Permanence

Introduce yourself!
I’m Nicole, and I’m currently working full-time at a digital agency, doing client servicing and social media—corporate girlie stuff basically. Before this, I was doing fitness full-time teaching spin and pilates, but I didn’t like it because of the messy politics, so I left. I still spin these days as a rider, just not as a coach. I also do functional fitness and CrossFit training as well. I’m quite boring, honestly (laughs).

Not at all! Have you always been this active?
I have, actually! I used to dance for about 10 years, but I stopped when I tore my meniscus. I tried to get back into it after it healed, but I feel like my interest just shifted more towards fitness.

We see you have quite a fun, close relationship with Celine. When and how did you two meet?
Oh, we met in university in 2020. We were from different polytechnics and backgrounds, but we both studied communications. 2020 was when COVID was still fresh, so our whole university was online back then—we literally met on Zoom University, on the first day of orientation, when they broke us up into breakout rooms (laughs).

So I noticed her because she was one of the only ones who had her camera on, and she was showing everyone her dog because they were asking if any of us had pets. Then I was like “Oh, she’s s cute, I hope we can be friends!” Anyway, fast forward to our first group project, when my other poly friends ditched me and I had no one to pair up with. I randomly thought of Celine and remembered that she existed, so I messaged her asking if she wanted got pair up with me. I expected her to say no because she seemed so popular, but she said yes because she had no one to team up with either, and that was it! We realised that we’re super similar and have a lot of similar interests and hobbies, and also stay quite near each other, so yeah the rest is history!

Wah, damn cringe, but I’ve never had a best friend until I met her, and I think it’s the same for her as well.

Aww, that’s so sweet! But okay, let’s talk more about yourself now, specifically your tattoos—tell us about them!
Oh, okay, all of my tattoos are done in Singapore because I’m too scared to get them done overseas, and most of them are actually done by different artists. I have one of my old office cat, Pepper, who has unfortunately passed away, but that one was done by one of my very good friends who used to come to the office a lot to visit Pepper.

I have a bunch of tattoos from this one artist, Chelsea, who’s super talented and so young—I think she’s three or four years younger than me, and all of my tattoos from her were done when she was still an apprentice! I actually found out about her because I did a piece with one of her old colleagues, and then I realised I actually like Chelsea more, so I did the rest of my pieces with her (laughs). Other than that, the rest of my tattoos are from a bunch of different artists.

Oh, I also have a tattoo of Euron Greyjoy’s axe from Game Of Thrones, as a tribute to my ex-boss who is no longer with us. Wah, actually a lot of people in my life have died, but long story short, he had always wanted to get a Game of Thrones-related tattoo, so when he died I decided to get this in memory of him, though I had already left the company by then.