Back for Good

A beautiful evening to all the beautiful ladies out there!

After a good five weeks (or more) of pulling all-nighters for work, I'm glad to say that I'm finally back. Work has taken up so much of my waking hours, so much that I'm often left with little to no time to rest after working for long hours. Those past weeks have been some of the most tiresome and stressful weeks that I've ever drowned myself into since I started working three years ago and I am so glad that it's all over (fingers crossed). I don't ever want to go home at 2 or 3 in the morning especially when my beloved is not around to pick me up from work. It's extremely horrifying to be out at that time of the night especially when you're going home alone. Thank God I have a coworker who's ever so thoughtful to even bother driving me home everyday for two weeks when he lives in another city far away from mine. If it weren't for him, I wouldn't know what would've already happened to me.

Another thing that I'm really thankful for is my health. Just a week ago while I was on my way to work, I ran a temperature and lost my voice to what my sister (she's a doctor) calls as tonsillopharyngitis --- inflammation of the tonsils and pharynx in layman's terms. My body temperature quickly shot up to 39degrees, which unfortunately, I had to endure until I got home that night. Because my tonsils and pharynx were inflamed and swollen, I wasn't able to speak for an entire week. I tried and struggled to speak on some days but it only made matters worse. So in the end, I had no choice but to type/write everything that I had and wanted to say lest I never get my voice back. Also, my appetite dropped a huge notch because swallowing anything, even my own saliva, was pure torture. After an entire week of gulping countless nyquils and dayquils (the only medicines that bring my temperature down quicker than any other), and co-amoxiclav (my sister prescribed this after she found out that I was self-medicating with erythromycin for one day) and puffing seretide (I also had asthma), I'm glad to announce that I'm virtually bacteria-free (doesn't sound good, eh?). Those streptococci bacteria got me really really bad this time. Now that the swelling and inflammation have already gone down, I will be making plans to see an EENT specialist to have my tonsils finally removed. This is something I should've done ages ago but kept putting it off because I'm a scaredy-cat. I know that it's a really quick and easy procedure but I have never gone under the knife and I'm hella scared to. However, I guess it's time I put my brave face on and get this done and over with. We'll see how it goes when I finally get it done.

Beginning this month, I should have a wee bit of extra time to do some other things that are in no way related to work. Hence, I should be able to have a few posts up here and there, especially the ones that have been in my drafts folder since February. There's gonna be quite a handful to expect from Practical Vanity this month so stay tuned for all that.

Meanwhile, I'd like to thank all of you for your continued support to me and to my blog even in my absence. I appreciate all the sweet and thoughtful messages I received while I was away. To my new followers, welcome to Practical Vanity, and I hope that you'd keep coming back for product reviews, FOTDs, and what not.

I'm sorry I rambled too much. I just... eh... really love details. When I tell a story, I make sure to include all the details to it. I'm sure you all can relate to me; this is a female characteristic anyway, and we're all females! Now I seriously have to stop.

Thank you so much for reading the whole thing (if you did. if you didn't, no biggie) and for keeping up with me. I should get back to blogging shortly.

Don't forget your beauty rest!

Smooches,

Thank You!

Thank you for all your sweet words! I felt so much better two days after my "Blogging Interrupted Post." While I'm still coughing and sneezing, my breathing has at least gone back to normal. My skin, likewise, has gotten back its radiance, glow and clarity that I lost in two and a half weeks. In other words, I'll be back to posting FOTDs! Aside from FOTDs, I have some other posts scheduled for the remaining days of the month. So keep an eye out for these posts.

In the meantime, I shall leave you with a photo of one of my most loved stuffed toys from one of my all-time favorite animations.

Care Bears stare!

Cheer Bear is the Care Bear cheerleader. She’s spunky, totally optimistic and gung ho to the nth degree. Cheer Bear has the power to get the adrenaline flowing and the spirit to win going in almost anyone. However Cheer Bear believes that everyone’s ideas and plans should be supported and often this causes problems when she finds herself supporting opposing views.

Yes it's great to be in the Care Bear family...

For the kid in all of us...

Blogging Interrupted

I have so many drafts saved waiting to be completed and published but I haven't had the time to sit on my ass and finish the writing process. Well, time has barely been on my side really, and moreso right now. I have so much going on in my life at the moment, so much that they keep me from updating my blog and commenting on other people's blog posts (I read all your posts though). I cannot explain in detail what these are, but one of them is because I have been bogged down by sickness for a good five (5) days already and I'm not sure if I'm getting any better. Although my body temperature has finally gone down to normal after four days, it's my breathing that's giving me sleepless nights. I don't get asthma attacks often, but when I do, it troubles me for a week. I don't know when I'll be back to posting regularly, but I'll try to keep my blog updated once in a while with quick posts of my occasional hauls, FOTDs, NOTWs, and KOTWs (Konadicure of the week - yes, it's going to be a new thing on my blog). Product reviews, unfortunately, will have to be saved for another day.

A big hug goes to everyone who visits my blog and leaves me comments/messages despite my absence. I will be making up for it all in due time. For now, I have to rest, nebulize and slave on my presentation for a seminar/training that I will be conducting at work this week.

The Story Behind

If you are all wondering what I was doing outside on a stormy day, here’s a brief narration.

I was supposed to take my final exams in UP this morning at 10. As I had said in my previous post, the rain started pouring around 4pm the day before and continued up to this day.(It’s not as heavy right now as it was for the most part of the day.) Upon waking up around 5am, the rain was still pouring but I got out of bed to do some last minute reading before heading off to UP. Before my mom left, I told her that I don’t want to take the exam. We had a short talk about it until she, my sister, my aunt and my 2year old cousin left for Balintawak for a garage sale at my brother’s company (my brother works for Golden ABC, maker of Penshoppe, Memo, ForMe, and Oxygen). I called UP and inquired about my exam. I was hoping that the person on the other end would tell me that the exam had been cancelled due to the storm, but it wasn’t what I heard. So off I went with my brother who was supposed to attend his class (he’s taking up his master’s degree) in UP as well. He told me he’d just drop me off somewhere since our buildings are about 5-10minutes apart. When we got out of our subdivision, we were both appalled by the horror that we saw --- knee-high flood water --- coz our area in QC never gets flooded. Silence crept in for a few seconds and then he drove off. The traffic was horrible, but we went on because of our schedules. I thought we’d make it to UP as we were already about to make a left turn on CP Garcia; unfortunately, the traffic wasn’t moving. When my brother caught a glimpse of the waist-deep water, we went back. We headed to Sikatuna as an alternative route to Katipunan; however, we didn’t get a kilometer close to Proj.2. The street outside the other gate of subdivision seemed like a lake. Cars were turning back, and so did we. My brother thought of dropping me off at home but I told him I’ll go with him, and so we went on looking for a street that’s not as flooded as the rest. We managed to pass through Proj.2, Kamias, Kamuning, Sikatuna and Kalayaan Ave., despite the flood. We decided to pull over somewhere in Kalayaan after a number of failed escapes. After an hour or so, my brother decided to drive off to find a place where we could eat and stay at (it was already around 2 in the afternoon that time and neither of us had breakfast). We went to the nearest gasoline station where we stayed at for a few minutes before heading to the nearest fastfood restaurant. We were planning to go to my grandma’s place, but since there was barely any passable street, we pulled over at a fastfood chain and had brunch. Luckily, my best friend’s brothers saw me and my brother there at that fastfood and invited us to their place. We stayed at my best friend’s place for about 2 hours before my brother decided to take the risk of driving home. About 500meters away from our grandma’s, cars started turning back. When we tried to see what the scenario was, we saw the park covered with water. Well, not the entirety of it. But it gave us a clear message that the streets surrounding it are possibly submerged in water (the court is elevated probably by 3 to 4feet). We followed the advice of one passerby who instructed us to turn back and take a different route. When we got close to her (grandma’s) place, this is what greeted me and my brother. (I would have loved to take a photo of the sunken basketball court, but we couldn't even come close to it)

That white car is just a few feet from the sunken court

It was a shocking sight as we have never seen anything quite like it in the past. But since my brother and I had nowhere else to go to, we decided to walk through.

There was still water inside the house when we got in. The chairs were turned upside down. All the appliances were placed on a higher level. The sofas and everything were wet. But to our surprise, we weren’t the only refugee in that house. A certain Atenean was there, too. My relatives took care of her the whole morning and afternoon that she was there.

Yes, that's me in my funky jacket. I posed for a couple of snaps in case I'll be needing an evidence to show to my professor. (by the way, this photo was taken at the garage. The water had already gone down by a foot that time I and my brother arrived)

After how many hours of waiting, we drove home a little past 8 and dropped off the poor girl at her condo near our subdivision. We’re all safe, thank God. But what we had just gone through today is something that will forever be in our memories.

Through the Eye of the Storm

I know that my silence from the blogging world for a couple of weeks is not so much, but I’m going to interrupt the “regular programming” to give way to something I want to share with everyone.

I’m pretty sure that the Philippines is all over the internet and televisions across the globe, but I’d still like to talk about what you may already know for a little while. Please bear with me.

As you may have seen or heard on the news, a typhoon names Ondoy hit the country around 4pm yesterday. I was, to be honest, unaware of this, as I was busy managing the office at that time. I didn’t even know that it was raining until our company’s HR-Assistant and I left around 7pm to look for some giveaways for an upcoming company event. The rain wasn’t pouring so hard then so we braved the rain without umbrellas or some sort of rain gear. It wasn’t until we were finally outside the mall trying to get a ride back to the office that the rain poured so hard. After waiting for a ride for close to an hour, a very kindhearted airport taxi driver drove me and our HR-Assistant back to our office. The rain went on until I got home and until I awoke this morning, around 5am.

That was the scenario last night. Today is a completely different story. I am honestly lost for words at this point. Please bear with me if in case you see typos or even some grammatical errors. My brain isn’t functioning well right now.

To give you a clue as to what has struck my beloved country, take a look at the photos below.

Can you still see people in this photo?

Can you spot the roof of that white car at the back? That car was completely submerged in water before my brother and I went to our grandma's house.

I believe this was somewhere in Kamias, or perhaps Sikatuna, where a lot of the streets were not passable to motorists.

Cars, trucks braving the flood.

Outside my grandma's house. The water was still waist deep that time. My brother was just standing on the gutter.

At my grandma's garage.

As you can see, streets everywhere are flooded. The pictures that I took don’t show how much damage Ondoy has caused because I wasn’t in those areas, and for that I am more than thankful to God. In some areas, the water was neck deep. The water inside my grandma’s was up to their waists; while at my uncle’s, only the roof can be seen. I feel for the rest of my people who may be already feeling hopeless standing on their rooftops waiting for rescue to come. I myself feel hopeless at this very moment. I want to help, but I don’t know how. My mom, sister, aunt and 2year old cousin are still out. I don’t know where they are right now. I cannot reach them anymore. I don’t know how long it will take them to get back home, but I do hope that they are safe wherever they are right now.

The reports on TV are very heartbreaking. People and houses alike have been washed away by the flood. Some have died, while others have nothing left with them except their lives.

I don’t know how to end this post, but I hope that wherever we may be at this time, we could all spend a few minutes of silence for the people who need help, those who have lost their homes, belongings and loved ones.

FOTD: Royal Purple + Quick Update + Shout Out

Hi everyone! Who would've thought I'd be able to up 18posts in one month? It's definitely not at par with other bloggers who post at least one entry per day; but for someone as busy as I, it is already an accomplishment. However, you probably won't be hearing much from me in the coming weeks coz I will be a million times busier from tomorrow till the end of September.The reason is that our company will be going through changes in the coming weeks, and it is my job to implement these. Prior to implementing the changes, I, together with our company's IT personnel, will be busy preparing for these changes by working on Sundays. If I could have it any other way, I wouldn't go and work on a Sunday since weekends are my only days of rest and also because Sunday is the Lord's day; however, this is the only time I and our IT personnel can work, as he is busy with grad school on Saturdays. As you can see, I pretty much have no choice but to slave myself to get things done. Hence, expect scarce posts for September.

But before I go missing in action for short while, I'll leave you all with another smokey eye look that I did sometime last week. I believe this was from Tuesday; I just didn't bother posting it coz I was much more enthralled by my smokey blues and big hair which I sported the day after I did this purple smokey look.

Why Royal Purple? Because Purple is the color of royalty

Subtley smoked eyes paired with nude pink lips

I always pucker up but I never seem to get it right

As you can tell, I wasn't a happy camper that day. My migraine was killing me

Forced smile

One last thing my beautiful sisters, if there's any of you who work in the Ortigas area (or if you know any), would you be kind enough to drop me a line at sweetytish@yahoo.com? I am currently doing a study and need as much respondents for my survey as I can gather. This paperwork is due on the 12th. Thanks in advance lovelies!

New Toys for the Big Girl

So I'm getting myself a new phone. I should've done so ages ago since my phone has been slowly breaking down on me since February this year (there were a few things back then that kept me from purchasing a new one). As much as I love my K750i (yes, ancient, I know), there were times when I just wanted to set my phone flying high outside the window onto the first bin it sees. Why? First, my phone had shut off on its own a number of times, clearing it of some important stuff I had stored in it. Then the joystick started acting up. It could no longer be used to scroll up and down. The keys got stuck, and my phone froze every few minutes. Though using it was a bitch (pardon), I stuck with it coz it was such a pain to part ways with my beloved Sony Ericsson which I've had for nearly three years. Then again, all things come to an end... and so had my relationship with my phone. Well, almost.

I haven't gotten myself a new toy just yet, but I already have my eyes on a few models that could perhaps serve me for another 3years or so. But before I let you in on what tops my list, allow me to tell you what I look for in a phone.

• A decent camera - Despite owning two pretty decent digital cameras, I don't tote either of them with me all the time coz I hate stuffing my purse with so much junk. I already have a lot of crap in my purse, and having another gadget occupy a bit of space will only make my purse heavier and more stuffed than it already is. I don't really need a 5MP or 10MP camera phone for snapping noteworthy shots; just a decent camera for taking random snaps.

• A decent music player - Walkman phone or not, it doesn't matter. Since I recently just got an 80G iPod video (which I have yet to load with junk), I'm really not after a phone with superb sounds and a video player. Of course, a crappy music player is a big NO-NO. I don't really need a video player on my phone. I probably won't be using it anyway.

• Size enough for a kid's hand - I want my phone to be slim, sleek and classy. Bulky phones are not my thing. My hands are too tiny to be holding a 6x4 smart phone. I'd love to own a smart phone (better yet, a Blackberry), but a lot of the smart phones that I see are way to huge for my liking, and my hands.

• Usability - I want a simple uncomplicated phone. As much as possible, I want it "user-friendly." I guess it will depend on its interface, eh?

• Loaded with cool features - It would be nice if my phone had other options for typing/texting --- Qwerty, handwriting (using a stylus, of course), or a standard keypad. Notes and other cool stuff would also be great additions. WLAN or 3G is something I wish my phone would have. While these are not necessities, I think finding a phone with all these cool features would be great to prevent the inner consumerist in me/us to keep looking or a phone with more features.

• A big memory - It doesn't matter if the internal memory of my new phone is small as long as it can be expanded up to 8Gig.

I don't know if this is too much for you, but for me, these are things I wish to have in my new phone, and I'm pretty sure I can get one for less than $400.

Here are the phone models that top my list.

1. Sony Ericsson G900 I've been a Sony Ericsson fan since my brother got his P(?) years ago. It was the sky blue SE smart phone that was all the rage back then. When I got my K750i in 2006, I fell in love with SE even more. I believed their phones to be the best ones out there, until their other models failed the expectations of many in 2008. Bugs here and there, and some other technical issues.

This one's a pretty cool phone. Touch screen, 5MP camera, business card scanner, handwriting recognition, WLAN and 3G, and StickyNotes are some of its cool features. Price? It's between $250 and $270. Not bad eh?

2. LG Cookie (LG KP500)I saw this cool phone yesterday while I was looking for the LG KC550 (not sure). Actually, the SA handed me this phone when I asked for something else. It's not that bad a phone, to be honest; however, this one's got no WLAN and 3G, and it's got a 3MP camera only. For something that's priced between $208 and $229, this probably won't make the cut.

3. Samsung PrestonThis one was recommended by one of my people at work. It's a pretty cool phone, that's a little better than the LG Cookie. It still lacks WLAN, but at least it's 3G capable, and just like the Cookie, this one carries a 3MP camera as well. I believe this one's being sold at just about the same price as the G900.

4. Nokia 5800I'm not a big fan of Nokia. Their phones are okay, but I feel like they get "phased out" far quicker than other phones. Also, I kinda got turned off a long time ago for reasons I can no longer remember.

Anyway, I've read quite a handful of positive reviews on this one, and I think it's worth the try. I've also gotten around to playing with it a bit since my coworker (the one who recommended the LG Cookie) is a proud owner of the Nokia5800. She's in love with her phone, I'd have to say.

The phone's pretty cool. Fully touch screen, 3.2MP camera, with some other cool features I can't seem to name. You have to forgive me as I'm pretty dumb when it comes to gadgets, honestly. At $312, I'm torn between getting this one or the G900. My heart still belongs to Sony Ericsson, but a part of me is screaming for the Nokia5800. If you've tried/owned any of these phones or know of a better one, would you be kind enough to leave your thoughts in the comment box? Your suggestions would surely be of great help to me at this time.

On another hand, I will be having my hands on an iPod in two days. Truth be told, I've never owned one coz I never deemed it necessary since I have a pretty decent Walkman phone (my brother tweaked my phone a bit) which I used to use to play my songs. But since the beloved bought a new iPod with a much bigger memory (120Gig), he thought it best to hand down his 80Gig iPod to me. So in about two days, I will be once again diving in a music-filled world.

So yes, the big girl is getting herself some pretty cool toys other than makeup!

Tata for now!

*all photos were taken from various websites on the internet*