Finally, women’s football and the sketch I would never let go

New Zealand vs Norway. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

The Philippines Women’s National Football team will be playing this afternoon at the FIFA Women’s World Cup. The Malditas aka the women’s national team, made it to World Cup after their win at the AFC Women’s Asian Cup earlier this year.

Unfortunately, our ass is getting whooped by Switzerland right now.

Once upon a time, I wanted to join the national team although I knew I was not that good as a fielder and as a goal keeper. But I loved the game so much that just one game with the national team would have been a dream come true.

Now, I couldn’t even think about running half the football field at the speed and agility I had before. 😂

Meanwhile, I finally managed to force Kimchi to wear the body leash. She refused to move, like she was saying, over my dead body!

She just wouldn’t budge. No, she won’t take a walk outside with this silly thing, she said. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Last night I had a heart-to-heart talk with my eldest nephew as he is struggling mentally and academically. He was dismissed by the university because he wasn’t able to pass even one subject because he wasn’t able to complete requirements/projects—but he regularly comes to class so there’s willingness on his part to make it work.

I think he is clinically depressed with general anxiety and the parents refused to recognize. I had been telling my SIL that I was already seeing the signs and the boy also acknowledges that he needed help but he didn’t know what kind of help he should get. The parents didn’t want medication because of the stigma but clearly talk therapy is not working. He struggled during Covid lockdowns and it all went downhill from there and never recovered. It went to the point that he no longer left his room and seldom took showers. It’s that bad.

I described to him my situation before when I was deep into my depression, what I was feeling, and what I went through. He said that is exactly how he felt and that finally, somebody knows how it is. I told him to tell his counselors about my suggestion regarding undergoing psychiatric therapy with medication. I said at that time, I am aware what I was having (during the episodes of deep depression), I knew I needed help, and I knew what exactly I needed to do, but there’s this helplessness inside that kept me from getting out of bed and be a productive member of the society. I was just at the bottom of the barrel and couldn’t get out of it, couldn’t even do anything because there’s this dark cloud pressing me down. This emptiness was so painful that I needed to numb myself but I didn’t know how so my sleeping pattern was just fucked up.

I talked to him as an artist to an artist so I could reach that inner child within him. He’s good at drawing and he said he couldn’t understand why he could no longer make art. The last one he created was in February 2020, right before the lockdowns.

I told him that in the midst of my gut wrenching pain, I was able to rediscover my art again because I needed to have an outlet for this pain, this heaviness. And this rolled into another drawing, and another drawing. And soon I was rediscovering painting again. I told my nephew, it took me 25 years to get back to it. “You just left it for 3 years, you can come back to it just like I did,” I said. “Art, alongside my therapy, saved my ass. Blogging saved my sanity. You should get back to your art and I’ll help you with the therapy because locking yourself up and not seeing people means you need more than talk therapy. I’ll help pay for it.”

I showed him the pieces that were hung on my walls, each story of what I was feeling at that time I was drawing or painting it. I told him how I felt whenever I finish one piece of art. “It’s a serotonin boost, I tell you. It was me. It was like finding myself,” I told him. “Go find yourself.”

I gave him one hardbound blank page notebook (like Moleskine) for doodles and a thick sketchbook that I hadn’t used since it was bought. He got excited to start again. He said, he never thought about drawing again to use it as outlet instead of sleeping to numb the pain, the hollowness.

“Draw something for me tonight and post it on Instagram. I will follow you and track your progress. Talk to your counselors about medication and going into honest-to-goodness psychiatric therapy. Promise me. I will supply you with all the art materials you want,” I said.

I wanted him to have a sense of accomplishment and have that happiness after finishing an artwork. I hope he finds the will to fight this because it is a lonely battle.

I will never part with this piece because this was the best representation of what I was during the time I was at the very bottom, hurting. It’s a reminder of how far I have gone. Photo by CallMeCreation.com.

I wish my nephew could draw something like this so he could let it out. I wish he could find himself again.

I hope the university could consider his reapplication because Covid really caused so much mental anguish among students. I heard about the student who hanged himself in their dorm, not far from I live. Even though the pandemic is now behind us, trauma still lingers and unaddressed mental health issues that have sprung from that will overstay and continue to weigh down its victims. It’s difficult.

I have successfully emerged from my therapy but I am still dealing with trauma and I don’t think it goes away that easily. As my doctor said, therapy will help you deal with your trauma better, deal with your triggers without resorting to medication.

The Udders ice cream incident did trigger me but I dealt with it better than I could have expected. I have already schooled myself. But it did get me down for a bit and should acknowledge to myself that I am just human and weak. That I shouldn’t be hard on myself for being vulnerable like that.

My nephew should forgive himself for being just human and we all have our weaknesses. We need to be kind to ourselves.

Back in my natural element

I drove for an hour this morning to cover an event within my province to interview a couple of local and foreign CEOs.

Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Because it’s outside of Metro Manila at 9 am, I was the only journalist there. 🤣 I didn’t have to fight off competition and it’s lovely.

Sorry, she’s not the model but she was in the way. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

They’re going to manufacture electric motorcycles here, the high-end kind—sporting bikes. But that’s not what I was there for.

Anyway, we had a follow up check-up with our pediatrician and it turns out Twin A isn’t drinking enough water so it seemed like she was dehydrated on the days she had a slight fever. Her urinalysis told us the truth. Everything else was normal. 🤦🏻‍♀️ This kid is still in the twilight zone where being a child and a teenager clash.

I can rest easy now.

After enrollment this week, we can do some school clothes shopping and then I can book a resort in Anilao—if weather permits. It’s hard to gauge these days; the Internet says there will be thunderstorms in the next 15 days here and in Anilao.

I had been chosen

George of the Porch. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

A stray outside my door wants to be adopted as I had been feeding unidentified strays in my yard. It breaks my heart that I can’t take him in because my inside kitties are throwing hissy fits. The most I can do for him—let’s call him George—is to have him fixed, dewormed, and vaccinated. He can sleep on our doorstep, I think. I can buy him a cat house from Lazada. I can’t have him on my doorstep or else he will be all over our slippers.

What to do? I had been chosen.

I was given the contact details of the vet who does home service. As I am spitting distance from the college of vetmed, I expect that I won’t be in short supply of vets. Might as well have my inside cats dewormed again and update their vax.

And here is Sushi, judging me again. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

My cat body leash from Lazada finally arrived. As usual, Kimchi is very displeased when we tried it on her.

Sushi is more cooperative. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

And here I am, a certified cat lady. Cats find me. 🤦🏻‍♀️ 🐱 I guess I’m only attractive to cats. But come to think of it, with cats it’s what you see is what you get. They don’t play stupid games with you. My cats may not be as lovey-dovey like other cats on social media but I know my cats love me. My human kids told me that Sushi was like a recluse the entire time I was in Singapore because she was not leaving my room. She missed me ❤️. Kimchi was the first to greet me when I came home from the airport—ahead of my human kids. Cats are also more faithful than humans.


There is beauty in a breakdown

Milk tea for breakfast among the trees. Early morning sun = Vit D. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I’m trying to start the week right by boosting serotonin through thoughtful consumption of breakfast (milk tea + mantou) while watching the early morning sun being filtered by trees. The breeze was lovely and I could hear various bird calls.

Kimchi watching the birds with me. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

When I was done with morning chores, I had to pick up Kimchi from the roof of the laundry area because she just didn’t want to come back inside. I don’t fault her though. Who would want to be locked up inside on a beautiful day like this?

But oh well, off we go to the hospital.

The earliest patient at the hospital in the next town. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Twin A had low grade fevers last Friday and Saturday afternoon or early evening. I wouldn’t have been worried about it but my sister pointed out that Twin A also lost weight. My worst-case scenario was dengue but my sister told me that our youngest nephew contracted primary complex (pediatric tubérculosis) before and the early symptoms were fevers in the afternoon to early evening and weight loss.

But the new pediatrician (recommended by their old pediatrician who is my older sister’s best friend) said Twin A’s lymph nodes were not swollen (no infection) and weight loss is not that significant since my daughter “still has a stomach.” Still she is screening her for primary complex and Type 1 diabetes. Unexplained weight loss + family history = better screen for Type 1 diabetes before it’s too late.

Twin A said in days prior, she had low grade fevers and sluggish constitution because of dysmenorrhoea. (Poor kid, she’s going to spend some days off from school every month, just like I did in high school and college. That malady is horrible). But that couldn’t explain the ones she had on Fri and Sat and it’s puzzling that she stopped having them yesterday and today without paracetamol.

Weight loss can be explained probably by the absence of Ate C, who was force-feeding her until we went on our separate ways on May 16. Plus they go to bed later than usual. Somehow they escape me because after I check on them every night, I usually fall asleep soon after that. Then they may have gone back to doing what they were doing before pretending to go to bed. Proper bed time is not enforced when I’m away. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Doing all the tests today as well. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

So there, xrays, blood tests (including RBS), urinalysis…

Let’s see what tomorrow brings, or when we do the follow check up on Wed.


While I was in Singapore last week, my fairy gaymother K messaged me to ask if I was happy in Singapore after he reacted to one of my Instagram posts. I said, no, it’s actually lonely here. I’m happiest in my own home, I told him.

He then told me to go use Tinder while in SG. I told him firmly that, “loneliness cannot be cured by random sex and you know what my stand is.”

“I believe that sex binds your soul to your partner, one-night stand or not. That’s why I don’t do it casually or without a relationship,” I had told him once. He wouldn’t understand it because when he goes on a holiday, he always has random sex, one after another, like clockwork—in one day. Like he can have at least five different partners in a day. Just the same I don’t understand the kind of fulfillment he gets from that kind of lifestyle.

I believe that if you keep changing partners, you will end up torn up and feel like you have pieces of yourself all over the place without belonging anywhere. I don’t know how fuckbois and wündersluts can manage it. Or are they really happy and feel at home, like they belong somewhere with someone? Don’t they feel like there’s something missing and they keep on searching for what it is?

It was really a mistake having to imprint myself with someone who turned out to be a fuckboi. Correction—fuckbois since the dad of my kids is similar. Healing is long and hard but that’s the price I have to pay. It’s hard to find peace and my place in this world after making soul tie mistakes.

Maybe that’s the reason why I feel lonely in SG…it’s because I am not home—as I have already found the place where I belong: My forever home. I have peace now in my forever home. I finally belong somewhere.

I may have not yet cut the last soul tie I made because I was still triggered by what I wrote about Udders ice cream. I haven’t forgiven myself, that’s obvious, based on what I wrote two days ago. I must forgive myself for allowing myself be treated that way, for getting duped because I believed the lies.

Forgive myself.

Because I didn’t know any better.

Back to cooking

Leftovers of leftover. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I’m back to cooking. So this past Friday when I arrived, it was already past dinner and I just reheated what was in the fridge. Yesterday was thankfully a day I didn’t have to bother with cooking because my mom’s cook was there. But today, I’m back to feeding my brood.

I had two-day old rice in the fridge that is almost frozen and a plastic container of kimchi—only the juice was left and one cabbage leaf. So I made a “sort-of” kimchi fried rice because all I had was the juice. I raided my fridge for leftovers and reworked them to serve my kids.

Speaking of cooking, I was alerted by Twin I about this video of Uncle Roger (comedian Nigel Ng) reacting to a botched adobo cooked on Food Network. I was shaking my head during the entire video because it was so wrong.

How can you fuck up adobo?!

There are so many versions of adobo as it varies from one family and region to another. But the basic building blocks of it are: vinegar, soy sauce, lots and lots of garlic, peppercorn, and dried bay leaf. That’s it. You can add potatoes (my version from Batangas) and cook until the liquid had reduced and the meat has become so tender. They call it “dry” adobo. In Cebu, they add boiled eggs and let it marinate in the sauce together with the meat. In Samar-Leyte, they add a bit of onion and a bit of brown sugar to neutralize the sourness of vinegar. It’s a popular dish to preserve meat, just like rendang in Malaysia-Indonesia, but instead of vinegar, they use a lot of bird’s eye chilis to preserve meat.

But this abomination of an adobo made by this guy on Food Network is beyond comprehension. Uncle Roger is right, Filipino food is not spicy so it is just so wrong to put habanero peppers there. Lemon for acidity is 🤦🏻‍♀️ just noooooo. The essence of adobo is the vinegar. There is also a version of “white adobo” in which soy sauce is really scant (can’t remember which region this came from, I think from the North) which is cooked to preserve the meat while traveling on foot over mountains. Again, Uncle Roger is right in saying Filipinos love vinegar that’s why it was so stupid to use lemon in it. The taste is very, very different and it’s no longer adobo. We cook paksiw (vinegared meat/fish) to recycle leftover roasted pig and to cook fish that easily goes bad if not fried or cooked in vinegar. That’s why we love our vinegar (from sugar cane or coconut), food easily goes bad in this tropical heat. That’s why we have claypots for paksiw; metal cooking pots react to vinegar and it makes the dish taste differently. Claypots are best for everything with vinegar, or tamarind (sinigang), and for rice.

And once again, Uncle Roger is right in complaining about parsley. Who the heck puts parsley in it??? It will taste like grass.

So there, I got it off my chest. I’m not a chef; I’m just a home cook but I take food very seriously. I watch how the old cooks on Youtube or hawkers stalls in Asia (wherever I am visiting) cook stir fried veggies or fried rice on woks. The shape of the wok helps differentiate the temperature of the cooking surface and that keeps food from getting burned even though they’re being cooked on high heat. That’s why I bought the traditional wok for my Asian cooking because the magic lies in it its structure, how it is made.

For a non-chef food critic, Uncle Roger has my respect. A Malaysian-Chinese who knows his Asian food.

That said, I should learn how to make nasi lemak, which is also served in Muslim Mindanao, and order sambal again because I can’t make it from scratch.


Meanwhile, I saw this at WHSmith at Changi T2 when I was browsing through reading materials that I could buy for my 4-hr plane ride.

Hahahahahaha! After so much hype, no one is buying it anymore in less than a year. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I ended up not buying anything because I remembered I was supposed to watch Everything Everywhere All At Once. Which was a good decision because a magazine costs SGD 12.50. For that price I could buy several books from Big Bad Wolf (which I completely missed last month because I was sick) or from Booksale.

Back to chaos

Trying out the other set because I don’t have any appointments in the next few weeks so I have no opportunity to justify this purchase.

I took the selfie photos of me (from the other day and this) wearing the sets so I can show my bestfriend, who wanted to see my jewelry haul after I told her about the expo. She said she loved it and they were really a steal for the price I quoted to her. She said she was also a magpie for leaving Singapore last month with a couple of Pandora purchases 🤣. That’s why we’re besties; I think we’ll end up in the poorhouse because we will be encouraging each other’s frivolous shopping.

Anyway, I was traveling for 12 hrs yesterday and it was such a drag. I left the hotel at 8:30 am and arrived at my own home at 8:30-ish pm last night. We were delayed by 30-45 mins yesterday since the runway in NAIA was congested so my plane had to hover around Manila Bay until it got clearance to land.

This is precisely why we should have this freaking airport rehabilitated ASAP. We shouldn’t be wasting expensive jet fuel flying around in circles above Manila Bay because we only have one runway. We also shouldn’t be spending hours lining up at the check-in counter to drop our bags even though we already did the online check-in. We shouldn’t be stuck at the immigration gates because of human ego—in the case of the BI officers who are fond of power plays. Why can’t we have nice things like these, like a very smooth check-in process and immigration clearance because everything is automated?

You print your bag tags and boarding passes yourself at Changi Terminal 2. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
See, no snaking lines at Changi Terminal 2! Photo by CallMeCreation.com

But then, idiot Filipinos keep voting for dumb and corrupt people who reflect their own values. Then they turn it into a class war. Choosing non-corrupt and straight-shooting people is deemed elitist by the idiotic electorate. 🤦🏻‍♀️


Yesterday’s delayed landing allowed me to sort of finish Everything Everywhere All At Once. It was an absurd and hilarious movie and yet it made me tear up. The plot sounds so fantastic and it’s hard to describe on paper but at the core of it is about family. Especially Asian families with generational trauma caused by unfulfilled expectations. Asian families tend to put you in a box and if you don’t fit in that box that generations before you have maintained, you are tainted and deemed not deserving the love and praises of your parents, of your ancestors. I understand why people walked out of that movie—it was chaotic. These are the people who are not exposed to anime storytelling, which can involve jumping from one universe to another so casually. The people who are not exposed to post-modernism, to art that is borne outside of the box, will hate it. It has a brilliant script and great cast. I fully approve the Oscar awards given to these people.

In one multiverse, Waymond told the Evelyn who turned him down to pursue an acting career, that a poorer and struggling life with her would have been better instead of their current situation wherein they end up always breaking each other’s hearts.

I got my luggage at 4 pm, got picked up by ParkNFly’s shuttle at 5 pm because the traffic from their office to T3 was beyond horrendous. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Got out of ParkNFly at 6 pm and drove for 2.5 hrs—traffic was que horrible going south because of the rains. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

As a side note, I got annoyed when SIA served us with this Singaporean ice cream.

Such a bad name for an ice cream brand. Such bad marketing, look at that tagline! Photo by CallMeCreation.com

J used to call me this and at that time I was tolerating it because he was being playful with me. I had that twisted reasoning in my head that “at least he is being affectionate towards me”—that beggars-can’t-be-choosers mindset—because I didn’t feel loved and I accepted any loose change thrown my way. He always thought of me as a cow in some way or another. That’s how he made fun of me. I was nothing more than a cow to him. I never received flowers or nice gestures from him whereas the woman he cheated on me with (whom my girls stalked on social media) showed off the flowers he gave her (my girls had shown me), the beer he had with her on that balcony table that I had made for him which I paid for. He didn’t treat me nicely; I was not special. I was just always a cow.

I will never let anyone treat me like or call me a cow ever again.

I hate this ice cream.