Who the bloody hell are you?

Hi! My name is Puzzle and I'm an Asian skincare addict.

I’m a quarter of a century old (something my younger brother takes absolute pleasure in reminding me of) and I have lady-parts. I like art, my dog, waking up early and I’m growing to love skincare too! I would say I have a rather...obsessive personality. I tend to jump into new things with great gusto and then get less and less interested over time until they end up a passing fascination, argh. This blog is to be my skincare haven to keep track of my progress and take a break from drawing fanart to apply my art skills in helping myself, and others, explain skincare.

My Environment

I work in one of the most punishing environments on earth – the Australian Pilbara. For those of you who haven’t heard of the Pilbara before, it’s basically a giant, hot, orange desert. During the winter, it gets dry and chilly and in the summer it’s hot (mid-summer the temperatures reach above 40C/104F on an almost daily basis), sticky and sometimes cyclonic.

My pictorial depiction of Western Australia

I’m one of ~20,000 Western Australians working in the mining industry on a Fly in- Fly out (FIFO) roster. What does that mean? It means that I spend 8 days in a row working 12 hour shifts in a remote location. Then I fly back to my home in the city and have 6 days in a row off for R&R (rest and relaxation). This might sound like a pretty sweet deal and, in a way, it is! It means that I have a good chunk of time without any sort of work commitments. On the flipside, working remotely kind of sucks. The internet and phone reception is dodgy, 12 hour days drag like you wouldn’t believe and there’s nothing really to DO in the evenings aside from drink (a maximum of 4 per night are permitted by our parent company), exercise, watch tv or sleep in your assigned box of a room (they’re about 3x3m).

My job used to involve being outside for a good portion of the day and by the time I got back to our mining camp I would be so orange from the dust that it looked like an awful fake tan. My skin grew tight and dry and I had sort of…inverse panda eyes from where my eyes had been protected by safety glasses.

Not quite to this extent, but it definitely wasn’t a good look (image: Pinterest)

Thankfully I’ve moved to more of an indoor data-analysis-y type role (from boiling heat and dust to drying air conditioning all day – PROGRESS!) but clearly the desert is a totally shitty environment to be trying to look after your skin in.

My Skin

I’m allergic to the sun.

(image: tumblr/She’s the Man)

Not literally, but I may as well be. I haven’t got my MAC shade figured out yet (Done! I'm in the realm of NC10/15) but my prediction is that it will fall into the realm of “pale as fuck”. I’m so white that I’m practically see-through in places. Another reason I’m so interested in Asian Beauty is that it seems to cater more towards porcelain skin in terms of BB and CC shades. I might actually find something that matches and doesn’t leave my face as a completely different shade to the rest of my body like some sort of mismatched lego man (or lady).

My skin type is combination, meaning that my forehead and nose areas are typically a little oily and my lower face and mouth area are dry. My cheeks kind of sit somewhere in the middle (probably in that holy and seemingly unattainable “normal” classification). I would say my biggest concerns are aging (whyyyy nature, whyyy?) and the uneven skin tone on my face. I have little capillaries visible in my cheeks, which used to be such a glorious rosy tone. YOUTH, RETURN TO ME!

If you're interested in finding out your skin type (and you really should!) I find the most helpful resource to be this Paula's Choice page. It's important to know you skin type as different products will be better or worse suited to your particular type. You might find that some parts of your face handle moisture differently and that what causes your cheeks to be soft and supple makes some other part of your face break out in unsightly spots. For me, I find that foaming cleansers often tend to make my dry spots even drier, although they work really well for the oily sections of my face.

Anyway, I think that’s enough of an introduction for now (and I should really stop procrastinating from work. Haha, who am I kidding? I'm more than likely going to end up sitting on reddit for the next two hours until work ends). I might end up writing some more about my job and the FIFO lifestyle at a later date as it seems to be a topic that a lot of people are interested in.

If you have any questions, please post them in the comments section below!

Next up, my current routine and how I'm planning on expanding it.

See you then!

Puzzle