Pond’s Flawless White

I got this bundle as a prize for one of those things I wrote and submitted to a magazine. So yeah, it’s a freebie. The irony of it was that I was writing about the health benefits of organic products. One look at the set’s ingredients listing is enough to tell you that it’s far from being organic.
It took me a while to actually give it a try because:

1. I invest a lot of money on self-tanners. Why would I want to reverse that by using whitening products? Isn’t it a bit silly to use these things when I’d be covering myself with bronzers before I go out of the house anyway?
2. Pond’s has never been good to my skin. As a teenager, their facial wash caused me to break out. In my twenties, their Pond’s Cold Cream make-up remover — compounded by the fact that I’m allergic to most make-up — irreversibly ruined the texture of my face.

Anyway, I suddenly found myself on a tight budget one day, just when I had consumed the last drop of my moisturizer. So I thought that maybe I could use this. Thought that maybe it could get rid of my moles or dark spots. Thought that maybe, this being the 21st century, Pond’s had stopped coming up with disastrous formulas.
I should’ve followed my instincts. They’re usually more sensible than my brain.
The steps:

1. Anti-Spot Intensive Whitening Serum
2. Light Infusing Under-Eye Cream
3. Visible Lightening Daily Lotion (daytime) / Re-brightening Night Treatment (night)

I felt stinging upon application. Followed by itchiness. And an entire day’s worth of scratching. Next, my eyes felt so dry I could hardly open them. As in, it actually hurt to open them! I thought that maybe I had turned into a 50-year-old overnight. Note: My mom is 55 and there are days, especially when she lets her nice, naturally wavy hair down, when she looks 28. She took pity on me and gave me a jar of her unused Clarins day cream as she has stopped using moisturizers altogether. That partially healed me.

The freebie set actually came with a 2-way foundation but the color is “Ivory White”. I can imagine looking like a glow-in-the-dark floating head if I were to use that. I mean, heck, the rest of my body has been tanned!

Rating: 1/10

To ALL ABMA Students

APPPORT
My consultation hours are in the morning, especially for Wednesdays and Fridays. Please do not consult with me on Wednesday and Friday afternoons as those are heavy-duty lecture classes and my students need my complete attention.


DIGIMED
Please check the Moodle all the time. Your syllabus (complete course outline) is there, as well as your deliverables. If you do not meet a deadline, you get a 0 for that activity. (Like what happened with the deliverable for last Wednesday. They went undelivered.) If your name is not in the Moodle, you get an R because I do not have a record of your existence.


EVERYONE
Please do not call my cellphone in the afternoons. I have classes in UP and my professors are not as lenient as your ABMA professors. They are three times as strict as me and Sir Crame and can be five times as cranky as a woman with PMS. (They're also very smart, so I give respect where respect is due. I hope you do the same.)

Also, come to me if you have any concern that needs signatures/approvals from the department heads. As long as your request is reasonable, I will sign your documents. Dean Robert is now handling external projects that he brings into APC. Very busy with SoMA issues, among other things that a dean is supposed pay attention to (ABMA is just one of the three clusters under SoMA). So I'm now doing the internal issues since ABMA is my turf.

And please take note of the heads of your School (SoMA). There are three clusters under it:

IDC - Interdisciplinary Cluster (General Education); headed by Ms. Elsa
ERC - English Resource Center, headed by Ms. Elise
ABMA - AB Multimedia Arts, headed by Ms. Bea (me)

Lastly, please don't ask me to sign "Change of Grade" and "Load Revision" forms without the approval and signature of your professors. Even if I can, I will never overturn anyone's grades. Follow the hierarchy (what subjects fall under what departments), so that we'll all lead peaceful lives.

Oh and yeah...you will always find me in any of the 6th floor labs, so if you want quick results, find me there. ^_^

Thank you.

UP Saga 4-6: On being a Communication Scientist...

Monday was stressful because I knew that I had flunked Teacher Ganda's mid term exam even when my classmates say that we all shouldn't be such pessimists.

I honestly enjoy my classes to a certain point. But times like these, I wish I could shift to PhD Literature. Two things keep me here, however:

1. My instincts tell me that PhD Communication is going to be very useful. The way my BA in Behavioral Studies, BS in Information Management and Master in Information Management have served me well. A GDAP (Game Developers Association of the Philippines) representative already named the degrees needed to help launch Game Dev as an actual curriculum in the Philippines and I want to be one of its first proponents.
   
   
2. You can only get 6 units credited when you shift. Bummer. I already have 15 units to my name.

The learning process is killing me because it reminded me of the times I hated being in Behavioral Studies, which was in complete contrast with how I loved being in UP.

Carlolo said something about me being adept at theories. That's funny because I wasn't always like that. In college, I barely survived all the theory-peppered exams. I never could sit still and listen, unless I like the professor. The weird thing about UP is that it's in complete contrast with APC: I loved my minors more than I ever did my majors (except for Anthro 187: Sex and Culture). APC students rarely take their minors seriously. But in UP, the minors were the only things keeping my GPA afloat. With the minors, I can be as creative as I want to be and professors like Pia Arboleda encouraged it. (*gasp* She's actually the only prof I really remember! Oh, and she was the original Teacher Ganda. The only other prof I recall is _____ and that's because he was manyak.)

So I told Carlolo, the reason why I seem to be adept at theories is because I learned them backwards. Not in college. When I re-read books about theories -- I was just starting out as a professor then -- it all made sense because I had already applied them in real life.

I have to see it work before I can begin to understand what it is. If I just read it, it won't make sense. This is the same reason why I had learned programming by virtue of looking at codes and not by reading technical books (I hate technical books). This is also the reason why, when I was at a loss for words during the exam, I ended up drawing two diagrams to answer the question: "What is the difference between overgeneralization and selective observation?"

Now I'm back to studying things that I cannot begin to comprehend because they're all abstract statements. But see, I found that I enjoy this course because I learned some of the theories by reading 14 theses/dissertations within a week. No matter how technical a dissertation is written, you cannot remove the narrative elements from it. I see stories unfolding and frameworks/models explaining the phenomenon.

That is so much better than having to read through hundreds of pages of materials that, to me, have no meaning. (Hehe, that's Semiotics for you.)