These Shoes Are Made For Walking

By Tingting Cojuangco
Lucy Torres-Gomez
Rissa M. Mananquil

DEAR RISSA,

I'm a college student and since our campus is big, we always have to walk from building to building. The rainy season has started and my favorite pair of shoes (leather ballet flats) has been getting wet from the rain. This pair was a birthday gift from my parents and is a bit pricey. But I love wearing them every day to school because they're super comfy and versatile. How do I care for my shoes when they get wet?

JAJA

I know how you feel! When I was in college, it was no fun walking from building to building during rainy days and going home with damp feet (and dirty, ruined shoes!). When my shoes would get wet, I just let my damp shoes dry naturally. Avoid putting them near sources of heat because this can damage the leather and later cause it to crack. You can stuff them with old crumpled newspaper to help draw out the moisture and odor. This will also help maintain the shoe's shape. A shoe horn is a good investment especially for closed-back leather shoes because this helps keep the back from breaking down. No matter what pair of shoes I use, I always make it a habit to clean them as soon as possible after use. A soft cloth can be used to remove dirt and dust. If my shoes are a bit muddy, I allow the mud to dry first, then use an old toothbrush to remove the mud. I know you love your leather ballet flats but try to rotate the shoes you use. Try not to wear shoes for two days in a row. No matter what time of the year it is, the feet sweat a lot and your shoes need sufficient time to air out. To keep your shoes in top form, it's worth investing in a good shoe shining kit (with appropriate brushes and polishing cloths). The kit will last a lifetime -- and your shoes will last longer, too! Have you heard of Melissa shoes? Made by Brazil's fashionable footwear giant Grendene SA, they're a great re-invention of the much-loved jelly shoes. I think they're a great alternative to your favorite leather pair -- especially during this rainy season! They have so many fashionable styles and colors to choose from, be it flats, wedges or stilettos. My first pair of Melissa shoes was pointy flats and they felt heavenly on my feet! My next pair was a wedge style. From runway shoes to a night out, Melissa shoes are a wonderful and fashionable treat for my feet! I look forward to slipping my feet into them every day. I wear them even when it isn't raining because they're just so comfortable and fashionable! You can find Melissa shoes at Anthem in Power Plant Mall and Shangri-La Mall, Mia Bella in Serendra, Culte Femme in Rustan's, and Mixedenim in Greenbelt 3, Makati. Hope you find a new pair to call your favorite!

RISSA

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RX FOR ACNE-PRONE SKIN AND SWEATY UNDERARMS

DEAR LUCY,

I cannot afford to go to the dermatologist on a regular basis so I am writing to ask you about effective over-the-counter products that I can use on my acne-prone skin. Please, please help me!

Also, I have sweaty underarms. I wear a lot of dark tailored shirts and my sweating really gives an ugly stain. What deodorant can I use?

DESPERATE CALL CENTER GIRL

I think you will benefit a lot from a soap-free cleanser and an acne treatment. If you already have an acne astringent that you can use in between the two, then so much the better. From Stiefel comes this product called PanOxyl, a soap-free cleanser that effectively works on pimple-prone and oily skin. It cleanses the skin thoroughly. I also came across this product called Duac (still from Stiefel) and it is a very effective topical treatment for mild to moderate acne. Its active ingredients are clindamycin and benzoyl peroxide.

Stiefel is available at Mercury Drug and leading drugstores nationwide.

For very sweaty underarms, you need nothing else but Driclor. Excessive sweating is also known as hyperhidrosis. This uncomfortable, excessive outflow of secretions from the sweat glands are prompted by emotions and/or heat stimulation. This condition can happen in the underarms, hands and feet. When left untreated, it can cause body odor. Driclor is a clear, colorless solution that is different from other deos because it is really formulated with aluminum chloride hexahydrate. It forms a gel matrix in the affected sweat glands, thus reducing and eventually regulating the flow of sweat.

Driclor is available at Mercury Drug and leading drugstores nationwide.

LUCY

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FROM BAGGY TO SNAZZY

DEAR MS. TINGTING,

What can I do with the baggy bum and knees in my old leather pants? I want to keep it in style instead of putting it away because it's very costly.

LIZ

Leather pants are sexy but a baggy butt isn't. To fix a stretched-out-of-shape bum, ask a good tailor to take in the excess at the back of the waist. Baggy knees are hard to fix because stretching around this area is vertical rather than horizontal. Taking in the seams won't help. To reduce stretching, try pulling the legs of your pants up as you sit down or put a garter at the bottom of the two sides of your pants and slip on the garter at the heel of your feet to give you a skinny silhouette.

TINGTING

Taken from The Philippine Star

Are You Intelligent?: The meaning of true intelligence...

A student gets a perfect score in his test. His classmates then comment, "That guy is intelligent." Is he? We all know for a fact that we, students, are getting to be experts in the field of cheating among which includes the cheating arrangement. Along with it, we also have very trained eyes to see our seatmate's answers at a glimpse and very trained ears to hear our seatmate whispering the answer to us. So if a student gets a perfect score in his test, is doesn't necessarily mean he is intelligent.

When does one become intelligent? One becomes intelligent when he has a great "capacity to understand." The key word is understand -- NOT MEMORIZE. You may say it's better to memorize than to understand because in memorization, the information tends to "stick" to your brain. This is only partly true because in memorizing, you can only absorb part of the information. It is believed that if a person has a better capacity to understand and get new information into his mind, his memory isn't as good. But this has been proven otherwise. Researches of some neuroscientists show that these two -- memory and intelligence -- are two very different things and are probably controlled by two different parts of the brain.

Further research shows that our capacity to memorize or remember things must be related to our emotions regarding the subject. This would explain why some of us can memorize better when we are in desperation and not so much when we are in stress or tension. One of its disadvantages is the tendency of the information to "disappear" when we have relaxed. Another is having a hard time to remember what the information is under heavy stress. Some tests conducted by some neuroscientists showed that we can remember the information that we can't normally remember once a certain instance or object, similar to that in the information we want to remember, triggers a nerve in our brain that would suddenly flash the said information into the mind.

These are the reasons why it is better to understand whatever information we receive (be it a subject, topic, news or any discussion or symposium) because once we have set our mind to truly understand what we are about to encounter, the information will "carve" itself in our minds and we won't have a hard time remembering it. When it comes to reading information from newspapers or magazines, it is better to get the main idea of the topic and then analyze each of the data in connection with the main idea.

But with regard to solving puzzles and answering questions like those in the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE), the capacity of the person to understand will enable him to analyze the data faster than usual. He will be able to find the connection between Object 1 and Object 2 and apply it to find the partner for Object 3.

True intelligence is therefore marked by the person's capacity to understand the information he encounters. It doesn't necessarily have to reflect on your test score (but you must have an above-average score). With this in mind...ARE YOU INTELLIGENT?

Rico Andrew Patron, HS450

Taken from The Bosconian Forum