Today is Palm Sunday, traditionally a day that marks the the start of the Holy Week in this predominantly Catholic nation. The old practice was the oldies refrain from eating rich foods at the start of Ash Wednesday but with my generation, sacrifices (no eating of meat) and fasting usually start on Holy Monday. I remember there was this old practice of Filipinos eating only fish on Fridays as part of their penitence, regardless of the time of the year, that’s why galunggong (round scad) and mungbean soup were popular dishes in offices/canteens every Friday lunch.

Anyway, I don’t really follow these practices since I’m no longer Catholic (because for me Jesus’ death on the cross is enough to pay for my sins so no need for penitence) but fasting is a good way of making you focus more when you plan on meditating this coming Holy Week. I tried intermittent fasting before when I was doing my reflections in 2016-2017. I subsisted only on coffee during the day and then break my fast after midnight with a light snack.

So today I grilled blue marlin steaks because Twin A asked for it, not because it’s Palm Sunday. 😁 I was surprised at how well I seasoned the fish before grilling. 🥰 I cooked meatless hotpot with tofu to accompany the fish. The smell of the fish while I was grilling it reminded me of beach outings we had when I was growing up. We always grilled something when we go to the beach during summer holidays. 💓

I then attended to my garden again to re-pot the plants that were not thriving and transferred the ones that already outgrew their containers into the clay pots I bought from Marikina yesterday. Now that I have a good look at my inventory, I can assess now what are the additional flowering plants I can buy next week. It took me four hours to finish. No wonder people during lockdowns were so into gardening. We can pass the day just gardening.

My morning glory plants are thriving and I may have to transplant them next week into hanging planters because they’re already growing vines. The marigolds are sprouting but I haven’t seen any sign of the calendula and aster. The leeks have also sprouted. This encouraged me to plant kale and lettuce in my spare mini pots. Let’s see if my black thumb only applies to vegetables.

As I said, gardening is trial and error. So I realized that the loam soil I was buying retains water too much and my area does not encourage evaporation that quickly so a lot of my earlier plants became victims of root rot, especially my expensive roses. Now I learned I must mix this soil with coco peat and humic plus soil conditioner.

And clay pots do make a difference.

Clay pots allow the soil/roots to breathe since the pots are porous compared to plastic pots. Yes, plastic pots are cheap and convenient to have but they easily encourage root rot. So what I’m going to do with my existing plastic pots and rectangular planters is I will drill holes not only at the bottom but also at the sides to encourage aeration. I already did that to my big plastic planter, that’s why some of the current plants there are surviving. However, it seems like the holes aren’t enough because my cosmos are nearly dying. So I transferred them to a clay pot and into an area that receives full sunshine throughout the day. I just hope it works.

Tomorrow will be the formal turnover of duties from my boss to me during the team call. Then on Wednesday will be a follow up call with my new manager (APAC head) as my outgoing manager will be transferring to the data team and by June she will be transplanting herself to London. I have to fix my schedule again to see if I can fly to Singapore before July (probably next month?) to introduce myself to PRs and renew my connection with firms and sources after the formal announcement of my promotion (and also my salary raise–a lot of paperwork and admin work).

As the newest reporter under my wing said, I will be busier but not much difference since I had been leading the team for quite some time now. Well, she has no idea how long I was like that, the invisible team leader that was underpaid. 🙄

My very old TV has stopped working so I ordered a new universal TV remote for it. If it doesn’t work, then I think I have to retire it and buy that 50-inch TCL Android TV for Netflix marathons with the girls. I will then mount it on the wall when we transfer to my new house and make it disappear by creating a gallery wall around it. Like this:

So many things to do…