I felt really bad for Liam Neeson when Natasha Richardson died. He is a decent man who was robbed of a loving wife he adored.

Meanwhile, Pamela Anderson had really bad taste in men: Tommy Lee, Kid Rock… Enough said. Tommy Lee even beat her up. Pamela was a very insecure person and that must have been the reason why she always ended up with assholes.

Both of them took time— a lot of time—to heal, at their own pace. Living quiet lives…

Then…boom! They found each other. One is nearly 60 years old, while the other is 73, I think. Pamela finally found a man who respects her.

I’m not really looking and I’m happy with life right now. I’m loving it, actually. Just thinking about how I stooped so low to serve the men who didn’t respect me at all—Just no, I’m fine with being myself and I am slowly building myself up. I love that I make decisions for myself, I run my life how I wanted it and not being dictated by a dickhead or catering to the whims of an asshat.

Maybe I will be Pamela when I turn 60. I may find a decent man later, who knows. I will demand though that he keeps his own home, I will keep to mine. I don’t think I can live with another man. It’s too exhausting.

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The online war between Thailand and Cambodia

I just read an article about a mentally unstable Thai man setting two Malaysian tourists on fire. The comments section was on fire as well, mainly with Cambodians (probably hired trolls) throwing so much dirt on Thais and stirring up controversy between Malaysians and Thais by pretending to be Malaysians doing a smear campaign vs Thailand.

Thais get fired up and throw back some dirt on Cambodians, opening up a Pandora’s box of human trafficking/scam centers and Khmer Rouge’s genocide record.

Reading the comments, I feel like the Cambodians took a leaf out of Duterte’s playbook and now has an army of online trolls spreading propaganda. I wonder what’s their gameplan, even dragging Vietnam into the chaos. 🤔

An interesting Tiktok video said that (save for the current Thailand x Cambodia war) ASEAN members really don’t kill each other, only we diss each other online about food. Generally, we don’t go to war with each other even though we’re so diverse. Some of the comments said we’re all SEAblings, we insult each other, just as siblings or cousins do. But if an outsider disses one of our SEAblings or SEAsia in general, we all gang up on that interloper. And we all “hate” on Singapore because of their haughty attitude.

One commenter said, ASEAN members really can’t go to war with each other because we are all too poor to sustain a war. At most, we will go to war with each other for a few days and after that we go back to domestic infighting because we all hate our corrupt governments.

Now if I can find again that Tiktok video…

I should have stayed in a hotel last night instead of driving back to Manila after 12 hrs. 😑

I spent three hours going around the expo, searching for people to interview.

I thought it’ll be slim pickings today but I’m happy to be mistaken. Paying PHP 400 for entrance was all worth it as I have about 10 interview prospects and they’re good brands. I had one interview conducted there and I can write it tomorrow.

I also bought foodstuff at discounted prices or at buy 1-get 1 promo.

I crossed to Ikea to eat (yeah, sounds weird that one goes to Ikea to eat) and bought some household items that would replace the ones broken by the cats or by my humans. I also bought breakfast muffins and desserts for when they come home from school.

And oh, I can’t resist lamps. I have a lighting addiction.

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@advocateofhope

They won’t be little forever… You’ll spend most of your life knowing your children as adults — but for a brief, precious moment, you get to know them as children. That moment is now. Don’t rush it. Hold them a little longer. Say yes to one more bedtime story. This is the blink. And it’s the most sacred season of all. 👣 Tag a parent who needs this reminder. ❤️ Save this for the days it all feels like too much. #Parenting #Fatherhood #ParentingTruths #GentleParenting #SENDParenting #ParentingJourney

♬ 星际穿越 Interstellar Piano – MegaPanda

So early in the morning, I cried over this video.

Yes, it was exhausting and all but hearing their tiny laughters, seeing all their shennanigans, sleeping with me under each armpit…

They’re little girls once. They were babies once. I miss those little girls. They’re not little anymore but I still have glimpses of the imps that they were every now and then.

I only have a few years left before they become adults and they’re slipping from my fingers so fast. I should embrace those years close to my heart, I shouldn’t work too hard or else I will miss out on the years left with me.

Not yet. Not yet.

I neeeeddd to sleeeeeep. I had coffeeeee at 10:30 pm. 🫩

I don’t know what the other three drinks were. They were paired with food that you can inhale in one go.

Because we were tipsy, a friend and I needed to have at least a latte before driving home in opposite directions. Our conversation went like this:

We journalists have an inverted pyramid/Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. We fulfilled first our need for self-actualization after J-school/college, at the start of our journalism career. Then the older we get, the more we need to fulfill the most basic needs. We’re already at this stage of survival; we need to make real money to pay for food, water, shelter, sleep, and homeostasis.

That’s why many have left this profession.

We give so much and yet we get so little.

AI is also destroying us.

The subscription model for news is not going to work in the Philippines. Pinoys don’t want to pay for content. You give your hand, they want your arm.

This profession, is there any future in it?

It’s a busy day today, with expos and press conferences, and a dinner with some execs.

But before that, my bad kitty was being cute yesterday and I couldn’t help but take photos while I was changing sheets.

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This is a very nice clip about redemption and forgiveness. Mel Gibson has hugged the cactus long enough, Robert Downey Jr said. I didn’t know that it was Mel Gibson who gave RDJ his second or third chance…

All of us have hugged the cactus long enough and yet we’re still waiting for our redemption. Waiting for someone to give us a break.

This resonated with me in some way and I don’t know why.

I may just be hormonal (perimenopause sucks!) but I really feel the world is conspiring against me. That nobody likes me. I’m just a mediocre pain in the ass.

I need to sleep this off.

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Yep, very hormonal. I just discovered I have my period today. 😑

The older I get, the more unstable my emotions become whenever I’m in the PMS period or during the menstrual period. My gynecologist already gave me a chart of what to expect during this horrible stage. The hot flashes are really bad—I wake up in the wee hours drenched in sweat even if my aircon is on. I can’t have deep sleep.

Then there’s the frozen shoulder. My Shanghai-based Chinese colleague told me that frozen shoulder is called 五十肩 (wǔ shí jīan), or “50-year-old shoulder” in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), which is a common ailment of perimenopausal women. She said she had that on one shoulder and it lasted months or years and then all of a sudden it disappeared. Then her other shoulder became frozen right after. Then it disappeared when she hit menopause.

In short, I will be suffering for a while…

My sister pulled a strand of white hair from my head the other day. It’s legit white hair.

Ageing sucks because everything hurts. But it’s a privilege because not everyone grows old…some fade away young.

I chased a (global) CEO of a listed company last Friday and tried to extricate as much info the best I could. But of course, being a listed company, they won’t give you much, just enough to chew on.

Then the editor, who doesn’t know much about the intricacies of covering large Japanese trading houses, killed the story because the details weren’t minute enough for her. She said we must ask the CEO again. 🥹

I said the CEO already flew back to Japan. There’s no way to ask him in person. I want to add, ever. Instead, I just said I’m turning this over to our Japanese colleagues.

My Japanese colleagues told me CEOs of that calibre don’t do interviews like that when they’re back home. That’s why they’re only able to quote spokespersons and not C-level people. The heirarchy in Japan (even in Korea) is so strong that no one could do doorstop interviews with them like we do here or in the west.

I was like a deflated balloon. I worked so hard on that interview. I just didn’t want to fight back. I just want the weekend to start.

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