Um, Ive stopped blogging here.
So, if you still visit here, you either didnt get the memo about where my new blog is, you havent bothered to change links (and Im sure Ive told all who I like visiting my blog where my new one is) or I didnt tell you.
Good bye vox!
"Think of all the women you know who will not allow themselves to be seen without makeup. I often wonder how they feel about themselves at night when they are climbing into bed with intimate partners. Are they overwhelmed with secret shame that someone sees them as they really are? Or do they sleep with rage that who they really are can be celebrated or cared for only in secret?"
-"Communion", bell hooks
Its scary how I can unconsciously put on makeup as I walk around getting ready, and how I always make one final check in the mirror to ensure my hair's not out of place, my eye makup isnt panda-ish, my lips are lined and my face is matte (or as matte as it can be, proactiv works people!).
When I look back at the time I was growing up with a beauty regime that consisted of Eskinol facial cleanser and lip glosses, with frizzy ponytailed hair, it makes me feel quizzical to be now addicted to straight hair and rebonding/flat irons, having current lipstick fave's such as Eva Longoria's 704 color by L'oreal and loving Clinique's dramatically different moisturizing gel and so on and so forth.
While I enjoy the luxury of some items, being brought up totally brand unconscious, sometimes that kid in me cringes when I look at my Gucci wallets or other branded things, and while Im getting used to it, and occasionally like the indulgence, a little part of me always feels...pretentious.
Part of me is torn with balancing my younger self's immaterialism (is that even a word that has the effect of what Im trying to say?) and yearn to be unmaterialistic. And yet, I like those pretty things. I feel media brainwashed at times and frustrated with myself and at other times, I question why it bothers me so much in the first place.
It could be because the cost of some of the things I buy, in total, could feed a small family in the Philippines for a week. Or that the bag I carry things in could be sold to pay for a child's tuition in other countries. That the skin care I purchase...
It comes from coming from a background that has seen relatives scrimping and saving just to be able to afford tuition for their kids, for their spending money, from a background of going with my mother to send money back to the Philippines to pay for a bill an in-law couldnt pay and asked her for help, for a sister's child's expenses, for a relative's spending money, for a niece's birthday, for her mother-in-law's operation...I've seen her calulate her BND or MYR or US dollars to PHP more times than I can count, and it always made my younger self blink as she tried to stretch her money to its every possibility and she would search for the best money exchange too to do so.
And then we'd go home and spend equal amounts on meaningless things like groceries and shoes I liked or a toy for my younger brother. Even then, it made me wonder how so many people back in the Philippines depended so desperately for an amount of money that my family would spend in a few days. Even then, it made me aware that while we sent money home, I had a very comfortable lifestyle, but my mother would never compromise that, and if I asked, she gave.
So subconsciously, I knew that if I asked for less things and bought cheaper brands, somehow I was helping too, because my mother would have more money to send home to her relatives when that time of the month came. When calls came for help with money, maybe if I didnt buy anything so expensive, she would have more to give.
Years have passed, and when I started earning my own money, thats when I allowed myself the luxury of purchasing the things I had always wanted to buy. Yet I didnt think about my mother's relatives, who, on my grandmother's deathbed, had my grandmother clinging to life tho being in desperate pain because she was worried upon her death, her other children, my mother's siblings, would be forsaken because she wasnt around to be a reminder of her more well off kids to send money home.
Its a Filipino culture. The entire Philippine economy is helped by the money sent home by the overseas contract workers, and my family was no exception.
I know its my turn now, because my mother is older now.My dad is retired now. I have a degree now, and Im expected to use it. Those relatives back home are still dependant on my mother. Even now. And its strange how I had always thought of them as my mother's relatives.
It took Good Friday,2007, for me to fully comprehend that they were my relatives too.
Happy Easter, all.
Remember that the only things we need sometimes
Are chilly nights and warmer thighs,
Cause there's nothing like being held
Sometimes
saves the day
When the cast of the Harry Potter films photoshoots came out, everyone was swooning about the Three, obviously, but me, being me, I said that the kid playing Neville Longbottom would turn out the hottest and suprise us all. Okay, he didnt really, and I was being very sarcastic at that point, but hey, he didnt grow up so bad.
And I spy Strongbow Cider!
Source: Google, Lj and me.
I wish that university came with a course in how to decide what you want to do careerwise and the steps on how to achieve that. We pay loads, they didnt even bother giving a seminar or a free pamphlet on these kind of things.
I have never gotten so much mail from Curtin in all my years of being there. I swear, its like they can't wait to cut ties from me. Not only do I now hold my graduation package,regalia hiring form and requisite phototaking ripoff shots, I also have my first ALUMNI NITE INVITATION.
Ahahaha, Im an alumni.
When you can't make sense of someone leaving, you sometimes try to make sense of what they left behind. And it makes it a whole lot easier when what they left you was beautiful.
-Georgia on Dead Like Me
Its easy for me to separate the people who care about me sincerely, matter of factly and without superficialty.
Theyre the ones who,when they found out Ive returned from Australia, know what I went through there, know my intentions to simply finish, despite it all, they go,"YAY! Youre back! How was Perth? How long will you be here, and what can we do, and OMGAD we have to do many many things!"
And the ones who dont, they see only the loss of supposed 'opportunity', question my return, question the worth of my degree and the expenses of me going over there, and question why why why I chose to leave Australia behind (at least for the now), they go,"Why are you back, and when are you going back to Australia?"
Guess which people I tell full details to?
*smirk*
Yay, greys anatomy download done.
