Valen’s Vanity Square

*Sniffles* I’m having a flu, and I’m slightly feverish. By right I should start to feel chilly and have cold feet and hands, but I feel the night is too warm, even with the fan spinning at a high speed. Even after a heavy rain!

I’m sleeping over at mom’s place, occupying my sister’s room as she had just left for London two days ago. The air-conditioner in her room is not working. Being used to sleeping in an air-conditioned room at my own house, I know for sure that I will wake up a couple of times in the night, sweating all over.

If sweating in the sleep could help me lose a lot of weight, then I wouldn’t mind it all. Haha! Many women would be then so glad to know that they didn’t have to buy the best weight loss pills or fat burners to get rid of excess body weight. They just have to make sure that they sleep in a warm bedroom and sweat in their sleep to find themselves a pound lighter in the morning!

Ok, that’s just my rambling, you’d better not have the slightest hope that what I just mentioned could be true! Haha! Sweat or not sweat, I just hope that tomorrow morning I will wake up feeling better than today.

I just called to cancel my facial originally scheduled at this afternoon. I have a runny nose and just feel tired to leave the house. Don’t think it’s a good idea to go to busy public places (the shopping mall) when I’m down with a flu. I think I will just take an early nap after this.

Perhaps when I wake up later, I will feel better and be able to schedule my activities for this and the coming weeks. My ‘activities’ include - getting a haircut, rescheduling my facial appointment, a trip to the mall to shop for stuffs in preparation for CNY, deciding when to start baking cookies for CNY, when to go to the supermarket to get the baking ingredients, when to spring clean the house, etc.

And when I’m planning all these, I have to carefully plan the expenses as well. I guess work will be easier if there’s a home budget software to help me with it. (If anyone needs a home budgeting software, you can check it out at www.homebudgetsoftware.net.)

Whatever it is, I’ll think about it later. For now, I need some sleep therapy…

I was making a list of to-buy and to-do since I will be going to the shopping mall tomorrow. Oh man, so many things to buy, so little money to spend. Haha!

I have got several personal care items to replenish - my favorite Elianto facial cleanser and compact powder, my favorite L’Oreal anti-wrinkle day cream and night cream, the Green Tea Revitalizer Shampoo from Follow Me (which I said I want to try long time ago but didn’t), facial tissues, toothpaste, etc.

I hope the Green Tea Revitalizer shampoo will help to strengthen my hair from breaking and falling. The scene of my bathroom floor is just to eerie, with long strands of hair everywhere… The same goes to my bedroom floor. It was very annoying at first, I couldn’t help but keep sweeping the floor to get rid of those hair. Now, I’m numbed to it. Just hope that I won’t ever reach the stage where I need to resort to hair growth shampoo to treat hair loss! That will be so sad…

Oh dear, I’m down with a flu again. Am also having sore throat and slightly feverish. I must have got it from my mom, coz when I went to my mom’s house few days ago she was coughing and speaking in a hoarse voice.

Okay, may be it’s partly due to my own fault, coz I had been indulging in too much fried foods for the past week, hence my body got ‘heaty’. Oh, and lots of coffee, too. Yeah, coffee is considered as a ‘heaty’ beverage according to the Chinese. And in traditional Chinese medicine. flu is associated with ‘heatiness’ of the body.

Somehow this ‘heatiness’ is also reflecting on my face! Several zits sprouted since two days ago, and now there’s some acne marks on my face. I wonder if there’s a really fast acne scar removal cream that can remove my acne marks by tonight? Because I will be going for my facial tomorrow, and I don’t want to hear what my beautician who will be most likely going to say, “Hmmm, are you picking on your zits again?” Hahaha!

Hands off my face today!

We always celebrate festive seasons with those closest to us, but forget that there is a group of less fortunate people out there that are longing for the community to care for them and wanting to feel some joy and happiness, even for just a while.

I have participated several community service and small-scale charity events in conjunction with CNY in the past years. Although our contribution can’t compare to that achieved by the richard willich philanthropy foundation, at least a group of people benefited in a way or another.

However, as I moved out of town for a couple of years, I had missed the opportunities to join my friends for such activities. Anyway, I have been donating to two organizations since few years back. Perhaps this year I can add another organization to my list. Though the amount donated will be small, it’s still something, isn’t it?

The world’s climate is turning upside down - that’s how it appears from what we read in the newspapers or saw in the TV recently. My sister is scheduled to fly to London this Saturday for a working trip again. But there is a possible chance that the trip might be postponed due to the weather. How cold is it in London now? I think it must be terribly freezing!

If you happen to plan for your very first early vacation in 2010, it seems there is no good place to visit at this time, considering that snow’s everywhere, there’s flood, there’s earthquake…. quite depressing eh?

Well, let’s us just hope that the weather will get better soon, and that by March the season is all bright and sunny again for anyone to enjoy a nice holiday, perhaps at a nice waterfront home in Outer Banks North Carolina USA… For those who intend to have their for a first-quarter holiday there, you can always check out Outer Banks rentals online.

Lucky me, traveling in Malaysia is possible any month, any time of the year.

It’s only one month to Chinese New Year, I have not started preparing for this festive - haven’t gone shopping, haven’t thought of how to decorate the house, haven’t planned what cookies to bake, haven’t gone for my haircut (the last one was like 9 months ago, haha!), just haven’t got the mood to celebrate yet!

Wouldn’t it be nice if there is some sort of festive preparation service, which help its customers to prepare for CNY, from spring cleaning the house to shopping and baking cookies. I think many people, including me, would like to use this kind of service, just like how a company needs managed IT services, or a bride-to-be needs a wedding planner.

Well, even if such services exist, I don’t think I can afford to engage them to work for me, haha! A poor peasant housewife just has to live within her own means, do the house chores herself, and bake cookies on her own. But no matter how poor a peasant housewife is, she still needs to go shopping for new clothes and go for a long-delayed hair cut!

Ouch! Hurt my finger when I was trying to zip up the luggage bag just now. My finger nail was dented a bit too. Oh well, it’s time to cut my finger nails anyway, but it’s not time to replace the luggage yet even though it’s already 8 years old.

The big, gray luggage bag was given to me by my mom when I got married. It’s quite a sturdy luggage, except that the zipper slider was damaged because it was forced open by don’t know who in the airport several years back. Now there’s only half the slider left with a sharp edge, so I have to be careful every time I zip or unzip the back, or even when carrying it to avoid being scratched.

I do come across nice looking luggage in the shopping mall. The Eagle Creek luggage series sure look modern and chic, but they’re quite expensive. Anyway, I don’t think we need a new luggage at the moment because we’re not going for any overseas holiday any time soon. My old luggage will just do fine for our local traveling. Even if we get new ones in the future, this old luggage can still be used as a storage for old clothes, haha!

It’s the first working day of 2010, and husband has to travel out of KL for work. It’s alright, because I’m tagging along!

I’m now doing nothing in the hotel room at Vistana Hotel, Kuantan, while hubby is off to his meetings. Well, I’m not exactly doing nothing; I’m typing this blog post on my Asus Eee PC 1005HA netbook. I bought this model after considering several netbooks and notebooks, and I’m quite happy with it.

Firstly, it’s light, making it very portable. I can carry it in my tote without having shoulder ache at the end of the day. Even its cables are smaller and lighter than those for notebooks. While it’s not suitable for running heavy applications, such as Photoshops and Dreamweaver, I find using simpler photo-editing software like Photoscape or website builder like Microsoft FrontPage is not a problem at all. Just don’t run several applications at the same time.

The only thing that troubles me is that the netbook tends to freeze if I use it while connecting it to the power supply. It has happened a few times, but I haven’t tried to find out why. So I just have to make sure that when I need to re-charge the netbook battery, I have to shut down the netbook. May be it’s the netbook’s way to tell me not to work too long on the computer, and also allow it to take a break. Haha!

I think I’m now going to make myself a cup of coffee, and enjoy chilling out in this very nice hotel room.