself that next weekend, I will definitely sleep early and not diddle daddle till the middle of the night doing nothing, and end up feeling extremely tired and unproductive all week. I was on track to sleeping early last Friday night after a rather pleasant evening of wining and dining, when at 1am I thought, “it’s still a little early, maybe I’ll just do a little bit of reading before I sleep.” So I went through my Kindle and found Mini Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella and started reading. I didn’t sleep until 6am that night (or is it day?).
I was a huge fan of the series when it first came out. I even got myself a mock green pleated scarf when the movie came out, so I could be the girl with the green scarf too. But after a certain point, the formulaic nature of the series and parts of the plot just got a bit ludicrous. Everything starts off jolly, she goes on shopping sprees, she tells little fibs based on some illogical but good hearted rational, which somehow leads her into debt/mess, but then in the end it all works out because of a suddenly brilliant idea. The plot for Mini Shopaholic is very much the same. Yet, I still could not stop turning the pages. At 3am, I told myself, just one more chapter. At 4am, I told myself, I’ll read just until I find out whether Minnie gets dragged to a spoilt brat’s camp and what “brilliant” idea Becky comes up with to pull the party together. I collapsed at 6am.
There’s just something about the way Kinsella writes that keeps me going, even though logically I know the plot is ridiculous and I am really better off getting some beauty sleep. The writing is fast pace, witty and entertaining. Objectively, I don’t even like Becky’s character much, but Kinsella manages to make her rather endearing. It’s like “The Twenty’s Girl,” which I read a few months ago. After reading the plot at the bookstore (about an ancestral ghost from the twenty’s following a girl around London looking for a pearl necklace), I hadn’t even bothered picking it up. But it somehow ended up in my Kindle again, and I must say, it was actually a rather good read. What can I say? There is something about Kinsella that flicks pages!
I was just looking through this blog, and realized that a few years ago, I’d written a piece freaking out about turning a quarter of a century old. Now that I have actually reached this milestone however, I feel surprisingly fine. Obviously there are still a lot of things to figure out and areas to improve in. But I’m looking forward to the challenges ahead. A little like the anticipation and apprehension I felt right before college.
Thank you again to everyone who has made it yet another happy happy birthday this year. I feel loved. Hopefully all my birthdays ahead will be the same 
I finally got my long time wish of getting a cupcake tower this year!
I even got a floating balloon, which I’ve been thinking about for this year!
We’re still trying to figure out what the bottom part says… because it is definitely not my name.
Hydrangeas and roses.
And a taste of all my favourite desserts in Hong Kong! From Sift (for the cupcakes), to Zoe (above)..
..to Cova….
..to Vero. A joint birthday celebration with a very old friend. First time in over 2 decades!
And lets not forget the delicious homemade carrot cake from S!
Ever since college, and we saw Jolin (the Taiwanese version of Britney) do it in her MV, HG and I have always been very intrigued by pole dancing. Not in the strip tease way, but by how incredibly cool Jolin looks effortlessly twirling and whirling on that pole as if she had wings, like a fairy.
So when I saw that our gym was offering members a 6-class pole dancing course at $360 HKD ($46 USD – it’s like Groupon cheap!), HG and I immediately signed up. Our instructor, Tessa (a competition winning pole dancer) is seriously impressive. She’s so fluid and elegant, it’s mesmerizing to watch (again, not in the creepy strip tease way, but the same way one is drawn to staring at art). In comparison, Jolin is clearly still a student.
I’m not sure what possessed us to think we can be fairies as well. I guess we figured that it was only a matter of the right instructions and learning, and we are nothing if not astute students. But alas, we forgot that some things simply cannot be learnt. We’ve just had our 4th lesson over the weekend, and so far we’ve tried an array of moves, from the figure 8, the body role, fireman, pretzel & single-leg pretzel, the carousel to the fan. Frankly, we’ve made a muck out of all of them. Our body simply does not move/work that way. The first time we tried to slide down the pole, we ended up a heap on the floor. When we tried to stay hooked onto the pole (hands off! it is all in the thigh and pelvic muscles), we didn’t even manage a second (let alone climb upwards, which is the next step). When we tried to follow her step by step instructions to do the body roll, we looked like we were trying to metamorphose. She even slides up the floor elegantly, while we struggle (it’s really more like a push up in disguise). Let’s not get into the carousel (the fairy-like swirl on the pole, where you are held up with one arm while your legs are elegantly sprawled out in 90 degree angles to your side). This one is like a single hand lift up, except you have to do it horizontally keeping your body off the floor. Needless to say, HG and I have no physical strength to perfect any of these, except maybe the head flick. So we just tried and had a good laugh.
It may not be an Olympic event (though if it were, I’m sure there would be a packed stadium), but it is most definitely a sport. The physical strength, stamina and agility that goes into perfecting the moves is nothing short ofwhat you’d expect of a gymnast.
Last Wednesday, in an act of spontaneity, HG and I took ourselves to Times Square over lunch time for the Peddar Warehouse sale (equivalent for us to going from mid-town to Soho). It is the bi-annual sale for staff and friends of Lane Crawford to pick up goodies such as Louboutin pumps for more than 80% off the original price (also a chance for the Lane Crawford group to get rid of stock from the past many seasons). A little like our version of the Barneys Warehouse sale, if you will. About 40-45 minutes for transit (as fast as my pointy Cole Haan heels will take me – I seriously need to reconsider them, I am still feeling the pinching pain today!), we figured that we’d have a good 40-45 minutes of shopping before we had to rush back to the office.
This is not my first Peddar Warehouse sale. Back when I was interning at Chloe back in college, I went to something similar and remembered being relative impressed by the selection. I’d even picked up a pair of white Dior sneakers for HK$800 (roughly US$100). So I was quite excited to go to this one, as I imagined all the goodies I can get at a discount, especially now that I have a constant need for new work shoes. I felt adrenaline rush through as we approached the address, and we saw girls leaving with huge bagfuls of shoe boxes!
Turns out, a few years indeed makes quite a difference to things. To begin with, it used to be located in an office location and entrance was still relatively strict. I had to whip out my Chloe credentials. This time around, it is located in a secluded shopping area of the mall, and it is huge. Entrance was also quite easy, as we whipped out the forwarded email on our iphones and walked in. Turns out, there are lots of Lane Crawford staff and friends. I beelined my way to the size 6 shoe collection. I was disappointed to find that all the shoes my size were either kind of meh or way too tall to be practical. I picked up a pair of red Miu Miu peep toe flats with crystal embellishments for later consideration. As I enviously saw girls struggling with dozens of Louboutin shoe boxes pass by, I wondered how they managed to find anything. Am I looking at the wrong places? Determine, I then explored the other racks, in the hope that not all size 6 shoes are where they should be. I came out with the conclusion that I should’ve either come earlier, or have tiny or really big feet, because there really aren’t anything buy-able left in my size! The selection simple wasn’t that recent or decent. I think I spotted Miu Miu’s from pre-08!
I next moved onto the accessories section in the middle to try my luck. I found some knick knacks such as a crystal headband (which HG thinks looks exactly the same as all the ones I already have – which I disagree with. It’s a similar style, but it is totally different), a hot pink rectangular Louboutin clutch, a gold necklace and a studded belt. I wasn’t in love with any of them, but I wouldn’t mind having them either. They sold bags too. Again, the selection is not great. I saw a lady holding a huge YSL Easy bag covered with studds, in a murky army green/brown color, discounted to around $8000HKD (around $1000USD)… let’s just say, I can see why they couldn’t sell it off at full price.
The way the sale is structured, is that one pair of shoe is on displayed and then there’s a counter where you can go find the other shoe with the shoe box. After 5 minutes in line and it still didn’t move, I looked down at my pair of Miu Miu flats and then looked at the line in front of me, and the many bags of shoes still to be “found” (I am still baffled as to how people can have such big bags of shoes. They can’t all have had no work and really tiny/big feet!). I came to the executive decision that it is not worth it for a pair of flats that I don’t love but wouldn’t mind having.
So I took myself off to the check out line, to pay for the accessories. The line went around a few times and was almost out the door. We estimated that it will take half a hour at laest. HG and I took stock of my selections – and decided it wasn’t worth the time. They aren’t even that cheap! We hurried back to work empty handed, and was amused to find another girl hurrying in front of us in very much the same situation. So much for sample sales in Hong Kong. I wish I’d remembered to take pictures of my almost buys so I can show and write, but sample sale shopping is just plain exhausting.
