I know many of us girls would love eyes like this..

or even face, mouth, nose, basically everything..
Ayumi Hamasaki, I am sure, is one of the common idols of most girls,
in which girls idolized her perfect shaped features (be it natural/or not I do not know) especially the EYES.
Well, just look at the above picture, it’s just to-die-for.

But we all know that the eyes you see above is enlarged through the very apparent brown contact lenses
(plus some graphical touches, most probably maybe) which is 80% of the enlargement.
Because of beautiful people like her, we are all inspired to get these contact lenses for ourselves,
I mean, who doesn’t love to have big eyes?!

There was a period I was totally hooked on getting coloured + magnified lenses,
and I remember spending quite a deal of money on it.
Then after a couple of months, the colour I was looking for was out of stock,
I tried not wearing the lenses for a couple of days but I just couldn’t get used to it.
The eyes seemed so much smaller and less energetic, and I feel that no matter how much make up I put, there is still something weird about the eyes. 

So I begun to start looking out for alternative brands, and consulted all the friends around me whom I saw,
wearing coloured or magnified contact lenses.
Some of them get it from those reputable brands but there were quite a few who got their lenses from online –
eg. Contact lense sprees, carts in shopping mall or overseas etc.

I have to admit my friends looked real beautiful with the lenses and the prices that they told me was totally a complete steal, no joke.
Was almost there to getting myself a pair online until one day…
My friend said the contact lense teared in her eyes.

And truly lucky or what, it didn’t affect nor hurt her cornea but it was awfully scary to know that.
It was also not the first time I hear about such cases, one such example:

I am gonna take bits and pieces of the story, and It’s a story of a girl named Tennile, 16 years old, living in australia:

"A contact lens made me go blind"

Tennille, 16, wanted to make an impact at a dance party,
but never thought she'd wind up losing her sight in one eye because of it.

In October last year, I was going to a dance party and wanted to make an impact.
I have brown eyes, but wanted blue eyes for the night, so I borrowed some novelty contact lenses from a friend.
I'd never worn contacts before and didn't really know how to use them – these were just cheap ones from the market.
In hospital, the doctors told me that, although the contact lenses had been packaged, the solution they came in was dirty and there were germs (bugs!) in it.
The nurses had to keep putting drops in my eye every half-hour – pretty much all day and throughout the night.

It was actually while I was receiving treatment that I lost my sight. At first I couldn't see because they'd put a big patch over my eye,
but when I was allowed to take the patch off, I still couldn't see anything.
Everything was just a blur. And although the drops had cleared up the ulcer, I was still left with a scar.


You can read more if you want to know the full story.

Another example is this news about this woman, from taiwan:

Woman tears out own cornea while removing contact lens

A woman pulled out her cornea yesterday while removing a special type of contact lens that make the wearer's irises appear larger.
The woman, surnamed Wu, suffered permanent vision damage when she took the contacts out after wearing them for more than 10 hours.

She said angrily, "The doctor told me that my cornea came out with the contact lens."

Wu said she brought a pair of Innova contact lenses that make the irises appear larger,
but after wearing them for more than 10 hours on January 23, she felt her eyes were dry and then proceeded to remove the lenses at home.
Immediately after she removed the lenses, she felt a sharp pain in her eyes that made her unable to open them, she said.
After she struggled to open her eyes, the tears kept coming out of her eyes and her vision became blurred, she said, adding, "It was so painful that I wanted to kill myself."

So these are in fact situation we MIGHT be facing if we get contact lenses from unknown & dubious sources especially online.
PHEW! Luckily I didn’t start buying contact lenses from those places!!!

After a while I just stopped wearing these contact lenses cuz I realised nobody even notices, thinks or can see that I wore those lenses,
so I presumed that there is no big difference and I shall not waste money on it. Example:

ME WITH BROWN & MAGNIFIED CONTACT LENSES
(I don’t buy from unknown websites, I got them from qualified optometrists at licensed stores).

you would probably seen it before on one of my posts, and this was taken last november.

As comparison to:

ME WITHOUT ANY CONTACT LENSES

Eyesight is really important, without that, we won’t even be able to enjoy activities at our best even if how good looking one person is.
And don’t regret when it’s too late, really. The consequences are simply not worth it!

Again, recently I was reminded by the contact lenses incident again after I saw an advertisement on ST:

With further shocking findings provided on the website:
50% of medicines purchased online from illegal sites are counterfeit or substandard(1),
1 MILLION illegal medicines were confiscated in 2010(2),
and 694 websites were engaged in illegal activity in 2010(2).

Sources from:
(1)World Health Organization on Counterfeit Medicines: Fact sheet No 275 (2010).
(2)Ops Pangea III global results

If you want to know more about the dangers of buying online.

So from now on, if  you were to buy any contact lenses , products or so,
you should only purchase from qualified eye care professionals and not over the Internet or other dubious sources,
and always ensure that you undergo proper eye examinations and contact lenses fittings by qualified optometrists or contact lenses practice opticians.
This is in order to prescribe the proper contact lenses to suit your unique eyesight requirements!