When I first met the man, who later on became my husband, I was pleased to discover that he cared a lot about how he looks and smells like. Grooming is a priority for him. He may come from a long commute from work but he can still manage to look presentable and mabango. He wouldn’t just spray on any scent. It has to be something that is not too strong nor too sweet. It’s a plus point for me because I have allergic rhinitis and I couldn’t bear the smell of strong perfume neither can I tolerate the floral ones.

I am thankful for spending my life with a man who cares a lot about grooming as much as he cares about hygiene. At least I wouldn’t have to come home with Stinky Pete. In fact, he is more conscious about his grooming than I am with mine. He has regular trips to the salon for a pedicure every other week, a monthly appointment with his derma for a facial, sometimes with a diamond peel and a haircut with his trusted barber. I don’t find it vain for a man to engage in these habits. I consider them as essentials for everyone regardless of sex. Okay, may be a facial and a diamond peel are optional.

Kudos to whoever it was who coined the term “metrosexual.” Metrosexuals are indeed the epitome of modern men. They are not afraid to take on steps that would improve their appearance. They are bold enough to go to a salon and avail of services that previously, only women indulge in.

So, how do we preserve the metrosexuals aka The Modern Man? I’d say we encourage them to care about their appearance as much as they go crazy with cars. Stop teasing them about being vain whenever they purchase grooming effects such as Kojie.san Men. It’s a deo and spray which perfectly fits into a man’s utilitarian mindset.

Visit the Facebook fan page of Kojie.san Men’s Club and find out how you can be man enough while making an effort to look good and smell nice. 

For 4 days, I was obliterated from the blogoshpere. No thanks to my provider for taking my site (and that of my husband’s) down without notifying us just because they need to migrate their servers. Their customer service for the past 3 days was far from being acceptable. I am thankful that today, they seem to have changed their mind and decided to do their job and be efficient at it.

Enough about them.  What’s important is that my site is now up and running again 🙂 I may not have that many readers yet but my online space is so precious to me. This is where I share things with my friends and other people and not be limited with 140 or 188 characters.

Dear PhilHosting, don’t ever pull that plug again without informing your subscribers. We have paid for our domain and hosting services. We deserve only the best after-sales support.

Instapatrol was just launched formally last Friday but it has already piqued the interest of the Anti-Epal Movement to use the app to advance their campaign. As many of us know, the movement is geared towards calling the attention of politicians who shamelessly engage in self-promotion at the expense of the taxpayers’ money. With Instapatrol, more and more people can report about such misappropriations that several government officials are guilty of. Hopefully, these politicians would take down their posters as soon as the matter has been brought to their attention.

The news about Instapatrol and Anti-Epal’s partnership was featured in Inquirer.net yesterday and on its broadsheet today.

Kwan Initiatives, the group behind this social responsibility app, is currently working on integrating the Anti-Epal button in both Anroid and iOs. So, the next time you see that poster with a huge photo and name of your councilor announcing his latest project, bring out your mobile phone and take a snap using Instapatrol.

Instagram is like Instax film for web. Instapatrol is like Instagram for social responsibility. It’s for people who are tired of being apathetic and who wanted to spread awareness with the things happening around them. It’s the brainchild of four mobile web developers who intended to create an app with the purpose of helping the community. The group is composed of Randy Valencia (yes, he’s The Husband :)), Dinjo Constantino, Teejay Temperante and Maoi Manzano.

Instapatrol is initially available for Android users. Just log on to Google Play and download the app for free. The app will soon be customized and made available for iOS. Take a look at this easy-to-use app which aims to tap the inner reporter in every Pinoy.

Instapatrol was formally launched at the DevNet1000 milestone meetup held last Friday, September 14 at Dillingers 1903 in Greenbelt 3, Makati City. The event was sponsored by Smart Communications, Inc. and gave other developers the opportunity to showcase their respective apps. Aside from Instapatrol, the other apps featured include Gorated.ph, MRTtrackr, Science Q & A, and MoodSee.

Congrats again to my husband and his teammates 🙂 After several months of conceptualizing and tweaking their first group app, it is now available for every Android user to download. Mag-Instapatrol na! 

Triumphs of any kind must be celebrated. Big or small, they are still blessings and we therefore should be thankful of. One such triumph is being featured on the website of my fellow web and DIY addict, Mommy Cow.

I was so thankful to Mommy Cow for pushing motivating me to get back into blogging and become a Nuffnang publisher like her. She might not know it, but she has inspired me to write about anything and everything that concerns motherhood. Try reading her blog and her posts will surely have the same effect on you.

To my dear Mommy Cow, thanks again for showing love and appeciation for my blogging comeback 🙂

And these are serious yaya issues. I am writing on behalf of my friends who had unpleasant encounters with people whom they have chosen to entrust their babies with.

Friend #1 texted me last night to inform me that she finally decided to let go of her new yaya. Previously, she already asked me to pray for that yaya because she sensed that something is not right. That time, I advised her to heed her gut feel because a woman’s intuition is right most of the time. I told her that it’s our gift. She took note of my advice but she opted to let her stay since the hired help looked easier to work with. Then came the incident yesterday, when yaya let a stranger into their house to look at my friend’s newborn baby. Yaya didn’t even bother to ask for her permission even when she was at home that time. Imagine my friend’s reaction! So Friend #1 called yaya’s attention and spoke to her calmly. It was yaya who got angry. At that instant, my friend terminated her services and told her to leave. Despite of what happened,my friend was thankful that  that incident happened while she was at home. She was able to keep her little angel (and their house) safe and protected from people who do not have the best intentions for her.

Friend #2 is a work-at-home mom. She has a son who is barely a year old and her husband is also working full-time for another company. She did not have a yaya since her baby was born up until last month. She decided to hire one because she is now finding it difficult to take care of her growing baby while working. Her new yaya was a referral of another helper. The woman was notorious for being a war freak but my friend decided to give her a chance because she thought that if she would be nice to her, she would be good, too. Yaya barely completed her first work week and did just a few chores. She left one day and when she came back, she informed my friend that she is pregnant. My friend didn’t mind it and figured that she needed the job all the more. Friend #2 was so patient with her despite of her frequent absences. The last straw came yesterday when yaya failed to report for work again with no SMS to inform my friend. She just sent her mother-in-law late in the afternoon to tell my friend that she can’t come in due to pregnancy symptoms. The old woman insisted that she work in place of yaya and that she would start the following day. Friend #2 just told her that that she would have to consult her husband. But my friend had resolved not to hire her. She would just take care of her son while looking for another helper. I also gave her an unsolicited opinion: It wouldn’t be safe for the whole family of a stranger to work for them and know everything about their household, most especially if they are the kind with dubious character.

We  all need to be careful when choosing people to be part of our household. Our life, specifically our safety, highly depends on them. I think it would help if we would make NBI and police clearances as part of our requirements prior to hiring them. It would be better if they could also provide us with their most recent medical exam just to be sure that they won’t pass on any disease to our family especially to our little ones whose immune system are not yet fully developed.

Each day is different. There are times when negativity would show up. We either get into a not-so-nice situation or encounter pessimists. Each time, we have a choice on how to react. We can choose to be affected and be a grumbling grouch or shun the negativity with a smile and put on a sunny disposition. I hope that we will always find a resolve to be the latter.

Here are tips on how to bash that nega away:

• Put on your earphones and tune in to lively music.
• Listen to an inspirational podcast.
• Read blogs of positive, creative and happy people.
• Find websites that would stimulate your passion.
• Talk to friends who are oozing with positivism. Catching up on them on GTalk will do.

Before we got married, my husband and I signed up for credit cards that would earn us Mabuhay Miles. We were so thrilled of having to spend nothing for our airfare and so we always shop with that plastic. As we have accumulated a thousand points for each card, hubby called the hotline to inquire how we can convert our points into miles. He was disappointed when he learned that we need more than a thousand points to get a few miles. I was not happy about it too, since I’ve been wanting to use miles for our Singapore trip. We ended up flying on the cheapest airfare that we have found since we needed to shell out cash for our trip.

I consoled my husband and told him that we just keep on using the cards because we might accumulate points for a Boracay trip. Fast forward to today, our combined points were still not enough to buy a one-way trip. Ayayyay!

Just before lunch today, hubby shared a link to me via GTalk. It was an article about the SM and Asia Miles tie-up published in the online version of Philippine Daily Inquirer. I was excited to find out that earning miles using the SM Advantage Card was way easier. Every point gives you a mile. What’s good about it is that we only need 200 points to get miles. I was so giddy that I have already thought of an out-of-the-country destination for next year 😉

Asia Miles currently partners with the following carriers:

• Aer Lingus
• Air China
• Alaska Airlines
• American Airlines®
• British Airways
• Cathay Pacific Airways
• China Eastern Airlines
• Dragonair
• Finnair
• Gulf Air
• Iberia
• Japan Airlines
• Jet Airways
• LAN
• Mexicana Airlines
• Qantas Airways
• Royal Brunei Airlines
• Royal Jordanian Airlines
• S7 Airlines
• airberlin

Let’s go international! 😀

That is not the latest knock, knock joke, okay? I am talking about Coco’s latest concoction. He is my project budddy in the office and he often brings a liter of his own mix. He was very generous to offer me a glass of it each time especially when he learned that I’m preggy.

Today, I came in the office with that cold again. I saw Coco in the pantry and he asked me if I wanted to have juice. When he told me that it was apple and pear, my eyes lit up and I poured some on my tumbler. That mix was able to alleviate that nasty cold that I had the other day. That time, I drank a glass of salabat after finishing my serving of his juice. This morning, I added squeezes of calamansi into the apple and pear mix to add more Vitamin C. Again, it worked!

I delight in natural remedies for common illnesses especially now that I am infanticipating. I can’t just pop a pill into my mouth because very few medicines are safe for expecting moms like me. I rather err on the side of precaution than take risks to protect my baby. I thank God for health buffs like Coco 🙂

It has been raining since yesterday afternoon. I never really liked rain but I now love how it keeps the ground and everything around it wet. For me, it’s an answered prayer.

I asked God for the rain when I got irked with cigarette smoke last Friday evening. For someone who has allergic rhinits and pregnant for 4 months, having a whiff of that really annoys me. And so I peeked through our window to see where it was coming from. I saw two men smoking in front of our house, near our bedroom window to where I was. I looked at them hoping that they would go away. The one standing just looked at me. Really annoying! So I slammed the windows shut.

I then told hubby to remind me to keep that area wet before we go to sleep to discourage incosiderate men from smoking on other people’s territory. I silently prayed for rain to pour in every night so I wouldn’t have to go out and do it.

I hope that it would be sunny during the day and rainy at night.