DIMMA UMEH

"In times of trouble he will shelter me; he will keep me safe in his Temple and make me secure on a high rock." Psalms 27:5

"The Kind of fasting I want is this: remove the chains of oppression and the yoke of injustice, and let the let the oppressed go free." Isaiah 58:6

"I know that I will live to see the goodness of the Lord in this present life." Psalm 27:13

This brush came to me. I was literally minding my business, managing the things I had and then it came and showed me that sometimes its not everytime management, sometimes try new things.

I talked about my current situation in a makeup tutorial that I published here late last year but from all the messages and emails I've been receiving, it seems that a lot of people missed that video. 

I love sigma brushes. They are affordable and the best thing for beginners who can't really afford the popular high end brushes. I buy and recommend their brushes a lot but I've never really bothered trying anything from their makeup line, that changed after the brand sent me a few of their products  back in November. I was sent a few things which I'm still trying out but the lip base that I'll be talking about in this post has been tried and tested.

I heard all and sundry rave about this stuff and I was about to purchase them before I received them as in the mail courtesy of Juvia's place. 

Big faced watches have always been my thing, right from secondary school, the bigger they were, the more I loved them, thank you! and I've been on the hunt for a good leather wrist watch for a while now. I realized a while back that in in my watch collecting process, I had completely ignored anything that was not a chain watch so I was excited when I received this watch from the Daniel Wellington brand in the mail.

"Be my rock of refuge, a stronghold to give me safety, for you are my rock and my fortress. Psalm 71:3

I've been eyeing the Gorillapod focus for a very long time. I wanted it even before I started making youtube videos but I didn't know how to get my hands on it. I settled for the standard tripod but I've always had a problem with mine because even at its lowest height, it was still too tall for my filming setup. I decided to buy a smaller tripod at the beginning of the year. I checked game which is a Godsend when it comes to things like this but the one here in Enugu didn't have anything smaller than what I already owned so I went back to mooning. 

After searching for table top tripods on amazon I decided to just close my eyes and get the Gorillapod focus. I kept telling myself that it will be worth the price I was paying for it and in all honesty, it has been.

Avidmax was the second seller that I tried purchasing the Gorillapod from and I'm glad I used them. I realized as I was about to check out that they offered expedited shipping to Nigeria so I sent them a message asking which courier service they use for express international shipping and they replied the next day saying that they used Fedex so I went on ahead and placed my order.

SHIPPING

My order got to me within 4 days. Shipping cost me about $42.90.

Three: The link will take you straight to a page that has a list of vendors that sell the same item through Amazon. Scroll down and look for any vendor that offers both domestic and international shipping then click on add to cart. At this stage, I work with ratings. As you guys can see, ratings are clearly shown underneath every seller's name. The higher the ratings, the better the seller. Also bear in mind that not all sellers that offer international shipping actually ship to Nigeria. About 70% of them do but you won't know this till you select a shipping address so if a seller can't deliver to you, try another seller. For this post I'll be using a seller called Avidmax simply because I've used them before and they offer both domestic and international shipping. 

Four: Once you click on add to cart, you will be redirected to this page. Click on Proceed to checkout.

Six: Once you click on the continue button, it takes you to the final page which is where you place your order. Your own page does not necessarily have to look like this. Amazon in most cases can't really tell what currency you have in your card account so feel free to manually to change it. Once your order has been placed, you will instantly get an email confirmation. You will receive another email once your order has been shipped.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Only about 5% of the third party sellers that I've used actually offer expedited shipping to Nigeria. I mostly use standard shipping which hardly ever offers tracking but my orders usually get to me within 10 working days. Most Amazon third party sellers use USPS to ship so that means that my orders are usually delivered by NIPOST. Luckily for me, the people at the NIPOST office here in Enugu have been very efficient. My orders always get to me on time. The only time that I've experienced delay in delivery was during the christmas period and we all know Nigerian customs, they usually decide to hold on to a lot of things during that period for no good reason.

Not all third party sellers on Amazon are based in the US so don't be surprised when you receive your parcel and actually realize that it came all the way from Singapore.

If you ever decide to use expedited shipping please make sure you contact the seller to ask what courier service they use for that type of shipping. If the seller uses Fedex or DHL then you are good but if the seller uses USPS to ship orders out for express delivery, just stick with standard shipping. I learnt this the hard way. I ordered an item last year from two different sellers on the same day and I chose expedited shipping for both. One of them shipped with fedex and the other one used USPS. The fedex parcel got to me within 5 days like promised  but the one that was shipped with USPS took way more than the estimated delivery time. At the end of the day it wasn't even delivered I was called by those working at EMS which is a private company that handles all express deliveries for NIPOST  and I was told to come to the office and pick up my order and that when coming I should come with the sum of N1,500 or something like that, I can't really remember. So with USPS expedited shipping, you will have to manually go and pick up your order and also pay them for no good reason so be very careful. Like I mentioned in a previous post, you are not supposed to pay any NIPOST delivery man one Naira.

This was a very long post (I don tire) but I promised to put it up and I wanted it to be as detailed as possible. I also have upcoming They deliver posts on vendors that I have used so keep checking!

I've gotten a lot of emails concerning how I place my Asos orders, so I will be answering most of the questions I've recieved in this post.
 If you are not familiar with Asos, kindly click on THIS  link.

Asos currently delivers to Nigeria and they offer two types of delivery. There is the standard delivery which is free and takes up to 9 working days and there is the express delivery which costs £20 and takes up to 4 working days.


I've used Asos alot so I'm going to tell you guys some of the things that I've learned from experience.


HOW TO ORDER:
To order from Asos you must have an internationlly accepted MASTER or VISA Card. You cannot place an order on Asos using a VERVE card.
To place an order, you need to enter the name on the card, the card number, the card expiry date and the card cvv code which is the last three numbers found on the back of card.


SHIPPING:
ANY ORDER WORTH LESS THAN 100 POUNDS WILL LIKELY END UP MISSING OR TAKE MORE THAN 9 WORKING DAYS TO GET TO YOU, so be very careful. This happened to me 3 times before I realised what the problem was. The main reason for this is that, Asos ships out orders that cost  less than 100 pounds through Royal mail which is the UK's local postal service and this automaticlly means that Nipost has the responsibility of delivering your order to you (which to me is a very risky something) smh.

With orders that cost less than 100 pounds, you don't get a tracking number and this makes it difficult for both you and Asos to track what is going on and  at the end of the day, Nobody can actually tell what happened to you order
The last time I had this problem, I sent an email to Asos telling them that my Order had not gotten to me  yet and they replied saying that I should give it extra 9 working days because it was shipped through my local postal service (NIPOST) and  in that same mail, they suggested that I check my local post office to make sure that the order was not there.

I decided to check the post office so I went to the one in Lekki phase 1, Lagos because I lived in Lekki at the time but there was nothing there. They  referred me to the post office in Adeola odeku, Victoria Island so I went there to ask of it. I gave them my order number and name and after looking around tiredly, the guy assigned to me came back and told me that he didnt see anything. I called him aside and told him to please help me keep an eye out for it. I gave him my phone number and house address and lo and behold I got a text from him the next day telling me that my parcel had miraculously appeared.
I went to the office that day to  pick it up and asked him why it was never sent out for delivery and he told me that they could'nt deliver it because there was no phone number on the parcel and that their bike men had also been banned from coming to the area where I live. The whole story made no absolute sense but I thanked him profusely and ran away with my package. I learnt that day to buy from Asos when I only had a 100 pounds or more to spare.

 ORDERS SHIPPED FOR EXPRESS DELIVERY AND ORDERS THAT COST £100 AND ABOVE:
You are only asked to pay for customs if the order was shipped through SKY NET and with all orders shipped through this company, you automatically  get a tracking number.

SKY NET is a courier service that delivers all Asos orders worth 100 pounds or more. They are also the ones that deliver all Asos orders shipped out for express delivery.

They are always prompt and never exceed the estimated delivery date (I've never had a problem with them). They are also the only ones you should pay any custom charge whatsoever. They usually send you a text stating the amount of money that a you are required to pay before your parcel arrives  and they also give you a receipt as proof of payment.

You should never ever pay a Nipost  delivery man one Kobo after he has delivered anything to you. I say this because they've duped somebody I know in past without giving him a receipt.

CUSTOM CHARGE:
With some orders, you are required to pay a custom charge depending I think on the weight of your order. So the more your order weighs the more you will likely pay. The highest I've payed for customs is about N1,800 and the order was about the size of the carton in the first picture with some extra items in a plastic asks bag.

I know someone who orderd alot of shoes, the whole thing came in 5 different cartons and she was asked to pay N10,000 for customs (horrible right?). I just try as much as possible not put items that might weigh too much in one order.

*NB
I also realised after several attempts that items from Mango are not available for delivery in Nigeria. I honestly do not know why.

I hope this post was helpful, Please kindly share your Asos experience in the comments section below.