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Michelle A. Eng Leang | TTChatterbox(@ttchatterbox)'s profile avatar HD Profile

Michelle A. Eng Leang | TTChatterbox

@ttchatterbox

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The bestie you didn’t know you needed. Romanticising life, one moment at a time. 💚💞 Powered by @heineken_tto 💅🏼 by @enchanted_aesthetics_bynikki
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Across all my platforms (@instagram, @facebook, @linkedin, @pinterest, @tiktok and my website), there are now almost 50,000 of you and, whether you follow, like, read, share, comment or simply watch, my rambling receives more than 5 million views collectively each month. Those numbers may look like metrics on a screen, but to me they represent YOU, my Besties, and that is a responsibility I do NOT take lightly. I have been thinking about how casually brands use the word “community” because a following is not automatically a community and neither is a customer list. When I call you my community, I take on a responsibility to listen to you, make room for you, connect you to each other and care about you beyond what you can buy from me. Answer EVERY DM! Community is not a synonym for clique. A clique protects who is already inside, while a true community notices who is standing at the edge and makes room. That is what I want Besties to be. Yes, some experiences will require tickets and membership will come with benefits, but belonging will never be exclusive or for sale. You do not have to arrive with a friend, look a certain way, know the right people or have been following TTChatterbox from the beginning. Whether you have been here for all 12 years or found me this morning, there is always room for you. With a name like Besties, no one will ever be left out. 💚💞 #besties #thingsilove taken in Trinidad and Tobago by @ttchatterbox
1
a month ago
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Besties, The Besties Book Club is officially here and I am thrilled to open the door to a world I have loved for as long as I can remember. I started reading at 9 months old, writing poetry at 2 and studying Literature straight up to Uni., so books have never been just books to me. They are places I can enter, characters who seem to leap off the page and sit beside me, landscapes an author can make me feel in my bones and conversations that continue long after I close the book. Books taught me how to look more closely at people, power, love, loss and ourselves. I chose Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea as our first read because it is an extraordinary example of how much a writer can achieve with simple, controlled language. Hemingway was one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century and his iceberg theory asks us to pay attention not only to what is written but to everything beneath it. In this novella, Santiago, an ageing Cuban fisherman, ventures into the sea after eighty-four days without a catch and faces an enormous marlin. The ocean becomes more than a setting. You will witness as you read, how the natural world reflects the emotional atmosphere through pathetic fallacy, how details quietly prepare us for what is coming through foreshadowing and how symbolism, imagery, characterisation and repetition turn a short story into something immense. Hemingway writes, “A man can be destroyed but not defeated,” and that sentence alone gives us so much to explore. This is why books matter to me and why I want to read with you again: because the best stories do not sit quietly on a shelf. They wake something up in us. Swipe to see our first book, then use the link in my bio to access a PDF or you can buy a physical copy like I have. I got this from @nigelrkhanbookseller in @longcircularmall_tt. Welcome to The Besties Book Club, Besties. We have so many pages ahead of us. I will do a video discussing the book after I’ve read it, maybe in a week or two, max. Have you read this one? #BookChat #BestiesBookClub #thingsilove taken in Trinidad and Tobago by @ttchatterbox
1
a month ago
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Besties has entered the chat! 💚💞! This idea started with something very simple… I wanted to create more moments, more connection and more reasons for you, my besties, to find more joy in your life through the little things. So many of our friendships began in tiny ways, a DM, a recommendation, a coffee run, a conversation at an event, a “bestie, do you know somebody who…?” and before you know it, someone who was once a stranger has become part of my life. I wanted to build a whole world around that feeling. The guava became my chosen symbol because it feels deeply familiar to me. I grew up with guavas in my grandparents’ backyard and I have always loved that little moment when you cut one open and the bright pink inside almost startles you. It feels joyful, unexpected and full of life, which is exactly what a new friendship can feel like too. The green and pink of Besties logo comes from that memory and from the idea of something unexpected, fresh, warm and full of sweetness. Besties is a community that I am building which includes an event series, a monthly membership with benefits only the besties of TTChatterbox can enjoy, a directory of trusted people and places, merch, curated birthday moments, surprise goody bags sent randomly throughout the month, brand bestie one-on-one sessions with me when you’re trying to figure it all out and all the other little things I think my besties will love. But underneath all of it is one idea I care about most: creating a community where women in Trinidad and Tobago can meet, connect, discover, laugh, celebrate each other and make friendship feel like something worth making room for in our lives. Off the screen, out of the group chat and into real life. Welcome to Besties. A community where everyone is your bestie. 💗🌿 #besties #thingsilove taken in Trinidad and Tobago by @ttchatterbox
18
a month ago
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On 14 October 2014, I launched TTChatterbox and this was the very first photograph I shared. @diannehunt making her legendary scones, dough being cut by her hands and a little piece of my heart captured in this photograph. You see, scones have always reminded me of my Welsh grandma, Mildred, who was always chatty and showed me her country with pride when we visited together. That made me see that every place and the people in it had stories worth telling. As a journalist, I had spent years pitching stories about ordinary people doing extraordinary things, only to be told they weren’t big enough for the paper. The lady making fudge. The young girl who struggled with her skin and decided to create her own skincare products. The entrepreneurs whose names nobody knew but whose stories I desperately wanted to tell. I never believed a story had to be big to matter. And so I created my own space to tell them. The irony is that I had spent much of my childhood being told to stop talking, until a wonderful woman @gailcrispin in a bridal boutique called @themewsbridal in Bristol, called me a chatterbox and actually celebrated it! That word stayed with me and eventually it became the name of something that would change my life. 12 years later, I look at this photograph and smile because everything I wanted this to be was already there. Food, places, people, things and my beloved Trinidad and Tobago, all connected by stories worth sharing. There have been millions of views, thousands of photographs, countless chats, extraordinary experiences and some of the most difficult years of my life but the reason I started has never changed. I wanted to give you and brands out there a voice, particularly those who had been made to feel they weren’t big enough to deserve one. To every person who has trusted me with their story, every brand that has welcomed me into its world and every Bestie who has read, shared, commented or simply stayed along for the journey, thank you. YOU have given this chatterbox 12 epic years of reasons to keep chatting. And I have so much more things I love to chat about. #besties #thingsilove taken in Trinidad and Tobago by @ttchatterbox
2
4 hours ago
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Coffee is truly my Bestie in a bag. Or tin. Or sachet. Or bottle. And these are my favs. from what’s on the shelves at the moment at @peppercornstt in their @thefallsatwestmall branch. I’ve tried EVERY SINGLE ONE. So if you have any questions, ask away. And I DO NOT recommend shit and NO Peppercorns is not paying me. They’re just my Bestie, for real, for real. I get so many of my treats I enjoyed when I lived in London. What do you treat yourself with (is with or to? I will go with “with”) yeah … with … in Peppercorns? @fostermarisa @melfosben @mary.foster.98 Let’s see what people say it is … treat yourself with OR treat yourself to. 🤷🏼‍♀️ #grammar #thingsilove taken in The Falls at Westmall by @ttchatterbox
6
10 days ago
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What if the office Christmas lime wasn’t a lime? When @1000piecesltd introduced me to Connect Differently, what interested me was not simply the creative Christmas experience. It was the thinking behind it. We spend much of our working lives alongside the same people, often knowing them primarily through their roles, responsibilities and the work that needs to get done. Connect Differently creates an opportunity to change that setting. Designed for groups of six to eight participants, the three-hour guided experience brings colleagues together around creativity, conversation and the simple act of making something together. Behind the concept is 1000 Pieces Director Shauna Huggins, whose work in organisational culture and employee development is grounded in the belief that stronger organisations begin with people. How they communicate, how they understand one another, how they develop and how they experience the organisation all matter. Connect Differently takes that philosophy and gives it a different setting for the Christmas season. You will leave with something you created, but the greater value may be what you build together. I’m sharing the full story of Connect Differently, 1000 Pieces and the thinking behind Shauna’s work is on my site. Have a look… link In bio! #thingsilove taken in Trinidad and Tobago by @ttchatterbox
4
13 days ago
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Besties, Luxe Desserts by Nicole W has entered the chat and I need you to look at those macarons. Those perfect little pastel shells got my attention first but then I kept scrolling and realised Nicole has an entire dessert situation happening over there. Macarons, mini desserts, cupcakes and celebration cakes, from beautifully elegant and understated to full-on birthday fabulousness. And because we firmly believe you do not need to wait for a birthday, anniversary or somebody’s Sweet 16 to make life a little sweeter, I think we have found another brand worth knowing. Go show @luxedessertsbynicolew some Bestie love, have a proper scroll and somebody please order the macarons because now I need to know if they taste as good as they look. #besties #thingsilove taken in Trinidad and Tobago by @ttchatterbox
0
18 days ago
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Besties!!!! 🇹🇹📖 Look at the words they just put in the Oxford English Dictionary!!! Trinbagonian. Canboulay. Douen. Hornerman. Jablesse. Nana. Nani. Peanut punch. Sugar cake. To get on. Vex money. And hear nah, the timing nearly took me out. Oxford announced them on September 23, the day before we celebrated 50 years of Republic Day. You know I had to go down the rabbit hole because I grew up with this HUGE Oxford dictionary, bigger than our family Bible in my childhood memory, pressed against my legs while I searched for random words just to see where they would take me. Now all these years later, I’m looking inside Oxford and seeing words that sound like us. Words we grew up hearing. Words we still use. A word that actually names us. Trinbagonian. 🥹🇹🇹 And Besties, the deeper I went, the more I realised this is about so much more than a dictionary. It’s about documenting who we are so that 50 years from now, people can still find us, understand us and know we were here. I wrote a whole thing on it, because obviously I had plenty to say 😂 Full editorial at the link in my bio. #thingsilove taken in Trinidad and Tobago by @ttchatterbox
6
19 days ago
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I have known Trinidad and Tobago for 49 of its 50 years as a Republic but I think I learnt how to love a country from my Welsh grandmother. She carried Wales everywhere: in the accent she never lost, the food she cooked, the stories she told and the fierce pride with which she once showed me her hometown, her street, her Wales. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿Looking at this photograph of her today with my Trini Grandad (swipe), I realise I have spent much of my life doing for Trinidad and Tobago what I watched her do for Wales while living here: telling its stories, celebrating its people and trying to make others see what I see. There is a reason TT comes before Chatterbox. Trinidad and Tobago was always the story. I have travelled the world and loved many places but if you laid the whole world at my feet and asked me to choose, I would choose these two islands. My twin islands. My country. My home. Again and again and again. 🇹🇹❤️ Happy 50th Republic Day, Trinidad and Tobago. I wrote more about Grandma, patriotism and this complicated, beautiful love of country on @linkedin and @facebook. Link in bio. #thingsilove taken in Trinidad and Tobago by @ttchatterbox
2
20 days ago
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Besties, look what I found! 💜🪔 @dilmahcaribbean Diwali Tea Selection is almost too pretty to open. Inside are 40 individually wrapped tea bags with Breakfast Tea, Earl Grey with Honey, Ceylon Single Region Green Tea and the one I’m trying first, Turmeric, Coconut & Vanilla. You know I love finding little ways to romanticise an ordinary day and a beautiful cup of tea will do it every time. Find the joy in every moment. This is in @superpharmtt and it’s also in @massystorestt #thingsilove taken in SuperPharm by @ttchatterbox
9
24 days ago
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We moved to the sun. @cultureeclubb @lurbzintl @farm_house_events @chineechic @casterscove_tt. Here’s to the years ahead! Happy Anniversary! ☕️🏡🫶🏼 #thingsilove taken in Casters Cove by @ttchatterbox
1
22 days ago
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Love these new shelf-talkers at @massystorestt! There are so many local brands at Massy. So many of my Brand Besties are there in one spot and it’s so convenient for me to get my fix. And then of course all the local produce supporting local farmers. How many of your favs. Are in Massy? I’ll tag some of mine below. #besties #local #thingsilove taken in Massy Stores Westmoorings by @ttchatterbox
0
a month ago
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