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Forgive me for the lack of updates; the last couple of weeks of the semester have been hellishly unforgiving. But now I’m on sem break and I have a digicam, which means I can make more picture posts.

When my sister came home from Baguio with my parents, I felt a little bad when she showed off her ukay-ukay finds. Ukay shopping basically means shopping at secondhand/vintage stores, where shirts go as low as 60 pesos (approx $1 US dollar) and dresses cost about 100 pesos ($2 US dollars). Ukay-ukay is a Visayan term that literally means “to dig through” (I think). It used to be that secondhand clothes were kept in the boxes they came in and when you shopped for them, you had to dig through piles and piles of clothes to find something good. Sometimes, clothes are still kept in piles in ukay stores, but the nicer and more expensive items are placed in hangers. I have to admit that about half my clothes come from ukay but you can’t really tell which ones they are–they look just as good as mall-bought clothes, except you have to wash ukay clothes before you can wear them due to the dust they accumulate.

Anyway, I didn’t have to feel bad for long because today, I went ukay shopping at Cubao my friends Kristel, Tish, Kimmy. I had no idea that there were so many ukay stores in that area and sold stuff at prices lower than in Baguio! Five hours of shopping later, I ended up with:

3 tops
4 (beautiful) dresses
1 tare panda stuffed toy
1 pair of tare panda boxer shorts
1 pair of skinny jeans (perfect fit)
1 pair of black moccassins

Total spent: 1 thousand pesos (approx. $25 US dollars)

I’d love to post pictures of my ukay finds, but I don’t want people to see me and go, “Hey, isn’t that the dress you bought for 70 pesos?” when I wear them out. :p Besides, they smell like mothballs and need to be washed. I’m very very very happy with my finds and the amount I paid for them. I must go back there again!

I couldn’t take pictures of the streets of Cubao and the ukay-ukay stores because my hands were full of plastic bags and I really didn’t want to whip my digital camera out and beg to be mugged. Instead, I shall post pictures of us when we took a break at this art gallery/cafe called The Chunky Far-Flung Gallery. The food was great (and cheap!) and they sold these really adorable (but expensive) vinyl toys from Japan. I’d love to tell you all where it is, except, er, I don’t know where it is. o_o It’s in one of those side streets in Cubao, near Gateway.

Unfortunately I don’t have a very interesting typhoon story to tell. My parents picked my sister and I up at the dorm at the ungodly hour of 8:30 because the typhoon was supposed to hit Metro Manila at noon and my mom didn’t want us stranded at the dorm with no food. The moment I got back to the house I went back to sleep, and woke up at noon to the sound of the wind screaming outside my bedroom window. A couple of minutes before I woke up, the huge tree branch (see the picture above) from the tree outside fell on our fence and gracefully decorated the lawn. I hate that I missed seeing that happen.

The ridiculous strength of the storm brought the whole Luzon back into the Dark Ages (aka there was no electricity anywhere; though I know some people may think that the Philippines doesn’t need a huge power outage to be in the Dark Ages, what with our being an uncivilized third world country and all). After a day, I gave up on making little candle wax statues so I ended up staying over a friend’s condo in Makati which had electricity, courtesy of the swanky building’s generator. Naturally I didn’t use the bright lights and the computer to do anything productive, and as a result I am cramming for a test tomorrow. XD

Sunday was spent resting and helping my parents get rid of the fallen tree branch on the lawn. It’s too bad my parents hired some random people to clear it out later that afternoon. There went my career as professional ax-woman. Of course, it didn’t help that the random people offered their services after they spent a few seconds watching me doing a rather awful job and hacking away at the wood.

The billboards have been cleared off the main roads and highways now (I think) and everything is back to normal. If it weren’t for all the uprooted trees and leaves all over school, you wouldn’t be able to tell that a storm just hit this crazy city last week. I hear another one might come in a few days, but I seriously hope it misses Metro Manila. I just want to get this stupid semester over with already.