As most of you would know, I had a snake tattoo at the back of my neck. Right under my right ear, down to the top of my spine and the tail spanned a little bit across my spine.
What most of you don’t know is that this snake is actually a coverup. Wendy and I and this other girl were very close for a while and we VERY spontaneously decided to go get a star tattoo right behind our right ear. Wendy still has her pink star; not sure about the other girl.
Due to personal reasons, I decided to cover the star up(Wendy and I are still friends; the decision didn’t have anything to do with her. In fact, she came with me to coverup the star and got her crown tattoo on the same day). We walked in, Wendy damn well-prepared, got her crown image all ready, and I just said I wanted to cover the star up. With ANYTHING.
The tattoo artist knew I had a panther tattoo already and asked if I like animals, I said, “Yes, I guess I don’t mind a zoo theme(fml I have no idea wtf I was thinking then).” He then proceeded to draw a snake freehand over the star. Initially it was a 2D image, kinda tribal I think. I didn’t like it and asked if he could make it more 3D/realistic. He did and I asked Wendy if it looked alright and she said yes.
So I ended up with this.
Not a bad job. Quite liked it. Had it on for several years. Most people then said it’s nice. But maybe cos the tattoo faded and/or I grew out of the wild child image and into Japanese kawaii style, it became less and less appealing, to me and virtually everyone else.
People started asking me why I did it, and I really had no solid reason to give other than I wanted to cover the star up, and they always replied, “With such a big snake??” Which was fine cos not only could I not be bothered with such comments, the snake was at the back of my neck, not noticeable to me unless I turn my body at an awkward angle to look at it.
What made me start to resent the snake was when I got fucked over by people I trusted and I don’t know why but every time I saw the snake, I would get reminded of it! It felt like an enemy snaking behind my back, an enemy I wasn’t aware of and trusted and hence turned my back towards and let my guard down with.
I started questioning why the fuck I would put a snake behind my back and all of the relevance it had to my life in recent years. It wasn’t that I got sick of the tattoo and decided it’s ugly; I still think it’s pretty decent(all of you who said it’s ugly, WHATEVER la.).
So yup, background story done. I’m in Malaysia now and my dear friend Brian introduced me to this bunch of tattoo artists from Borneo Ink. They appeared on LA Ink previously and are reportedly the best in the country and they are super famous(even Cheesie such a non-tattoo person heard of them when I mentioned it to her!).
They are soooo packed an appointment with them has to be made maybe 3, 4 WEEKS in advance, and that’s JUST to CONSULT. But cos Brian did like all his tatts with Lina(she’s the youngest sister; all of them are siblings), and I accompanied him there twice, they managed to slot me in when some guy cancelled his appointment!
And guess when this appointment was???
THE VERY NEXT DAY.
I was like “WTFOMGBBQ I don’t even know what to cover it up with!” Eddie, my tattoo artist(he’s the oldest of them and I’d like to think most experienced), told me there’s nothing much I can do about it if I don’t wanna do a giant one. He said, “See you tomorrow, we’ll work something out.”
DAFUQ??? It’s a coverup of a coverup, I CANNOT AFFORD TO FUCK IT UP. 
I was kinda stressing back then and Brian kept reassuring me Eddie’s really the best and all that. But just imagine, no image/design AT ALL, TOMORROW TATTOO. Will you freak out or not???
Fast forward to the next day, le bf brought me to Borneo Ink and Eddie sat me down on a chair and started drawing. It felt kinda ticklish and I fooled around saying OUCH! every time the marker touched me. (The whole bunch of them, Eddie, Simon and Lina, are SUPER funny and such a riot. They always scold you and make sexual/sexist/gay jokes and are generally super rude and fierce hahaha. NOT for the faint-hearted. But I love them, every time I go there, I laugh till I wanna cry omg).
Then Eddie said, “Ok I’m done.” I looked in the mirror and saw this.
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What is all the orange and green thing?? What’s going on? Is this a JOKE?
And then I realized he was serious and I panicked, thinking omg how am I gonna tell him I don’t want already?? He’s very fierce and I was so scared of offending him!
Now I REALLY wanna cry.
I think he saw I panicked a bit and he said, “These are the flowers and these are the buds.” in a nonchalant way. SIMI FLOWERS SIMI BUDS??? Look like orange/green rubbish!
Then he drew the image again. With a black marker this time.
Erm still the same rubbish eh. The leftover orange and green marker ink did nothing to make me feel better.
He said the flowers will have a magenta tinge. WTF is magenta??? In my head, it’s laosai purple lor. I damnnnn sad and emo and scared.
Haven’t start tattoo already cold sweat. But I remembered what Brian and Cheesie said about them, and saw all the work they did for all the people I met in the parlour the previous 2 times, and thought, “Aiya can’t be that bad la. Coverup what. Maybe my snake really too hopeless and this is the best it can be. No snake can already la. Beggars can’t be choosers.”
I kept psycho-ing myself with all these thoughts and only told him one thing, that I wanted the top part to be tapered. He said Ok and started tattoo-ing. I’m pretty ok with tattoo pain. It hurts but it’s very bearable for me, I was playing Scramble With Friends(btw if I don’t request to play again with you, it’s cos I have too many active games cos a lot of requests, NOT cos I don’t wanna play with you again. Just invite me ok?) and tweeting and looking at all the pics of Wendy, Qiu, Soph and Cheesie in Phuket.
Some parts hurt more than others but for this coverup, I didn’t even know when he switched from outlining to shading and coloring. Kinda all felt the same. A dull vibraty ache that was sometimes hot and sometimes sharp(eh I’m not a tattoo expert so don’t take my word for it, this is just how *I* feel about it). The ending part near my hairline and ear, I felt kinda high and my eyeballs were rolling and I started blushing lol.
Eddie: “Stop it, you’re creeping me out.”
He says all these jokes with such a deadpan nonchalance I couldn’t stop laughing. So awesome for distracting me from the ache of the tattoo.
And then he said this:
“I tattoo-ed a HIV-positive person before.”
This was near the end of my tattoo. PANIC AGAIN! This one really not funny eh!
He then reassured me and said it’s really hard to transmit HIV through tattoo needles cos they’re all properly sterilized, and HIV, which is a very fragile virus, doesn’t thrive for long outside the body and dies easily with soap or common detergents(Google if you don’t believe me!). I looked around then and saw of all the certs he has, he even has one for passing some course on NOT transmitting diseases through tattoo-ing! PRO max! (Also, his real name is Edward hahahha).
And a million crazy funny jokes since the start of my tattoo and 2 hours later, Eddie was done!
I was DYING to see it. I didn’t get up once throughout the tattoo so I really had zero clue how it looked like!
Le bf saw it sometime towards the end and said, “Omg the snake disappeared. Damn legit.” (He hated the snake and to him, the main point was to get it covered up.) But I’m obvsly vain and that was by no means an indication of whether the new tatt is NICE.
So I got him to take pics for me. It’s obvsly super red and sore and bleedy now BUT WOULD YOU TAKE A LOOK AT THIS.
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Sakura blossoms. Where DAFUQ is the snake???
I WANTED TO GO HUG HIM! And say sorry I was so apprehensive about the drawing on my neck hahahah.
All the tattoo artists at Borneo Ink have a lotta tatts and are super cool with MAXIMUM street cred all so I was tryna keep my cool but at that moment, I just wanted to SQUEAL and SQUEAL and SQUEAL!
How did he get from this
To this
To THIS???
This is how it kinda looks like right now, still scabbing and flaking and I’d have to go back to let him check and I might need a touchup(free) but HOW PRETTY IS THIS???
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Borneo Ink Tattoos is at Tattoos 8-3. Jalan 27/70A, Desa Sri Hartamas, 50480 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Phone: +(6)03 – 2300 1151. I paid RM350 for my coverup(cos Brian is friends with them) but if you ask me, there can be no price on this. If you’re thinking of getting a tattoo, please make sure you won’t regret it in years and years to come. Then get an awesome tattoo artist and trust him/her with everything you’ve got. 
I LOVE YOU EDDIE. X
(And nope, I wasn’t paid, in cash nor in kind, to say anything I did in this post.)
(Ok I know I have a LONG way to go but I’m starting tonight by checking-in at Zouk!)
He started sketching…
MAD LOVE! He says he’s gonna colour it in when he finds the time but I already love it like this! 
Pics of my face so you don’t forget me! X
