Valen’s Vanity Square

Oh my gosh, all my jeans, pants and skirts have gotten so tight and difficult to button up. I have got some serious belly fat to lose! Seriously!

I think it all started about 2 months ago. I still remember that day, when a bunch of us went to that pancake shop to have lunch. It was a very heavy, nevertheless satisfying meal. But little did we know that there was a huge cake waiting for us back in the office, because the boss decided to celebrate the birthdays of three staffs.

The cake was delicious, but… I think it must have exceeded some ‘threshold’, that I felt my waistline and belly expanded overnight! Since then, my pant, skirts, jeans never feel the same again when I wear them.

Well, I seriously have to do some serious exercise now, like 30 minutes on the elliptical machine every alternate days. May be I should also fully utilize my sister’s treadmill at my mom’s house since I will be staying there for two nights.

Hubby is going to be away from KL for two days. I suppose he wouldn’t be so busy when our local insurance industry has advanced to the stage where people can check and buy online term life insurance or other types of policy. He then wouldn’t be traveling around to ‘educate’ the insurance agents on how to recruit and train new agents, because by then most manual tasks can be managed through the internet. But then, probably hubby would lose his job too. Okay, that will be a serious problem. It better not happen. Haha!

After 6 days of work-free happy times, it’s time to get back to work and reality. It’s like I had been to cloud nine and now fallen back to earth. Haha!

I still have 7 days of leave remaining for this year. I am not planning for any holiday soon after this, although my sister is asking me whether I want to join her to Cameron Highlands this October, while hubby’s friend is trying to persuade us to join them for a trip to Bali in January 2011.

The thing is, I foresee October to be a very busy month for me in the office. As for hubby, he doesn’t like the idea of spending money just before Chinese New Year either, since it is the festive season that will suck a big amount of cash from our pockets.

I do have marked down certain days to be off from work, simply to clear my leave and have a break from work. All I will do is sit at home, laze around, watch tv, surf the internet and play computer games on my laptop, etc.

I plan to take more days off during Christmas. Although I won’t be skiing at some snow mountain or sliding on the snow with snow sleds, I definitely will enjoy the joyous festival atmosphere in cool places - such as in the shopping malls. Haha!

Yeah, the next great thing to look forward to is Christmas. 4 months to go….

Good times always pass by so fast. It’s already the last day of our holiday, and we’ll be driving back to KL tomorrow.

All we have been doing these few days are eating, sleeping, watching TV, reading or surfing the internet in the room. We have not become couch potato, but bed potato, haha! There’s also free wireless connection here at Flamingo Beach Hotel, so I didn’t have to go to Starbucks in order to get online.

The only time we leave the hotel is when we need to eat. We also have enough drinking water in the room by boiling water taken from the bathroom. I know some people tend to just drink the water right off the tap, but I don’t know if the hotel is using a good water filter system, so I better do it right and safe instead of regretting later.

Everything is great with this holiday, we feel so relax and really unwind from the usual daily hustle and bustle. The only down side about this holiday is that it has make my lose weight plan even tougher! But what the heck, just have to work out harder when I get back home.

I’m taking my first break from work after working for 5 months, and am now on my way for a holiday in Penang!

Actually today is still a working day for hubby. We are now at Butterworth. I’m now sitting at one of the staff’s desk in hubby’s company office, while he is attending a meeting upstairs. After the meeting, we will head off to Penang for a 4-night stay.

We foresee Penang to be cramped with cars and tourists this weekend, as tomorrow (Friday) is a public holiday, and many people took Monday off because Tuesday is our National Day, which is another public holiday. Sometimes I have to admit that I enjoy being a Malaysian because of the number of public holidays we observe in our country! Haha!

To avoid the crowd and traffic jams, we probably will just chill around in the hotel room, the beach or nearby food outlets. It doesn’t matter that we don’t leave the hotel, as we are taking this as a time to relax our mind (no work!) and rejuvenate our body (sleep more!).

Some people will take a short break like this as a good opportunity to relax, refresh and perhaps reflect and ‘review’ their life, their goals and purpose.

May be you can use this period to consider how to upgrade your knowledge and qualification, perhaps through an Online Education program. Or, you can examine your achievements so far, and set new goals in life.

There is a lot personal thinking that we can do when there is a chance to break away from the daily hustle and bustle. For me, I should use this waiting time to think of what we should eat for lunches and dinners over the coming 4 days. Haha!

Well, I’m not exactly a red-headed woman like one of those Japanese F1 girls.

There’s just some shades of red on my hair, really bright when seen under the light. Otherwise, the hair will just look brownish with some red hues.

I got my hair done at Derrick & Team. The shop is located right outside of Carrefour at Midvalley. Hair color + hair cut + hair treatment cost me RM360! But it’s okay, I bet the price would be more exorbitant at A Cut Above or Jantzen. In addition, I don’t cut my hair often. Only two times a year, haha!

But I think I will ‘invest’ more in hair care from now onwards. I plan to go to Derrick & Team again next week to do a treatment for the hair cuticle, mainly to address my hair shedding problem.

I’m quite happy with the service at D&T. Hubby has also been going to its outlet in the Mines shopping mall for his monthly hair cut and the cuticle treatment. Hair loss problem, too. Hehe…

I think it would be better to stick to the same hair stylist, so that he keeps track of my hair problem and knows how to deal with it, and also has a better idea of what hair style suits me the best.

Oh well, it’s high time to give my thousands of tresses some tender loving care.

My skin still reacts to the facial treatment from NYSS. Went for facial 2 weeks ago, and the itchiness and bumps and rashes were worse than the previous time. Perhaps because I went for facial too soon, only 2 weeks apart. Previously when I spaced out the intervals to more than 4 weeks, the reactions were much milder.

But I don’t want to go through the allergic symptoms each time I go for facial! Facial should be an enjoyable (err, sometimes painful as well because of the whitehead extraction) experience, during and after. I don’t want my face to look red all over, or have dry skin at the corner of my lips that last a few days. Well, my complexion do looks clean and glowing once these signs clear up, but it’s such a suffering!

I want to figure out whether it’s my skin that has become sensitive (to any form of facial), or I’ve developed some sensitivity towards ONLY NYSS treatments and products. If it is a problem with my skin, then I can blame no one but to ask NYSS to change or modify my treatment. But if it’s a problem with only NYSS, then it’s time for me to switch program.

So, I now have to ‘hunt’ for good facial treatments in town and put my skin on a test. Eeeeks, dangerous act!

Should I try Jurlique? Cres Wellness (using Cellnique products)? Bella? Thalgo? Where else? May be I should go window shop this weekend and do some beauty salon research.

Having to work with a group of colleagues that share a common interest with you is a blessing. Errr, the common interest I’m talking about here is… food. Haha!

Okay, so we all (except one or two) enjoy eating and love to try new food. That’s good. What’s not good is the ’side effect’ - I have put on weight!

I don’t have to weigh myself. The feeling of increased tightness at the waist and the thighs when wearing my skinny jeans is good enough an indication that I have gained weight. What’s more it’s always around the tummy! Urgh!

My waistline is vanishing gradually over the years, so sad. Looks like I have to follow my sister’s footsteps. She is again on a healthy weight loss endeavor. She has ordered a treadmill, to be delivered to my mom’s house soon. She is eating wholemeal bread, drinking organic soy milk in the morning. She doesn’t skip dinner this time.

Me? I just had chicken chop for supper! Terrible me!

While having lunch today, my colleague who’s a mom to three kids gave me some advice on how to increase chances of getting pregnant. Haha!

Besides suggesting to eat chicken cooked in herbal soup, she also mentioned that to put up the legs high up after intercourse. This is one tip that every woman who’s trying to conceive would know. But what I don’t know is that, rather than just placing pillows underneath the butt to raise the hip, putting up the legs and resting them against the wall is said to be more relaxing and less straining for the legs and back. Hmm, how come I had never thought of that?

Actually, just like taking prenatal vitamins (e.g. prenexa) to make sure the body gets sufficient nutrients to cope with pregnancy, it is also important for a woman to prep her body for a pregnancy by taking pre-conception vitamins. I don’t know if normal multivitamin would do the same role as pre-conception vitamins, or there are additional nutrient requirements to meet.

I definitely know that folic acid should be taken once a woman starts her attempt to conceive. Speaking of that, I now remember that I have a bottle of folic acid in the kitchen cabinet. I used to have the habit of taking folic acid, but I’ve stopped taking it. I totally forgot about it!

Jeez, I better resume my supplement intake to get myself ready for “B” project! Haha!

Wow! It’s the first anniversary of…. my netbook! Haha! I didn’t count the days, but just noticed that I have just paid the final monthly installment for my Asus Eee PC netbook bought a year ago.

Absolutely love my netbook so far. It hasn’t give me much problem, except that I must not charge it while using it. Other than that, it is behaving very well. Although my internet browser is now slightly low when opening, but it is mainly because I’ve installed so many add-ons.

I think netbooks are really a wonderful light-weight laptop for gals, especially if you like hanging out in cafes, sipping coffee while surfing the net, facebooking or twittering.

Since it’s my netbook’s first ‘birthday’, I think I want to give it a new ‘attire’ - a laptop skin that is. Dear netbook, I will get you your birthday present this Friday, okay?