Money diaries: A day in February

 I believe my expenses are a big reflection of who I am. So let’s go back to writing Money Diaries - a series wherein I document how much I spend every day in an attempt to describe how my days went. The last time I did this was seven years ago. And back then I was still going to the office 5x a week, also earning much less.

Let’s see how this week goes!

Monday (Feb 12) – ₱2,855

• Bag cleaning – ₱150
  • Had my sling bag cleaned at the laundry shop. For the first time haha. I never really clean my bags. Which sounds gross but I don’t know, I just don’t. The last time I tried to clean my own bag with a similar material (nylon), I ruined it by wringing it, so I knew I had to leave it to the pros. What’s 150 for a properly cleaned bag. If it comes out good, at least I know where to get my other bags cleaned.
• Juice cleanse – ₱2100
  • Like I mentioned in my previous post. I just purchased a 3-day juice cleanse to help detox my body and hopefully lose weight. I don’t intend to do a juice fast I just want the healthy juices to supplement me when I feel hungry.
• Parking – ₱110
  • Parking was full earlier in the office building so I had to go to pay parking. When a slot freed up in the evening I moved my car out. I was surprised about paying 110 cos that’s what I usually pay last year for the whole 9 hours, and I only stayed 4hrs. I guess they increased the rates already.
• Dinner at Mann Hann – ₱395
  • I had dinner at Mann Hann and ordered Lechon Macau with Rice which was pretty disappointing as it was just twice fried lechong kawali with mang tomas and plain rice. Couldn’t even switch to Yang Chow. And their house tea tastes like basahan. 10/10 would NOT recommend.
• Black Dragon Milk Tea – ₱100
  • Again, I couldn’t resist. Got my usual Black Dragon 0% sugar and loved it. If it’s any consolation I had to throw half of it because I couldn’t finish it anymore. I mean I feel like I’ve always felt this way about their serving size but I just couldn’t fathom throwing away food so I always finished it no matter what. I really want to conquer the mental aspect of losing weight, and part of it is not feeling bad about being unable to finish my food because sayang naman the serving. If it’s really good I’ll have it wrapped, otherwise I already paid for it and got my money’s worth so it shouldn’t be an issue. Lesson learned: Stop when you’re full.

Other household purchases I’m not adding cos we have a separate budget for it…

• We do groceries on Mondays and we spent ₱1869 for this week. Very conservative considering we didn’t get meat (cos I kept getting lazy last week so we ordered in most days) and yet I’m surprised we almost spent 2k today for what? Eggs, cereals, coffee, coffee filter, bread, avocadoes, conditioner, a lip balm, and dog food! Didn’t look much in our cart really.
• And because we didn’t reach 2,500 in groceries we had to pay 50 for parking haha.
• We also snacked before heading to the supermarket. I got vietnamese iced coffee (which tastes weirdly sour), Jeckie got buko shake. We shared kwek kwek, chicken balls, and cheese sticks. That was maybe worth ₱435. Our grocery budget covered it.
• Another thing we bought is Nexgard Spectra for Koomi. That’s ₱800. Monthly. Remind me to write a Koomi budget haha.
• My husband just booked an airbnb for his birthday and ordered grab for dinner tonight, so if I had to count that, he spent 21k today lol

I’d say Mondays are usually big for me in terms of spending because it’s when we do the groceries so normally we would eat out before shopping. And then I go to the office so I eat out as well. And because I’m out, sometimes I window shop. So you know, there’s so much tempation when I’m out.

And I hate it because it’s not like I have money to spare. I put almost everything on credit so when payday comes, all of my allowance goes to paying my credit card and I’m back to zero, charging everything to my card again. I’ve fallen into a vicious cycle of falling in debt every month, and relying on my next allowance to pay for everything. In my defence, I pay all my cards in full and before due. And quite frankly it’s very convenient living this way. But I also miss the feeling of having liquid money to spare. And sometimes I lose track of my spending and end up overspending and having to put items on installment. Much worse having to allot my future bonuses to paying credit card debt.

Oh gosh. I have a spending problem.

When will it end

I’m so broke right now but I just purchased a 3-day juice set to hopefully lose some weight this week. I’m trying to resolve cutting rice but now that I’m hungry all I can think about is eating big heavy rice meals.

As soon as I pay off my 60k worth vacuum I’ll have more clarity about my expenses. But you know it just keeps piling on! It’s already March which means it’s Jeckie’s birthday, and also my mom’s so there goes gastos!

I really really want to get my weight down but I’m just so fucking hungry all the time. It’s like dieting doesn’t work. Even if I don’t eat rice I know I won’t be able to resist bread, or pasta. Carbs in general. This sucks.

I’m trying to go back to regularly working out though. Planning to get a small floor bike to exercise my knees better. But you know, gastos lol.

Oof

 Daily writing prompt

What’s your favorite candy?

View all responses

I don’t know if a lozenge counts as a candy but my favorite one is Fisherman’s Friend Original.

---

Something’s wrong with my automation. There’s a missing step we forgot to put in the stored procedure that made the automation incomplete. And it’s already in production for what, two months now? T_T Oh my gosh.

I personally didn’t know there was another aspect to the automation until an issue was raised that users aren’t getting survey access after running the automation.

Hopped on the call with my SMEs and apparently they thought we were automating the UI so roles and surveys should be automatically given after hitting Save. We were executing this through the backend so I definitely needed to know what goes on after hitting Save aside from granting access. During testing we were able to catch the roles not being set so I’m not sure why we forgot about the surveys part.

I feel very accountable because on one hand I should’ve asked more? But seriously, it never occured to me. I should’ve asked for help on the test cases though just to make sure I’m not missing anything but I didn’t do anything. I made the test cases, ran it, my SME ran it. It passed.

Oh gosh I’ll probably get reprimanded for this. Like how could this have gotten to prod incomplete?

I’m scared.

I’ve done what needs to be done to resolve the issue. Which is really just raising tickets to get the stored procedure updated. But I probably still need some explaining to do. I feel really sorry because I wasn’t able to get the whole scope.

Wish me luck.

(￣m￣）

Today

It’s already Feb! Can’t wait til March to be honest. It’s when I get to have my compensation discussion with my manager. See how much salary increase I’ll be getting (if any), how much of my target bonus I reached (if any), and how much extra bonus I’ll be getting (if any). Lol. Hopefully it’s gonna be as great as last year. Great meaning meets expectations. Apparently that’s all I have to achieve here in order to feel abundant every year.

But I don’t know. With the reorg happening and my workload getting halved, I’m not sure how that’s gonna play in my performance review this year. Hoping for the best without me having to work too hard lol.

I’m really just pressed for money right now. I’ve overspent so much last year I’ve tapped into my imaginary annual incentive to pay for my credit card. I just really want to finish paying my vaccuum cleaner lol. I don’t even know how much I’ll get, I’m just assuming here.

It’s RTO day today I’m in the office waiting for 12mn lol. Our local team has started monitoring RTO’s more strictly now so I have to be in early and spend the whole 8/9 hours. Something I haven’t been doing consistently for a while now. Sorry.

Since I’m in BGC, I took the chance (again) to walk around and window shop. Right now I’m looking for training shorts that fit well. Plus sized of course. Something I could wear to play badminton. Right now I’m using my lounge shorts and it looks weird, although it’s comfy, it looks very obviously out of place. I’m looking for something like running shorts but longer and without a cycling layer. No luck finding one so far. Those that fit are either too short or have ill fitting cycling layers that I hate. Hay.

I had dinner at Nagi earlier. I shouldn’t have ordered gyoza cos the ramen was already too much, but oh well. I still finished everything (except the broth).

I hate that I’m so heavy right now. I hate the feeling. And it’s all my fault. I’m 161lbs. I was pretty okay pre-op, but post-op I lost control of my weight from resting too much and eating too much. I didn’t realize I’ve gone obese. Now everything hurts. My back, my foot, my knees. It’s just so hard to move when you’re heavy.

And it’s hard for me to lose weight because I’m so weak when it comes to food. I overeat a lot. I think mostly because I eat like my husband. I really don’t know how to restart. Every day I resolve to do so I fall into a pit of unconsious snacking. Urgh. I hate it!

I also hate that I couldn’t bring my range of motion back to normal. It’s been 8 months post-op! Part of me wants a second chance by having the scar tissue buildup removed. But I’m scared that it might swell up again and build scar tissue again because it will be too painful to move it. My ortho doesn’t seem too concerned. He doesn’t recommend it yet. We want to wait and see my progress before fully deciding on it. Oh well. My ortho rehab clarified that scar tissue buildup doesn’t completely go away, you just teach your body to move with it and soften the tissues surrounding it so it doesn’t stick so much. As for the lump, sadly it will stay.

More to my wardrobe difficulties, I couldn’t seem to find my favorite relaco shorts from Uniqlo. They’re all gone.

I have more to complain about my life but I’ll save it for another post lol.

Friday’s Happy Things

Know that this is very hard to do for me to do right now because I’ve been feeling largely uncertain about my job position. But let’s try…

✱ I got my Bodum tumbler back! When I went back for it I didn’t bother checking at Watsons because I was so sure I left it at the bathroom before I went to buy something at Watsons. Turns out I actually left it at Watsons and they kept it. I was able to recover it yesterday. Thank you Watsons! It’s honestly the last place I’d check as I was so consumed with my false memory.

Lesson learned for me here is to leave no stone unturned. Same thing happened when I lost my wedding ring one time. We were eating at Poco Deli when I realized my finger was empty. I looked everywhere but Poco Deli because I thought it was already gone before we started eating. Never did I think to find it there. Our memories are fragile and unreliable.

✱ Enjoyed celebrating my mother in law’s 60th birthday at Bataan. Bataan nga ba? Cos we kept driving to Subic to eat, even got lost there on the way home hunting down a restaurant lol. Despite staying at a crappy resort, I had loads of fun with the family and the view was utterly breathtaking. It’s really about the company.

✱ I managed to swim earlier despite feeling really sleepy and wheezy. Lap pool was full so I swam in the kidney pool which wasn’t so bad except that I don’t know its length so my swim data was probably inaccurate. Still a great 45 minute workout.

✱ I have new a Youtube review! Check it out! Finally, after a year. I guess I’m back to uploading review videos. I’ve been too lazy to work on them but I also need to free up space in my phone. So yeah, let’s do this!

---

I was supposed to list down 10 things but I coudn’t so I just renamed the title to Friday’s Happy Things but honestly I could easily list 10 unhappy things cos I feel mostly sad right now. Can I just do that? It’s easier to let it out this way

1. I’m not losing weight. We’re on week 3 of dieting and the scale won’t budge despite me eating less. My husband has already lost 6kgs.
2. Like I said at the start I’m feeling uncertain about my work because I feel like my skills aren’t needed anymore. And I have nothing else to offer.
3. I’m too lazy to read
4. I’m too lazy to work
5. I’m too lazy to workout
6. I’m too lazy to learn piano
7. I’m too lazy to make art
8. And I can’t get my knee to recover fully. It’s grown scar tissue already that’s gonna be difficult to break unless I opt for another procedure.

I’m just too lazy nowadays. I just wanna do nothing. Especially in this weather.

Oh, I guess it’s a good thing that I can’t find 10 unhappy things! 😅

Today: you lose some, you gain some

Today I lost my favorite tumbler huhu. My off-white Bodum travel press that’s been with me for almost 3 years now!

I’m sure I left it somewhere in Shang when I went to rehab earlier. I already called lost and found and Rustan’s department store but they couldn’t find it or no one has surrendered it yet. I only realized it was lost when I got home and wanted to wash it.

This was its last moments with me…

One of the perks of being a vlogger is getting clues like these when I’m looking for something lol.

It feels devastating. It’s silly, I know. That tumbler isn’t the best. It leaks and I don’t use the french press lid anymore. But it’s cute and I had it pre-ordered from Europe so it costs a lot, and I love the color so much. Also, I couldn’t find it anywhere here in the Philippines.

Anyway.

That’s what I lost.

What I gained is something of similar color haha. The bucket hat I tried on the other day haha.

My husband promised me a bucket hat so I’ve been trying a few every time we go out. I tried this on the other day and thought it looks cute.

My tumbler huhu

Didn’t buy it immediately cos I wanted to get my husband’s opinon first. Of course he said it’s cute wahaha. But I wanted his opinion mainly about the price cos it’s a whopping 2.5k for a bucket hat, wth? But seriously, thank you Jeckie!

I also bought myself a new tumbler quick. I looked at the variety of tumblers from Aquaflask and settled for the smallest one in black.

The one that comes in off-white is too big for me (20oz) and my Bodum tumbler is 350ml so I got the closest one which is 14oz. It’s their smallest too. Normally I want all my tumblers to fit my hand so I can wash it properly, but I made an exception for this one cos I was in a rush to get a replacement. We’re going out of town this weekend and I need coffee in the car.

Oh well. Still gonna look for alternatives.

Embracing Body Positivity with Popilush Shapewear

 

In the world where we live, it is often surrounded by the standards or we should say beauty standards by our society. The journey of a person from loving his/her body and creating a positive impact on the society are low to none as these standards have rooted into our minds so much that it feels almost impossible to change them or look through other perspectives. One perspective is the dressing of an individual. Popilush being a famous brand in shapewears and bodycon dresses stands straight while providing the best shapewear jumpsuit & dresses to those who love to explore their bodies.

Beyond conventional shapewear

Popilush celebrates the bodies of each individual without categorizing them into societal norms due to which it stands out among others. The brand’s shapewear is designed to enhance the natural curves of the body and its features with pride and confidence. These features are visible in their best bodysuits shapewear. Popilush recognized beauty in diversity and it promotes inclusivity as well.

https://www.popilush.com/products/built-in-shapewear-deep-v-neck-lace-thong-bodysuit

Inclusivity as a guiding principle

A distinguishing feature of Popilush its commitment to inclusivity which means it embraces all shapes and sizes of women. We all are humans and we all have different needs and requirements according to our body shapes and sizes. By introducing a wide range of shapewear dresses that fit all sizes and everybody looks beautiful in their own way. This inclusivity goes beyond the marketing strategy to customer attention as it is a genuine acknowledgement for the beauty of all shapes and sizes of women.

https://www.popilush.com/products/sexy-lace-deep-v-neck-shorts-bodysuit

Empowering Every Body

It is usually said “Girls supporting girls” which means that the women are the main besties of each other and they need each other to boost their confidence. This thing can work when everyone is happy within themselves. Popilush recognizes body positivity as a powerful tool to make proud of everyone in their bodies and embrace them with confidence wherever they go whether they are wearing a shapewear midi dress or a bodycon. This empowerment is a step forward towards an authentic self that is free from societal norms and put herself first in everything.

https://www.popilush.com/products/lace-deep-v-neck-wide-leg-shapewear-slip-jumpsuit

Revolutionized comfort

Popilush is a brand that never compromises on comfort. It is the first thing every one looks at when buying a shapewear. No one wants a dress that is looking beautiful on the outside but is tearing the body apart on the inside. The subtle enhancements provided by Popilush shapewears contribute to an improved posture and the overall body image. Popilush encourages individuals to use their shapewears in their daily routine to make sure if the dress is not too short or too long or uncomfortable. This brand prioritizes quality over quantity and makes breathable, lightweight and seamless stitching dresses made specially for comfort seekers.

https://www.popilush.com/products/denim-tummy-control-bodysuit

Conclusion

Popilush has become a key player in the fashion industry by combining fashion with functionality. These dresses accentuate your waistline and make you feel so confident in whatever shaped body you are. Popilush embraces love and functionality. The brand is committed to authenticity and will keep moving towards its goals till they are achieved.