Down In The Dumps Is An Understatement

Actually, I was hoping for the best, that I would get my blog Juniper's Journal back intact but hope is fading because I just spoke to the website designer who basically admitted that he made a mistake and half my published blog posts along with 65 draft blog posts and half the published comments has gone missing.

Fantastic, Just made my lousy year. I am surprisingly calm. Maybe it is because I became resigned to my fate. I don't even know how things got this way other than I made a very bad choice when I chose someone to redesign my blog.

I have been getting calls and emails from people asking about the links to their posts and I really have no good excuse. It's embarassing and so darn humiliating to have this kind of situation where I have to work hard to restore missing images and a lot of things are beyond my control because I have no idea how to bring back my missing posts and the worst thing is, neither do the so-called professionals whom I paid good money to. This is by far one of the worst things to have happened to me EVER.

Mayura Apothecary Offers Holistic & Natural Products

It was only because I was meeting someone at M+ Pharmacy in Bangsar Village that I found out that the pharmacy has quite a number of interesting skincare and bodycare brands, most of which contain natural ingredients and are made in Malaysia. One of them is Mayura Apothecary. The founders of this brand are siblings, Henri and Yoking Lai. They even grow some of the herbs that go into their products.

Mayura Apothecary started when Henri Lai encountered a lack of safe and natural skincare in the market. Practising as a herbalist, he met a lot of sufferers of skin problems in his day-to-day job in the pharmacy and found it repugnant that the medical world did not offer anything more than steroid creams to patients with skin conditions.

One of Mayura's bestsellers and most interesting products if the Butterfly Pea Shampoo because it darkens hair. Great for those who don't like colouring their hair. We all need to cover our greys sooner or later!

1-Day Acuvue Define Vivid Style

It's much more convenient and hygienic to use 1-day lenses but the price is a lot more expensive than monthly lens which means I can't use 1-day lenses as often as I like. Beauty lenses like 1-day Acuvue Define Vivid Style can be used for special occasions when you want your eyes to look good even without eye makeup.

I can see that my iris looks bigger and more brown when I wear the 1-Day Acuvue Define Vivid Style. It's so comfortable to wear all day, wish I had a few more boxes of these but each box only contains 10 lenses. If price wasn't a factor, I would gladly switch to daily lens. Can also save on contact lens solution.

Product reviewed is a press sample.

SK-II Launches Facial Treatment Essence Limited Edition Inspired By Suminagashi

SK-II's iconic Facial Treatment Essence now comes in a beautifullt crafted design inspired by traditional Japanese marbling Suminagashi or "floating ink" in Japanese. The art of Suminagashi was chosen for its powerful philosophy which states that there is no wrong drop; each dot and swirl come together to create a unique art piece.

Designed in red, blue and green, this art transforms SK-II's Facial Treatment Essence into the season's must-have gift for your loved ones. I watched a demo of Suminagashi - one drop of ink is dripped followed by a 2nd shade and then a 3rd.

Then use tools to create patterns.

Place a piece of paper over the pattern.

Wait for the paper to dry in 20 minutes before cutting into strips, they make lovely bookmarks.

Each pattern is obviously unique and you will never get the exact same pattern even if you use the same shade of inks. This is the 1st time I have heard or seen this art, you learn something new every day.

Chinese Herbs For Cough

Tired of coughing incessantly, I decided to try a different cure. I went into a shop selling traditional Chinese medicine and explained that I had a dry cough. The proprietress said she'd get a bag of herbs for me to brew. She set about opening drawers and picking herbs which she put into a Burger Awam bag. Whatever happened to the paper used to wrap herbs or was that in bygone days?

I don't know more than half of the herbs in this bag. There are a lot of leaves and what I think are white lily bulbs. The proprietress gave me instructions on how to brew the herbs which were good for 2 doses.

Firstly, soak the herbs for half an hour. Then brew the herbs with 5 rice bowls of water for an hour. That would leave me with at least 2 bowls of medicine. Actually, it tasted more like a kind of tea than a bitter brew.

The next day, I could brew again adding 3 bowls of water and this time, I didn't need to brew for an hour. Okay, it didn't cure my cough but at RM16 for this bag, I think the price was a bit steep.

MAC Studio Nail Lacquer Holladeck

MAC Studio Nail Lacquer Holladeck is from their recent Star Trek Collection. This is a frosted gold shade which will really make anyone's nails pop and stand out. Actually, this is the ideal and perfect shade for the Christmas season. It is a most outstanding colour.

One layer and it is quite sheer so you need another layer before it becomes opaque. Because it is so sparkling, one doesn't even require a top coat. However, I won't say it is so long-lasting for me since I do so much typing and other chores. Starts to chip within 48 hours. For me, the only way to maintain a manicure is to apply gel polish otherwise I have to keep re-applying normal polish every 2 days.

MAC Studio Nail Lacquer Holladeck retails at RM60/10ml.

Product reviewed is a press sample.

People Who Screw Up And Think Nothing Of It

I like to give people the benefit of the doubt although in this cruel world we live in now, we should be much more cautious and not be so gullible but guess what, I am sure that every now and then, even the most cynical ones get screwed over. Five months ago, I engaged a website design company to give Juniper's Journal a makeover. They wanted full payment whereas some other companies only requested a certain percentage, 50% for starters at most.

Never mind that, I thought because the company representative seemed quite professional and confident that they could meet my requirements which were rather simple actually, just wanted the same features as my previous theme. How difficult can that be and furthermore, the company had a team of 20 people so they should be efficient, right? Yeah, that is what I thought too.

Weeks passed and I had to call and follow up with emails before a terribly incomplete draft of the new theme was sent to me. It just wouldn't do and it was as if they just simply sent a draft without taking into account ANY of my requirements. I was beginning to have serious doubts about this company.

Then weeks turned into months and there were periods of absolute silence from them. No updates via emails, I didn't even know if they were still working on my project. I had a sinking feeling. I sent multiple emails asking about the progress and had to call the company to get some sort of answer, that they were still working on it. By August, I was beginning to get a sinking feeling in my heart. After all, if someone has been working on what they were supposed to have completed months ago, you would have some doubt too about their capabilities.

I asked if it was possible to have a change of colout in the blog logo and although they sent me a version of it in early August, nothing was heard from them until September and only then because I called and emailed for an update. I received a rather cold response from the consultant (the person I met with before I paid and had made known to him clearly what my requirements were) that what they were doing for me was outside the scope of their work! That was so unexpected. I even gave up on the colour change and told them to stick with my old logo.

As I wanted everything to progress expeditiously (come on, it was already October!), I asked if the blog could go live on 10th October but before that, I'd called them to confirm that the blog would show the latest posts and all the archives from the beginning of the blog once it went live and they confirmed it would, So the blog went live on 10th October and more than half my blog posts especially the more current ones are missing and worst of all, nothing is functioning as readers can only read the headings and see no images!

There are a lot more things I want to say in detail but I will leave it for now as we enter a new week and I have no great expectations that Juniper's Journal will go back to normal any time soon. Such is the incompetency of so-called professionals nowadays, So disappointing and disillusioning.