Where your treasure is, there your heart will be

I've left my job at the Ministry of Defence. So the last two weeks have been days of rest and relaxation for me, spent with loved ones and doing things that are important to me, along with the redefinition of what is important. After all, where my treasure is, there my heart will be also.

I'm both excited and apprehensive about my next job. It would most probably require a lot from me work-wise, a lot more than I've been putting in the last year and a half, for sure. But my main reason for switching jobs was actually to ensure that I don't stagnate, both mentally and career-wise. My deep interest in learning has and always be a great asset of mine, and I didn't want to get too comfortable where I was. Yes, life was definitely good at my previous job, affording me awesome work-life balance and a more than decent take-home salary. I loved my colleagues and genuinely enjoyed passing the time of each work day with them. Many people could not understand my decision to leave my job. Why walk away from a good thing? But I believe that there are good things, and then there are good things.

I've made my choice to expand my knowledge and learning opportunities, so here I am, waiting.
In the meantime, I've spent a lot of my time expanding my mind, reading and reading and then reading some more.

One of my favourite reads this break has got to be Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus.



It is immensely magical and beautiful, and her prose has painted such an exquisite circus, replete with the burnt taste of caramel popcorn and the wonder of a room full of clouds. I loved every minute I spent in her circus, relished the time I spent wandering among the fantastical tents of each act and wondering at how all my senses took flight, and I never wanted it to leave. But leave, it must, for the book had to come to an end, and it left me wanting yet more. It has been a long time since my imagination has been so captured by a read, so much so that even my soul felt gripped by the subtle undercurrent melancholy. I loved that the way the plot was weaved into the tapestry of the details; I'm personally a fan of books high on lyricism and exquisite style, probably because that's how I like to write.

How I can tell when a book touches me particularly is when I feel moved to pick up my own pen and write again - and I felt stirred to write days and days after I'd finished the book. Something in me just wants to recreate the magic in my own way.



Anyhow. Other than reading my eyeballs out, I've been trying to become more financially literate in earnest. It's been tough going, that has. Reading up on concepts and financial products aside, this journey has made me come face to face with all my bad habits, and forced me to acknowledge them for what they are. It's made me a whole lot more self-aware. While I'm on one hand still reeling from the magnitude of my ignorance, I am also very grateful that I've started now rather than later.

Clem and I have also started running again in a bigger way. Longer distances, a bit more frequently (trying to up our frequency from twice a week to thrice, but it's not easy to find the time!), more exciting and beautiful running locales... All in our bid to be more healthy all-round.

Tomorrow is my last real day of holiday, since the weekend doesn't really count! I shall try to be as productive and savour every single minute of tomorrow. I will try to be back again with a picture post from last week, but I'm really not too hopeful, given my lousy track record!

To treat these two imposters just the same

What I've been inspired by these days, from the Spring 2012 runways.
First up, a bevy of beautiful evening gowns from my favourite evening wear designers: Marchesa and Elie Saab.
Hands-down, these two always do it for me where gowns are concerned.
They always have gowns that do what evening gowns should do: dazzle and take one's breath away at the gorgeousness of it all.

Absolutely dripping with high-octane glamour.

 

 

Marchesa Spring 2012

 

 

 

 

 

And of course, my absolute favourite - Elie Saab.
I lurrrve the colour palette and the elegance of his evening wear. This is in spite of the Style.com fashion writer's lacklustre review of this collection. Lace, sequins, and flowy chiffon, these are everything I'd want on any gown I'd don for a glitzy affair. (And I've always wanted to work a gown with a thigh-high split like Megan Fox or Blake Lively - both of whom do so with such aplomb.)


Okay this is a very random post.

One of my favouritest poems, ever.

"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you.
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

...

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!"

If
Rudyard Kipling

Peek to your heart's content:

"Some people search for a fountain - promises forever young. Some people need three dozen roses - and that's the way to prove you love them. Hand me the world on a silver platter, and what good would it be?"

In the midst of all the craziness, all the madcap rush to get things done, it's the little things in life that keep me going. That, and hope for the future; my heart is swollen with that.

"If I ain't got you."

87 days from today

Counting down the number of days till I become Mrs. Clement Chua:

there are exactly 2 months and 27 days from today.

How do I feel about it?

Too many things. A little afraid, but mostly excited.

Very tearful at having to move out from the place I've called home for the last 18 years, even more so at the thought that I will no longer wake up to the familiar morning wake-up call of my dad that I've been so used to ever since I was in Primary school.

This has been my home for so long, in more than the physical sense.

I've played countless games in front of the TV on the Playstation with the baby sister in my teenage years over the holidays (we could spend weeks on end glued to the console just trying to finish up a game). Had so many pyjama parties with the cousins as we were all growing up. And when I was older, had endless sleepovers with Trina either in my room or hers, movie-marathoning or exploring the world of Azeroth in World of Warcraft. Pizza parties, very simple home-cooked dinners, the kampung spirit that still permeates my home since much of my family lives in the same estate.

I will miss all that home has meant to me, for sure.

Heck, typing the last few lines is already making me tear..!

But the future promises much, too, and I must not let nostalgia overwhelm me.

I just hope with all my heart that my - our - dreams: of pursuing our Masters education abroad, seeing the world together, designing and building the space we will call home in the future, and eventually having a family of our own - will not remain dreams.

In case you all were wondering where Snooze has gone... Nowhere!

Such a cutie ain't she!

I love scratching her. But being a cat, she's quite temperemental.

How does a colour palette inspired by sorbet-melon grab you?

Clem hated it, but I thought it was pretty cute :P

WIW:

 Chiffon top in duck egg green from the UK

Pants in rose from Hollyhoque

Brunch at City Hall one of the Sundays.

One of the best ways to spend a lazy Sunday.

(Other than going for a facial or a massage, that is.)

Vintagey outfit and curls for brunch.

(Both crochet outer piece and crimson midi skirt are from Hollyhoque)

Someone's looking pensive..

Our first taste of Bakerzin was that of a chocolate bun, and a bacon danish pastry.

Very yummeh stuff there ;)

Our beloved church bell tower by the evening light.

The wedding gift from Oli - a pretty bundle of books with nuggets of wisdom.

Our pictures together always turn out blurry / off-centre.

Nonetheless, two is still better than one.

Two months and twenty-seven days, love.

Literature & Life #1: To Live

For memory's sake,

especially since there's just too much going on for me to keep proper track of things:

TIME's All-Time 100 Novels List.

I should be reading a lot more than I have been;

the world's vaster than my desk at work, my bed at home and my upcoming wedding combined.

So I have a new resolution: I shall read one book off TIME's list every fortnight.

Last night while sitting on the swing, Clem and I were discussing about how the society we are a part of inhibits fullness of being, clips the wings of our imagination, sucks us dry. We are myopic, flat, uninspired, tepid - too focused on what we stand to gain from our successes than in how these experiences have enriched us and added another facet to our lives. Pragmatism is the disease of our society, the cancer that leaves us so empty with no space to dream and pursue those same dreams. There's no place for romance, no space for doing things solely for the heady rush of doing them, no time to savour each moment. I'm not saying these don't exist, but they're rare and sparse among us who are bogged down by neccessities.

This might perhaps illustrate my analogy above a little better:

I see myself as a raw gemstone, with every experience big or small, significant or seemingly insignificant, adding another facet to me. Adding to my brilliance, changing the way I reflect and appear to others, changing the way I am made up, changing who I am. In that same vein, all the arts should function that way on top of their entertainment value.

So in short, books feed my soul, are a means for me to experience the larger world outside my current circumstance, shape me. Some people have their music, others have their art, theatre or dance. I have my literary pursuits, for a lack of a better word. Reading, writing, reading, and then writing again - all in the attempt to add on layer upon layer of vicarious experience and ideas onto myself.

Travelling, too.

But I tell myself there's a time for that, there will be a time for that, though that time is not now.

(Can't possibly be travelling to one new destination a week - much as I would love to - , can I?)

So many financial responsibilities, so little time, and just one of me.

Some Instagrams that sometimes seem more accurate in their filtered distortions than real life itself.

After all, perception and life as a whole, is a lot more subjective than we'd like to admit.

  

In a (poor) attempt at captioning:

Dusk and night sky, twilight interstitiality, pop colours, sameness/difference, glass half full.

The little sister turns 22, and I'm all in a (not related, fortunately) hullabaloo.

I thought that since tomorrow's gonna officially be the last day of my internship, this warrants an update from me! I've been lazy about upkeeping this space, even though I spend so much time in front of the computer each day at work.. But furtively blogging when I'm supposed to be working working makes me feel bad! Heh but somehow the fact that tomorrow's my last day is making me a lot more relaxed about things. :) Spent the better part of this morning compiling vogue.com write-ups of the latest haute couture shows in Paris over the last week, purely out of interest and to satiate my anal-retentiveness. (edit: which I forgot to send to myself and it's now saved on someone else's desktop *smacks forehead*)

Surprised as I am to say this, I am a little sad to leave. This taste of magazine journalism life has left me wanting more, but I'm more than a little scared that this is the end. My experiences are so limited and few, how could I possibly get a job in this line with what I have so far? :(

Things have been looking up for me on the job-hunt side lately. Have some interviews to nail, and am pending confirmation for another. I am, however, still unsure if this is the way to go.

Am I selling out, choosing the option with the easiest and most stable income? Do dreams have any place in the world of a working adult? A spate of conversations with the boyf in the past week has led me to think a lot more about this - about the place of dreams and aspirations in the face of reality. A part of me still wants to hold fast to all the dreams I had when I was a little girl: being a bestselling author, travelling the world as a journalist and writing inspiring articles for Nat Geo or a glitzy fashion mag... As much as I'm constrained by my reality, sometimes I still feel like the sky's the limit, and I can go wherever my imagination takes me to, as long as I dare to dream it and then pursue it. Of course, the real-world isn't like that. It takes infinitely more to live the life I want than just willpower and sheer longing. Aspirations must be backed up by talent and ability, and I fear I fall short in walking the talk. As much as I want to do these things, I might have to realize that I can't because it's just not in my make up to do these extraordinary things.

Darn I hate being fatalistic. I hate having the feeling of being resigned to something I seem to have no control over. I hate feeling like I have to do something because I'm obliged to - like earning money through a stable job, for instance. I hate feeling like money's that important, because I know deep down that it's not (and that a lot of the reason why I want to earn enough is to be comfortable enough to buy what I want, which is another thing I hate cos it makes me feel so materialistic and so bloody shallow)..

All this musing aside though, there's just one more announcement I have to make:
My little sister turns 22 today (note to self: stop referring to her as "little" then!)
It feels like just last month that she turned 21!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DARLING.

Thou shall not complain

Being an intern post-graduation is really tough. On one hand, I relish the challenge of doing something so utterly new, working on a glossy women's magazine and writing little features here and there: fashion and beauty journalism has been something I've always wanted to try but haven't had the chance to - until now. On the other hand, it's hard being the lowest lifeform who has very little monetary incentive (read: zero, actually) and is struggling to earn some form of income to support herself. I'm trying not to complain because truth be told, I do enjoy the work I'm doing every day and I really appreciate the opportunities to write something that is going to be published. The industry is so hard to get into, especially the fashion/beauty journalism I have always dreamed of working in. So I'm taking all the chances I've been given with grateful hands and a positive attitude - although the parental disapproval at my perceived "free labour status" is almost as tough to deal with the fact itself.

Although I'm interning more than working, I'm trying to take this as I would an actual job - making sure I get enough rest every night so that I can do a good job the next day in whatever I'm tasked to do. Hopefully, I'll have something lined up for me once I'm done in Feb, although I'm thinking now that I'd like to take a nice two or three week break after my internship ends before I begin whatever's waiting for me next. I do tire of telling people who ask what I'm going to do now that I've graduated that "I don't know what job I'll end up taking, nothing's certain at the moment" - it makes me question my own abilities. But uncertainty's something I have to learn to embrace, although it's definitely an awkward, uncomfortable pill to swallow.

As for what I've learnt in the last couple of days, I'd say I've learnt the most about being confident enough to not hide in my corner and hope that someone will notice me and say hello to me. There's no place for shyness and aloofness in the office. If you want to be talked to, you have to go talk to people first. I hate it, because I'm naturally reserved and generally pathetic at meeting new people - but it is something I have to learn to do. Especially with all the possible career paths I'm contemplating - journalism, Public Relations.. All of which, ironically, are unforgiving to the reserved who insist on remaining as such.

If I could though, I'd give anything to be a stay-at-home writer. I can write to my heart's content in the comfort of my cosy bed, where my time is flexible and my own, and I can let my imagination run unbridled and the words flow. Ahh. Dreams. We all have them, even at the grand old age of 23.