I worked on a Maundy Thursday because no editor picked up my story the day before so I had to continue working the next day. I also had to answer messages from our APAC boss and other people because I forgot to turn on the auto-reply function on Outlook, saying that I am away.

In-between work, I did laundry, from 6 am until afternoon. I did a tub clean in the evening because it takes 2 hrs. I washed and hung the blankets and bed sheets at 7 am, by lunch they’re all dry. I was able to fold and put them away on the same day—that’s how hot it was yesterday. Putting away the blankets gives me more space for additional laundry to hang.

As I’ve said before, one of the deal breakers for me in choosing an apartment is having a laundry area. I needed a space where I can line-dry clothes. Yes, we can have a dryer and save space (my contractor also made provision for a dryer) but this is ridiculous when the Philippines has plenty of sunshine. Line drying is also kinder to your clothes—they last longer. I also like the way clothes smell after it got disinfected by sunshine.

That’s why I went over budget with the construction of my tiny home because I told my contractor I want a decent laundry area with plenty of space for line drying. Steel trusses aren’t cheap, you know. Laundry area was just an afterthought when my father built our two childhood homes. We always had to do laundry more than once a week because we didn’t have enough space to hang our clothes to dry. We always had to beat the rain to rescue our clothes before they get drenched.

Since moving to my house, we can afford to do laundry just once a week because I have plenty of line drying space. I also don’t have to beat the rain. I can leave my clothes drying for a week during southwest monsoon season, when rains don’t stop. The only time I wished for a dryer is when we have non-stop rains for two weeks.

My laundry rooftop and balcony also serve as a drying area for all the things I wanted the sun to disinfect like matresses and dish racks.

I can’t express how much I love living in a house, albeit small, that I designed for myself, according to the way we live. We really didn’t have to have a large house that’s hard to clean. We just needed an efficient space with ample storage.

My house is dark inside even during daytime so I’m going to have the accordion screen door installed tomorrow so I can let more sunshine and fresh air in without letting insects invade my house.

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We drove to Caliraya at 4:22 pm today… just because. We had been stuck inside our house for two straight days because of the heatwave so Twin I had been pestering me to go somewhere.

We brought my bff’s daughter along because she has been stewing in their house as well.

We tried to find an open restaurant on a Good Friday… And we did! It was perched on a good spot as well.

Heat index in my town yesterday hit 50 degrees C. 🫠 It was in the news. No wonder I felt really rotten. Today was no different either. I was blowing off my nose during early morning training (financials). I sounded like I was near death during the call with my manager in the afternoon.

I still have no refrigerator, hence, no icy drinks. Panasonic has yet to deliver the unit that is supposed to replace my old one that has a factory defect.

I had so much trouble finishing work that I submitted my story for editing really late… so no editor picked it up. 😑 That means I have to work tomorrow to publish that article or else it will go stale.

Just as I was looking forward to a real mental health break this Holy Week… 😭

I was planning to go on a drive southeast to cool off but I don’t know if I can because I’ve been popping cold tablets and sometimes they have narcotic side effects. I was thinking of going on a food crawl here in our home province and/or go on a hike to some of the waterfalls nearby.

It’s hard to be sick during a heat wave. 😷

Twin I passed down her colds to me. The virus must have been incubating in her before we checked into the hotel. She got sick the next day after she, her twin and their friends went swimming in the hotel pool at night. Of course her sister and I caught it. We’re all sick and stewing in our house right now. 😷

It was a battle between sleeping this off and editing. And there were lots to do yesterday. I was still working until evening and it was so draining (Japanese stories are a lot of work 😣).

I have a headache coming now.

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I have no agenda for today. I just woke up my birthday girls so we can eat at Mary Grace at the mall and then later meet their elementary bffs who will sleep over. I transferred to the smaller room next door. I just checked out some stores because this is an area of SM North that I seldom or have never been to because this mall is massive—one of the biggest in the world.

Despite its size, it’s still packed with people, like it’s Christmas rush or sales day. But no, it’s just an ordinary weekend and Manileños want to cool off. This is the kind of consumerism that foreign businesses want to capture. Fueled by OFW remittances, domestic consumption is alive and kicking.

SM North is huge that it can devote a large store just for Gashapons. These vendo machines for toys just line up streets of Akihabara in Tokyo or outside of supermarkets. I’ve never seen Gashapons this many in one spot anywhere else. Who buys these things? Well, apparently people make the trek here from all over just to get their hands on these trinkets. They’re not cheap ha. Almost PHP 200 per capsule = one combo meal at Jollibee or McDonald’s. In Singapore they’re much more expensive. The ones I saw in Don Donki are about SGD 10. The last time I was in Japan, it was about JPY 300 (about PHP 150 or less), mostly in Nipponbashi Denden Town.

When I was already on my own and my kids have met their friends, I went to book stores. I went to Booksale but I didn’t see books that I liked. Then went to Biblio and was tempted to buy more…

But I held back. I HAVE STACKS OF BOOKS on the shelf in my room that I still need to finish. 🤦🏻‍♀️ But how can I resist this??? 👇

I’m so dead inside. I worked on an analysis piece the whole day yesterday while I edited one or two stories. Then today I had to chase a story 20,000 km away from me.

I had to rework the piece as two editors came down hard. In between, I had to drive to QC and check into our hotel.

And still write and tweak and edit.

Just came out to the mall to send off my daughters to meet their dadbecause they’re going to have their birthday dinner with him. I had dinner alone.

Went back to the room and worked. And worked. And worked. 🫠 I almost forgot to book my massage! It was almost 9 pm so I was the last customer. Even when I was being squished, I still had to check my phone every now and then because the third editor might message me before clearing my article for publication. 🥲

I’m so dead inside.

I couldn’t write and I have a ton of things to write. It was so hot inside and claustrophobic so I worked in my balcony yesterday afternoon.

It’s holiday today but I must will myself to write. I need to write 😭

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Nope. I just really couldn’t work today even though people kept messaging me on Teams, sending me off the edge. Our APAC boss even harped about the tariffs fallout, which I had already told my team to do eons ago. Even without her telling me, I knew beforehand that what we’re seeing right now is reminiscent of the Lehman Brothers spiraling of the markets.

Because that’s what Trump wants, by design, he and his team wants the world to go into recession, just like in the 1930s. They want to bring down the value of the USD, since they want to bring back manufacturing in the US and make US goods more competitive by crippling the world. They want to control shipping, that’s why BlackRock bought CK Hutchinson ports. They want the northern trading route—the Northern Sea Route (NSR) and the Northwest Passage (NWP). That’s why Trump wants to annex Canada and Greenland and befriending Russia—because the northern trading route is a shortcut to Europe and Asia.

He and his cronies want Wall Street to melt down so they, the oligarchs, can buy American corporates cheaply. Trump is forcing again ByteDance to sell Tiktok to an American entity because they want to control the narrative. Facebook and Twitter/X are already controlled by friendly camps like Zuckerberg and Musk. But not Tiktok, which is more powerful than the two combined. It is in Hitler’s playbook—control media, you control the world.

How to wrest control of trade and economy just like post-WWII America? Start major wars.

The thing here is, this will backfire. The rest of the world will trade among themselves and the US will just be isolated. The world will learn how to survive without the US. It’s going to be difficult because the US is the biggest consumer market but that will change because its people will be crippled by the recession. It will cut people’s buying power. Moreover, US manufacturing is decades behind China and the rest of the manufacturing hubs of the world. China has already automated manufacturing and logistics people had been saying US won’t be able to catch up.

Anyway, I just decided that I’ll just tackle everything tomorrow.

Keeping my blood sugar level down is a Herculean task. My concern now is how to keep my blood sugar from spiking because once it spikes, insulin won’t be able to do it’s thing immediately because I have insulin resistance. It will stay elevated before it crashes (hypoglycemia). I had been watching videos of PCOS-women who are suffering from insulin resistance/pre-diabetic—what they eat, what they do before and after meals, and what to avoid.

Cooled rice in the fridge overnight has lower glycemic index, so I had been keeping rice in the fridge when I still had a fridge. Toasting bread also has a lower glycemic index. If I can get away with eating rice, then I skip rice and only eat it once a day.

How to adopt a keto diet when you want to control cholesterol as well? I have a sad existence, food-wise.