“This hair colour is my reddest so far,” shares Shirley, 55, who was on a search for a new hairstylist two years ago. For her, an ideal hairstylist is one who “understands your character and style without asking you too much”. Her high expectation stems from her love for surprises – she places full trust on the hairstylist to come out with new hairstyles and interesting colours for her. Hence, she feels a strong need to develop a connection with her hairstylist so that her hair can reflect what she calls her “adventurous and boisterous personality”. 

Shirley keeps her hair short because of her active exercise routine. She keeps herself busy with yoga and trekking opportunities, and is an avid traveller. Her trekking hobby, combined with her love for exotic places, has brought her to places such as Bhutan, Kashmir, Nepal, Uzbekistan, Iceland and the Silk Road, which is an important trade route between China and Mediterranean. Her most memorable travel recently is to Hong Kong, where her team accomplished the 100km MacLehose Trail in four days.

When she is not overseas, she would trek around Singapore and Malaysia with Facebook trekking communities such as the Singapore Adventurous Nature-Lovers. She signs up for such communities to find like-minded individuals who enjoy the hobby, and treks with them at least once or twice a month. While she remains undecided about her favourite place to trek, she shared some of her popular trekking destinations – “I would say the most common people would go for is MacRitchie, Upper Seletar Reservoir, Mt Faber towards Southern Ridge and Bt Timah (which is closing soon for six months for repairs). Likewise for Malaysia, there are many lovely mountains but the common ones and not too tough ones are Gunang Lambak, Gunung Angsi and Fraser Hill, just to name a few.”

How does one start with an interest in trekking? She advises, “Just sign up online. I have joined easy peasy treks which can be one hour or so, or tougher, bashing through jungle treks where typically the whole trek is between three to six hours, including breaks, of course. Such a trek is between 8km to 15km.” For starters, she advises beginners to train their stamina with brisk walking – “Three to four times of briskwalking provides a good foundation with taking the staircase instead of the lift. However if one is not so fit, just do a short distance.”