Slipping down the rabbit hole...

I made a trip to the doctor on Wednesday, asked for a blood test, it was expensive. I had to go private because my employer's clinic cannot do that test for me easily. Anyhow, it'll be worth it since I'll know whether the results aligned with the guess works. If the results doesn't match with what I had suspected, then it'll be tough work to look elsewhere, but that's a topic for another day.

On the same topic of doctor, I had a skin condition that seems to be slowly coming back and it's not a good thing. The past 2 years had been an ordeal for me until I found a dermatologist and went to a facialist. The facial lady could only offer temporary relief for me, while the dermatologist was able to diagnose my condition, put me on some antibiotics and topical gel, but the condition didn't really go away as I discovered lately. Hence I was reluctant to go back to the derm. as there's nothing much he can do except asking me to consider taking the last resort: use a higher grade medication that can have side-effects (and they can be huge or life-long, different for everyone). With that in mind, I visited the facial lady and put in a large sum of deposit, well, to me it's large. Previously I put about half the amount of the current sum and the package will give me 20% off every treatment. Now that I put double the amount in the deposit, the package will give me 30% off every treatment, I figured I would need more frequent visits to the facialist hence the deposit could last me an entire year and would stretch further my budget.

My colleague next to me had been coughing seriously for the whole week. This colleague called in sick on wednesday, the next day didn't see any improvement at all! Now my supervisor has noted that one by one we had fallen sick, I should be the next. It's annoying to be surrounded by sick people who should just stay home (but they don't!), my sick colleague told me that he had a party to go tonight. I rolled my eyes in my heart, he should at least wear a mask for the whole week instead of spreading germs. Completely inconsiderate. I feel glad it's Friday and I've been tolerating this since Monday.

With winter looming close and my determination to tweak my breakfast, I headed to the grocery store to stock up some stuff that I can have as easy meals, at home or the office, they would help me reduce my spending on food perhaps. I bought a few energy bars for just under US$0.5 each! Also got something slightly more fancy to drink (strawberry milk parfait powder sachet, I don't drink these every week so that's OK), instant noodles, some chocolates (those are delicious but I can exercise self-restraint so no problem with overdose), plain oat biscuits, soda crackers, a can of sardines. We'll see how it turns out with some instant pasta I got a while ago! If it works out, I know what I'll be stocking up next time :-) At the moment this pile should last for a while so we're set here.

The colleagues are talking about having a steak lunch with unlimited fries sometime next week, and honestly I don't care if the chef comes from France or Hell's Kitchen, I just don't. care. Guess what, the lunch could cost HK$230!! That amount of money will see you through in a lunch buffet at a hotel nearby our office, WTF?! Oh and last time I checked, fries are not really friends for our health. We'll see how this roll out next week.

My dad mentioned that he might not be able to go to the long-haul trip with us next year due to work, this needs further thinking, I certainly could go with mom but I really wanted all of us to be able to go! Granted the costs will be higher but I've come to realize that the time for all of us to go on a trip together isn't that much...and they are getting older, I want to bring them to places that they've never been and be amazed!

I had abandoned the pair of sneakers that I had my eyes on earlier, but I ended up with another 2 pairs of sneakers that look nice and versatile enough. If this works out, I might get the other 2 colors as well later on. 

I talked about putting funds for investment before end of 2014, but this plan has to wait. The bank I went to told me they had no new offers for the rest of this year so I might want to wait for 2015 if any new offers come out (some costs could be waived / rebated).

November has seen me slipping down the rabbit hole financially, but I still hold hopes for 2015 whereby unnecessary spending could be reduced to a minimum, given the tight wiggle room.