Philipp Rösler, new German Health Minister, with wife Wiebke

Congratulations to Philipp Rösler, announced as Health minister for Angela Merkel’s new government in Germany.

Philipp was born in Vietnam and adopted as a baby by German parents. This is a picture of Philipp and his wife Wiebke taken from the article “Bei Berlin winkt Rösler ab” at Focus.de (about his recent success, in German, English word salad by Google translate here). What a beautiful couple he and Wiebke are!

I don’t want to say too much about this news item. I am still in shock. How lucky the Germans are… and we got Chua Soi Lek!

This is Sunrise over the Old Man of Storr, Isle of Skye, Scotland. It won the landscape photo of the year 2009.

The landscape of these pictures are fascinating and by looking  at the surrounding of natural environment, just amazing!

That inspires me to have a good camera so that I can capture all the fantastic memory when  I look back one day.

You can view the full pictures gallery here.

See what I mean? Does she say LER KRAW? Second video is about Christian Lacroix perfume advertisement in France. Very sentimental and elegant video in which you can hear it very clearly – more like LA KRRRRWA! I like his perfume designed, will go to have a look for my next shopping trip!

Here’s a sound file taken from the video, save it on your phone and listen, just in case you have to say it sometime!

Durex Quality condoms

Sometimes Lolyco customers ask for advice in choosing a condom. Actually customers ask for advice about all sorts of things. It’s easier with skin care products – they say “I have oily /dry / combination skin” or “I want to get rid of my wrinkles / black spots”.

It’s more difficult with condoms. So far, no customer has said “I am hung like a bull / orangutan / cicak” and neither have they said “I want to last all night / feel nothing / keep the rain off my lunch”. They do occasionally ask, but there’s not much information offered on which to offer advice! It has been difficult knowing what to say, apart from “try and see”.

The Durex condoms Lolyco stock are in boxes of 12. “Try and see” can quickly become expensive, and if you try the first of 12 and find it’s not really for you, that’s 11 creative uses you have to think of for the remainder.

Lolyco has added a ‘pick and mix’ individual condom item to its catalogue. Now if you want to try a range of different Durex condoms, you can choose exactly which ones you want, and exactly how many of each kind. Just add the total number of Durex condoms you want to your shopping basket. After you’ve gone through the checkout, drop Lolyco a note to say exactly what kinds of condoms you want.

Lolyco Durex condom mix selector

Example: If you want 1 Extra Safe, 3 Pleasuremax and 2 Close Fit and 2 Together, just add 8 Mixed Durex condoms to your basket. You can use the Lolyco ‘Contact Us’ form to let us know the breakdown: just write something like:

“Hi Lolyco, just placed an order for 8 Mixed Durex condoms. I want 1 x Extra Safe, 2 x Close Fit, 3 x PleasureMax and 2 x Together. TQ!”

And that’s it! Hopefully that will help anybody wondering which is the best condom for them. No need to get the ruler out any more – happy testing!

Cheryl Cole

Every year I’m fascinated and excited want to find out:  who is the most beautiful women in the world? Who is the best dressed woman? Recently, there was a poll conducted by The Style Network, voted Cheryl Cole as the Best Dressed woman of 2009 and style icon of the year.

These are my personal favourite pictures of Cheryl Cole.  She is indeed gorgeous and stylish. I like her hairstyle and the proportions of her figure  makes her look so stunning whatever she wears. No wonder she would be able to beat Kate Moss and Victoria Beckham to grab this year title! I reckon she could grab the most sexiest icon of the year as well, what do you think by judging of these few pictures?

Cheryl Cole

There were about 3000 women took part in this poll, the survey asked who is the most stylish icon age range between 25 to 30. I read somewhere that her success is thanks to her shopping habit and she dresses up well all the time. On top of that, she is married to a rich and famous  Chelsea football player Ashley Cole which helps her fame as well.

Cheryl Cole

Cheryl Cole

The top 10 best-dressed women of 2009 were:

1. Cheryl Cole

2. Kate Moss

3. Victoria Beckham

4. Alexa Chung

5. Blake Lively

6. Katy Perry

7. Agyness Deyn

8. Katie Holmes

9. Rihanna

10. Rachel Bilson

See the pictures  of the top ten best dressed women here.

Back: medium handbag, tall wine/gift holder, large handbag. Front: Small gift/novelty holder, small handbag, gift holder

If you are searching products for Christmas presents, birthday gifts, valentine gifts, wedding gifts , a special gift for a special love ones, you can look for it at Lolyco.com at Malaysian crafts category which has a variety of choice. You can just give away as it is or just can be a little bit creative for instance, just purchase a handmade box and just put some jewelery or souvenirs as a surprise gift!

Back:Placemat, large box. Front: Large presentation box, pencil cases, songket coaster (cup mat) set, gift box.

All the Malaysian crafts that can be seen in Lolyco are handmade products, made by hardworking women with a lifetime’s experience in a small village town. According to the manager, once they have gone, it is a bit difficult to find such experience workers. So even the workers are national treasures, not just the unique product!

From 27th March 2009 for a limited time, Lolyco will give a free Malaysian craft with every order. Which one? It depends the amount of the order! Actually, we were going to do a promotion later but just can’t wait to give you those wonderful crafts! Hurry, while stock last! Just say you saw this blog article when you place an order.

Institut Esthederm logo (GIF)

Jess wanted some pictures with the Institut Esthederm logo in them, but the only versions I could find online were very small, so resizing them made them look horrible. She had a version on a disk too, courtesy of a trip to Esthecosme, her supplier. It was the old black-on-white version of the logo, and in an EPS (Encapsulated Post Script) file. Even though it was a huge (over 300kB!) file, it still had jagged edges!

I’d recently done a few articles about Inkscape, the drawing program, for isono.my, so I thought I’d test my new-found skills on the Institut Esthederm logo. I’m not a graphic designer, so I may not have gone about it quite right. It was easy enough, with perhaps the only tricky bit the kerning (spacing between characters) of the text. It’s very easy to change the kerning of text in Inkscape, once you know how – it’s not obvious!

Reconstructed Institut Esthederm logo, large version (PNG)

Before you use this logo in any of your own work, please note that it isn’t Institut Esthederm’s logo, it’s Lolyco’s reconstruction of it. It does look like their logo (okay, so the first ‘I’ and the last ‘T’ in the curved INSTITUT at top are not quite rotated as much as the original), but if you really wanted to use Institut Esthederm’s logo in your own documents, we strongly recommend asking Institut Esthederm for a better, official version. I could have done that, but patience is not a virtue I possess.

If you want a resizable (to any size) version that you can use with Inkscape (so you can fix the rotation on the ‘I’ and the ‘T’!), Institut Esthederm logo, SVG format, zipped.

Lolyco.com

In January 2009, Lolyco.com is giving away a free Ang Pow with every order, to mark the Chinese New Year of the Ox. Chinese New Years (CNY) are based on a lunar calendar and the northern solstice, so the festival falls usually in late January or early February. The Chinese animal zodiac consists of twelve animal signs in a cycle. Most of 2008 was the Year of the Rat, CNY in 2009 marks the start of the Year of the Ox.

Ox Year People

People born in an Ox year are said to be patient, tireless and gain prosperity through hard work. Born leaders, they are quiet, systematic thinkers who benefit from a peaceful environment in which to consider their options and make plans. Ox people are truthful and honest, and have many friends.

Ang Pow

Ang Pow, meaning ‘red envelope’, is a gift of money given to mark a special occasion. The red of the envelope is for good luck, while the money inside is usually in certain auspicious amounts. At Chinese New Year, it is traditional for married people to give Ang Pow to their unmarried relatives, and for adults to give Ang Pow to children. The amount of cash in Lolyco.com’s free Angpow won’t make you rich, but like a seed grows into a beautiful flower, maybe it will be the start of a prosperous New Year of the Ox for you.

恭喜發財 Gōngxǐ fācái / Gong hei fat choi / Kung hei fat choi

The traditional greeting for Chinese New Year can be pronounced many different ways, depending on what Chinese dialect is used. Mandarin (official Chinese) is spelt in pinyin (A-Z with pronunciation marks) Gōngxǐ fācái. The other two ways I’ve shown here are similar to Hakka (my ancestors!) and Cantonese (Hong Kong area) pronunciation. In Malaysia, you’ll see all kinds of wonderful spellings around CNY!

Listen to the way Oprah Winfrey and this journalist say his name:

If you want to hear their pronunciation separately, here is Oprah:

And here’s the journalist:

I hope that helps! Maybe I should spend more time watching the news on TV instead of reading it online!