How I Dressed for August Parties

I’m a big believer in choosing what to spend on and save on. Check out these two looks:

Black Asymmetrical Dress Pink Dress
Cocktail

Both of them I wore to cocktail parties from last month. Both dresses cost around 300 pesos: the pink one was 250 pesos from Express at Landmark, and the black one was 380 pesos from a bazaar. Since I don’t really like using the same dresses again for events, I aim to buy cheaper dresses so I can have lots of variety on a budget.

I used the same shoes (Nine West) and bag (Coach) — it’s always worth investing in basics that will look good with anything you wear.

Same goes for makeup; it’s great to have lots of variety when it comes to color for eyeshadow and blush, but for the foundation, what lies closest to my skin, I don’t scrimp. I used liquid foundation from Clinique, trying to achieve the poreless and sophisticated look. Did I succeed? I hope so.

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Kiss kiss!

For whatever it’s worth, I always enjoy getting in my party finery and looking fabulous no matter the price.

P.S. I’d like to buy more from Clinique, but some of their products just don’t agree with me (except for the foundation and lipsticks). It’s a shame too, because until September 15 they’re giving away gift sets for single-receipt purchases of P3,500. You even get a travel bag if your purchase totals up to P4,000.

Clinique Clinique

I’m game to shop with someone to help them rack up that much in purchases. I need some more liquid foundation!

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These Shoes Are Made for Running

The Urbanite was the first time my friend Joel saw the shoes I’ve been using since last October. He’s a recreational triathlete and was using the Urbanite as a tune-up to the Cobra Ironman 70.3.

Joel asked me with incredulity, “Are you sure those shoes are for running? They look too low!” My reply was, “Well, they have ‘nikerunning.com’ on the sole!”

Nike Women "Track Runner Lace"
Nike Women Track Runner Lace

I bought these shoes late last year on sale from Sports Warehouse in preparation for the Run for Life race I didn’t run. While they had served me well in my running on treadmills, they weren’t taking too kindly to being out on the road in races. I looked them up online at Nike and they’re track-spike-inspired and mostly used by gym bunnies (hehehe). They finally gave up the ghost after my Urbanite experience.

Nike Women "Track Runner Lace" right shoeNike Women "Track Runner Lace" left shoe
“she falls apart by herself,” sings Sugar Ray

Today after signing up for the 5K event at GMA7’s “Tatakbo Ka Ba” run, I headed to Bonifacio High Street in Fort Bonifacio to buy a new pair of shoes at RUNNR. “Now to get myself a real running shoe,” I thought.

RUNNR storefrontRUNNR is owned by the son of the business mind behind Toby’s Sports (check out the August issue of Action&Fitness; for the story), but carries products specifically for running enthusiasts. Being a specialty store, they carry top-of-the-line and latest products from Nike, Adidas, New Balance, Asics, and other running brands. I wasn’t expecting to find the same kind of bargain there as I did at Sports Warehouse. However, I was looking for help in finding exactly the kind of shoe I need for the kind of running I do, and that’s where RUNNR’s Footworx service comes in.

The very knowledgeable salesguy (who also does his fair share of running — OMG, ultramarathons) asked me to step barefoot onto a “podoscope” so I could find out whether I had a normal, flat, or high arch. I was flat-footed as a baby and always thought I had a low arch, so I was surprised to find my arch was normal. (Oh the wonders barefoot walking can work.) Then he asked me to run barefoot on a treadmill. He took high-speed video of the way I ran, and analyzed how my feet struck the ground. Although I knew it already, he confirmed that my right ankle was weak, causing me to overpronate on the right foot. I told him that I was fine with my current shoe except that my ankles complained after the races.

Based on my results, he recommended I try a neutral to light stability shoe, like the Nike Air Span + 6. “My feet are in better shape than I thought,” I mused at this point. And after another video analysis where we confirmed that my ankle-rolling had been controlled by the shoe, I ended up taking a pair home.

Nike shoes!the unboxingarch supportswoosh!
Elmo approves of this purchase.

Char, one of the girls I ran with at Urbanite, had been to RUNNR about a month ago and found she needed a stability shoe for one foot, and a motion-control shoe for the other. She ended up spending approximately 6,000 pesos for stability shoes and an additional 2,000 pesos for custom shoe inserts. Yoinks! I had come into the store with a budget of 5,500 pesos but asked God to help me find a shoe around 4,000 pesos. I got the shoe at P4,895.

The best part is that they’re Nike (my favorite shoe brand) and they go really well with the racing top I’ve set aside for the GMA7 run. Ü I’m taking these puppies out for a test run on Monday.

Nike Women Air Span + 6
“Tatakbo ka ba?” Answer: YES.

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Splashing with the Weekend Warriors

So what do you get when you toss three guys and a girl into a car, make them drive all the way to Laguna, and then present them with a water park to cool off in?

Well, aside from the part where hilarity ensues, you get another episode of Weekend Warriors coming soon on Flippish.com. This time, Chris was away (preparing for the Asian Poker Tournament in Macau) and Jinno was available to shoot (with provisional script, to boot). Once again, I was the only girl they could get on short notice to be the Girlfriend of the Week. Thanks to Ton for inviting me during Amina’s party, I got to revisit a childhood wonderland, one I was last at when I was 13 years old.

 Jinno, Al, and Ton didn’t offer to take my photo. Boo.

After banging on Al’s door to wake him up (dude needs an alarm clock, seriously), dropping Jinno’s car off to get his bumper re-attached, and sating five hungry bellies including our cameraman’s, we finally arrived at Splash Island around 12pm in our Ford Everest, on loan from the car company.

The park hasn’t changed from my childhood memories of it, except: the grass is longer, there are more dead leaves in the water, and there’s less water flowing at all since some of the slides were closed. It’s only open Saturdays and Sundays in the off-season, but open all days of the week during the summer.

What’s great about visiting parks with these guys is we get to ask for rides to open just for us so we can shoot on them.

 “Get into the hot tub with me,” says spider Al.

One thing I forgot about Splash Island is you always have to climb several storeys up a tower to get onto a slide. But once I slid down our first ride, Magellan’s Drop, everything came rushing back at me: the long lines starting at the base of the tower, the anticipation building as you got nearer to the slide itself, and then finally those short ten to 15 seconds you slip and slide down to the water below.

Jinno took ass shots. Grrr.

I took my waterproof camera with me on the slides, so I took video which they might use for the episode. Aside from the video-taking distracting me from my acrophobia, my advancement in age took away the terror I used to feel getting into the King Pilipit body slide. When I was younger, that ride made me pray aloud.

 I got to play while these guys worked.

There was one ride I sat out while the boys tried it out: the giant plastic balls in the wave pool. Aside from having only a limited supply of oxygen inside, I just didn’t want to be seen falling all over myself. Besides, I was afraid of any wardrobe malfunctions that might happen (or that they were counting on to happen, hahaha).

So I let them do their thing while I took photos! Wasn’t my job to sit still and look pretty anyway? Hahaha. And I was conserving my energy for the Kenny’s Open Urbanite Run I was participating in later that night.

 

Bubble Boys

Thanks again to the Weekend Warriors for taking me on the road trip to Splash Island. It was more fun than a barrelful of monkeys! Oh wait–

Update: The episode is out! Watch Weekend Warriors: Splash Island on Flippish.

Kenny’s Open Urbanite Run

I’ve been hot under the collar to race again and see if I could beat my 10km time at the Globe run. I thought I could do that at the Kenny’s Open 2009 Urbanite Run on August 15.

Urbanite Run: Marc Nelson

Based on this poster alone I would have signed up.

I got sales-talked into it by Rovilson. He told me (and I have the Facebook comment to prove it), “It’s going to be a night run (starts at 9PM, no wind) so I expect a lot of personal times to be beaten.”

Well, that was before we saw the race route. It would wind through the old Fort Bonifacio almost down to C-5, then back up the way we came. Then we would detour through McKinley Hill (past Heritage Park cemetery) and a quick run-by the Manila American cemetery before heading back to where we started.

Urbanite Run 10k route
what the hill?! (pun intended)

I arrived at 7pm fresh (or tired) from a shoot at Splash Island with the Weekend Warriors. After a quick-change in the car I met up with some friends from church who were also going to run the 10K event at 8:45pm.

Urbanite Run: the Vite Runners

Guess which ones were our bandits?

Official race results were released today (enter my bib number 1605 to view all my results) and despite me not beating my personal best, I’m still largely pleased with how I did.

summary info

The Timex clock at the finish line told me I crossed it at 54 minutes 25 seconds after the gun. It’s weird that the official time is off by five seconds. It’s still better than my treadmill time (54:31) before the Globe run, though.

result in entire field

Probably due to the lack of depth in the field (only 887 finishers in the 10K event), I finished in 32nd place. At the Globe run I finished in 60th place. My gender and division results were poor though; I finished two places lower.

result in gender
result in division

section speed
It was really a tough run: the time of night, the route, and the humidity and temperature wilted all the runners. I ran strong during the first two sections of the race, but by the last one, my will was starting to fail me as it was literally an uphill battle.girls do it better I tried to overtake a guy who had glowsticks poking up like antennae out of a headband. Then I tried simply to keep pace with him. But at the last two kilometers, he put on a burst of speed and just vanished. I was fading, and I had to pray aloud for God to give me what I needed to finish strong.

As I made the last turn toward the finish line, I saw the clock tick from 53 minutes into 54. Suddenly I felt a surge of defiance within me. No way was I going to let that clock tick into 55 minutes. I started sprinting.

Urbanite Run: Racing to the Finish

harder, better, faster, stronger

My feet crossed the mat, I came to a sudden stop to avoid crashing into the woman logging the finishers’ numbers, and I was gasping for breath from the burst of effort. A few minutes later, Rovilson came in from his 15K run, and we bumped fists before he went off to host the awarding ceremony with his best bud Marc. I stayed near the finish chute to welcome my fellow runner friends, and then we went back to the finish line to take some photos.

Urbanite Run: Powered Up!

my Supergirl pose. all I need is a cape billowing behind me…

I reverse my original statement that I like running alone. Sure I may leave behind the group I came with as I try to beat my personal best — but being around when they celebrate their own personal victories is a better feeling than the runner’s high.

UPDATE: Thanks to Sam the Running Ninja for giving me the link to my Photovendo photos from the race. See the change in my expression from the start to the end of the race:

Urbanite Run: Serene Start

Serene Start

Urbanite Run: Pushing the Limit

Pushing the Limit

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Make-Up “Splurge”

Because of the eye infection I had last month, I began to distrust the makeup I had in my possession. My mom has a habit of giving her makeup palettes to me (as a starter kit of sorts), but I don’t know how old they are. So for the past week I’ve been throwing out old products and buying new stuff. The other day I bought waterproof mascara, but today was the big splurge.

Perhaps I should write “splurge”, with quotation marks. While some people may have no qualms about shelling out 1,500 pesos on Smashbox eyeshadow, I certainly had no plans of spending more than 500 pesos total. I went slightly over-budget anyway.

Ever Bilena Eyeshadow 24 Shades
Ever Bilena Eyeshadow 24 Shades

I am not a makeup snob, so even if Ever Bilena has a funny and local-sounding name (whateverrrrr), it’s been a trusted brand of cosmetics for as long as I can remember. It’s cheap, but it’s good. I tried this 24-shade palette (worth P240) when I got home, and I was impressed by how rich the pipgments were. I only needed one or two sweeps across my eyelids to achieve the desired effect. It doesn’t rub off easily, either.

I thought I was done with my purchases for the day when I realized the EB palette was too big to fit into my daily makeup bag. I was busy kicking myself when I came across a G-Lish stall.

Patrick Rosas for G-LishEyeshadow and Bronzer
Patrick Rosas for G-Lish Eyeshadows & Bronzer

Normally the eyeshadows are priced at P250 each and the bronzer is P300, but I’d chanced on the store during a promo period. I snapped up the brown and black eyeshadows and bought the bronzer on a whim.

The total amount I’d spent tallied up to P540 — that’s 40 pesos over-budget, and it’s why I felt it was a splurge. But when I tried on the makeup at home, I really felt it was worth it.

PhotobucketPhotobucket

Now to try finishing all this product before it goes stale. Anybody want a makeover?

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Filipina Flickrites

For those of you following my RSS feed you might have noticed some interesting photos cropping up in the image feed spliced into it.

In the HoodYou Got Me Burnin' UpPosh (I Needed an Excuse to Wear These Boots)

These photos are submissions to Filipina Flickrites, a group on Flickr where members post self-portraits according to a theme every week. The first two photos are from Week 22: Music Genres, and the last (and latest) photo is from Week 23: Fashionista.

I really enjoy what other people come up with, and I love how this stimulates my own creative juices.

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Sujiivana: The Beautiful Life

Last month shortly after my birthday, I got an unexpected treat. I was invited to be part of Sujiivana Salon‘s online catalogue of Fall Looks. Check it out!

Fall Looks for Sujiivana Salon

The curl came from an iron, so it washed out after the shoot. What stayed with me is the trim and color. The cut has been growing out nicely, with none of the stray hairs and split ends I had before I went to the salon. The color has been gradually lightening over time since the shoot, but I still love it and am maintaining it with Kolours shampoo. I think it’ll grow out gracefully as well, not leaving me with ugly dark roots.

Sujiivana Salon is located at Westgate Center, Alabang. Check out the price listing on their website for their services. Pretty reasonable, for the spa ambience you get. Ü

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Slice ‘n’ Scrape

Filipino old wives’ tales tell us that Peeping Toms get kuliti, or styes. It’s not really true, of course. You can get styes from wearing old mascara, which is probably what happened. Still, this version of events is more entertaining…

One thing I mentioned from my Run for Home report is I ran past a cute and tall pacer running at 5’30/km. I didn’t mention that at the parking lot after the race, he was changing his shirt at his car, which was parked near mine. I snuck a photo:

the reason for my stye
the reason for my stye

God has a sense of humor. He must have been looking at me, shaking His head and saying, “My child, that’s very unbecoming of a princess in My kingdom.”

So, the next day I woke up with a stye. A HUGE ONE. One that, even after two weeks of treatment with medicines, was still with me. I even had to go to a party at Embassy trying to hide the stye with makeup.

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It’s hard to party when you feel ugly.

Today, I went to the hospital where my dad works. I asked an opthalmologist to flip my eyelid, make an incision on the stye, and scrape it until it was hollow so I could finally be rid of it.

It was AWESOME. Also, painful.

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I can haz eyepatch?

The bandages came off shortly after I got home, and I iced down the swelling. There’s just a little bruising on the eyelid, but I am finally rid of that stye.

I swear never to peep at anyone ever again.

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