Reason to Sing

I've had a love affair with sewing since home econs back in 2001 (I am ancient). Since I didn't have a sewing machine at home, I would sneak into the sewing room by removing those layered window panes and climbing in during recess and after school to work on sewing projects.

Then when I was 17, my mum finally bought me a sewing machine! I had oodles of fun with it and went crazy with it! Kept buying cloth and zips from Chinatown and experimenting with inner linings (which are the prettiest details ever). I should have taken more pictures of those things I sewed, mostly tote bags, pouches, pencil cases, even PVC bi-fold wallets!

I even sewed my own school bag.

This is the best picture I could find, it was a desigual-esque patchwork cos I was super into bohemian/flower prints/crazy prints/batik then

These are some stuff I sewed for a carnival.

If you can see what's in the picture,  those on the bottom right were pacman PVC pencil cases which I was very proud of. I was super into clear stuff then but wanted to change things up a little bit. I binded my own notebooks too! Fun days.

Then my sewing machine went bonkers :( First the bulb blew, then bobbin winder stopped working and I had to wind it manually.

I was not happy with this machine.

And then one day, I happily chanced upon a lady demonstrating a Singer sewing machine. She stepped on the pedal, and without using her hands, the cloth was sewing parallel to the seams! I was shocked, I've never thought it was so easy to sew, because my machine can never sew straight without my hands guiding it.

From then on, I vowed that Singer shall be my next baby.

Soon enough, the bobbin threads started to run everywhere and then one day the machine just got stuck and couldn't be repaired. I was sad and grieved its demise, but excited that I could get a new one!

Was procrastinating on this for the longest time when Val messaged me last week with a photo of her new sewing machine.

And with renewed motivation, I went out to get one over the weekend!

This baby shall sing together with me :)

Life, for lack of a better title

Too busy to update, but here are some snippets of my life in the past few weeks(?), or months. Not in chronological order:

Qinpei is holding a bottle of oil in the MRT, and we have just received fresh, to anoint our places of influence. Hmm, what is conclusive?

A couple of girls delighted to be gifted koala/kangaroo key rings, proceed to adorn them fingers.

The subject of my distress on a saturday night upon hearing from Weiwen that she has seen 3 cases of brain infection from eating raw fish!!??!?!?!?!

Mr Lau looking his usual suave self at his brother's wedding.

My brother likes to send me pictures of dogs that he grooms at work. This was entitled "Chicken".

It was a pleasure serving the most high King at conference.

My ever faithful lifegroup.

After a report-filled day, I texted HY to tell him that I felt nauseous from the report-typing. He decided to get me sour plums (+ accompany me on the bus ride for music practice!)

heehee<3, this is one boy whom I really treasure.

Pop Pilates!

I've always been a believer of keeping fit. Not so much to the extent of being a fitness nut/guru like the ones you see on Instagram, but it is always a good feeling to start/end the day with a nice and refreshing work out. Contrary to how we think exercise tires one out, when done at the right intensity and frequency, it is extremely refreshing and gives me energy for the day.

Over the last 11 years, I've managed to routinely intersperse running, swimming and badminton as part of a weekly/bi-weekly regime. Things were so easy in school where there was a gym and pool. But as I started work, it was extremely hard to drag my tired body at the end of the day for a full-on cardio workout. For a while, I was extremely unfit and constantly prey to the flu bug and cough monster. After quitting my previous job, I decided that I wanted to feel healthy again, and following the advice of my sister who stretches every day, I chanced upon pilates! 

I initially thought it was an extremely pointless form of exercise. No sweating during exercise = time wasted. The first encounter I had with pilates was at the start of my internship in India where Joyce introduced me to an extremely boring series of pilates videos when we were trying to figure out how best to keep fit in a place where curry and biyani more or less made up our daily meals. I eventually did not buy into it and ended up running every morning on our roof top.

Fast forward to these past couple of working years, I was getting constant back aches from being at the desk most of the time and remembered that my spine doctor had advised me to swim and do stretching. So I decided to find an exercise that I could do in the comfort and convenience of my own home. I did some research, chanced upon Cassey Ho's videos and loved them! She's humorous, entertaining, encouraging, relatable, has extremely pretty backdrops and does these less than 10 minute clips for target spots, so it's perfect for people like me who needs things straight to the point. I've been doing it for some time now and have more or less settled on a fixed routine. I especially like the stretches to relieve lower back pain at the end of the set!

I find pilates really helps me to train my core muscles and tone up the different areas, which is great cos running just burns fats and doesnt do much toning. Toning makes you look fit and good, and overall, less effort exerted for physical stuff.

I've also been trying to train myself to do splits and other more fancy stuff. Heh, maybe check back here in a few months for some progress update?