I know that tourism is the lifeblood of some cities, provinces, and countries but until we have everybody inoculated and not take precautions (please, no to crowds!), the virus will continue to mutate. Chinese tour groups are notorious for the lack of crowd control or the volume of people. If the virus mutates again from China, God knows what kind of monster will come out of there again. We should refrain from encouraging this kind of complacency.

Meanwhile, the dolomite beach along Manila Bay is I think politically instigated, to show that stupid project is not a waste of people’s money when funds should have been channeled to pandemic response.

This is really stupid.

What Dr. Mojica says is true. Presidential aspirants who promise to build hospitals do not know what the problem is, therefore, they do not know how to solve a health crisis like Covid. Mojica says that hundreds of hospitals will not solve the pandemic if you do not fix the contact tracing, air circulation in public utility vehicles, offices, schools and public places and not enough vaccines/low vaccination rate. These hundreds of hospitals will still be filled with Covid patients to the brim. He asks, where will you get healthcare workers? “We do not multiply when we get wet,” he said.

As I said in my post on LinkedIn, you are like groping in the dark and Covid will just hit you from out of nowhere because there is no contact tracing, no access to low-cost testing, and no support for quarantined breadwinner from poor families. You can’t just go on cycles of lockdowns that kill livelihoods and spur reckless behaviors, like that of the uncontrolled tourists in the two examples above.

I don’t want to get sick with Covid again. Nope.

So after discussing with my siblings and mom the plan, I was told, no, I cannot eat floor area in the main house so the room that I will be taking from the main house will remain narrow. So I decided to keep the existing walls and just make another wall to extend my room and make a separate office/walk-in closet. The girls’ room will be transferred to the corner of the unit and will be occupying the rest of the eastern wall. There will be just a wee bit of space for hanging out/lounging for my girls and their friends. We don’t really watch TV that much but this will be for the girls’ movie nights with friends, which I regularly had with my friends when we were in high school because our house was so near our school.

It looks tight because I have my dimensions off (this is not to scale) but the general idea is there. The bar stools can be pushed under the counter for more walking space but I think this will not be that small. I have inspected the space yesterday and it’s doable and is more spacious than I thought. I can also have transoms all around the entire east, north and western walls because there are gaps between the support beams and the naked ceiling. There will be sunlight all around.

Then I told my mom that I will just follow the vaulted ceiling and not have a dropped ceiling so that the entire unit will feel more spacious. My house will feel like a church with super high vaulted ceilings. I think I wouldn’t need a/c in the living/kitchen area and just have my window-type inverter a/c units in our rooms because of the number of windows and the vaulted ceiling will keep it well ventilated. Plus my hometown is generally cooler than Metro Manila since it is at the foot of a mountain.

Meanwhile, the girls are having fun with their older cousin and the younger one. They played all day long until it was time for Kuya P to go home at around 8 pm.

We brought their bikes so at least they can bike around the area. They need a lot of exercise and fresh air and more playmates.

I have one week of freedom. And the cats have peace.