Meet The Bloggers

Friday, 25th February 2005

I went on a blind date.

With two married women.

One a blissful newlywed and one a chic tai-tai.

I was an hour late.

I was disheveled, oily and sweaty.

Now, having said those four sentences, if I was a man, I'd be castrated right away. Go figure. Doesn't it sound like some B-grade soap opera with a tardy, oily, messy, skanky, morally-challenged male lead?

But I'm a woman...

... and the blind date was more so a blogger date, which I've been missing much of due to being so geographically undesirable. And the two ladies I met were Shireen and Rini,perfect personifications of patience, who waited for me for an hour and still had smiles for me when I finally showed up. And the last time I had a Singapore flight, Izrina, my decade-long galpal (and one galpal attachment ie.Firhad the Fiance) bunked one night with me in the hotel room and another two galpals Mardee and Fishah had dinner with me the following evening and all in all I had a blast but I didn't have my Ixus. This time, with my two new galpals, I made sure Ixus worked very hard.

We bitched, we theorized, we laughed, we griped, we reflected, we posed (yes we actually DID pose, sempat arrange kerusi meja Starbucks)

....we were so intent on yakking our gums off that we did not realize Starbucks Raffles City was closing and the Indian busboy was giving us the evil eye as he hustled and bustled to clear the al fresco tables at midnight.

So we got off our pretty little fannies, still talking ad nauseam, and started walking aimlessly, lost in wedding translation. We bantered as we cantered and we unconciously walked me back to Carlton. Heh.

We camped in Carlton's lobby as we waited for Tai-tai's husband to come and pick them up. Exchanged numbers, made promises, took photos.

What else can you expect from a bunch of new friends that click like a switch? In a nutshell,the meetup was isanely pleasurable. I quote Rini, "Gila babi is an understatement."

Finally, the Tai-tai's husby's massive Mitsubishi (honest to goodness, Shir, i knew it was a Mitsu,i dunno why in my head i keep calling it a honda-with uber-cool rims that I loike!!!Kudos Mr Malik!!) rolled up Carlton's driveway and I felt all warm and fuzzy as I walked them to the car, big hugs, sempat pose lagi and waved bubbye.

All I can say is, Shireen is an amazing supermom/tai-tai of three. And Rini is an amazing wedding-planning superwoman. Both are absolute darlings, gorgeous Mrs-es, women of substance and I'm glad I met them. Their blogs didn't do them justice. Their pictures don't do them grace. They are nonpareils of the married world and I hope I get to be even a fraction of the kind of cool, lawa-gila bride Rini was and the same kind of cool mom-of-three-kids Shireen is.


And like a good sneakpreview into the blogging world, a few hours before I met these two Mrs, I met a Blog Queen Mrs-to-be at a highly-recommended photographer's studio.

In that split-second, as I slipped off my shoes to step into the studio, I looked at this girl, folded in the corner of the couch looking up at me with a knowing look on her face. In that split second, I could have sworn I know this girl from somewhere but where? After an immediate groundbreaking "RAIHAAAANNN!!" and a five-second delayed reaction "DIAAAHHH!"(okaylah..Raihan a bit drama here!), we have touched common ground and then, this girl unfolded herself from the couch to greet me.

And there she was. Long. Lean. Lawa.

I felt like a dimunitive troll beside her. Yeap. Dimunitive coz she was so tall and I'm not. Troll coz she was so lithe and I'm...just not. Though she did say she thinks I look like a doll. Yah...oily, stinky, messy, short and fleshy doll. Macam Bride of Chucky (Azim), maybe? Heh.

Anyhow, Diah, next time let's make it longer than that five-second hi-bye-fly. Set? Oh but of course, we posed. Anytime is a good time for picture time,no?


The next day, Ashraf Alami....

.... a good guy friend for more than a decade, insisted that he could rush down to Ritz-Carlton from his posh home in Siglap, where I was with my wedding planner, to see me for a while before my flight. He patiently sat through boring wedding talk in the Ritz-Carlton Lobby Lounge just so that we could catch up a little, later. Now,he is the only non-family person other than Azim and his family, who now knows the nitty-gritty details of my wedding plans and he thumbed-up enthusiastically. Even my bridesmaids don't know much yet. Sorry,girls.

Turns out Ashraf had a little secret waiting to happen. His (new!) girlfriend, a mysterious little NgeeAnn MassCommer, obviously my "junior" of sorts, really wanted to meet me and was apparently a reader of my smelly blog. By the time Ashraf and I made it back to the Carlton for me to get ready for work, she was already nearly there so Ashraf went to pick her up. And here I have my meet-the-bloggers finale.

Me (with the senget red hat, no less). Ashraf. And Liyana. The Mystery Bloghopper who tagged me before. Who reminded me of me of myself when I was a 19-year-old MassCommer. Who is the kind of girl I would imagined Ashraf to be with. Who is smart, articulate, confident, babelicious and very very nice. Who kindly finished my crackers for me so I won't have to pack them. Who will make one helluva media professional one day and not shun the media field like I'm doing now. Who is the editor of Hype magazine, the final-year MassCommers' glossy periodical professional project (which makes her the top dawg of her print journalism batch,y'all!).

So there you have it, my dosage of blogger meet-ups. Now I know how deprived I am when it comes to meeting the nice bloggers. Now I'm genuinely jeles of all the blogger meet-ups and the friendships nurtured. Now I hope, despite the non-too-kind opinions that have been aired about me elsewhere, people still regard what I am based on what I write and not on others' fanciful dirty little tributes to me. And then when they meet me, they won't run away, scared by my stereo voice. Especially during my wedding.

Coz I made new real friends. And I thought I was an eternal anti-social.

Things change.

I like.

For more pics (not that much more lah)...go and Multiply me.