TOCA LOVING

Last weekend we partied really hard.
This week, I worked back all that I partied.

Yet I’ve never had a more satisfying week.
I enjoyed my work, although
I head home worn and torn each night.
I felt accomplished with an exchange of
Lack of sleep, and my brains can’t stop working.
I found appreciation in friends, words couldn’t describe,
And I fell in love with both work and play,
with friends I am glad to see almost everyday.

I’ve learnt to understand that apart from business, working, could teach us all about friendship, support, trust, and characters about humans we all took for granted for on a daily basis. Toca wouldn’t have done the same without you guys!

THE TIPPING JAR

Our young entrpreneurs from Toca Me, Ollie and Denise has set up The Tipping Jar, to support their love for vintage fashion, accessories and collectables. With an eye in fashion and design, they look to always stay afront on their imports or purchase on vintage designs. Look out for them at Flea Markets, and bookmark them for regular shopping online now! Match vintage items with high street fashion to create an original look of your very own!

View more of the collection from The Tipping Jar Here!

AIRWAVE MUSIC

With the use of a FM Transmitter, costing me just a mere 49 bucks, I can plug it into my Iphone dock, or into my nano, and blast my music universally in the car, at Toca, or even over my Jamo in the living room, using the airwaves of a FM. Simple, yet amazing! My old FM transmitter which had to be plugged in, was chucked away. Music people, fix up your old radio, and purchase an FM Transmitter!

BOOKS ACTUALLY.

Once upon a time, there is a little boostore named BooksActually, nestled in an old fashioned shophouse at the corner of a street, 5 Ann Siang Road Singapore 069688. It opened last week, and last night I popped my head in and took a look. I had unsuccessfully been able to find it when it was located at Telok Ayer. The shop tucked in the corner, with quaint old classic bookshelves and all the little details in old poloroid cameras and vintage stationaries caught my heart. I feel in love. Just what we lack, an independant bookstore, a owner whom believes and strives in their believes for the love of book in this dead-poet society, and a great book buyer, bringing books by George Orwell’s ‘Down and out in Paris and London’. Not only does it contain a handful well picked literature books, it’s interior is also one with quirky tastes and attention to details, look out for the old typewriters, or random pictures put together capturing the soul of the bookstore. Love it.

I walked in, and left with a piece of the bookshop, with a local poem book named ‘ Light is like water’ by Jasmine Seah and Jennifer Koh. An interesting rendition of thoughts and poloroids. The next book I would be buying would be the 1000 Interesting concepts book.
ST REVIEW of the book.
A whimsical wisp of a book, LIGHT IS LIKE WATER is like the anti-coffee table book - its pictures and text evoke an unvarnished everyday world that becomes accidentally poetic in unguarded moments.

Created by Singaporeans Jasmine Seah and Jennifer Koh, the book features poetry by the former and photographs by the latter.

The visuals, of which many are casual polaroids, are wistful, evocative and often romantic. Clear summer skies and grainy void decks; rolling English fields and Singaporean bougainvillea blooming on overhead bridges - both the local and the foreign are captured with a dreamy tenderness. Seah’s poetry is inspired by Koh’s pictures, and their sensibilities fit together well. In the poem titled Leaving, for instance, the mood is both curious and contemplative: “I noticed for the first time / the grave latitude of trees / persisting in the fading light”. Throughout the book, there is a sense of both the photographer and the poet searching for ways to capture new worlds, and their sense of wonder is a quietly thrilling thing.

Review by Hong Xinyi, Straits Times, 1 Apr 2007

Read more about the book from the book’s online blog.

And us, Toca Me is proud to be their neighbour.

A CITY GIRL’S GUIDE TO RELATIONSHIPS.

I decided to do a series of guides called the ‘A City Girl’s Guide’, and my first would be regarding the unknown topic of everyone’s life, Relationship and love.

In praying with both eyes closed, managing through life, like a darkness hole, with a gleam of invisible hope, here are some of the tips to having a longer relationship, (ron’s way). Please note that the following thoughts are simply a reflection of my meagre mind, and are all personal opinions, not reflecting thoughts of the general society, and I don’t quite belong to the general society.

1. DO NOT TALK ABOUT FOREVER.
Never once in any way of expressions in conveying your love to your partner should you in any way, intend or imply the meaning of forever. It’s one word that has absolutely infinite meaning to it. When I say infinite, it literally means it’s difficult to even grasp or measure the meaning of it. Nobody would be around forever. We all die. It’s just who leaves first, who lasts how much longer.

2. DO NOT EVOLVE INTO TALKS OF MARRIAGE LIKE COMMITMENTS.
If it happens it happens, if it doesn’t it doesnt, don’t discuss about it, don’t talk about it as a substitute of love, don’t use it to represent as a ‘permanent tie up’, it’s taboo. In a relationship anything close to sharing serious items alike car, property, life, family, anything legal, would somehow cause a downfall nobody expects. Don’t plan it, cause nothing goes according to plan. Like i said, if it happens it happens. The less you plan, the fast time pasts. Refer to the above, there is no forever.

3. DO NOT TALK ABOUT YOUR PAST.
Wrap it up, clean it up, stash it away in a dark corner of your absolute personal enemy , your memory. Don’t bring it up, don’t discuss nor share it. Don’t verbally remember anything. Give extremely generalised comments, do not let memories haunt your mind. Lock it away. To be honest, nobody right now is interested in your past. The space given to you on earth is only this small, if you are tagged by your past, there would be less space for what’s coming for the future. The only reason to forgive and not question is when an individual knows, she’s only passing by. Passerbys, can’t remember your face, nor can they be bothered.

4. DO NOT DWELL ON MISTRUST.
Mention your anger, but don’t tear your hair over it, learn to understand it’s anger from the point of where timing and logic clashes. Divide the emotions by half, stay calm, and see it lightly. Learn to give yourself the same kind of freedom you learn to not question, learn to understand that letting go half the anger is probably the only way to a less wrinkled, healthier collagen, happier you. Cause in the end you would still be the better surviving individual from letting things go. What the point of arguing about it, if maybe it was not even meant to be, or, even after such arguments, you are the one who chooses to leave one day? Immerse in the better moments, those are the things that never returns.

5. DO NOT BUY RINGS TOGETHER
Another taboo to be avoided. How many rings you have to decided on whether they should become accessories or not thereafter each one leaves? To be honest, they are accessories and should stay as accessories. What can it bind? The mind, the body, the soul, or the heart? I guess when you love, death is the only thing that unbinds you.

6. NEVER PLAN LIFE HALF AND HALF.
Your life is one. You are one. Everything you do and work for, is for one. An individual can’t live a life thinking it’s about halfs. The person whom said ‘your other half’ was probably one of the worst thoughts to manifest a human’s soul. We entered the world alone as one, and we would exit and leave alone as one. Thus everyone should learn to self survive, work and imagine what happens if you leave alone. If you do fall in love with another one, it’s a bonus from god. And if it happens, 1+1 is better than half plus half.

7. DON’T LOVE 100%.
Simply cause you have to learn to love yourself first before loving someone else. Keep some love for yourself, it gives you the strength to live on, also a reason to stay alive. Never in your life, live on loving someone else. I am not even arguing about whether one should love themselves more or less than the other, that’s subjected to personal opinions of each individual, but we all must love ourselves, in order to stay alive.

8. EXPECT LESS.
Like David Copperfield’s magic, nobody can explain the science behind the thought of it happens only when you least expect it. And it’s one sentence we all duly have to agree it’s true. And it’s not a game of reverse psychology, nor is it something you can consciously plan for the opposite. It just happens. When you don’t expect to last a lifetime together, you take it easy, you see things lightly, you expect less, you harp less, and somehow, before you know it, you’ve been together for 10yrs.