RSS 4U

I went to Malaysia last year for a business conference. I brought my mom along since she hasn’t been to Kuala Lumpur, and she is interested to do some sightseeing. Our bags were packed, our passports were ready, and we were anxious for some serious shopping. The day came and we excitedly flew to Malaysia.
After Kuala Lumpur, we went to Genting to enjoy the cable cars and the amusement parks. Genting was situated in a mountain, and the weather was so cold. The day after our arrival, I started to have colds and high fever. When I started to experience chills, my mom decided to bring me to the hospital.

The diagnosis was pneumonia and I have to be confined for a few weeks. It was a great thing that my mom got a travel health insurance before we left. What happened was very unexpected and had she not thought of getting insurance, we would have spent a lot on hospital bills and medicine. Our regular health insurance back home would have been useless because we were in a foreign country.

I’m all well now, but because of that experience, we made sure to secure a travel health insurance whenever we are travelling out of the country to safeguard our health and safety even when we are abroad.

My husband doesn’t wear jewelry. Not that he hates it, but it’s just that no one ever gave him one. For the past special occasions, I gave him a pair of sneakers and clothes. Then there came a time that I was browsing through different items at a department store, when a display containing men’s accessories caught my eye. I looked at it and saw different kinds of stainless steel mens bracelets. There were different designs – ball chain, ion-plated combined, carbon fiber combined, and rubber combined. There was no special occasion, but I thought of giving him one, just for the fun of it. I haven’t seen him wearing any piece of jewelry except our wedding band, anyway.

I didn’t like those bracelets combined with other materials, and I decided to give him a bracelet made of purely stainless steel. I chose a simple chain design since I couldn’t picture him wearing something that is very intricate – my husband is the simplest person I have ever known. I gave him his “no-occasion” present when we met up after work. He was surprised and he grinned when he opened the package. He wears it everyday, and surprisingly, it suits him well.

My friend and I met up to watch a movie and I noticed that she had on a new pair of earrings. My friend was a simple, no-nonsense kind of girl, and more of on the casual side so I was surprised that she even had pierced ears. I joked that she was undergoing a transformation and she laughed, and sheepishly said that it was a gift given to her by her new boyfriend.

My friend was a member of the NBSB – no boyfriend since birth club, and my eyes almost jumped out of their sockets and I squealed “Finally!” We were already 25 years old and it was about time she had a boyfriend since a lot of our friends were engaged or already married. All the while, I was pestering her for more details about her new beau.

Then I shifted my attention to her new earrings since I couldn’t help but admire how beautiful and delicate they were. It was a pair of platinum bamboo hoop earrings, intricately designed to resemble bamboo stalks. It was simple but has a lot of character, not to mention expensive since it was made of platinum. I was glad for my friend. That was one of the few times that I saw her so happy.

We almost have to wash and change our kitchen window coverings every week since it always gets stained or accumulates dust. We usually alternate curtains and valances, but changing it every week is actually very tiring since it adds up to the pile of laundry. I have been actually looking for an alternative to curtains or valances for a long time. Recently, I came across a shop that sells bamboo grommet top panels. I haven’t seen one before so I became curious and entered the shop.

Obviously, it is made from bamboo, but created in such a way that looks Zen and natural with a modern twist. I imagined it in our kitchen and I think it would go with the kitchen interiors pretty well. It adds texture and beauty, and lets enough light in without giving away our privacy. What I also liked about it is that it is low maintenance so I don’t have to keep on changing curtains every week. I gave the store owner our kitchen window dimensions and asked if they have enough panels left. Luckily, they have one set left. Without second thoughts, I bought the bamboo panels. Now, our kitchen is revamped with the relaxing and stylish appeal of these new panels.

We used to have a cheap, basket-like clothes hamper in our bathroom. It has no cover, and after every single member of our family has finished taking a bath, the dirty laundry is mountain-piled in the hamper and a lot are already littered on the floor. My mother is a neat freak and a little obsessive-compulsive, and she hits the roof whenever there is a mess in our house. Our beds are made like beds in a hotel – you can drop a coin and it would bounce. That’s how my mom cleans and fixes our house. You can imagine how agitated she is when she enters the bathroom and the clothes are all over the floor. Talk about a disaster.

Luckily, I found a solution to the clothes hamper problem. I saw a Wuchow Triple Tilt-Out Hamper and gave it to my mom as a gift. It has three storage tilt-out compartments, and it has a large storage space which could house every single one of our dirty laundry. We can now say goodbye to the overflow of dirty clothes in our bathroom floor. Plus, as modern bathroom storage furniture, the top part of the hamper can also be used to showcase family pictures, figurines, scented oils and incenses.

With the bathroom mess solved, at least my mother has something else to fuss over about – my own cluttered room.

In our house, we all have a lot of things that we wanted to get rid of. Some are usable items, while some are plain junk. But they all have one thing in common – this stuff is slowly taking up every square inch of our garage. When it came to a point that walking in our garage without stepping or tripping on something became literally impossible, we decided to do something about it. Since there was a lot to do, we even hired a boy looking for odd jobs to help us in our clean up.

We first segregated the things that can still be used or sold from those which that we can already throw away. It made our lives easier since the pile of stuff was slowly getting smaller. We then organized the remaining things into different garage storage products. Our hand tools, power tools, hardware and cleaning materials, and seasonal decorations were arranged neatly inside our heavy-duty storage cabinet. The car tools and gardening paraphernalia are placed in the garage shelving. We had a garage sale and we sold our old clothes, furniture, and old appliances.

We spent the entire day cleaning up and by the end of the day, we were zonked. We celebrated our hard work by using the garage sale money to order pizzas and eat it while watching a movie on cable.

Back in college, we were asked to do an interview about people who had unique hobbies or collections for our Art Studies class. Some interviewed a man who makes pottery, a man who collects Superman memorabilia, and an old lady who collects frog figurines. My groupmates and I interviewed a French diplomat who was also a wine collector.

He told us that he came from Bordeaux, the capital of Aquitaine in France. This city is famous for its world-class wines, dating back to the Roman Empire when it was set up as a colonial trading post. He said that the most popular tourist activity in Bordeaux is wine tasting. A number of wineries in the region welcome visitors with open arms for sampling of their wines, and if you come in October you can watch the grape harvest.

He got his passion for wine collection since his grandfather owns a winery. In France, their wines are kept and aged in cellars. However, since he now lived away from home, he had to settle for a wine refrigerator. Since he grew up with wines stored in cellars, he had to consult various wine cooler reviews first before he purchased one. In the end, he chose the EuroCave Comfort 101 Wine Cellar since he had over a hundred wines in his collection.

I enrolled in a marine science course this semester and we went on a field trip and diving expedition last month to collect different kinds of sponge and mollusk specimens that would be studied for their antimicrobial activity. Some species of sponges and mollusks can produce peptides which can be turned into useful drugs, and we are aiming to isolate such peptides in the laboratory. We took off early in the morning, and arrived at the dive site just as the sun was starting to rise. The weather was perfect, and we were all excited to go underwater.

In a marine science course, an underwater camcorder is a necessity. How else can you record the behavior of different wildlife such as mating and reproduction and predatory activities, not to mention the exquisite and different world under the sea without a camcorder?

My professor brought his Oregon Scientific Ultimate ATC3K waterproof action camera and took a video of the colorful corals, sponges, and fishes in the diving site that we were working at. While we were busy collecting specimens, he was capturing the life under the sea – from the clown fishes hiding inside sea anemones to the schools of fishes swimming in perfect synchrony. Underwater wildlife was such a beautiful sight to behold, and our underwater camcorder captured it all.

One of my secret fantasies is to be a Bond Girl, like Halle Berry and Olga Kurylenko. Accompanying James Bond with his spy and secret missions, driving Aston Martins, wearing sexy outfits, and using high-tech spy gear is definitely a dangerous and exhilarating way of life. Maybe being a Bond girl is as impossible as a crow turning white, but having and using spy gear (and driving Aston Martins) is something attainable.

Spy gear has evolved from the plain, old binoculars to high-tech gadgets that have other important purposes besides spying. Hidden cameras are now installed in inconspicuous objects such as exit signs, books, or teddy bears, to further avoid detection. Rather than to be used for spying, these hidden cameras are now widely used by stores and house owners as protection from burglary. Spy sunglasses are now not just for subtle spying, but some has installed USB devices for data storage. Watches can now play media files, take pictures and videos, and record sounds. There are also amusing spy gears nowadays such as the SpyGear Pretender, which allows you to play various sounds such as the dog barking or a doorbell ringing to allow you to make excuses and put down unwanted calls.

I may not be Bond girl, but I can definitely feel like one with these different gadgets.

When I was pregnant, especially during the third trimester, I’ve never felt so big in my life! I gained 32 pounds, I can’t stop eating, and I feel so unglamorous. I didn’t bother to dress nicely or to even look at myself in the mirror. But deep inside, I was worried that all my clothes would go to waste if I didn’t get my pre-pregnancy body back. After giving birth, I took it slowly and started dieting. After five weeks, I could already fit into my skinny jeans. Fashionable clothes, here I come!

I’m going back to work next week and I feel so excited. I’ve been stuck in the house for three months already and I miss the outside world. In preparation of my return to work, I had a new haircut, and had my nails done. To complete my post-partum make-over, I went to the mall to shop.

I made an inventory of my wardrobe and noticed that I had to buy new tops. Worse, I had to replenish my accessories since most of them were outdated. Almost nine months of wearing flip flops and no jewelry totally depleted my wardrobe. Of course, any woman wouldn’t want to run out of fashionable accessories. For footwear, I bought a new pair of the latest Converse Chuck Taylors for ladies, Steve Madden gladiator heels, and Ipanema gold sandals. To further accessorize my outfits, I bought bib necklaces from Forever 21 and a Philip Stein Fruitz ladies watch.

Who said mothers can’t be cool and stylish?