I sent a message to my car guy to ask when can I go and pick up my car. He hasn’t replied yet. And it’s not a good sign.

Meanwhile, I’m so mentally exhausted today after spending hours trying to come across as intelligent and knowledgeable about the industries of my interviewees. Good thing I seemed to have passed and the discussions were good; I was able to extract enough for a 1,000-word article for each interview today.

I’m also struggling to finish an article, which was based on an interview by my newest reporter. From the transcript, it shows that she had trouble pivoting or taking control of the interview. The interviewee refused to budge and does not answer the questions directly or is beating around the bush. This reporter sent an SOS to help her write the story. Now that I’m deep into it, it took me a while to figure out how to structure the story. Interviewing difficult people requires great skill and unfortunately I wasn’t there to help my reporter go around the interviewee to grill him more.

You see, being a journalist involves a lot of mind games and interviews are like a football game. You need to always have the ball in your control and you call the shots, which information you need or don’t need. If they give you more motherhood statements than real information, flip the court and have the ball back under your feet. You juggle the ball around your interviewee until you get what you need and move to strike a goal.

The sooner reporters know about how cerebral this work is, the better they are in interviewing/data gathering.

However, there are instances that you just have to walk away because talking to a stonewalling interviewee is more trouble than his company/story is worth. Know when to walk away.

Because this day has left me mentally drained, I am just going to indulge in brainless activity—watching Youtube videos of creative people.

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Expect more market routs from hereon. Hello my portfolio…are you still ok? My paper losses have been mounting.

“The odds of a recession have gone up, but the markets have not fully priced in the recession case yet,” Ms. Hoxha said. “Not only is the Fed having to correct being too dovish last year, it has to unwind its balance sheet” by selling the bonds and other securities it bought to support the economy and markets.

These idiots on WallStreet are in denial. People on Main Street have been hurting a lot with the increase in basic goods and services–that is already an indication that the economy is spiraling down since people are no longer willing to shell out more money and are now focused on just buying the basic stuff–if they have the cash to buy in the first place.

People have yet to price in this double whammy that China may fall due to mortgage-fueled credit crunch. Many China-funded projects abroad have stalled and expansion plans have been shelved.

Large banks in China are in trouble as well. They have lent tens of billions to poor countries as part of China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative. A significant portion of their credit portfolio is likely to become nonperforming as their borrowers are unable to service the debt due to the global economic downturn.

The most recent economic implosion and the collapse of the government of Sri Lanka will likely force their Chinese lenders to write off a large portion of the loans. If big Chinese banks themselves face rising nonperforming loans abroad, they will be less able to help bail out insolvent small or medium-sized banks at home.

Minxin Pei, Nikkei Asia

Locally, the likes of Dennis Uy of Undenna had depended too much on China backing that none of his new companies/ventures took off. He had to sell his huge assets/liabilities to Enrique Razon, including his stake in the Malampaya gas fields. As for infrastructure projects that the Duterte admin had been depending on like the Southrail project, it’s already dead as China rejected the proposal to finance it. Now the government under Marcos Jr is scrambling where/how to procure financing for this.

Stupid.

It’s no longer a question of whether the world will go into a recession. It’s a question of how deep is it going to be and how long will it take before we can bounce back.

Meanwhile, another catfisher is on to me again on IG today. My daughters and I were reverse-searching the photos that we are sure 100% stolen. Again from another Thai guy (THEY’RE EVEN NOT CUTE, just ordinary). There seems to be a trend: At first the ones that were bothering me were Caucasian guys who I keep on blocking. Then Chinese guys–blocked. Then for the entire year last year until early this year, almost all are Koreans. Blocked. Now Thais. Blocked. But I wanted to play a revenge game with them, but my daughters said, Mommy, don’t bother. It may just backfire on you. Ok, my daughters have more sense than me. Blocked.

Do I look desperate??? Geez. I just wanted to show the world, especially my stupid exes, that I am well and they’re not a loss, hence, my decent photo. Maybe I should just change my photo into that of my cats.