It’s so cumbersome to be living in QC if most of your business is in Makati central business district. The travel time is hellish due to the mind-numbing traffic jam that is back to pre-covid horribleness. However, this is compensated by the fact that QC has more wide open public spaces with trees compared to surrounding cities and people do not have to go to malls to be able to access public spaces where they can bring their children.

My kids and I had bento brunch today c/o of moi because I wanted to eat maguro sashimi. I pan-seared the tuna’s surface but the inside is still raw. I like it that way, I don’t know why.

I took a nap after lunch because I slept late again last night. I had been tinkering with my older sister’s laptop that I wanted to convert into a Linux machine. Because I can.

I cleaned its innards and checked if the RAM has an expansion slot. Nope, the RAM is onboard, thus, I would be limited to just 4GB. The keyboard is ghosting so I bought a replacement to make this serviceable. The keyboard would come from Shenzhen, China so I would have to wait for weeks before I could perform another surgery on this thing.

Why am I resurrecting an old laptop? I don’t know. Maybe because I can? It has always been a hobby of mine to tinker with old laptops and Frankenstein it. I used to dual-boot computers with Windows and Linux but it’s a bit cumbersome to partition SSDs or HDDs and run out of space over time so might as well have separate machines for the two OS. Why? Because I need to brush up on Linux every now and then and teach myself how to compile drivers or work my way around GitHub. Why? Because I’m bored? I want complications? I don’t know. It’s just my way of educating myself with stuff that 95% of the people here don’t bother with.

Anyway, enough about the laptop.

So this afternoon we’re back in QC Circle because I wanted to buy more plants and have a very lush container garden again.

I let the girls roam free in the amusement park again and ride whatever they want with the budget I gave them.

It was a lovely afternoon and we took advantage of the sunshine that has been rare every afternoon this week. After I spent like PhP 500 on additional plants, I watched the afternoon go by on this concrete bench and waited for the the girls to run out of money.

I appreciate this city for having this Circle, UP Diliman, and LaMesa EcoPark (further up north near Fairview)—and other places I have yet to discover—so families can have affordable places where they can have picnics and have their kids run around safely. I could not imagine living in other cities and being stuck in a condo for months on end because of Covid lockdowns. I would have gone stir-crazy. Good thing I had the foresight and chose to live in QC still. I was thankful every time I could bike to UP campus in the evenings on unbearable days when I was still living inside my head and grieving.

Since we live near Maginhawa St, I am making sure we dine once a week in some of the restaurants here so we can try all of the things on offer before we leave this apartment next year. I’m going to miss this place even though last year it was painful to be still living here. Through sheer determination, I was able to exorcise J’s ghost and learned to love this home that I call mine. My apartment in my city where I’ve been living for almost 20 years.