I just dyed my hair. Well actually, Chris dyed it for me.
I chose the L'oreal Feria Pear Blossom and it turned out ok.
At least you can see the difference between my old colour and this new one.
It's still not light enough though.
I liked the ash brown colour I did just before returning back to Brisbane with the blonde highlights.
It was beautiful.
I'll be trying to get that colour back once my hair has had the chance to recover from this dye job.
Plus I want highlights which means I need to get it professionally done.
Home-made highlights aren't nice enough.

I've come to the end of my training period at work. I've "graduated" from the training and will be assuming real work next week. There's still lots to learn though. I am looking forward to this new period of work. Even till now I feel like a student on attachment who's getting paid to follow and learn from others. Perhaps this feeling will be gone when the real students start coming to our lab. There are already 4 students in other respective labs but none in mine. I think the university students will be posted to my lab at the end of the year. That will be pretty exciting. We need more younger people around. There's too many uncles and aunties around at my workplace. In fact, I'm already quite close to this Ngee Ann Poly student. We take the same shuttle bus and train back and usually chat all the way. As nice as my colleagues are, sometimes you do feel that age/generation/frequency gap. I want a friend who can laugh like a hyena with me, share the same kind of jokes with and is on the same level as me. So far, only the student comes close. The other girls are in different stages of life as I am and have different priorities. Maybe I still have a lot of growing up to do because all I want to do now is have fun and to be happy. The girls, on the other hand, want and need and do much different things from me. Don't get me wrong, they also love food, shopping and going out with friends. But one of them is a wife and mother. Another has a steady boyfriend for seven years now and is hoping to persuade him to settle down with her. The last one, well, she's too nice for her own good and a staunch Christian. She's so demure and gentle. She can't say no to anyone and hence is easily taken advantage of. My friend says that she is a typical Teochew woman. I don't know if that is true. Come to think of it, I've never really analyzed the Teochew women in my family (I'm half Teochew). Then again, Juju is Teochew too and she is a total opposite from my friend.

I'm settling down into this work and play routine. Work hard from Mondays to Fridays and then play like mad on Saturdays and Sundays. I see Chris almost every week and sometimes more than once a week. This week alone, I would have seen her three times already. We went for dinner with Kit, Mr Tan and Keong at Serangoon Gardens. We ate at Aston's and the food was cheap and good. Then we bought tau huay from Chomp Chomp for dessert. Initially all of us were going to tabao the tau huay back because we ate too much already but the tau huay was just too tempting. We ended up opening all of our tau huay and sharing and trying each other's tau huay flavours. I tried chocolate, strawberry, almond, mango and egg that night. I still like the egg best although mango and almond were good too but they tasted more like pudding than tau huay. After overeating (as usual, we never learn), Keong kindly sent all of us home. It's so nice to have a friend with a car and plenty of free time on his hands *wicked laughter*

I accompanied Chris to get her hair cut again, this time at Kimage Funan IT Mall. It's so troublesome to have short hair. You have to keep trimming it to keep it in shape and unless you have a good regular hairdresser to go to, cutting your hair can be a horrible experience. On the bright side, hair will grow eventually so at least you won't be stuck with the bad haircut forever. Fridays are sometimes the worst day to go out. My energy level is usually at its lowest after the work week and it's hard to muster up some sparks of energy to go out. I am stubborn though, and I want to go out no matter what. So I get home all exhausted but I don't sleep till at least 1 am because I don't want to waste my free time. It doesn't really make sense to me after I write this down but what the heck!

Right now, I'm waiting for people to fall in at my house. We are having a potluck party and although it would be nice to have each person cook and bring something down, it's not very realistic. We are not in Brisbane anymore and how I miss those days! I baked a batch of oatmeal raisin cookies and will be providing rice and fruits. Chris is bringing Japanese curry, broccoli and a cheese cake. A mahjong session will automatically follow lunch and Chris and I will be dyeing each other's hair. I'm quite bored of my hair colour. It's not as light as I would like it to be. Hopefully this will lighten my hair considerably.

Things have been pretty strained with me and Em. Perhaps I'm the only one who is feeling this. I know that Em can be very dense and insensitive sometimes. I've reached the point where I just don't care anymore. A brief update from Keong appalled me but only for that few minutes. I think this friendship is over. I've been very cool to Em when Em messages me. Sure I reply the messages, but I say what I need to say and don't bother with asking questions or being too nice. This is for the best...