Powerful words from a powerful man. As fights go on between Israelis and Palestinians, let’s be reminded that…
No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
— Nelson Mandela
Am sipping the Night Cleanse tea (second brew) as I write this post.
Was expecting the ginger taste to be really strong, but it’s surprisingly quite mild. The peppermint taste is also not too strong and rather calming. I only tasted the ginger when I reached the bottom of the cup.
Hope it calms the achy feeling I got in my lower abdominal area this morning. Not sure if it had anything to do with the Morning Boost tea I drank this morning…shall monitor as I go along.
Regular Facebook users should have noticed by now the ads for this detox…or teatox programme called SkinnyMint.
Detox has been on my mind for some time now. Ever since I started work, I’ve been battling a constipation problem. I also had a persistent pimple problem on my back. I figured what I really needed was a good detox. My mother-in-law had recommended some Chinese herbal pills which worked, but she said it wasn’t good to take them regularly, so I had to find an alternative. When I finally stopped work, I vowed to drink more water to flush out the toxins. It worked…sort of. The pimple problem on my back is more or less gone, but I can’t help but feel like I still need a good detox.
I must say that I’m rather “cautious” about such programmes because I’m afraid that the chemicals used in the product produce bad side effects. So, I read the website carefully. Seems like the teas are made from natural herbs/ingredients.
Testimonials from other users can only do so much to persuade me. First, some people are paid/sponsored to write reviews. Second, even if these people are not paid/sponsored, most of them have good figures to begin with. That was until I saw a testimonial from someone like me…who neither exercises regularly nor maintains a strict diet. Ok, now I’m bought into this.
The programme seems easy to follow. No drastic changes to my current lifestyle. One Morning Boost teabag every morning and one Night Cleanse teabag every other night.
So here goes nothing…
The Morning Boost tea has a rather fruity scent. Thought it would have a strong berry taste like the Lipton Forest Fruit tea, but it surprisingly tastes quite mild. I don’t put sugar in my teas as I prefer the original taste of the herbs. I have cultivated the habit to drink sugarless tea after one too many encounters of drink stall aunties/uncles putting far too much sugar despite ordering teh o siu dai. Since I can’t control how much sugar they put in my teh o and I can’t tahan super sweet tea, I’ll rather have no sugar in my tea at all. The only exception is when I drink lemon tea, the sour/bitter taste is just too much and that’s when I put a little honey to improve the taste.
My only little complaint is that the string for the teabag is a tad too short. It keeps slipping into the mug when I top up the hot water. To prevent that, I like to twirl it round the mug handle. But even that is a little difficult with this teabag. Hmmm…
Other thoughts: I’m still skeptical on the losing weight part but if I do, that’ll be a bonus. Right now, I just want to effectively flush out the toxins in my body.
PS: Sorry, no tummy photos yet as it’s beyond my level of comfort to share that much. Just know that I DO HAVE a pooh bear stomach. Haha.
As quoted by a friend, “…some things are better off as just memories.”
Couldn’t agree more.
Normally I wouldn’t start watching an anime series until I’ve got all the episodes. It’s a weird habit but I would rather have uninterrupted viewing than have to impatiently wait for a new episode to be released. This rule sticks unless I’m too excited about something. In this case, said friend wanted to discuss it a little and ok (I admit), I was curious.
So I watched it. The first two episodes of 美少女戦士セーラームーン Crystal (Bishoujo Sensei Sailor Moon Crystal) — a remake of an old anime series I watched when I was a kid. Halfway into the first episode, I decided that Sailor Moon was just too darn aho and her speech was annoying me to the max. Like seriously, I felt my brain cells were dying listening to her talk. The last time I felt like that while watching anime was バカとテストと召喚獣 (Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu). I deleted the entire series after watching the first episode because it was just too stupid.
I can’t believe I liked this anime as a kid. Maybe the speech pattern in the old series wasn’t as annoying? Maybe the Mandarin-dubbed version that I had watched was not as bad? I mean, I do occasionally watch kids/mahou shoujo anime, but this is too irritating. Even しゅごキャラ! (Shugo Chara!) was way better than this.
I think I’ll just sit through this entire anime series for the sake of…”reliving” my childhood, but I sure hope as hell that I don’t get frustrated halfway and start pulling my hair out.
Geez…
I used to go crazy on manga but stopped for a while since it became a little too costly to keep up. Instead, I turned to online scanlations. Yes, I broke the cardinal sin of turning to online English scanlations, but hey, I read English much faster than I do with Chinese.
Well, it lasted for a while until I realised that the online scanlations take awfully long to be updated. Unlike anime where the subbed episode gets uploaded in a matter of days, scanlations take months to have new updates and they could be slow by at least five books. Not that I don’t understand that scanlations take time to produce, but I don’t think I can wait that long… So, recently I bought a new manga series. 花君と恋する私 (Hana-kun to Koisuru Watashi) is a typical high school romance shoujo manga. (I’ve said thousand of times before that I’m a sucker for such manga/anime.)
I’ve read up to book four where the couple have just started dating. They both feel a little awkward…
(Will type the exact words in Chinese.)
Hana-kun: 我的心情，也跟你差不多。没什么真实感，觉得很紧张。感觉象是在。。。做梦一样。
(Translation: My feelings are about the same as yours. So surreal; I feel anxious. It feels like…I’m dreaming.)
Oh my goodness. I think I really felt that the first time I got together with my hubby. He was not my first love, but it was definitely my first relationship. The day after we got together, I was in an Asian Literature class and we were going through a lover’s poem. My TA called on me to figure out whether the narrator is male or female. To help me, she asked if I have a boyfriend. For a minute, I was stunned. Then it hit me. Yes…yes, I am attached. And suddenly I got this rush of emotions that made me feel a little embarrassed.
You must understand that I never thought I would find somebody. Me, the plain Jane. The one, whose sister said I might as well marry the computer since I never went out to socialise and was always stuck in front of the computer. The one, who was rejected twice. It all felt too surreal.
Oh well, but that was years ago. I am now happily married.
Another kyaa-ing post. I have discovered that such anime are usually part of an otome game or visual novel’s franchise. Yes, these anime usually have rather weak storylines but have characters that make you go all doki doki. In Amnesia, the main character (her name is not mentioned at all) loses her memory after an accident and she interacts with the different guys to recover her memory. However, a mishap (whether fatal or not) always happens and she is transported back to 1 August and a different world each time. In each world, she is romantically linked to each guy.
The guys represent each suit in a deck of cards.
Heart — Shin
Diamond — Toma
Spade — Ikki
Club — Kent
Joker — Ukyo
Quite a bit has been going on but I’ll take my time to fill in the gap since my last post.
Since I made a status post on Facebook that I’ve perhaps found a new song to sing at KTV, I thought I’ll clear up some doubt on whether I memorise lyrics when I sing Japanese songs.
The truth is…no, I don’t. Apart from YUI’s “Goodbye Days“, ZONE’s “Secret Base ~君がくれたもの~” and Perfume’s “My Color“, I do not remember the lyrics to any other song. The only reason why I know the lyrics to these three songs by heart is coz of repeated listening and singing. So, I did not purposely memorise them.
When I want to try singing a song, I find the Japanese lyrics to the song. Not romanji, but the actual Japanese lyrics. I will only peek at the romanji for kanji that I can’t read. This helps me to keep up with my Japanese reading skills. Besides, there’s no romanji when you sing Japanese songs at KTV. This also explains why I sing rather slow tempo songs or songs with easy lyrics. I just can’t read Japanese as fast!
A good site I go to for lyrics is JpopAsia, which has the Japanese lyrics, romanji and translation of songs.
Trust me, it’s really no fun singing along with romanji lyrics in hand.
My blog was down for awhile coz it exceeded the 8GB bandwidth. I’m quite sure it was the doing of spam bots as I receive tons of spam comments and all my pictures and embedded videos are hosted elsewhere. As much as I like the sound of thousands of page views, I prefer if actual people are reading and not spam bots.
I had to upgrade my plan coz of this problem. Not that I really wanted to in the first place…boooo…
Any idea how to prevent them from even visiting my site?
I got my first birthday present of 2014 in the form of watching Alma Mater return to her pedestal via the very cool Alma Cam. She was taken down in 2012 for restoration.
After years of braving the rain and snow, she had obtained a shade of green. This was how she looked like when I graduated.
I began checking out Alma Cam on the morning of 9 April, but due to the time difference, all I saw were drunk people passing by. At about 7pm (8am there), I got excited coz I noticed someone taking measurements. The action only began around 9.30pm (10.30am there).
Note: I didn’t think of taking screen shots earlier, so I only grabbed some when they were beginning to return her to her pedestal.
Prepping to lift her…
And she’s in the air!
Putting her down gently…
I couldn’t watch the final adjustments coz it was already midnight and I had to turn in. I suppose there was some sort of ceremony as there is supposed to be a time capsule put in her to be opened in 10 year’s time.
And here’s what I saw this morning…
Alma’s back in business with a nice bronze shade!
Tolerance. Something that not everyone has. Sometimes I wonder why we allow society to shape how we think or act.
“The only thing wrong in this little girl’s world is the people who won’t accept her for who she is.”
Jazz was not allowed to play girl’s soccer coz she’s biologically a boy and they are afraid she’ll hurt the other girls. What bullshit! Look at her. She walks and talks like a girl! She is most definitely a girl.
Watching her swim in her homemade mermaid’s tail is just incredible and sad at the same time. She loves mermaids because they have nothing between their legs to define which gender they are.
I have nothing to say except that she is awesome and that she gives hope to transgender people. I also think her parents are awesome for not conforming to what society wants us to think or act.