These two babies (below) may not look like much but they are probably the two most loved and used products I own:

Euthymol is a deliciously old fashioned English toothpaste with a very acquired taste (I remember my mother using it when I was a child and thinking how disgusting it was).  It’s ridiculously pink in colour – very cheering on a drab Monday morning though – with a strong, medicated, zingy taste that’s almost impossible to describe: the best I can do is to say it’s a minty/herbal version of germolene antiseptic cream, also unapologetically pink.

Very hard to get hold of, even in the UK, it costs next to nothing when you can lay hands on it (£1.65 / S$3 from Boots).

I have found these guys, British Mart, on amazon.com who will ship it to Singapore but it costs four times what it should which I find rather hard to swallow.

The other little tube of salvation is Mopiko – a Japanese cream for bites, stings and muscle aches that’s just brilliant for (in my case) taking the itch out of mosquito bites. It comes everywhere with me, only getting jettisoned from my handbag when I’m going out at night.

Available from pretty much any and every pharmacy out here.

Generic bottle image courtesy of Healthful Mama