Collection 5!

Hi girls,
Apologies for the delay. Most are one-piece only items, so do sms me - 9797 7321 - or drop me an email - evelinegan@yahoo.com - if you want to reserve them.

Note: All the pieces here are specially marked down by about 30 per cent from the original retail price, so you'll have to pay for postage delivery if I don't meet you at work, or for a cuppa. :)
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COLLECTION 5
Item 1: Delish Denim Frock
Price: $30
Material: Denim
Size: Free Size
Bust: Up to 36 inches
Length: 34 inches (without straps)
Armhole: 20 inches
Pocket height: 5.5 inches

Available in acid wash, light and medium blue.

Country-style denim frock with embroidered swirls and mesh details. Cute pockets for you to stash your stuff.

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Item 2: Little Black Jacket
Price: $28
Material: Cotton lace
Size: Free Size
Bust: 36-38 inches
Length: 17.5 inches
Armhole: 16 inches

Black only.

Cropped lace jacket with shoulder pads (they’re not huge so don’t worry about looking like your mum during her disco hey-days). It’s something you can wear for work or play. Shoulder pads can and should be unstitched and removed if you already have Michael Phelps’ shoulders.

(Inner portion where shoulder pads are.)

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Item 3: Femme Fatale Little Black Dress

Price: $22 only!
Material: Stretchy Lace
Size: Free sizeBust: 32 inches (but can stretch)
Arm length (from shoulder): 31 inches
Length: 31 inches
Armhole: 19 inches

Available in black.

A Little Black Mini Dress with a (dominatrix) twist - Love the power shoulder sleeves. Would have kept one for myself if I have less tummy and post childbirth bulges. You can pair it with an inner slip (see last photo). Best thing is that the lace material is not the flimsy type – it’s quite hardy and can stretch well.

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Item 4: Hoo’s There?
Price: $20
Material: Cotton

Bust: 38inches

Length: 33 inches

Armhole: 20 inches
Height of owl: 13 inches

Available in grey only. (LAST PIECE!)

Bling-bling oversized owl tee. Have you owned your first owl tee? If you haven’t, you should! They’re so bloody cute. I like that you can wear this tee with skinnies or simply on its own as a sack dress.

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Item 5: Flutter By
Price: $30
Material: Chiffon
Size: Free Size
Bust: 38 inches
Length: 30.5 inches (without straps)
Armhole: 20 inches
Sleeve (from shoulder): 12 inch

Available in black
Floaty, romantic chiffon tunic with embroidered flowers and butterfly. Comes with lining. If you’re around my height (1.63m), you can wear it as a short dress and pair it with heels.

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Item 6: Chiffon Dress
Price: $25
Material: Chiffon and cotton
Size: Free Size-
Bust: up to 40 inches
Length: 34 inches
Armhole: 18 inches

Available in beige (I messed up the photos of the beige color piece. Let me know if you're interested in the beige piece) and light grey
Great for those feel-fat, feel-bloated days. Sweet on its own, or with a belt.

Akan Datang!

Hi girls, a few of you asked what happened to my "blogshop"? Why haven't I been updating my collection?

I haven't closed shop.

I've just been really swamped with I-dunno-what and with the School Holidays Blues (read my previous post) in full swing now, I can't seem to get a breather!

But I'll be back soon, promise! In the meantime, here's a sneak peek of what you might be expecting in the next collection. Look out for it!

Ulcer-causing spouses

They call it the Retired Husband Syndrome (RHS). No, it's not a joke. The syndrome was first identified by Japanese psychiatrist Dr Nobuo Kurokawa.

Apparently, more than half of women in Japan literally fall sick from having to hang out with their retired husbands. I read about one poor woman who developed stomach ulcers, slurred speech and rashes when her husband retired from a high-flying position, and began using the same bossy attitude at home. Seriously.

It's something I can identify with.

While the Japanese aunties suffer from RHS, I get the School Holiday Blues Synrome in March, June, Sept and then Nov/Dec - when the teacher-husband gets his long breaks from school.

While I don't get stomach ulcers (hopefully not, since I won't really know for sure unless I go for a checkup) or rashes, I get frazzled - from the extra mess lying around - and maybe a sore throat or two. That's probably due to the more frequent shouting matches.

The Mon-to-Fri routine that Jubi and I had stuck to for ages would be thrown off-track. And after you finally tuck the talkative wee one into bed, you can't get down to your ever-growing but never shrinking pile of stories/ household chores without being 1. distracted (hey, make me a cup of coffee) or 2. annoyed (why are you always checking your email/ doing other things instead of accompanying me?).

Of course I get along with the spouse - we had dated for donkey years prior to getting hitched. But the thing is that many men I know remain the same, do the same thing year after year, while women evolve to juggle more roles and responsibilities - look after baby, please husband, juggle career, please boss, handle the household chores, oh, and at the same time, look good while doing all those stuff, as most husbands would request.

On a cheerier note - thank goodness for me the school holidays don't last forever.

Jubi and Barney

Jubi's second birthday came and went so quickly.

If not for photographs, I'd almost forgotten how she looked like as a bald, toothy baby.

Looking through those old baby photos makes me sad - she had left babyhood so quickly, and soon, like me, she'll grow up. Now I understand why my dear mother appeared so upset when I told her I was going to marry. It meant her baby had grown up.

Looking through those old baby photos also reminded me of the grim meaning of mortality. When Jubi was one, my beloved greatgrandmother still existed. Now she is two, and my chor chor lies within a little urn in church.

Anyway, enough about all these depressing mumbo-jumbo. Check out what happened at her birthday.

The Romance of Jubi and Barney.

It was the wee one's second birthday on Sept 19, 2009. And her indulgent parents had prepared a mega birthday bash involving a 1.5kg Barney (her favourite character) cake, and .. a surprise.

More than 30 family members turned up with presents, which of course, delighted the wee one. All was fine and dandy, until...

Barney popped out (yep, that's Gary in that fake pirated suit which he rented for a cool 100 bucks) from the laundry room, and scared the living daylights out of the little girl.

We thought she would be so delighted that she would immediately run and hug her favourite purple dinosaur. What a mistake, as you can tell from these pictures.

Thanks to her father, she had nightmares, and clung to my arm like a koala while she slept that night.

Now, she no longer dares venture into the laundry room alone.

Bow to me minion, I, your madam (or sir), pay you $350 a month!

Originally, I had wanted to volunteer this piece to the paper's Voices page. But I decided against it, cos well, I did not want to embarrass myself.

Anyway, I wrote this last week after witnessing several ugly incidents between a relative (shan't name names) and her domestic helper.

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With the arrival of my baby two years ago, a good number of relatives, including my mother, was appalled when I told them I had no intention of getting any domestic help.
Coming from a privileged family who relied on live-in foreign domestic helpers to wash the laundry, prepare meals and pick up after us, their reactions were understandable.

“How can you cope? You’ve never lifted a finger to do any housework?” several aunts and my mother had repeatedly asked me.

Well, to be honest; they were right. Juggling the nitty-gritty’s of domestic chores, a wailing baby and work has not been easy for me. But what they did not know is that I find juggling the “madam-maid” role a lot tougher.

At 26 then, I wasn’t sure if I was up to it. I was also put off by the idea of being responsible for someone else’s livelihood, after witnessing so many negative employer examples.

Many people I know claim that they treat their maids well, but do they really?
A few believe they’re benevolent employers because they give their maids days off. “She (the maid) doesn’t know how lucky she is to be working for me,” one person whom I know very well told me.

Of course, compared to the Madam-from-hell who ill-treats her maid, an employer who gives his domestic helper a monthly day off seems like an angel.

But what prompted the self-righteous proclamation?
About 170,000 domestic workers in Singapore do not get a regular day-off, according the Day Off Campaign website, aimed at getting local employers to give their live-in maids regular personal time off.

Over the years, we’ve had several of such – something which I find ridiculous in a country which calls itself “gracious” and has a literacy rate of 96 per cent, according to 2008 figures from Singapore Department of Statistics’ website.

Why do we need campaigns or anyone to tell us that?
Isn’t a day off a basic labour right?
And isn’t it commonsense that everyone – especially those whose work involve physical labour or chores – need regular time off to recharge?

Many Singaporeans I know cite unwanted pregnancies or mixing around with bad company as some of their top reasons for their reluctance to let their maids have off-days. Over here, employers stand to lose their $5,000 security bond if their domestic helpers become pregnant or run away.

Granted that no one can guarantee that your maid won’t give you any problems (you can’t even ensure that with your own kids), but this should not affect the fair manner in which you should treat her.

Like all of us, a domestic helper – no matter how much less educated or privileged she is compared to you – should be entitled to regular rest days.

And how she chooses to spend her rest day – be it going out with friends or simply bumming at home– is also her entitlement as a human being. And no, I don’t think you’re a particularly model employer just because you give your worker something which is a basic entitlement for a human being.

Bow to me minion, I, your master, pay you $350 a month!
I want to talk about two incidents that I’ve witnessed. While they do not physically constitute maid abuse, I find them emotionally disturbing in this day and age.

One unfortunate incident occurred with an older relative. After my great grandmother passed on, her bed was left vacant. Eventually, it was taken over by my mother’s former maid.
Several older relatives learnt about it, and remarked that the maid should be sleeping on a mattress on the floor and leave the bed vacant. I asked one of them why.

Her answer: maids should not be pampered and so she should not sleep on a bed. C’mon, even my mother’s pet cats sleep on beds.

The other incident occurred in a supermarket. It’s been years and I have not been able to erase the image from my mind.

A middle-aged woman, who was grocery shopping with her daughters and maid, was riling and swearing at her maid – presumably an inexperienced one – for pushing the supermarket trolley too slowly. '

But when the maid hastened her pace, she was yelled at for walking in front of her Madam.
When I caught the woman’s eye and frowned at her, she turned around and yelled at her maid for being lazy and stupid, as if to show who’s Boss.

I was disgusted.

While I do not believe in mollycoddling domestic helpers or suffer substandard work from them just because they come from less privileged backgrounds – that itself is also a form of discrimination - I do not think it is necessary to yell derogatively at your maid to get things done. Or to have them sleep on the floor, so you can assert your authority as the boss.

This is especially so if you do not do this to other people (or even your pets).

If you don’t yell haughty instructions at your kids or colleagues, why would you do so at the maid? Unless, of course, long after those eras of slavery, you’re still unable to shake off the master-slave mentality.

And while you're still living in the middle-ages, please don't tell me what a fabulous "madam" you are. I won't be convinced.

Exciting Times

These are exciting times. An hour after Jubi's second birthday bash ended, her little cousin - my brother's kid - popped out. Presently, the whole family's in a mess and grouchy from lack of sleep because of the new baby.

I've been helping out my sister in law in the mornings too. While the wee one is very cute, he's certainly strengthened my resolve not to have any more kids. I'll be posting several stuff up soon - Jubi's bday bash photos, some pictures of the wee one and my thoughts on ... maids.

Ta!

I want to pluck my brows

Hello everyone,
So sorry about the dead silence for the past weeks.

For those at work, you'll know how terribly hectic everything has been ever since the weekend revamp. To make matters worse, I was down with hives - bad allergy that resulted in a nasty rash all over my body and face. Because it affected my throat and airways, was asked to go to A&E by an overly paranoid GP.

Agh. And the dear spouse had a week's holiday from work - what could be worse, really? Which meant, on top of juggling work, kid, hives, housework and my unplucked brows, I had another "kid" to handle.

But I don't think I should whine too much. A lot of other people have it worse - like the poor old office cleaning auntie who limps a little when she pushes a trolley full of (some of my) rubbish. So there, I shall try to be thankful and happy. And promise to update newer stuff - there's quite a lot - after I finally neaten the unruly bush above my eyes.

Stay healthy :)