It’s just 45 mins away from our house. Some springs were cold, some were warm, which was not surprising as this resort is nestled in between maars within the Laguna Volcanic Field.

We arrived at 7:45 am to maximize our day trip there as they haven’t renovated the cottages there for overnight stays. Going from the parking area to the pools required some walking through a rainforest.

We were provided lockers in the shower rooms since the huts were quite spread apart, which makes it hard to monitor your stuff.

The place is clean and easy on the eyes despite the resort being in existence since the 1980s, or even 1970s. Urrrrgh…research told me that the 45-hectare property has been run by the same family since 1918. 😱

Just like the forest back home.

It’s a bit tedious though to go back and forth the locker rooms and the pools because it requires a lot of walking up and down the stairs and winding paths.

We spent several hours hopping from one pool to another. We transferred to the colder springs before lunch and stayed there until we decided we were already tired of turning into prunes and needed to grab lunch.

Our PHP 2,800-per-head fee includes buffet lunch and snacks.

My girls have had enough so they had just hung out in one of the pavilions. Good decision since it rained. And it rained hard.

But my older sister and I were nonplussed and went around the rainforest under torrential rain, went upstream to try the other pools, one of which was called Lovers Pool. Well, I guess it was called as such because it was remote and it required you to cross bamboo bridges. Only lovers would seek that kind of secluded pool to do R-rated stuff.

We wanted to go further up the forest to reach the falls but it was raining so hard and going there was foolish because we had to cross a creek. Our experience living at the foot of a mountain all our lives taught us that torrential rains in rainforests could cause flash floods in creeks. Many students have died of drowning because of flash floods in an area we called Flat Rocks, where a natural pool was and had been a magnet for hikers since time immemorial.

It was fun walking under the rain in a forest. It has been a long time since I had done that. I didn’t do that while living in Metro Manila since I always felt rain in the city is acidic (we are perpetually covered in smog) and hardly refreshing.

On the way back home, we decided to take another route but Waze decided to take us to a less traveled road.

Damn that driving app. The road it told us to use was rough i.e. unpaved and at some point I got terrified because some of the rocks were sharp. I was trying to keep my cool because on the other side were cliffs.

I was literally driving through a rough mountain road, with no sign of civilization, with no end in sight.

I was overjoyed when we finally reached a hairpin turn that led us to a more familiar paved mountain road.

I slept the entire morning as my body compensated for the stress and disturbed sleep I had been having for a couple of weeks now..

Then cabin fever took over. Twin A and I walked grabbed our running shoes and walked for about 6 km late this afternoon to take the cobwebs away.

PAGASA declared that the hot and dry season has begun. My backyard, however, disagrees. It’s still raining at night.

At this point I already took 6,000 steps and going up the mountain was out of the question since it was already getting dark.

Tomorrow we will be driving east/southeast early morning to a place of cold springs and waterfalls. We need to cool down and get away from the maddening crowd.

This is the lovely thing about getting out of Metro Manila, going into the great outdoors is not much of a hassle.

This is my toxic trait: I keep on buying plants, thinking I could keep them alive despite my busyness. I keep blaming the weather and pests as the reasons for my plants’ demise.

Now I’m convincing—no, lying—to myself that this time it’s different. That since I would be relinquishing my manegerial position and I’m transitioning, I would have more time to devote to my plants and finally set up my garden.

Or I would garden more so I can take away the stress my boss is giving me.

Whatever the lies I tell myself, I believed them and bought more plants to kill. 😑

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I had a strange dream. A Filipino around my age who works for a global bank was very taken with me as I dialled up my charm offensive. He kept asking me out, so at first I thought it was part of work but later on it seemed like it wasn’t anymore.

I was in a dilemma. I liked him enough to say yes to invites but I don’t want to go through that again, be involved with someone I met through work and be used again.

I was about to say no to another invite, saying he is compromising his job, when I woke up.

It was a strange feeling. I never even knew the guy in real life—his face is not someone I encountered in the past. 🤔

Maybe it’s a warning. Maybe in the next few months I will have this encounter.

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I will watercolor this tomorrow because I refuse to work. I just had another shitty encounter with my manager today that I couldn’t help telling her off.

I no longer care because I’m dialing back soon anyway. If I bag that consultancy job, I will go on leave without pay for a month, just to prove a point to my manager and our APAC head that what they’re doing to me is already taking a toll on me mentally and physically. I can also tell them that I may or may not come back after the hiatus. Of course there is always the danger that they will call my bluff so I need to get more clients quickly within that one-month break if that happens.

But right now I am sticking to the timetable I initially set. I just need to have less engagement with my manager.

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I finally finished Oppenheimer during my round-trip on Cathay Pacific. The thing with Chris Nolan is that he makes really long movies. I had to cut my movie viewing in half because that freaking movie is 3 hours long!

For two-thirds of the movie, I have been trying to figure out what’s going on. Only in the last 1/3 of the movie did I understand what this was all about: Oppenheimer is the American Prometheus and he has to suffer the consequences of stealing fire to give to the world.

There were many scenes in the movie that could have been cut out to make a more compact movie.

However, the last scene was so poignant that I could forgive Nolan for this long-winded movie.

“Now I become death, destroyer of worlds,” Oppenheimer said.

Now, watch Grave of the Fireflies after Oppenheimer and let’s see if you won’t become an emotional wreck after this.

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I just didn’t have the energy yesterday. I wanted the nastiness of travel for work and the tension I had been carrying the entire week to melt away. I just want to lay flat and never move.

I arrived in Manila at half past 12 midnight of Sunday (yesterday) but technically landed at 12:12 am. Before I could get my car at ParkNFly, it was already 1:30 am. Got home at 3 and had to unpack immediately because my face cleanser was inside my luggage. I was able to sleep (had Kopiko before driving) at around past 4 am.

Half my day was already gone by just catching up on sleep.

My girls loved the gifts I brought them. Twin I said, she would prefer HK than going to SG. Now that I thought about it, they would enjoy HK more since there are better things to do there than in SG. There are hiking areas in other islands, we can go around the New Territories, or just go traipsing around Hong Kong and Kowloon. Just crossing Victoria Bay from HK to Kowloon on a ferry would already be a treat for them.

We could stay in Kowloon as hotels would be cheaper. I did that the first time I went to HK decades ago.

Anyway, back to my humble abode, my small but warm home. Being nestled in it was like having a hug.

Now I have to do a refresh of my workspace so I could mentally tackle Monday, which is giving me so much anxiety.

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It’s 10 pm. My manager is after me again. The editor who edited my story with another reporter couldn’t understand why my manager is being dictatorial and why she dips into every edits being done to me or every story I edited.

I told him (the editor) that I don’t know anymore and I give up.

Now I know why I shopped too much in HK: I was trying to self-soothe. I was dealing with bosses face-to-face for a week and I was a walking mass of nerves and unhappiness.

To think this is just Monday. I have many more Mondays to deal with until I get out of this situation.

I cleaned my kitchen and brought order back.

I am comforted when I see my small house clean and neat. However, it doesn’t melt my stress away.

I wish I could get out tomorrow to draw or just walk. My health is not getting any better with the way my manager is crushing me.

I am shortlisted in one short-term consultancy gig at ADB.

Let’s see how I will make the other gigs happen after Holy Week.

I decided to do touristy things that are not usually done by tourists, like hanging out here at Central and Western District Promenade.

I decided to take an extra day off since I thought I would be hammered this morning. Well, it turns out my co-workers and I are too tired to go drinking. The Filipino staff here (four of us) had lunch yesterday at Sushiro—for about two hours 🤣.

But after this I had back-to-back meetings with my manager and another editor. This is the time I could taste the office politics and I’m caught in the middle of it. By the end of the day at 5 pm, I was already a deflated balloon. Went around to buy some TCM (Pei pa koa is the best!) and another jar of Banila Co cleanser and went back to my hotel to freshen up. And I waited for them to message me where we were supposed to go.

7 pm came and there was no message.

The Chinese co-worker I promised to go out with messaged me that she already made plans with her friends because I was not messaging her about plans for that night. 😩

I ended up spending my Friday night tucked in and watching the documentary about the making of “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.”

Took my time getting ready this morning before checking out.

Time is too short for me to cross Macau (and I don’t want to be stuck there) so I think I’ll keep my feet on Hong Kong island for now.

I was researching last night if it’s worth the bother going to Tung Chung and ride the cable car. I was tempted but I realized it’s Saturday and it would be full of tourists. Getting Covid is not on my agenda.

So for now I’m here at the promenade, preparing for a sketching session. I need to practice because I suck at it.

Will go to Heng Fa Chuen later for lunch.

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I ended up buying too much.

BUDOL OF THE YEAR! My co-worker told me about Paradise Mall in Heng Fa Chuen where the non-touristy sports outlet stores are. It’s right in the middle of a housing estate so it’s pretty local.

Anyway, Adidas had a buy four, 50% off sale. The Gazelles and Superstars are on sale on an individual basis. Bought four pairs (one Gazelle for me, Superstar for Twin A, Ultrabounce and Retropy for Twin I and my sister who will pay for her share). Total bill (at 50% off) is HKD 1,083.50 and if you divide it by four and translate to pesos, our shoes cost PHP 1,950 a pair. Imagine, a pair of Gazelle for less than PHP 2k whereas in the Philippines it costs around PHP 7k in malls.

I had been hankering for a pair of Gazelle since high school. I couldn’t afford it then, I still couldn’t bring myself to buy it for me because my kids’ needs come first.

Going to Citygate Outlets on Lantau island is too much of a hassle and I wouldn’t know if I would get good deals like this since it’s a tourist area. I’m not even assured there would be sizes that I want.

I had been buying so much stuff. 🤦🏻‍♀️

But I’m happy I finally bought my dream sneakers.

Meanwhile, I started sketching again outside Paradise Mall, at the courtyard of the housing estate surrounding it.

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