TOPAZ HORIZON

When I was a kid, my dream—aside from becoming a writer—was to become a postman. Yep, the guy who delivers mail. I figured I'd be at the post office early in the morning to get my batch of deliveries, then spend the rest of the morning going around houses and chatting with the people. Then I'll rest in the afternoon, and then—and here's when the real work begins—then I'll sit down and make up stories about the people I met that day.

I tested out that dream by selling tapa, tocino and longganisa one summer. I was 11 or 12 years old, very skinny, and I put the frozen meat in a pail of ice (very heavy) and walked around the neighborhood selling people breakfast. I had a great time. Everyone loved my products, everyone loved that a young girl was so entrepreneurial, and I loved that I met so many people and learned so much about them. After all, people like to talk to someone who brings food!

But the business ended when a neighbor, who had been getting meat on credit, refused to pay me. When I kept showing up at her door to collect payment, she finally set her dogs on me. That ended that business real quick. When I told my parents about it, in the hope they would confront the nasty neighbor and get me my money, my father said, "It's best this way. I don't like you out in the sun because your skin gets dark."

I hope to be a parent who encourages my kids to do crazy things. Hopefully, the crazy things are the sort that makes them money haha. Vince told me he was so charmed by this little girl who would collect rocks around her neighborhood, wash them and paint pretty designs on them, then sell the painted rocks to her neighbors. I wish our sons would be that entrepreneurial!

How inspiring is this?


He earns enough to buy LEGOs. Those things are so expensive! I know because we buy our boys LEGO all the time! He is so cute. And so encouraging to me because I want to sell bags again. You all know how that business failed spectacularly. But I don't regret it because I learned a lot.

As with my frozen meats business, I learned that credit must not be extended lightly. With the bag business, I learned that I can't just assume people are doing their jobs just because they said so. I actually have a business now, my freelance writing. I'm learning a lot, too, the most important being this: Start charging after the second meeting and don't be shy about my rates. Argh, I've wasted a lot of time and energy this year meeting prospective clients and working on proposals and mock-up projects which all went up in smoke anyway. So the project didn't push through but I spent time and money and brain cells on them anyway and I got nothing in return. Lesson learned! Just goes to show you're never too young or too old to learn something new!

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Been feeling under the weather but I still had to work! So I trimmed off the the meetings and events that weren't really urgent. But for those times I had to really really work, these are what I wore:

Lunch meeting at Il Terrazo with a new major blog partner (announced on Topaz Mommy!) and then off to a Levi's house party in Forbes. I wore my Ojay raw silk blouse, Uniqlo jeans, Karimadon woven belt, Dune London loafers, Charles & Keith sunglasses and Fino bag.

Check out my red red hair! It's so clown red! I love it!

Gosh, this is such a comfy outfit. I love those jeans. The shoes are so buttery soft. Must buy more Uniqlo jeans and loafers from Dune!

Hosting duties as the new Vicks VapoRub Mommy (click here for the story)! I wore my K & Company wrap dress and Zara pumps. I bought both summer of last year, right after giving birth to Iñigo. The dress looks navy but it's actually a blue-green hue.

Also, the dress has such a plunging neckline that I had to ask the Vicks people for double-sided tape to prevent a wardrobe malfunction. Well, either the neckline was too low or my boobs got too big for the dress. You see, when I left the house, my cleavage was fine. But two hours later, my breastfeeding boobs were filling up with milk and they were just spilling out of my dress!

I want to proudly say that I did my own hair and makeup!

Photo shoot at Louis Phillip Keep Premier Salon for my Manila Bulletin column. That's my photo shoots uniform: soft shirt, skinny jeans. I wore my old, thin, gray Topshop shirt (I wore a red bra underneath that in bright light, you can see through the shirt), skinny Guess jeans, Nine West heels. Really comfy!

That's my iPad Mini from SMART. (Thanks, SMART! I love that I can now #LiveMore!) It's my latest fashion accessory, mommy tool, blogger and writer necessity!

I actually was planning to blog about my latest online shopping purchases from Zalora and Sammy Dress but I'm soooo lazy to take photos. I'll blog about those as soon as I have the pics. Happy weekend!

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