Staycation at Sofitel Philippine Plaza Manila

Jeckie and I celebrated our first anniversary at Sofitel, mainly because we wanted to eat at Spiral haha. Dinner there costs ₱3,500 nett per head, so that's ₱7,000 for the two of us. A room, on the other hand costs around ₱7,500 with breakfast at Spiral included, so you know?! Nagbook na lang kami. Sulit din naman haha. Btw, we booked via Trip.com. I've been to Sofitel a couple of times before with my parents. I wasn't too impressed on our last time there because the rooms look super old na as in the furnishings and carpeting look so outdated. But now?

Ganon parin. Charot! The rooms look updated, and it smells super nice, like when you pass by a Mia Maison kiosk haha. Yass there's some aromatherapy going on in our room and I love it kasi pag pasok mo parang amoy bago lagi kahit ang kalat sa loob hahaha.

The room smells clean and everything looked neat and polished. I gathered that most hotel layouts look this way: closet, minibar, and bathroom along the entrance hallway, then opening up to the main area is the bed on one side and a long TV desk that continues as a work desk on the end. There's also a small chaise nook beside the bed. I love this layout! Truly master bedroom goals!

I'm I'm not mistaken all guest rooms at Sofitel have a balcony. Ours is overlooking the old Manila Film Center and this newly built dampa market called Seascape Village. We tried to see what's going on there the next day but we were disappointed by the lack of variety. It's a seafood haven, and most of the restaurants are Chinese, some of them aren't open for business yet.

Our view on the right is Manila Bay. Great sight, bad scent.

Back to the room...

So, they've got a closet with a bathrobe, disposable slippers, iron and ironing board, and a safety vault. Note that the balcony door is equipped a some sensor that turns off the AC when it's open so make sure to always close it! Also, what a nice energy-saving feature!

The minibar has some complimentary treats like coffee, tea, and water. Althaus tea is good! I gathered that you can always order for some more water and you're allowed to bring snacks in, they won't mind. On our second night we ordered through KFC delivery. They're not allowed up so we had to meet them at the parking lot.

The bathroom is also super nice and immaculately clean. It's a decent size with a spacious enough shower and vanity area. Their toiletries used to be L'Occitane but now they've changed to Lanvin. I personally prefer the former haha. As usual, hotel bathrooms are definitely goalssss.

They've got shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, soap, body lotion, toothbrush set, shower cap, nail file, cotton rounds, and earbuds.

Our main source of entertainment is Netflix. Sofitel doesn't have it, but they have strong free wifi and we brought a laptop and an HDMI cable so voila, we were able to Netflix and chill.

Surprise!

I didn't expect this kind of welcome but their staff gave us a small token in celebration of our anniversary. Sweet!

And when we dined at Spiral that night, they also gave us this freaking delicious cake! Huhu. I did mention in my confirmation email with them that we're staying for our anniversary, but I never expected them to actually take note. What a nice gesture!

Dinner (and breakfast haha) at Spiral will be a whole different story, wait for it on my next post! Ang masasabi ko lang, it's the beeeeeest buffet restaurant in Manila.

Top 3 Reasons Why Socks Make Amazing Gifts

Photo from Pixabay

There are a lot of people who say that they do not want to get socks. That is, until they are in a situation wherein they realize that they do not have any socks anymore. Socks have the tendency to get lost very easily. Even if you do not lose both, you might lose one sock. This makes the lone sock unusable. Unless, you are creative and you can do something with the sock or you love wearing mismatched socks. Some people genuinely love socks and would ask for socks from the people that they know for different occasions. The gift-giver would greatly love this for sure. If you are not convinced yet whether you should give socks this Christmas, these are just a few details to remember:

1. Socks are inexpensive.

You know that you do not want to spend too much money on gifts. The economy is not at its best right now. You want to have enough money for your needs. You can check the best sock of the month club for the best socks that you can purchase right now. A lot of the items that they will list down will be inexpensive but lovely.

2. They are needed.

It was mentioned earlier that most people do not realize that they need socks until they realize that they want to have socks immediately. You would look for socks when you are feeling cold and you would like to keep your feet warm. Socks are also needed when you need to wear your favorite rubber shoes. If you want to learn more details about the latest socks for women, check out women’s sock of the month club.

3. They can be worn by people of all ages.

There are some items that will not be age appropriate anymore to people of certain age. For example, large hoop earrings may not be recommended anymore to women over the age of 60. Some would still wear it but in smaller sizes. Socks can be worn by anyone no matter what their age is.

Do you agree that socks can become amazing gifts? You can sign up for men’s sock subscription to learn more details.

Unleash your inner champ with Taiwan Excellence gaming rigs

If you have ever imagined a gamer's dream room, it would possibly look like a hub full of enormous action figures, dramatic led lights, and multiple wide gaming monitors. There are no rules on how cyber athletes should decorate their corner, but setting up a comfortable and modern playground helps you sharpen your competitive edge further. If you haven't had the chance to remodel your gaming space into its best version, Taiwan Excellence brings the most advanced devices that can help you unleash your inner champion within.

Take gaming experience to the extreme. The Acer Predator X27 monitor is equipped with HDR ultra technology, which gives the darkest blacks and brightest lights for a more realistic game. Whether you are inside a cave or atop a mountain, the monitor’s stunning pictures help you clearly see the gaming terrains for a more immersive battlestation.

Couple your premium monitor with Gigabyte's TOP Gaming Motherboard. With Smart Fan 5, you can seamlessly juggle three games at a time, or play while listening to the music without overheating the processor. 

Bring the adventure outside. MSI introduces its GE63VR Raider, a high performance gaming notebook you can use anywhere. It has 120Hz panel with ultra-fast 3ms response time that allows the device to keep up with rapid movements. Moreover, it has enormous surround sound speakers that provide a wraparound feel as the action starts.

On top of these, MSI also crafted the VR One - the Virtual Reality (VR) backpack PC. This helps gamers avoid tangled cables, and distract them for their battles. 

Approved by NVIDIA, a market leader in the design of graphics processing units, this equipment is exceptionally suitable for gaming scenarios such as theme parks, cockpit simulations, and military trainings. Due to its unmatched performance, it has been selected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as a training equipment for astronauts, and by Sony and Bandai as the go-to option for their VR projects.

Redesign your gaming station with Thermaltake's View 31 Tempered Glass Edition Mid Tower Chassis. This processor house features a dual durable 4 mm thick tempered glass window with colorful led lights to set your mood. Aside from its stylish front, it has a powerful dual graphics processing unit (GPU) that ensures crisp visuals.

Channel your inner beast and conquer your enemies with these Taiwan Excellence-approved gadgets. These innovations are carefully evaluated and sealed by TAITRA with the guidance from the Bureau of Foreign Trade to promote Taiwan's revolutionary products.

For more information about its accredited products, visit taiwanexcellence.org, or like Taiwan Excellence on Facebook. 

4 tips to getting the best car insurance provider in the Philippines

Photo from Pixabay

Getting a car insurance in the Philippines is imperative for every car owner. In fact it's mandatory by law for vehicle owners to secure a CTPL insurance as a prerequisite to LTO motor vehicle registation. There's no denying the benefits of having one though. Car insurance helps offset a huge amount of damages whenever an incident occurs. Depends on the coverage of your policy, you may get benefits for accident and death, get legal fee provisions, get repair coverage, and many more additional add-ons.

But where do you begin? Here are 4 tips you may find helpful in getting a car insurance policy in the Philippines.

1. Get a reputable provider

A good way to look for reputable providers is to really just ask around. There are tons of non-life insurance companies in the Philippines and some of the most popular ones are Asian Life, Malayan Insurance, FPG, and BPI/MS.

A reputable provider is one that has a good track record in handling applications and processing claims. This means whatever you apply for with them is delivered on time and with minimal hassles.

2. Compare with other providers

I found that the easiest way to shop and look around for insurance companies is to go online and request for a free quote. Sites like MoneyMax.ph and eCompareMo.com offer real-time car insurance quotes from different providers that would help you decide which one to get. It's also a good way for you to get savings of up to ₱10,000 depending on your car model. Getting a quote is easy. All you have to do is go to the website and fill out a form describing your car and current insurance company. You'll be asked for your vehicle brand, the year, model, and series, as well as the region and city where your car is registered. And that's it, in just seconds you'll be greeted with a page filled with a list of insurance companies that could cater to your needs.

3. Learn how to process claims

Should you get into an unfortunate incident, it's important for you to know how to go about processing an insurance claim. The easier, the better. Some insurance companies may appear more strict than others, but basically the official documents you would need to file a claim are as follows:

1. Police Report or a Notarized Affidavit
2. Driver's License with Official Receipt (photocopies)
3. Your vehicle's LTO OR CR
4. Photos/videos of the damage/s to the car with the LTO plates of the vehicle

Make sure to always have the number of your agent or insurance provider handy because they should know about any incident immediately.

4. Look for reviews and feedback

Aside from getting competitive quotes online, it also helps to look for reviews and feedback from actual customers. From the list of providers you got from your online search, try to narrow down your list based on price point and amount of coverage, then dig deeper into these companies by looking for customer feedback online. To help, join local car groups in Facebook or online forums.

It's bad enough that you got into an accident, but to be faced with a lengthy claims process because of a lack of system adds more frustration to your situation. Get a can insurance provider that really cares about its clients and wouldn't make it so hard for you to have your car repaired or checked.

My Prima Sassy Belle Haul and Review

Hey guys! Sharing with you my first impressions of some of Prima Sassy Belle's bestselling beauty products, plus one of their slimming beverages. If you know me, you know that I suck at routines, and that no matter how hard I try to stick to one I always end up abandoning it somehow, specially if it gets in the way of me going to bed immediately when I get home. 

But here we go again, sampling products to consider adding to my irregular beauty regimen!

Prima Sassy Belle is a fairly new direct selling company that offers beauty and wellness products. They were established on September 2016 and has since grown to having over a hundred retailers all over the country. They're a hundred percent Filipino owned and they take pride in producing high quality products that are FDA approved and Halal certified (among other certs), guaranteeing that their items are 100% safe to use.

That said, let's get on to the review! We'll focus on 3 of their products, the 3R Set, Sheer-C Serum, and Curvetrim juice. Let's go!

Prima 3R Set

₱ 710

The 3R Set consists of a Kojic soap, cleansing toner, night cream, and whitening cream. 3R stands for Refresh, Restore, and Rejuvenate and it claims to help improve the condition of your skin upon regular use.

The Kojic soap acts as your cleanser. I personally love the scent, it's super mild and smells like it could really clean. And unlike other kojic soaps I've tried, this doesn't dry too much that it stings. I was surprised at how pink this soap is. Nagsusumigaw sya mga besh haha. 

The cleansing toner, sadly, is something that I would replace with other toners. Yung milder. It smells like your regular toner, like Eskinol ganon, and it stings. I have some breakout on my face and putting an alcohol-based toner on it isn't really advisable so I'd skip this. 

Depends on the time of the day you are to use either the night cream or the whitening dream, funny how it wasn't labeled a day cream haha.

The night cream is lightweight and lotiony, and a little goes a long way. This acts as your moisturizer after putting the toner on. The whitening cream on the hand is thicker and whiter and leaves a light cast on your face that you need to blend well with your other makeup if you intend to go out. It acts as a sunscreen to help protect your face from harmful UV rays.

There's much to improve in terms of packaging and overall branding. Everything came in plastic and the lids on the creams kindof don't shut properly.

Sheer-C Serum

₱ 340

Sheer-C serum comes in a small push button dropper bottle that's really cute! The serum smells like orange zest and helps to retexturize and smoothen the skin. I like how it smells and how it's not too oily on the face. My only issue is that it dries sticky so it feels weird on the face hehe.

Curvetrim Juice

₱ 260

Oh this was such a delight! This slimming juice is filled with key ingredients designed to help us feel fuller between meals. There's garcinia cambogia, green tea, spirulina, l-carnitine, grapeseed, gluta, and collagen. It also has kalamansi, blueberry, green tea, and grapeseed, making for such a unique flavor. 

Dissolve a sachet in 120ml cold water and enjoy. It tastes like strawberry kalamansi juice which is oddly refreshing as we've never tried that combo before. As for the slimming effects, I can't really say because we downed 4 sachets in a pitcher of cold water while feasting on chips. What a cheat haha.

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Aaaand that's it! For orders you may reach them on their Facebook page or Instagram.

Life Lately and infinite loops

I may have kindof recreated a bug at work that ran an infinite loop that created 40k++ records on our PROD database and impacted a page on my MANAGER'S timesheet.

It's not that bad though, my manager knows of the issue. We've worked out a plan to prevent the issue from happening again (implement better data validation both on UI and backend), but the problem also piqued our curiosity on how infinite loops work.

Being that I'm more interested in the mystery of these loops, I want to uncover what happens during an infinite loop first before I actually apply the bug fixes. I'm sorry! But in my defense, my boss was also curious! Scenario:
I submitted a form that inserts records on a database based on the date range I provided on the UI form. Date range starts on December 14, 2018 and ends on September 21, 2018. Yep it's backwards and that's the issue because the backend took it. Please don't comment on the quality of our code. HAHA

Now, backend logic would loop through the dates on a daily increment and run an insert statement per date. Problem is, since the end date is a past date, the loop will never reach it, thus creating an infinite loop.

The bug created 41,046 records that dates back to December 14, 1901 all the way to January 19, 2038. And for some reason it left out April 1995 to December 2018. So what the hell happened?

Thank God for Google because all of my questions were answered.

I learned that January 19, 2038 is an important date in software development.

January 19, 2038 would be the maximum value a datetime variable in a 32bit integer data type can handle.

Now adding 1 day to that would be an abomination. Datetime couldn't read January 20, 2038. The variable would overflow, wrapping it in a negative value, which the system would interpret as... *drumroll please*

December 14 freaking 1901.

So that's what happened.

The infinite loop started on December 14, 2018 (input start date) and inserted records all the way to January 19, 2038. When it got past that day, December 14, 1901 came next on the calendar and on and on it went until April 1995. Or more accurately, after 10mins of running over the loop -- which is the default remote query timeout value set on our SQL server.

So today... I learned about the 2038 bug, a remake of the Y2K bug where 32bit datatypes storing datetime values would overflow and reset to 1901. Hopefully we already know what to do. Google has a lot of info on it already. And it's still 20 years from now, I wonder what I'd be doing then hehe.

Case closed.

Back to the real life lately...

I, uhhh, have a new bag!

My new everyday bag with Velma from my old Kipling

I'm retiring my 2-year old bag because the fabric tore somehow huhu. My husband bought me a new bag, and it's the most expensive bag I've owned so far (even more expensive than my luggage, apparently). Thank youuuuu my love! This counts as my anniv, birthday, and Christmas gift already so a girl shall ask no more hahahaha.

I was so torn when I found my everyday bag got torn (pun intended). I kept looking for the same model in Kipling stores but I couldn't find it. Either it's phased out or I may have actually brought an imitation one haha. It's a Kipling Anette I bought from TJ Maxx in Minnesota, it's kindof an outlet store for overrun things but I can't be so sure hahaha. Anyway. No luck finding something similar here so I looked at other stores. Never found something I liked at SM Dept store except for those parang Pac-safe anti-theft bags that are overly expensive, so pass. The next day I tried looking at the The Travel Club just to spy on cute bags to search on Shopee/Lazada, I don't care for imitation I just want something nice and sturdy haha. Then I found this...

I love the functional aesthetic of Hedgren bags but it's one of those super unjustifiably expensive things I'll only get to mindlessly buy if my pay grade was at 6-digits you know? But there it was looking all nice and perfect. So I took it to Shopee, Lazada, Zalora (baka may discount), and FB Marketplace to look for this one model I like. It's Hedgren Appeal, the one with a 13inch compartment. But to no luck. Nobody sells a good enough replica of it. :(

I went to the store for the second time before heading home just to take a final look at it and decide if it's worth the occasional splurge. This is an item I definitely cannot afford without maxing myself out, you know what I mean? Like you have extra but it's not meant for such kinda bags. So my husband rescued me! YEHEY! I have a new bag!

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Uhhh, so that's the highlight of my week lol.

Friday's 10 Happy Things // 5

Hey goys, here I am squeezing my brain for happy things, let's go!

1. I loved the sermon last Sunday, actually no, I uhm, needed it. Worship is for God. It's all about Him. He is the audience, and we are the performers.
2. It's swelday today yeheeeeyy
3. Sierra Burgess is a Big Loser is out today. Excited to watch it.
4. Also excited to continue episode two of Designated Survivor.
5. I uhm, designed something quickly for the boss today. Aaaand I learned how to warp text! Finally? What kind of designer am I! Apparently I've been doing things the hard way, typing on a circular path instead of hitting the Text Warp tool. Thanks boss for the Photoshop tip!

Bebas Neue, Day Roman, Miama Nueva, Krinkes Decor

Pinterest, The Noun Project, Mockup World

6. I finally ordered a dashcam. I got a Xiaomi Yi from Shopee for ₱1709 only because of the sale, free shipping voucher, and credit card discount hehe. Hopefully I can manage to install it properly without damaging my car lol, I just want the wires hidden properly help me Lord.

7. Was able to request a cashout for my below-threshold Nuffnang earnings (because they're closing down operations already)! Looking forward to it... the cashout I mean. I'm sad about Nuffnang closing down, I've a lengthy draft about it. :(

8. Also, got a PR posting request from Nuffnang too. Prolly the last I'm getting from them, but yey for the extra money.

9. Grocery tomorrow! I wish I could convince my husband that grocery shopping is fun :(

10. Costa iced mocha is delicious! I'm kindof building an iced mocha preference and so far from all the coffee shops I've tried, Nitro 7's still tops. Next comes Costa!

Happy weekend people! Excited for the next two weeks! :D