WHAT'S IN MY BAG VLOG!

What's in my bag? from sophia chong on Vimeo.

FORMSPRING ME!

XX

Sophia

Know me more!

01: Your current relationship, if single discuss how single life is.

It's been about 2 months since I'm single. It definitely is a fresh breath of air. I like the space I have, the time I have to focus on other important things. 

02: Where you’d like to be in 10 years.

32 years old, I better have a pretty damn good career and a loving husband by then. I want to be a happy, successful and content woman then.

03: Your views on drugs and alcohol.

Drugs - Nay ay never in the right mind will I touch them
Alcohol - makes me a Claire

04: Your views on religion.

I don't like the word religion, I prefer to call it a relationship, with God. People should place more emphasis on their relationship with God than the routinized church-going (it's important but loving God should come before loving church itself).

05: A time you thought about ending your own life.

When I was 11 cos I thought life sucked. WHAT WAS I THINKING DUDE?

06: Write 30 interesting facts about yourself.

I loved lizards. I'm not scared of any insects. I'm trypophobic. My right eye is smaller than my left eye. I have very white finger nails. I become a different person(Claire we call it) when I'm 1)inebriated 2)when I'm sleepy 3)when I just woke up. I eat sweets everyday, I live on them. I love being alone. I can't and don't cry in front of friends no matter how sad I am. I like smart/charismatic guys. I love surprises. Can't think anymore.

07: Your zodiac sign and if you think it fits your personality.

Cancer. Yup it does!

08: A moment you felt the most satisfied with your life.

Can 2012 be a moment? It was perfect. I had TJM in place, I was traveling a lot and I had D in my life.

09: How you hope your future will be like.

Refer to question 2....

10: Discuss your first love and first kiss.

I can't remember my first. Last was beautiful.

11: Put your ipod on shuffle and write 10 songs that pop up.

Lazy

12: Bullet your whole day.

• eat
• study
• eat
• eat
• eat

13: Somewhere you’d like to move or visit.

New york, Norway, UK, other parts of Japan, Boracay, North Korea, South Africa, Maldives

14: Your earliest memory.

My 2nd birthday!

15: Your favorite tumblrs.

Mine. Cos I don't remember others hahah

16: Your views on mainstream music.

Mainstream lor. Gets on my nerves after awhile.

17: Your highs and lows of this past year.

Lows - break up, school's a bore, no time for tjm
Highs - sofie's birthday at bangkok. 

18: Your beliefs.

You shape your own destiny. Don't let others define who you are. Don't be a snob just cos you have a bit of glory.

19: Disrespecting your parents.

Bad. Shouldn't do that.

20: How important you think education is.

Education itself is important cos it enriches you and sort of moulds the person in you. Emphasis should be placed on gaining knowledge that's vital to life and not just on the cert.

21: One of your favorite shows.

For now it got to be 2 broke girls. Makes me laugh a lot!

22: How have you changed in the past 2 years?

I've become less gullible, less trusting, more independent, and much stronger.

23: Give pictures of 5 guys who are famous who you find attractive.

James Franco, Daniel Wu, Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Chris Evans.

24: Your favorite movie and what it’s about.

I like Les Miserables this year.

25: Someone who fascinates you and why.

Can I not say who?

26: What kind of person attracts you.

Smart, talented, truthful, charismatic, driven, loyal, supportive.

27: A problem that you have had.

Why must school only end in a year? :'(

28: Something that you miss.

Freedom and time

29: Goals for the next 30 days.

Pass my exam, travel, buck up for TJM, start exercising, watch more movies, spend more quality time with my friends.

30: Your highs and lows of this month.

This month's boring.

Imperfections make perfection // "Stop instagramming your perfect life"

"I keep having the same conversation over and over. It starts like this: “I gave up Facebook for Lent, and I realized I’m a lot happier without it.” Or like this, “Pinterest makes me hate my house.” Or like this: “I stopped following a friend on Instagram, and now that I don’t see nonstop snapshots of her perfect life, I like her better.”

Yikes. This is a thing. This is coming up in conversation after conversation. The danger of the internet is that it’s very very easy to tell partial truths—to show the fabulous meal but not the mess to clean up afterward. To display the smiling couple-shot, but not the fight you had three days ago. To offer up the sparkly milestones but not the spiraling meltdowns.

I’m not anti-technology or anti-Internet, certainly, but I do think it’s important for us to remind ourselves from time to time that watching other peoples’ post-worthy moments on Facebook is always going to yield a prettier version of life than the one you’re living right now. That’s how it works.

My life looks better on the Internet than it does in real life. Everyone’s life looks better on the internet than it does in real life. The Internet is partial truths—we get to decide what people see and what they don’t. That’s why it’s safer short term. And that’s why it’s much, much more dangerous long term.

Because community—the rich kind, the transforming kind, the valuable and difficult kind—doesn’t happen in partial truths and well-edited photo collections on Instagram. Community happens when we hear each other’s actual voices, when we enter one another’s actual homes, with actual messes, around actual tables telling stories that ramble on beyond 140 pithy characters.

But seeing the best possible, often-unrealistic, half-truth version of other peoples’ lives isn’t the only danger of the Internet. Our envy buttons also get pushed because we rarely check Facebook when we’re having our own peak experiences. We check it when we’re bored and when we’re lonely, and it intensifies that boredom and loneliness.

When you’re laughing at a meal with friends, are you scrolling through Pinterest? When you’re in labor with your much-prayed-for-deeply-loved child, are you checking to see what’s happening on Instagram? Of course not. We check in with our phones when it seems like nothing fun is happening in our own lives—when we’re getting our oil changed or waiting for the coffee to brew.

It makes sense, then, that anyone else’s fun or beauty or sparkle gets under our skin. It magnifies our own dissatisfaction with that moment. When you’re waiting for your coffee to brew, the majority of your friends probably aren’t doing anything any more special.

But it only takes one friend at the Eiffel Tower to make you feel like a loser.

I’m a writer. I use Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest and my blog as part of my professional life—as a way to connect with readers and be part of a conversation that we’re creating together, a conversation about creativity and faith and writing and parenting and community and life around the table. It’s a lovely conversation, and part of my work involves reading many blogs and commenting on lots of photos and scrolling through status after status.

Some days it feels rich and multi-faceted. I learn and I’m inspired. I find recipes I want to try and stories I want to live. I feel connected and thankful to be part of such an intelligent and creative internet community.

And then on some days, I feel like I have nothing to offer, like I must be the only one who isn’t a graphic designer and hasn’t yet managed to display her entire darling life online with lots of chevron and mint accents. I feel so certain that my life is a lot less darling than other peoples’ lives.

But that’s the Internet. The nature of it. I so easily fall prey to the seduction of other people’s partial truths and heavily filtered photos, making everything look amazing. And their amazing looking lives make me feel not amazing at all.

Let’s choose community. Let’s stop comparing. Let’s start connecting.

Some days when I sit down at my laptop, instead of choosing to be an observer via Facebook, I choose to be a friend via email. Instead of scrolling through someone else’s carefully curated images, I use those few seconds to send a text to a person I really know and really love and really want to be connected to.

It’s not about technology or not. I’m not suggesting you get all old-school-pen-and-paper about it (unless that’s your thing.) It’s about connecting instead of comparing. Instead of using the computer to watch someone else’s perfectly crafted life, enter into someone’s less-than-perfect life. You can use Facebook if you want, but you might find email, Skype and phone calls work better.

The distinction I’m making is public vs. private, not in person vs. long distance. I have very close, very honest friendships that depend on phone calls and Skype dates and long wandering emails, and I’m thankful that technology allows for those connections. But I don’t think you can build transforming friendships that take place only in a public sphere like Facebook or Instagram.

For many of us, walking away from the Internet isn’t an option. But using it to connect instead of compare is an option, and a life-changing one. Using technology to build community instead of building carefully-curated images of ourselves is an option, and a worthwhile one.

And on the days when you peer into the screen of your laptop and all you see are other people’s peak experiences that highlight your lack in that moment, remember that life isn’t about the story you tell about yourself on the Internet. It’s about a million more beautiful and complex things than that, like love and faith and really listening. It’s about using what you’ve been given to craft a life of gratitude and passion and grace.

Remember that the very best things in life can’t be captured in status updates."

By Shauna Niequist

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/culture/tech/stop-instagramming-your-perfect-life

What went down last night~~~

Just some pictures of last night with my homies at Zouk ♡

♡ FIE FIE ♡

Lincey X Tien

LOL @ ELVIN'S FACE! #maintainplease

#Drunkrol

Sophie, Sofie, Sophia. HAHAHAH

Grumpz Hannah and Dawn!

Wore this pants out last night and I had SUPER A LOT of compliments for it, even from a ton of guys! If you get compliments from guys on clothes(that are not revealing), it must mean that it's really nice hahahah.

Launching JUICE 85 tomorrow night!

http://www.thejuicemarket.com/

XX

Sophia

SALON VIM X GONE GREEN AND BACK TO BROWN

*MUST READ IF YOU ALWAYS DYE/BLEACH/PERM YOUR HAIR!

My hair have been undergoing quite a bit of transformation for the past month and it's been quite an "adventure" for me. As y'all know, I'm pretty conservative with hair colors and hairstyles which is why I didn't have colorful hair even though it was/is the trend and half of the bloggers I know already colored their hair pink/purple etc!

SO I DECIDED TO STEP OUT OF MY COMFORT ZONE!

Last time with reddish brown hair! 

So I wanted matte brown hair with grey highlights initially but my hairstylist, Fiona, told me that I might have to bleach my hair more than once to achieve the color which means my hair would be even more damaged. Instead, green highlights would have been more possible with just one time of bleaching so I heeded her advice and went green!

BLEACHING IN PROGRESS!

Getting my green highlights up first before dying my whole head brown and.......

MY HAIR AFTER 4 HOURS IN THE SALON

It's actually a bit lighter in real life but my stupid phone camera couldn't capture it!

Yow yow came to accompany me :* then we went for our "date night" at shokudo!

Super yummy fried tofu!

And omu rice! Damn happy he introduced Shokudo cos it's really affordable and the food's yummy!

My actual hair color! Hahah Yow's pullover matched my hair!

Went back the next day to do treatment.

MUST MUST MUST DO TREATMENT AFTER BLEACHING HAIR!

So I did the usual Redken treatment which you can read about here ! The Redken treatment helps to strengthen hair so it prevents damages and hair breakages from chemical works. Definitely very useful for people like me who loves dying my hair. I know of people who bleach and dye their hair often but don't go for treatments regularly so their hair breaks super easily. Like their hair break when they run their fingers through their hair. 

SO REGULAR HAIR TREATMENTS ARE SUPER IMPORTANT!!!

My hair after Redken treatment (: So much softer than it was the night before after I bleached it. 

As much as I love changes in my life, I wasn't very used to having super light hair with green streaks. My parents were also making a hell lot of noise about it and insisted I dye it back to dark brown or something. So I texted Fiona that I have to go back and dye it darker :( She was really nice to let me do it after a week after my hair rested from the bleaching!

Meanwhile, Fiona generously gave me a range of products to protect my hair!

L'Oreal Vitamino Color Shampoo - helps to lock the color and keep it vivid and vibrant for long

Redken all soft heavy cream - transforms hair with improved manageability, intense softness and lasting silky shine. It contains argan oil which creates intense softness.

Mythic Oil (Rich oil) - Contains argan oil and rich bran oil which provides intense nourishment to make hair more manageable and for easier blow-dry. Lightweight!

See, my iPhone camera just keeps making my hair look darker but it wasn't even this dark!

Goodbye to the craziest hair color I ever had IN MY LIFE hahaha.

So I went back to Salon Vim and chose the color I wanted!

I've always wanted to try ash brown and I love Olivia Palermo to death so I decided to try this color!

Repair B treatment with fibre cutic to reconstruct hair!

As usual, I did hair treatment after getting my hair dyed but this time I opted for a different hair treatment from my usual Redken treatment!

LOREAL MYTHIC OIL TREATMENT!

I'm sure many of you have heard about the Mythic oil and I can only say it's awesome! I have tried their hair serum and I love it. It's my second bottle already and it beats ALL other hair serum I've tried before! So I was really excited to try their hair treatment!

Tadah!!!!! Done and my hair was a lot smoother and it didn't feel greasy at the same time. Meet my new hair color also! Absolutely satisfied and I had been getting a lot of compliments from my friends about it! Pardon my face, looked super tired that day!

Now, here's a confession!

Whoever told you that your hair WON'T spoil or become dry after bleaching or perming your hair is either lying to you, or they just have super good hair genes because truth is, your hair will likely become more dry and damaged after undergoing chemical works on your hair. Then you ask, 

"LIKE THAT HOW??? I STILL WANT TO HAVE NICE BROWN CURLY HAIR!!!!"

Well, GO FOR TREATMENTS REGULARLY!

I cannot emphasize how important hair treatments are but you definitely would be able to tell from this blogpost cos I went thrice just within a month!!!! That's how my hair isn't super damaged from bleaching. For sure, it's more dry and harder to manage after bleaching but it's definitely better than my condition at first before I started on the treatments!

So I went for another hair treatment at Salon Vim recently!

Salon Vim is very famous for their hair treatments and they definitely deserve the accolades! They have a few types of treatments which cater to different hair needs and it's not the kind which will fade off after a few washes! 

Here's my hair before treatment. Doesn't look too bad cos I did 2 treatments 2 weeks before this, but after awhile it got a bit hard to manage.

Fiona urged me to try the new Japanese treatment which recently got introduced into Salon Vim. 

It's a 2-step treatment called Arimino.

While Redken helps to strengthen the hair, Arimino aims to soften the hair so it's more manageable. 

EXACTLY WHAT I NEEDED!

Even the packaging looks so Jappo!

So they rinsed my hair with a mild moisture-rich shampoo then we got started on the hair treatment!

Step 1 : ENRICH TREATMENT

This step aims to nourish inside hair and repair, and also acts as the base of the next step. The inner repair of the hair is by liquid crystal emulsion technology!

Step 2 : HOLD CREAM

This step basically further locks step 1 into my hair and protects the surface of my hair. It contains Camellia oil and shea butter which are really effective ingredients to attain softer hair.

The whole process took about and hour, and voila.....SIGNIFICANTLY SOFTER HAIR!

I've already washed my hair again after the treatment and my hair is still softer so this means that the treatment is lasting even after washing your hair!!!

Look at how healthy my hair look in this photo!!!!!!! I LOVE IT!

I'll be going back for another treatment in 2 weeks' time. I'm really thrilled to get my hair back into perfect condition so I can perm it maybe say June? 

Nobody said you can't have nice colored wavy hair, you just gotta take care of it by going for treatments (:

And fret not about the price, this is all you have to do to get a discount at Salon Vim :

Quote "Sophia Chong" to get 10% off at SV!

SALON VIM

http://salonvimbychezvous.com.sg/

Call them at 68847757 to make appointment (:

XX

Sophia