Giving juicing another chance

Or the other way around cos it's really me who doesn't want to give up on losing weight the easy (but expensive) way. Last week I ordered a 3 day juice cleanse package from Pure Jus. And in fairness, it's one of the best tasting blends I've ever tasted. Sly Diet still tops the list unless they've changed ingredients. I also tried Sexy Detox last month and it sucked big time cos I think they gave me expiring bottles. Not three days in the chiller and it smells rotten at the lid. Eew. Do not buy there. Their Hulk Green is slimy and gross (which is weird cos it's not the first time I ordered the hulk green. This last one just tasted repulsive), the only drink I enjoyed was their Grape Jolt.

Anyway, I'm on my 3rd day of taking Pure Jus and I haven't lost weight lol. But that's because I can't hold my cravings. On my first day I cheated a lot already, eating snacks with my juices. It wasn't a pure juice diet for me but I sure didn't eat a lot that day. I mean, even you combined all my Day 1 cheats (2 packs of crackers, half a brownie, 2 small cheese bread, 1 pandesal, banana, this is embarrassing, mango caramel bar, daing, I should stop, and corn soup), it's still not halfway the amount of food I ingest on a regular day. Argh, why is it so hard to eat less.

Disappointing as it seems, that's how it went for the next two days. I already ate rice on my second day in the form of two onigiris from Family Mart. On the third day my self-control became worse as I ate two rice meals. haha. I should feel bad about myself after wasting almost ₱6,000 in hopes of shedding off even a pound, but for some reason I don't. Does juicing make you this optimistic? Or did 6k just seem like barya to me? Charot on the latter of course. :P
I can attest though that I felt better, albeit not lighter, than how I usually feel working the graveyard shift. I wasn't sleepy at work (though I was expecting I should as a form of side effect) and my mind was active. I DIDN'T CRAVE FOR COFFEE. Day 1 was my proudest day, cos I only ate snacks throughout the day and my tummy didn't fill up that much. I think I could follow up on this!

2 out of the 6 bottles I have to take everyday are lemon maple juices, which are very easy to make. I think for my next attempt at making fad diets work, I should retry the lemonade diet and modify it so that I get to eat solid foods still. Day 1 kindof worked for me in a way cos I drink and eat lightly every 2 hours.

Now that I've disclosed my future diet plans, let's forget about it.

Buffalo's Wings N' Things

Hey! Long time no food post!

I'll get straight to the point, Buffalo's Wings n Things serves the hottest sauce in the history of sauces. But that's coming from someone who'll run at the scent of Tabasco, so don't take me seriously lol. My boyfriend, however, loves spicy foods and wanted to know if their spiciest of 1,000,000 SHU measures up to the chili sauce the siomai vendor sells at their church. Spoiler: it does.

Scoville Heat Units (SHU) is a unit of measurement that determines how spicy a chili pepper is. The higher the hotter. Record holder for world's hottest pepper right now is the Carolina Reaper, rated 2.2 million SHU. Tabasco is rated at 30,000 - 50,000 SHU, Jalapeno at 3,500 - 10,000 SHU, and Pimento at 100-1,000 SHU. Can you imagine how 1 million SHU tastes like? You couldn't taste fire.

I have very low tolerance for spicy foods but I got curious when Jeckie ordered Ultimate Wingsanity (the spiciest on the menu). What could be so spicy that you had to sign a waiver to relieve the restaurant of any liability related to a possible suffering? So I poked a bit into his plate just to try it out, and well...

IT WAS HELL. The spiciness lingered for hours and that's just a teeny tiny drop of their hottest sauce.

No wonder they require you to sign a waiver before taking on their extremely hot chicken wings (but not really cos we had to remind them about it, and they served us tenders cos they didn't have wings yet that hour).

Here's a peek at the menu and the waiver. They have over 10 signature sauces arranged in increasing spiciness. Take your pick, I chose one of the mildest, Chipotle Lime cos I'm lame like that.

Chipotle Lime

And Jeckie took the hottest on the list,

Ultimate Wingsanity

and earned bragging rights with it!

They have a promo every 2pm-5pm where you get a plate of chicken plus NY dirty rice for just ₱99. Super good deal! My meal reminded me of a deconstructed chicken burrito. Their salsa is amazing!

Complete menu:

Will definitely come back!

Buffalo's Wings N' Things

SM North Edsa Annex, UGF

KDramarama

In between watching my scripts run and obsessively refreshing the messages tab to check the errors, I heaved a sigh and figured life is only as interesting as I make it to be. In short, I'm bored and out of things to do to break the seemingly dragging routine that is my day to day (night to night to be exact) job.

Source: viki.com

After Descendants of the Sun, I didn't know what to do to keep the fleeting feeling the show has brought me, I figured it's mostly because I adore Joong-Ki so I watched Innocent Man, if only to satiate my craving to see him more.

Source: marnelfundales.wordpress.com

Then, just like any series, it ended, and again, I didn't know what to do. But here I realized it wasn't really Joong-Ki, but Song-Song's overall chemistry that I've come to admire, so I learned I was just really looking for kilig. Seeing that there's no other Song-Song series out there. I decided to ignore my feelings for Joong-Ki and watch another high-rated drama as suggested by KissAsian.

Source: dramafever.com

Cheese in the Trap definitely goes to my favorite KDrama list. The story is engaging, stressful at times, and I hated the lead guy so much 'cos he's manipulative, creepy, mysterious, and is borderline psychotic. That's why the second guy syndrome (when you prefer the other guy more than the lead guy) is so strong with this one! Anyway, when it ended, I didn't feel the need to watch anymore dramas cos work was getting more demanding.

Then my life suddenly went to a stall. When did I become so heavily glued to watching KDramas that my entire life literally stops when my mind isn't in anyeong mode? For a while I was even trying to learn to write in Korean. FTR, I learned to write Korea in Korean! That's as far as it goes haha.

Anyway, after a while (one week and counting) of not watching any drama, I've managed to put my mind to another diversion, my favorite of all... DRAWING! K. Will be posting an art dump soon (or not cos I may be tamad).

Happy weekend goyz!

What's on my desk?

One of the Skillshare classes I'm taking is Kate Bingaman-Burt's Drawing Collections: Illustrating Stories through Taxonomy. In her class we are to produce a collection of illustrations that tell a story about ourselves. We are to make two sets; this is the first I came up with just by watching the first couple of videos and browsing the completed projects.

Finished output

In terms of following instructions, this output is totally wrong, but nevertheless let me take you to the process hehe

The collection I decided to draw was the stuff on my office desk, you're supposed to draw each item on a big sheet, add labels, color it using whatever medium, scan it, and post process it using Photoshop. After doing all those, you can combine and layout all of the items in a single large canvas and marvel at the story you've made a bunch of things convey.

Sadly, here's what I did: I drew them all together on a postcard sized pad and colored the items using watercolor. Then I took a picture of it and edited using whatever app my tablet has. I forgot about the labels cos there isn't any space left.

Pencil outlines

Colored in using watercolor

Outlined digitally

I'm happy with the output, for one, it took me of out the creative slump I've always planned to escape from but never really got the motivation to. And also, I'm less afraid of watercolor now lol.

But then, I should have been more patient and watched all the videos before turning in an output.

Another thing,

There should be no shame in digital post processing, I know. But my finished work was more digital than traditional and sometimes I'm afraid of putting it out 'cos I would be ashamed to show the less stellar but original version. I don't know, but enhancing artworks using Photoshop feels like a stab to my creativity. Do models feel this way when their bodies are shopped for magazine covers?

I was very reluctant to apply filters and adjust brightness and contrast because I thought I will lose the integrity of the piece. But then I realized I was more afraid of screwing the piece by trying to enhance everything manually because there's no undo. :P

Case in point: I shouldn't care less

Virtual users

Ten minutes to go before we resume training. But this time, I'm not the one being trained. I'm posing as an understudy so I can take on tomorrow's class. Amazing. I never thought this day would come, not that I dream of it, that my role in the team is stepping up to not just minding my own business but teaching potential teammates too.

It's quite a deal for me, not big, but a deal nonetheless. If anything, I want to tick off bullet after bullet on that friggin' competency framework chuchu the management invented to make it harder (or easier, haven't checked) for us to get promoted. It's pretty stressful, but if I don't make myself cut out for the next step by next year, well, there's jobstreet and the end of my bond. If you know what I mean ;)

Virtual users is just one of the terms we're teaching on this class.

Bids

While waiting for my script to run long enough without throwing up errors, let me waste some time here. This week, I was busy struggling to balance my work and life. Work being my daily QA job, and life -- watching Song Joong-Ki. Hm.

Joong-Ki is pretty much what my life is about for a week now. If I'm not obsessing about the actresses he's been linked to, I'm actively waiting for the next episode of Descendants of the Sun -- by watching his other dramas (right now: Innocent Man).

I know this'll die over time. See, I grew tired of thinking about Tom Wlaschiha after Season 2 of Game of Thrones. On his return to Season 5, I thought my obsession would come back but no. No sparks took off. Oh well, the man has brought good feelings and a girl is grateful.

My record of obsessions says a lot about me, I've learned. One is that absence makes my heart grow farther, and the other is that I'm not one to wait.

To be honest, I'm feeling bored and pathetic. 11 minutes and counting for the script I'm running. This needs to hold for at least 15 minutes before I can confidently march out of this frkn office and face the unbelievably scorching 8am sun. I hate the summer heat.

I don't even have the strength to think of happy thoughts for this week's Happy List. That's why I'm feeling pathetic. Didn't anything nice happen this week? Oh sure there are, but at the risk of oversharing I'll just keep them to myself and God. Oh God, aren't you tired of the mundane things I keep yapping about.

Not to be totally random, the script I'm running has something to do with creating bids, hence the title.

Yosh, 16 mins. Let's abort the script and go.

The Happy List (vol. 1)

Since I hardly publish on a Friday let's just plain call this the happy list.

1. Got my copy of Reese Lansangan's album, Arigato, Internet
2. Got my hair colored (light golden brown) at L'Oreal's free hair color application at Landmark Trinoma (which is now permanently installed at the mall)
3. Mr. Kimbob's Gimbap
4. Coco Milk Tea's Salty Cream Milk Tea + Pudding <3
5. Daddy briefly taught me to drive atras abante while waiting for mommy to finish her appointment. ORAAAYT!
6. Bought a super long pillow for the bed, and a new pillow for the office (to cover my tummy lol)
7. SM Cubao is now my top 2 favorite SM. Makati comes first.
8. Earned another free ride from Uber!
9. Watching Descendants of the Sun because Song Joong-ki! Best thing about this week!
10. Getting inspired to take classes at Skillshare (cos my almost free premium account is expiring in 2 months!)
The challenging thing about this list is not abandoning it on a week when nothing extraordinarily positive happened. It's nice having to look back and kindof force yourself to consider the little things just to finish this post. Looks like I did have a happy week! :D Thank you Lord! :D