Where do you usually get cheap finds besides 168? And can you recommend any good ukay ukay stores out there? Thank you!

Hi! I don’t know when you sent this message. Sorry if my reply is super late, it’s just that my laptop broke up with me. So, I haven’t been able to go online in a long time. But anyway! On to my answer to your awesome question.

I usually buy my things from 168 and 999 (another mall in Divisoria). If you’re from Quezon City, you might want to try visiting Circle C along Congressional Avenue and the Sunday market in Centris. Landmark is another cheapskate’s heaven! I swear, you can find stuff there that are cheaper than the things you can find in 168.

The ukay ukay stores I usually visit are the ones here in the Ermita area. They’re all lined up along Padre Faura and Pedro Gil. I hope this helped! I’m planning to do a post about the wonders of thrifting once I get my laptop back. I hope you get to see that one, too. Have a good day!

Eleventh commandment and mantra for the week.

Significant events happening this February:

• It’s my birth month! I’m turning twenty this year and, heck, it is freaking me out. I know, I probably shouldn’t make a big deal out of it, but twenty feels like such an “adult number”, you know what I mean? I’ve always said that there was nothing special about being 19 — it’s just sandwiched between two significant birthdays (the 18th and the 20th). As it turns out, I was wrong. Nineteen was, in fact, special. I learned a great deal about myself and about other people.
• Valentine’s Day! Okay, I’m obviously not one of those people who get excited over this day. I mean, it’s that one day of the year when couples get completely gooey and covered in cheese, and single people like me get whiney and bitchy. I don’t particularly hate it, though. In fact, the first Valentine’s Day gift I’ve ever received is still with me, tucked away in my room somewhere. The fact that it’s been 7 years since I got it is seriously creeping me out. Has it been that long?! And why was I such a coquettish 12-year-old? Hahaha.
• My mother is going away to work in Singapore. Of course, it’s making me quite sad, but it’s also nice because I can go there often and visit Ikea everyday. Mommy thinks I’m homeware-obsessed because I’m more excited about visiting Ikea rather than H&M. 
• STARS CONCERT on the 16th!!! Try listening to their The Five Ghosts album and thank me later. My favorites are The Black House, The Blue Sky and Wasted Daylight.

san ka nag ojt?

Hi! I didn’t do anything like that last summer. I just took Spanish lessons, haha. :)

1. Anthropology by Dan Rhodes
My cousin’s copy did not come with that wonderful pink cover, but I still enjoyed all 101 short stories in this collection. The stories are extremely short – literally, one page long each. It’s a stress-free read and it got me laughing out loud in some parts.

2. Love Is The Higher Law by David Levithan
January also marks the month that I finally crossed paths with possibly my favorite YA author of all time. This man is just pure genius and I can’t believe I only started reading his work now that I’m nineteen. I’ve always avoided reading books related to 9/11 because I was so sure that I wouldn’t be able to relate. But, by some miracle, this book managed to  make the topic interesting for me. Also, I think this was my first taste of queer lit and I enjoyed it quite a lot.

3. The Girl On The Fridge by Etgar Keret
This one’s pretty deep and political, but I still enjoyed the entire collection because I kind of have an inexplicable obsession with random Jewish whatnots. The stories themselves are diverse – there’s one about a girl who always prefers to sit on the fridge, then there’s one about a man who had the power to hypnotize girls into having sex and eventually falling in love with him. Then there’s my favorite quote from the book from the story entitled Alternative:

“But not necessarily. There is no “necessarily”.  Nothing or not nothing. The alternatives are all in our hands.”

4. How They Met by David Levithan
Okay, another book by David Levithan, shocker. It’s a collection of short stories that he had been writing since high school. I didn’t like all the stories, but I got a little too excited about a few of them, especially the gay ones. I think this book might be the reason why I’ve been semi-forcing some of my friends (who have been very patient with me, haha!) into homosexual relationships because, ugh, Starbucks Boy was just too cute and hilarious.

5. Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn
Oh my gosh, this was such a fun read, I can’t even begin to tell you. I didn’t even bother to count how many times I laughed out loud. Dash was, well, dashing. Haha, I’m so creative and witty, yes? Lily was normal, slightly naïve and very relatable – a far cry from the manic pixie dream girl stereotype that I’ve been encountering so much in a lot of YA novels. What I didn’t like about the book though, was the fact there was the ever-present YA dilemma of rebelling against your parents because you don’t want to move to a new place (Fiji, in this case). I’ve never found that situation relatable because I cannot, for the life of me, wish for anything else but to move to a new city, or better yet, another country.

6. Folktales From Africa by Alexander McCall Smith
Boy, did I have a hard time finishing this book. It was so poorly written that I had to stop several times because my brain can only take so much. Or maybe, I find the writing so horrible because the target audience is comprised of 8-year-olds. I got my copy for around P40 ages ago when we still had Powerbooks here at Robinson’s. I probably shouldn’t have bought it in the first place but, heck, that’s what you get for being an impulsive buyer.

Last month was filled with anthologies, which perfectly complemented my intermittent attention span. Reading these books was also ideal during class hours when all I want to do is to get lost in the world in fiction, someplace far away from a  self-important lecturer who finds it too easy to waste three precious hours of my day talking about his life, his past lives, his book, his second book, and just about anything under the sun except for what we are supposed to be discussing for the subject for which I paid three units worth of money. I must say though, that my favorite collection of short stories is still Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, mainly because the first story almost made me cry.

Artist: Icona Pop

Album: I Love It - Single

Title: I Love It

70 plays

I don’t care, I love it. I don’t care.

You’re on a different road, I’m in the milky way
You want me down on earth, but I am up in space
You’re so damn hard to please, we gotta kill this switch
You’re from the 70’s, but I’m a 90’s bitch

I can’t take it anymore. It is my obligation to share this perfection. It’s the perfect sing-along party song. Gotta love Swedish dance pop!

Why?

Wow, this is a pretty difficult question. 

My mother has apparently jumped right onto the whole cupcake/macaron bandwagon. She was craving for an irresistible piece of Vanilla Sunshine. So last weekend, we made a trip to Sonja’s, which I can easily single out as my favorite cupcake shop in Manila. Sure, their cupcakes are delicious, but it’s really the whole ambiance that makes the cut. With vintage posters, floral and striped wallpapers, and a Cath Kidston umbrella (!!!), their quaint little cupcake store  is the epitome of shabby chic.

I am very easily seduced by desert, a trip to Fully Booked, philly cheesesteak, and basically any excuse to get out of the damn house. So, I said yes and I got treated to some late night binging. I brought the Pistachio and Berries cupcake to school the next day, but when I got home, I realized it was still in the ziploc inside my bag. You can only imagine how mushy, and squishy, and disgusting it was, so I had no choice but to eat it in a mushy, squishy, disgusting manner. You don’t want to know the details.

I haven’t written anything in a while mostly because I’ve been feeling sleepy all the time. This photo set will let you take a glimpse at my everyday life (hahaha), and in one of the photos you can even see me in my pambahay shorts. Also featured are some of things I’ve bought this month and some of the books I’ve been reading. January has been a month of anthologies for me, and I’m currently finishing my first non-fiction book of the year. I cannot wait to post about the following things:

• On First Rate Social Butterflies and Wannabe Wallflowers
• On Trusting Myself A Little Bit More
• Posh People in Posh Places
• The Story Behind The Title
• The Andi Experience
• A Year After The Great Depression
• Being A Teenager Is Overrated

Whew, so that’s a lot. Hopefully, I can finish all those before summer vacation starts because I’m planning to go away for a while, stay at my mom’s, become completely unreachable to everybody, and go through the whole isolation thing all over again because I think it’s one of those things that keep me from going insane.

Public service announcement: STARS is having a concert here in Manila on the 16th of February!!! 

Say hello to the most adorable alarm clock ever!

This sweet baby girl slept over last Friday night and woke me up at 5 am. If only all alarm clocks came in this cute little package (complete with those chubby cheeks and unbelievably long lashes), I won’t have a problem waking up every morning.

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