Product Review: The Body Shop Make up brushes

Probably one of my favorite make up brushes are from The Body Shop.

29 years ago, my mom was gifted an Angel

Her name is Angelina and she took care of me when I was six months old.

I keep saying in this blog that I wanted a brother that's because I already have an older sister who took care of Aprille and me,

I would like to credit our Achi Helen, whose been with us since I was barely six months old. If there's someone who knows us so well, that's our Achi Helen. Part of who (Aprille and me) we are today, part of it was Achi Helen.

Happy, Happy birthday to our Achi Helen, who's literally been with us through thick and thin, in sickness and in health, through our ups and downs. I never saw Achi as someone other than my older sister. God was so good to my mom that He blessed her with an Angel who's been with us for almost 30 years and counting.

In this day of age, finding and having another "Achi Helen" is so scarce that it's almost close to impossible. I am forever thankful and grateful that even before I even reached a year old, we already have a guardian angel until now and until forever.

I love you Achi.

UPLB Freshman Fair

Yes, you heard/read it! Something new, right?

With the new generation of UPLB students calling Carabao Park as C-Park, Freedom park as F-Park, and the ground in front of the Humanities Building where the Oblation is, as O-Park, this Fair, again is something new. 

This is what they call The Freshie Fair (Freshman Fair).

Product Review: Charm and Marionnaud Make Up Brushes

For quite sometime now, I've been collecting Make up brushes and brush set for years now. And I have an embarrassing make up brush confession. I seem to lug around these brushes with me whenever I go. I have yet to meet another person who has an "emergency make up kit" in the office like me.  I can still remember what my friend and colleague, Eisen, said, when I told him about the kit: 

It seems like the word "emergency" doesn't go with "make up kit" in one sentence. 

Haha! But seriously, I think I fell in love with Make up brushes first before the Make up Artistry itself. Maybe it reminds me a lot of my childhood that I used to paint. And before I know it, I've been collecting make up brushes now and I even like to mix and match brushes from their sets.

WTH: What The Heck Books in Book Sales

I love book sales! I must get into one when I see one. Most of the time, I buy. I get the cheap ones, like 2 chick lit books in mint condition under the price of Php 85.00. Really. That's actually how good I've become in getting cheap deals. I have a thing for chick literature books. I am not a wide reader. I wish I am, but I do get bored easily. I read to entertain myself. I think I have a slight mental ADHD. I was quite relieved when Dr. Hechanova, said that she reads chick literature books during her free time. Because it just relaxes her and does not require her to analyze much. Well, ditto!

Last week I went to two book sales and bought 3 books that I will not be able to read until I finish my manuscript. What I also love about book sales is you get to find What the heck... books like these.

I searched for this and this book got good ratings. 3.5 out of 5.

And I was surprised with the rating for the second book. 4.67 out of 5 with very minimal comments. To those who still don't know, sex really sells.

They are actually prized very cheap, wanted to buy it but don't know who to give it to after. So I just left it on the shelf and moved on with my purchase.

Now after seeing the ratings I'm thinking I should have bought it and give it to two people that I secretly have in mind. Haha!

How about you? What WTH books have you encountered recently?

The Cafe Ella at Los Baños Centtro

For quite some time now, we've been looking forward to the opening of Cafe Ella at Los Banos Centtro, the nearest, mall-like (for its size) building, walking distance from UPLB.

Finally last Monday, it finally opened.

It has been officially a year of disbelief.

Pain, they say, can either make or break you. 

It has been officially a year of disbelief.

"One cannot or will not get over the death of his/her parent" I was told. "But eventually you will just learn to live without, but the experience, you will not get over it."

Sometimes I can't believe that it's been a year. It was not easy.

Certain things that we see on movies that isn't true about death. That after the burial starts the healing process. It is not that way. Just Uncle Dave said, "Sometimes the breakdown comes 8 months later."

Or just when you thought you have cried enough, a song, a situation, a scenario, a material thing will send you to tears. I have had uncontrollable tears in public. Shuttle, jeepneys, cars, train, bus, cinema, malls, coffee shops, name it.

I think we have dealt with our pain so individually, I'm the only one who writes about it in the family. Many little things that my father did were overlooked, I didn't think it was such big of a deal, until he was gone. If there were three words that I would like to say to my father today, other than  I love him, it is: You were right.

Pain, changes you. I think it realigned my values, taught me empathy and compassion. Sometimes I feel like I now have four legs instead of two. That's how close to earth I am.

It taught me that happiness and pain will pass, that everything balances itself out.

That every single day, I thank the Lord for giving me a chance to wake up. My father did the last time but he was throwing up, rushed to the hospital and never came home.

It taught me not to be shaken easily. Before, I was over thinking about things. But now, I have learned to choose my own battles. Carefully.

Pain have also taught me other things about the future. The first year have always been hard, they say. but it brings out new things that you will surprise you, yourself.

Pain brought me back my faith, I am closer to God than I was before. Don't get me wrong, I am not holier than thou, but all my planning, schedule, visions that I have for myself, pain have taught me that someone's Greater. My plans were merely suggestions. He is the ultimate Boss.

I can go on writing about pain today, but it would be far too long.  Instead, I would like to use this virtual space, to thank each and everyone for being with me and my family through this difficult year.

Women and GPS

Met up with my city-based friends last weekend for the much needed catch up. Before we went home, we decided to check out Folded and Hung's newly opened outlet store that sells everything under Php250.00. When women hears "SALE" they get their hearts and blood pumping, so Thea decided to use WAZE to show us where to go.Thea, our resident, designated driver and best directions navigator has this application downloaded on her tab called WAZE, where it shows you the routes to go to get to a place.

First you type the destination and it shows you the list of the address to choose from. It looked like this:

Waze gets their info from four square and other location based social media. You can also add an additional location to be shared with other waze users. It showed two addresses. 

One says just plain Quezon Avenue and the other one with the street number and address. So we chose the more specific one.

Ideally, navigation should be like this. We drive along the purple line. 

 

I'm actually impressed how accurate it is. It tells you, through voice prompt, when to turn and how kilometers near are you to the place you need to be. We chose the option for Passenger Navigator because it also has a setting that will not allow you to be on the phone/tab while you drive. It's really good really. I'm very impressed. 

Actually, all three of us girls in this ride worked and lived in Quezon City. Thea remains the resident of Quezon City so we actually know how to get there. But we decided to go along WAZE instructions to see if its really accurate.But then, while driving, we got W-T-F?! moments like this:

 Even WAZE thinks were nuts that we actually fell out of the purple trail. 

When you change routes, waze re-calculates your route real-time and suggests another route for you to go.

We knew the address is in Quezon Avenue. We should've been there 20 minutes ago, but we found ourselves in Caloocan because we got so curious where WAZE will take us this time. We're actually running out of gas but we decided to push with this trip since waze tells us that we are near our destination. We passed by near squatters area, really narrow streets, pile up of construction trucks and we even reached china town's temple. 

Finally, when WAZE said: You have reached your destination, there's no outlet store in sight. Instead this is what we saw:

WTF?! Where the hell is the outlet store?! 

So we figured out some jackass might have ruined other peoples chance for a SALE so we decided to ask help from waze to get to EDSA so we can get back on track and go to Quezon Ave, on our instincts this time.

But finally, we used WAZE again to get back to EDSA and followed our instincts this time and a little help from WAZE then finally we saw the outlet:

Good news: We were able to find the outlet sale.

Bad News: Clothes were way out of season. Like 2008. 

But if you get lucky and haggle, you might find a classic piece or two.