Karmina, you go, girl! A journalist excoriating a lying politician on air. It’s *chef’s kiss*
I once did that to an incumbent minister/department secretary during the Q&A of a conference I was moderating. The official didn’t *like* me after that and I was marked as anti-government. I didn’t take it badly; I’m just doing my job as a journalist by asking the tough questions. If I didn’t do it, then who will?
Seeing the list of senator candidates now makes me want to puke. I forgot to register for the May 2025 elections because it is not a priority in life right now. Deadline was yesterday. Just seeing who the Filipinos will vote for (as shown by the SWS survey) makes me hate my country now.
Leni, Bam, Kiko and Chel didn’t enter the top 12, the available seats for this upcoming elections. 😩
I’m having my glasses fixed changed because I broke it. Damn. It cracked where the screws were supposed to hold the lenses. That was an Ann Taylor frame and it wasn’t cheap. Now I had to get one Mango frame that was on sale…
Update: WTF! They ordered the wrong eyeglass lenses and contact lenses! No wonder I was nauseous. It was gadawful trying to drive out of the parking area with the wrong prescription lenses. Gave me so much eyestrain and I have an oncoming headache.
I had to turn back and demand that they change my contacts and my eyeglasses.
So many green flags.
He knows his fantasy literature! I mean, yes, Robert Jordan ✅ David Gemmel (which I have yet to read) ✅ and I didn’t catch the other three authors.
There’s nothing sexier than a man who reads a lot.
My sister messaged me at 9 am yesterday and told me instead of going to Makati on Tue to shop, we should do it that day and just drive to Nuvali. With me driving.
Ok I said, fine, I will finally buy that Acerpure air circulator that I had been hankering for because my living area + kitchen is not ventilated well. I still have to have that giant front door screened. Giant accordion screen doors are manufactured in Metro Manila and I’m still figuring it out how to order and have it installed.
Anyway, here it is, the air circulator that finally had the hot humid air in my living area moving. It makes the area cooler and I no longer have to bring out another electric fan when I have several people over for dinner.
You can stick the remote control on top of the magnetizedhead. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
According to Anson’s website, “with an efficient DC motor, the minimum airflow power consumption is just 1.65W.” Compared to the standard fan with power consumption of 65W, this purchase is a big win.
I can also plug this into a Jackery or Ecoflow battery/power station during power outages. I don’t like rechargeable fans because they may cause electrical fire. One of the Big Mama rechargeable fans we brought over from the QC apartment short-circuited. Those really were bad purchases. Bad reasons, bad results.
We bought the rechargeable fans in Cash & Carry Makati when we were threatened with a super typhoon and I was panicking and worried about how in the world will I keep J from complaining about the heat because there will be no aircon when the power goes out. But the super typhoon got diverted and passed through Southern Tagalog instead of hitting Metro Manila directly so the power didn’t go out as expected.
Imagine that—he was always on top of my worries and his welfare was my priority. And what did I get???
Ah never mind.
I think the best combination during power outages are a DC fan and a rechargeable power station (it’s like a giant power bank) that some portable solar power generators use.
Screencap from Lazada
The height can be adjusted (just remove or add the extra neck) so you can make it into a desk fan or a standfan.
You can store the extra neck at the back of the unit so you won’t lose it.
I bought another one (as a standfan) for my Demolition Twins’ room so that the air is distributed when their aircon is on at night. They don’t have to fight over the aircon because one girl is allegedly hogging all the cold air since the air swing function is now wonky.
This is on sale now on Ansons website for PHP 4,999.
This is the movie that Gwyneth Paltrow has chosen over Titanic. I liked this movie and I often wondered about its premise, how missing two seconds of an event had changed the course of Gwyneth’s character forever. One scenario is that she was able to catch the train and the other was the train’s doors shutting on her face, making her miss the trip. Just a difference of two seconds, her life had forked.
I wouldn’t know which two seconds of my life would have been the turning point but I can tell the exact moments that certainly would have been pivotal. Like for example, what if I decided to cancel that initial meeting with J at Westin Singapore? I was supposed to cancel it because I was still in a meeting with my manager and my team mates. I was flying later that evening back to Manila and I didn’t want to be harassed going to the airport because it was already late. The meeting was supposed to be earlier that day but he forgot to put it in his phone’s calendar because I also forgot to RSVP. So we moved it to 4 pm.
If I cancelled that meeting, I wonder how my life would have been. I think I still would have moved to our apartment in QC even if I hadn’t met him and then I would still eventually move here in my hometown. I still would have built my home. But I think what I would have missed are the lessons from that painful experience. I would not have taken that long and arduous road to learning how to love myself.
But then, I always believed I am put in a place where I am supposed to be. I am meant to be here. It doesn’t matter if I took the circuitous route or the straight path, I will always end up here.
Just like when Gwyneth’s character in Sliding Doors. She missed the train so she wasn’t able to catch her boyfriend in bed with another woman. When she didn’t miss the train, she was able to catch her bf in flagrante delicto. She broke up with him and in the throes of her grief, met a better guy.
However, in the multiverse where she missed the train, she still ended breaking up with the bf. At the end of the movie, the other guy was just in the background but you can insinuate that eventually they would have met, even if it would have been a different circumstance. Gwyneth would still have ended with the better guy.
We are where we’re supposed to be.
Speaking of Singapore, I just watched this video by Tanner Leatherstein that showed how he tried to expose the deception being perpetuated by bag maker Aupen.
Given that Singapore is one of the top 3 most expensive cities to live in, there is no way that bags sold for USD 300, competing with mid-level luxury brands (think sub-USD 1,000 bags like Kate Spade, Tory Burch, Coach, and Michael Kors) are being made there. The margins would have been too thin. Even the homegrown brands like Charles & Keith and and Tocco Toscano (which I like and have two bags from them) aren’t made in Singapore (*whispers in mainland China Mandarin*).
What this video exposes is that mainland Chinese companies use Singapore as a front to appeal better to the broader public. Aupen claims on their website that their bags are made in Singapore but there are no tags that state where they are really manufactured (as per requirement by WTO). Tanner traced the shipment of the bag that he ordered and saw it was shipped from Guangdong, China where bulk of the world’s bags are made. He said it doesn’t make sense to manufacture bags in Singapore then ship to a warehouse in Guangdong. That would have eaten the very thin margin that may have left after paying the expensive wages Aupen would have paid its hypothetical Singapore-based workers.
Yeah dude, Singapore to Guangdong is five to six hours by air. Shipping from Singapore to Guangdong to ship all around the world is nuts. Who is Aupen kidding?
So what’s my point? Chinese companies like to pass themselves off as companies from somewhere else other than China because there is wide belief that goods manufactured in that country are of low quality. They’re also circumventing some trade embargo to be imposed/being imposed by Western countries.
Once luxury brands are bought by the likes of LVMH and Kering, manufacturing is moved to China to have wider margins. Yes, Louis Vuitton and Chanel are made in China, hence, the anecdotal evidence that quality of the products by Kering and LVMH are much more inferior than years past.
Some speculated that Aupen is secretly being funded by these luxury conglomerates to create a new brand that would appeal to Gen Z. These Gen Zs aren’t buying the goods from well-established brands because they feel like they’re sooo old—something that mommy or auntie are buying.
Established brand aren’t appealing to the generations anymore.
The gameplan is to make them trend on social media, create artificial shortage to make the brand more desirable and less accessible, and then when the brand becomes established among the younger generation of consumers, the brand gets “acquired” by these luxury conglomerates. It’s basically these conglomerates are cannibalizing their own market to get a bigger share in the consumers’ wallets.
And just like that, Aupen announced the collab with LVMH, even if it’s still plastered on their website that they’re closing down their operations because the founders wanted to take a break. 😉
I took this photo at around 10 pm today along SLEX from Makati. There are road works going on along this stretch but there was no blockage in this particular section. It’s purely high volume of vehicles passing through. 😩
I hope that cursed Christmas rush is not starting earlier this year. It’s just disheartening to think about the weeks leading to Christmas would be like this. 😢
Display at Ikea. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Shopping centers began decorating with Christmas stuff in the first week of September. It’s not going to be very long before companies start with their yearend activities, starting a chain of events that would lead to gnarling of traffic in Metro Manila.
I lack sleep. I was holding a vigil because the US online store of the brand I patronize had a surprise sale—for a very short time only.
I swooped in, loaded my cart, and checked out. These are going to be Christmas gifts for the women in the family.
It took me hours before purchasing for myself though. I had to read so many reviews about my choices across different brands before finally clicking “checkout.”
Meanwhile…
Horrible pricing.
What in the world?! That’s the price of a brand new sedan or hatchback! Whhyyyyyyyy?!
Who in the world would buy these? Are these made with human skin?
Despite the astronomical price, these bags easily get broken, the hardware giving up or the skin peeling off 🥴
