At the risk of sounding like a total narcissist, let me confess that I have hundreds of selfies in my old computers' hard drives long before the term 'selfie' was coined. I was a trigger-happy kid who, with the help of my then 5-megapixel digital camera (which was a big deal back in 2006, LOL), enthusiastically took a photo of everything that struck my fancy - including my and my friends' faces and the many different ways we can smile (or grimace, or smirk, or make faces) in a photo, for "documentation purposes." I cringe when I think of it now, but my old Multiply account had albums and albums of myself hamming it up. It helped in a way I guess, because it helped me determine my most flattering angle heh.

These days, I still do it but not as much. I have decided that acceptable situations where a selfie is warranted include: meeting a famous person or a person I idolize, seeing a friend I haven't seen in a long while, taking FotD (Face of the Day) photos while doing makeup reviews, and when I'm feeling particularly cute.

But then, I discovered something that reignited my love for taking selfies. Don't worry, I won't subject you to too much of those. (^_−)

Everything I need for taking a perfect selfie: my iPhone and the new The Body Shop All-in-One InstaBlur 5-Action Perfector (Optional: Olloclip Clip Lens)

The new All-in-One InstaBlur 5-action perfector from The Body Shop promises flawless, photo-perfect looking skin in an instant so you're prepared for every Ready... Blur, Snap! Now you're ready to say, "Don't retouch me, Instablur me." and ditch those photo apps. Feel free to include the #nofilter hashtag on your Instagram snapshots!


InstaBlur is available in one universal shade: a translucent white gel-like formula that becomes transparent once blended.


What's its secret? A unique formula made of mattifying spherical powders with smart-filling properties and moisturizing Vitamin E. InstaBlur controls shine for up to 12 hours, smooths pores, hides blemishes, evens complexion, and extends makeup. It joins the best-selling The Body Shop All-in-One makeup family, providing makeup and skincare solutions in one.

So how do you use it? You can actually either use it alone to smooth out imperfections for a mattified no makeup look, or as a perfecting base after your daily skincare routine and before applying makeup. Personally, I use it after applying my Burt's Bees Daisy White Serum and Belo Essentials SunExpert Face Cover, and before my choice makeup for the day.

My personal favorite though is the InstaBlur with my Pixy Ultimate Makeup Cake in Natural Buff

How to apply? Just dab and blend. Apply dabs of InstaBlur on your cheeks, chin, forehead, and nose. Gently blend in all over face with small circular motions and voila! You're InstaBlurred!

Here's the InstaBlur in action with my favorite powder:

#nofilter #Instablur #NoRetouchTBSPH

Seriously you guys, this is also the makeup look I sported (plus smokey eyes) at two big events we had towards the latter part of last month, and we were so busy that day and our schedules were so tight that I was glad and relieved that I didn't have to retouch my makeup before the event started!

For P1,195 per 25mL tube, The Body Shop InstaBlur is not exactly inexpensive, especially for something used just for prepping the face for makeup. But for someone who considers makeup costing P1,000 upwards as costly~, I would gladly purchase another tube when mine runs out. I mean, I love it a lot more than my Makeup Factory Makeup Base and Ellana Minerals Let's Make It Last Primer!

InstaBlur is now available in all The Body Shop branches nationwide. I suggest dropping by soon so you can try it in-store. You can also take advantage of their huge pre-holiday sale and start shopping for gifts for your girl friends as early as now! You may also visit The Body Shop on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for more information.

Do you like taking selfies? Why do some people call them 'obligatory selfies', anyway? Were they somehow forced to do it? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Disclosure: The product was sent to me by The Body Shop but I was not required nor compensated for this review. All opinions are my own. Please see my blog's complete Disclosure Policy here.

That feeling after you watch a brilliant and harrowing movie based on an equally brilliant and harrowing book that you don't even know how to begin writing a review. That's exactly how I'm feeling right now.

Today I took half the day off work to see the movie adaptation of Gone Girl directed by David Fincher. Based on a novel of the same name written by Gillian Flynn, the movie is about Nick Dunne and Amy Elliot-Dunne and their tumultuous marriage. On the day of their fifth anniversary, Amy mysteriously vanishes. All clues lead to implicate Nick, who is not winning any fans because of his "villainous chin" stand-offish way of dealing with people. It's 149 jarring minutes of red herrings, twisted lies, selfish motives, and you-thought-you-know-what's-going-to-happen-next-but-you-don't, and I loved every single one of them.

I am all for justice and getting one's comeuppance, so I have to admit I was terribly affected by the ending when I read the book. However, as a reader, I am more than satisfied. Still, it's a very polarizing book and although it has a lot of fans, it attracted criticism as well. Oh well, I can just imagine Flynn smirking at every one of us who fell for this book's wiles.

Comparing a movie from its source material and enumerating where it fell flat is like asking which came first, the chicken or the egg: it's pointless and the debate will never end. All I can say is that the movie FELT like the book: creepy, compelling, and diabolically good. It helped that Flynn also wrote the screenplay, deciding which parts to cut and which parts should stay. I literally felt physically drained after seeing the movie even though I was seated comfortably for the whole duration of the film.

My Film professor back in college told us before that you would know a score is good if you don't notice it as it blends seamlessly with the scenes. Kudos to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for providing the perfect music accompaniment. The cast and the score are my favorite things about this movie. I read the book just this July, so knowing who the cast are helped me immensely in putting faces to the names. Kudos to the director and the casting team as except for Casey Wilson as Noelle Hawthorne (I couldn't help but picture her as Penny in Happy Endings as she acted so exaggeratedly that it almost looked campy), they couldn't have come up with a more fitting set of actors and actresses. Ben Affleck IS Nick Dunne and Rosamund Pike IS the Amazing Amy Elliot-Dunne.

Come see it and learn to be more wary of the people you meet, heh. Towards the end of my Gone Girl book review, I wrote that the moral of the story is to never marry a psychopath. How do you know if someone's a psychopath? That's the problem. Choose well.

I was touched and felt really giddy when I received a Coke bottle with my name on it as a surprise months ago, so just imagine my reaction when they contacted me to say I can surprise two more people with their own personalized Coca-Cola bottles!

I have a long list of friends I would love to Share a Coke with, but I just had to give it to the Top Two people in my life: my parents.

Seeing the sheer delight on their faces when I presented them with their Coke bottles? Priceless. It was worth having this huge and heavy box delivered to my office address so I can be the one to personally give them these when I got home. ❤ Thank you for giving me the chance to say The Happiest Thank You to my parents, Coca-Cola!

You may wonder why I didn't request for Mama and Papa to be put on the bottles. Well, I just feel that they are so much more than the main roles they play in my and my siblings' lives, and I wanted to thank them personally with this sweet gesture. Having our own names on these special edition Coke bottles just feels more special, don't you agree?

And since we're in the subject of giving a more personal spin to expressing thanks, why don't we take a moment and think of the people who help us every day, that we have seemed to learn to take them for granted? I'm sure most of you have already seen the video below, but for those who haven't yet, check this out.

I have a thing for sappy commercials and this made me shed happy tears when I watched it for the first time. :,) Such a wonderful initiative, yes? Thank you, Coca-Cola!

Do you already have your own Coke bottle? Would you like to give your family and friends their own? Check the Share a Coke website to see the list of names that have already been printed and to see the Share a Coke mall tour schedule, where you can have the chance to personalize your own bottles!

The Happiest Thank You for visiting my blog and sticking around! You are awesome. ♥～(‘▽^人) 

I finished reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer before midnight last night, and this morning I watched its movie directed by Stephen Daldry and starred by Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, and Thomas Horn. I don't know if tears are quantifiable, but I know I cried a lot.


Oskar Schell is a nine-year-old inventor, pacifist, amateur entomologist, Francophile, letter-writer, percussionist, jeweller, detective, vegan, and collector of different kinds of things. When his father is killed in the World Trade Center terrorist attack, Oskar aims to solve the mystery of a key he finds in his father's closet and see what it opens. It eventually leads him to come across strangers who share one thing in common - their last name Black - living all over New York and get to know their stories.

It's not stated explicitly in the novel, but I think Oskar has a disorder that hinders him from relating to people that much. He is eccentric, intelligent, clever, empathetic, contemplative, and has a very wide imagination. He also does not sound nor think like kids his own age, which caused a lot of criticism for Foer's work. He is afraid of a lot of things like public transportation, elevators, bridges, and loud noises, and these fears were magnified after the September 11 attacks.



Interspersed with Oskar's search are his grandmother's letters to him and his grandfather's unsent letters to his father. I read them and wonder, how much hurt can a heart hold until it decides enough is enough? I read the lines "I’m so afraid of losing something I love that I refuse to love anything" and  I decided it's one of the saddest lines I've read in a book, ever. When self-ruin becomes hand-in-hand with self-preservation, what do you choose?

As expected, the movie veers away from its source material but it doesn't make it any less worth seeing. All the actors gave stellar performances that wrung my heart dry, and I wish Thomas Horn can be given more projects as I'm sure he'll improve even more with more exposure.


The author has been met with a lot of criticism, saying that using the 9/11 tragedy as a plot point is a cheap ploy to attract acclaim, but I don't think that was his objective. In an interview, he said, "I think it's a greater risk not to write about [9/11]. If you're in my position—a New Yorker who felt the event very deeply and a writer who wants to write about things he feels deeply about—I think it's risky to avoid what's right in front of you." What happened shook the earth right through its very core and grief reverberated throughout every nation. I didn't know any 9/11 victim personally, but I'm still affected until now.

The horrors of that day can never be erased, and however minute, our lives were changed forever after that day. I won't even try to look for a silver lining from that horrible tragedy, because it still makes me angry that it happened. It doesn't make any sense at all, and trying to find its logic is completely futile.


I guess, after all the tears, my takeaway from both the book and the movie is that we should never let a moment to tell our loved ones that we love them go to waste. After all, we don't know until when we will have the time to do so. As Oskar's grandmother pointed out to him, "It's always necessary."

Whenever something happens to me, I can either choose to react negatively or look on the brighter side of things. I always choose the latter. When my friends and I were trapped in the heaviest traffic jam we have had the misfortune to experience so far, I just chose to be thankful that I was with my friends, sitting comfortably on the passenger seat, instead of being stranded out on the streets.

These heavy traffic jams (that we can only expect to get even worse now that the holidays are almost here) are the main reason why I just choose to stay in during weekends and rest in the comforts of my couch or bed with books or movies to keep me company. Save for Liz’s Watercolor Workshop last week (which was held in a quaint coffee shop), I don’t think I have been anywhere near a shopping mall on a weekend for the past couple of months. Sure, shopping is tempting especially now that my salary just credited my account, but I'd rather stay home and save myself the trouble of saying goodbye to my personal space and sanity and battling it out in the metro’s public utility vehicles.

Times like this call for my third favorite thing to do on my computer next to reading and writing: online shopping. Whenever I need or want something, all I have to do is search my favorite online shopping sites, add to cart, consult my wish list on the site and consider granting a wish or two, key in my Paypal details (even better if the site uses COD), and wait for my orders to be delivered. Big triumphant whoops if the site offers discount codes or coupon codes. Convenient, practical, quick, and free from being hassled by traffic jams! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧

I looove online shopping. I can’t count the number of times I’ve bought stuff online, and I even had an album on my old Multiply account showcasing my online buys! It has been more than six years since I first experienced the delights of online shopping, and until now I still feel a buzz on my fingertips whenever I open a new parcel. Admitting this makes me sound like a dork, but it almost feels like receiving a gift!

For my friends and readers based in the US, I’ve got great news for you! If you love online shopping as much as I do, you may shop online from retail giant Nordstrom and get big savings using Nordstrom promo codes!


Nordstrom, Inc. is a leading fashion specialty retailer offering compelling clothing, shoes, and accessories for men, women, and children. Currently serving customers in 36 states with 117 full-line stores in the United States and one in Canada, 155 Nordstrom Rack locations, two Jeffrey boutiques and one clearance store, they also serve customers online in 96 countries through Nordstrom.com.

I’ve been browsing the site since I got home earlier tonight and maaan, I am so tempted to shop! Are you going to use any of the Nordstrom coupons provided? Please link me to your purchases and let me live vicariously through you!

As for me, I need to save up for my trip to Tacloban early next year so I better stop checking constantly if the items in my wish list will go on sale or not. Or meh, maybe not. (*≧▽≦)

I was so tempted to use Oh-ctober! as this post's title but was too afraid to be met with crickets and collective booing from the Internet so I stuck with this one instead. Heh.

So, October. This morning I posted this on Instagram:

Funny how in just a few hours, a storm can literally rain on my parade.

Chum, Sheila, and I were stuck in Mike's car for more than three hours trying to get home from Makati to Navotas. 

Good thing I bought a pretzel on our way to the parking lot.

Seriously, it has been going on for several years now but we never learn. No improvements on the drainage system, nor on urban planning, nor on contingency measures when the rain comes. All you need is a little rain and Manila gets nearer to Dan Brown's "gates of hell" blurb that got the nation fuming with rage, calling for the author to be considered a persona non grata, what up.

At least I was with my friends. Being with them made things 100,000X better.

Hope your October started out better than mine did, and may you have a wonderful month ahead!