Happy Birthday everyone! Today is the seventh day of Chinese New Year, which is also known as 人日 or all man’s birthday.

Set meal from Soup Restaurant

Haven’t been finding the time to settle down to write an entry for Chinese New Year. This year has been a bit quiet as my in-laws have chosen not to go visiting. We did however have a feast for our reunion dinner.

Made a couple of boo boos on the first day. Went over to my parents’ place for lunch. Was in a hurry to get out of the house that I completely forgot mandarin oranges and ang pows. Maybe because I’ve been so used to going visiting with my parents that I didn’t think we’ll need oranges. (My mum usually buys boxes of oranges.) Mother-in-law shot us the disapproving look. (Yes, my in-laws were there at the lunch too.) Then came the ang pow issue. This year, we definitely cannot run away from giving out ang pows as it is our second year of marriage. The first year, we could give the “excuse” that we hadn’t gone through the traditional ceremony. So, my cousins were there at the lunch and we had to give them ang pows. Uh oh. No ang pows on hand. Had to get some empty ones and new notes from my mum. Again, we got the disapproving look from mother-in-law. Yikes.

I was so ready to take some “ootd” shots this year, but then I realised we weren’t doing much visiting so there’s less chance to dress up. Moreover, I caught some bug that gave me a slight fever, bloated tummy and stomach ache. Totally ruined my plan of wearing my new cheongsam. Didn’t want my tummy to be sticking out, so I opted for an older mandarin collar dress on the second day.

Ah well.

Since it’s the year of the sheep, meh the huat be with you!

A health-related entry…maybe I should create a category for such entries…hmmm…

So I had this huge scare early this morning that resulted in a trip down to the 24hr clinic. It started last night while I was in the bath. For some strange reason, I had a strong urge to pee. Even after I emptied my bladder, I still felt like peeing. I just shrugged off that strange feeling, thinking it would go away after a while. Nope, it didn’t. Around midnight when I was ready for bed, I went to the loo to take one last pee for the night. That’s when I noticed a slight pinkish tinge in my pee. Blood. Uh oh. And mind you, the strange feeling of wanting to pee was still there. I crawled into bed feeling rather uncomfortable, but decided that maybe I’ll go see a doctor the next morning. Did a quick search on the internet for a possible diagnosis and thought to myself that nothing could be too bad.

And I was wrong again. One hour passed and the feeling hadn’t gone away. In fact, it was getting worse. I just couldn’t fall asleep with that feeling…partly because I didn’t want to end up wetting myself in my sleep. I got up and peed. My pee still had traces of blood. I could feel the panic rising in me and tried to distract myself with an activity so I would stop panicking and making things worse. After pacing up and down a few times, I decided to wake the hubby. I could feel my voice quivering as I struggled to tell the hubby I was feeling unwell. He immediately got up and drove us to a nearby 24hr clinic.

The doctor ordered me to pee in a cup for a dipstick test. That was when I got the biggest shock of my life. My pee was full red this time. I was really about to cry. There was no other pain or discomfort except for the strange urge to pee, the sensation at my uh…pee hole. Doctor confirmed that I was having urinary tract infection (UTI). I’m not about to go into a long discussion on the possible reasons for getting UTI except that the receptionist/nurse just consoled me that it is common for females to get UTI and with medication, the symptoms would ease off in about two to three days.

A first dose of antibiotics after I returned home did help. There was still blood in my pee but at least the nagging urge to pee was easing off. As I lay down to sleep, a wave of nausea came upon me. What now. Could be the effect of the medication or another symptom of UTI. Struggled out of bed for the umpteenth time and found some sour plum to take (wasn’t sour enough but I’m taking whatever chances I have to keep from throwing up). Sat up in bed a little and soon the nausea subsided. It was about 3am by the time I (and the hubby) actually fell asleep.

The lesson learnt from this scare is to drink enough water and not to hold in your pee. If you gotta go, you gotta go. The doctor’s advice was to pee every one to two hours. Yes, I was actually holding in my pee after dinner. We were at the mall for dinner and I thought it didn’t matter since I was going home straight after dinner. Would rather pee in the comfort of my own home loo. What an expensive lesson to learn as the trip to the clinic in the wee hours of the morning cost us $145 (consultation after midnight is $105 which is about the same as a trip to the hospital).

Oh and the hubby deserves a pat on the back (and maybe more) for sacrificing precious hours of sleep and still head for work this morning.

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!

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!

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

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.

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!

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!

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.