Life in Zambo

Thanks to Pantene for sending me this little treat. God only knows how much I need this for my hair. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I can't afford it, it just so happens that I wanted to sign up here and they decided to send  me these lovelies. Just to give you a gist of how much fixing my hair needs, check this out. That's due to too much abuse via coloring. If I don't use conditioners or leave-ons, it's like doll hair. T_T

Source Last night, instead of being with family, I partied with a friend and her family. It was a type of party that I haven't been to since I was a kid. I'm the one who's usually away from home, but this time, I'm the only one who stayed at home. So instead of being lonely on New Year's Eve, I decided to take up my friend's invitation to come over and spend it with her family. For the past ten years, every New Year's party or celebration I've been to involved beer and a lot of singing. Well, I don't really drink, but I'm not going to tell my friends to stop drinking either. It's their choice to make.

Well, okay, so I never had a list of what I wanted to do for the past years. This is going to be the first time I'll be putting goals down. Maybe before the year ends, I'll even have a bucket list of long term goals. I never made a list, because I always thought that plans always don't push through. But not anymore. I haven't thought like that for a more than a year now and now, I like planning years to come. Now before I start writing down my plans for 2014, here are some stuff that happened in 2013. I backpacked through five countries in 16 days. I backpacked with some friends and the boyfriend locally. I opened a new bank account. I got my stock portfolio. I started blogging again. I started an emergency fund and travel fund. Lost 10 kilos.

Paydays usually fall on the 15th and the 30th. When I still worked at my first call center, and if the 15th fell on a Saturday, we'd get our pay on the 14th. The funny thing was, it's still the 13th and people are already itching to withdraw from ATMs. We'd call the last few days towards the payday " tingbits ". That's short for tingbitay, an expression Cebuanos use that means "running low on cash". My salary used to be between P10,000 - P15,000 at the time. Since I was a fresh graduate, the frugal living that I led and taught my younger siblings were carried over by habit and I managed to live somehow without asking for allowance from my parents. Then I met Lifestyle. I met Starbucks, Bo's Coffee, met with McDonald's and Jollibee as much as I can, and even forgot that I used to see Carinderia to shell out just P20 during midday. Regretfully, whenever it was payday, I always found a way to spend it and just lived from paycheck to pay...

Originally, I started writing this to be posted as a Facebook status message, but then it got a little too long, so I decided to make a blog post out of it. Let's do a little math. Say for example, we have a call center agent whose salary is P20,000 in a month. Her mandatory SSS contribution is set to P1,560 per month since her salary bracket is above P15,000 (this is set to be increased come January 2014, by the way) . She also has HDMF, PhilHealth and 12% salary taxes to pay. If, for example, she gets off 20,000 clean in a month, that's 12% Tax: Goes to the Bureau of Internal Revenue, which is used to pay ordinary Government employees (their wages aren't much, mind you, I would know) , the Police, the Military, the Congress, the Senate, the President, etc. There's also the Pork Barrel, the DAP, etc. 20,000 x 0.12 = P2,400 Social Security System: P1,560 PhilHealth: For a salary base of 20,000, expect a P500 deduction from your payroll monthly(http:/...

No amount of hair moisturizer, whether oils or creams, and even hair masks can save the dryness of the tips of my hair. Well, that was to be expected, given the number of times I've dyed my hair and the way I avoided trims. I've recently just had my hair rebonded(?). And this is how my hair looked before. Note: Don't be fooled by the Instagram filter. LOL And this is how it looked after.

I've read somewhere that pet photography isn't something that you can take lightly. It's like trying to take pictures of babies. You can't tell them to sit still and smile, nor tell them to do something crazy and then attempt to capture that moment. I have two Labrador Retrievers, but I think somewhere along the line, probably one of their grandparents wasn't all Labrador. I mean, how can a Labrador Retriever have long hair? Just look at him.