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    • Posted On: November 16th 2024 at 5:14 pm | Add a Comment?
    Categories: Insights, Japanese related, Korean related, Personal life, Reviews, Shopping, Skin care

    I realised I haven’t blog about my skin care regime for 5 years. My last post is in 2019. I have other posts earlier which you can see them here. Some of the old posts are archived though.

    Day care

    Night care

    Damage*: S$1767

    * I’m following the prices I found online and not the ones that I actually paid for. I always do my due diligence when it comes to buying the products and where+when to buy them. So what I paid for is lesser than what is listed.

    Wow, it’s a 65% jump since 2019. Lol, lifestyle inflation is a real thing. Maybe I should say is skin care inflation. Lol. Well, when you are older, you do need to spend more to upkeep your appearance. 😐

    Sulwhasoo, Kiehls, Fancl, Round Lab and Drunk Elephant are now like key skin care brands while Hermes, Cle de Peau and Charlotte Tilbury are my go-to brands for daily basic makeup now.


    Posted On: October 25th 2024 at 10:48 pm | 1 Comment
    Categories: Food, Friendship, Japanese related, Personal life, Pictures

    I went to The World of Studio Ghibli with my friends, Rui Yun and Eunice, on 5 October 2024. We managed to secure tickets on the first day of ticket sales and using my MBS membership perks, we got 2 for price of 1 tickets. That means 3 tickets for the price of 2 tickets. 😀 Always happy to get savings. Haha.

    Even happier when I have friends with similar interests to go for such exhibition with me. 🙂 I’m definitely counting my blessings. The older I get, the harder it is to find friends to hang out with. It’s even harder to make friends now. So glad that our friendship managed to last through 2 decades…

    I’m seriously considering buying this skirt since it is the usual style of skirt that I like. Unfortunately I cannot try the size so I didn’t buy it.

    After the exhibition, we went to So Pho at MBS for dinner.


    Posted On: April 17th 2024 at 8:04 pm | Add a Comment?
    Categories: Japanese related, Personal life

    I asked my violin teacher, Mrs Masako, about my Japanese name and if Reika is an accurate translation of my name from the Chinese characters. It turns out that in terms of the meaning of the Chinese characters, Reika is an accurate translation. However, Japanese people will not be able to translate Reika to my Chinese name. There’s different characters if I want to translate my Chinese name to Japanese in terms of the pronunciation. In fact, she also tried to translate it in the traditional characters (the one that looks like Chinese characters but is actually Japanese), it actually means prosperity and wealth. The characters will still be able to translate back to my Chinese name.

    Hmm… So I was in a dilemma earlier which one to use. Should I be known as beautiful flower or prosperity? Haha. Both are good for me personally. In the end, I decided to just stick to Reika since Sakura also means a type of flower – cherry blossoms.

    So now my online name is both Sakura and Reika. Or Sakura Reika. Haha. Call me Reika!


    Posted On: April 13th 2024 at 1:35 am | Add a Comment?
    Categories: Friendship, Japanese related, Personal life

    This work week has finally ended. Wow, this week is like so busy for me. I think I had 3 interviews on one of the days along with vendor calls and work meetings. It’s quite crazy. Lol. I also visited Google office and Krislab Innovation Centre this week for work too.

    I had my 1-1 with my Japanese mentor, Ryuji, and I asked him about my Japanese name. He took 15 mins to give me a crash course of Japanese language and the 3 types of writing. I showed him the Wikipedia page and we went through the 3 different characters and confirmed the meaning of my Japanese name. I also showed my Chinese characters of my name and he confirmed that it is the correct translation. Wah, not bad for my friend to tell me and it turned out to be correct. 😀 He is probably more Japanese than Taiwanese. Lol…

    So yes, now my online name has a second part to it. I’m now known as Sakura Reika. Can call me Sakura or Reika haha. 🙂 I have been using Sakura for more than 2 decades so it’s kind of too late to change it now so I am just going to append Reika to it. My mentor, Ryuji, told me I should use the first character on Wikipedia as that’s the most common way for Japanese natives to communicate. Looks quite difficult to write. I’m going to ask my violin teacher, Mrs Masako, to teach me how to write it before/after my violin class this Sunday. Hehe. I need to ask the equivalent for my surname too.

    I told Gulabi about it and she added “Sakura Reika” in front of my real name and sent me a screenshot of it. LOL!


    Posted On: April 10th 2024 at 11:41 pm | 1 Comment
    Categories: Friendship, Insights, Japanese related, New stuff, Personal life, Rants

    I feel like recently I am blossoming more into a flower. Especially with my new Pleats Mama cherry blossom bag. Sakura is carrying her new sakura bag and dressed in sakura colours today. 😀 Well, I wore my cream pleats blouse from Uniqlo with my pink linen shorts from Muji today. Oh I picked my black merino wool cardigan from Sezane as well. So it definitely matches the bag colours that I got. You can see a photo of the bag in here. I matched it with my VCA Sweet Alhambra necklace in rose gold and it is a perfect addition to the entire outfit. 🙂 I’m definitely blossoming well and beautifully! I took a selfie of my outfit of the day and all of my friends (probably biased haha) praised my outfit choice. Whee!

    Okay, except for Alex who commented that I look like an auntie who is going to wet market to buy vegetables (all in Chinese). Rude! -.-

    I used to be a dehydrated flower but now that I am refocusing everything on myself, I’m definitely blossoming well. A flower needs water to grow well. The same for grass too. I should always focus on myself and direct the water to myself to grow well.

    That reminded me of something that a friend told me. My real Chinese name can be translated to Japanese name “Reika”. I just checked and whoa, Google translate did translate it accurately.

    YJ*: Sakura actually fits you well because hua means flower
    Me: yessssssss
    Me: not bad, you are smart
    Me: your PhD has come in handy hahahahaha
    YJ: also btw your Chinese name can pass as a Japanese name
    Me: eh is it???
    YJ: yes
    YJ: rei ka

    * Not going to put the name of my friend because he is listed as a public figure on Google and I don’t want my blog to appear when his students googled for his name…

    It was an old conversation but as I am blogging about blossoming more into a flower, I decided to google about “rei ka”. Apparently it means “beautiful, lovely, flower, petal”.

    Perfecto lah. All these glowing up is actually inline with my name. *acts out a pretty pose* I’m vain and I’m not even going to deny it. Hahaha. 😀 If I knew my Chinese name can be translated to such a beautiful Japanese name, I would have called myself Reika instead of Sakura. Lol…

    No idea why no one ever told me about “Reika” name… Not even my friends, who knew both Chinese and Japanese. I am not exactly sure how to write it in Japanese characters though and my friend didn’t type it for me. Luckily I got a Japanese mentor and I have my 1-1 meeting with him tomorrow so I will definitely ask him about it. Otherwise, I have to ask my Japanese violin teacher this Sunday during my violin class. If I like how the characters looks like, then I might add it into my online name. Haha.

    On a side note, will I recommend anyone to buy Pleats Mama bag? Probably no. I already see some design and quality issues on my first day of use. To be honest, I haven’t had a bag brand which I do not complain, except Hermes. LOL. I also have complaints about my Hermes bags but Hermes after sales is always able to address every single concern I have. So no complaints about it. No wonder I have the most number of bags from this brand so far. I don’t think I ever bought so many bags from a single brand/shop before in my life…





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