Pants and under pants

So many years ago, I attended a training program on personal grooming conducted by a well known social figure who also writes for a local English newspaper. Her columns provide tips and guides on personal etiquette, manners and such.

I remembered distinctively the esteemed presenter giving us all a tip that I have since been sharing with my classes. We were told that in order for our shirts/blouses to stay neatly tucked in our pants or skirts, we had to first tuck them into our…under pants!

In other words, the order of dressing up is to first put on our top garments, then our underpants – pulling the waist band on top of our blouses/shirts, and then only do we put on our pants/skirts. That way, regardless of the number of times we move about in the office or wherever, our blouses/shirts stay neatly tucked in our pants/skirts.

Today, I again had the good fortune of being given some more tips and guidelines on personal grooming, or rather, professional corporate grooming. And today I learnt that the rule of thumb in tucking in your shirt/blouse into your pants or skirts is to ensure that the portion of your shirt/blouse that is tucked in is about 6 inches from your pants/skirts’ waist band.

In other words, NEVER TUCK IN YOUR SHIRT/BLOUSE INTO YOUR UNDERPANTS! Remember, waistbands of pants nowadays are not what they were during the first grooming class I attended. And what do you know; underpants of recent years are certainly not what they were before, either…

Imagine trying to tuck in your blouse into flimsy strings and what-have-you…now, wouldn’t that be challenging?

In a bit...

Good golly miss molly...it has been a long while since I last penned my few cents worth here, hasn't it?

Not that I have not been dropping by; every day or so when I do, I tell myself this is the day I am going to share what's been going on in the past few days...and the days got longer and more spaced out.

I eventually started my field work again, going round the country on business...and before you know it, the country has had a change of leadership (power is too strong a word in this case, for me...and power is almost always associated with abuse. Heck, maybe thats why the media and our leaders kept on using that word! Go figure...)

Anyway, I went for an out-of-the country holiday, and this time am not refering to the usual trip back to Singapore. The children and I went to Indonesia; more specifically to Bandung, Puncak and Jakarta during the 1 week school break. All of 5 days and 4 nights. And we flew on Garuda Airlines. Which means, we went through KLIA, real international travel, if you ask me.

We had a ball - the sightseing, the hospitality, the food, the excitement and of course, the shopping.

We all felt like millionaires; you would too, if everytime you spend, you have to take out their currency in the thousands and millions. And usually when you convert the price of an item back to Ringgit, and you realised how much lower priced that item is in our home country, a sudden rush of guilt envelopes you - even then you still haggle with the seller for a much bigger discount!

Ah, well...I need to re-install my bluetooth thingy in this laptop so I could download the pictures taken on my hand-phone. Then we'll share more of that. Meanwhile, we'll chat on other issues...in a bit.