Valentine’s Day falls on Chinese New Year this year and I’m pretty sure most Chinese will be celebrating the occasion early. Hence, I wish everyone an early Happy Valentine’s Day! I read from the Chinese newspapers that there wouldn’t be any flower delivery service on the 14th of February since most shops will be closed during Chinese New Year. Chewy and I have no plans yet. We will most probably just have a simple dinner since he will only be free during the evenings.
I made the wallpaper above during one of my study breaks. These wallpapers can be found in the resources section and if you want to send some love over during Valentine’s, you can buy the prints over at deviantART. 
While working on the wallpaper yesterday, I was thinking of things associated with the occasion. Things and words like hearts, love, balloons, teddy bears and the colours red and pink. I cannot figure out the connections between teddy bears, balloons and love. Does everyone who is in love owns a teddy? Or maybe they always held on to balloons when visiting theme parks? The latter is always the case in Korean dramas. When the protagonist fall out of love, they will usually be shown letting go of the balloon and the poor balloon will fly away. It reminds me of a scene in Princess Hours.
I can understand balloons during Birthdays but why Valentine’s? Are balloons considered sweet things for ladies? Balloons are sometimes also used to signify freedom thus explaining the release of the balloon. Releasing a balloon may also meant that the protagonist is letting go of the relationship. Am I wrong to think that it’s an inverse relationship with love?
My teddy bear
Teddy bears again reminds me of scenes in Princess Hours whereby the male lead gave a teddy bear to the female lead or the bear is a representation of one of the leads and they fell in love. Why bears? Pandas are adorable as well and most robots are cute. However most of the time, bears especially teddy ones are used. Why do you think that’s the case? What makes teddy bears so special?
With the rise in the numbers of online blogshops in Singapore, the number of spams in my mailbox has also increased significantly the past few months. For the benefit of those who aren’t familiar with the terms, a blogshop is actually an online shop which sells mostly imported clothes, bags and accessories and most of these blogshops use Blogger or LiveJournal to update their products catalogue.
Blogshops usually have the mailing list system whereby emails are sent to the people who subscribed when there’s a special promotion or product updates. I have totally no objections towards shops that have mailing lists to update those who are interested. Please note the key word: interested. I am not interested if I did not subscribe to the mailing list. Forcing me to read the mailing list is not going to help the business and spamming is just the first step to kill the customer base. Spamming your potential customers is definitely not a wise act. Even if I had been interested in the products you are selling, I would never spend a single cent in a blogshop which uses spamming as a marketing strategy.
Furthermore, it’s really frustrating to know what a hypocrite some of them are. Most of them have a message saying that if you would wish to subscribe from the mailing list, they will respect your decision or a message of similar context. Majority of the time, I noticed my emails notifying them of the fact that I did not subscribe in the first place and would wish to be remove from the list went unread. I do not feel as though my privacy has been respected just because they claim to do so in the email. Marking them as spams in Gmail isn’t a long term solution since they will still land up in my inbox somehow. My solution is to create a filter which moves all the emails with the name of the blogshop into the spam folder directly without giving it a chance to sit in my inbox. I check my spam folder for false positives occasionally so I’m not worrying if genuine emails landed there.
I seriously think blogshop’s owners should also look into how mailing lists work before jumping straight into it. Some blogshops obtain additional email addresses from spree pages or other mailing lists to send their updates to. Blind carbon copy (Bcc:) exist for a reason such as sending mailing lists so why aren’t they using it? I have receive spam mailing lists which have all the email addresses in the “To:” field. They have just “contributed” my email address to the spam list. No thanks for that! Kudos to them for taking the first step in ruining their own business! 
Who says you can’t get valentine’s day gifts for yourself? I get myself presents every year during Valentine’s and this year, I bought some pretties from Soap ‘n Sorbet. I have read about this new online shop selling extremely gorgeous beauty products from Makeup Stash! a few weeks back. Looking at the beautiful product catalogue with brands like Tokyo Milk and Lalicious, who can resist?
My pretties from Soap n Sorbet
For the nth time, I succumbed to temptation and ordered the famous Steam Creams and Tokyo Milk Rosewater Lip Balm. I have read really good reviews about the multi-purpose steam creams which can be use on the face, hands and body. Besides that, it comes in the most adorable packaging. I ordered one of the limited edition Steam Cream Cute as a Bunny Gift Set which contains the Porky Rabbit and Grace tin designs. I kept the rabbit tin and gave the other one to my sister for her birthday. 
Thumbs up to Soap ‘n Sorbet for their wonderful packaging and efficient delivery! My orders arrived via registered postage nicely sealed and packed in a sturdy box 2 days after I had placed my orders. Everything was bubble-wrapped carefully and they also included 2 samples of their perfumes and hand creams.
Steam Cream Cute as a Bunny Gift Set
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