Ukay? Okay! How Thrift Shops Can Fill Your Fashion Needs

When I'm bored with my current wardrobe but I don't want to spend too much money (thus feeling guilty) on buying clothes, I go to the nearest and biggest thrift shop or ukay-ukay in our area. The biggest one is located at the ground floor of Starmall Alabang and basically all around the said mall. If you are not familiar with these kinds of shops, ukay-ukay is a depot of pre-owned clothing and accessory items with very affordable prices (with prices even as low as 10 pesos!). If you have an eye for good and beautiful items, if you have the patience to browse around hundreds and hundreds of hangers (which is a good arm workout by the way :D), and not picky or sensitive in using preowned items, then maybe you will enjoy being an ukay shopper.

3 for 100 area, spotted! Now time to browse through those hangers!

It always excites me when I find something I really like with a bargain price, and looking over through thrift stores always makes me happy. I'm not really picky or maarte when it comes to brands of clothes I wear because I believe I can still look nice without having to brag about where I bought my things. I know fashion trends come and go, and it's better for me to spend more valuable money on things that I know are not practical to be stingy on (e.g. electronics, appliances, etc.)

Look at ALL these clothes! Exciting much!

Shopping in an ukay-ukay is not a walk in the park-level kind of shopping though. It's not enough that you find something that you really like, you should also be keen enough to inspect what you picked to see if there any holes, stains or any other kind of damage. If it's worth your time to repair or do some modifications with it, then fine. I hope you don't make a mistake of buying tons of clothing only to find out later on that they are tattered with holes and infested with stains. Oops. So be careful!

So after a couple of hours browsing through the ukay-ukay, here are some of the items that I really liked. I shall also list down how much I bought them.

I'm more of the sweet and feminine type, so these are the ones I found: 1. Pink long blouse with lace details - 55 pesos, 2. Leggings - 80 pesos, 3. Pink high heeled peep toe shoes - 75 pesos

This attire can be both for work and date days. I found: 1. Pink wooly-ish cardigan - 70 pesos, 2. Black top with sequins - 60 pesos, 3. A-line skirt - 80 pesos. Where else can you buy a complete an attire at only around 200 pesos?! Yes, I am kuripot at heart, but proudly kuripot! (sounds familiar? Haha!) As much as I love to shop in boutiques and malls, I couldn't resist having the same kinds of clothes with the same quality and style but only with a lower price, so I think that shopping in a thrift store is always worth it.

Do you also love ukay-ukay? Where do you go? I would love to hear your experiences and knowing the awesome finds you discovered! :-)

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Insurances are Traumatizing!

I am a CAP college education plan holder. My parents invested a sum of money under one of the most popular education plan companies in the Philippines during the early 90s. Sadly, news broke that this insurance company filed for bankruptcy even before I graduated high school. I heard that they invested their money on businesses that didn't earn much coupled with the extreme soaring of tuition fees over the years. It was very frustrating for most people, especially for my parents because it was just a couple of years short from my graduation. To top that off, I graduated high school in 2007, which was also the year where all the UP campuses pushed their TOFI (Tuition Fee and Other Increases), which made the regular tuition fee increase more than 100 percent for some. I had a usual tuition fee of around 20,000 pesos which was supposed to be only somewhere along 7,000 or 8,000 hadn't the TOFI been approved.

However, God, being the great Provider that He is, made a way through the help of my grandparents who funded a portion of my education. I am just really blessed but I keep thinking about those families and aspiring college students who depended on their CAP to provide for their financial needs in education. I even heard this anecdote that there was a man in the CAP office (this was during the time where news of bankruptcy recently broke) who was shouting loud, as in nagwawala, due to the education plan that they won't be able to claim.

Credit: http://www.medimanage.com

That's why I really find insurances traumatizing nowadays, though some people tell me that I should invest in a really good and trusted company. I will, maybe sooner or later but I'm trying to ward off these thoughts in my head, do research and look at the latest news and trends of the insurance company that I will invest on. I guess the lesson to be learned here is know where to invest and invest wisely. I scanned through an article below and it really gave practical tips on choosing a good insurance company:

http://www.lifehappens.org/tips-for-choosing-the-right-insurance-company/

Are you investing on insurance? Why or why not?

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Imagine Yourself: Typhoon Yolanda Aftermath

Credit: http://philstar.com 

Imagine yourself looking outside from the window of your home, your heartbeat picking up its pace as you see the unbelievably strong winds sway the coconut trees. After a few minutes, you see  pieces of wood splinters, metal scraps and concrete blocks flying out of nowhere. The heavy rainfall is deafening, accompanied with the distant voices of people screaming outside and asking for help. Water level rises up to your leg, your knee, your thigh, your waist. You help your sick grandmother and your little brother move to the higher floor of your home. You prayed hard that the waters would not reach the second floor. You hear the loud wave of water from afar, and your body trembled all over. With a split second like a tsunami, a surge of water beat down the concrete walls of your home. You found yourself struggling to hold on to pieces of debris, realizing that your brother and grandmother are suddenly nowhere to be found. You felt your heart break into a million pieces, you felt that this day will be your last. You managed to hold on to a rusty pole, covering your face from the torrent. Your whole life you'd never have imagined yourself to be in such a place, experiencing fear, grief, and hopelessness to an ultimate extent.

Credit: http://philstar.com 

Imagine yourself sitting in the dirty, grimy concrete floor of the evacuation center, people scurrying around, struggling to survive. Your body is bruised, feet splintered with pieces of wood and glass. Your throat is dry, stomach in pain, feeling nauseous as it was your second day without food. You had no choice but to drink salt water. Everything is sinking in--you cannot find your grandmother and brother, memories of them kept playing in your mind. You are in total shock, and tears welled up in your eyes as you stare blankly across the area, people wailing, feeling anxious for their missing loved ones, and grieving for the ones they lost.

Related: "What's Your Tragedy?"

Imagine yourself experiencing all of this. Imagine yourself being in their place. Imagine yourself--all your property and your loved ones gone in a split second. This is what our kababayans are experiencing right now. This is reality for them. If you were in their place, you would want all the help that you can get.

You are blessed to be reading this. You are blessed to have a roof above your home, food on your table, to have a stable internet connection. You have all the resources that you need. You have more than enough, and if you have these things, what's keeping you to move, to help? Instead of posting selfies in Facebook, playing Video Games and complaining about your life, why don't you use your spare change to buy a kilo of rice and some mineral water bottles and drop it off in the nearest McDonald's? Don't say that you can't do anything. Prayers are great, but we are given blessings not just to count them but to share them. Remember that we are built for good works, we are made to show compassion. I hope this post encourages you to do something. Let's help our fellowmen. God bless the Philippines. #bangonPilipinas

Here is a resource page on how you can help: http://www.mb.com.ph/help-yolanda-victims/

"And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works." Hebrews 10:24

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand compassion and helping others in a Christian perspective:

Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life

In this provocative essay on that least understood virtue, compassion, the authors challenge themselves and us with these questions: Where do we place compassion in our lives? Is it enough to live a life in which we hurt one another as little as possible? Is our guiding ideal a life of maximum pleasure and minimum pain? Compassion answers no. 

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