I braved the wet roof of my laundry area yesterday so I can peel off the toppled banana trees that were blown off onto my property. I then reinstalled the solar panels of my stairs’ flood lights and cleaned off the debris left by the typhoon. The clean laundry that was hanging to dry was washed again because it got messed by the strong winds and rain. It smelled of fabric that didn’t dry properly 🤢. Since I had to do several cycles, I was doing laundry until 8:30 pm 🤦🏻‍♀️

I’m now back to the daily grind and I’m mentally exhausted already. I didn’t even have time to claim my blood test results because that damned lab hasn’t emailed the results. 😡

While I was in Anilao, I had a dream wherein I was in a room, fretting, full of anxiety because I still haven’t had any story to write. When I woke up, my insides were twisted and my heart was beating crazily. That’s how much I dread returning to work.

So now I’m back. Same-same shit. My Indonesia reporter told me he’s got a job offer from an investment bank. My Manila reporter is not engaging with me because she’s so down because my manager killed her story again. I’m afraid I will lose her and resign soon. I sent an SOS email to our APAC head and asked for a call with her so I can have clarification as to why this is happening.

It is what it is. If I lose them both, it’s no longer my fault and I will pin the blame all on management.

*sigh* 😩

I want to go back here again.

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Half of my plans for the weekend disappeared with the strong winds. We stayed in Anilao for three days, thinking I could still dive on the house reef—which turned out to be the best coral diving during our entire stay—on Saturday afternoon before sunset and early morning before we leave. Nope, the weather said.

I couldn’t even make sketches or watercolor painting on my art book. Power went out this morning so packing our stuff in the dark was tough.

We left even before official check out time because I thought I could outrun the typhoon. Hehe, fat chance. I drove through it. Good thing I had new tires so I had one less thing to worry about.

The typhoon in Batangas was mild but the more we drove to the east, the wilder the rain became. When we got to our town, we saw how strong the typhoon was: trees were uprooted and some streets were flooded. Some barangays had no water since the utility had to cut the supply off due to fluctuating power that could short the pumps. Good thing we have our reservoir, which stores potable water good for three days for two households. (Yes, I have measured it when I emptied it in October for cleaning.) My older sister is now asking me to ask my contractor how much would it cost to have another tank installed.

Another good thing is that we have four tanks of rain water to flush the toilet in my mom’s house so we know if disaster strikes, we can still poop and clean the bathroom.

We have a power generator set on standby but for the life of me I forgot how to turn on and run that thing. I’ll somehow know how to operate that when desperate. It is also imperative now to invest in a solar power system since I think our typhoons will be nasty this year given the very hot summer that we had. The Pacific Ocean is warmer than it has been the past years so the typhoons this time will be stronger.

Trees in my neighbor’s backyard were down and some of the banana trees went over my fence, knocking out my small solar panels. Thankfully, my trees are still upright, even my beach umbrella was still standing and unharmed. I did a good job of securing that thing on my stairs’ handrails.

I had been craving for arrozcaldo the entire day but we haven’t found any arrozcaldo places along the road. Well, if I can’t buy it, then I can make it.

Perfect for a stormy weather like this. ❤️

I only knew about the typhoon yesterday afternoon. It’s really odd since it’s still supposedly summer and we never had typhoons in May. Well, that’s climate change for you. The typhoon is still on eastern Philippines while we are in the west. However, this typhoon is pulling up winds from the southwest where we are.

It was a good thing I chased the sun yesterday and did freediving until sunset. Diving today was just exhausting. It wasn’t raining but you can feel the swirling currents even just looking at the surface.

Battling the currents at Sombrero island was beyond what my will power can take. I was on standby mode so I can take care of my sister-in-law and my nephews who are novice snorklers, so they had to wear life vests. My older nephew and my SIL were taken away by the current; my SIL was brought back by the boatman from another boat with me pushing/guiding my SIL’s behind and then I guided my nephew to my diving buoy. We secured the buoy with a long line connected to the boat and that was their anchor. Meanwhile, I was also keeping an eye on my daughters who were diving on their own. I told them to keep close to the line.

What makes this dive such a disappointment was that the corals are dead. It wasn’t like this four years ago! This is coral bleaching, I thought. The die off was massive and it broke my heart. 

Upon research, my suspicion was right that there was massive coral bleaching, not only in Sombrero Island, not just Mabini, but it seems like the whole of Batangas. This paper described the bleaching in Lian town, while this news article written by my friend talked about the bleaching in Calatagan.

This happened in 2020, the year we had to stay in place because of Covid.

The worst thing here is, we couldn’t do anything about it. It’s the rising temperatures that kills kilometers and kilometers of coral reefs. 😭

We shouldn’t have spent an hour battling currents. I told the boatmen to proceed to the cove in Maricaban Island, near Sepoc Beach. The beach there offered calmer waters and better living things. These were not coral gardens but gardens nevertheless and it looks like the start of a coral colony.

The boat ride back to the resort was scary as it began to rain. The wind was picking up. It was the end of this diving trip.

After a buffet lunch, we spent the afternoon warming our bodies here in this pool while it rained. Parts of Mabini have hot springs owing to the stratovolcano, Mt. Panay, on the western side of the peninsula, where we are.

We couldn’t do anything the rest of the day. It didn’t stop raining. So I finally asked the front desk for a massage, then had it after dinner to remove the huge knots on my back and shoulders.

My masseuse told me that there are several resorts for sale in the area. If only I have millions to spare…

It has been sooooooo long since I went freediving. I missed it so much. I haven’t exercised my lungs by this much in a long time. I looooove my long fins. I love going deeper and swimming with sea turtles. I think there were two in our resort’s house reef.

I must do this regularly now I have finished moving house and we’re settled in. I’m not flying out every month so I have more time for hobbies.

Tomorrow we will be diving near Sombrero Island and Sepoc beach. I must practice going deeper.

I love the sea. How I missed you. ❤️

I’m now in the dark, in this hammock, listening to my beach playlist and dreaming away the night. ❤️

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Awwwww. I destroyed my smart watch. I didn’t realize I was diving deep. It probably wasn’t able to take the pressure so now it’s no longer turning on. 😕 It’s water resistant because it has a swimming function and measures laps and calories expended.

RIP Oppo Watch. 💔

The whole story here on ABC.

The most vulnerable to homelessness are women who aren’t financially literate. Even high fliers can fall and become homeless, like Glen-marie here. This is what I’ve learned early on in life. My mom taught me that for every 1,000 I earn, I should sock away 100. Whatever I have saved would tide me by in an emergency or would let me walk away from a crappy job.

That was the thing I did, even in my first job out of college.

I tried to learn about investing and be wise with my money. I tried to earn extra from writing and editing gigs to selling stuff on ebay.

When I was at the bottom, just scraping by during the lowest point in my life, I realized that I was in a very vulnerable position. In an instant, I can be homeless and my kids and I would be scrambling for a place to go and be uprooted in a snap. If I lost my job, that’s it, I’m done.

So with all the willpower left in me, I built a tiny house. This ensures that even if I lose my job or I fall ill, I still have a roof over my head.

Glen-marie and many others like her weren’t prepared. They relied on men to handle finances; they didn’t protect themselves. This financial illiteracy is also the number one cause why women can’t walk away from abusive relationships. They are not financially independent.

It’s scary to be insecure like that, having no savings as a buffer for life’s unexected turns.

Speaking of independence, the divorce bill has been approved at the Lower House. It just needs to hurdle the second/third reading at the Senate before a bicameral conference and hopefully it will not be watered down on the floor deliberations.

This would free me from so much burden that comes with annulment. Going to court and wasting time to appear in hearings like a criminal… Annulment is just too taxing, too expensive, too anti-women.

Oh please, please, please let divorce be finally legal here.

After my visit to the doctor, I went to the other compounds asking around if they’ve seen an orange cat. Nope, they said. So what I did was, out of desperation, I called pssssswwwssssss pssssssswwwwssssss as I always do with all the cats that have gone through me.

Then I heard it, the small meow. As I traced the source of that meow, my pssssswssss grew louder and the more the cat responded. After a lengthy search, I finally found Oyen, locked in one of the halls in the church next door.

He hasn’t eaten in three days! If I hadn’t been proactive in searching for him, he could have died with dehydration and starvation.

I knew he was alive and was stuck somewhere. He isn’t that mature enough to go gallivanting far, as males in heat usually do.

Cats normally just roam around within a 200-meter radius, as one dude here in this uni campus found out. He put a tracker on the strays cared for by a volunteer group called Cats of XXX (name of our uni). Then he plotted the whereabouts of those cats for xx months in different cat territories. So that’s how he found out that cat colonies have specific areas they guard as their own and they never or seldom stray within that 200-m radius.

Anyway, that background info made me hopeful Oyen is just somewhere near. Unless he was picked up by someone, I believed he can be found soon. I was right.

I feel sad for Ninja though. She is separated from her family and her carefree life here but it is for the best. She is going to be well taken care of by my friend who I know has been a cat lady for a long time.

A family friend messaged me that he and his wife are going to talk it over if they can adopt the remaining cats for their homestead some towns away from here. He hasn’t messaged back yet 😕.

For now, I know all the kittens are alive and thriving and I’m at peace with that. Two already found loving homes, the remaining three are still waiting to be adopted. But I think we will keep Tabby/Gorilla/Tiger. (Twin I keeps on calling her Gorilla 😑)

Since I’m on a roll this week, I continued with my quest to do the important stuff that I keep putting off—this time is oil change.

Good thing that I only choose to have mineral oil (every 5k km change) instead of the synthetic one (every 7k to 10k km) because I want my car to be checked more frequently. Because of that, the mechanic found that one of the oil plugs has lost its threads and must be changed. If it weren’t for the more frequent oil changes, I wouldn’t have caught it and I would have a very leaky car traversing SLEX and EDSA.

I thought this is the last day I would be checking in with a doctor. Nope. I would be passed on to a plastic/facial surgeon on Tue to excise the lump on my forehead. Need to see what it is really and while it is not a cyst because this lump is hard, it’s better to check if this is benign and not worrisome. I would have to ask for a leave of absence on the day of the surgery.

This is the price I pay for making sure that I’m healthy so my kids won’t be burdened with my medical issues later on. As my friend who I met yesterday said, I shouldn’t neglect these things. His mom’s breast cancer came back and had a mastectomy last month. She would go through a month of daily radiation treatment in June but thankfully she doesn’t have to go through chemo again. She said chemo just killed her body the first time around and it was so rough going through the whole series.

“Yeah, you should do you sono-mammogram every year, even if you don’t have a family history,” he said. His sister is starting her regular monitoring now. Their aunt died of colon cancer so they have to be doubly careful.

Hoping all things are ok with me so my kids have less things to worry about.