We had some friends over for dinner and I put together a mis-matched meal for five.

I’m not terribly creative when it comes to table settings and you can so see it! The colours don’t go, nothing matches but ah well, it’s charming in its own quirky way.

And those drinking glasses – I LOVE LOVE LOVE them. My godparents used to run the snack/drinks bar at The Cathay before its current incarnation when I was a wee kid and my mom worked for them. I used to spend my Saturdays at the stall, scratching lucky draw cards and getting snuck into the cinema for a free movie.

In fact, the very first movie that I can remember watching on the big screen was The Fly, which SCARED THE SHIT OUTTA ME. The visuals of the protagonist metamorphosing into the fly was seared in my memory for the longest time.

Anyway, back to the glasses. When the owners of The Cathay decided to close the cinema, my godparents had no choice but to wind up the business and these glasses are what remained of the stall. Last year, I decided that they would belong to me and my mom was all too happy to pass them on. SCORE!

My end of year holiday plans are in disarray and I am Not. Happy.

Between the constraints of the new job and my state of pregnancy, the only window of opportunity that Mr Thick and I have to go on a holiday together is during the Christmas period. We can’t fly too far out because of the nugget and I didn’t want to stress my heavily pregnant self on the long-haul flight. We narrowed our options down to Tokyo and Hong Kong and thought that luck was on our side when we spotted the Tokyo travel deal on Groupon.

Before we booked, however, we did our due dilligence. We called up HIS, the travel agency, and checked that there were flights on the dates that we were looking at. We ensured that the blackout dates did not fall on our preferred dates and that there were no additional surcharge aside for the airport taxes (excluded from the price of the deal). And then we bought the vouchers. And on that same Friday, we emailed HIS with our details.

We didn’t hear back from them until a week and a reminder email later. And to our dismay, the travel agent told us that there were no SIA flights available on the dates that we had in mind and that if we wanted to, we could top up an additional $690 to fly on ANA.

Now that pissed me off. I had already paid an extra $200 per pax for the vouchers to travel on SIA instead of JAL and now I was supposed to fork out another $690 to move to ANA? It doesn’t make sense. Plus, I had checked the SIA website and there were flights available on our dates. When we called HIS prior to making the booking, nobody mentioned that there would be any additional costs to travelling during the festive period. I highlighted all these in my reply and asked the travel agency to please work with me on this as we only had this tiny period of time to travel.

Their reply to me was absolutely hogwash:

True, there were no black out dates on SIA on the period you want to travel, however seats are based on availability.

This is under SIA promotional seats and during the peak period, these seats are not available already.

The seats you saw from the SIA website would have been based on normal fare. however it should be based on very much higher fare.The special SQ fare for this promotion is based on $380 fare. If you wish to get your airfare by yourselves, we could always deduct this $380 from your base fare and we will book the hotels for you.

I opted for a refund instead and sent a note to Groupon yesterday, who has yet to reply to me.

So yeah, I am mad. It’s not even about whether the deal is too good to be true or not. There’s misleading information and false advertising involved, and now we are scrambling to get our plans in order. We had read and reread the terms and conditions carefully to ensure that we had covered all possible loopholes, we even called up HIS for clarification and still this happened.

Note to self: trust Groupon only with low-price items. Urghs.

A little shameless ad here: I’ve sent in my entry for the HP Me and My City contest because…well, I get a chance to win a trip to New York City.

So if you could just pop over the site and vote for my entry, I would be super grateful! You’d need to sign up though (BUGGER) and my entry is currently on page 4 of the gallery.

And well, I didn’t put up any sexy pictures of my friends and I partying as many other contestants did. Mine is a moody night shot of Haji Lane. I’m sorry, I know that’s such a dampener but seriously, you wouldn’t want to see me in sexy outfits.

Thank you very much in advance!
(Sending lots of hugs and kisses your way)

I am usually not so vulgar and un-classy on the blog (in real life, now that’s another story altogether) but today was just such a dreadful day. When 6pm arrived, I zipped up my bags, shut down that useless piece of crap my company calls a laptop and dashed out of the office without a second glance.

And when the day is bad, what do you do? Why, find a song that sums up everything you are feeling and Keep. Singing. It.

This song is for all the bad Mondays you have had and you will have in the future. Peace out.

Which girl doesn’t lust for a piece of Chanel?

Whether it is the signature white camellia (so dear to the late Madamoiselle Chanel herself), the chic tweed skirt suit, the square bottle of No. 5 or the elaborately crafted and highly sought-after 2.55, an item from the House of Chanel is always something to be desired for many a squealing girl. After all, Mlle Chanel did change the face of fashion for women all over the world. The ubiquitous little black dress was a Chanel creation, as was the blending of masculinity in women’s wear.

But more than that, her life is intriguing, from the affairs that she had to the lies that she fabricated in order to protect her poverty-stricken past. And this is why I think Coco Avant Chanel, the movie starring Audrey Tautou, will be a very good watch.

The bonus is, of course, the casting of Tautou. I’ve loved her since Amelie and honestly, who hasn’t? Forget about her dreadful turn in The Da Vinci Code (urghs!), the gamine Tautou is a marvellous actress who is a wonderful mix of vulnerability and fierce pride.

I’m not sure when the movie will be out in local theatres but this is one biopic I will definitely catch.