TAG: The Beauty Blogger

Hey guys! Hope your day is going well 🙂

I was tagged by some bloggers (didn’t keep track of the names but thank you, whoever you are!) to do a variation of tags a few months ago. Tags are a series of questionnaires about your personal life and you’re supposed to repost the questions on your social media account with your answers if you’re tagged to do it. It’s like responding to survey quizzes with Facebook Notes which apparently was the craze a few years back. Now, it’s back to haunt me on WordPress. Hahaha, kidding.

Well, throughout my 5 years on WordPress, I have been documenting my life in the form of product and service reviews. Very seldom would you see me writing extensively about myself here because I’m usually quite uncomfortable with the idea of baring my soul to the world and documenting my every move online (the internet is such a scary place).

But I actually thought that tags would be a fantastic way to unveil bits and pieces of my life without sounding too.. self-obsessed? And it’s about time I take a break from reviews and inject some personal touches to this space of mine. 😉

For this post, I have picked a beauty tag which I’m always very excited to talk about (and ‘coz beauty inevitably forms part of the backbone of this blog). So here goes!

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Lipsticks are my obsession

1. Is your hair naturally curly or straight?

Naturally straight. It used to be very straight before I chopped off my hair when I was 15 and people would think that I rebonded it when I didn’t 🙂 Now it’s more wavy than straight because I bun up my hair a lot.

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Shampoo and conditioner I use!

2. Do you dye it yourself or go to a salon?

I get it done at a salon because I can’t dye for nuts.. and my hands won’t be able to reach some parts of my hair.

3. Do you wear the same style everyday, or do you change it?

I’m all about convenience when it comes to dressing up and it has always been the case since I started buying my own clothes. Is that considered as a style? But I love anything pink, floral and girly.

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Floral dresses, my ultimate luv

4. Do you do your own mani/pedi or go to a salon?

I… don’t do any mani or pedi.

*gasps*

Yes. I think it’s a complete waste of money and they won’t last more than a day on me anyway!

5. How often do you change your nail polish?

As above, no nail polish unless I’m in a destructive mood to scratch off paint from my nails.

6. Do you polish your toes in the winter or just the summer?

Never!

7. How long does it take for you to put on makeup?

It depends on how much time I have for makeup. Typically 10-15 minutes during morning rush hour (lighter makeup and sans highlighter and mascara) and 20-30 minutes on days I can afford to waste 😉

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What I use on a daily basis!

8. What do you do first? Face or eyes?

Used to be my face until I realised that it’s way faster to do my eyes first! Plus, the foundation that comes after helps to cover up all the annoying fallout!

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Collectibles 🙂

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Highlighters

9. Do you collect makeup or just buy what you need when you need it?

I unabashedly admit that I collect makeup so I have tons of unused products at home. Eye palettes and lipsticks are just too irresistible.

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My almost-complete collection of Urban Decay Revolution lipstick

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Some of my unused collection

10. How often do you wear false eyelashes?

I don’t wear them because eyelashes make a huge difference to one’s look (and I dislike the feeling of them weighing down my lids). I like my makeup to stay as natural as possible and I don’t wish to appear unrecognisable without my lashes 😉

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I rely on mascaras to enhance the look of my natural lashes. I alternate between Benefit and Urban Decay, sometimes using both (waterproof on upper lashes and non-waterproof on lower to prevent clumping). Also not forgetting my trusty Shiseido eyelash curler. I also own a Shu Uemura curler which works as great!

11. Do you do a full face of makeup everyday?

Yes, as long as I have the time for it. And especially if I am experiencing breakouts.

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Full makeup

12. Do you wear makeup when you’re home alone or with family?

Nope, I’m perfectly fine with my family and boyfriend seeing my no-makeup face. I’m not that self-conscious!

13. Will you leave the house without makeup?

Yes, definitely. I’ve done that a couple of times on days when my skin looks flawless HAHA. And also I don’t mind leaving the house without makeup if I’m commuting by car. But it’s a huge no-no if I’m heading to farther places from home like town by public transport.

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Face products I use to pamper my skin!

14. How many high-end products do you have?

I’m not a high maintenance person so I don’t seek brands like Gucci, Prada or LV. I think my most expensive accessories to date are my Coach wristlets (gifted to me by my cousin and boyfriend), Kate Spade bag and wallet (bought by my boyfriend when he was in US a few years back). My other high-end products are perhaps my more expensive cosmetics from Chanel, Dior and Guerlain.

15. Do you plan your OOTD every night or decide when you’re getting dressed?

I have to plan my OOTD the night before. Otherwise, I would be late for whatever I’m rushing off to.

16. How often do you change your handbag?

Rarely. I own tons of handbags but there’s only a handful (no pun intended) that I use regularly because of the size. I need a medium to large handbag to store my barang-barang hahaha.

17. What time do you wake up and go to sleep?

I’m nocturnal and I know it’s bad for health 😦 I typically sleep after 4am (latest was 7am) and wake up before 11am. That’s less than 5 hours of sleep each day and I’ve grown accustomed to this sleeping pattern. But what to do, I’m just so busy! 24 hours a day is not enough for me.

18. How often or when do you workout?

I try to do short exercises (sit ups, crunches, stretches, planking) every night before I sleep. I run at least 3 times a week if my schedule allows.

19. Left handed or right handed?

Right handed.

20. How tall are you?

165cm the last time I measured. I hope I’ve grown taller after all the stretching exercises 😀

21. Do you speak any foreign languages?

Is Cantonese foreign? I have studied basic French, Spanish and Malay but I doubt I can carry a conversation in those languages. I can understand a little though.

22. How many pets do you have?

One, for now. Planning on getting another dog soon (if the co-owner agrees to be more responsible)

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My lovely Chubs the Pomeranian 🙂

23. How often are you on WordPress?

Daily. WordPress is one of my pinned tabs and it’s also my homepage on my mobile Chrome.

24. Do you read comments posted on blogs?

I don’t really bloghop (too busy for that these days) but I do head straight to the comments after reading a post/news article because I enjoy reading alternative views 🙂

25. Do you keep a list of products to try as you see on other posts?

Not really, I pick up whatever that catches my attention when I go shopping.

Great Singapore Sale is happening right now at ZALORA! Head on to ZALORA now for the best deals and offers 🙂

26. How did you come up with your blog name?

It’s my name, duh! I wanted a name that truly represents me and eventually concluded that it should be my name. So unoriginal but yeah. Hahaha.

27. What kind of camera do you use for your photographs?

NX-2000 for product shoots and NX-mini for outdoors.

28. How often do you clean your house?

I sweep the floor everyday because my dog sheds a lot! I clean and scrub my bathroom perhaps once every two months.

29. What’s your favorite color?

Pink, definitely!

30. Do you swear?

Nope, because I feel that uttering vulgarities depreciates my self-worth. I’m not as liberal as the youth these days. I just can’t bring myself to swear. But admittedly I do swear when I’m extremely pissed off. Hahaha.

31. What are you doing with the rest of your day?

I’m just going to have cupcakes from Five One Degrees and torture myself with a bowl of spicy Korean instant noodles for dinner. 😀

… and that’s all I have for this tag!

I’m supposed to tag a few people to do this questionnaire but I really have nobody in mind. So I’m tagging all of you to do this! Let me know in the comments below if you’ve done it and I’ll hop over to your blog and take a look at your response! Whee, it’s gonna be so much fun!

Thanks for reading lovelies! 🙂

PAUL @ Westgate

Hey everyone!

It was pouring heavily everywhere in Singapore last Tuesday, leaving boyfriend and I stranded at Jurong East MRT station. We had planned to have dinner at Jcube (since we were going to catch a movie there later) but the rain had obviously thwarted our plan. Fortunately, the station is directly connected to two other malls so we had the option of dining at either of them. But we eventually chose Westgate because it was the nearest to where we stood and most importantly, it’s a CapitaLand mall where we can earn points for vouchers as we shop! 😀

We walked around the first level in search of an inexpensive place to eat and we stumbled upon a bright-lit and snazzy-looking restaurant complete with Parisian-style interior visible through its full glass window panels. The French restaurant has its capitalised name “PAUL” incorporated in the entrance door.

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PAUL Singapore

At first glance, the restaurant looks like some upscale restaurant strangely emplaced in a neighbourhood mall. Right next to it is a bakery of the same name. The entire establishment just looks so posh and Parisian, it totally tickled the Francophile in me ^_^ Curiosity prompted boyfriend to take a closer look at its digital menu boards but all he saw was a poster about their rather affordable lunch special (nothing much, just pastries and bread). There was no menu whatsoever at the entrance. But really, how expensive can a restaurant in the heartlands be, right?

Cashier

Cashier

Paul Singapore

Paul Singapore

In the restaurant, we noticed that less than half of the tables were occupied even though it was dinnertime. We were then given the regular menu and another for their dinner special. We were pleasantly surprised to see the price of the latter:

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WOAH! Exclusive to Westgate outlet only! (They have many other outlets in Singapore as well)

A regular main course alone ranges between S$20-$30++ (perhaps this explains the lack of natural dinner crowd) but you only need to pay a fraction of the price for this Dinner Special! Plus, it comes with brewed coffee or iced green tea. This is such a steal if you ask me! And these are not on the regular menu 🙂

Flipping through the regular menu made us crave for desserts, so on top of the set dinner we also ordered a macaron (wanted Tartelette Citron Meringuee but was told that they didn’t have any Meringuee that day) and Napoleon. We had them before our mains because our growling stomach couldn’t wait any longer.

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Raspberry Macaron and Millefeuille Nature (Napoleon)

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Raspberry Macaron (S$6.90++)

I was initially quite reluctant to order this because I didn’t want to spend S$6.90 on a small dessert like a piece of macaron. But when the macaron came, I instantly understood why it was priced that way. It was huge, probably 3 times the size of a regular macaron. I had strategically place my cup of iced green tea in the background of the first picture to show how big the macaron really is.

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Raspberry Macaron

Ever since Canelé pulled down its shutters permanently last year, I had been going to Antoinette (opened by Chef Pang who spearheaded the creation of desserts at Canelé) to get my macaron fix. But to do that I’d have to travel to the nearest outlet at Orchard. Well, not that it’s very far away from where I live but it’d be even better if I can buy equally good macarons in the west because that’s ultimately where I live, work and study. With PAUL’s macarons, I can safely say that it’s possible now! The macaron I had was just.. divine. It is sweet (some may find it too sweet but I like it the way it is!) and has a really chewy and fluffy centre. It’s not too dry and can be nicely cut in half with minimal crumbling.

Millefeuille Nature

Millefeuille Nature (S$6.80++)

Millefeuille Nature

Millefeuille Nature

The Napoleon is one of PAUL’s signature desserts and it got me hooked at first bite. It’s a crispy golden puff pastry filled with vanilla-flavored pastry cream and topped with a light apricot glaze. It’s simply phenomenal and I really enjoyed the flaky and crusty texture. The pastry is sweet too and very, very addictive. A must-try when you’re at PAUL!

After a rather long wait (would probably feel like eons if not for the desserts to keep our mouth busy), our mains were finally served.

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Poisson Grill̩ Sauce rose ̩pic̩e Рgrilled white fish wish roasted season veggie, spicy pink sauce and topped with mix salad

Poisson Grillé Sauce rose épicée

Poisson Grillé Sauce rose épicée

Pardon my poor photography – these pictures really don’t do the dish justice. It may seem like a small portion here but in reality it’s many thick slices of cod fish (?) stacked on top of one another. Really value-for-money. I almost couldn’t finish it and had to share some with boyfriend who wished he had ordered this instead of the braised beef. The fish was very tender and fresh, but a tad salty which can be salvaged with the spicy sauce (no, not spicy at all!).

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Boeuf Brais̩ servi avec une pani̬re boulang̬re et une salade Рbraised beef, potato, carrot, onion, leeks, country bread and mix salad

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Country bread and mix salad

The beef was cut in thick chunks and were relatively soft but in terms of flavour, this pales in comparison with the grilled fish dish. I felt that it was a little bland and the portion was also noticeably smaller so it wasn’t enough to satisfy boyfriend’s hunger. Hahaha. The bread was top-notch though!

Our total damage was $50.96 including all prevailing charges. It would be waaaay cheaper if we just ordered the set meal alone (less than S$35) but even so I thought I was paying less for high quality food 🙂 It’s an offer not to be missed! Unfortunately this deal is only good until 31 May. Hopefully the restaurant comes up with a new Dinner Special menu next month!

And that’s about it for PAUL. Do stay tuned for more food updates 🙂

Thanks for reading!

PAUL Singapore (Westgate)
3 Gateway Drive
#01-05
Singapore 608532
Tel (Bakery Shop): +65 6369 9082
Tel (Restaurant): +65 6369 9080
Operating hours: Mon – Sun: 10am – 9:30pm
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Achieve Your Ideal Body Shape with EnzSerum

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Hey everyone!

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I am now about 5 months into my low-carb diet and so far I’ve managed to maintain my physique despite gorging on food lately (no thanks to all the SG50 dining deals around). Of course, that’s only possible with the help of fat burning/weight-loss products because I’m just too busy for intensive workout as for now.

If you recall, it all started with a strict low-carb diet whereby I would totally abstain from refined carbohydrates like white rice, noodles and bread. Foreseeing that I wouldn’t have time for any workout due to my internship, I initially planned to stick to this diet until the end of my stint in June but sadly, it only lasted for two months because the radical changes I made to my eating habits visibly affected my immune system negatively. I found myself more susceptible to illnesses, falling sick really easily and my period also became really irregular. So I started ingesting little amount of carbs – usually bread – mainly to get my menstrual cycle back on track. But I gradually became more and more liberal in my diet (doesn’t help that lunches with colleagues are always at amazing cafés) and had put some weight back on. It may seem like a measly 2kg increase on the weighing scale but the fats around my waist had in fact thickened twofold (like literally 2 foldable layers of flab, haiz).

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Belly pre-EnzSerum: flabz not fabz, can’t even see the vertical line on my stomach anymore 😥

My body insecurities

Well, granted, I’m not exactly fat (the last time I measured I was a UK10 which is considered a “small” in some countries *chuckles*) but I’m definitely borderline chubby by Singaporean standards (or Asian in general) with lots of stubborn excess fats on various parts of my body – more specifically my arms and tummy. Despite being a rather active jogger since 3 years ago, I had only managed to squeeze into a UK8 dress at the minimum at one point (also caused by poor appetite during my busy days which made me lose a few inches of belly fats). Still, unsightly flabs would still be hanging from my underarms no matter how much exercise I do. I used to shy away from sleeveless tops because of this reason. I would feel so self-conscious in them and too ashamed to wave goodbye or hold on to the handgrips on the train. Although I’ve outgrown this insecurity a little, I still wish for toned arms to look good in pictures.

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Arms Pre-EnzSerum: fatfatfatfatfatfatfat

While running does play a great part in weight management, it is after all a whole body activity and it doesn’t really tone up or burn fats at targeted areas apart from my thighs and calves. Moreover, my ongoing internship makes it impossible for me engage in long vigorous exercise because I’d be too burnt out for anything else by the time I get home. I could only spare about 20 minutes each day for a quick workout (consists of 60 sit ups, 4 sets of 50 crunches, abdominal exercises like plank and etc.) which to be honest hadn’t shown much noticeable results on my concerned areas if not for a fat burning product.

Introducing EnzSerum

So what is this fat burning product that I mentioned? Thanks to JBeauty, I was given the opportunity to try out EnzSerum, a fat blasting serum essence, which can be used in conjunction with my workouts to help slim and tone the body by reducing unwanted fat. What’s amazing about this product is that it allows localised fat loss (burning the fats of a targeted area) which is exactly what I was hoping for.

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Formulated in France, the main ingredient of the product is Hydrogenated Phosphatidylcholine and it is derived from soy lecithin, a natural ingredient which is absolutely safe to use since it is obtained during the process of soy beans. It is capable of destroying the fat cell membrane and removing the triglyceride to kill fat cells. For those who don’t know what triglyceride is, it’s the end product of digesting and breaking down fats in meals (e.g. carbs) and essentially the main form of fat in the body. It’s not entirely a bad thing because everyone needs some fats to stay alive. But it’s definitely not good if your triglyceride level is sky-high because that may lead to heart disease and could multiply the bad effects of high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and diabetes. [source] It’s like having high cholesterol level, y’know?

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But having said that, this product is not a health or dietary supplement of some sort for lowering triglyceride levels. It’s used purely to combat stubborn fats in your body and can also be a weight-loss supplement for your diet and fitness goals.

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Thighs pre-EnzSerum: not too bad but can be leaner hehehe

What’s more, this product is strictly for external use only so nothing of it is to be taken orally (yay for the sceptics). All you need to do is to apply the product evenly on the surface of your targeted flabby areas and massage until the serum is fully absorbed by the skin. The product utilises the latest Nanotechnology to break down its active ingredients so that it could penetrate the skin cells easily. For better results (I think so la, haven’t tried it yet though!), it can also be used with body wrap for approximately 45 to 60 minutes.

My results

I have personally trialed EnzSerum for 2 weeks and already I can feel the effects of the product. My skin (especially tummy) now feels tightened and less flabby. I use this prior to my workout at night (daily before bedtime) and after my morning shower on my underarms, tummy and thighs.

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Arms

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Tummy

No change in thighs.

But to be honest, 2 weeks is too short a duration for me to realise its full advantages. I believe I would be able to see better results with prolonged use (especially with body wrap). Personally I think it will work way better with exercise (as always!)

Every application leaves a tingling sensation on the skin (something like that of Prickly Heat Snake Powder hahaha) that can last for up to 3 hours so as much as I’m tempted to apply lots of it at one time (not like it’s going to speed up the fat loss process but yeah kiasu is like that), I try not to because I don’t want to feel like I’m being burnt alive. But it provides extra cooling (on exposed areas) on windy days! 😀

Each bottle of EnzSerum should be able to last you for three months (or more if used sparingly hehe).

Why you should get EnzSerum

If you’re troubled by regional fat bulges (belly, waist, shoulder, armpit, hip, upper thighs, back and and unable to reduce fat despite restricted diet and regular exercises like me before, this is the one product you ought to try for a quick, easy and non-invasive way to eliminate unwanted fat.

Besides hastening the breakdown of fats (the primary use of EnzSerum), it also helps to increase your body’s metabolism rate and skin’s elasticity and tighten your body into the highly desirable ‘S’ shape. When used long-term, it reduces cellulite and moisturises your skin. Other benefits include water retention reduction, orange peel skin elimination and skin nourishment.

Here is the list of the ingredients and their functions:

Hydrogenated Phosphatidylcholine – destroy fat cell membrane and remove excess triglyceride (unwanted fat)

Coenzyme A and Vitamin BT (Carntine) – gently eliminate fatty acid and excess fat and reshapes the body

Carnosine – counters the effects of free radicals, provides oxidation, glycation and anti-aging properties

Borage Seed Oil – used to treat eczema and nearly any kind of dermatitis or rash

Gotu Kola Extract – decreases inflammation and blood pressure in veins, increases collagen production

And yup, that’s about it! 🙂

Give EnzSerum a shot if you want a trim body fast and (almost) effortlessly!

 

EnzSerum

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