Traffic today during morning rush hour is not that bad. The bottleneck is just at Skyway due to repairs + high volume of cars going into Metro Manila.
I have a full day today until evening. October (well, technically is still September) is very busy month for me.
My sister messaged me at 9 am yesterday and told me instead of going to Makati on Tue to shop, we should do it that day and just drive to Nuvali. With me driving.
Ok I said, fine, I will finally buy that Acerpure air circulator that I had been hankering for because my living area + kitchen is not ventilated well. I still have to have that giant front door screened. Giant accordion screen doors are manufactured in Metro Manila and I’m still figuring it out how to order and have it installed.
Anyway, here it is, the air circulator that finally had the hot humid air in my living area moving. It makes the area cooler and I no longer have to bring out another electric fan when I have several people over for dinner.
According to Anson’s website, “with an efficient DC motor, the minimum airflow power consumption is just 1.65W.” Compared to the standard fan with power consumption of 65W, this purchase is a big win.
I can also plug this into a Jackery or Ecoflow battery/power station during power outages. I don’t like rechargeable fans because they may cause electrical fire. One of the Big Mama rechargeable fans we brought over from the QC apartment short-circuited. Those really were bad purchases. Bad reasons, bad results.
We bought the rechargeable fans in Cash & Carry Makati when we were threatened with a super typhoon and I was panicking and worried about how in the world will I keep J from complaining about the heat because there will be no aircon when the power goes out. But the super typhoon got diverted and passed through Southern Tagalog instead of hitting Metro Manila directly so the power didn’t go out as expected.
Imagine that—he was always on top of my worries and his welfare was my priority. And what did I get???
Ah never mind.
I think the best combination during power outages are a DC fan and a rechargeable power station (it’s like a giant power bank) that some portable solar power generators use.
The height can be adjusted (just remove or add the extra neck) so you can make it into a desk fan or a standfan.
I bought another one (as a standfan) for my Demolition Twins’ room so that the air is distributed when their aircon is on at night. They don’t have to fight over the aircon because one girl is allegedly hogging all the cold air since the air swing function is now wonky.
This is on sale now on Ansons website for PHP 4,999.
This is the movie that Gwyneth Paltrow has chosen over Titanic. I liked this movie and I often wondered about its premise, how missing two seconds of an event had changed the course of Gwyneth’s character forever. One scenario is that she was able to catch the train and the other was the train’s doors shutting on her face, making her miss the trip. Just a difference of two seconds, her life had forked.
I wouldn’t know which two seconds of my life would have been the turning point but I can tell the exact moments that certainly would have been pivotal. Like for example, what if I decided to cancel that initial meeting with J at Westin Singapore? I was supposed to cancel it because I was still in a meeting with my manager and my team mates. I was flying later that evening back to Manila and I didn’t want to be harassed going to the airport because it was already late. The meeting was supposed to be earlier that day but he forgot to put it in his phone’s calendar because I also forgot to RSVP. So we moved it to 4 pm.
If I cancelled that meeting, I wonder how my life would have been. I think I still would have moved to our apartment in QC even if I hadn’t met him and then I would still eventually move here in my hometown. I still would have built my home. But I think what I would have missed are the lessons from that painful experience. I would not have taken that long and arduous road to learning how to love myself.
But then, I always believed I am put in a place where I am supposed to be. I am meant to be here. It doesn’t matter if I took the circuitous route or the straight path, I will always end up here.
Just like when Gwyneth’s character in Sliding Doors. She missed the train so she wasn’t able to catch her boyfriend in bed with another woman. When she didn’t miss the train, she was able to catch her bf in flagrante delicto. She broke up with him and in the throes of her grief, met a better guy.
However, in the multiverse where she missed the train, she still ended breaking up with the bf. At the end of the movie, the other guy was just in the background but you can insinuate that eventually they would have met, even if it would have been a different circumstance. Gwyneth would still have ended with the better guy.
We are where we’re supposed to be.
Speaking of Singapore, I just watched this video by Tanner Leatherstein that showed how he tried to expose the deception being perpetuated by bag maker Aupen.
Given that Singapore is one of the top 3 most expensive cities to live in, there is no way that bags sold for USD 300, competing with mid-level luxury brands (think sub-USD 1,000 bags like Kate Spade, Tory Burch, Coach, and Michael Kors) are being made there. The margins would have been too thin. Even the homegrown brands like Charles & Keith and and Tocco Toscano (which I like and have two bags from them) aren’t made in Singapore (*whispers in mainland China Mandarin*).
What this video exposes is that mainland Chinese companies use Singapore as a front to appeal better to the broader public. Aupen claims on their website that their bags are made in Singapore but there are no tags that state where they are really manufactured (as per requirement by WTO). Tanner traced the shipment of the bag that he ordered and saw it was shipped from Guangdong, China where bulk of the world’s bags are made. He said it doesn’t make sense to manufacture bags in Singapore then ship to a warehouse in Guangdong. That would have eaten the very thin margin that may have left after paying the expensive wages Aupen would have paid its hypothetical Singapore-based workers.
Yeah dude, Singapore to Guangdong is five to six hours by air. Shipping from Singapore to Guangdong to ship all around the world is nuts. Who is Aupen kidding?
So what’s my point? Chinese companies like to pass themselves off as companies from somewhere else other than China because there is wide belief that goods manufactured in that country are of low quality. They’re also circumventing some trade embargo to be imposed/being imposed by Western countries.
Once luxury brands are bought by the likes of LVMH and Kering, manufacturing is moved to China to have wider margins. Yes, Louis Vuitton and Chanel are made in China, hence, the anecdotal evidence that quality of the products by Kering and LVMH are much more inferior than years past.
Some speculated that Aupen is secretly being funded by these luxury conglomerates to create a new brand that would appeal to Gen Z. These Gen Zs aren’t buying the goods from well-established brands because they feel like they’re sooo old—something that mommy or auntie are buying.
Established brand aren’t appealing to the generations anymore.
The gameplan is to make them trend on social media, create artificial shortage to make the brand more desirable and less accessible, and then when the brand becomes established among the younger generation of consumers, the brand gets “acquired” by these luxury conglomerates. It’s basically these conglomerates are cannibalizing their own market to get a bigger share in the consumers’ wallets.
And just like that, Aupen announced the collab with LVMH, even if it’s still plastered on their website that they’re closing down their operations because the founders wanted to take a break. 😉
I took this photo at around 10 pm today along SLEX from Makati. There are road works going on along this stretch but there was no blockage in this particular section. It’s purely high volume of vehicles passing through. 😩
I hope that cursed Christmas rush is not starting earlier this year. It’s just disheartening to think about the weeks leading to Christmas would be like this. 😢
Shopping centers began decorating with Christmas stuff in the first week of September. It’s not going to be very long before companies start with their yearend activities, starting a chain of events that would lead to gnarling of traffic in Metro Manila.
I lack sleep. I was holding a vigil because the US online store of the brand I patronize had a surprise sale—for a very short time only.
I swooped in, loaded my cart, and checked out. These are going to be Christmas gifts for the women in the family.
It took me hours before purchasing for myself though. I had to read so many reviews about my choices across different brands before finally clicking “checkout.”
Meanwhile…
What in the world?! That’s the price of a brand new sedan or hatchback! Whhyyyyyyyy?!
Who in the world would buy these? Are these made with human skin?
Despite the astronomical price, these bags easily get broken, the hardware giving up or the skin peeling off 🥴
No thank you.
I did nothing yesterday but watch Finding Your Roots (PBS) on YouTube that’s why I was late to the 5 pm church service. Yes, it was that late.
It was so fascinating how thorough they are with their research, especially with the documentation of black slaves. It was an emotional roller coaster ride for most guests.
I wish I have access to PBS so I could watch full episodes. 🥺 I love history.
I was wondering how far back can we go when it comes to my family. Maybe, someone might have been a writer, a thespian, or a musician back then. However, I doubt if we can go earlier than my great grandfather on my mom’s side. First of all, it was just in 1849 when the Spaniards forced the Spanish last names on the indios so tax collection would be easier. Prior to that, the records on my maternal side maybe would just indicate “Alfonso, son of David the Tall” which was the normal practice for the lower class or the indios. They didn’t have last names and they just identified as “son of” then the description of that person, hence we have Rajah Matanda (Rajah the Old) in our history books. It was the rich who had proper documentation then, just like in my paternal grandma’s side. We had/have a family tree, made in 1960s, hanging in one of my grand uncle’s houses. That house always figured in my nightmares as a child because it was dark and very old. It looked like it hasn’t been touched since the 1960s.
Anyway, in that family tree, I could trace the Spanish side of the family—a Spandiard married into the family and he was an industrious man who fenced all the land that he could fence. That’s why that family ended up with so much land and became rich/richer. He must have been a rarity in those times because when you’re an Español, you were automatically an upperclass human and can just be indolent, if you’re crafty enough. It doesn’t matter if you were just a petty thief in the old country. You can fashion yourself as someone in the new world—in the far-flung backwater Islas de Filipinas—as long as you are a pureblood Spaniard from the Iberian peninsula (peninsulares). This was best illustrated by Jose Rizal in Noli Me Tangere in the form of Don Tiburcio, the fake Spanish doctor whom social climber Doña Victorina de Espadaña married. The Philippines was not populated by the peninsulares because we are so far from continental Europe. There was little incentive for the Spaniards to come here, except if you’re a criminal on the run or have zero prospects back in Spain. Or a Spanish friar. We were just governed by the Spanish empire by proxy through Mexico. This explains why we Filipinos have fewer white or Eurasian features compared to the Mexicans. Mexico is just halfway across the world from Spain whereas the Islas required a full circumnavigation.
On my maternal side, family lore is handed down orally. Nothing has been written down. We don’t even have the Chinese name of our forefathers on my grandpa’s side and on grandma’s side. A cousin several times removed whom my uncle met in the US was the one who told him the original Chinese name. Now I have to pester my uncle for that info while he is still alive and has his mental faculties intact.
I don’t have info as to what was my maternal great grandfather’s trade. I just know he was a Katipunero during the revolt against Spain. My great grandma lived until my mom was in her elementary school years and she and an uncle slept on either side of her when they were growing up.
My maternal grandpa was very industrious. He was able to reach high school—a rarity in those days during the American colonial period—and the only way he could go to school then was by taking lodgings with a household near the school as his family lived in the mountains. That’s where he met my grandma (who only finished 2nd Grade but could do sums); she was the daughter of the landlord. (In contrast, my paternal grandma went to finishing school and her siblings went to law school or finished college in Manila. That’s why she could speak and read Spanish and English). My maternal grandpa said he brought with him a potful of uncooked rice from home every week and that would be consumed all throughout the week.
He boarded a ship (as a stowaway) bound for California, USA. He became a muchacho (errand boy), a cook, a grocer, etc. This is why he could hold conversations in English. He told me his favorite fruit was peach that’s why his children from the US always sent him canned peaches (before imports came flooding our market with it). He could have stayed in the US and just live there but he went back home to marry my grandma. My grandpa bought land (several hectares of it in two provinces). He built an elementary school in his village so children didn’t have to board with strangers just to be able to go to school like he did. Everyone in my maternal side has a fond memory of him and his cooking. I loved his Southern-style fried chicken while my older cousins still hanker for his pork cracklings. He didn’t like cooking on the gas stove; that was for my grandma. He preferred cooking on his wood and ash stove. I had watched him cook his magic there, in his tattered cookhouse. He still had the beat-up dining table that my mom and his siblings used to eat on and utilized it as his worktop. I wonder where all those went 🤔.
My paternal grandpa was a witch doctor and a farmer. I doubt if our last name is our real last name because he was a child born out of wedlock. He was an only child—uncommon in those times when families have more than 6 children. My great grandma could have invented a last name for my grandpa because it was not normal to have an illegitimate child acknowledged by the father in those days, even if half the town knew who he was…
He and my rich grandma eloped, lived for a while in a hacienda in San Pablo. He worked there as a majordomo (butler) for that rich don, who was a friend of President Manuel Quezon. The president visited the hacienda while my grandpa was working there.
However, my grandma insisted on going back home and inserted her family in the middle of the clan even though she and her family were ostracized. The problem with her is that she wanted it all—romantic love and comfort—at the expense of her children and husband’s happiness. All throughout their lives, my grandma and grandpa lived separately. My grandma lived in her house surrounded by homes of her siblings, while grandpa went home to his farm, several kilometers away from town. They just visited each other. Because how can you tolerate living smack in the middle of a community that looks down on you?
My father and the rest of his siblings were always taught by my grandma not to go against their rich cousins, always have their heads down and not fight back. She taught them to be subservient and to be inferior at all times. Oh God, forgive me, but I blame her for all the trauma that my father carried, which we his children bore as well. Being a child of a raging alcoholic narcissist is not fun. I’m still trying to heal from that generational trauma. In my angriest moments, I called my grandma in my head a spoiled little princess who wanted the world and didn’t care whom she would hurt.
But maybe that was unfair of me because she was nice to me. She loved us as offsprings of his favorite child. Yes, my father was a mama’s boy, which compounded to a lot of problems (hence, his narcissism). I don’t know how to deal with my past—I’m very conflicted. My ex-spouse is the same as my father, a spoiled favored child, a narcissist who could never owe up to his actions. Everyone and everything is at fault but never him. My therapist said we get attracted to the same kind of people we grew up with. I learned this from my mom, my therapist said…
I am writing this down so it will not just be oral history for my children. They need a record of their past. I wish I could dig through records in my parents’ hometown to get more data from both sides of my family before they all get lost.