attack of the running nose.

Recently I’ve been waking up with a blocked nose. A rather itchy blocked nose. I doubt it’s sinus, more like allergic rhinitis. I don’t recall this having happened to me weeks before. Just, recently.

Allergic rhinitis

When an allergen such as pollen or dust is inhaled by an individual with a sensitized immune system, it triggers antibody production. These antibodies mostly bind to mast cells, which contain histamine. When the mast cells are stimulated by pollen and dust, histamine (and other chemicals) are released. This causes itching, swelling, and mucus production. Symptoms vary in severity between individuals. Very sensitive individuals can experience hives or other rashes. Particulate matter in polluted air and chemicals such as chlorine and detergents, which can normally be tolerated, can greatly aggravate the condition.

Allergies are common. Heredity and environmental exposures may contribute to a predisposition to allergies. It is roughly estimated that one in three people have an active allergy at any given time and at least three in four people develop an allergic reaction at least once in their lives. The two categories of allergic rhinitis include:

* Seasonal – occurs particularly during pollen seasons. Seasonal allergic rhinitis does not usually develop until after 6 years of age.
* Perennial – occurs throughout the year. This type of allergic rhinitis is commonly seen in younger children.

Allergy testing may reveal the specific allergens an individual is sensitive to. Skin testing is the most common method of allergy testing. This may include intradermal, scratch, patch, or other tests. Less commonly, the suspected allergen is dissolved and dropped onto the lower eyelid as a means of testing for allergies. (This test should only be done by a physician, never the patient, since it can be harmful if done improperly). In some individuals who cannot undergo skin testing (as determined by the doctor), the RAST blood test may be helpful in determining specific allergen sensitivity.

More hereditary than seasonal. My dad’s allergic to tonnes of things – seafood, dust. I know I’m simply allergic to dust. Drives my nose insane and my eyes start to water. Piriton and Claritin aren’t really doing their job. I’ve run out of Telfast and please, spare me the advice of taking Decolgen because I used to take the extra strength ones and it did nothing. The stupidly expensive doctor near my house prescribed me that and I was WTF! And it’s not because I’ve been taking Decolgen that I’ve grown immune to it. I had only taken it once or twice and both times I had to fall back on Piriton because there was no effect, no relief from the annoyance of runny noses and what-nots.

a saki moment.

Wish I could have recorded the whole moment.

I had all Pungs (3 of a kind) in hand and was waiting for my final tile. I could have gamed earlier on but didn’t. Why not just try my luck? For the first time ever I wasn’t that short of change in the box and if I had decided to take that winning tile (a sequence which would have ruined my family of 3 of a kinds), I would have only won 40 cents.

I managed to get 4 of a kind which meant I’d need to draw from the dead wall. I drew my own flower, another tile to be taken from the dead wall and the final tile I drew was my winning tile.

2 of my own flowers, all Pungs and in Saki’s terminology – Tsumo after a Kong.

Maximum. $6.40 from everyone. Happiest moment of my life. Not for winning but the fact that I Kong, draw my own flower and then Tsumo (which means I win by drawing my winning tile by myself and not by a tile discarded by another player).

thank you uncle.

This event took place a long time back but after reading this post on A Singapore Taxi Driver’s Story, I was suddenly reminded of it.

I can’t quite remember why I was, I think heading back from supper. I had virtually no cash on hand, thinking that I could swing by an ATM to draw some cash for the cab back or else, pay by NETS. Unfortunately, the first cab I flagged didn’t have one of em’ newfangled NETS machine installed and so I hunted about for an ATM.

Just my luck then that I saw both a UOB and DBS automated machines. Heng ah, can draw money go home.

Unfortunately, Murphy’s Law decided to play a prank on me. I’m not too sure of what reason but both tellers refused to accept my card. Only earlier I had withdrew money via DBS for supper and other assorted things and I was able to deposit cash into my UOB account. Ok fine. So I’ll wait around for another cab, hopefully one that allows for NETS.

No one came by. But I did see the same cab I had flagged earlier. Felt a lil’ fishy for me so I decided to walk down a wee bit more. Confirm main road got more cabs. None. Murphy’s Law again.

This time the same cab from before slowed by and stopped. The driver, who was a Malay man in his mid-thirties, wound down the window and told me to just get in. Alarm bells started ringing but he assured me quite fervently that no harm would come my way. He had a daughter who was a lil’ younger than I was and told me that as a father, he would never let his daughter walk around, alone, late at night. I hope he didn’t think my dad just let me wander aimlessly (truth be told, the parents were asleep and I headed out coz I was stark raving famished).

He drove me back to my house and accepted no form of cash, compensation or reward whatsoever. I did take his cab number down but I lost that phone and couldn’t call the cab company to thank nor reward him for such a kind gesture.

These days the cabbies I’ve been in and taken slam their doors on me, drive like maniacs on the road or just flat-out refuse me in favour of cabby-bait.

I thank the cab driver, the selfless nice man, for his kind gesture and hope that plenty good karma and fortune goes his way.

For me, lesson learnt, next time I either drive out to get my foodie-fix or call Macs.

i’m not THAT old!

I’ve been procrastinating on talking about my birthday because… well, sometimes it still gets me embarrassed. I’ll just put it, in short, that it was one of the most random ones I’ve had with really random surprises. Brunch with the family at Breeks at Terminal 2 (why of all places, I don’t remember) where a bunch of kids were adding +30495830 points to noise pollution before heading back for a couple of Zs. I didn’t sleep well the night before. Evening was dinner with the boyfriend at Newton – his fault for planting ideas of chilli lala, sambal kangkong and or jian (oyster omelette) into my head and we made a detour from our initial destination of Borders Bistro to there. Afterwhich, finishing the night off with some cappucino sheesha at Arab St.

Oh I forgot to mention. On the stroke of midnight on June 25th, we were in the car and he pulled over to a bus stop and gave me a swiss roll and sang me a birthday song. HAH! You didn’t think I’d have known the swiss roll was my birthday cake now did you? I is smarter nao.

But then I had another birthday cake surprise when his friends came over for a spot of Wii. That one, really blur story but it can’t match the surprise the DYL family had for me Saturday night at Timber @ Arts House. Last day for the Singapore River Festival and two international acts were down as the final acts with Jack and Rai finishing off the set. Cutting it short, I got another birthday cake, a birthday song and a pretty pretty star that I have to figure out how to fix and where to hang once my room is decently organized.

Thank you everyone!

From the birthday wishes on FaceBook and via phone. To the DYL-ers for the cake, star and surprise. To the boyfriend’s friend for the ice cream cake from Swensen’s. But most of all, to the boyfriend who upped his game on tricking me into the surprise and of course, putting up with my nonsensical emoness prior to the birthday and everything else.

Love you guys plenty and many.

For the first time in well, 24 years, I can say I’ve had the most unassuming, surprising and pleasant birthdays ever.

giving the heartlands a chance.

This is not an advertorial. Ahem.

I realise that sometimes the shops that are closer to you manned by the aunties or uncles in the neighbourhood can sometimes offer a better service and rate as opposed to those atas shops. I learnt my lesson when I went to rebond my hair (and get a haircut) at Funan’s Kimage. I had paid for a senior stylist to do my hair yet what I got in return was a complete travesty of what I should have gotten.

All the senior stylist did was to ask me how I wanted my hair cut and then cut it. That was at the beginning and end of the session. In between, I was given a frickin’ apprentice. One who pretty much burnt my hair and my scalp. I hated the haircut. I expected getting normal bangs but instead I was given one that pretty much made me look like an idiot.

I grabbed a pair of scissors and gave myself a proper bang-trim when I got back home. So embarrassed and outraged I was. For $150 a silly apprentice almost gave me second degree burns and the main senior stylist to whom I had asked for and even called and requested for, treated me like some second-rate customer. If I wasn’t so exhausted from having to sit still in the chair for 5 bloody hours, I would have thrown a hissy fit. As it stood, I just wanted to get it all over and done with and swore (so viciously hard) NEVER EVER to return to ANY Kimage outlet. I didn’t care if it was just one incident.

I just got back from getting my hair rebonded. I didn’t dare rebond it again after the Kimage incident and that was 2 years back. In the past, I used to get my hair done (trimmed, cut, styled, rebonded) by a friend of my sister’s. However, she got married and relocated to Kuala Lumpur and comes back once in a blue moon. That one time when she did come back and I did get her to rebond, I had to fork out $300+. Sure it gave me a heartache causing such an atomic-sized hole but the end result was absolutely fantastic.

This time round I decided to head down to Clementi. My hair was already doomed so I figured might as well la. See how much damage a $99 rebond+cut+treatment would do to it. When I went in, the lady was busy styling a young girl’s hair. Function I suppose. She was the only one manning the shop and I was pretty cool with waiting. I deserved it la since I woke up late and only got there about 4ish.  She was really generous with the mixture used for rebonding and even had to topped up more. I just have too much hair. It’s frustrating. At least, I reasoned with the boyfriend, that our future kids would have plenty of hair and would never go bald.

The tedious thing was perhaps straightening the hair. That took her about an hour. I felt bad. Reaaly bad. Because she didn’t even stop for a break. There were other customers in the shop too but they were awfully nice in waiting and not throwing a hissy fit. In fact, they told her to take her time and I guess because they seemed quite fascinated with just how much hair I had.

I make myself sound like the Asian Rapunzel freak. Hire me as a sideshow circus act!

But yes. It took close to 5 hours, most of which was spent getting my hair ironed out. She didn’t complain. Not once and I didn’t even see her face turn black or her mood grouchy. Stellar service. If you want to head there, it’s at Clementi, near block 328. It’s along the stretch where there’s a coffee shop famous for its claypot chicken rice and there are fish shops (as in shops selling fish for rearing and looking at and not to eat) and a bubble tea store. If I recall, the name of the shop is Scissors something.

Awesome lady. Maybe I should have gotten the after-rebond treatment lotion but I was too hungry and I wanted food.

Am gonna see how long this style lasts. I have been nagged at least five times by the boyfriend who was reminding me not to tuck my hair behind my ears. This plus I can’t wash my hair for another three days. Oh the grimy horror.

But I guess the most important bit is that, you honestly don’t have to pay a lot to get good service and a satisfying haircut (or anything). Big shops with big names are big but they aren’t always big on service unless:

1. You’re a celebrity.
2. You’re ranked high on the social strata.
3. You’ve got the $$$.

And even so, there’s often too much stories of how diva-esque these stylists are and how they gossip and throw their tantrum or show their black ugly faces. From now on, I’m frequenting the heartlands. I think I prefer nosy bubbly aunties to obnoxious stuck-up plastic people. I’ll leave ya’all with a crappy tired mugshot of me and my new hairdo.

hello new hair!

i like going to the airport, but i dont like planes.

It’s true. I like going to the airport, checking in and hanging out at the lounge. But when it comes to the planes, taking off and in the air, it still freaks me out a little. Hmm. I’ve been on a plane about seven times. The first was always traumatic. I grew up watching cartoons where planes took off like rockets so it wasn’t really a surprise when I freaked out as we were all buckled in and listening to the engines roar.

I think (it was a looooong time ago my first flight) I was ten at the time. We were traveling to Turkey. My brother wasn’t being the least bit helpful telling me all the things that could possibly go wrong. I cried when the plane took off and the cabin crew (oh that i was such a cute lil’ thing) took pity on me and gave me the kids pack to take my mind off. Course, I had to put it away when we were taking off. Anyway, it all seemed pretty uneventful and I gotta say, thank god for KrisAir (no, not you Krisandro) for keeping me joyfully entertained with Mario and Contra. Old school games FTW!

The way back I experienced my first turbulence. It was rocky. My sister felt sick, my mom felt sick, my dad was sleeping (and so was the brother i think) and plates and cups were jiggling on the tray. I hate that feeling, when we hit the air pockets and the plane kept jolting and going up and down. I didn’t puke but it left me pretty scarred. Funny thing is that the next two or three times I was on the plane (with my parents and then it was for work), I didn’t feel anything. In fact, was even calming a friend down when our plane hit turbulence again.

What you really shouldn’t be watching when you’re leaving for the airport to head back is to watch a documentary on plane crashes. We were in Phuket covering the unaugural Phuket Marathon (the villa, is SUPER SWEET! of course when you’re paying USD1000++++ a night, it has to be. we didn’t pay for it, lucky we. and oh, it had a pool and a lounge area and almost everything! plus we were right in the middle of a golf course. now travelling to the main reception was a bit of a problem but that’s another story) and happened to be watching the Discovery travel. (Not so) Lucky for us, it was a piece on famous plane crashes and as we watched footage of how some of the planes crashed, the group of us weren’t too comfortable knowing we were going to be on a plane in a couple of hours.

The flight was alright. No turbulence. Smooth take-off and landing. Makes me wonder how the cabin crew do it, all those flights and the possible uncertainties and hazards of the job.

Maybe as we grow older, we become more paranoid and neurotic. Or it’s that my mother’s genes are really really strong in me. I guess it was some teeny tiny turbulence but I was gripping the boyfriend’s hand like mad and really really really wishing there was like a nice bullet train to Bangkok that would ease this fear of crashing (and then it’d be really really sucky if i caught a documentary on bullet trains gone wrong. just my luck eh?). Nothing happened. The skies were just rocky and when we landed in Bangkok, the rain started to pour like a waterfall. Same thing happened when we touched down back in jolly ol’ Changi.

Terminal 1 and 2 are pretty awesome places to hang out. Haven’t yet seen what the departure area for Terminal 3 looks like. Budget Terminal has upped its ante a teensy bit – Wireless@SG, a place for you to charge your electronics and a (marginally) wider selection of duty free shops (the last time i was there, there was only the liquour shop and random confectionary) to keep you somewhat entertained and occupied till your flight.

The only downside is that you have to walk, across the landing strip (or whatever its called) and up the stairs to the plane. Why on earth did the government have to choose budget, of all names, for the terminal. There’s only Tiger and Cebu Air there.

And the drive to the airport, always makes me feel excited, like I’m off to an adventure bringing with me the barest of necessities (not really, sometimes i think i tend to overpack). Now… to just save up for another holiday and this one, hopefully to hop on a plane that departs from Terminal 3.

clicktokill

I’ve been procrastinating on fixing clicktokill.net. Right now its an empty shell that needs some good loving. And loving it will get. Just need a bit more time to fix a couple of stuff (mainly the new layout and its sub-pages) before I can (sorta) shift everything over. Nrrrgh. Wish I had done this sooner then I would have put it up on my namecard. Ho well. This is what you get for procrastinating.

don’t touch that remote!

Righto. There’ll be a bunch of blog entries coming soon (once I get them all edited nice and pretty with pictures and uhm, catchy words).

1. No more freezing-cold days thanks to my personalized hoodie!
2. Singtel’s F1 blogger event
3. My cousin’s wedding (which I’m not sure if there’s a point to writing about it)
4. Top racing games, ever

So just sit tight. Also a bunch of resource posts coming soon with reviews, because it’s always cool to share nifty things with people.

blackberry stooooooorm!

No, I haven’t been picked. Yet.

But it would be awesome. Why? Because I’ve been thinking of getting a new phone. Something that makes it convenient for me to Twitter/Plurk on the go. Specially during Social Media / Web 2.0 gatherings. Sometimes there isn’t time to get your questions out to the panelists which explains why some of those present use Twitter to tweet out their questions so that the panelists may look at them and get back to the person who asked the question after the session is over.

Anyway, this is all happening on RippleVox. Great place to try out new stuff before everyone else has gotten wind of it or can get it on the market. You also get to catch movie previews (I caught a number, Kite Runner was incredibly awesome) and even attend concerts and meet your favourite artists!

I did some research on Blacberry pricing plans for both Singtel and StarHub. Still deciding if BB is the way to go or I should just stick to the tried-test-and-so-true Nokie E71.

If I get picked for this, you never know eh? Might just turn into a shiny squishy Blackberry convert.

snippetysnippetywho?

I need to do something about my hair. It’s getting from bad to did-you-set-your-hair-on-fire-or-something? I want to grow it long but it’s taking almost forever and I’m never one to be patient. I’d do extensions but considering the thickness of my hair and the length I desire, I think I’ll be causing an atomic explosion in my pockets than a simple hole.