Books and banana chips

DOES the extra brightening stick deodorant make your armpits shine? Nope, it doesn’t. But it gives the armpits white stick tidbits. If you’re planning to shop for clothes, better avoid using this type of deodorant otherwise those tidbits will stick to the dresses and tops you’ll try on.

Unlike clothes and shoes you can try on, and books you can read before buying them, deodorants are the type of merchandise whose reality you’ll discover only upon using them. The promise of extra brightness made me realize I should have stayed with my old reliable extra-whitening kind.

The brightening or whitening marketing strategy may also be used for detergents, dishwashing liquids, bathroom cleaners, toothpaste, bath soap, facial treatment, skin lotion, glutathione injections, eye drops, etc.

But when it comes to buying books, their brightening or whitening quality doesn’t matter. What matters is their content—if they resonate with you. And if their pages are complete.

There was that time when the book I bought had some missing pages. I didn’t check its pages at the bookstore then. Lesson learned. Despite that, I have a locally published book that has blank pages. Yes, blank. No words or images at all. The publisher needs quality-control people to check pages before releasing books into the wild.

A bookstore is always one of my happy places, wherever that may be: Cagayan de Oro, Tagbilaran, Puerto Princesa, Davao, Cebu, Manila, Singapore, and Manhattan. But some places are for touring only, such as South Korea and Europe, since choosing a book requires more time than choosing a travel souvenir.

I did promise to stop buying books already. But there I was at Fully Booked at Ayala Center Cebu, where I bought books, of course, and three bookmarks that said, “It’s Not Hoarding If It’s Books,” “Carpe Fcking Diem,” and “A Wise Woman Once Said, Fck This Sht, and She Lived Happily Ever After.” Haha! This reminded me of Mark Manson’s books: “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck,” and “Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope.” Not great reads, by the way. You’re better off with Jordan Peterson’s “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.”

For me, a vacation is complete only when I have bought a book. I should change that mindset because I think I’ve already read all the books that I need. Operative words: I think. A.k.a. sort of, kind of, maybe, perhaps, probably, possibly.

But on our recent trip to Cebu, my most favorite purchases, aside from books, were banana chips. Thanks or no thanks to the most delish banana chips at the hotel’s breakfast buffet, I became curious about other brands, and whether they’re as delish, too. So, I bought some at Carcar’s 7-Eleven branch, and even at the Mactan-Cebu airport. And while shopping at S&R here in Cagayan de Oro, I bought banana chips again.

The side effects? Allergies as usual. Friends have told me I’m not used to carbs anymore. But I already had these allergies while on high-carb. The only difference is I now know the cause—it’s carbs.

The sugar intake required a low-carb diet reset again, this time on September 1. Whew.