In the meantime, here are some pictures of the wonderful food and my outfit for the evening.  (We were so engrossed in eating and chatting that we forgot to take more pictures!)

This was me a couple of years ago. I have been on the heavy side for most of my life since I was 7. I ballooned till 75kgs at my peak and that was the point where I decided it was time to do something about it. One day, I jumped out of bed and started to run 2.4km around the track, every other day.

It was a huge deal as I grew up cursing the person who invented this stupid 2.4km fitness test.

Every time there was a 2.4km trial (practice session for the test), I always failed them and had to go for remedial sessions. Remedial classes for the most torturing subject in school! I would take 4 hours Chinese remedial over 30 minutes 2.4km remedial! Taking the actual 2.4km test was an emotional experience every year. I would bawl my eyes out at the end of the run because I would push myself too hard just to scrape a pass.

Through my run, I managed to lose some weight, but it was tough to keep up doing something that I didn’t like. Eventually I stopped running and stagnated again. It was only a couple of years later that I started to notice how my body worked and found a way that I could easily manage my weight without torturing myself.

My simple strategy is to eat less calories per day but eat many more times. Weightloss = output > input. Tweak either the output or input to effect your weight loss.

And so I ate less, but I made sure that I do not go below 1200 calories (my dietician worked this out for me) as this would put my body in starvation mode and make me fatter in the future. I do allow myself to eat more than this of course, but when I know I need to lose weight, I will restrict calories to 1200.

Junk food that I eat

I was always snacking and eating something. Eating constantly made it easier to not overeat at meal times while driving up my metabolism. I ate so many times and anything I like, down to Ben & Jerry’s icecream and roasted pork. In fact, I had some friends think that I was having some sort of disorder just because I seem to be always eating but am getting skinnier at the same time.

The truth is – it is really just a simple manipulation of daily caloric intake.

I took to this like how fish take to water. It was so easy to just eat less compared to bringing myself to run and gym on a consistent basis. Don’t misunderstand, I still do exercise; I swim, love to take long walks and I climb a lot of stairs at work (like seriously a lot) but cardio for weightloss to me is so difficult compared to the technique of “eating less”.  I exercise to stay healthy but I love to use this weightloss hack to lose weight.

What is your own weightloss hack? Do share with me in the comments below!

Dionis, signing off.

Charles has been a wonderful friend to me. I knew him when I was only 18 years old at the NUSSU Union Camp. He was my orientation group councillor. Despite the fact that he belonged to the pageant group (when you are in pageant, you’re perceived to be the princes and princesses in the school), he was always sincere and down-to-earth.

He would talk, interact and goof around with my group (the geeky ones) without any airs at all. We were extremely surprised because we were under the impression that good looking people are kinda proud somewhere. We kept in touch on and off but never had the opportunity to be on close terms.

Fast forward a few years later, fate decreed that Charles needed to check out one of Cleo’s magazine columns to see if his products were in line with the feature objectives. And me, being an avid collector of magazines happened to have that particular issue and I left it at my shop for him to pick up. He said it was through this Cleo magazine that he got acquainted with the editors which opened the doors to him becoming one of Cleo’s top 50 bachelors and sincerely thanked me for it. He is way too kind with his words as I hardly did anything except to dig under a dusty stack of magazines. LOL. However, it was really through this that we started to reconnect and get to know each other beyond the “senior-junior” friendship.

Me being cheeky.

It helps that we live very close to each other and he always welcomes me to hang out at his place. Haha, sounds super scandalous, but we are just very good friends. He’s like the big brother that I never had, always looking out for me and checking in on me. He gives me relationship advice from a guy’s POV which is very important because girls and guys can think very differently. (You don’t say… LOL)

Charleswanmushi Moving Branch

Charles is also the wonderful photographer for the masthead image on my blog. He has modelled quite a bit so he knows how to capture the awesome angles of a person. That’s him above moving the branches around to compose the image. Very professional while I stand and snap random pictures around. I am very grateful for his help in composing and taking the pictures. He even edited them and removed the unflattering bits here and there. Will be posting up the rest of the pictures soon.

Thank you @Charleswanmushi for everything!

Vicki is my good friend and sister that I treasure greatly. We met while we were attending coaching courses together. Being the geek girls in our group, we found many topics to yak about. (She the web designer, me the comp engineer)

Somehow the combination of the booksmart (fine, bookworm ) me and the streetsmart her resulted in quite a bit of chemistry and we went on to become close friends and business partners.

We paired up to create the (in)famous AWARE Shut Up and Sit Down T-Shirts that went crazily viral in 2009. I just came back from a Guangzhou business trip and suddenly she gchat-ed me at 3am in the morning about the Tees and asked if I would like to partner up with her to produce them. Back then it was a real challenge, because I needed to produce hundreds of PINK coloured tees in less than 10 days. I don’t produce in-house tees in my factory and I would need to order them somewhere that could meet the colour and timeline requirements.

I was terrified but after thinking for 3 minutes, I said, why not? Aiya, don’t think so much. Do first then worry. So that period of time was intense. We had the media calling us, twitter account exploding with enquiries, suppliers after suppliers telling me pink tees in 10 days is impossible. Luckily she handled all the PR and orders side while I focused on the production. Hand in hand we gritted through and produced the shirts in time. I am still amazed till this day by this crazy thing we did together!

Our birthdays are also one week apart and we like to have a combined birthday party to celebrate our 25th every year. Everyone’s 25 when they attend our party! And this is how we look like the next day after our parties…

What happened last night?

Hahaha, ramblings aside, I really want to thank Vicki for helping me edit and beautify the header picture. She also gave me some advice on my overall blog design which I am also grateful for. She runs her own design boutique and at the same time has a little craft shop (really cute stuff) going on. Do check them out!

I count my blessings that I have met them both and connected in so many ways that really add so much more colour to my life.

To friendship and many more awesome years ahead!

Cheers

Dionis

Yesterday, I was in Malaysia with my family. Somehow, I am not sure if it was due to the weather or I already caught the flu bug, I suddenly developed a fever and felt terrible. The moment I reached back home, I ate some cherry tomatoes and went to bed. (I ate the tomatoes because I think they are going to spoil soon and they were not exactly relevant to helping me feel better.)

It was in my flu-laden dreams that I started to review my life. You know, it is always during these times of discomfort when you start feeling sorry about yourself and get a little bit depressed. It is only natural and a passing phase, I hope.

I’ve been blogging since the end of 2002 and the blogs have undergone many transformations. It started off as a diary to document the trivial stuff that happened everyday. A blog entry literally went:

Upon hindsight, it does seem a little silly back then, but honestly speaking, I was 19 years old and what could you expect from a 19 year old? Thank goodness, I did grow up as I grew older. My blog went from mindless blogging, to sharing of technical stuff (literally programming routers and sharing Java and C codes), to sharing my thoughts and documenting some important events in my life.

Then I stopped. Mainly because I got involved in after school activities (legal ones! I’m a good girl :p) like starting a non-profit tech based organisation in my final school year and I didn’t want my professors to track me and think that I wasn’t doing my school projects. And I stopped because I had nothing that I could share anymore.

Then the years passed by. 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and now 2012.

The important events, my thoughts and realisations in these few years have literally turned up blank in my memory, except for a few pictures here and there on Facebook. There were no more documentation of any sort. There were a couple of entries on this domain, but they were not meaningful at all.

Yes, “meaningful” being the keyword here. The epiphany that came to me while I was tossing and turning in my bed.

My Afro Hair - 2005

So at the break of dawn at 6am yesterday,  (I was up this early because I hardly slept the night before from my flu.) I decided that it’s time to get back into some blogging action. I will start off on a clean slate and not let the past entries influence my current ones.

I want to crystalize my realisations, talk about life, talk about food, talk about acting, whine, de-stress, talk about anything under the sun. You know what, I just realised that my new intentions aren’t that different from the ones that I had when I started my first blog in 2003. Zomg. But hey, still show me some love and smile any way

Dionis, signing off.

I decided to download it and immediately I was hooked. I found myself playing when I wake up, playing when I eat, playing when I watch tv, playing whenever I take a break. Zomg. Literally.

I was wondering to myself why was the game so addictive and concluded the following:

• You get amazed by how some of your friends can REALLY draw.
• You get entertained by how some of your friends CAN’T REALLY draw.
• The fun really begins when you get your colour palettes.
• The game really fills those little pockets of time that you have here and there. Each drawing and guess is really short and you can do it anytime you like.

Personally for me, it is really entertaining to draw and laugh (I know I’m evil but you gotta admit the WTF moments that you have when you try to guess those impossible drawings) at the drawings of mine and the rest. It is super awesome bonding when I take a jibe at my brother’s drawings while he criticizes mine till no end. Even mom gets to guess and dad gets to raise his eyebrows.

I have since bought 5 colour palettes and purchased the paid version of the app. I am a fangirl and a picasso in making. (right. Lol). Hey, I have improved a lot since I first started. My good friend, Vicki can testify to that. From shitty to pretty decent is a huge jump! Btw, she alongside with Charleswanmushi generously helped to beautiful the blog header above. Will do a proper credit to them in a separate entry.

Anyway, after the huge hype, I think some people might be interested to check out my drawings. I have put together some of my best drawsome moments below! Enjoy

Decided on a hearty brunch today. As I woke up late, I chose to have both my breakfast and lunch at the same time since I have the extra calories. People sometimes ask me if I find it tiring to count calories and if it is very restrictive on my diet.

My answer is Yes, it is pretty tiring to key it into my iPhone via the MyFitnessPal app but what I realise is that when you count for a long enough period of time, you sort of have a mental gauge of how much calories you consume a day and you can skip the actual counting itself because you kind of know how much you have chalked up instinctively.

As for diet restriction, on the contrary, I find that my diet is much better these days. I get to eat anything that I want, albeit in smaller portions. I do have a preference for healthier food but when I have those insatiable cravings for cakes, sweets, icecream, fatty stuff, I know that I can eat those as long as I keep within my calorie budget. The best thing that came out of this calorie restriction diet is that I can really eat freely and guilt free. You know sometimes you have that, “oh damn it, I have eaten way too much today and I feel so terrible” thoughts which makes you feel really lousy and guilty? With my calorie budgeting method, I find that I do not have such thoughts that often anymore and I actually ENJOY my food.

So, back to the main topic today – Peanut Butter and Banana toast on a diet. Yes, you can enjoy your high calorie sweet stuff even when you are trying to lose weight. Just make sure that your daily intake does not go past your budgeted calories.

For those who are interested in the caloric count of this particular brunch that I made for myself, let me share the recipe and calories below:

Tadah! Really simple and the entire menu costs you approximately 550 calories. Not bad for a hearty meal

Decided to cook myself a nice dinner of scallops and peas today. Very simple 10 minute dinner that you can fix for yourself. Low in calories and yet very very yummy.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this simple recipe. Bon Appetit!

Made broccoli soup for dinner over the weekend. Love how it is so creamy without milk and cream. Check out the recipe here.

I made Pandan Chiffon Cake today. I must say that for a first attempt, I have done well. Now it is just to figure out how to make the cake fluffier and more moist as well as prevent the middle portion from collapsing too much. I <3 these radioactive looking cakes!

Here’s a batch of pictures for your enjoyment.… 

Picture of room before the revamp:

In the process:

Unveiling the new room

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Little details to cosy up the space:

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TADAH!

Hope you guys enjoyed the pictures. It was 7 weeks of hardwork overhauling the entire room. I’ve been hoarding and piling up stuff since 2006 and the mountain of stuff in the ugly bookcases in my room is astounding. I literally huffed and puffed to set up the new furniture, cut out the little vinyl stickers, sorted and threw away the little items. (Unfortunately I still have one box in the guest room still waiting for me to sort/throw out but yeah, at least the major stuff is complete)

Some lessons that I learnt:

1. Stop buying unnecessary items. If you don’t think you will ever use it, don’t waste your money!
2. Always put things back from where you took them out from. Isn’t this exactly what your mom always told you? Until you are at the receiving end of having to clear up your own mess, this advice probably falls flat
3. Stop hoarding! If you haven’t used the item or looked at those secondary school physics textbooks for 10 years, what makes you so sure that you’ll look at it in 20years? Donate, recycle or throw them out.
4. Sort items out according to colour / types. Hair stuff at one area, important stuff at another. This will help you find your stuff easily and raise the probability that you’ll use them.

I’m really happy that I FINALLY got down to packing this monster and I can say that I’m really proud of myself. All the hard work have paid off I would like to take this opportunity to thank my brother and Alex for helping me fix up the furniture and drill the walls + what nots and of course my Mom for helping out to sort the bookcase and Dad for providing the resources.

Feel free to share links of your own bedroom makeover in the comment section below!