I'm not really particular about the products that I use. I'm more of a soap-and-water girl, really. Although there was that time when I went for some expensive hair treatment and I was told that I needed to use some special sodium chloride and sulfate-free shampoo to maintain it. Then I went ahead and used some cheap-ass shampoo that I had bought from 7-11 and, effectively, washed P8500 down the drain. Doh!
I know a lot of people go out of their way to seek all-natural and organic stuff and that's all very good and commendable but, based on personal experience and observation, I find that there are two things where natural and organic don't quite cut it: insect repellant and anti-perspirants/deodorants. Seriously.
I could pickle myself in citronella and still get bitten by a hundred mozzies.
A friend of mine posted this on her Facebook wall recently:
"Mosquito trap - No more mosquitoes!! Cut the top off a 2 liter bottle. Invert the cone and place it inside the straight part of the bottle. Glue the two pieces together. Add 1 tsp yeast and 1/2 cup sugar to some lukewarm water, and pour the mixture into the bottle. Mosquitoes are attracted to the carbon dioxide that you exhale. The yeast feeds off the sugar and emits the same gas, so the mosquito enters the bottle, thinking she will find food there." (Click here for the link.)
Two of her friends swore by it and, since I live in the Land of Aggressive Mosquitoes, I had to try it. I made one and kept the bottle beside my bed for several nights. I still served as fattened calf to those feasting mozzies.
So I thought, okay, maybe the yeast I used wasn't really yeast, or maybe I should have used white sugar as opposed to brown, or used a 2-liter soda bottle instead of a 1-liter water bottle (- I'm not in the habit of drinking soda so I don't have any spare bottles lying around!), or maybe the water I used wasn't warm enough or was too hot. My friend sent me some yeast via courier. (Yes, we were taking this project very seriously and many a-text was exchanged between Manila and Siargao on this subject matter.) Then I sent the girls out to buy white sugar. We tried this two more times. With three water bottles. That are now full of ants.
I could have just put out a plate of sugar for them, no?
Right. Back to Off and industrial-strength chemical mozzie killer spray. And none of that lemon-scented nonsense that will kill you before it kills a single mosquito. It's got to be the Agent Orange-take-no-prisoners type of bug spray that could embalm you in your sleep.
Same with body odor. You need chemicals to mask that shit. Seriously. When I was in college, I remember this guy saying that he would rather emit his own natural odor than smell like a field of sunflowers, or whatever scent those things come in. Unfortunately, for him and for all of us who accidentally wandered within smelling radius of him, the natural odor he was emitting was similar to that of a rancid goat.
I used to be really sensitive to smell. I once walked into a ladies room at the Ateneo (the university I went to) and had to walk right out, even though it looked empty. I waited out in the hall and, sure enough, a vile-smelling woman emerged from one of the cubicles. I had to hang out in the hall a while longer and wait for the stench to dissipate (I swear it clung heavily to the walls and ceiling) before I could enter the bathroom again.
In high school, we had an exchange student who stank so badly that we had to open all the windows and crank up the electric fans so that we wouldn't pass out from the smell. An emergency meeting was called on how to handle the situation. We eventually elected someone to have a discussion with her about it. If I remember correctly, she opened with, "You know, Daisy (not her real name and she certainly didn't smell like one), the Philippines is very different from your country. It's hotter here and we sweat more..."
Nowadays, I'm a bit more tolerant. But most Filipinos are not and find it offensive when someone reeks. If you smell, they won't tell it to your face but they'll make fun of you behind your back, perhaps give you a rude nickname, and turn their noses up at you when you walk by.
And don't even think about using those tawas (potassium alum) crystals. They don't work. Industrial strength anti-perspirant-deodorant-fields-of-sunflowers chemical is what you want. Okay, there are the unscented ones and those work just fine. But, yeah, all-natural when it comes to body odor - and insect repellant - is never a good call.
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Oh, while we're on the subject of mozzies, those mosquito zapper tennis rackets are awesome! I love the smell of frying mozzies in the evening. It's worth it to get a few - they're dirt cheap anyway - because they're flimsy and don't last very long. Out of the last three that I brought home from Chiang Mai, only one is working and I'm worried that it's about to fizzle out from being whacked too many times on various surfaces. The previous ones I had didn't survive being chucked at 5 AM at roosters in the trees.
And that's why they're called roosters, isn't it? (Eureka moment.) Because the damned things roost in the fucking trees. And here I thought they were high on "Sesame Street" when they had that cartoon about chickens in the trees. When the gardener showed up later in the day, I casually mentioned to him that he may find a few mosquito zapper tennis rackets, umbrellas and an assortment of slippers in the bushes behind the trees. Goddam roosters.
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