Reader Focus: Sheena Marie Flores

Sheena Marie Flores is one of the winners of my birthday giveaway 2011. I met up with her at Heaven and Eggs to give hand over her prizes as well as to interview her. Turns out that she's an Electronics and Communications Engineering student at the Ateneo, who's also actively involved at the Ateneo Electronics and Computer Engineering Society as a Vice-President for Special Projects.

Now, this girl is a certified Kikay Geek.

As with my other readers, Sheena is a delightful conversationalist. I've actually learned about a lot of other websites she guessed I might be interested in.

How she landed on Skysenshi.com
She found Skysenshi through blog networks since I'm also connected to MrsMartinez and Dash, owners of blogs she frequents.

We actually covered a lot of ground because she's interested in a myriad of topics, from education (she believes, as do I, that this is the ticket to helping our society) to the Reproductive Health Bill (she led me to a very insightful website about it) to feminism (and its various incarnations) to Engineering and student life, which I could definitely relate to. Haha!

Sheena with her token prizes.

If she could be a guest blogger at Skysenshi.com...
She'd talk about anime and Japan.  The most interesting thing Sheena shared about was her stint as an exchange student in Japan. Here's a transcript of her story:

I went to Japan as an exchange student for December 2007. I was in fourth year high school then. The sponsor company is the international organization AFS. AFS-Philippines handled all delegates from the Philippines and the major sponsor of the program was AFS-Japan. I was under the program Japan East Asia Network for Students and Youth - short Program (JENESYS Program).

There were 60 young Filipino delagates nationwide and I was one of the lucky chosen ones. Since it was a short program it was two weeks long which was 1 week educational tour and 1 week host family stay. I stayed in Gosen City where I enetered Gosen-kita Jr. High School and Gosen High School as part of the experience. Since it was an Asia Network for students, I met great people who became my friends from Indonesia, Australia, India, Thailand, Malaysia and New Zealand. I had a trip bestfriend Laura, who was an Australian. We had a reception event where all 600 delegates from these countries gathered and it was really amazing to see such diverse cultures but were open for friendship.

It was winter that time and me, being not used to the weather, felt really cold. It was awfully cold! Good thing they had those pocket heat sheets that you can buy to keep you warm - I only discovered it when a co-delegate shared some of his packs to me. My host family also gave me some.

When I was in my host family stay-in period, we went shopping and tried Japanese Crepe and it was really delicious. We also took a lot of these mini sticker pictures which I kept as a remembrance. It was winter but I saw girls wearing skirts and no leggings and they seem to look pretty comfortable and warm - very impressive cause I was wrapped in layers of clothes but I still felt cold. Since I am a fan of the anime Naruto, I really wanted to visit a ramen restaurant and we did - the food was amazing!

The trip was all expenses paid so the food, hotel stays, tours, transportation, plane tickets and many more were free! I really enjoyed my stay there and really plan to go back to Japan and visit my host family after graduation or when I have the money to pay for my visit. Until now I keep in touch with them and I'm glad that the recent Japan Tsunami event did not hit Gosen City. My host sister said that their fear was the radiation but as of now they are ok.

I wish I had been as adventurous as her when I was her age. That sounded really fun!

Congratulations, Sheena! And hope to see more of you soon! (With a slightly bigger group sounds so much exciting, too!)

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Reader Focus: MrsM! Michelle Cu-Martinez

For our second edition of Reader Focus: The winner of my birthday giveaway, let's hear it for MrsM!! Michelle Cu-Martinez!

I met up with Michelle at Serenitea (will upload the full story about this meet-up, which included other top bloggers, on a separate blog post) to give her her PhP1,000 SM Gift Card. Of course, many of you already know MrsM.  For those who don't, well here's a glimpse of this popular lifestyle blogger's life...

How she describes herself.

I am a housewife, executive secretary and a blogger all rolled into one. Housewife=24/7, executive secretary to DH 3x a week and blogger when I am in the mood. LOL.

How she landed on Skysenshi.com

Bea, I don't know if you remembered but I met you in Holy Cow! You were with Leki. And Rowena introduced you to me as “Siya si SKYSENSHI!” and the rest, as they say, is history. LOL.

I like your beauty topics, especially your dilemma with Pond’s. I swear binasa ko ata lahat ng posts mo about it. Sana wala akong na miss.

And also when you conduct a giveaway, it’s so easy to join! Plus the prizes are awesome! More SM GCs to come. LOL.

What interests MrsM?

My favorite topics are food, make up, and fashion in that order.

My favorite hang out: Serenitea! Haha! I love Japanese restaurants especially the one in Sta. Rosa called Umenoya. Last I heard the restaurant transferred to Biñan, Laguna already. I will visit it soon.

My top beauty product picks are Celeteque facial wash, Dove Facial Wash, Pond’s Cold Cream, Kanebo, Carmex, which I discovered just recently, and The Body Shop. These are the products that I use and I am willing to pay for. Haha! The beauty products that I love do not cost an arm and a leg but they work for me. I still haven’t found the right shampoo combination/ treatment that works well for my itchy scalp. But it seems like Nizoral is working well for me right now. I use it alternately with a local organic brand tea tree shampoo for dandruff control. So far it’s working after two weeks of alternating the two. Let’s just wait and see after a month. I will keep you posted.

I love fashion and looking at all fashion bloggers’ photos. I like how they pose so I am currently working on my pose as well. I can’t say that I am fashion forward. My style is simple. I like clothes that are comfortable. It doesn’t necessarily has to eb expensive. I know my limitations, no sleeveless or halter for me. I like to wear short skirts and shorts because I want to show off my legs. Haha! It’s the only body part that I am proud of anyway. Hey, I am in my 30’s, give me a break! LOL. In a few years' time, no matter how much I would want to show it off, nobody would dare even look. LOL.

I am so talkative, OMG, maybe that’s why Pond’s christened me to be the "Queen of Talk" in the Unbeaten Challenge. LOL.

If she could be a guest blogger at Skysenshi...

I would write about make up: the way I do it. During one event, I learned that the flat brush I use for my compact powder was intended for liquid foundation. Haha!

But the heck with the manual, sometimes, I even use my fingers to apply make up. LOL. Look at some of my FOTD, it came out just fine, di ba? So, I think it doesn’t matter if you only have one make up brush or even with no brush at all, if you know the trick in applying make up, you will be just fine. 

Thanks, MrsM, for gracing us with your presence! Of course, after this, I'd be going to your blog to check out your recent updates. Haha!

Hm...I think I met you waaaay before Holy Cow. I think I remember seeing you in one of the Starbucks events I attended as a contributor of Spot.PH. I'm not quite sure, though...

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Reader Focus: Dash Estefani

Last month, I celebrated my birthday with a giveaway and promised to treat the winners over coffee or dinner. I also intended to interview them, as I want to acknowledge the support that my readers have given skysenshi.com.

Dash, who also owns a lifestyle blog that carries her name on the domain (though its official title is Pieces of A Wunderkind's Mind), won second prize so we decided to meet at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in Ayala Triangle. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that she's a nurse who works at a hospital in Quezon City.

I was curious about what part of her job she found to be the most inspiring, because I believe that being a nurse is a vocation, much like the priesthood or teaching. She said that there would be times when she'd walk in the mall and some of her patients would recognize her. Dash would feel really awed when they'd thank her profusely for taking care of them. She never expected to be thanked for doing her job but she was extremely grateful that people noticed it.

How she landed on Skysenshi.com 
She told me that she would normally go blog-hopping -- usually searching for topics about beauty and anime -- and she ended up in here one day. What utterly amazed me was that she just recently found out that I own The Otaku Fridge, which she used to frequent when she was a lot younger. (Yikes, our ages are showing!! I've been running that site since I was in college.)

I asked her if she had already met some of my readers and she said she had met Smarla and had actually thought she'd be seeing Sheena (one of the other winners) during this meet-up since Sheena also won something from her. Some of the other bloggers she follows are Trixie Torralba and The Creative Dork (ooh, this blog is also one of my favorites).

While I was asking her about her favorite topics, she took this photo of me, which I actually like very much since...well, I looked so happy to see her, haha! Anyway, she said that she liked reading about Human Nature, among many of the other health and beauty posts. Her favorite products are the Seaweed Calendula Facial Wash (she claims that this is very refreshing) and the Love Minerals Island Shell Foundation.

If she could be a guest blogger at Skysenshi...
She'd write about Japanese food, seeing that the blog is definitely Japanese-inspired. And it won't just be like any other food review. She would concentrate on the history, creating a narrative that would delve into the back story and science behind the dishes she'd be featuring. Hm. I'd really be interested in reading (and posting) that guest entry.

Overall, we had a very nice conversation about events, other blogs, our jobs...oh, it turns out that her boyfriend is an alumnus of the institution I work for! And he happens to have come from my department. Whatta coincidence!

Here is Dash again, with the rest of her loot. Congratulations, dear! I'd also like to thank you for participating in my contest and indulging me in this interview.

More power to you!

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