Visiting Mandarin Supermarket in Binondo

Posted on 5/25/2018 01:15:00 AM by Kenken

Mandarin Supermarket is located on the ground floor of the Mandarin Square building at Ongpin Street, Binondo. I wanted to arrive at 8:00am to take some pictures while there's not much people around. When I went there, it was still a few minutes before 8:00am and the supermarket signage was still turned off, but when I looked down the hallway I saw someone with grocery bags so I went in (please note their opening time is listed at 8:00am so don't blame me if you decide to go earlier than that and its still closed).

Apart from Chinese goods, they have some Korean and Japanese items (mainly Korean noodles and ice cream then Japanese chocolates, toys, curry and noodles). They also carry local products so they don't exclusively carry East Asian goods. I wanted to take as much photos as I can but there were boxes littered around so it was hard to stand in front of some of the aisles. Anyway, here are some of the photos I managed to take:

Tea

They only had the zero calorie/sugar cream soda in stock :(

More tea and fruit juices

Hi-C!!!! Sold in packs of 6

Yogurt milk drinks and milk tea

Want Want Little Mantou! I wanted to buy it T-T

Lots of ready to eat sausages and meat paper strips

Tofu

Chicken leg and feet in vacuum pouches

Flavored microwavable rice

Self heating hot pot! I will get this next time

Lots of noodles! They also have a lot of non instant noodles available, like individually packaged 100g udon

They also have toys - Kracie Poppin here is cheap! Around 185php if I remember correctly

Milk and probiotic drinks

Other stuff that I didn't take a photo of:

- candies/chocolates/biscuits other snack items

- Chinese cooking ingredients, too bad I can't find any tianjang and huangdoujiang (I dunno if salted yellow soybean sauce is the same as huangdoujiang, the characters on the bottle doesn't even say yellow but it says yellow soybean on the tag).

- cookware, utensils, tableware

- other non edible products like detergents, toiletries etc.

Here are the stuff that I got:

From top left to right, clockwise:
- cup noodles, only bought them because of the packaging. The red one with pig design is pork dumpling flavor while the Hello Kitty one has a Japanese Soy Sauce flavor
- sausages, crab stick and pork paper strips
- instant noodles again. I know Chapagetti can be commonly seen in SM/Robinson's Supermarket but I always buy some when I see one
- Hi-C apple flavor
- strawberry and banana yogurt milk
- lemon Coca-Cola and Want Want milk
- Schweppes zero cream soda. I prefer the regular one but this'll do

Kiko Mizuhara at the Cannes Film Festival Red Carpet

Posted on 5/10/2018 01:03:00 AM by Kenken

Kiko Mizuhara shows up at day two of Cannes Film Festival red carpet for the screening of Yomeddine (English title: Judgement Day)

With Wang Likun/Claudia Wang from Dior's weibo account

Embed from Getty Images

Video from Kiko's IG stories (@i_am_kiko)

Wearing look 42 from the Dior Haute Couture Spring Summer 2018 show

Full list of celebrities who walked the red carpet on the second day of Cannes Film Festival can be seen here:

https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/festival/actualites/photos/on-the-red-carpet-on-may-9th

Kiko Mizuhara Shows Support For KaoRi; Also Tells Her Experience Working With Nobuyoshi Araki

Posted on 4/09/2018 04:23:00 PM by Kenken

Disclaimer: I gathered the information below from sources written in Japanese, so it's definitely not 100% accurate. I would be truly grateful for inputs and corrections.

KaoRi, a dancer and a model spoke up about Nobuyoshi Araki last March. Many people misunderstood her relationship with Araki (it was strictly photographer-model) and she was flattered and pressured to be branded as Araki's muse that she didn't come into terms with Araki posting her pictures and using her name (such as 'KaoRi Sex Diary') without permission on his products. She felt that she was driven into a situation where she had no choice but to do it. She also had problems with stalkers, and she had to deal with the psychological and financial burden of moving places alone.

She tried to confront Araki about it, her attempts to call and to ask for a face to face meeting was ignored. When they finally had a chance to meet, she was being forced to sign a contract to allow Araki to use her name on future products - she refused and as of June 2016 (supposedly she had another 'muse role' shooting schedule) she was "fired".

She lost all self esteem and affected her work as a model because she felt powerless over her own identity.

(You can read more of it here: https://note.mu/kaori_la_danse/n/nb0b7c2a59b65)

Kiko Mizuhara showed her support and called KaoRi brave for sharing her story. She also shared an uncomfortable encounter she had with Araki before.

Brief Translation:

In my early twenties, I had to shoot topless (with my hands covering my chest). During the shooting, there was a lot of male presence; apart from the staff there were about 20 upper management who came to the shoot.
I felt really uncomfortable with having a lot of other people in the room, but I was told they had to be in the room to "check the quality of the shots". Since it it was work I felt that I could not refuse.

Araki, what is a woman's body to you? Your muse, Kaori, is it necessary to abuse her mentally?
I don't know if you are completely unaware of what you are doing. You've photographed me many times as well... but I don't feel any regrets for you.

Forever21 Global Store EMS Shipping to Philippines

Posted on 4/09/2018 11:51:00 AM by Kenken

As a plus size person, shopping is hard although I admit it has gotten easier during the past few years. It's still somewhat hard to find clothes that aren't matronly or too professional. T-shirts and shorts compromise 95% of my wardrobe, and it's not easy looking for cute, casual clothes locally.

Forever21 has a local store but the price difference from the online store is a lot (considering their online store frequently does sales). I normally use a forwarder but sometime back, Forever21 launched a global online store so customers from can have the items shipped to them directly.

On a side note, if anyone out there wants to lecture me about the harmful impact of fast fashion just gtfo. Poor people also deserve things and it's not realistic to get just one or two fair priced quality item considering we all need to wear clothes everyday (and no matter how high quality an item is, it will wear out if you use it day in and out).

Anyway, the selection on the global store is less than the US one, but I still wanted to give it a try since I would save some money on shipping (shipping is free for orders over $100 plus I would get the items much faster). That is until I learned that the only shipping method available is EMS, which I avoid because there's a chance that I'll have to pick up the items at the main office in Pasay. Fast forward to many months later, my clothes are either too beat up or too big (I actually lost a little weight lmao), and with my limited budget and a big sale going on, I decided to go ahead.

Delays often happen in the mail, but you can look at the table below to estimate when your EMS parcel will arrive

Click to enlarge

I'm in Zone 2, and true enough my order arrived on Wednesday! I received my order in less than 10 working days

Here is the timeline:
23rd March - Placed the order
26th March - Got an email that the says my order was shipped
29th March - According to the tracking, it departed from Incheon and arrived some hours later at Manila
31st March - The item arrived at the inward office of exchange
4th April - The parcel was delivered to me

Office Kiko Pop Up Store at Kiddy Land Harajuku

Posted on 4/04/2018 06:27:00 PM by Kenken

Office Kiko will have a pop up store at Kiddy Land (Harajuku Branch) from April 15 - April 27

There will also be a special event at the pop up store on April 200

For the first 200 customers who purchased over 6000 yen worth of items will have free stickers as well as a photo op with Kiko Mizuhara!

Outside of the event, customers who purchased over 3000 yen worth of items will also receive stickers, on a first come first serve basis (and until the sticker stock lasts).

Here are some of the items: