I’m now in the room where I lived since 1992. It is where my girls first cried their lungs out for six months after staying in the NICU for 32 days in 2011. It’s a storage room for now, where things that have no place are dumped—just like me.

The storage boxes above contain my journalism memories of the past 17 years. These are my old notebooks and newspaper copies that featured my investigative pieces that were published every Sunday by my old company. I must sift through them and throw away 90% of them. I still have my childhood crap somewhere in this house that I need to sort and throw away. My diaries since 1989. That’s a lot of crap. I only stopped writing on journals when I discovered blogging in 2003. I tried keeping handwritten journals after that but it was just too painful to write the things I needed to write…I could have saved myself from staying in a bad marriage if I allowed myself to vent out and parse through the things I’ve been through.

Oh well, what is done is done. It is what it is.

I’m now close to perfecting my chicken rice. I discovered that poaching the chicken first with the usual ginger, onions/scallions, a bit of sugar, and salt (or salt substitute) and then cooking it on top of the rice (with the chicken rice mix that I buy in Singapore) in the rice cooker produce a nicely done chicken. Not Tong Fong Fatt level but better than the Wee Nam Kee here.

Before leaving the apartment this afternoon, my sister asked if I have badminton rackets that I want to give away because their maid’s child needed a racket. I remember buying them a couple of years ago, when I deluded myself into thinking that my kids and I would be playing regularly in UP Diliman on weekends.

Goodbye, rackets. You didn’t have much use. I’m throwing away the memories that came with these because I bought them from Decathlon with the ex.

The girls were so little then. 😊

Now they’re into this:

I’m hormonal today. I feel melancholic. I shouldn’t let my mind wander to the past.