Time carries us away From all the places we have come to love; Just wishing we could stay But maybe that’s not the point What makes this all so god damn beautiful Is knowing that its bound to fade in time If you listen you can hear the wind talking to the trees Like words of quiet angels, or so I’d like to believe I don’t know where I am going I don’t know where I want to be But as long as I have a soundtrack I’ll make it there breathing And so it comes, the heavy rain… The storm we’ve all been waiting for To wet our hearts and make sense of this pain From standing still for far too long… (from holding out and holding on to all the things You know will only hold you back in the end) ..like you’re just holding out for something better To steal you from these tired days that you don’t want What are you hoping for? Miracles happen all the time, so where is yours? The rain, it never lies Writing its secrets on the window pane You lose your focus in the subtleties of its poetic grace There’s just something about its sadness that makes You feel okay Do you remember that rainy afternoon When we cried in each other’s arms? When we knew we’d found perfection But somewhere deep inside Knew it had come too soon for us to hang on Or try to make it last We can’t forget these moments baby But our lives are now Don’t lose yours in the past Once we find ourselves I swear I’ll find you again someday But the western wind is calling me… I heard the angels say my name My loner heart is aching, so I’ll be leaving soon To start this lonesome journey When the leaves dance for the moon
My cats have destroyed my closet because it’s their choice furniture/infrastructure for sharpening their claws. I bought a pint of wood filler to remedy the situation and then I let it dry/rest before I sandpaper it. Then paint.
I had a quick trip to Tiendesitas for a month’s worth of cat supplies and it yielded me this lovely contraption:
Scratching post for PhP 480. Photo by CallMeCreation.com Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Because scratch pads don’t cut it anymore.
I’m sleeping early tonight as I have an early morning interview at ⌚ 7 am Manila Time/4 pm US Pacific Standard Time. 😢
During Aquino’s term, I’ve never heard of anybody being sacked for doing the right thing. Even if one is being critical of government. I also wrote some analysis pieces and spot reports that had been critical of Aquino’s administration but I’ve never felt I was in danger.
This Duterte administration is so insecure, so afraid of a dead man that social media trolls are working doubly hard these days. Mainstream media like GMA is killing its own.
We spent Sunday morning until past noon cleaning our bikes. They were so dirty after our Caliraya Lake camping and it’s only now we were able to clean it and properly grease the bike chains and all hinges (since all of them are folding bikes). Then I folded them before storing properly since the southwest monsoon has started to rear its ugly head.
Towards the end our bike cleaning, we got drenched under heavy rain. We enjoyed the shower but the thunder started crashing and it was getting louder so we had to get inside and have hot showers in the bathroom.
It’s lovely staying in bed while the raindrops lull me to sleepiness. I didn’t get enough sleep last night as I was awake until past 5 am this morning for some inexplicable reason. My sleeping pattern has gone out of whack again. Anxiety about work and other work-related issues, I guess.
I just went to Lazada to search for camping cooking sets and then fell asleep (that’s how I make myself sleepy these days). Upon reflection now, it’s too bad that habagat (southwest monsoon) season is already here so I (or I and my girls) can’t go camping again.
The last time I went camping prior to our Caliraya trip was 21 years ago when my two college friends and I climbed Mt. Maculot in my parents’ hometown. The idiotic thing was we didn’t bring cooking gear since it was just a spur-of-the-moment decision. We survived on food sold by vendors along the way, like boiled eggs and cooked rice. Well you know, when you’re 20 yrs old, you’re bound to make idiotic mistakes because YOLO.
Then I went to climb Mt. Pinatubo a few years later, without practice, so I ended up collapsing near the crater lake due to sheer exhaustion. I ate lunch at 3 pm lying down. I don’t know how but I did. Thank God for the Aeta guide. The next trekking was in Morong, Bataan, when I visited the Aeta community there for my article on government’s neglect of indigenous peoples’ basic education. It was not a challenging climb but it was exhausting just the same. We had to cross hanging foot bridges. My guides were a National Scientist and a fulltime UP Pahinungod volunteer and they trekked like it was nothing. We didn’t have to camp though since we stayed in the former refugee center used during the Vietnam War. (Yes, aside from Palawan, the Vietnamese boat people were also brought to Morong and some other parts of Bataan since the American bases Subic and Clark were just near).
I need to get back into shape and climb and go camping regularly so I can do Mt. Pulag. But that would take a while. My short-term goal is to camp in Sagada, if Kiltepan Peak is already open for camping again. They closed it after a fire in 2018. We are populated with a lot of irresponsible campers that’s why Mt. Apo was on fire for days some years ago. The last home of wild Philippine Eagles, take note. If Kiltepan is closed, I can try Marlboro country also in Sagada.
Mt. Pulag. Photo from Wikipedia
That’s why when I bought my camping gear (tent and sleeping bag), I made sure it would be able to withstand the precipitation and cold in Mt. Pulag. The setup in Decathlon Masinag labeled the tent and sleeping bag (can keep me warm at 15 degrees) as Mt. Pulag-certified.
I will try to go around Rizal first since these are the easy climbs, like Daraitan and Batolusong. Then in Batangas would be Mt. Batulao and Pico de Loro (<< this one can terminate at the beach resort Pico de Loro… OMG now I remember, I trekked here in 1996!). Mt. Gulugod Baboy can be done alongside diving in Anilao (this needs a week-long leave of absence). Once I get the hang of it, I can try Pulag with some friends (and I will be hardpressed to find such friends now) before I become too old to climb mountains.
You know what’s funny? I grew up at the foot of Mt. Makiling. I had been climbing it casually when I was bored or if I wanted to get a away for a while. But I never ventured beyond Mudsprings because of the limatik (blood leeches). Makiling is notorious for those creatures. I was traumatized by the sight of my brother pulling out these leeches off his legs when I was a kid after one of his climbs. Bloody hell.
I don’t think I will ever reach Mt. Makiling’s Peak 2 because of that.
This was a difficult week. I struggled with work, almost threw in the towel and quit. I am still three paragraphs into the story I was writing the entire week. There was a little writing here and there after some interviews but basically my brain was dry. I was trying to wring out some creativity from my body but I yielded nothing. Nothing. I resorted to writing on my notebook everything I needed to do per hour just to get me through the day or else I would be stuck.
Agenda for the day. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
To make me feel better, I sing after work. On Wednesday I wasted 2 hours just singing along Youtube. Whatever took my fancy. I needed to let it all out.
Tonight I fell into the rabbit hole of memories, of music I listened to growing up. Tears for Fears figured so prominently in my life in the 1980s because my brother played them constantly. The lone stereo, amplifier, and big speakers were in his room. We had to share it. I didn’t have a say in the music played then. So I drowned in New Wave music (which didn’t become as popular in the US compared to Europe), Tear for Fears, Fra Lippo Lippi, and the local band The Dawn.
We had an exercise in one of my communication courses in college where I had to be a disc jockey for an hour in our campus radio. I had to write the script, song lineup, make sure that the equipment was working before I went on air, research in our college’s music library for my spiels. I picked Tears for Fears to feature in my show. I didn’t care that it was already 1996-1997. Britney and the Spice Girls were rising. Monica and Brandy were battling it out in the airwaves. And yet here I was going retro, stepping 10 years back.
I missed their first and only concert here in Manila (because I was in Cebu at that time, baking under the sun in a lovely beach in Bantayan Island).
I am now being comforted by Roland Orzabal’s solid voice and Curt Smith’s brilliant song writing. Songs from The Big Chair and The Hurting were good albums but I think the best song they have written was Woman in Chains (about a woman’s freedom from an abusive relationship) from the album Seeds of Love.
I love concerts. When I was in high school and college I saved money to watch whatever concert I could afford. But when I started working, time was my enemy. I watched concerts when I had the time, which was in short supply especially when I had the girls.
I remember after one quarterly press conference with Meralco some years ago, Chairman Manny Pangilinan asked us reporters casually who do we want to see Smart Communications bring to the country. Without batting an eyelash I shouted, “U2! Sir, I would take a leave of absence on the day U2 will have their concert here so I can prepare!” He asked, “Really? You think many will watch?” I replied, “Sir, you have no idea about the number of people who would pay an arm and leg for their concert here. Although they are notoriously hard to book. You can entice Bono to one of your CSRs to pull his do-good strings so they will come.”
Seemed like MVP had seriously thought about it. So several years later in December 2019 it was finally happening. Sponsored by Smart. I didn’t go; I really can’t remember the specific reason why but I think it had something to do with J. I think it was because I was saving money at that time because I was supporting him so I didn’t want to spend so much on frivolous things. We were planning to go abroad together (I was scheduled to fly to HK in Feb, SG after that and SKorea in May for the ADB annual meeting) because he needed to be out of the country every 60 days. And U2 is not cheap; the most affordable seat was already equivalent to a plane ticket to Korea.
On the day of the concert, I remember it was pretty late, PLDT called and told me they had some tickets left and they were giving it to me for free. I looked at the time, it was almost 7 pm. The concert was supposed to start at 9 pm. I was tempted but it was such a risk driving late to Philippine Arena in Bulacan and friends told me there were no parking spaces left. Or no parking space to begin with.
I had to let it go. It was for the best. It was just U2. J was more important.
I skipped many concerts throughout the years. Alanis. Cranberries. Gin Blossoms. Because life happened. Because I had children and it was hard to get away during those days. Before I had the girls, I also didn’t have the time because I was putting to bed every night (even on sacred days like New Year’s eve) the business page of the newspaper I worked for. 🤷🏻♀️
But there were concerts that I had to watch, no matter what it took. The Eraserheads original reunion concert at BGC when there were zero skyscapers there back then. It was the time Ely Buendia collapsed backstage in between sets. Turned out his blood vessel had collapsed.
I also watched GooGoo Dolls by my lonesome. Because I had to–I waited for them for 20 years. That was the time I realized I needed to get out of my marriage because I was already watching live rock concerts by myself.
Now I spend hours watching and listening to concerts on Youtube. But of course, it can’t replace live music. One day, concerts will come back and I would be braver by that time, brave enough to watch concerts alone.
PNoy is a contraction of President Noynoy (Benigno Aquino III) which made life easier for us editors when writing headlines.
I did not vote for him. I didn’t like that he was out of touch with the masses. I was leaning towards Gilbert Teodoro (who is now showing his true ugly color)…
BUT
Maybe he was made to be insensitive (they say he is on the spectrum) so he can have the ability to tune out the criticisms without literally killing the critics. Maybe his being obstinate was good so he would not be as super butt-hurt as this demon in Malacañang now and just go about his business.
I told my colleagues before that he would earn my respect if he is able to pass the Sin Tax Law (decades-old battle vs big tobacco money) despite being a very heavy smoker himself. Because he knew the country needed it.
I’ve written about CODE NGO, pork barrel and that thingamajig which was the same as PDAF (was that DAP?) which traveled all the way to the Supreme Court, criticisms regarding the slow progress of PPPs, and other things to counterbalance the rabid yellow supporters. I muted some of them in my timeline.
His biggest sin in my book is the Corona trial because this became a precedent. Does quo warranto sound familiar to you?
BUT
He had sound economic policies that resulted in: low inflation, 6%-7% GDP growth, low interest rates, etc. I saw T-bills drop to near-zero levels when I occasionally covered Treasury auctions. He did what he needed to do. Our PPP scheme is way better than other systems I see now that I cover infra sector of other markets in SEAsia. We were the darling of investors. From junk status to investment grade. The international community respected him. He did not have the workaholic nature of GMA (who rises early to start working) but he was not corrupt. He prioritized his friends (hello Pagcor!) but his cabinet was sane.
He fought against China and was vindicated in the end. David vs Goliath.
He was “Noynoying” in office but this current president is a lot worse.
He is a lame duck president but he made things work somehow. I did not fear for my life that much when I was doing my job as a journalist. Unlike now.
