Rice or Hermes Birkin?

A woman is shopping for shoes and is asking her significant other what style and color of shoes to buy. He’s male, what does he know about women’s fashion?

Some men want to control the looks of their girlfriends or wives. No plunging necklines, no mini-skirts, no booty shorts, no two-piece bikinis, no makeup, and no lipstick, may wear lipstick but not the red one. This should make a woman wonder if that’s how he expresses his tender loving care (TLC) or his tight lording-it-over cruelty (TLC, too).

Shopping can be an Artist’s Date—a date with yourself per Julia Cameron’s advice. But it’s also advisable to have someone critiquing your fashion choices before buying them, to ensure you’re spending money on a good buy. If that someone is the boyfriend or husband or even the sales staff, you may listen.

I was at this store where I needed assistance in getting a shirt from its lofty wall display rack. But its sales staff were busy arguing about what a masking tape looks like. The messenger they sent to buy one, bought a packaging tape instead. Their most non-essential debate was definitely a hint that the store’s sales were low and slow.

I went inside the fitting room to try the shirt on, but it was too teenagey for my age. Crop top pa more. Haha. I thought their debate would be over on my way out of the fitting room, but they were still arguing over masking tape versus packaging tape.

Another hint for slow sales is when all the sales staff are suddenly crowding around you once you enter the store. And following you around. Creepy.

But there are stores filled with snobbish sales staff once they have guessed you can’t afford their merchandise by the way you’re dressed—cheap outfit from head to foot. Profiling pa more. How can you possibly afford their Hermes Birkin? So, they leave you alone.

Now that rice in Pinas is expensive, the more the high-carb dieter has to be careful with priorities. Rice or shoes. Rice or shirt. Rice or Hermes Birkin. It’s a no-brainer—rice, of course. The high-carb Pinoy can’t survive without rice.

Here’s a wild guess: the expensive rice is meant to encourage the Pinoy to go low-carb. Haha. The low-carb dieter has not even noticed the rice’s price increase. Because he doesn’t buy rice anymore. But he sees the prices of beef, pork, fish, chicken, and eggs. And of salt, coco aminos, and apple cider vinegar.

Some discoveries in the elimination diet: coco aminos in lieu of soy sauce, and apple cider vinegar for cane vinegar.

With the new restos and cafes continuing to open in Cagayan de Oro, the Cagayanon now has more choices in sating his food cravings. If he wants croissants or unli-steak or ramen or samgyupsal or bulalo, he already knows where they can be found. Discovering the most delish requires research, though—meaning, he has to visit each resto and café. Kind of window-shopping before going back for more.