twins here again....noticed many HK girls tend to have thick dark eye brows.....eg cecilia cheung and few TVB actresses. while their tw counterparts have a totally diff look...more pale, and flat features....like that kind of typical "ling dai yu" fair beauty look? 

Twins - Ah Gil (left) and Charlene 

Ah-Sa and Ah-Gil

being national day, there are lots of activities and fireworks.....and free concerts. yes, in the world of mando pop nowadyas, free concerts are a common thing for promotions. so bad in tw, that if its a paying concert, nobody be willing to pay a cent to watch a quality show!....

anyway, luckily in spore, its not like that, pple are willing to part with $200 to see some big scale live entertainement, just that dont expect them to get excited of express themseves at the concert ...haha.

one of the free concerts will feature TWINS.....a very popular 2 girl group from HK.
when i first know of them in 2002 during a trip to HK, i thot they were just commercial crap....but its 2005 now and they are still surviving very well. they cant really sing for nuts but the record company has managed to market them so well, that many people find them cute and nice to look at. they are always smiling, wearing nice clothes and posing in pleasing way.

sometimes the x factor is really quite unexplainable. ah sa is not particularly pretty but u wouldnt get sick of her looks. she is so call the cute one. Ah Gil is the pretty one but a bit more reserve sometimes and quieter. but with her beauty she can get away with any sloppy clothes and still look good. just like sammi cheng.
these 2 girls work almost non-stop for 3-4 yrs and are seen almost everyday on the media be it for movies, music, concerts, ads, events etc. and still give you their brighest smile!

there is something about these HK girls that make them look cool. unlike tw female stars, the HK girls can wear as tom boyish as they like, something that covers all their assets and still look like a STAR! tw stars always have to look cute or sexy or the boys wouldnt like them. they just dun have that "qi zhi" (charisma?)
if a tw girl singer comes out wearing a baggy t shirt, cargo pants and sneakers i think that star will not sell.

but hk its different, with nice make up and cool looking hair....everyone can look like a million dollars. for example, there is an ad by mariam yeung on tv showing her skate boarding for a chinese medicine ....she wears a boyish shirt , loose pants with bright purple/red longish sassy hair...and she looks great or cool at least. twins have worn some pretty mis match stuff but still forgivable.

thats the thing about HK, they work very hard and the harder they work, the more energy level they have. the city always has a buzz or vibe around it. a very cosmo place. i have to agree on that, sometimes the more work i have, the more energy i get. and u dun feel like stopping.
but a totally relaxed day would make me even more sleepy.

i guess the marketing people behind twins are prob quite brilliant too....from a typical girl group that i think nothing off to their concert tonight that i am curious to watch! hmmm....power of the media and commercial people nowadays.

Its Aug 9 again!

Its Aug 9 again.....the birthday of the country that i was born, bred (is there such a word? haha) and raised. haha. but do i feel any patriotism? well, not really..just enjoy the day off from work. but come to think of it, spore's success today is not easy to come by. but prob most of us take that for granted. there are pros and cons living in this somewhat plastic country.

i went to bintan 3 weeks back, on the ferry back to spore, there was an awful irritating immigration video warning pple about what to declare, what kinda of tax on cigarettes, liquor...and of course death for drugs. its such a typical spore govt style video!! i mean, must they be so lor sor? the presentation of the video was bad too, using a boring powerpoint style format with cut and paste pictures and a damm lousy narrator! prob one of the male custom officer. with that boring layman spore style english. i mean this kind of vid is broadcast to many tourists etc...how can the standard be so bad? further more, the video is about warning pple coming into spore....is that what you call a welcome? before i can visit yr country, already got 20 rules for me to follow. i dunno lah, i felt a bit paiseh to see that. maybe the narration could be a bit softer and friendlier etc.

i can just imagine the boring, maybe local grad guy behind the video talking in his monotonous voice. are they so cheap to just use their own staff for a corp video?

maybe in other countries, the customs wouldnt bother to say too much before u enter the country. some things are obviously illegal ....... spore is so systematic , sometimes overboard...it may be quite efficient but now...its loosing out to many countries cause its boring to be here.

hope in the near future, the govt would be more relaxed on certain things in spore where the people will be able to make more decisions for themselves.

i think for a start, they shld relax a lot on rules for running a business in spore. lots of youths may have brilliant business ideas but its just too tough to implement them. in the end, what do we do? get a job in the office, 9 to 5pm with a fixed salary is the way to go to survive. is that the young people we want in the future to propel the country future in this competitive world?
maybe this will work 20 yrs ago...but not now.

i chat with some of my customers sometimes and they said their local business....the real headache is getting all the approvals and licenses...it could be up to 20 such approvals before any thing can start! of course, there must be a reason for each approval but this is certainly way to cumbersome esp for aspiring and amatuer people who like to try it out for the first time.

oh well, but in anyway, lots of people do say spore is a safe place for living and stuff (yeah...touch wood....terrorism is on the cards).... yes i do agree with them in a way. but we sure gotta also learn from other countries. they also have their strong points...despite higher crime rates or negative media reports....sporeans cant live in a well, watching those patriotic videos and songs on TV and always think we are the best. that would be our downfall.

ok...Happy 40th Birthday Spore!
i am still proud to hold the red passport and wish spore all the best for the future.