The weather in Singapore

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It’s humid. It’s humid. It’s really humid. It’s humid all year round. Your hair is forever frizzy.

I’ve lived in Singapore all my life. I’m not really well travelled unfortunately so far, only been to nearby Asian countries. But I must say, Singapore is the humid-est of all!

It means that the moment you step out of the house, you perspire. It means perspiration creeps out of my pores when taking the lift down from the apartment and walking a 50 metre distance to the train station. The lowest temperature I ever truly felt was 22 degrees, and that was considered a freak temperature by our standards. It felt really cooling. It was still humid by the way.

On a normal day, the weather app tells you it feels like 36 degrees celsius out there when it is 29 degrees.

I’m an OL, so it means that I step out from the aircon room in my house, into the heat, onto the train with air-conditioning and then into the heat, and then into the office. In the office, since the air-con is on, the air is pretty drying. The air-conditioning is centralized, so you have no control over the temperature. Depending on where you sit, it could be really cold, or normal. It’s the worst when you get blasts of cold air on you and it cause you to fall sick easily. I know of people who wore winter jackets and have blankets in office.

Once I reach home, I turn on the air-con, cos it’s really too hot in ‘ere.  The building traps the heat of the day time and the room just feels really hot and stuffy. I sleep in air-con all the time cos I don’t like to wake up being drenched in sweat. Maybe “drenched” is being too exaggerated, but surely my back will be wet, because I have to sleep with a blanket. And it’s really too hot to sleep without the air-con.

I guess you can say that my skin goes through some changes in temperature every day even though we don’t have the 4 seasons. It’s perpetually summer all year round! I do understand why my skin could be dehydrated though, since I’m in air-conditioning all day long.

My scalp will feel itchy if I don’t wash it everyday. This is another aspect of skincare I will have to take care of.

 

My skin type

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I wondered very long about what to write as my first post and I got my inspiration today! Generally this post is about my skin so that you can determine if I’m your skin twin! I’ve been to many facials before and beauticians loved to make many many comments about your skin so that they can up-sell you more and more packages and their products, but I guess what they said about your skin must be true to some extent for them to recommend you products and treatments that worked.

I used to have acne on my cheeks, and now and then I still have acne mostly on my jaw. I do experience clogs very easily, even with products that claimed to be comedogenic. I also didn’t really care about my skin that much. I went to see a doctor before about the acne. The topical cream the doctor gave me caused my skin to peel really badly. When you stop applying the creams, the acne just came back. What saved my skin from acne was facials! I went through very very painful extractions. The beauticians loved to tell me, oh your acne are all trapped inside your skin and it’s very difficult to extract them. I wish I knew about BHA and AHA then and maybe my facials wouldn’t be so painful!

Skin in 2009 left cheek

Picture in 2009 with acne on left cheek.

Through numerous extractions and painful squeezings (ok, maybe not all of you agree with this method, albeit done professionally) and IPL, the acne slowly just stopped. Maybe, maybe, it could be age. I’m really not sure. Anyway the scar marks are still there, as commented by beauticians some time last year.

Skin in 2010, right cheek.

Picture of me in 2010, showing acne on right cheek.

I have milia seeds around my eyes too, and dark eye circles. I’ve tried to apply products on my neck too, having read some advice to apply whatever you apply on your skin to your neck and this resulted in milia seeds on my neck too. The lines on my neck are very pronounced though. My skin also seems to be sagging. Pores on my cheeks are larger as compared to the rest of my face. I have a lot of blackheads on my nose. They also mentioned my skin is thin. They claimed my skin is sensitive because my skin will turn red really easily when it is touched. I do notice my skin do looked kind of patchy and red sometimes, even my arms, and it happens when I’m cold or hot. My skin is also oily and dehydrated. I did see some improvement in their comments after I started on BHA in probably end of 2016. I still did extractions but the extractions are no longer so long and painful.

Well, now I’m 35 grand years old, I’m starting to notice lines on my face (lucky me with oily face!). Lines below my eyes and the lines around my mouth and nose are more pronounces. There are also patches of dryness and flaky skin around my mouth and nose sometimes. I really try not to raise my forehead too often, I guess I don’t have that many obvious lines there. I think I also have water retention on my face and probably some lymphatic blockages on my face, I probably need to do some gentle massage on my face. The beauticians never wanted to do any on my face as they are afraid that the massage will over-stimulate my skin.

Just a side note on my hair – Thank God I also do not experience white hair much, haha, maybe I experience one strand once every 10 years. I hope that doesn’t change!

Thank you if you’ve read to this far, I shall just perhaps do a summary of what my skin is prone to here.

Grand summary: Oily, dehydrated, prone to clogs, hormonal acne, lines and pigmentation due to acne scarring. 

I really hope to update this blog regularly to document my journey on my skincare. Better late than never I guess!