Reading that the economy is possibly on the rebound now was the best bit of news I had this morning. But it got me thinking again about our lives here and what will happen next.

The whole retrenchment scare we experienced earlier was truly like having a bucket of cold water dumped on us. Our enthusiasm and excitement over our new life here fizzled out a little and we were left feeling very much unsettled. I did not manage the possibility of having to return to Malaysia / Singapore to start over again very well, I must say.

That possibility downright sucked.

The sad part is, we're still on edge right now as the whole job situation here is still quite uncertain. We will probably have to live with this feeling for a long time to come.

Such is the life of an immigrant, I guess.

 

I saw today, for the first time, exactly how DAMAGED the skin on my face is.

I went for my appointment with Claremont Skin Clinic for the initial consultation and skin analysis. I had to take off all my makeup and stick my face in a skin scanner unit where I could see for myself exactly what damage I had suffered.

I knew my acne scars were gonna show up big time and my sun spots as well, but what I saw with my own eyes was horrible! My face was littered with acne scars and sun damage -  almost every inch was covered in dark spots!!

I looked like something out of a Halloween movie. OK, maybe I'm being a little melodramatic.

Then I had to have a picture of my face taken with the Beau Visage analysis system which gives you an incredibly comprehensive skincare analysis as it uses a camera that looks up to 2mm beneath the surface of the skin. The system assesses your face for distribution of melanin, sun damage and blood and also calculates the age of your face.


That's obviously not me (I plucked the pic from another site), but the damage on my cheeks looked worse than hers.

So, before things get worse, I'm gonna fix it with IPL. I'll blog more once I start treatments.

This better work. I've got only one face afterall.

I just found out that feeding bread to ducks may actually harm their digestive system.

I feel bad; I've been feeding bread to the ducks and swans down at the River Severn. They seem to like it and would sometimes fight for the bread also. And I don't recall seeing any of them go belly up after eating (OK, maybe only fish do that, but still...).

It's bad for them, but apparently if everyone stopped feeding them, they might also die since these ducks might not be able to find enough food in the section of the river that runs through the town (I can personally vouch that I've not seen any fishies or frogies in the river so far).

Hmmm...  I'll have to think about this more.
 
 

 

Three of the local residents of the River Severn. My husband took the picture and I planted a couple of flowers on their heads. So pretty....

Work has been pretty crazy lately. Deadlines for work have been either "today" or "yesterday". Typical. A deadline of "tomorrow" is usually something of a miracle (I would buy lottery tickets whenever that happens).

So it felt really good to be able to 'escape' to Birmingham (and Dudley) last weekend. We spent a good part of Saturday at the zoo in Dudley. I love zoos. The zoo was a good sized one, with a castle to boot.

On Sunday, we went to StarCity in Birmingham for 2 rounds of Mini Golf. I also love playing games. Great weekend.

At the z :





The Mini Glf Drama :