Dance like no one's watching

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Had a trial makeup with my usual hair stylist today.  I like her style a lot more… and the fact that she didn’t do a heavy eyeliner on my lower lid.  Now I’m torn… should I save $$ and stick to French Bridal’s MUA for the actual day morning makeup?  Or should I get my stylist to do everything?  (She’s charging $500 ‘cos she needs to be at my house b4 7am).  I’m leaning towards the latter…

The bunnies felt that they had enough of my cam-whoring and that they deserved more air time on the blog so here’re more photos of the cuties!

Pinky feeling bored on a Sat afternoon.

Horlicks was bored too.  There wasn’t much to do on a Sat.

Horlicks wanted to come into the house when she caught me taking photos from the sliding door.

Pinky decided he wanted to come in too.  (They didn’t get their wish though ‘cos I went out after taking the photos).

Lazy Pinky.

Pinky squeezes in with Horlicks to eat her food (click on the image and u’ll see Horlicks next to Pinky!)

Pinky being  groomed by Horlicks.

Oops… I think Pinky overheard me saying he’s spoilt.

Horlicks, the great mommy to Pinky.

Sorry for the greenish tinge.  It’s caused by the polycarbonate boards that shield the front and side of my house from the sun.

Noticed this new feature on the latest Windows Live Writer 2009 but didn’t test it till now.  When I select multiple photos and paste them into my blog post, Live Writer prompts whether I want to paste the photos directly, or automatically create an album in my Windows Live photos gallery and add a link to the photos from my blog post.  I can then control who gets to view the photos from my Windows live photo gallery permission setting. 

So as long as you’re on my MSN contact list, you can log in using your MSN id to view the photos!  Hehe.  Yippee!

For starters, here’re the gowns I’ve selected. 

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Isn’t this cool?  My first cam-whoring outing.

Matthew 5:43-48 (New International Version)

Love for Enemies

⁴³"You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor^[a] and hate your enemy.’ ⁴⁴But I tell you: Love your enemies^[b] and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. ⁴⁶If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? ⁴⁷And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? ⁴⁸Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Footnotes:

1. Matthew 5:43 Lev. 19:18
2. Matthew 5:44 Some late manuscripts enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you

Every time I consider how my day to day living can reflect Christ working in me, I struggle with the above passage.  I find it insanely difficult to love my enemies.  Perhaps it’s my nature to be more “reactive” in my treatment of others… people who are friendly to me, I will naturally be nice to them.  Friends who are generous, I always remember their kindness and generosity in my heart and try to return the kindness.  All this unfortunately, falls starkly short of what God requires of us. 

Having a more vindictive nature than most, it’s a natural reaction for me to plot and scheme ways of executing revenge on those who have aggrieved me.  In situations where I’m unable to “exact revenge”, I harden my heart and cut off any concern I may have for the aggressor.  For e.g., the girl who used to bully me in kindergarten, when she died when we were in primary school, everyone thought it was “sad”.  I thought (and still do) it was “good riddance”.  I probably would’ve felt sadder for a stranger who died in some traffic accident than her.

And so today while I consider what it means to love my enemies, I conclude it’s not enough to disengage them from my life.  I need to actually care about how they fare and not have a “if you die, that’s your problem” attitude.  Maybe that’s what an older friend meant when he told me long time ago that we need to forgive, even if we don’t forget.

Had a trial makeup session with the makeup artist (“MUA”) from French Bridal though I really don’t know what I was “trying” since she didn’t do the makeup base, and only used my own foundation to thicken it, and added on more blusher (I already had blusher). 

According to the MUA, during the actual photoshoot, she’ll highlight my nose bridge to make it appear sharper, add highlights below my eyes (‘cos when I smile there’s this “dent” there that makes it look as though I have severe eye rings), trim/neaten/tweeze my brows, use tape to create deeper double eyelids and stick on fake lashes.

Here’s a sample of what the MUA considers “normal makeup for daily wear”.

Dark plum-purple eyeshadow blended with beige-pink eyeshadow.

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She also circled my entire eye (well, almost) with eyeliner which I’m not used to.  Makes my eyes look very black in person… though it’s ok in photo.  Heh.  I hope everything goes well during the actual photoshoot…

Most importantly, I hope I smile naturally during the shoot!  I don’t have a very good track record of smiling for photos… sigh.

Was eyeing this pair of shoes in Aldo… initially I thought they only came in gold… but turns out they have it in silver too!  What I find strange is that the Aldo website says it’s 2.5 inches?  Actually it states that the heels are “2.5” and +”, whatever that means, but I’m sure it’s more than 2.5”.  The Aldo UK site is having a sale for this pair – they’re going for GBP34.98.  Should I get them online?

Or is this better?  These cost GBP55… reminds me of salsa shoes actually… and they actually can double up as salsa shoes ‘cos I believe the soles are made of leather upper.  Heh.

Forgive my OCDness but I kept getting the niggling feeling that the back of the gown looked different.  So I dug out the photos I took the last time to compare and indeed!  The lace/beading is tacked on differently!  I called the tailor, Ann, to tell her about it but she was at some really noisy place so I’m not sure if she heard me.  I kept emphasizing to follow the way the lace is on the original gown (the green one), i.e., along the edges of the dress and not horizontally across the back.  I’ve been very amiable to whatever the tailor’s done so far.  My only instruction was – follow the original as closely as possible and if she can’t get this right, I’m going to insist she re-sews the lace.  Grr.

Double checked the front of the gown too… the lace should start from the opposite side of the collar and down one side.  I assume since Ann only tacked on the lace, she’ll add more beading & crystals when she does the final gown… well, she better, ‘cos I’m not letting this go either!  Hmph!  I hate it when people can’t follow instructions.

Sigh… I do wish the gown was as blue as it is in the photos.. instead of being more purple…

Finally got to see how my evening gown looks like.  It’s more purple than I thought (though the photos look blue)… prob. due to the purple lining I chose.  The cloth is actually this midnight blue/purple chiffon with tiny gold glitter (not very noticeable unless you look at the cloth up close).  Anyway, here’re some pics.

Front view:  The underbust/upper waist portion is still loose so the tailor’s going to take in another 1” of that section  The hip’s quite fitting though so I really hope my hips won’t swell from water retention on the wedding day!  The lace & beading down the front isn’t quite complete too. but I’m impressed!  As it’s quite difficult to find purple lace, the tailor actually dyed the lace for the gown.  Once the final alteration is done, the tailor will then hand sew beading to form flowers, and add crystals to the flowers!

Back view: Sorry, pics are a little blur ‘cos of the lighting at the studio.  The lining’s not supposed to be exposed too.. just wasn’t arranged properly.  The dress is too long so it’s going to be shortened by about 2”… and yes, I’m wearing my made in Taiwan Americaya heels…

Been scurrying around looking for stuff that I’ll need for the photoshoot – Swarovski crystals (for nail art), shoes (for bridal gown and evening gown), and so on.  Saw a pair of shoes from Americaya today that came in 2 colour combinations – gold/silver or silver/grey.  While I preferred the gold/silver combination, the silver/grey one matches the gowns better so I decided to go for it.  The Americaya at Centrepoint didn’t have  my size but the counter inside OG department store at Orchard Point had it so the sales person at Centrepoint helped me reserve it and told me to walk over immediately to collect them (they were the last pair).

When I reached OG, I decided to check out the other shoes to make sure that there weren’t anything more worth buying.  While checking out some shoes near the Americaya shelves, I saw this sales woman from China pick up the shoes I had shortlisted and saying loudly in Chinese to a sales man, “These shoes are so ugly”.  The sales man smiled and said, “Eh, you shouldn’t be saying such things”.  The China woman persisted, “They’re the ugliest shoes I’ve ever seen!”.  The sales man warned her, “A customer is coming to collect the shoes.  You better be careful what you say”.  She ignored his good advice and once again said that the shoes were ugly.

At this point, I was seething with anger and said to Iceman, “Yes, I’m the customer who’s collecting them”.  Unfortunately, both sales staff did not hear what I said so I ignored them and continued checking out the rest of the shoes.  After confirming that there wasn’t anything better available, I went back to the Americaya counter, took the silver/grey pair and said LOUDLY to the sales man, “Could you help me get this VERY UGLY pair of shoes in size 38 please?”.  It was unfortunate that the China woman was standing too far away else I would have added, “As you can see, a Singaporean lady’s taste is very different from a China woman’s taste”. 

The sales man gave a small laugh (the diffuse-an-awkward-situation kind of laugh) and went to get the shoes.  When he returned with them, I tried them on again and decided to go ahead with the purchase ‘cos it’s not easy finding a pair of heels in silver/grey.  I almost said, “I’ll get the shoes since there’s nothing uglier in the store” but didn’t.  As I walked away to make payment, the sales woman was looking at me.  Not a tinge of remorse on her face.  I glared at her, scrutinised her rough face and stocky build clothed in frumpy clothes, blinked my eyes in annoyance, and walked away.

I must say that I’m glad I don’t share the same taste in fashion as a country bumpkin from China (can you imagine me wearing black shoes with see-through lacy socks  under a white gown?) and I admit that my anger stems from having my taste insulted by someone who was poorly dressed.  That said, I think the sales woman was presenting herself poorly as a sales person.  I mean, if you don’t believe in your product, how do you promote it to customers?  Even though there’s no perfect product, as a sales person, you need to be able to highlight the positive points, instead of passing comments that obviously do not help in the sale of it.

Anyway, that’s all past.  Looking forward to the evening gown fitting tomorrow.  Will try to take photos if possible.  🙂

P.S. In case you’re wondering, the shoes were made in Taiwan.  Ha!

Remember how I used to complain about unauthorised links being added in my blogroll without my permission?  And how my site got hacked repeatedly despite my strong password?  The answer dawned on me after I saw that one of the sites where I downloaded some WP themes from, ‘www.greatwordpressthemes.com’, was inserted into my blogroll without my knowledge.

It had never occurred to me before that there could be “backdoor” codes in my WP themes that compromised my blog’s security integrity.  Sigh… these despicable hackers!  I hate you assholes!  May your computers crash with every use of the spacebar!  (Ok, that was completely random).

Anyway, I did a bit of research online and found this plug-in that helps scan WP themes for malicious codes.  I did a scan and this was what it showed:

This fantastic plug-in also indicates which file the suspicious code is in.  Going through the list, I removed all the suspicious codes from the respective files.  I also checked all the static links to make sure they didn’t belong to any unsavoury sites and am glad to report that – I have a wholesome blog once again.  Yay!

A lot of the themes that had malicious codes in them were from www.themesjunction.com, which up till this morning I thought was great a great site because of their unique themes and helpful administrators.  Remember I had that line spacing problem with my current theme?  I e-mailed themejunction last night and they actually helped tweaked the codes for me.  At first I was impressed by their helpfulness… given that this is a free site after all.  Now, I’m wondering if there was a more sinister motive behind their apparent kindness.

But it doesn’t matter ‘cos I’m using the revised theme, and I cleaned up the malicious codes.  Muahahahaha….