Valen’s Vanity Square

May be I wasn’t sleeping well in the past few nights, plus I haven’t been to for facial treatment for almost 2 months, blemishes started to develop on cheeks and chin. From what I observed of my skin condition, I think I will have this occasional acne ‘eruption’ up till I’m 50 years old. Haha!

Acne is indeed a skin problem regardless of ones age. The root cause is the active sebaceous glands, that can be due mainly to changes in male hormones in the body. While this hormonal changes usually occur during puberty age, certain changes - in the body or environment - can cause a change in the hormone levels in adults, too.

For example, acne that flares up during menstruation or pregnancy, or recurrence of acne that cleared up after adolescence. Other times, dusty environment, stress, insufficient rest or touching the face with dirty hands can all trigger hormonal fluctuation as well.

Sometimes, acne that occurs in adulthood may be more difficult to treat than teenager acne. No wonder adult acne treatment is so in demand nowadays.

While my acne usually resolve on its own most of the time, I think I should have a bottle of tea tree oil standing by. You see, I’m a working woman now, I meet people, so I need a clean face to show people all the time.

Am still coughing until today, but at least it’s not as serious as it was few days ago. At least I can eat, I can watch TV, I can go window shopping. Almost back to normal now.

The doctor told me the possible cause of my illness had something to do with ‘coldness’ - either I drank too much cold water, or I have been sitting in a very cold air-conditioned room. Well, while there are three sets of air-conditioner in my office, I never felt cold in there. I also sleep in an air-conditioned room, but I think the temperature is just right at 26 degrees Celsius (well, sometimes I even feel warm!).

Then it suddenly hit me… hubby’s car! For these couple of weeks, hubby has been driving a replacement car as the company car that he is using has been sent for repair. The temperature control of this replacement car is faulty - the temperature is forever so cold! Although I only spend perhaps 1 to 1.5 hours in this car everyday, but somehow it had taken a toll on my health.

Luckily none of the cars belong to us. It will be so sickening and costly to have problematic cars. While there are auto insurance to cover for car damage in road accidents, funds for car servicing and repairs have to from our own pockets.

Speaking of auto insurance, I think I’d better start researching on auto insurance quote and allocate a certain portion of monthly savings for it. Although I’m only getting a car 4 or 5 months down the road, I should start planning now, or else I would be so use to spending all my money on shopping.

Sick, so sick. Last Friday I had sore throat. The sore throat has gone now, but it has evolved into runny nose, itchy throat and coughs.

I kept coughing in the office yesterday, despite swallowed several Strepsil drops all day long. So embarrassing. Physically I felt so terrible by the time I left the office. Initially planned to accompany hubby to the mall to window shop on bow ties, as he’s considering to get one as a gift to his colleague, but we had to cancel it due to my condition.

I don’t want to spread germs around to my colleagues (well, actually there’s another person coughing quite badly in the office too), so I went to see doctor this morning, got myself one day off from work today.

I have taken the cough syrups and flu medicine, and am waiting for the drowsiness to kick in. As the doctor said, “All you have to do today is to sleep, sleep, sleep. Then you should be able to recover tomorrow.” Well, I hope so. I think I will go over to the sofa and lie down now. Zzzzzzzz…..

Think I’m going to come down with a flu. Started to feel sore and scratchy throat after lunch. Now I feel slightly feverish. There’s too many sneezing around me recently. May be I got the bugs from one of them. Or may be partly it’s my own fault, that I have been eating hot and spicy food regularly.

Not sure if I will fall terribly sick tomorrow. If I am too sick to get out of the house, then I have to postpone my shopping plan. Yes, it’s the time of the month that I’m going to use my credit card. Too bad the credit card I use doesn’t come with a travel reward card, otherwise I might have enough points to redeem some free 2-night hotel accommodation kind of voucher.

Am planning to get a new bottle of perfume. Aiming on Estee Lauder’s Pleasure Exotic, although I still have a quarter of bottle of Pleasure Intense on my dressing table. I have finished a mini-sized bottle of Pleasure Exotic that my sister gave when she came back from a London trip. I kinda like it. Well, I like most of Pleasure’s range of fragrances anyway. So I think I should to get a full-sized bottle. But perfumes are expensive. Perhaps I should wait for another couple of months, by then some of my monthly credit card installments will be settled, I should have extra cash to buy a new fragrance, hehe.

Good plan.

So sleepy. Feel so fat. My skin is rough. My dark eye circles are obvious.

Please! Can anyone give me a magic potion to remove the excess fat around my waist and butt and thighs? Or lighten up the ring under my eyes and infuse some glow into my complexion?

This is how I usually feel on every fourth working day in a week, haha! Continuously suffering from insufficient sleep, rushing to meet one deadline after another, strain my brain, fry my eyes, and that’s what I get.

Although I heard about a weight loss pill - Lipovox - that somehow might also help in wrinkle and acne problems, I doubt there is a all-in-one solution for the problems I mentioned.

Sometimes it’s just so ironic. I write about how to live a healthy life every day, but I myself am not living one. And for the past few weeks I have been writing and preaching so much about the importance of keeping the digestive system healthy, but I’m frequently experiencing flatulence, bloating, diarrhea myself. Hahaha!

Fortunately, I’m not writing about how to be a happy person or to live a happy, stress-free life, or else….

I may be bugged by pimples once in a while, but in general my skin condition is considered steady and free from serious skin problems compared to many out there.

One of my colleagues has been troubled by acne since her school days, and she is still in the search for the best acne treatment or anything that can at least maintain her current skin condition and not worsen it. Even if this means that she has to spend almost 1k for three bottles of daily skin care items. But at least she doesn’t need to go for expensive facial treatments, like me.

Sometimes you can’t blame people for wanting to keep on trying different acne treatments, because they have been disappointed by the so-called skin specialists or dermatologists at the first place. Hormone pills, skin peels, injections, etc, nothing worked for good. And so much money had been spent on those treatments. Even if she had been avoiding eating oily and spicy foods for years, that didn’t change a thing.

Of course, her current acne problem is no longer as serious as she used to suffer during her teenage and college years. She is now using some ‘brand-less’ new products that seem to be able to keep her skin condition under control. Well, if her skin improves few months down the road then may be I can inquire if there the brand-less products have something for aging skin, hehehe.

Hubby has quite a lot of white hair. They are not obvious if he puts on hair cream. But after shower, those white hairs just pop out from everywhere.

Hubby said, “Well, having white hair is better than no hair.” So he never care much about his white hair, never thought of getting his hair dyed.

Two weeks ago, hubby went for his haircut. The barber told him that he had less hair on the crown compared to the sides of his head, and suggested him to start using hair tonic.

Hubby doesn’t mind about white hair, or wrinkles, or even a slightly flabby stomach. But getting bald is the No.1 in his list of Things-to-Fear. The idea of getting bald at this age really scares the hell out of him, haha!

Suddenly, hubby got so keen to know about hair loss treatment for men. last week, he bought two bottles of hair tonic, as suggested by the barber, to help prevent hair loss and promote hair growth.

Now he spends additional 10 minutes in the shower every night, to massage his scalp with the tonic after he washes and towel dries his hair.

I think I will want to try to use the hair tonic too, hehe. I’m losing a lot of hair as well. If fallen hair can be donated for whatever purposes, I would certainly become one of the top donors. Haha!

I wonder if this applies to most people: the longer you have worked in a regular 9-to-5 job, the more sleep deprived you get?

I now wake up half an hour later than I used to compared to the first couple of weeks in my job. I am so darn sleepy every morning when the alarm clock rings. So is hubby, haha!

May be this is a vicious cycle. We don’t get to watch TV much during working days, so we indulge ourselves staying up late watching TV on Friday and Saturday nights. While we should ‘replenish’ our sleeping time during weekends, we end up sleeping less! No wonder both of us are getting dark eye circles.

No eye cream in this world can ever remove our eye bags. Perhaps a one week holiday somewhere up in the mountains where there’s not much to do - no shopping, no entertainment and no Wi-Fi - will bore us and put us to sleep early at night. Haha!

Was calculating my monthly ‘compulsory’ expenditure - credit card installments, insurance, a big chunk to our shared account, to mom, donations, etc - to check how much I have in balance that I can spend for my daily allowance and shopping.

Sadly, not much. Haha! Well, 2-3 months down the road I will be free from half of my credit card installments, but the insurance installment plan is like a forever thing, even though there will be a time where I can stop paying. But that is only going to happen like so long, long time in the future.

One really can’t thrift on insurance, you know. It’s part of the financial planning for your life, to protect yourself and your loved ones financially in case there’s any mishap. The more money you can make in your job or business, the more ‘valuable’ or ‘worthy’ your life is, then the more insurance coverage you need to have. Don’t ask me why, I’m just quoting this from my dear hubby.

There’s no reason for one not to get an insurance plan these days. It’s so easy to get universal life insurance quotes on the internet at the comfort of your home. Compare all the plans beforehand and choose those that suit your needs the best and that you can afford, before you get in touch with an insurance agent to sign up for the plan.

Really, although I love shopping, the need for protection comes first. Shopping, I’m sorry, you have to be no.2 in the list.