Need cash?

I was on my way to Eastwood City one sunny noon of April 23, 2008. Since the place is only a kilometer (or less) away from home, I rode a tricycle. The wind was blowing hard on my face, and it was messing my hair - and it was everywhere! When I faced the "dashboard" of the tricycle, this sticker caught my attention.


Haha. If you're calling from outside the Philippines, don't forget the zeros, country code, and Manila area code!

Call now!

Oh so cool headphones!

My aunt went home for a short visit back here in our country. She stayed here for 10days (but she didn't sleep in the house). While we were staying with her at her friend's house, my sister and I found two headphones lying around the room...


It is a Bose QuietComfort 3 Acoustic Noise Cancelling headphones. I think it's their latest. I tried it on and I can barely hear anything from outsite! It has a switch at the side - so that if your headphones are attached to an iPod, or disc man, or any mp3 player, you can choose to listen or to turn it off.

This is AOK to use when you're commuting, or riding a plane, or in a noisy environment. It's not that big - measures 7 3/8" x 5 1/4" and weighs a mere 5.6 oz. (with cable) [from here]

I asked my aunt if she could give it to me. She just told me "Oh, we are using that in the office, if the patient doesn't want to hear the drill." She's a dental assistant.

We went to a mall to see a movie. I saw a Bose store and I saw the headphones on display! It was so so pretty. I asked the guy how much for the headphones. "P24,900.00 ma'am. You can try it." And then I was like, "Uh, ok.. Thank you!"

Talk about expensive headphones!!!

Polka-dots.

What's that on your left cheek?

Oh yeah. I always get that question from new people I meet.

I have no idea WHEN I had freckles, but I'm pretty sure that I don't have these when I was a kid.

Looking back at my old photos, my skin was spotless.

(I uploaded an actual photo of my freckle, haha! Look closely and you will see.)

What are freckles?
Freckles are sort of spots you find in a person's skin - particularly in persons with fair complexion. They are flat, kind-of circular spots in random areas, which develop after repeated exposure to the sun. They are always darker than the skin due to accumulation of dark pigments called melanin; may be in red, yellow, tan, brown, black, or light-brown.

Types?
There are two types of freckles.
1. Ephelides - This type of freckle is the one that appears during sunny season and disappears during winter. This may be hereditary. Using sunscreen helps suppress this kind of freckle.
2. Lentigines - This is the type of freckle that does not disappear during the winter. They are normally darker than the ephelides, and are occasionally part of a rare genetic syndrome. For most parts, they are isolated or found in unimportant areas.


Apparently, there is no winter in my country. So I'm assuming that my freckles are of the second type. Hahaha.

Now, there's this type they call "liver spots". This kind of freckle is just like the lentigines. They appear in aged people, and it has nothing to do with the liver. ROFL.

How are freckles formed?
After exposure to the sun, or probably tanning salon or anything that emits UV rays, our skin reacts differently. The outer layer of the skin normally thickens and the melanocytes (pigment-producing cells in our body) produces the pigment melanin at an increased rate to protect our skin from being damaged and for future exposures.

Basically, uneven distribution of melanin causes the freckles. It is nothing more than an unusually heavy deposit of melanin at one area of the skin. =)

Prevention.
It's easy. SUN SCREEN and PROTECTIVE CLOTHING.

I read in an article about a study made on twins about freckle count. The twins had almost the same freckle count, and they concluded that heredity has something to do with having freckles.

Prevention is better than cure - so if you start to develop freckles, let it serve as a warning that your skin is vulnerable to sunburn (or even skin cancer). Better watch out and start protecting your precious skin. If you see any spots on your face, get it checked by a dermatologist to make sure they're not cancerous.

Can I remove them?
My boyfriend tagged me to his dermatologist for his skin asthma around September of 2007 (or something). While waiting for the doctor, I asked the assistant, "What can I do to remove my freckles?" She said, "I don't think you can remove it. But you can lighten it with laser."

I searched the web about freckle removal.

Bleaching creams. Products containing hydroquinone and kojic acid can be purchased without a prescription. Higher concentrations of hydroquinone (over 2%) require a prescription. These products can lighten freckles if they are applied consistently over a period of months. (from here)


Vitamin A acid / Retin-A in conjunction with bleaching creams can also help lighten the freckles over a period of time.

Cryosurgery - A light freeze with liquid nitrogen can be used to treat freckles, but I don't know how they do that.

And then comes the laser part. They said that most lasers, especially the ones that produce green lights, can effectively reduce and eliminate freckles. It is safe and simple, highly successful, and have lower risk of developing scars. =)

My friends would often ask me - "Don't you want those removed?"

I don't really know. These spots contributed to my identity physically. And I got used to having them there, so why else would I want them off?

Perhaps I'll decide when I have plenty of money to spend. =p


References:
Medicinet
Freckle Guide

Summer Skin Cutter!

Ah. It's been a while. A long long while.

It is summer again. For most people, it's beach and pool and out-of-town time. For college students, ongoing classes. For high school, it's vacation.

For little boys - it's horror.

In the Philippines, more often than not, circumcision is a summer event. You'll find "Painless circumcision" or "Murang tuli" at every corner and clinics around your place.

Circumcision way back.
I browsed the net and found a compilation of why circumcision is performed.

• a religious sacrifice
• a rite of passage marking a little boy into a young adult
• a sympathetic magic to ensure virility
• as a means of suppressing sexual pleasure; remove excessive pleasure
  
• an aid to hygiene where regular bathing is impractical
• means of marking social status (lower or higher)
• discourage masturbation or any sexual action
• demonstration of one's ability to endure pain
• increase men's attractiveness to women
• symbolic castration (any action, surgical, chemical or otherwise, by which a male loses the functions of the testes or to a female loses the functions of the ovaries)
• male counterpart to menstruation or breaking the hymen

Circumcision was an important issue for first century Jews and Christians. Philo Jaudeous, a first century author, defended that circumcision on several grounds, including health, cleanliness, fertility and as a symbol of "the excision of all superfluous and excessive pleasure." Another author mentioned that it was instituted for moral reasons - "for perfecting what is morally defective" (Maimonides).

In Europe, except the Jews, they don't really practice circumcision.

Ancient Greek artwork portrayed penises covered with foreskin (sometimes in exquisite detail), except in the portrayal or satyrs, barbarians, and lechers. To hide a circumcised penis, during the second century, men would attach copper weight (called the Judeum pondum) was hung from the remnants of the circumcised foreskin until, in time, they became sufficiently stretched to cover the glans. Celsus, a 2nd century Greek philosopher and opponent of Christianity, described two surgical techniquesin his medical treatise De Medicina to restore a foreskin. One technique is by cutting around the base of the glans to loosen the penile shaft. The skin was then stretch over the glans, allowing it to heal and giving it the appearance of an uncircumcised penis.

In 1870, Lewis Sayre, a prominent New York orthopedic surgeon and vice president of the newly-formed American Medical Association, examined a five-year-old boy who was unable to straighten his legs, and whose condition had so far defied treatment. He noted that the boys genitals were inflammed, and he hypothesized that the long term irritation of the boy's foreskin has paralyzed his knees via reflex neurosis. Sayre circumcised the boy, and within a few weeks, the boy recovered from the paralysis. After a few more incidents in which circumcision appeared effective in treating paralyzed joints, Sayre promoted circumcision as an orthopedic remedy.

Pros and Cons of circumcision.

• It is easier to clean a circumcised penis. Although you can teach an uncircumcised boy to clean his own penis by retracting the foreskin, some kids end up having infection becauser of poor hygiene.
• It may be a little odd, but I actually found a study performed to prove that the penis of an uncircumcised boy is more sensitive than a circumcised boy. It said that intact men enjoy four times more penile sensitivity. (more HERE)

"The most sensitive part of the penis is the preputial opening. The results confirmed that the frenulum and ridged band of the inner foreskin are highly erogenous structures that are routinely removed by circumcision, leaving the penis with one-fourth the fine-touch sensitivity it originally possessed." - Morris Sorrells, MD, lead researcher

Five sites on the penis-all regularly removed by circumcision-are more sensitive than the most sensitive site remaining on the circumcised penis.

"Oddly, the most sensitive site on the circumcised penis is the circumcision scar itself." - Robert Van Howe, Researcher pediatrician and statistician

Taken from the ACTUAL research:

• Five locations on the uncircumcised penis that are routinely removed at circumcision had lower pressure thresholds than the ventral scar of the circumcised penis.
• For womne, having a male partnet with a foreskin increased the duration and comfort of coitus, and increased the likelihood of achieving single and multiply orgasms.
• The type of nerve endings in the penis vary with location. The glans penis primarily has free nerve ending that can sense deep pressure and pain. The transitional area from the external to the internal surface of the prepuce, or 'ridged band', has a pleated appearance that in continuous with the frenulum and has a high density of fine-touch neuroreceptors, such as Meissner's corpuscles. Based on this histology, the transitional region and the ventral surface of the prepuce would be expected to have lower thresholds for light touch.
  

• Small risks are due to minor infection around the circumcised area, which can easily be solved by the family physician.
• Public health benefits include protection from urinary tract infections, sexually transmitted HIV, HPV (responsible for cervical cancer and genital warts), syphilis and chancroid (STD characterized by painful sores on the genitalia), penile and prostate cancer, phimosis (male foreskin cannot be fully retracted from genitalia, thrush, and inflammatory dermatoses.
• In females, circumcised partners provides protection from cervical cancer and chlamydia infection.

Female Circumcision.
Different terms:

• female genital cutting
• female genital mutilation
• female circumcision
• female genital mutilation/cutting

"all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs whether for cultural, religious or other non-therapeutic reasons." - WHO 2June2006

• maintenance of cleanliness
• maintenance of good health
• preservation of virginity
• enhancement of fertility
• prevention of promiscuity
  
• increase of matrimonial opportunities
• pursuance of aesthetics
• improvement of male sexual performance and pleasure
• promotion of social and political cohesion

Type I
- removal or splitting of the clitoral hood (hoodectomy), with or without excision of the clitoris

Type II
- "excision of the clitoris with partial or total excision of the labia minora."
- also called khafd, meaning reduction in Arabic.

Type III: Infibulation with excision
- "excision of part or all of the external genitalia and stitching/narrowing of the vaginal opening"
- also known as "pharaonic circumcision."

Type IV: Other types
- "all other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes, for example, pricking, piercing, incising, scraping and cauterization."

Ouch!!!!


Legal Issue!
In Oregon, a father (an attorney) is in the process of converting into Judaism. He wants his 12-year-old son Misha, who is in his custody, to be circumcised. The decision was opposed by Misha himself and his mother.

The court believes that Misha has the right to be consulted before the circumcision. It opened the doors to a possible change of custody, depending on the child's opinion.


References:
Doctors Opposing Circumcision
Noharmm Org
Wikipedia - Female Circumcision
Wikipedia - Circumcision
Nemours Foundation
Circinfo

Peanut butter Cancer

I was sitting silently at the corner of our room on this hot sunny day. Outside was 31°C, while it was around 18°C in our small space occupied by arm chairs and eager students (I suppose).

Our professor's voice entered my left ear and exited the right. There was a silent trail of thought that caught my attention.

Peanut butters.

"Who among you knows what an aflatoxin is?"

Written in our handouts were these words:
-causes liver cancer

It was vague to us students. After a minute, he decided to break the silence.

"Aflatoxins are toxins you find in peanuts. It's like a mold that grows and when digested in high amounts, hello liver cancer!"

The thought was disturbing, so I browsed the net and read about it.

Peanuts.

To start off, peanuts are not nuts, well, in a botanical sense. It is an example of a simple, dry fruit that, when ripe, split along both sides. In short - they are legumes. It is called a PEANUT because it's a pea (in a legume sense) but it looks like a nut.

Other peanut terms: earthnuts, goobers, goober peas, pindas, jack nuts, pinders, manila nuts and monkey balls. Haha!

Aflatoxin.
This is a poisonous substance produced by a fungus (species of Aspergillus), and are carcinogenic (cancerous).

These fungus can contaminate grains before harvest or even during storage. Prolonged exposure to high humidity environment, or even high temperatures can lower the barrier of the grain to protect itself from being damaged.

Aspergillus live in the soil, old decaying vegetation, rotten grains and hays. It will invade all kinds of organic materials or substances, just as long as the conditions are favorable to its growth.

Bad news: roasting process cannot destroy them.

There has been a research that peanut farmers are found to have high rate of cancer. A study that was recently conducted resulted to a discovery of presence of highest levels of aflatoxin are in health food store ground fresh peanut butters!

What aflatoxin can do to you.
If we consume too much aflatoxin, our liver cells would die, the it would have scars that would eventually lead to liver cancer - and our livers would bleed! Since the liver is very essential, damage to it would also lead to improper aborption and metabolism or nutrients, altered digestion, and eventually dead.

The good news: we have high tolerance for aflatoxin!

You can always go to the doctor and they could do some test on you to detect aflatoxin exposure.
This information does not say that we should stop eating peanut butters - or peanuts. Consume moderately, and be aware of where your peanuts are coming from. =D

Reference:
Wikipedia
Andrew Weil, M.D.
Delicious Organics

Playing Money

Ever wondered why people call a piggy bank "the piggy bank"?

I was curious. I looked it up at the ever famous Wikipedia and found out that during the Middle English years, they have a clay that people used to make household objects like jars, pots, or other similar stuff - and this clay is called "pygg". It was cheap, even their cookwares are made out of it.

The nice thing about this is that, it is the same type of clay that they used to make their money jars. Since it was made out of pygg clay, they originally called it "pygg jar". It eventually evolved into "piggy bank" because "pygg" is homonymous with the word "pig".

Actually, the real pronunciation of "pygg" is closer to the word "pug". Cute! A "puggy bank" - a coin bank of a pug (dog) made out of clay.

The term has been changed from the kind of material used to the shape of the bank, piggy banks now come in plastics, glass, metals, and even plasters. Some even say that the history of the piggy bank is related to the farmers. Farmers feed the pig (putting coins in the piggy bank), then only when the pig has been slaughtered will the farmer get his money (breaking the piggy bank).

Coins in the piggy bank
People collect coins. Some would collect shiny new coins (like I do), some would put P5.00 and P10.00 coins in their piggy banks, some would place every single coin in their banks, and some would just break their piggy banks to get money (bye bye to piggy bank and bye bye coins).

Fake coins
Bills can be faked. But beware, because coins can also be faked. The most common coins that syndicates fabricate are the P5 and the P10 coins - which are, of course, of no value.

Spotting fake coins
I read some articles about "How to spot fake P10 and P5 coins". I really didn't find a lot, most are just personal observations, some are hearsay, some from "government", and some from money collectors; but basically they tell the same "How to"s.

According to what I read, coins are made out of nickel, copper, zinc, and aluminum. These elements do not stick to magnets. Therefore, if your coin sticks to magnets - they're probably made out of steel, and are definitely counterfeit coins.

Here is a picture of a P5 coin. Notice that the real coin (left) is has smoother, evident features, shiny (maybe because they're new), and the engraved design are evenly stuck on the metal. The fake coin (right) is poorly structured, and observe the circle that looks like a wheel in the middle surrounding the mountain part with the sun - it is smaller than the real P5 coin.

Same as with the front of the P5 coin, the real coin has more detailed design than the fake coin. The letters and numbers are deformed, and some of Emilio Aguinaldo's features are absent.

Once you receive a fake P5 and P10 coin, surrender them to the authorities. You don't want to be caught saving these coins, because once you bring them to the bank to reimburse for bills, they wouldn't replace your fake coins. XD

References:
Wikipedia
Unlawyer
Mukamo Phil

Jeep : Go Jeep!

On my way home the other day, I took a jeepney, just to be safe (because they say it's safer to ride a jeepney than ride the FX). As a typical jeepney, they have this banging loud sound, mostly remixes of songs (good and bad music) with extra volume on the bass - very annoying often times (in my opinion); speakers banging under your butts, so loud you feel bouncy; and makes you feel DEAF the moment you get off the ride. The jeep also has the "Pull the string 2 stop" sign; the colorful dim lights; and the barker/sort-of cashier by the jeep entrance.

The ride was pretty empty, sat at the end of the jeepney (farthest from the driver, right next to the exit).

"Patok" drivers
They steer the wheel left and right, just to make the ride a little too exciting. Some passengers enjoy this. It keeps them awake. Or some like it because of the thrill, the speed probably the wind brushing their faces and blowing hard on their hair, drying their sweat from a long days struggle. But not everyone likes the idea.

I was seated at the right side of the jeepney, and the lady in front of me yelled at the driver.

"Ano ba yan, pakiayos nga yung pagmamaneho niyo manong! Nakakamatay na yung ginagawa niyo eh!" ("Please drive properly. You could've killed us with the way you drive!"... or something like that)

Most jeepney drivers are careless. They step on the gas and let their wheels jet into the road, neglecting the passengers. There was even a time where a kid, sitting on his mommy's lap, fell into the middle of the jeepney, because the driver was racing with the other jeeps to pick up passengers. The mother got mad at the driver, and she said she wouldn't pay for the fare, because if something happened to her kid, refund of the fare wouldn't compensate for the damage.

Regarding the number of passengers inside the jeep
Barkers - these are the people who yell the jeep's destination to get passengers. The driver tells the barkers how many passengers the jeep can accommodate. If the driver tells the barker "Waluhan yan." ("8 passengers on each side"), they will really try to fit 8 passengers on each side of the jeep - even if it cost having the last passenger sit with half of his butt.

This crowding is sometimes the cause of robbery inside the jeepney. Because the passengers are too close, the couldn't feel hands slipping in their pockets, and seatmates slashing their bags. When they get off the jeep, they'd be surprise to find their pockets empty, and their bags with an extra hole.

Jeepney law suggestions

• Hmm, maybe a special law for jeepney drivers to drive safely? If a passenger fall off the jeep and dies? Or be hit by the next vehicle? What will the driver do? Drivers should not be concerned with the "boundary" money they're making. They should also be aware of the passengers' safety. Remember: The passengers are the driver's customers.

• I also think that the MMDA or the traffic enforcers or whoever is responsible for the traffic and road rules should be strict when it comes to passengers who, just like the guy in the photo at the left, decide to ride outside the jeep. It is very dangerous, especially when the driver decides to drive roughly, race with other jeeps to take more passengers, and starts to play with the steering wheel. I understand that most passengers who do this are in a hurry to get to work, but if something goes wrong, they will never get to work.
  

• Some jeepney drivers do not return the right change. Students should get 20% discount, but some drivers don't give back exact changes. Regardless the age or status, most drivers consider their fare as ordinary passengers. What should the authorized people do about this?