The Good CLEO Times...

As you know, the May issue of CLEO is out on stands since Monday!
Have you grabbed your copy yet? ;)

And here's my account of my one-month stint with them!

First day at CLEO: LATE LATE LATE!! I was panicking throughout my journey because I've under-estimated the travelling time from home to office. I was almost 30 minutes late, so imagine my relief when I found out that the CLEO team hadn’t come in to check on us. I quickly settled down and made small talk with the other guest editors.

It seems like we all come from different backgrounds, but something tells me that we were the Chosen Ones for a reason. I was sure we'll gel together very well in time to come and I've not been proven wrong. :) FYI: Denise was a teacher previously (and I think she has a degree in psychology?), Nadia (also known as Nadnut) 'blogs for a living' and is also a student, Elise is a law student currently, and hmm I guess April is slightly similar to me since we both have Mass Comm background.

The CLEO team came in later to welcome us and assign us to the different beats. April to fashion, Denise to web, Elise and Nadia to features/ lifestyle(?) and me.... to beauty! =D We were put to work on our first day, Annabelle breezed in and passed us books to review. And we received our first challenge --> Writing a Her Say piece under 500 words. Winner will get to go to Power 98 studio with Deborah, the editor and 2 Bachelor hunks! BTW, Denise won! :)


I can't remember when was this picture taken, but yes... I'm snacking. A girl needs fuel for her brain aiight?


Nadia and I, we braided hair for each other! =D


Elise and Nad had to go source for sex toys to be featured and they came back with huge bags! Here, you can see a variety of vibrators, lubricants and other kinky toys spread across the table (and on April's laptop)! And see the innocent looking lipstick that I'm holding on to? It's a vibrator. I suppose we take quite a bit of pictures...

Hahaha, Nadnut brought her rockstar shades and made everyone take a picture!




April


Denise


Elise

Bachelors... Hunks... Bachelors... Hunks... We were also involved in the Bachelors Preview and the Finals party! We sat in for meetings, and knew exactly what we had to do throughout the entire event. For me, I was basically the 'trophy girl', bringing props and prizes onto the stage for both Preview (Mar 7) and Finals (Mar 13).

Before the Preview event kicked off, we were downstairs helping to pack bottles of water into CLEO bags for the Bachelors to give out, and then Bryan and I chilled all the way till it was time. Elise was stationed at the photo-taking booth, April at the polling booth, Nad at the sales/subscription booth and... I cannot remember offhand where Denise was stationed. =X After the performances and games, I went to my muffins and coffee booth to help out, to replenish the trays of muffins and spins for Bachelors to give out while rallying for votes.


We were so busy, that's one of the only pictures we took. I think Elise had a great mix of work and pleasure, she took quite a number of shots with the Bachelors! Hahaha

Bachelors Finals: It was a busy week leading up to the event. My domestic goddess was put to the test when we had to sew velcro strips onto shirts that the Bachelors were going to wear for their striptease act. For someone who relied on glue to hold all my Home Economics projects together, it felt like I've come a long way. During the sewing process, I think I made alot of comments that make the rest go "OMG" but hey, I don't think I was the only one... hahaha! Other than that, we had to style the Bachelors' outfits as well. It was fun, April and I paired up and it was fun choosing shirts and suits, holding ties close to the ensemble to see if it worked. After that we took snapshots of the outfits for all the Bachelors for reference.

It was a busy day for me on event day and a quiet day in office as well with majority of the people at Zirca doing their thing. As for me, I had to attend a beauty launch by Nu Skin at noon, and it was raining cats and dogs! Then, I met up with my sister (my lifesaver once again!!) briefly to pass me my handphone charger because my battery was dying and rushed back to office.

I checked with Andrea what time she would like me to swing by, and I made my way over shortly. Went backstage to help the girls out in steaming clothes (oooh, fun! okay prolly fun since I weren't the one doing it the whole day) and stood in for some Bachelor during rehearsals (no idea why, but my cheeks were burning hot when I was surrounded by the hunks). Soon the hour was drawing near, we all went to the toilet to touch-up on our makeup haha! It was a mad scramble as we passed the hunks their outfits, pin the hems of their pants in so they wouldn't trip, etc. After that I went to look for Shaomei, who ran through the entire programme for the night with me.

My jobscope at the event was the easiest among the rest of the fellow guest editors - To stand around and look pretty (kidding!!). Seriously my role was to bring props on stage and give prizes out to participants, escort presesnters on and off stage. I even managed to catch bits and pieces of the show backstage in between segments and talked to this Bachelor who turned out to be my junior in poly and we had a common friend hahaha!

You would think that all our worries and troubles had come to an end after the winner of the night was announced, but you can't be more wrong. It was total mayhem backstage and a race against time as we rushed to collect clothes from the Bachelors, count and pack the clothes into boxes to be couriered back to office. After doing all that, we then finally relaxed... Checked out the VIP area with the girls and left shortly to look for Jenn who came to the party. She bought me a drink and we hung out for a while before I left the place because the boy had come to send me home and I'm starting my Saturday early!

So here are the only pictures of the night... Too busy! I wanna be in the crowds next time, screaming at the top of lungs and having fun!

Somewhere along in the second week, we decided to have theme days haha ;) We dressed up to themes like Gossip Girl, traffic light, floral, and coloured leggings!


We'll show you some colours! I don't remember why Denise wasn't around... But I think it's because of her dance rehearsals.




So we were presented another challenge in Week 2, to come up Q & A for AskCLEO and the winner gets to host the CLEO Show & Tell! I was keen on winning because it's pretty easy to me, and I really wanna find out more about mineral make up, hopefully I would find out my perfect shade as well. And guess what? Nadnut and I were the winners! :) She hosted the show while I was the model. It was interesting to learn about the application techniques, ways to take care of make-up brushes, and finding out a shade to suit my skintone. And the best part? I walked away with a Bare Escentuals bareMinerals get started kit worth $140 and 2 lip plumpers worth $45 each if I recall correctly! =D

I also interviewed Dalila for the beauty section, and she's such a sweet person!

Last day @ CLEO: Good things never last. We didn't have a theme on the last day, but it seems like we are all wearing alot of black!




We didn't have much to do, so we spent much of the day chilling, taking pictures, and when lunch time came by, we sat down with the CLEO team for a farewell lunch!


Looking through our work! After lunch, we took more pictures!


April and I in the photography studio


Taking silly pictures!


April doing her thing...

We decided to do something nice for the team and we went to get gerberas!


This is why I miss them so much, they are fun and don't mind care about looking silly!




We went around giving out flowers!







Some group shots! Pity Denise left for dance rehearsal/performance already...








Will I do this all over again?
Yes, in a heartbeat :)