An afternoon at Singapore Zoo

My first full day in Singapore and we crossed off one of our major to-dos here with a trip to the zoo. After an immense trek through the enormous range of habitats and wildlife, which resulted in some very sore feet, I can only say that in one word the zoo is EPIC.

Everything is quite open, with little monkeys in some of the trees right up next to the footpath, a orangutan walk where they swing about in the trees above you, and a biodome kind of enclosure with lemurs, sloths, butterflies and hilariously cute mouse deer running about, amongst other things. I have to admit the baboon enclosure did make me quite nervous as the wall seemed quite small for the adults squabbling about in the water below!

A shout-out to my mate Douc Langur (who was unfortunately too busy for me to grab a photo of).

Dwarf caiman. So cute!

Flipping the frizz: my Bio-Ionic permanent hair straightening results

After much hmm-ing, ahh-ing and researching I recently decided to take the big leap and and get my hair permanently straightened. With an upcoming holiday in the tropics the thought of having to deal with my leonine hair on a daily basis in the humidity was too awful to bear, so I booked an appointment at Venus Secret Hair & Beauty in New Farm for their Bio-Ionic treatment.

Upon arrival this evening the lovely hairdresser Maggie talked me through each step of the process, explaining what each treatment would do to my hair and the expected result. I also had to complete a questionnaire basically to gauge what kind of chemicals my hair had been exposed to (dye, shampoos etc) before work began.

Much like Rome wasn't built in a day the process of perfecting my enormous fuzzball was fairly arduous clocking in at four hours. Here are the obligatory before and after shots (and I seriously can't believe how minging my natural brushed out hair looked):

The difference in the way my hair feels now is amazing, it's light and feels well nourished not to mention it's SO shiny. Of course there are rules for the first few days of the new 'do: no getting it wet, no tucking it behind my ears (causes kinkage) and definitely no tying my hair back. For a look that is guaranteed to dry straight and will require relatively little maintenance over the next year before the regrowth makes an appearance, I think $325 and some small rules are well worth the hours I'll save not wrangling with the straightening iron.

See here for more info on the salon I visited and the Bio-Ionic treatment.

Life in Instagram: November

I'm sharing my Instagram pics for last month a little earlier than expected for this simple reason:

I don't know how much time I have left with my phone behaving rather well in such a state so it's best I get official business out of the way ASAP. I think my internal reaction upon dropping my phone Thursday afternoon could be best summed up by this video:

Anyway, onto the rest of the month:

I got given a free ticket to Coldplay's spectacular show at Suncorp Stadium - for being the greatest friend in the world a person could have, obviously!

A gentleman caller

I did some healthy cooking, this being a large frittata. I still think cooking is boring.

The melancholy coconut. You would be melancholy too, if you knew your brains were going to be scooped out and eaten.

Bless her face but did she really require a whole magazine?

Saturday walks to buy chicken with my brother

My forehead and I went to the bay one Sunday

Got myself a new keyboard for $50. Thanks, Gumtree!

My beloved car became too unwell to drive - first a flat tyre then the battery and engine dying completely - hence I'm blogging at close to 2am in dread of having to catch two trains to work at 6:30am tomorrow

November was a month of ups and downs, unfortunately more downs for me than I liked. Tomorrow I will be officially resigning from work which is a daunting and exciting prospect after two and a half years of following the same routine. I feel like it's (cliche as it is to say) closing one chapter of my life and moving onto the next. This time next month (next year!!) I'll be somewhere in Malaysia on the lam. First things first though; to bed, work and getting a tiny dose of zzz's before training like a pleb in the morning. 

Life in Instagram: October

My last couple of weekends could only be described as completely exhausting: two weekends ago I spent Saturday morning and all day Sunday doing my Q-Ride course and obtaining my motorcycle licence, and squeezed in a trip down to the Gold Coast on Saturday afternoon for the first leg of this year's Rugby Sevens world tournament. Firstly, a picture to sum up the utterly maniacal atmosphere of costumes, drinking and sport unique to Sevens events:

As you can see, I opted for an easy costume and wore my sailor dress and a Fijian flag men's shirt I received free with a stupidly expensive rugby shirt purchase I made over there earlier this year. My workmate Martin was excited to get a chance to wear his Wallabies shirt. Speaking of Wallabies, I went to their match last weekend (not to see them but the All Blacks of course). Unfortunately, it resulted in a draw, but I did meet this handsome young man in the city the day before:

(DAN CARTER!!!!!!!!)

Of course, last Saturday was my birthday also but seeing as I chose to prioritise (union before everything) we celebrated in sort of an ongoing fashion all month, which included a Snog, Marry, Avoid? themed do:

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Plus plentiful cake, outings and pressies:

I came home from work to find my brother had bought this little guy for me! (My last beloved fish died a couple of months ago and if you have teenaged brothers you can understand how thoughtful a present this was.)

Before I go I have to mention that after about six months of hard work weekly, our trivia team The Expendables finally won the grand final - the same night we won the weekly event - and walked away with $550! And to prove we weren't flukers, we backed it up with another $50 win last week. To see what a winning trivia team looks like, see below:

This wasn't what I was going to write about when I began my post, but I think such an overall quality month should be added to the record! I'll be spending November and December with my head kept relatively down low, as I'll be saving for a trip to Asia for Christmas and New Year. Of course we have Melbourne Cup coming up next week so I'm sure there'll be some interesting attire to make comment on then. I'm currently looking into buying my first motorbike so I'm sure a wishlist will be on it's way here soon!

Kia ora, Aotearoa!

Almost two months have passed since my last visit to beautiful New Zealand, so what better time to finally post my photos up?

When my (now ex-) boyfriend and I visited the Land of the Long White Cloud last year we did a fairly luxurious trip down the coast to the bottom of the South Island and back on an inland route via Queenstown to Christchurch. We drove a brand spanking new Toyota Corolla, and stayed in some rather expensive hotels (by NZ standards at least - so about $4.50/night in real money). This time for a change my friends and I opted for the cheaper alternative and drove a Jucy camper van along the approximately 1,300km drive from Auckland to Christchurch.

Living in a van was a 'interesting' experience and all I can say is, if you don't mind holding your wee in for five hours until the person sleeping in front of the door wakes up you'll be fine; otherwise, you're gonna have a bad time. If you value personal space - you're gonna have a bad time. If walking to the public showers/toilets in freezing temperatures isn't something you feel you can deal with - you're gonna have a bad time. Anyway, it's an experience I can now say I've done and never have to do again.

Aside from that, highlights of the trip included: doing the 192m high Skywalk around the outside of the SkyTower in Auckland, extreme Mario Kart-esque luging in the rain at Rotorua (sadly I didn't get any pictures but you can see the luging track here), wandering through the middle of an active volcano (which erupted just a week after we visited!), visiting some bloody impressive gardens in Hamilton, snowboarding and me accidentally stumbling across a group of seals while I was taking photos at a coastal lookout.