Wall Street was too excited at the prospect that the US Fed will start cutting rates. Nope, sireee, uncertainties still linger. Just look at the 10-year Treasury bond rates that climbed to reach 4%. The monetary policy easing may be slower than anticipated.

In addition to that is Trump’s likely return to the White House.

“Investors were also parsing a raft of other political and geopolitical developments, including Donald Trump securing a resounding win in the first 2024 U.S. Republican presidential contest in Iowa on Monday, and developments in the Red Sea, Gaza and Ukraine,” Reuters reported.

Well, it’s not just investors. Europe is also wary.

With that, I bought some ETFs to take advantage of the selloff. However, I was premature…the price even went lower later today.😒 Meanwhile, the mutual fund I bought several weeks ago has now given me dividends. I just received the notice yesterday. Hoping that the sell off will continue until the end of the month so I can buy more ETF and mutual fund shares.

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This will be another circus. Trump may win again as Biden is not really stellar, plus the Gaza massacre has not helped him a bit.

If I were the Democrats, I will ask Biden to give way but that doesn’t work that way, does it? Plus Biden will not do that. So happy landing na lang to the US. 🛬

What does it have to do anything with us? Well, we have a narrow strait separating Taiwan from us and God knows what Trump will do as the situation north of the Philippines is becoming more restless. China keeps flying over Taiwan in a bid probably to intimidate the island-territory or for reconnaissance or both. A chance of an actual war is high under a Trump government and this will disrupt global trade and drag markets, if we still have any room for that kind of thing these days.

This year is getting more interesting and highly stressful. I didn’t start on the right footing.

I hope it won’t get worse. 🫠

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Van life in Philippines is hard but doable.

This is one pipe dream of mine, to drive to different provinces in the Philippines and explore them. I had experienced some long drives like from Manila to Leyte for journalism or when we went to my ex-in-laws every Christmas. That’s around 1000 km one way. I had been a member of a volunteer group so I can travel. One time I ended up in Mindoro. I also took the ferry (Superferry) and stayed there for three days to reach Mindanao and it involved stopovers in Iloilo and General Santos City. That was in high school.

There are many beautiful places in the Philippines that you can only truly appreciate when you travel on land and sea.

However, living full time in a converted van is difficult in the Philippines. Remote jobs are not plentiful like in the US and our mobile internet sucks. As this couple said, they are sustained by consulting work and grants so they can document the flora and fauna nationwide.

A Reddit board discussed the difficulties of living this nomadic lifestyle in this country because we don’t have national or RV parks like in the US where people who live in their vehicles can station themselves, use the bathrooms, and be protected at the same time. We don’t have public bathrooms. We don’t have infrastructure for dumping grey or blackwater properly.

When we went on roadtrips, we had to spend nights in BnBs in major cities (like Legaspi or Naga) and stop in Jollibee or some chain restaurants to pee. If we’re really desperate, we would have to shell out more pesos to stay in some beach resort. This method is not sustainable if you’re doing it fulltime. It’s ok if you’re just getting from point A to B.

But still, the urge to go on a roadtrip is there. Maybe after I buy a new utility vehicle (whether an SUV, AUV or even a pickup truck), I would try to go on a roadtrip with my cousin or a girl friend.

One day.

I have become the soccer mom. 🤦🏻‍♀️ It’s inevitable, right? Twin I has joined so many things, among them is cheerdance. I have to fetch her at 6 pm from school since the latest that the school bus can wait for students in my daughters’ school is 5-5:30 pm since the bus has to pick up students from other schools.

My clock is determined by my kids’ timetable.

I guess that’s how things are…

A mother’s life is no longer her own

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I needed to decompress and relax. So far…I dunno if it’s successful.

I’m just dreading Monday.

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I was hankering for eggplant today so I made this eggplant omelette.

I’m just trying to follow my wants and needs to soothe myself.

I have to fix my attitude towards work because I hate my job right now.

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I think the dry season has started. I can now sit in my pseudo-balcony to breathe in fresh air. The Department of Science and Technology has declared that the El Niño may peak in April, a month earlier than forecast. So this cold spell may be short-lived. I had been sleeping without AC most of the nights for several weeks now as the cool mountain air with the help of my wall fan for aeration has been sufficient.

I just want to freeze this moment when I can be lazy, seemingly without any worries for tomorrow. Enjoy this momentary peace.

I should be thankful that I still have a job right now that allows me to stay at home for most of the time and provide for all that we need and some extra. I shouldn’t focus on the shit thrown my way last week and the aimlessness that I had felt weeks prior.

Maybe, just maybe, I need to detach my value as a person to my job and just focus on the things I like to do on the side, such as starting my garden and paint more and hone whatever minimal skills I have.

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A company sent its belated Christmas gifts to me today and one of those is one big roll of lechon belly. I sliced into three pieces so they would fit in the air fryer I bought before Christmas.

I told myself after I was discharged from the hospital last month that I would no longer eat fatty pork. Oh well, I was tempted tonight.

I don’t need an oven anymore 🤣. I think I can make cupcakes in this air fryer—well in the first place this is essentially a convection oven in a different form. It’s convenient to use in the mornings when I’m still a mombie (mom + zombie) and only half my brain works. I had cooked a perfectly crispy bacon in this by just setting the temp and timer right and just left it while I took a nap. My girls are old enough to feed themselves breakfast.

“It’s like the great stories, Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad has happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines, it’ll shine out the clearer. I know now folks in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going because they were holding on to something. That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”—Samwise Gamgee

JRR Tolkien, The Two Towers

Naivete can be frustrating but you know, Sam may be naive but he sure is a brave, brave Hobbit. The bravest creature that walked Middle-Earth. When the world is so dark and hopeless, he still believed there is goodness in this world. Just like Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that man is inherently good but was just corrupted by anything that is not natural.

This romanticism makes people think that some things are worth fighting for. For Sam, it’s home, be it The Shire or Middle-Earth. For Rousseau, it’s man and all that he represents.

There are moments when I doubt whether some things are worth fighting for anymore. Like this country. No matter what I and other like-minded people do, we are still in deep shit as the majority still opts to remain in mediocrity and shallowness.

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I woke up angry and frustrated. I wanted to email the director of that advisory firm about how abominable I was treated by his juniors. The senior is European and the juniors are Southeast Asians. Southeast Asians—or any Asian for that matter—are inherently nasty to one another. We have a silent hierarchy and unfortunately some of us are the “wrong Asians”.

Anyway, my colleagues told me it’s not worth it and just call it a day. Walk away from my desk. Take a hike. Just don’t work.

Another one sent me this article about leaders’ need to tune out off-office hours. She told me that’s one of the reasons why I’m always stressed to the point that it’s debilitating to my health. I don’t tune out, I don’t let go.

So now I just took a break. I did some errands like engine oil change and car wash.

Ah, I was just ordered to take a story to edit. Will just continue ruminating later. I just want this anger to go away.

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I just saw a raven in my forest. I’m not sure if it’s a crow or a raven but it’s big and super black so it might be a raven. I’m scared for our adopted cat, which is very pregnant now. I wasn’t able to have her spayed in time because I was too busy.

After she gives birth, her kittens may be exposed to birds of prey and I don’t know how prevalent they are here in my own yard. I know ravens aren’t birds of prey but still…However, I can’t have her inside the house since Kimchi and Sushi have been having fights with her whenever they encounter each other through the glass window by the front door.

I think I would have to buy that outdoor cat house on Lazada to give them some kind of enclosure.

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Shall I buy the controller on Lazada? I’m thinking of playing Lord of the Rings Online, a 17-year-old MMORPG that is still running.

Today is a bad day.

I don’t know if I can fully write this down but I had been bullied by this company that is advising the company CEO/management that I interviewed. I don’t know if I can go into details but I feel like I was treated like dirt, like we are a PR firm that they can dictate so they can push their agenda. I asked the compliance team to help me deal with them because protocol says we journos (my role here in this particular case is a journo, not an editor) cannot engage in such situation and better leave that to the compliance editors. We cannot answer back or throw bombs to retaliate because they are our subscribers.

They kept me up until 5 this morning but the bullying on chat didn’t stop until 5 pm today.

I am so pissed and yet so defeated. I hate that they made me feel like I’m very stupid. The way one of their advisors speak to me on WhatsApp is way below the belt, like I am under his payroll. I showed the screencap to some of my colleagues and they said—wow! “They really treat you like shit, don’t they? The problem is we can’t answer back.”

It’s so different in newspapers. We can just say “fuck you!” and the story goes on print.

I am broken today.

What can I do? I would just have to bite a bark of a tree and scream then expect all my negative energy will be gone. But who am I kidding?

For somebody who’s outspoken in person and online, my self-control is tested to its limit to not to bite back. I keep on repeating to myself, “do not bite/fight back, do not bite/fight back, do not bite/fight back, do not bite/fight back…”

I am twisting in my seat now. I don’t know how long I can hold on.

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