I thought I saw white hair strands when I was looking at the mirror tonight. I double checked and triple checked… It was just the reflection of the lamplight on my black hair.
I was surprised by my reaction; I didn’t imagine that I would panic at the sight of white hair. I thought I wasn’t bothered about ageing—except for the backpain that came with it—but I guess I was wrong. I did care about how it would affect the color of my hair. I don’t know why it did.
You see, I like myself now better than I was in my 20s and 30s. I am turning 45 in three weeks and I feel like this age is pivotal. Not young but not old. I have wisened up but I’m still just winging it in life. I still haven’t figured it out and I just make stuff up as I go along.
I feel like life is just starting for me. I’m not physically tied anymore to my infants, toddlers, or pre-schoolers. I no longer have to stress about my school graders. I finally have my own thing as my now-teenaged kids have theirs. I am no longer tied and held back by a partner.
I’m still young. I have yet to do many things.
I think I panicked when I mistakenly saw white hair strands because that is the signal that I am indeed old. Maybe the inner me rejects the idea that I am old, that I can’t do anything else, and that I am now limited in terms of what I can do. That is one half of what makes me scared about ageing—I’m afraid of limits, of being boxed in or pigeonholed. Because women of certain age are boxed in or pigeonholed by society. I am deathly afraid of that ceiling that is/will be put over me.
I want to have Iris Apfel’s spirit—she didn’t let age stop her from pursuing life. At age 97 she was signed on as a model by IMG because she was so much sought after by so many brands.
Here is Nicole Kidman and Jimmy Fallon, on national television, talking about how clueless and stupid Jimmy was.
Jimmy was told by a mutual friend that he will bring Nicole Kidman to his NY apartment because she wants to talk to him, maybe for Bewitched. This was a time Jimmy was still in SNL. The idiot didn’t know what to do. Was told to buy brie cheese and crackers and that’s it.
Nicole, on the other hand, liked Jimmy and the mutual friend was trying to fix them up. Jimmy had no idea.
So here they were in his apartment, Jimmy didn’t know what to do,didn’t know what to say, so he put on a video gameand played!
Nicole said, OMG, this is not going anywhere—no chemistry, no he didn’t like me, I’m embarrassed—and that is that.
Jimmy said, wait—did I just go on a date with Nicole Kidman?!
Idiot, yes!
On national TV, Jimmy wanted to die and melt into the floor. 🤣
But I don’t fault him. I was in his position when I was in college. I was so shy in front of this guy I stalked for so long and my friends and I are still talking about this like it was yesterday. 🤣
Let’s call him Benj, a biology major. He was the reason why I always had hung out in my mom’s building and spent inordinate time with my bio major friends. I memorized his schedule—well some of his classes—and knew he would pass by at 3 pm in front of the bio bldg to go home to his apartment. So I had hung out at the lobby where there were benches and sat there so I could see him. I often was with my bffs at that time and sometimes with my guy bff but normally I would push him away so we won’t be mistaken as my bf. I did that for several semesters. The time slots changed, but still the same modus operandi.
One of my bffs was classmates with him in one Humanities or English subject, I can’t remember now. I often fetched this bff from this class so I could just have a glimpse of my crush.
A brother from my Greek-letter organization was roommates with him. One time he orchestrated my meeting with Benj. We were in front of the Humanities building and my brod introduced me to Benj. Like it was a well-planned meeting, a really carefully staged one. After I was introduced, I was so shy that I couldn’t say anything at all and I ran away! The idiot me just literally ran away! Maybe I said I had football practice or something.
My brod was flabbergasted and asked “me what did you do?!” when we met later. I said, I don’t know! I was just so shy that I wanted the ground to swallow me up.
During my last semester in college, I was finally classmates with Benj in one general ed class. I sat infront of him. I couldn’t bring myself to reintroduce myself to him because I was still so shy with him—and him alone. Our professor then knew my dad because he used to teach this very same subject before his early retirement due to his diabetic foot. “Ah you’re the daughter of ____,” our prof said during the first day.
So Benj should have known my name. But I still couldn’t bring myself to talk to him. The whole semester my back was just very conscious of his presence.
All my friends were already frustrated with me. The loud, confident me has been reduced to a tongue-tied idiot in the presence of this guy. The only person who reduced me into one big puddle on the ground.
Decades later, my friends and I still couldn’t find him on social media…
Oh wait, I just found him! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
He’s a doctor now in a southern city. Still married with two boys. Well good for him. Haha!
He has noooooo idea.
Ooooh damn, I want to try this but I think I will die.
French cuisine eaten in a farm in Cavite. The cooking methods are simple enough but the ingredients are hard to obtain here in the Philippines.
Authentic French food in the Philippines found in Cavite
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. 😉
