Trinket Time

I was at Greenbelt the other day to have a nasty chimple (chin pimple, the cystic kind you get when you're hormonal) injected, when I ended up visiting two of my favorite stores.

One is this place (don't know if it has a name) that sells car accessories on one half of the store and cutesy trinkets on the other. I've been able to buy Disney stamps, keychains, shopping bags, etc, etc, and yesterday I bought paperclip/bookmark magnets:


I was happy to find Chip n' Dale, two of my favorite Disney characters (my mom used to rent Chip n' Dale cartoons when I was a kid). I thought they were different kinds, so I bought both, but upon closer inspection, I bought the same kind but saw the back of the other and thought it was different.

This one made me snort out a laugh loud enough for people to stare. I had to buy it:


I don't know if there really is such a breed of cat as "Mixed Bread." I wonder if they also like to drenk melk (and leck themselves clen).

My other favorite store is the Japan Home Centre. Everything used to be P88 except for some items (I saw a cute toilet paper holder in the shape of a giant toothpaste tube for P350). I end up buying so many useless knick-knacks there because I am taken in by the cheapness of it. My friend Karen just rolls her eyes at me and points to me the logic that P88 times a lot adds up to a lot.

I bought a Twitter bird looking Thermos holder (but it's downstairs and I'm too lazy to get it. Next post na lang.) and I bought this:


It's a giant Hello Kitty placemat. I figure I can use this as a mat to put my kit on whenever I have to set it on expensive surfaces (like when I have to do makeup for a shushaling socialite on her antique dining table).

It's most likely fake, but I don't give a rat's ass. It's cute and it doesn't look that fake:






It's an ID necklace/USB necklace/phone (lightweight) necklace. Wala naman akong ID. I'm still thinking about what to wear it as.

My favorite purchases:


Ever since Tank the poodle chewed on my brother's iPhone cable, we have been fighting over my iPhone cable. This nifty attachment allows you to attach any min-USB to USB cable at the bottom and *poof* you've got an instant iPod/iPhone cable. The one on the left is the same except it's for a Nintendo DS. Suweeeet.

My third favorite store is True Value. They have a lot of cutesy imported goods there if you just get past their cluttered layout.

I bought a 4-in-one mini keychain screwdriver:




and a cute pink Thermos (again, downstairs).

My super winner purchase has to be this:


It's called the iSlice (not an Apple product). There's a tiny ceramic blade at the tip that doesn't cut your finger, never dulls, and slices through paper, and even those goddamn hard to open plastic packaging that gadgets come in (and some memory cards). As in, it sliced through the plastic like it was buttah (you just have to hold it parallel against the surface you wanna cut).

Here's my demo on the cardboard that the fake Toki-kitty necklace came in:


Ta-dah.

Homesick?

Lately I've been thinking a lot about Paris. I really miss it, and I want to go back.

I plan to tour the city at my own leisure. We were rushing the last time and it was a whole slam bam merci beaucoup type of thing.

Plus now that I have the LX3 the photos will be better. Although I had plenty fun with my pink camera the first time, before I saw the difference.

In the meantime, I keep myself entertained with the photos from last year, taken at Paris, Grenoble & Bordeaux.

Twurprise!

Do take a peek at today's Super (Twuper!) for a, ehem, 5,000 character piece about celebrities on Twitter by yours truly (section G1).

There's also a short article there about how I'm a Twitter enthusiast (ie addict). :)

Big thanks to Pajammy for the chance to write about a fun topic, it was no trouble writing it, once I realized that she needed only 36 tweets worth of characters, and not a gazillion times more (I tried computing how many tweets 5,000 words were into characters, but I had to factor in symbols and spaces, and it's too early for me to arrive at an actual answer, nix that, I'm too rusty at math to figure that out no matter the hour).

On a side note, local celebs HAVE started Tweeting, but it's still OK (so far), one of them tweets from a Blackberry so she's instantly shala in my book. Plus, she was tweeting about making an itinerary to go to Spain, Portugal etc, etc, so that's double the bongga. And, she's very grammatically correct.

Thanks to Mayzee (of Macy's Fields, one amazing motherbaker. Try it!) for sending me the link to the local celeb's Twitter :)

April Fooling Myself

Leave it to me to April Fool's day myself.

It started pretty innocently. Last Tuesday was a doozy of a day. I slept at 230 am jailbreaking my iPhone classic running on its jurassic 1.1.4 firmware. Ended up upgrading to the latest (official) version just so I can download Twittelator Pro, a Twitter client that promises awesome features (it does deliver but it's rather confusing).

As luck would have it, my shoot that day was at 7 am, and I had to be up at 530 am to get ready. Gucci has picked up this habit of waking me up at 400 am, where she will step on my hair with her paws and lick me continuously (with Tank eagerly egging her on with high-pitched panicked yelping) until I succumb and let them both out.

It was a good thing that the shoot finished fairly early and I managed to squeeze in a much-needed hour long nap because I had so many errands to run. Do the groceries (since Grace is on maternity leave *sob*) and pullout for a shoot the following day.

It was during this panic period of crossing off things from my mental checklist that I got a text from Pajammy. She wanted me to write an article, would I be willing to?

Of course I was, and I immediately said yes.

Except it was due the next day. And it was 5,000 words.

Still, I said yes, and throughout the day, I kept thinking of how to phrase the article already because I knew that 5,000 words was a LOT.

So much so that I did not, did NOT even think about watching any of my TV shows from Torrent Tuesday. I was afraid to get distracted.

And so I wrote. I typed, I pounded away on the keyboard....until my brain started sputtering at around 2 am.

And I only had 725 words.

I decided to risk it and sleep (since I had an 8 am shoot) and just wake up early and try to finish it (while wondering where to get 4,275 words...did I even have that much in my vocabulary??)

This morning, I couldn't listen properly to the small talk at the shoot because I had a 4,275 word deadline looming over my head. I must've looked stressed because I finally blurted out that I needed to turn in a 5,000 word article.

The editors both looked at me in shock.

"That's like, 10 pages in a magazine, Tatin."

Me: "Really? Well it's for the newspaper....smaller font?"

Editor: "Could it be 5,000 characters?"

I looked at her dumbly. And hurriedly scrambled for my phone.

True enough, there it was in its full SMS glory:

"...............4 to 5k characters....Will you kill me if I ask you to submit tom? :)"

OH. MY. GOD.

I am a ditz sandwich with extra idiot meat stuffed in between.

Here I was about to have a coronary literally thinking "Paano ako i-u-utot ang 5,000 words???" when I had already finished the article without me knowing.

It was like me crossing the finish line thinking it was the starting point. Or going to Dasmarinas Cavite when the venue was in Dasmarinas Village.

Like my friend Marko replied to me in Twitter: "5,000 characters? That's like 36 tweets."

36 tweets indeed.

Happy April's Fool to me. I'm really my own joke box.

ka-Twitter mo na ba?

Anyone who's had access to Internet knows that Twitter's popularity has been increasing exponentially.

Perhaps this can be attributed to the presence of celebrities from various industries mingling with the commoners, without the shield of a well-phrased soundbite from publicists and managers (or so we'd like to think).

You see the celebs in 140 characters worth of "realness", and somehow, their occasional grammar mishaps (eg Ashton Kutcher's "shooting a fight seen with him") make it all believable.

And it's a nice world to be in. Everyone's amusing, informative, pithy and brings you a peek into the window of anyone's life on some faraway part of the globe.

Which brings me to my worst Twitter fear:

That the enterprising people in OUR showbiz industry join the Twitter bandwagon.

God. I can picture the promotional dialogue already.

1. Kapamilya!! Ka-tweet mo na ba si Piolo at Juday? Follow na!!! (yes I'm sure they are the network who have the financial means and manpower to massachusettize Twitter).

I can also imagine the inane tweets that will follow:

"Hello po, mga kapamilya. Start na po ang taping sa (insert cheesy teleserye title). Pagod pero happy po. Salamat sa suporta!" (or its 140 character equivalent)

"Going to Emba later, it's Lloydie's birthday bash. Don't know what to wear nga e."

"I'm going to practis my left hook later, you know."

Or, God forbid, if Kris Aquino starts Tweeting. Can you imagine Phoem's spiel on TV Patrol?

*teaser: "Krizzie, best friend na nga ba si Demi Moore? Abangan!"*

Phoem's spiel:

Mga friends, narinig niyo na ba kung sino ang bagong best friend ni Kris Aquino? Walang iba kung hindi ang sikat na Hollywood actress na si Demi Moore!!! Nagkakilala sila sa Twitter, isang site na laging pinupuntahan ng mga sikat na taga-Hollywood!"

Kris Aquino's interview:

Oh MY gaawd. Graaabeh no. I joined Twitter and when there's a taping lull, I like, log on with my iPhone 3G!! I just go to Tweetie, it's an app kasi for the iPhone and I just, you know, post mga updates, about Joshie, baby James, my show, basta, anything. And then, I started following Demi Moore, her name there is Mrs. Kutcher!! O diba, kasi asawa siya ni Ashton. So I replied to her, told her I'm the host of Deal or No Deal here in Manila, and OHMYGAAAWD. She replied back. And there, we started replying, and grabe, I swear, she's so nice, best friend ko na siya!!! Sorry, Boy, irereplace na kita!! Who knows, we might even do a Hollywood movie together!!! (peal of loud laughter then pan to Kris's iPhone closeup of tweets).

And later that night, on SNN (Showbiz News Ngayon).

"Isang famous international musician, nililigawan ang isang local celebrity?"

Boy: OK, Kriz, we have a super exclusive here. Isang famous international musician, nililigawan ang isang kapamilyang aktres.

Kris: *claps/jumps/squeals/all of the above* OHMYGAAAAAWD, Boy, I know right? I'm super kilig, grabeh. I'm such a big fan of him pa naman. His songs are sooooo kilig.

Boy: Let's not keep the audience in suspense any longer. Mga kapamilya, aming nabalitaan na may isang relasyong namamalagi sa sikat na musizian na si John Mayer at si Rufa Mae Quinto. Ang mga detalye, now na.

*cue to interview of Rufa Mae*

Voice: So, ano naman tong balita na kayo na daw ni John Mayer?
RMQ: Ano baaaaz, hindi naman noh. Kase, ayun, sumali ako sa Tweeeter. Tapos, fan kase ako ni John Mayer so finallow ko sha. And I said, John, I'm a big fan of yours. I'm also a singer here, in Philippines. And nagreply siya. Tinanong niya anong favorite song kooo, syempre sabi ko "Your Body Is A Wonderland." and then nagpost ako ng picture ko. Tinignan niya, beautiful daw ako. O diba? Charing ka ngayon Jennifer Aniston bwahahahahahaha. Naku, in love na ba ko? Hindi no, friends lang kami. Pero kung meron, why not!!! (more laughter)

*commercial break*

"Gusto niyo bang maging ka-Twitter ang SNN? I-follow, showbiznewsngayon, NOW NA!!"


Please no please no please no.

The Friendship Saver

One thing I didn't foresee when I bought Pee-pee was the difficulty in finding accessories. Refusing to succumb to the P7,999 leather case (which, incidentally is half the price in the US.) yet, I started searching for alternative cases.

After week 1 of carrying Pee-pee in its styro-like sleeve, I was going nuts. So chaka!!!

I suddenly remembered that Beam, palm-reader and crafty craftsgal makes the cutest accessories out of felt. (http://artwine.multiply.com)

During one of our shoots, I asked her if she could make me a case. When she asked me specifics, I just said "Basta, pink and cutesy."

By our lunch break, I had subtly (or so I thought) forced out her notepad where I specified the type of flap I wanted, the side stitching and its color, the lining, the closure, and the embellishments. Some were doable (a cute beribboned skull), some were impossible (my name handstitched along the flap) (she's not a machine, she's not a machine).

So anyway, I know she was busy and just waited for her to get in touch with me regarding whatever.

A week passed, and at our next shoot, I casually (or so I thought) inquired about it (though I told myself not to).

Everyone who's come in contact with me and my infamous impatience will know that I have been exercising Herculean willpower by not bugging her (that and I'm afraid that she will render our budding friendship immediately over before it even blossomed.).

Thankfully, during one of my aimless trips around the mall, I came upon this at a store in Archaeology at Powerplant (really a place for finds!).

It was being sold for P350 (such a steal!) and it was slightly padded and the zipper was outside which made the inside non-abrasive.


It's manufactured by Risque, and it's probably from their swimsuit line's cloth droppings (or more popularly known as retaso). OK, I think cloth surplus would be a better term than droppings.

Anyway, to be honest the purse (as a purse) wouldn't have worked since it would've ruined the form if you put anything round (like shades or keys) or a fat wallet in it. Plus, it wouldn't exactly be the most ergonomic thing in the world too, nor would it be fashionable clutching a misshapen blob.

Still (let's not look a gift horse in the mouth, shall we?), as a case for the vaio P, it was damn near perfect (except for the poorly-sewn tags which were easily solved by a cutter and a steady hand).

I wasn't too sold on the pattern (not cutesy at all), but beggars can't be choosers. I did check their site for more patterns and even went so far as to check their store at Edge of Light studio. Well guess what? Sarado na pala ang Edge of Light.

I'm going to try and check their other outlets if they have a cuter pattern.

But in the meantime, this makes a nice interim case until I get the one Beam promised me.

*twiddles thumbs*

If you know of a case similar to this, do let me know.

Just so you know, it has been 6 days since I asked Beam about my case. MAJOR restraint.

And so it begins

I was at a meeting today at The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf at Galleria when my dad called me.

Dad: "I checked Cebu Pacific and all the tickets are sold out."
Me: "Huh? But there were plenty pa when I checked last Thursday, but I checked PAL. Let's check it together when I get home tonight."
Dad: "No, no, better book it now with my credit card."
Me: "Um, I'm not at home right now."
Dad: "But you have your computer with you, diba? My laptop's out of battery already."
Me: *has no more excuses* "Um, OK, can it be in two hours though? I'll just finish my meeting."
Dad: "OK"

I really have no more excuses for not answering stuff anymore. Hehe.

Tokidoki x Hello Kitty

Look what Kai sent me through e-mail.

Some items from the Tokidoki x Hello Kitty collection will be brought here via special order.

Boston Bag - P8599.75
Cosmetic Bag - P7199.75
Long Wallet - P5449.75
Small Wallet - P4699.75
Carry Pouch - P3299.75

Comes in two colors Black/Pink.

Other terms:

*Goods subject to availability
*10% downpayment required
*For order placements, email: dian@greatgifts-sli.com

Last day for orders is March 17, Tuesday.

I already emailed her my orders. Hopefully I get a confirmation. Let you know how it turns out :)