Valen’s Vanity Square

Hubby and I went to Cameron Highlands last weekend. I wore my pair of Hush Puppies flat pumps, and during a stop at one of the rest stations I realized the sole of the right shoe was coming off. It was as if my shoe had a mouth and its mouth opened with every step I made. Haha!

Luckily, I have a pair of sneakers kept at the back of hubby’s car. So, the moral of this is that - always keep a pair of shoes in your car for emergency use.

Speaking of shoes, I need to get a new pair of heels. I have been wearing the same black heels to every occasion. I like that pair of heels (from Vincci) very much, it’s comfortable (provided I don’t stand or walk in it for too long) and cheap! But due to constant use, its wear-and-tear process is also faster than any other pair of shoes. It’s time to get another pair of heels so that I can wear them alternately. Moreover, there’s a wedding dinner to attend in Penang this Christmas. (Another excuse to buy!)

Of course, I won’t be considering branded shoes, like one of those ladies shoes from Stuart Weitzman (they have a good collection of ladies heels). I will only be looking at ladies shoes in Jaya Jusco, or perhaps Bata, haha! Well, cheap shoes can be pretty and comfortable to wear too, right?

My father-in-law is now running a food stall in a coffee shop in the neighborhood. He just started this about 6 weeks ago. He’s now planning to get a car so that he can drive to the morning market, go to work and drive home on his own, and not relying on my brother-in-law to be the driver.

Hubby met up with a second-hand car dealer, and found a car aged slightly more than 10 years and comes with an affordable price tag. Of course, the decision is up to FIL, whether to buy or not to buy that car. Although the car is almost a decade old, its mileage is actually lower than the 6-year old car that hubby’s driving (the car belongs to his company)! This is because hubby travels a lot within the country.

And because of that, the 6-year old car is aging faster than the 10-year old car, haha! Also, there have been problems on and off - gear box problem, engine problem, alignment problem. It seems that every 3 months hubby has to send the car for repair (not just servicing).

Sometimes we just can’t help to doubt the quality of locally produced vehicles. Fortunately, it’s a local car. No matter how expensive the parts are, the price won’t be as exorbitant as the exclusive Ferrari parts. (In my world, it’s like comparing L’oreal on the shelves and La Mer in the selected shopping malls. Haha!) Thank goodness it’s a company car, so that hubby is able to get reimbursement for all the servicing and repairing.

So when hubby needs to get his own car in the future, local cars will be out of the picture.

Will be setting off to Cameron Highlands tomorrow morning, but we have not packed our bags yet. Well, it’s just a one-night stay, so don’t think there is a lot to bring.

But I do need to find out from hubby whether we will be heading straight away to his friend’s wedding dinner in the evening after we come down from the hill, or if we will come home to freshen up ourselves first. I need to know what I should wear as we drive back to the city (and put on my evening make-up in a moving car, haha).

I think it’s going to be a ‘fattening’ weekend for me - spending hours traveling in the vehicle, eating scones at the tea house, a good dinner at the Equatorial Hotel, more scones before we leave the hills, and an eight-course dinner at a friend’s wedding banquet. Wow, looks like this time I can make use of some fat burners to keep the calories off, haha!

But no worries, I will stack up on lots of natural fat burning foods, such as guava, grapefruit, apple and oranges after I come back. I should be able to get fresh and cheap guavas at the hills.

Hubby and I will be on a short trip to Cameron Highlands this weekend. It’s short because it’s just an one night stay, and the purpose of going there is that hubby has a dinner to attend at the Equatorial Hotel.

It’s not a dinner with friends though. It’s for work! Hubby will be there to do a presentation about his company’s insurance product to a group of potential customers. Hubby is trying to push sales by helping the insurance agents to run this small event thing called seminar selling. While the insurance agents will receive commissions out of the sales, hubby gets nothing out of it. He’s just a marketing staff for the company with a sales quota to meet. :<

In the US there are professional companies that help insurance business persons to secure life insurance or health insurance leads. I don’t think we have such specialized business services here. If there’s such a service, hubby wouldn’t have to work during weekends and after office hours so frequently for the past 2 months!

Anyway, having to work this weekend in a chilly hill holiday attraction with scenic views, it’s not too bad. But I must make sure that I get to eat the famous scone from Bala’s tea house this time.

I’m a gal with many dreams. Dreams, as in those images you ’see’ when you sleep. Not those ambitious dreams like ‘I want to become the no.1 top selling self-published housewife’, or ‘I want to sail around the world for 100 days’.

I have all sorts of dreams, they can be very funny, adventurous, scary, exciting, thrilling, absurd, weird, sad, all at the same time. Sometime I woke up from a dream that was so ‘interesting’ that I wanted to just quickly fall asleep again to continue the dream. Haha! Of course, most dreams don’t make sense. They just reflect what I saw or experienced recently, especially if I had just watched some action-packed or horror movies.

That’s why I never care to decipher what my dreams are trying to tell me. What does it mean if I dreamed myself couldn’t find any exit signs and got lost in the beauty salon after my facial treatment? What does it mean if I took out my eyeball from my eye socket and put it back again? What does it mean if I went into a toilet and all the cubicles have no door? Haha!

I will not bother to understand these dreams of mine, but I will tell it like a story to hubby, for entertainment. Somehow it’s weird that hubby doesn’t seem to have dreams when he sleep. Or, he never remembers any of them. He just sleeps like a piece of dead wood, so dead that he never goes into dreamland. Haha!

If my vanity is all about my face, then hubby’s vanity is all about his waistline. Haha! Don’t get it wrong, it’s not that hubby wants to have a slim waist. He’s just being cautious of not having spare tires bulging out from the sides of his waist.

Hubby has said to me several times over these few days that he must sign up for a gym membership. Hubby has been very busy with work-related evening events recently, and these events are always accompanied with typical Chinese full course meal with eight dishes. He’s really worried about the after-effects of the heavy meals, i.e. increased waist line and a bulging tummy, haha!

The thing about hubby is that he’s not one of those who are willing to take slim pills or do a body detox program to lose weight fast. He needs to feel his heart pumping and sweat trickling down all over his body to assure himself he’s burning the calories away. Since I don’t allow him to buy a treadmill (coz I don’t think there’s any space in the house for it), and it’s increasingly difficult for him to find time to exercise, thus the idea of rejoining a gym.

Well, I’m perfectly fine with hubby going to the gym, as long as he comes home on time to have dinner with his lovely wife, that is.

I know I said that I will take photos of my face to show the progress of my skin condition over the course of my facial treatment. I did try to take a few shots 3 weeks ago, but somehow I couldn’t get one that is sharp enough to see the pores when zoomed in. Was frustrated after a few shots and didn’t bother to snap again. (Isn’t it funny that I want to take photos to show people how my facial pores look like? Haha!)

Perhaps it’s the wrong combination of natural lighting and flash from the camera itself. I know it definitely is not my digital camera’s fault. I have been using this digital camera from Nokia for at least 4 years, and it has been doing a good job. But in my mind, of course, I will always hope to get one of those latest and slimmest digital cameras from Sony or Olympus.

When I bought my Nikon digital camera 4 years ago, I considered it to be a slim camera model. Today, I’m amazed by the even slimmer models that keep emerging in the market. Now my Nikon camera looks so bulky in comparison!

However, I know I won’t be replacing my Nikon digital camera any time soon; it still has to serve me for at least another couple of years, haha! (Wonder how slim a digital camera can be by then?)

Not mine of course!

An acquaintance of hubby at work, let’s call him Mr X, has recently moved into a new RM2 Million worth of bungalow with his family. According to hubby, this bungalow was not a ready-made property, but Mr X actually hired contractors and designers to build it from scratch!

Hubby visited Mr X’s house and described it to me the details. He kept saying that how huge the bungalow is, how well designed the interior is, and what a good sense of style Mr X has, blah blah blah. But I just couldn’t imagine it, until I saw it featured in one of the local most popular home ID magazines latest issue. Wow! It really is huge! And the ID is very modern contemporary, very tasteful and creative. Not that I think Mr X could actually come up with all those ideas himself, but the fact that he was able to accept them considering that he is a typical conservative type of businessman.

From the photos in the magazine, I could say that everything in the bungalow are new;from furnitures to home electronics and decor items, they all just look sparkling new. There is even a sound-proof karaoke room, okay? The room set up is totally like one of those in the high-class karaoke club with dark-colored theme and cozy lighting.

I told hubby, if you ever set a goal to buy a bigger house, please make it big - as big as Mr X’s 2 Million bucks bungalow, haha!

My sister has been away in London for work since last month. This time, she’s staying there for 2 months! She’s coming back end of this month, I wonder if she’s getting my any gifts, but I doubt there will be any this time since she has to watch her spending.

I heard from my mom that this time she’s not staying in a nice hotel like she did in her first trip. Her company is renting a room for her. So she is living like any other people working in London - spending after-office hours in a small room, taking public transport to work, munching on sandwiches… Well, I think it will be a good experience for her, whether she likes it or not.

Some people do like to move from one place to another, to experience the way of life and learn to appreciate the culture of the locals. Of course, in order to get prepared for that, one has to do a thorough research before making the move. First of all, one definitely has to find a job, unless he or she has strong financial backup. So, let’s say if you want to experience the life in Philadelphia, you might want to first browse for jobs in philly area on the internet, and learn some of the basic information e.g. weather, history, population, place of interests, etc.

If my sister do plan to work in London in the future, her 2 months living there will certainly help her a lot in understanding the city and its people. Or, perhaps she can be my tour guide if I ever go to London?