My Verbal Diarrhea

Almost a month ago, my sister and I were browsing through the limited toiletries collection of Robinson's Tacloban when a stock of Asian Secrets soap bar caught our eyes.
I love the mehndi designs on the packaging plus since I read almost everything including putos hit gawgaw, I was swayed by its promise of whitening my skin.
My sister said she has heard some friends talking about how good the product was but as OC as I am, I did a little research with trusty Google. I found blogs and vlogs reviews about Asian Lulur. I even chanced upon the Asian Secrets Giveaway contest. I joined and lo and behold a few weeks later the Asian Giveaway pack is now on my lap! Yipee! I just so love freebies!

I never expected the package to be this big and heavy! It includes:
1. 2 pieces Bengkoang Indonesian Whitening Soap with Natural Antiseptic Betel Extract.

That explains its orange packaging. Betel nut is used by the old folks even until now to produce heat in their bodies. It is addicting and most commonly used in the Cordilleras. This gives the eerie bloodlike coloring on their teeth. The Betel extract gives extra protection from germs that can cause body odor. I guess this is the reason why people who nguya have healthy strong teeths with minimal cavities.
I doubt if they really added Betel on the soap. Betel nut has a strong red orangey tint but this Asian Secret soap bar is white.
2. 2 pieces Bengkoang Indonesian Whitening Soap with Moisturizing Olive Oil

Olive oil has always been used to moisturize so no doubt about this.
3. 2 tubs of Lulur Indonesian Whitening Body Scrub with Licorice and Mulberry Extract

4. 2 tubs of Lulur Indonesian Whitening Body Scrub with Seaweed Extract and Vit. E
(Blue packaging)
5. 2 tubs of Lulur Whitening Body Scrub with Green Tea and Vit. E
(Green packaging)
There would be no need to restock my bath essentials for 6 months at most! I'm all geared and my skin should better show some lightening by June!

Thanks geekgirlmanila!

Updated: March 17, 2012

I've been using the soap and scrub for almost a month now.

The bar of soap lasted only for about 2 weeks but my first tub of lulur scrub looks like its virtually untouched even if I've been using it almost everyday.

I noticed that the roughness of my knees and elbow has gone away. I love the feeling of the micro beads on my body. The micro beads has the same texture as dissolved aspirin. There is also a slight scent but after washing off it doesn't linger.

Congratulations to the new nurses!

I know you have been waiting and praying for this moment. You've passed the teeth gnashing and knee trembling wait for your license. Don't be afraid to party and party hard. Celebrate!
You've worked hard for four long years for this. If there is a course which is literally worked for with blood, sweat and tears, this is it!
Join your Torch Parade. It will only happen once in your life.
And when all the congratulations has faded and the parties has already ended, I welcome you back to the real world.
You will now realize that:
1... to get a spot as a volunteer nurse you will need to pay up or have a powerful backer.
Getting good grades way back in college doesn't really matter in the real battlefield. You might be your batch's Best in RLE or even the summa cum laude, but if you don't have the right connections, you won't get anywhere.
2.... you will be guiled to take up trainings and exams. The licenses you get from there will eventually expire even before you land your first real job.
I've had friends who are US RN's but has never stepped foot on US soil. They have IELT's band 7 plus scores but are stuck in call centers. Some have Basic Life Support and Advance Cardiac Life Support Licenses and etc. but has never gotten to practice their skill in the hospital setting.
These licenses are expensive yet nurses collect these like badges on a girl scouts uniform. They look impressive lined up on your wallet and written down on your resume but, as I've said earlier, without the right connections, these are all just learning experiences.
3. ... reunions with fellow nurses is like a meeting with the labor union. All you'll ever hear are whinings about the current unemployment rate.
When nurses sit and gather around while sipping an expensive cup of coffee, they are most likely complaining about their working conditions or lack there off.At the back of their mind, they are also calculating the things they would need to sacrifice to pay off the very expensive cup of coffee they just had.
Have you ever met a happy nurse working locally? Yes? Introduce me to her and I'll say she is in her manic phase right now.
4. ... the white uniform is not as glamorous as it once promised to be. You'll get screamed at, puked on and you'll even pee on yourself because there is no decent loo in the hospital you are serving.
Your white uniform and duty shoes might be too tight and old already but you hate to ask your parents for money to buy new ones. After all, you have already graduated and supposed to be "working".
5. ... the IW's salary is twice as what you have. He has SSS, GSIS, PAG-IBIG and PHILHEALTH while you are left battling viruses and bacterias without enough money for insurance and vit. C. (That is if you ever do get to land a job.)
You went to college for four years and you have a diploma to show for it. You also have your nurses license on top of your IVF, BLS, ACLS, Dialysis etc licenses but your service is free. Sometimes you get paid an allowance that is less than what you get way back when you were still in college.
This makes me wonder how nurses could still stay beautiful despite the hard times.
6. ... Volunteer, probationary, reliever, contractual, trainee nurse are not considered as working experience.
How can you get out of this country without an experience? So you agree to be a slave to hospitals that take advantage of your situation.
7. ... you need to have a raket to survive.
I need makeups and a dozen toiletries. As a nurse you have to look good and smell good. Your patients would always want to see their nurses looking like angels. But if you are financially hard up, how can you have these little luxuries?
I survived my days as a volunteer by selling anything from contact lenses to scrub suits. My other colleagues have also other rakets from online stores to fake bath and body perfumes. Others would charge for intravenous glutathione injections.
We try our best to survive.
8. ... on night shifts and rainy days, only a few volunteers would show up.
These are my worst duties. Your staff nurse will be busy snoring while you are left to fend for yourself with over 50 plus census in your ward.
A general rule is to wake up your staff nurse if and only if a patient is dying. IF there is no need for a CPR don't wake her up from her sweet dreams.
9. ...nurses don't just get assigned to the ER, DR or ward. You will also work in the stock room, medical laboratory, kitchen and laundry.
You are dispensable.
If you don't agree, leave. There is no shortage of nurses, instead there is an oversupply. Many nurses would willingly do the laundry if you hate doing it.
10. ... you should have not followed the herd.
Everyone wanted to be a nurse way back in high school. so you wanted to be a nurse too. The nursing students all look gwapo and beautiful. You wanted to be one of them.
Now it is too late for you to back out. You already have a degree and license. Yet you realized that nursing is not for you.It is far from the images you see on tv.
Sometimes you think to yourself that if you have taken up management or other boring courses you most likely have a job already.

Welcome to the sad reality of nursing.

I pray that you become successful in your chosen course. There will be lots of challenges but if your desire is strong, keep the faith.

If you are reading this, then perhaps we are on the same page on our journey through life (or have been in the same situation.)

Science has taught us that repeat exposure to the same stimulus or biological invasion dulls our reflexes and when a certain saturation point is reached, we gain immunity.

Contrary to this, failing grades has always been unpalatable. It has never ceased to ignite in me feelings of regrets of what coulda, woulda, and shoulda.

Experiences like these are God’s way of teaching us a humbling lesson. It is from these that we evolve and survive as homo sapiens - the highest form of animals.

We may mourn for a little while, this is all but natural. Who wouldn’t? But we should always move on with a renewed vigor made wiser by our inductions and deductions. As the great Bob Marley once sang, “Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny...We’ll fight this little struggle...We gonna fight!” And if we are going to fight, we should follow the Art of War of the great strategist and philosopher Sun Tzu.

“The great general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose.”

I’ve always believed that whatever grade I get in class is a reflection and tantamount to the effort I put into the subject. Therefore, we must persevere. Whatever we are doing now needs careful examination, discernment and improvement.

Research says that IQ may get us the job but EQ will give us the promotion. What I’m trying to say here is and I know you are already well aware of is that thinking coupled with action and feelings equals success.

We must plan and stick to it. We need to sacrifice now for a lifetime of success. Focus. Pray. Believe. We are going to be doctors by 2015!

“IF you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. IF you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in the battle.”

This we know so far: medicine is not a walk in the park. It needs time and attention, understanding and lots of memory work. By now, we also know that our effort is not paying off. Perhaps we do read our books three times and even more but have we truly, madly deeply committed it to memory? Do we fully understand the concept and interrelationship?

Promise me we will not just read our tomes of medical scripts but we will fully understand it that even our subconscious will start dreaming it.

I’ve always thought of my brains as muscles. It needs a regimen to obtain optimal results. There is still 80% of our brain that is left idle. We need to use that or risk Alzheimer’s.

IF medicine is war then I say let’s get ready to rumble!!!

A week ago, I was running low of my usual Olay Natural White Cream. I headed to Robinson's and they already ran out of it.

Admittedly, I am a big moisturizer junkie. Growing desperate and too lazy to go to other stores due to the heavy human traffic.( Holiday shopping and all.) I perused the wide array of available face creams- L'oreal, Garnier,Ponds and Myra to name a few.

I've tried Garnier before but I don't like the feel of the cream on my face. Pond's makes me break out. L'oreal is too expensive for my student budget. I've also tried Olay Total Effects and I feel that the tint looks too obvious on my dark skin.

What I generally look for in a face cream is it should at first protect and then moisturize. I'm not looking for whitening creams. It will just make me fair from the neck up. I love my mocha skin!Unfortunately, the market is saturated with whitening creams. Most of the moisturizing creams with SPF promises whitening.

Myra Vitaglow caught my eye because for a price of around 130php, it promises to be a tinted facial moisturizer with SPF 15. I've been looking for a tinted moisturizer for the longest time ever since I read that it can give you even skin tone and good coverage.

www.projectvanity.com

The only tint available at the time I purchased it was ivory.There is another tint available which is beige. This, they say is more apt for morenas. The ivory one worked fine for me though. In fact, I've asked around and my friends say that the only unnatural thing about my face is the glitters.

Yes! This product has added shimmers on it. I guess they added this to make you "glow". I don't mind this added effect though because I sometimes intentionally use bronze powder by Nichido just to have a glittering effect on my skin even at daytime. Since these shimmers actually reflect light, you come out looking dewy and glowing in your photos.

For a drugstore brand and very cheap at that, this is a real steal. The cream is not sticky nor oily. Just make sure that you apply it on your damp face. Apply it quickly to prevent drying out and make sure you do it evenly for a flawless look.

I've worn this cream for as long as 8 hours and my skin does not feel oily at all. I've even stopped using powders because there is no need to retouch at all.
I am so in love with this product that I declare it a must have in my make up arsenal.

The local market is so full of surprises! Since this pleasant discovery, I am excited to try out local products in the future.