A sherbert swirl, fully beaded A-line evening gown by Alfred Angelo.
A suggestion for accessories.
Continue reading “Friday Glam! Sherbert swirl by Alfred Angelo”
Born in the vibrant city of Singapore with a unique Eurasian blend of Portuguese and Chinese heritage, my journey has taken me from the bustling streets of Singapore to the serene and open landscapes of Sweden. My educational pursuits in Singapore culminated at tertiary level with two separate Master degrees, after which I embarked on a new adventure in 2002, moving to Sweden.
In Sweden, I pursued with deep interest, the knowledge field of applied linguistics, particularly corpus linguistics research methods, earning a doctoral degree from one of northern Europe’s largest universities, the University of Gothenburg.
I currently work as Project Manager, focusing on EU and international projects, at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, at the Division of Bioeconomy and Health, Department of Agriculture and Food. My office is located in Mölndal municipality. Mölndal, known also as the Valley of Mills, is located about ten minutes by bus ride from the city center of Gothenburg to the south. If you’re ever traveling south from Gothenburg to Malmö, whether by train or car, you will likely come by Mölndal municipality.
In these pages at cmariec.com, you’ll find my lifestyle musings on culinary and travel adventures from Singapore to Sweden, and from when I lived and worked the Arctic City of Tromsø (2018 to mid-2022).
SINGAPORE | SWEDEN | NORTHERN NORWAY
Life in Singapore
Pursued all academic interests in Singapore, of which the post-graduate years were founded in two separate disciplines.
In 2000, graduated with two separate Masters Degrees:
(i) Master of Science in Information Studies at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore
(ii) Master of Arts in the English Language at the National University of Singapore (NUS).
In 1999, represented the Republic of Singapore at the Miss Universe Pageant in Trinidad and Tobago. With this came a variety of film, educational TV, media, and ambassadorial work for the Singapore Tourism Board.
Life in Sweden
In 2002, moved from Singapore to Sweden in order to pursue a PhD in Gothenburg, where a number of international corporate head offices were located that all had a substantial business presence in Singapore and also Asia in general.
In 2009, graduated with a PhD in applied critical linguistics from the faculty of humanities at the University of Gothenburg, with a cross-disciplinary thesis entitled, Swedish management in Singapore: a discourse analysis study, looking particularly into the concepts of assimilation, integration and hierarchy, at top management levels of Swedish-Asian corporations in Singapore.
2013, as research fellow at the Centre for International Business Studies (CIBS), School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, researching the future implications of increasing Asian-Swedish cooperation within the field of international business. The project is entitled Gothenburg in Asia, Asia in Gothenburg, funded by the Anna Ahrenberg Foundation. The project is aligned with the 400 years anniversary of the city of Gothenburg in 2021, and falls under the broad category of Kunskap Göteborg 2021 initiated by city representatives of Gothenburg, Göteborg & Co, University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology.
2015, was granted the Flexit post-doctoral scholarship by Bank of Sweden Tercentennary Foundation (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, RJ) for a three year project together with the Swedish-Swiss multinational enterprise ABB. From 2015-17, the research will take place at ABB Corporate Research Sweden HQ in Västerås, and at CIBS during 2017-18. The research focus of the project is how new technologies are perceived and accepted by users and customers, using linguistic methods of data analysis. More information can be found at RJ’s website, at Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ) Felxit 2015.
Life in Northern Norway (2018-2022)
2018, late summer. I acquired new work as Market Scientist at Nofima. Having moved to the county of Troms in August, I’m currently enjoying myself, exploring the island city of Tromsø. From the 1900s, this city became known as Paris of the North due to how the people of Tromsø were exceptionally stylish and sophisticated in contrast to the fishing village preconception that many might have of a city located in the Arctic Circle.
In my years in Sweden, I have known Sweden to be called the land of the midnight sun. During the long summer mights, it was beautiful to sit and watch the sun’s languid pendulation between east and west, touching the horizon out at sea before going up again. Northern Norway takes this languid pendulation of the sun to the extreme. It is not only known as the land of the midnight sun, but it is also the land of polar nights and the northern lights. This is my new adventure. And in these lifestyle blog pages, you’ll find my personal thoughts, insights and musings.
Cheryl Marie Cordeiro | PhD MSc MA
ACADEMIC REFLECTIONS | CV
LIFESTYLE BLOG
A diamond skull is forever
British artist Damien Hirst revealed his latest work of art at the White Cube Gallery in London, June 1, 2007. “For the Love of God” is a life-size cast of a human skull in platinum and covered by 8,601 pave-set diamonds weighing 1,106.18 carats. The single large diamond in the middle of the forehead is a 52.4 carat internally flawless, light, fancy pink, brilliant-cut diamond reportedly worth $4.2 million alone. Hirst financed the project himself, and estimates it cost between 10 and 15 million. The price tag was $99 million. The platinum plates were hand-lasered with thousands of holes and the diamonds, which have a total weight of 1,106.18 carats, were individually set.
When I first saw this skull I went through a myriad of reactions that went something like:
WOW! What a fantastic thing!
Oooh! How HORRID!
buuuuut…Interesting.
COOOOOL!
Well, my thoughts needed to do a really long walking to come to that fourth observation of it being cool. The obvious in-your-face impression of this piece of art, is of course that the skull as an age old Vanitas symbol that Nothing is Forever, combined with the De Beer diamond slogan that Diamonds, are Forever, Hirst manages to add some kind of cynical humour to the combination “Death, is Forever, too”.
How cool is that.
Then I started to wonder, is that observation really worth £50 million?
My mind started to ponder a much wider circle. Looking some into this I found that the original “perfectly shaped skull” had been sourced from a taxidermy shop, with an analysis suggesting that it had probably belonged to a European man who died in his mid-thirties in the 18th or early 19th century.
But don’t those teeth awfully “fresh” to be from an 18th century skull?
A really old skull. The painting “Vanitas” by, Pieter Claesz (1597-1661).
It suddenly dawned on me that I had seen such a “fresh” looking skull once before, at the desk of an engineer who designed dental equipment. “Is this plastic?”, I asked. “No, it’s the real thing” he answered and explained that it actually came from the first World War battle fields in the Flanders. They were popular with dental clinics because the soldiers had been so young and healthy when they died, that their teeth were perfect, “Look Ma, no cavities!”.
Of course this was just my mind wandering, but then again I had just been forced – due to a lack of alternatives – to read an article about a specifically bloody battle in an obscure village in Belgium, called Passchendaele. It lasted some 100 days in the autumn of 1917. And when it ended, a total of 325,000 Allied and 260,000 German young men had died, achieving nothing.
Continue reading “A diamond skull is forever”
Baum und Pferdgarten
One of my favourite designers here, Baum und Pferdgarten, known for their quirky and tongue in cheek designs.
An Alfred Angelo evening gown
Some catwalk styles similar to this dress
The Vietnamese Ao Dai
My first view of a Vietnamese Ao Dai (the national costume of Vietnam) was when I was still a student at the National University of Singapore (NUS). I believe one of the lady professors at the English Language & Literature department wore an ao dai to work. I watched her move and was mesmerized at how the material flowed around her wrists and ankles. I thought she was a vision of a goddess walking in the glinted shades of the tropical sunlight that filtered through the leaves at a most unromantic spot of the NUS parking lot for cars.
Continue reading “The Vietnamese Ao Dai”
An Alfred Angelo pageant gown in light rose
A beautiful pageant gown that commands a stage presence, this Alfred Angelo dress is reminiscent of Sherri Hill designs. Intricately beaded, barely there pink evening wear Continue reading “An Alfred Angelo pageant gown in light rose”
Moss green bell sleeved crochet top and Patrizia Pepe skirt
Continue reading “Moss green bell sleeved crochet top and Patrizia Pepe skirt”
A Nicole Miller deep purple gown
A dress by Nicole Miller in deep purple. The size is about XS to an S. The seams can be taken in to make the dress smaller but it is inadvisable to let the seams out.
Similar purples on the catwalk by Elie Saab and some more designs by Nicole Miller
Sunday casual
This autumn day was bright and fairly warm with temperatures between 10 – 15 centigrades. So we went out to sit some in the sun.
In the picture, on me:
Personality and individual style in pictures
I think if I ever wished to get to know a person without approaching the person and talking to them, one could just sit and observe. Apart from how people interact with others in their surrounding, their sense of style will say a lot about their personality, who they are or possibly want to be. When this is not intentionally the purpose, the message comes through anyway, just as language is a reflection of your thoughts. This we can also observe through photographs.
I’m posting two sets of pictures. The first set taken in Sweden and the second in Singapore, all by Kevin Cordeiro.
A picture of three teenage girls, Sweden.
Photo: Kevin Cordeiro, 2006.
Continue reading “Personality and individual style in pictures”