At the end of the day...

I was watching the reunion show of the Project Runway Philippines last week which had designer Rajo Laurel answering questions of the designers and viewers. I can't help but notice that his last sentences always began with, "At the end of the day..." Then some of the designers talked about their experiences and it was the same case, they end their remarks with a sentence starting with "At the end of the day..."

This lead me to think whether this is the new expression, "At the end of the day..." What do they actually mean by this phrase? Can't they just say, "Ultimately" or "In the end"?

In a showbiz oriented talk show, I hear this teenstar say "At the end of the day, kami din ang makakaalam..." Huh?

I bet they heard this phrase used somewhere and they think it makes them sound... intellectual. But these things are not to be used lightly.

I guess that soon, "At the end of the day" will take its place alongside such showbiz created expressions such as "in fairness", "actually", "you know...", "it's like..."

National Bookstore Sale

I always pass by a National Bookstore Branch on my home from the office. Last August, it announced a sale of its books with prices cut by 20 to 70 percent. It got me so excited of course, hoping I'd be able to get the books I wanted at lower prices.

The most exciting part of the sale, though is the P99 bin. I found a lot of books there that I've always wanted to buy but were so expensive. Most of the books are hardbound editions so it was quite a steal to get copies of books.

Thanks to National Bookstore for making one of my passions more affordable.

What Happened to Milk?

I am not a big fan of milk. I don't drink milk because I have lactose intolerance since I was a kid. But my brother drinks lots of milk. Even today when he's fully grown, he still drink the white stuff before he goes to bed. He said it relaxes him.

Though I am not a milk drinker, I encourage people, especially young children to drink milk. It's a complete food, you get Vitamin A for good vision, Vitamin D for your bones and teeth, Vitamin B for over-all wellness and lots of other minerals and micro nutrients. So if there's one food item that needs to be in the grocery list, it has to be milk.

But milk has become complicated today. There are so many brands (one celebrity endorser says, "ang daming milks (sic)"). Each brand has so many claims about having this and that to increase your child's growth, brain power, etc. One even has the temerity to claim that it can make your child a gifted child. Parents now are faced with the dilemma whether they're giving the right milk to their kids or not.

While milk is essentially one of the most nutritionally complete food available, its reputation was never unblemished. There have been instances that milk was blamed for the spread of diseases including tuberculosis. Thanks to the process called pasteurization, some of the bad bacteria that comes with milk have been minimized, if not eliminated.

Just this week, however, milk has become the object of another health scare. But it's not because of its own doing but by men.

In China, hundreds of kids got sick after consuming milk contaminated with melamine, a substance used for making plastic ware. News reports say that melamine contains compounds that added to milk, will make the milk register a higher protein content when tested.

This contamination caused kidney stones among other ailments in hundreds of babies in China. Some eventually died after their organs failed.

This caused the supermarkets here to withdraw all milk and milk products imported from China. Too late for me, I already bought one brand that was ordered to be recalled by government. It's called Yi LI. I intended to give it to my pet dog. Luckily, I haven't given it to her.

This incident however has put milk under suspicion. So much so that some of the milk companies came out with notices that ingredients of their products do not come from China. Even Starbucks had to announce that they don't use dairy products from China.

We Filipinos however have a tendency to generalize, as I have done so in that statement. When you say, some milk brands made in China are contaminated and unfit for consumption, we would avoid the milk not only from China but from anywhere else. So in TV tonight, newscasts reported of of a sudden drop in sales of milk.

Hopefully, this will not completely obliterate milk from the Filipino's diet. I am not so sure though what effect this incident will have on the price of milk. That is another story.

Manila Ocean Park

We finally had the chance to visit the Manila Ocean Park Oceanarium earlier this month. The entrance fee at 400 pesos is a bit steep, but the park offers discounts for the city residents and senior citizens. I am also happy to note that in spite the high ticket price, there were still a lot of people going to the park.



The park has several species of sea life, including a spider crab which can only be found in the cold waters of Japan.



Highlight of the display is a huge tank and a tunnel where the people can immerse themselves in the abundant creatures from the deep.



There are still a lot of construction work going in the park so we expect it to get even better in the future.

Olive Riley, World's Oldest Blogger is dead at 108

I just read this morning that Olive Riley, considered as the oldest blogger in the world, died over the weekend at a New South Wales nursing home after an illness. She was 108 years old.

Ms. Riley's posts contained a lot of childhood memories, such as how going to school was like 100 years ago. Her blogs give her followers a glimpse of what like was before the Internet, satellite and other modern means of communication made this world a global village. For that alone, she deserves a permanent place in the blogging world. In one of her latest posts, she wrote about how she regularly sing happy songs, with "Happy Days Are Here Again" as her favorite.

Others contend that Ms. Riley is technically not a blogger because she doesn't type her entries herself. She has someone else type her posts for her. But that did not diminish the importance of her posts in the blogging world. She reportedly receives a lot of communication from as far away as Russia.

108 years. With the way I live my life, I don't even expect to live until 80. Hopefully I would live until my retirement and enjoy it for sometime. However, to live as long as Olive did would be like hitting a jackpot of heavenly blessings!