ugly is the new beautiful

Eating light is good. Menu for dinner yesterday was pretty light – stir fried mixed cabbage with french beans with brown rice (for dearie), strawberry yoghurt. Somehow both of us felt a little hungry after 2 hours and munched on a little multi-grain bread.

We’ve fallen in love with the vegetarian food at jurong east recently, but as the serving is pretty big. It always leaves me feeling semi-satisfied yet semi-guilty that I’ve walloped the entire plate of rice and mock fish. Hence, unless I’ve trained hard that day, vegetarian food is not a privilege.

Dearie and I were watching the Channel 8 drama serial yesterday and he commented how Phyllis quek looked bulky on TV. I think she looked fine, to the fact that being on camera always makes one look fatter than he/she is. Phyllis probably looks perfectly good in person, while the others like ivy lee, who looks just nice on TV, are most likely stick thin. Think about it, what about those like jolie tsai who look super slim on TV, I reckon they might look like walking skeletons in person. =S

Well, that’s how beauty is defined by the media these days. Skinny=beautiful. Fat=ugly.

Gone are the days when fleshy is sexy. Now, being able to fit into a size 0 or XS is sexy.

Lament lament. When is tricia going to stop lamenting about this?

Finally, I have begun with the consolidation work. The translation kills, but I’ll have to plough through it somehow. Let’s just hope I get it right.

We didn’t manage to obtain the Hyflux shares on its IPO. Got to find some other investments to make in place. Money on idle is a waste (especially leaving it in a savings account only to collect $0.25 interest per month), it ought to be put into some form of investment so it would generate more money in return.

Who knows, if we make enough money through investment, I’ll spend some on liposuction. =P

Overheard ct commenting to the auditor about work. Pay here is pretty low, workload heavy. Only good thing is the bonus.

Well, tossed with dearie on this issue of pay vs bonus. Low take home pay means lesser savings each month. Higher bonus if spread out through the year should even the low monthly pay. Living in Singapore is getting tougher as the days go by. Prices of virtually every thing we know has gone up, EXCEPT our pay.

- fuel prices are up. Petrol prices, up. Electricity, up.
- Taxi fares up. Latest news, yesterday comfort delgro announced an increment of 30cents upon flag-down. (doesn’t quite affect me because I hardly take cabs, the only time you’ll find me in one is when my company is paying for it)
- Food prices, up. Everything has gone up at least 20-50cents. For a bowl of noodles which was $2.50, now $3.00, the increment is 20%.
- GST, up. Was 5% now 7%. That literally means, for everything that’s transacted in Singapore, the government is going to earn another 2% from it. For the extra that’s going to gnaw into my savings from the GST increment, the government has most kindly gave me $200 reimbursement. How about a monthly household allowance of $100 instead? ($100 is reasonable. $100/2%= $1500 spending per month.)

Working at rl lets me come face to face with the reality of income disparity. The number of platinum/elite cards I swipe in 1 day is more than all my cards (atm card, membership cards, discount cards) added together. Sometimes I ask myself when I would find myself within the calibre to own a platinum card too. Some day. One day.

Mean time, it’s work work work for a future. save save and save. Money doesn’t buy happiness. But without money, I think lagi harder to be happy.