Going Quantum: My Perfumed CNY Adventures

Title totally misleading. But I do have some stuff to say about quantum thingies, perfume (as always), and CNY.

This CNY has seen me behaving like a big girl. This was largely thanks to the incessant nagging of my colleagues who insisted that I Absolutely Had to get Lim Chee Quan bah kwa for my 'future mother-in-law' (their words, not mine) after they saw what I had originally planned to give (cookies). So after much haggling ('Can I give 500gm?' 'Too little!' '800?' 'Too little!' 'But very expensive! Ok ok 1kg lar.') we trotted down to Lim Chee Guan after work only to learn that the sliced pork had already been sold out, and we had to settle for the inferior (oh tragedy!) golden coin one. And even for that we had to queue for about an hour! An HOUR! But, as my more experienced and wiser colleague sagely noted, Lim Chee Guan is more than bah kwa; it has become a symbol of patience and virtue. Buy 5 cans of abalone also not better than 1kg of Lim Chee Guan bah kwa! 5 cans of abalone just use money can buy already, but Lim Chee Guan bah kwa still got to queue up and then maybe queue finish already still don't have.

It's things like this that make me realise how much I enjoy where I am now. Sometimes I think, I could work here forever. Sometimes.

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Today I dropped by the discounter near my workplace, and to my huge surprise, discovered a gem of a perfume. A banged-up box of Guerlain's Vol De Nuit in parfum form(!!!!!) was sitting alone in a crowd of Guerlain's Samsara. Now I confess that before today I'd never smelled this perfume before, and I actually knew very little about it. BUT what I knew was that this was a perfume that was launched in 1933, has since been discontinued, and is nearly impossible to find in parfum, especially in Singapore. I also knew that parfum extrait in general tends to be horrendously expensive compared to EDT & EDP. And here was this little perfume sitting calmly on the shelf selling for SGD39!

Ok, so the box is a little discoloured (read: very) and torn and even a bit mouldy. But I got the salesperson to open the box, and inside was an absolutely charmingly retro black and gold box, with the 8ml gold bottle nestled inside. So of course I jumped on it, hugged it, announced it was mine, and got a discount of two measly dollars. I confess my purchase had nothing to do with the actual juice. It's just the sheer joy of unexpectedly discovering something old and pretty and expensive and has a bit of romantic and tragic history to it, and being able to buy it for practically nothing (haha ok not really), and I would really have regretted it if I'd let it go. (I sometimes have the same reaction to really old books, but I'm a bit more wary with books because I am convinced the old ones are all infested with gigantic silverfish).

For an idea of what my perfume looks like, and how much it costs online, look here. The picture is on the right. It's selling online at $100+ for 8ml! Needless to say I'm reasonably pleased with myself.

In other perfume-related news, I am seriously considering setting aside a perfume fund. This arises from a recent visit to Sephora, where I fell madly in love (again) with Sisley Soir de Lune, and fell madly in love (for the first time) with Aqua di Parma Iris Nobile and Sisley Eau de Campagne. All of which cost about SGD200 each.

I think I'm rather fond of the iris note. Iris perfumes (Prada Infusion d'Iris, Hermes Hiris, Iris Nobile) tend to sit well with me.

I also like rose perfumes, but I think those are a little harder to do well. I don't like Bvlgari's Rose Essentialle because it's a little too sweet to be a real rose perfume for me. I've got Agent Provocateur, but oh man, that is a rose perfume with a huge wallop. It is the only perfume that I don't spray directly on my skin because it's too damn strong. Instead, I spray into the air and walk through the cloud of perfume. For most perfumes doing that just wastes the perfume, because the smell doesn't stick to you. But for Agent Provocateur it's a totally different story. I love AP, but it's incredibly strong, plus it's a rose perfume with a dirty/skanky note, all of which makes it not-so-polite. Thing with rose perfumes is it's too easy to be a) boring; b) old lady-ish; c) too strong; or d) too candied for my taste. But Sisley's Soir de Lune is such a wonderful gem of a perfume. It is a perfectly rounded rose perfume with no sharp edges; it's incredibly incredibly well-made, very sophisticated, and just all in all wonderful. At this juncture I should also inform you guys that I have a bad habit of sniffing congratulatory wreaths as I walk past unsuspecting newlly-opened shops. I especially love to sniff the lilies and roses, but this makes me rather embarrassing company, methinks.

As for Sisley's Eau de Campagne - For the longest time I've been looking for my perfect 'green' perfume, and this is it. Some green perfumes are nice but rather boring (Guerlain Vetiver), some are too strange for me (The Different Company Sel de Vetiver), and some are too sweet. But Eau de Campagne evokes freshly cut grass, the damp earth after the rain, and salty ocean breezes. It works. It works dammit.

Incidentally, I also love Annick Goutal's Encens Flamboyant, which smells exactly like incense in churches. It also costs more than I should pay for perfume. Just like the rest.

Bloody thing is, Sisley, Aqua di Parma & Annick Goutal don't usually turn up on Singapore's discounters' shelves. Argh! *tears hair out*

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On my going quantum - In the midst of all the stress and work early this month, I anyhowly bought a book by Stephen Hawking that is called [[something something] Baby Universes. It is coolness man. It has things like quarks and parallel universes and black holes. I was so fascinated by it that I bought Hawking's A Brief History of Time as well as A Very Short Introduction to Cosmology. Why in the world didn't they teach us this stuff in secondary school?!?! For all these years I thought that electrons were the smallest things eva! And if they'd told us about this stuff maybe I would have gone into science! (nah.) Reading these books, I feel somehow as if the world is actually pretty magical. I need to remember that not everything is prosaic and expected...

Rock music

I find that I appreciate different genres of music in different ways. For example, lyrics play a huge part in my appreciation of Mandarin pop/rock, but I seldom bother to even make out the lyrics in English rock. I think it's partly because I feel that Mandarin is inherently much much much more lyrical and beautiful than English, and very often, English lyrics merely spoil the music for me. (Case in point, Celine Dion's abysmal lyrics for 'All By Myself' have forever spoiled the 2nd movement of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No.2 for me. Forever.) Just look at the lyrics for Jay Chou's songs - how much of it can be translated into English without losing the beauty? (Ya, irreversible damage to street cred due to appreciative reference to Jay Chou. Dear Jay, long gone are the days of your coolness. You have faded into mediocre idol-ness.)

For English rock, it's the howl (or growl, depending) of the guitars, wildness of the drums, the animalistic timbre and power of the voice... (*ahem* composes self and takes cold shower) and the sheer energy of the musical dissonance that gets me. Or it is the urban degenerate druggie feel. You know, for those urban degenerate druggie rocker types who are not like the healthy ones jumping around on stage and prefer to slump in a corner while somehow producing what passes for very very cool music from their guitars (probably stolen). As for the lyrics... I don't want to know. Really.

But occasionally, I take a listen to pop/rock that I never used to think much of and kinda tear up because the lyrics are so beautiful.

Superman

I can't stand to fly
I'm not that naive
I'm just out to find
The better part of me

I'm more than a bird, I'm more than a plane
I'm more than some pretty face beside a train
And it's not easy to be me

I wish that I could cry
Fall upon my knees
Find a way to lie
'Bout a home I'll never see

It may sound absurd but don't be naive
Even heroes have the right to bleed
I may be disturbed but won't you concede
Even heroes have the right to dream?
And it's not easy to be me

Up up and away away from me
Well it's all right
You can all sleep sound tonight
I'm not crazy or anything

I can't stand to fly
I'm not that naive
Men weren't meant to ride
With clouds between their knees

I'm only a man in a silly red sheet
Digging for kryptonite on this one way street
Only a man in a funny red sheet
Looking for special things inside of me

Inside of me, inside of me, yeah
Inside of me, inside of me

I'm only a man in a funny red sheet
I'm only a man looking for a dream
I'm only a man in a funny red sheet
And it's not easy, it's not easy to be me

For the record, you should all know that I detest Superman (the red cape guy). For reasons unrelated to my detest of the superhero and for the longest time, I was relatively unimpressed by the song. It was one of those pleasant rock ballad types floating around in a veritable Pacific ocean of pleasant rock ballads. But for some reason this song is speaking to me these days. It's speaking, dude!

All this makes me think that maybe appreciation for the lyrics of a song is situational - (i.e. we like certain lyrics because of our experiences or our ability to imagine certain situations or images), but our appreciation for the music is largely aesthetic, with nothing to do with anything outside the music. Maybe? Yeah whatever.

Things are getting weird in here

I officially declare this the month of freaky Singapore weather. The mornings and night have been incredibly cold, and the afternoons have been incredibly warm BUT very windy. And I mean my umbrella turns upside down windy.

Ok I'm going to have to explain that right? Why I'm toting an umbrella on a sunny day like an old lady?

Nah.

(I love my l'aire de mysterieuse, and I don't know if I retain any French, I being one of notable French-specific non-retentiveness.)

In other news, I spent more than 12 bucks on post-it notes (2 pads altogether). Very very cute post-it notes.

I've become a post-it fanatic. They're like little flags saying 'look at me, I'm important!', so I tag all the important things at work with post-it notes. What this means is, of course, that my work desk looks a bit like it has been claimed by every single country in the world (and possibly a few extra-terrestrial empires), with many many many flags planted all over and all fluttering in the minuscule office air-con breeze. Either that, or my desk has become the unofficial hangout of the United Nations, and everyone brought their own flag in some sort of flag-themed potluck. Sometimes I think that with all that fluttering, one day my work desk is going to float up and out into the sky. Ah, most treasured dream!

Seriously, every morning I reach office, I'm greeted with many little paper screams, all wanting my attention, all saying 'look at me look at me! me first!' I might as well be a mother.

Oh, and my worst nightmare has come true. My colleague has been clearly heard to comment that I am like a little girl. Don't cry for me Argentina, it was inevitable and anyway, I don't really know you. As for the rest of you, cry your hearts out for my miserable little reputation.

(Can anyone tell I've been watching Scrubs again?)

Hedley Bull is the coolest

In his introduction to Martin Wight's International Theory:

"Wight's atttitude towards the behaviourists was the source of one of my disagreements with him. I felt that they represented a significant challenge and that it was important to understand them and engage in debate with them. The correct strategy, it appeared to me, was to sit at their feet, to study their position until one could state their own arguments better than they could and then - when they were least suspecting - to turn on them and slaughter them in an academic Massacre of Glencoe. Wight entertained none of these bloody thoughts. He made no serious effort to study the behaviourists and in effect ignored them." p.xi

Pissed

with African historians.

As much as it's not very PC to say so, and insofar as my rather scanty knowledge of the literature allows me to make sweeping statements on the subject.

But if they don't start acknowledging that the Europeans weren't the only brutal murderers in their history, they should stop writing.

My love for The Onion grows

Poverty-Stricken Africans Receive Desperately Needed Bibles

No Machine Can Do My Job As Resentfully As I Can

'Iraqi Gandhi' Preaches Slightly Less Violence

Substance dependency

I can't believe I spent the whole day searching for a blue can of Red Bull. Does nobody else require Red Bull to get through the day?!?!

Also, stopped by new Sephora at Taka. Perfumes section was a huge disappointment. The discounters have a much better range. The makeup and skincare sections were funky though. Sephora had better buck up if it's going to suck any of my perfume money out of my very shallow pockets.

Oh yeah, thought I'd mention that I cut my hair short. I look very very cute (in case you hadn't noticed).