My Basic Kikay Kit

A confession: I'm writing this blog at the office. Shhhhh! I actually need to finish my presentation material for next week but my brain is getting numb from equations and all these terms --de-gassing, terminal velocity, Schoepentoeter...Ugh.

So I'm taking a break and am letting my mind wander into lighter, more feel good things.

Blogging = Therapy

I took pics of my super basic Kikay Kit a few weeks ago but forgot to blog about it so here it is.

Everything I need to last me through the long working day are here. Actually, most of the items here my favorites. So this is essentially a My Favorite Things post, albeit cut to the very basics.

My kikay kit is housed in a Le SportSac Pouch. It's actually the pouch for my weekender bag but it works well as my Kikay Kit because it's very light and is big enough for my stuff.

Lioele Waterdrop Aqua Makeup: it's a light tinted moisturizer that's more watery than most bb creams. I don't actually reapply this at the office. But I bring it just in case the need arises. :-)

Benefit ChaCha Tint: I use it more as a lip tint than a cheek tint. It gives a very natural peachy sheen to the lips, and like most Benefit Tints, the colors lasts awhile ~ about 3 hours min. for me.

Benefit Dandelion Boxed Powder in its super bugbog box: my current favorite blush.It's a very light pink blush. What I love about it is that there's no way you'll screw up applying this blush. Since it's very light, it just gives a natural glow effect.

La Roche Posay Toleriane Ultra: A gentle anti-irritant which works well for my irritated skin. The temperature's dipped in Seoul and the heaters are humming along at our office. Dry hot air = dryer, sometimes red, irritated skin. This moisturizer works well to calm the redness.

BBW Tangelo-Orange Pocket Bac: No explanation needed ;-) Most Filipinas I know keep one hand sanitizer with them wherever they go.

Love&Toast Sugar Grapefruit Mini Perfume: I don't normally use this at the office. But just in case!

Love&Toast Sugar Grapefruit Hand Creme: For my dry hands. Also, I love the sweet candy scent!

Tony Moly Magic Lip Tint in Red Grape: In lieu of a vavavoom red lipstick, I use this instead. Same effect, more long lasting! And cheaper too :-)

Skinfood Peach Sake Silky Finish Powder : to combat the shine on my T-Zone. It is still to me the best oil-absorbing powder I've tried.


What about you, what's in your Kikay Kit?


P.S. Toothbrush, Toothpastes, Red Flag Day items are not shown as I am sure nobody's interested to see them :-)



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Our store carries the following items: Skinfood Peach Sake Silky Finish Powder, Tony Moly Lip Tints, Benefit ChaCha Tint.

I bought my latest batch of Love&Toast items from the Lotte Dutyfree Shop in Korea which is great because now I no longer need to pester someone in the US to buy them for me.

LaRoche Posay Toleriane Ultra can be bought from SkincareRX.com

BBW PocketBacs can be bought online at the Bath & BodyWorks US online web shop.

Missha Watery BB Cream: Why We Will No Longer Offer This Variant at the Store

I've mentioned this two years ago in one of my blog entries at my multiply store and have informed clients about this unfortunate problem when they do encounter it. In fact, for a while there, we even stopped accepting orders for this BB cream.


But we've had so many bad reviews from this BB cream that I figured, enough already.



We will no longer offer Missha Watery because of its problematic formulation : Missha Watery deemulsifies.
We all know it is water-based. The culprit is the water which is lighter than the cream (foundation) part of this BB cream. So, remember our elementary chemistry? fluids of different densities would separate into layers. In some tubes, the lighter one (the water), settles on top of the heavier (cream) layer. What then happens?

Here are descriptions of this problem from Make-up Alley:

-After a few uses the cream would separate itself from the color.

-very runny. Yesterday when i opened it water came running out of it... wonder if it ever happened to you?



It is something that sellers like me cannot control. I personally purchase our shop's items here in Korea at the Missha Retail outlets, and yet as early as 2009, when I started selling Missha Watery, clients would either be lucky enough to not encounter this problem, get one which has separated already, or buy one that seems okay but after sometime would encounter the dreaded deemulsification. I would often explain that the only way around it is to shake the bottle hard. I could not do anything about it because I bought them as is from the actual Missha stores in Korea.

Three years on, one would expect Missha to have fixed the formulation, but no, just this weekend I got a complaint again: A longtime client, who specifically requested for a tube of Missha Watery, got her tube recently and complained that her Missha Watery seemed to be expired because when she opened the tube, runny water came out. The BB cream's deemulsified. The sad thing is, I seldom stock up on Missha Watery but because she requested for one, I bought one for her and brought it with me on my recent trip to Pinas. The thing is, in most Missha stores in Korea, Missha Watery is no longer offered. So I had to get the tube in the Missha store in Myeongdong, Korea's fashion strip, where most tourists flock, to get a tube. Good thing this was not a new client. She, being a longtime buyer, knows how we try to be honest and forthcoming with our business, even accepting our mistakes if needed be. Imagine if a new client ordered this and found the item deemulsified, do you think she'd wholly believe my explanation that it is an inherent product flaw?


That it deemulsified was a sad thing but it was totally out of our shop's control. Sure, the client, being a longtime one understood. But the hassle and dissapointment such a bad product gave is well, unforgivable. So hear me when I say, we will no longer get any new stocks for Missha Watery even if a client personally requests for it. One, we do not want to be at the blaming end when the tube the client gets is deemulsified.
Two, I've had it with this product. That must be the precise reason why this is no longer sold in all stores here in Korea. I say, better for them to totally scrap this dud.

And please, a bit of a plea to clients who preorder, much as we try to give you information about the products you request, please, please do your part too in researching your items (a little googling takes only a minute or so). As we all should know, an informed consumer is the best consumer.

Cheers!

P.S. Sorry if my first blog post of the week isn't too perky but I feel that I have to say this so that others would be informed.

FACT OR FICTION:A Beauty Haul including a Kiehl's set for $10.00!

Contents:

Kiehl’s Boxed Gift Set:
30 ml Ultra Facial Cleanser
7 ml Ultra Facial Cream
40 ml Ultra Facial Toner


A Trio of Magazines:

Elle a’ Seoul - Elle Korea’s Seoul lifestyle supplement showcasing new eateries, new brands, new must-do’s in Seoul.

Elle by Hera – Hera’s sponsored beauty supplement filled with Hera product descriptions and images of Sin Min Ah.

Elle Korea – book –thick and a joy to browse through. For that alone, magazines here in Seoul rock! And if you’re like me who loves perfumes, it’s always a bonus to find sniff pages such as the one pictured below, so we can get a whiff of the newest fragrances at no cost ☺

All these, 3 Magazines + the Kiehl’s set, I got for only $10.00. I kid you not. This is how cheap magazines are in Seoul. And most of the fashion magazines offer samplers of expensive products to its target women to try (a.k.a. the beauty conscious ladies in Korea!) so they can try out the products and hopefully purchase them at the stores. For October 2011, if I remember correctly, Vogue Korea was offering a set of Aveeno facial wash and toner (Or was it Aveeda? ), Nylon was offering a full-sized Vitamin C serum. There was also a local mag. offering a Clinique Facial Wash but I chose to get Elle because I kinda liked the feature, My Home Project, for my home decorating ideas. And well, because autumn has come and I wanted to try Kiehl’s supposedly amazing Ultra Cream for my suddenly dry skin.

Caveat: The only thing with these magazine product bundles is that these are not advertised at the bookstores’ online shop, so to get hold of the bundles, one needs to purchase them at the physical stores. But it works fine for me ha because Kyobo Bookstore’s main branch is a 15 minute walk away from my office so I pass by once in a while to check the new releases *grins *.


Oh, and yes, the magazines are in Korean ☺ But then, I buy them for the images and the freebies not for the write-ups.

An Indulgent Breakfast from Pinas

The cold’s finally arrived in Seoul. The days starting to be grayer, the nights longer.
It’s Saturday, my official chore day, and having gone on a weekend holiday to the Philippines last week, I sure have a lot to do – a mountain of clothes to wash, and my little flat in dire need of cleaning.

What does one have for breakfast on days like these when it’s officially my rest day but I am harangued with a hundred things on the task pad?

I say, go for an indulgent breakfast! Something that will satisfy both my gut and my need for something a bit comforting and well. Swoon-worthy.

Beef Lasagne brought all the way from the Philippines. One of the pre-cooked goodies I bought from a neighborhood eatery in Paranaque, Sieg’s Diner. It isn’t the richest lasagne in the world, the béchamel (white cheese layer) being almost non-existent, but it’s yummy enough and has a pretty long shelf life, I think because it’s a relatively drier (not too saucy) and less cheesy lasagna. Where I am, lasagne, unless I make it, is hard to find. So this is certainly my comfort food.

Partnered with some Grissini Breadsticks bought from S&R, my current favorite shop in the Philippines, this meal was comfort food heaven.

And what’s an indulgent brekkie without dessert?

Sweet and tart, these lemon squares from S&R are my idea of a perfect dessert ~ complex, and not overly sweet. Something that's refreshing and light, a foil to the rich meal I just had.

Happy busy Saturday, Everyone!

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Sieg’s Dinner
94 Dona Soledad Ave. Better Living Subd. Paranaque
I must say that we love this place! The prices are amazing,, ranging form 65 to 200. The serving sizes are huge! The food though not spectacular are good in a comfort food kind of way. And the people who work here are courteous and nice!

S&R Membership Shopping
Branches at The Fort, Alabang, Quezon City, and a few others with a new branch in Cebu.
One has to pay for an annual membership fee (700 pesos) to shop but for us, it is so sulit! There are a lot of imported brands that are really reasonably priced. Aside from the grocery stuffs, I like their linen selection and their kitchenwares. They also have really value for money baked goods. The box of Lemon Squares I brought with me to Korea costs only about PH 250.00 and was big enough that after offering it as pasalubong to my workmates at the office, I was left with a third of the cake.

Savouring Samgyeopsal

A superfriend and colleague, L just got her Schengen visa approved in time for her European tour this coming yuletide season, so we pestered her for a celebratory treat.

Which is how we found ourselves at our favorite Korean Barbeque place for dinner on a Wednesday night. :-)

SamGyeopSal literally means three layered flesh, which describes the interlayer of fat and lean meat in a good slice of samgyeopsal.

There is nothing more comforting, more uncomplicated to eat than Samgyeopsal. It’s a literal grill your own feast.

We order our favorite cut of meat ~ not really samgyeopsal (which is pork), but marinated beef (almost like bulgogi but from the cheaper cuts of beef) and in seconds we are given these:

Lettuce and perilla Leaves to be used as wraps plus green peppers which are actually sweet and without any hint of heat, and onions which we grill with the meat

Kimchi, raw garlic and the two sauces: ssamjang (the red pepper paste mix) and gireumjang (the sesame based sweet and spicy sauce).

A circle of hot flaming coals.

Samgyeopsal is the template for freestyle eating. Most Korean salarymen troop to Samgyeopsal restaurants for a soju (i.e. booze) binge with friends.

The three of us, Pinoy to the bones, eat our samgyeopsal with bap~Korean sticky rice!

How does one eat a samgyeopsal? Let us count the ways: Savour the grilled meat plain or dipped in one of the sauces. Wrap the meat in lettuce with a bit of the ssamjang, a bit of grilled onion and shove it to your mouth. Use the perilla leaf instead.

Us three, we love to grill the accompanying kimchi until it’s soft and smokey-sweet, add a few pieces with the pork, add a bit of grilled onion, and wrap everything in perilla and lettuce leaves. Yum-o!

Our Samgyeopsal dinner stretches into hours. The act of eating what has now become our comfort food in Korea is interspersed with the sound of our laughters and admittedly boisterous conversations. A few Korean diners look at us from time to time, perhaps surprised by the unfamiliar words they hear, or more possibly because sometimes we laugh too hard and shriek a pitch too loud. But they let us be, and we laugh and laugh, savoring perfectly grilled meats with perfectly fine friends.

Additional Info:

Our favorite Samgyeopsal Place is about ten minutes away from Yeoksam Station in Seoul. :-) Our meal for three costs about 30,000 won (about 1,400 pesos).