Dressing for success
… is something that I never really got to master until now.
The intricacies of formal dressing have always been lost on me, for shame, granddaughter of a fashion designer, niece of an acknowledged fashion plate. However, give me urban clothing and I can raise the guts to go anywhere, even into the middle of a formal ball — that is, if they let me in in the first place.
The thing is I’ve never really been comfortable with wearing clothes that limit my movement. I’m not exactly an active person, but being a mom for a time meant that I had to go into places that might make me show more than I’d care to if I had been wearing skirts and stuff. But put me in clothes that I am comfortable in and my level of confidence builds up, no matter what situation I’m in.
Black Friday
Black Friday is the discount shopping day that follows American Thanksgiving, which is always on a Friday. Retailers promote Black Friday as the day to start shopping for Christmas. Black Friday is often advertised with “Christmas Sales” as well as “Thanksgiving Sales.”
The word “black” in Black Friday refers to the term “in the black” meaning making a profit. Today, Black Friday is not an important source of profit to retailers, but is important in driving traffic in to stores. Lots of retailers mail special Black Friday circulars to consumers, announcing deeply discounted items in the hopes that consumers will visit their store on Black Friday.
However, the Black Friday that comes to my mind is the Steely Dan song:
When Black Friday comes
I’ll stand down by the door
And catch the grey men when they
Dive from the fourteenth floor
When Black Friday comes
I’ll collect everything I’m owed
And before my friends find out
I’ll be on the road
When Black Friday falls you know it’s got to be
Don’t let it fall on me
and while totally inauspicious compared to the one first mentioned, I’m starting to think that I’m bound for the latter one …
The matter of a pea
There’s this children’s story called The Princess and the Pea, which as far as I understood it, chronicles the woes of a princess going through several ordeals in order to prove that she is a real princess and therefore worthy to be a prince’s bride.
The ultimate test was when she was made to sleep on a stack of mattresses with a pea inserted into the bottom mattress, with the assumption that the princess, if real, would be so sensitive that she would feel the pea on her skin.
I have no idea what Hans Christian Andersen was up to when he wrote what was supposedly a children’s story but I have always frowned upon this particular one. I had never been able to understand the virtue of having such sensitive skin, or the theory that only a princess can marry a prince, but then again back in Andersen’s time they may have fully believed that this was only natural.
I do think that some of these so-called children’s stories should be rewritten.
Our house is for sale
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The house that we live in, indicated by the yellow box you see in the photo above, is for sale. 450 square meters of land less than half a kilometer away from both NAIA and Centennial Airports, and roughly 15 minutes drive to Terminal 3.
An agent who lives nearby, called my father in Cebu and told him that people were interested in buying the house. This agent is the same person who asked me, days after we just moved back here from Mindanao, how long we were staying, as if she was just loaning us the house. I have the urge to tell her she would make more money by selling her own house, but I can’t as it would not be a polite thing to say, and my father might not like that. She could, for all I care, just go and read fat burner reviews on the ‘net.
Two buyers have expressed interest, offering a price of 3.5 million. One has backed out, but the other is asking for the land titles and tax payment receipts, to show the bank for a loan.
This area is known as Barangay Vitalez, but in its heyday it was known as Baltao Subdivision. It is slowly being taken over by warehouses disguised as residential houses, to keep tax payments down, and I daresay the barangay may have something to do say about that.
I think 3.5 million is too small an offer. Look at that location and tell me what you think.
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