chilling poolside on a sunday

top, ebay. bottom, something borrowed via zalora PH (similar).

This was 3 sundays ago, in Stargate Resort that's just close to home and with the best girl friend and another friend of hers. 11 out 10, I'd go back there in a heartbeat. For one, it's close to home. Two, it has a really good view of the city from where it is situation (uphill, yes...). Three, it's not too crowded, I guess, like the other resort close to it, Ultrawinds. Fourth and last, the entrance fee is just 50 Php and the swimming fee or pool use fee is 150 Php. It's quite affordable, really and especially if you're just there for a quick dip to ward away the summer heat. Believe me, it is super, super hot...indian summer hot this time of the year that beach trips and pool dips are a regular must. It would be good to go swimming once every week when here...in this heat.

4-14

 thermal/long-sleeved top, secondhand. skirt, ebayed laundry by shelli segal. heels, zalora. 

Long-sleeved tops and dresses are doable for the humid summer (and perpetually humid days in the tropics 365 days a year) as long as it's balanced with a mini skirt or denim shorts/cut-offs and actually pretty thinly cozy. Nothing thick for days like these, really. 

summer heat cozy

 cami, secondhand ralph lauren (similar here in black). skirt, ebayed laundry by shelli segal. boots, zalora. choker, smashbox. cross necklace, aizilim.

Something cozy for the hot day out today. This is likely the second time I've worn this cream cami on here. The first was the garden shot which ended up being too bright for this thing to be captured in photos better.

Anyway, today's music mood because the heat makes me want to feel a bit cutesy? I don't know either...really. More like this is a new release by one of the favorite music groups from Japan so...

Finally, it's something high school academe related. I was counting on them to one day do something like this and they delivered. I actually like the other a-side of the single, Boyfriend better musically but this is a-ok, too, I guess. I like the video for this more than Boyfriend's for some reason.

Ah...skater Asada Mao has just retired from competitive skating. She'd posted details of her retirement on her blog. This, just in time when the Japanese women were given just two slots in the incoming Pyeongchang Winter Olympics (the men won three slots during the recently concluded World Championships in Helsinki). Commence collective sad sounds coming from Japanese team ice skating fans (including me). I'll always remember Mao as someone who was instrumental in bringing in my favorite male skater, Uno Shoma, into the sport (in addition to Takahashi Daisuke, that is). Photos/snaps and video clips of her carrying little Shoma around the ice, playing with him, will always be a fond memory for me to treasure this day on. Let's just say, although I'm not too familiar with Mao's work in the women's figure skating field, I have too much love to give to the Japanese skating team. It doesn't matter to me which part of the figure skating events they compete in.

rain shower, slits and JJ Abrams' Cloverfield

 t, h&m. skirt, ebayed Laundry by Shelli Segal. hoodie, vintage anne klein. boots, zalora.

What I ended up wearing today because it was cloudy then sunny then cloudy again with scattered summer rain showers. Is anyone getting tired of these boots? Well, I am. Sadly, I don't have a lot of heeled boots similar to this to alternate pairs with. I'm working on getting another pair, however. I'll eventually get there. Meanwhile, as of late, I seem to be abusing this pair one too many times now. I tromped around the city's Divisoria on this in a mini-skirt and t combo while running errands. There weren't too many stares from people but it's probably because this pair looks pretty boring outside of the block heels. So maybe when I get even more insane pairs of boots like maybe the Kurt Geigers I have been drooling over at Zalora...let me mull over it... But I do swear I have other ankle boots, mostly non-heeled and one pair that's 5-inch tall in stiletto heel form, on rotation with this one.

The slits are what made me fall for this skirt when I saw it on ebay... So Xena the Warrior Princess-like?

 src: google images

Right when Hunter x Hunter on Animax ended, I was able to catch the JJ Abrams produced scifi found footage film, Cloverfield on HBO. I know I'm really late discovering this film, my reason being that I'm not too updated with mainstream and indie film releases. I'm not a regular cinema-goer and I definitely do not check on new film releases on an almost daily basis. But hmn...this has got to change, probably, but I've seen more disappointing films being aired in the cinemas than ones I actually really like and ardently wait for upon hearing news of them being aired in cinemas worldwide soon so I'd really rather not risk it. I...I'm not all too happy with spending money on tickets to films I actually end up disliking...and even those that are just so-so for me... That said, I only go to cinemas at least once or twice a year. But back to topic, Cloverfield. Okay, I am now questioning myself: how did I miss this?! This film is so, so, so good. It's, in my book, a sci-fi-ed Blair Witch Project that's been upped a notch (quality-wise), done even better. ....what else would one---sci-fi, psychological thriller, crime/true crime, and even action film/tv/literature buff---expect from a JJ Abrams produced film?! Nothing less than good to near-perfect, yes. He did give us two superb Star Trek films that I stan hard (never mind that I'm not much of a Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan as in general, I've never really been a Cumberbatch fan...), and of course, that recently released Star Wars film. You could say sci-fi is JJ Abrams' forte as much as sci-fi, often-times children's fantasy is Steven Spielberg's. To clear any question that may rise around why I am a Star Trek stan more than a Star Wars fangirl like the majority...I'm not even really a die hard Trekkie, just a casual one. I think I just like the idea of being able to operate high tech equipment in outer-space travel and space itself. So Star Wars...I just never really got into the franchise.  
Cloverfield in a nutshell: party in NYC, then some alien makes it to Manhattan...in Central Park no less and rampages thereby killing a huge fraction of people living there, and plunging the Big Apple to just utter chaos all around. I compare this film to the Blair Witch Project because they are of the same kind, they just differ in genre. Cloverfield, like the Blair Witch Project is a found film type. It is just sci-fi while BWP is horror and supernatural combined. I'm pretty sure you've seen these kinds of film, if I'm not mistaken, Paranormal is another of this kind. However, what I like about this more than the other found footage or film types I've seen is that it goes full circle with its ending clip. I don't think the others in this type of film have accomplished such a feat as Cloverfield has. I wasn't able to see the whole film as I wasn't able to catch the very beginning of it---thanks to Hunter x Hunter and before that, a couple episodes of Golden Time on Animax---but I'm definitely planning to watch it whole should I catch it as a lunch feature or presentation on HBO or something similar. 
This film made JJ Abrams one of my favorite director-producers along with Christopher Nolan (the Dark Knight trilogy, The Prestige, and Inception has me hooked on anything this one does/comes out with). Sorry, but not that much sorry, I am not your regular person pretending to be eccentric stanning directors like Tim Burton or James Cameron (I couldn't bring myself to like Avatar, to be honest) and other...well, 'eccentric' arts figures in the pop world. But I'm proud of being someone who gets so, so excited by slice of life, psychological thrillers, crime/true crime, southern gothic, sci-fi, action, thriller, some fantasy, horror and even supernatural. Just something about these genres named here get to me somehow. Hence...why I just had to blab about JJ Abrams' Cloverfield on here.
I'm definitely keeping an eye out on everything Abrams and Nolan come out with. I may now have found two directors slash producers I can stick to that I know won't disappoint me with every film they are heavily attached to.    

01-23-2017 ebay listings

A couple auctions and one Human Heart Nature item is up live on my ebay right here from tonight for Philippine residents/locals. Click on the items for sale's links for more information. Feel free to email me on inquiries. 

More listings/auctions to come in the next few days. 

pretty pleasant pool day

photos by Candice Calonia

vintage ruffle front cream silk shirt, ebay top, What a Girl Wants bottom, Zalora faux leather double strap sandals
 

Owing to the fact I have a ton of separate pieces of tops and bottoms for swimming in pools and beaches (lost the bottom to one of my favorite What a Girl Wants bikini last year while moving from one water body to another around Surigao del Sur), mismatched bikinis is now a thing for me. 

Had so much fun lounging around Xavier Estates Sports and Country Club's poolside in between slithering into the pretty vast adults' pool they have and getting out of it to people watch and munch on snacks (of fruits and fries) and chitchat with the lounging companions. Yesterday, the whole day was perfect for pool day as the sun alternated to shining hot with isolated rain clouds and being hidden by the clouds in the early 8 to 9 in the morning. There wasn't any drop of rain either granted it's been raining on and off the day before and even before the latter. Best time I think we had in the pool area? Between 8 to 9 in the morning when there weren't anyone but the three of us and we had the place to ourselves, right before the club house's guests came down to swim and have their brunch. I like it when we have the place to ourselves but it isn't really bad when there are others besides us just so we can people watch, really.

There was definitely a lot of lounge-playing involved...

With this place being something I find to be easily accessible and just right by the village (what we'd call a private subdivision here because one, it's gated and pretty guarded---think Bel-Air?) where the best friend since high school resides, outings as random as this might just become more frequent...hmn...250 Php isn't too much to pay for a whole day's---until night because they close somewhere between 9-10 in the evening and night swimming is a must during the extremely hot summer days too---use of the pools here, really. 

....the sandals are originally for men but they proved to be lighter than the first use here. This might end up being used more often on quick errands and such...and walking around every kind of terrain possible here minus the desert which we don't have? Yes.