keeping yourself covered adequately

Some time last month, I wrote an entry about taking care of your health and keeping yourself covered with medical insurance. I cannot stress how important it is to make sure that you and your loved ones (especially if you have ageing parents) are adequately covered.

Up until the day I moved out of the family home, my dad has been the one buying the necessary insurance and managing the family’s coverage. His hope was that one day his children would take over the responsibility of managing their own insurance matters. The day is here, but I guess it is regrettably a bit late. After seeing how hospital bills can add up to the five-figure range with my father-in-law and managing his insurance claims, I resolved to make sure my own parents were well covered. I found out that my mum was only covered under the Basic Medishield plan, while my sister was covered under an integrated shield plan for up to government-restructured hospital A ward. My mum has always been adamant about going to a private hospital and staying in A ward. Therefore, with their current plans, it didn’t seem enough. However (much to my dismay), my mum and sister’s plans cannot be upgraded due to their medical conditions. My mum is diabetic and my sister is undergoing treatment for depression. My insurance agent told me that underwriting for medical insurance is very strict.

So what’s my point of writing this entry? Yes, while most Singaporeans are covered under Basic Medishield (unless they opt out), the coverage is only up to government-restructured hospital B2 or C wards. I’m not saying that everyone should buy an integrated shield plan as supplement, but depending on your income level and lifestyle, it may be a good idea to look into it. Do it while you’re healthy…and especially while your parents are healthy. As age catches up, so do health problems.

The other part of my entry is more to whine a little about how unfair it is that people who are not born healthy, have to be excluded in getting themselves covered. While my mum insists that she is not born a diabetic, we all know that her side of the family has a history with diabetes and for the longest time, I’ve known her to be a diabetic. My grandparents were diabetic and so is my aunt. Even if she wasn’t born with that condition, it is more likely to be passed down genetically. From a business point of view, I can understand why insurance companies do not want to cover unhealthy people. They are a liability (so to speak) anyway as their risk of getting hospitalised or seeking treatment is higher. But from a human point of view, I just can’t get my head round the idea that people not born healthy have to be excluded just like that. Hellooooo, they didn’t ask to my born unhealthy. The hubby tried explaining it from another angle which helped me accept a little (if not fully) this rule. He said that if these people were included and they really had to be make more claims, the premiums for everyone would go up (since it’s based on shared risk) and the healthy ones (like me) would not like that right? Sigh, I guess he has a point.

Anyway, friends or anyone else reading this, if you have no clue about this insurance stuff and want some help, I’ll be happy to share what I know. Yup, this has been my job since I became a homemaker. Reading up on and understanding insurance and investment related matters.

new beginnings

I recently changed webhosting companies. It’s not like I was unsatisfied with Webby Tech’s service. After all, I’ve been with the company since the time it was known as Netrillium and then AxisHost. The staff (which I suspect is only one person named Josh), has been very helpful and responsive to all my queries. You should just check out the number of tickets I’ve posted asking for help (usually pretty trivial matters) and all have been met with a great level of professionalism. It’s just that I have plans to expand what I’m doing with my domain now and I’m finding the most optimal solution to it. I’ve switched my hosting plans a couple of times with the last switch being fairly recent, but somehow I just couldn’t find something within Webby Tech that would satisfy me.

Thanks to Nick for recommending Vodien. The hosting plan costs more, but in terms of value, I think it’s worth paying that extra bit. Also, Vodien is a local company so I no longer have to wait for a response due to time difference or grapple with currency exchange (e.g. How much is this in SGD?) The folks at Vodien are very helpful too. I got them to help me with the domain transfer, which they did so for FREE. Really happy with their service.

New year, new beginnings. Thanks Webby Tech for hosting realistic-soul.net all these years. It has been a good 10 or so years. Vodien, am looking forward to many more years of great service with you. Cheers!

2014 going on 2015

Just a quick one before 2014 ends.

Have been a little busy these past few days, hence the no post. Christmas was spent with in-laws this year. A nice quiet one as father-in-law is still recuperating from his recent major illness.

I have no new year resolutions whatsoever. But here’s what I hope for in the new year… The boy and I are trying for a baby, so I hope we will have some good news to share next year. Yup, we hope for a jubilee baby (or at least I hope for one).

May 2015 be a year filled with all the good things that one can hope for. Here’s wishing everyone good health! Cheers!

the geek in me says

After lots of clicking back and forth, scrolling up and down pages, reading lines of code, I am finally satisfied with what I’ve done to the theme of my other blog. (OMGGGGG…I finally changed the date format…WOOHOO~~~) Pardon my silly moment, but really, it bugged me a lot to see the date in mm/dd/yyyy format. I’m sorry but that’s how Americans see it and not the rest of the world.

I am no pro at coding, but I can definitely do some basic stuff and roughly understand the syntax. Thanks to my Diploma in Internet Computing background. I hated the Java Programming days, but thinking back now, I don’t think it’s that bad. (I can’t remember much of what I learnt back then though…hurhur…)

While I was tweaking the code, I found two sites particularly helpful…

W3Schools

This site is essential for looking up html and css tags.

Color Hexa

Such a handy website. It not only shows you what colour the hex code represents, it even shows you the shades in the gradient and complementary colours. No more jarring colours that stand out like a sore thumb on your website!

The last site I’m about to introduce is not something I’ve used yet, but definitely for the geeks like me who want to learn how to code.

Bento

take care of your health

Your health is very important. Without it, you are unable to enjoy life to its fullest. Do not take your good health now for granted. You never know when you’ll lose it.

While you’re still healthy, make sure to purchase health insurance for yourself and your loved ones. I am not an insurance agent by profession and I do not intend to bore anyone with sales talk. I speak from experience. Recently, a loved one of mine was struck with an illness that saw him being admitted to ICU for almost a week. He is still on the road to recovery, so it is unlikely that he will be discharged from hospital soon. Two weeks of hospitalisation and the bill is already in the five-figure range. Even if you choose the lowest class of ward, every little bit adds up.

Act now. Don’t wait until it’s too late. My relative was still happily enjoying his overseas holiday a week or two before he was down with this illness. No one expected him to deteriorate that quickly. And by quick, I mean in a span of one or two days. He was admitted to hospital for high fever. Two days later, he was hooked up to machines because he had gotten pneumonia and had difficulty breathing. Yet another two days later, he had to be sedated and transferred to ICU. That’s how fast it can be.

more carouhell

I’m back with another Carouhell Carousell story.

So, I was browsing the beauty products section and chanced upon this.

  

WAH! Like that also can sell for $3! I’ve seen people sell very lightly used palettes with hardly a dent at that price and this joker is selling her more-than-half-used eyeshadow/blusher palettes at $2-$3. This is absolutely ridiculous! Don’t even talk about the price, there’s hardly anything left to be used!

I told Sis about it and she pointed out something I didn’t even consider. It’s really unhygienic to sell used cosmetics. Even if the seller does not include the original applicator, just imagine how many times her applicator has swept across the palette. And what if she has say…bad acne? Erm…I don’t even want to think about it.

Reported her to the Carousell admin immediately.

So please, if you wish to purchase cheap cosmetics off other people, try to purchase brand new ones and always check with the seller on the expiry date. Yes, cosmetics do have expiry dates!

lost comment

My blog was down for a while due to the webhosting company having some server issues. Didn’t expect to get a rude shock this morning when I discovered I lost two of my latest entries including one with a comment. Thank God I managed to retrieve the two entries from Google’s cache, but I’m sad to say that I lost that comment. 🙁

Sorry Nancy!

dolly locks

My faith in rebonding has been restored. I am proud to announce that I have rebonded my hair and it is now dolly smooth.

I tried rebonding my hair years ago. About the second or third time, my hair got really dry for some strange reason. It was straight but super dry and gross. That was it. No more rebonding for me. If it couldn’t give me the smooth dolly locks I wanted, then it ain’t good. Besides, I always felt that rebonding kind of made my hair ramrod straight…the ends all super pointy and very unnatural.

This time, I took a leap of faith and tried it again. Apparently there’s two types of rebonding now? The hairdresser promised that the type I was going for looked more soft and natural. Erm…ok. The result was as he had said, but I wasn’t getting my hopes up yet. I wanted to tweet that I had dolly locks now, but was afraid that I was jinxing it. After all, time will tell after the first wash.

First wash and every wash after that, my hair still remained smooth and straight. ALRIGHT! I’ve already had two compliments. Those who have seen my hair from before would know that my hair has a life of its own. It’s super dry (especially at the ends) and frizzy. I tried product after product to get the dolly locks I wanted and although the products did help to tame it a little, nothing…NOTHING worked like magic.

My only gripe is that my bangs is now rather flat and a little sparse. My hair is originally thin and little, but the frizziness made my bangs look thicker and fuller. I know there’s a method to create fuller-looking bangs, but I’m not sure how far back I can go before my crop of hair looks too thin. Gotta think more about this before taking the plunge.

PS: I hate the smell of chemicals in my hair after visiting the hairdresser. It takes a few washes to get the strong smell out. Meh.

kabloom

It all began with an email from Samplestore.com announcing their event — a sneak preview of their new look. There were only 200 available slots to receive an invitation to the event and I was crossing my fingers that I’ll get it.

Got really excited when the invitation arrived.

Was really impressed that they actually printed my name on the invitation. That’s 200 personalised invitations…some effort there. Gotta give it up to the staff.

The event was held on Saturday, 20 September 2014 at Fullhouse Signature Cafe. I’ve been wanting to check out that cafe ever since I saw it being featured on another blogger’s site, so…just nice…got an opportunity to check it out!

After registration, I was given an awesome goodie bag filled with goodness (will show its contents later) and a play card.

There was an activity to be completed at each product sponsor’s booth. Each completed activity earned you a stamp. Three stamps to redeem a goodie bag (more great stuff!) and six stamps to enter the lucky draw. Some product sponsors were also selling their latest products at discounted prices. I would have bought some face masks at the My Beauty Diary booth but I have too many face masks already. As for Tsubaki, I just got the hair oil so not like I really needed anything more. The only product sponsor that I wanted to purchase from, NOV, was not selling their products at the venue. Dang. And the worst part was their products are only sold at Tokyu Hands in Westgate…so far!!! For other product sponsors, I would prefer to try out samples of their products first before purchasing anything. So, I didn’t purchase anything in the end.

There was some pretty cool stuff going on at the event too. Express makeover at Enavose’s booth, hair styling at Tsubaki/Ma Cherie’s booth and a skin type test at NOV’s. I tried the skin type test and found out that the oil and water ratio of my skin is not balanced. Not enough water but producing too much oil. Yea…quite obvious from my face. Been trying to combat the oiliness with shine free make up items but to no avail. Was recommended a line of items to try and balance the ratio. Sigh…gotta make a trip to Tokyu Hands some day.

It was kinda crowded at the venue and the queue for food was rather long. Of course, where there’s free food and samples, there’ll be kiasu aunties. Some even brought their kids in tow. *tsk tsk* It was quite obvious that they were there only for the free stuff. They weren’t bothered to learn about any products and shoved their way to get the stamps on the play card. I was so not motivated to get in queue for food so I didn’t in the end.

There was a photo booth and free instagram prints, but I didn’t get any. 🙁 Blame it on my VERY LATE sister. By the time she reached the venue and went round all the booths, the event was over and they had packed up. We only managed to get a shot with the standee.

I’m sure everyone’s curious about my awesome haul from the event.

There was a sure-win lucky dip at the belif booth and I got a 4-piece sample kit. I’ve used their aqua bomb moisturiser and it’s pretty good. Very light and not oily. Can’t wait to try the other products. Haha…sample-size products are good when going travelling. That’s the time I try all these products.

The awesome goodie bag I received during registration. Not all visitors got it; I think only the 200 who were originally invited. Other visitors got their invitations through a contest. Anyway, the goodie bag is packed with goodness. A lot of travel-size products. Unfortunately, the NOV travel kit that is included is not the range that was recommended for my skin type.

This is the smaller goodie bag I got from the play card. It’s in the new packaging. Took a picture of the old and new packaging so you can compare the difference. The use of white as the base colour is a lot more refreshing. Simple, modern and clean. Was even more amazed at how much stuff they managed to squeeze into the packet. Lol.

Thanks Samplestore.com for the event! Guys, do look out for their new look that’s going to be rolled out soon!