Get it? Heh.

The opening of Marks and Spencer Food, the British supermarket in Wanchai lit a fire under the asses of all Brits within a mile's radius. You'd think it was the second coming of Jesus, come to provide scotch eggs and pork pies to the starving and needy. As none of your Geeks have any British affiliation, this will be a pure picture-porn post. If you haven't been yet, it's at 88 Gloucester Road.

We went to the beach over the long weekend in spite of the iffy weather, and Laura packed this kick-ass picnic which included boursin, cured meats, pate and the BEST. BREAD. EVER. I seriously have not stopped thinking about this bread since Friday. So when I dropped by Soho for dinner last night, I immediately texted her for the bakery's address, only to be told that the place closes pretty early. Thank God for iPhones, because I speed-Googled the bakery and saw ten minutes to spare on the clock, so I bounded across Staunton Street and up Aberdeen Street until I reached Bo-lo'gne Bakery.


And almost stopped in my tracks when I saw $18 for two slices. $9 for one slice of bread? It's highway robbery! My pauper's bread only costs $3.5 for four slices! You can tell that I was aggravated by my rampant! use! of! exclamation! marks!

But then I remembered the soft, flaky crust... the butter-infused goodness of it all and the juicy sheen it leaves on your fingers. I envisioned a large chunk of butter oozing through the folds and penetrating every orifice... I started picturing all the different condiments -- the mayos, the meats, the mustards -- and then I decided to stop having a private porn show in my head in front of strangers, and picked up the six-slice package for $53.

Now if you aren't going to take my word for it, I'll go ahead and tell you why this bread is so desirable. This Japanese mom-and-pop shop once had four-day waiting lists when they first opened, so good is this bread, and the so-called "Danish pastry" features 81 folds, which contributes to its croissant-like texture. Apparently if you go during the day, there are lunch treats like Katsu sandwiches or jam spreads. And if you order enough dough (a full loaf is $105, for example) they will even deliver it right to your door, so you never even have to leave your couch.

Images: Shamelessly poached from OpenRice.

Half of you are clapping your hands over these wingtip brogues; the other half of you are wondering "WTF-why-the-hell-are-these-filed-under-shoerotica-when-there's-nothing-attractive-about-them-at-all." Well to those who fall into the latter category... it's my blog and I'll post what I want to.

GET THEM at Net-a-porter.

I don't believe in new-age mumbo-jumbo, voodoo spells or mind control. I don't meditate, I don't know how to "centre myself" and I sure as hell don't join in the "ommmmm" sessions during the few times I've gone yoga-ing. So when we were invited to get hypnotized as part of our trial experiences with Spoilt, and FashionGeek chickened out, I said sign me up. Let's see what these guys can do.

The experience is titled "MindSpa", and entails a certified hypnotherapist coming to your apartment to put you in a trance so you can relax and empty your mind of toxins and polluted thoughts and all the other clutter that prevents you from sleeping at night. I was a little bit nervous about getting robbed or raped while under the spell, so I made sure someone was home at the same time (other than my dog, who would undoubtedly welcome thieves to the apartment with a big lick of saliva and a waggedy tail).

Thus, at 330pm on a Saturday afternoon, a pretty young woman by the name of Michel showed up at my door. She instructed me to sit on the couch in a comfortable position, and then took a seat suspiciously close to me on the same sofa, so that I could be sure to hear her voice throughout the experience.

Once I got over the slight invasion of personal space (I mean, we have three couches in a dead silent living room. There is no real reason for me and a total stranger to be sitting on the love seat together), the hypnotism began. Supposably, you are meant to be conscious the entire time, and you can think of it as a "guided meditation", a fact which had me entirely skeptical.

The session then started, not with a swinging pocket-watch and a repeated chant of "you are getting sleeeeepy," but with the simple act of closing my eyes and breathing in and out deeply. To accompany the breathing exercise, Michel told me to breathe in, imagining the air filling my eyeballs, and then breathe out, feeling all the stress leave my body. Rinse and repeat x every body part I own. She then proceeded to have me visualize a beach on Thailand (my chosen image of relaxation) with birds chirping, blue skies, etc, yada yada yada.

At this point, I was thinking to myself "OH MY F-ING GOD HOW AM I GOING TO LAST THROUGH THE NEXT 80 MINUTES OF THIS CRAP..." and then somewhere along the way, I don't know what happened, I fell under the spell. The last thing I remember was her saying "you are feeling soooo relaxed, you can see the sea in the distance and..." zonk. Intermittently, I remember such phrases as "when you wake, you will feel happy and relaxed and successful" and I sort of remember thinking "well I already AM happy and relaxed and successful." And then before I knew it, she was saying "When I count to 10, you will slowly wake up. 5. You will be so relaxed when I get to 10. 6." Meaning that I missed 1-4 and only really started to rise from the beyond at the end.

So there you have it. A non-believer, converted. Michel even told me that I was easy to hypnotize, but I still have no idea whether I fell asleep or got hypnotized. I guess the point is, did I feel relaxed afterwards? I suppose I did, and I suppose what's more important is that this would indeed make a good gift experience, primarily because it isn't something that someone would buy for themselves, but also because it's kind of a unique once-in-a-lifetime thing that a person would remember. It's also a very good beginner's intro to hypnotism, especially for those who are interested in experimenting with those techniques in order to quit a habit, like smoking, or heal a phobia.

More importantly, it's a tale to tell, if you haven't had the good fortune of being called on stage to be hypnotized into doing silly stuff, like eat your own arm off. Everyone loves hearing an "I was hypnotized" story. Or maybe they don't, but I've repeated the story several times already, and nobody has dared to complain.

Should you wish to try the experience for yourself, or gift it to someone, you can do it at Spoilt.

Image: Selfcaremanual.com

I'm a big music listener and I would never leave the house without my earphones. Unfortunately, I think I must be some sort of innate earphones wrecker as inevitably, one side of the earphones will lose its sound without fail within a year. After having broken yet another pair of earphones last year, I dragged ShoeGeek to help me find a replacement. After wandering around the shops for a while, I discovered AIAIAI earphones, created by a Danish design house. I was attracted to these earphones primarily because the wire was thicker than normal hence I hoped that it would survive the one year curse. It will be coming up a year in a month or so and things are looking pretty promising. Having already been a fan of AIAIAI, I was delighted when the company sent me a pair of their latest AIAIAI Track Headphones for trial.



These headphones are a hipster-friendly design by Copenhagen’s Kilo Design, which pays homage to the original Walkman headphones. With a simple stylish design, these headphones come with a range of different coloured parts so you can customise the look depending on your mood. So let's go to the sound, for the audiophiles, the headphones boast 40-millimeter drivers with a sensitivity of 112 +/-3 dB and a 23-Ohm impedance. For the rest of us, the music sounds a little fuller on the bass than other headphones but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Turning up the volumn still brings a nice clear sound with minimal distortion. However, do note that the noise insulation of these headphones are pretty poor. Everyone around you will hear exactly what you are listening to so fans of Justin Beiber might want to shy away from these.

Check them out at CitySuper's Log On or LCX. iPhone compatible.

Call me lazy, fine, but I find a hefty selection of images will suffice in lieu of an interesting blog post. I'm brain dead a little bit, and nothing I write will really compare in terms of genius to Dior Spring 2007 Couture, the undisputed pinnacle of Monsieur Galliano's career. It's a testament to what pure, unadulterated, uncompromising vision can yield. This is the kind of stuff that can almost earn you a warning letter at work, if instead of writing about accounting and the joys of career advancement (ah, the good old days of a job stagnated) you are surfing Style.com like a crazed fanboy stalks Star Wars news, or whatever it is exactly that those boys are into.