Author Archives: admin

Signals

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My body was full of knotted muscles so I had booked a two-hour Zennya massage last night. At the end of the session I was already snoring so I just went straight to bed and forgot about everything else.

Today, I was bombarded with edits (which was fine) and hiring chores/issues (which was not fine) that I had suffered through diarrhea the entire day due to too much stomach acids. I think I had been going to the bathroom 10x already. It seems like my proton pump inhibitor (esomeprazole) is not doing its job. If by next week I’ll still be like this (geez I’m in Singapore 🤦‍♀️), then it seems like I need to have that endoscopy to see whether I already have peptic ulcers.

I think I need to decompress for a bit.

Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Let’s see what I can come up with later.

This is why I bought a heat gun from Lazada last night. A small desk fan cannot dry washes in an instant. Art and photo by CallMeCreation.com
Yes, I repeated an old image. Art and photo by CallMeCreation,com

I redid this Binangonan sunset that I drew last year. This time, I did not resort to using fine liners to define plants and I am now more light-handed when it comes to sky colors compared to the first drawing. This paper is still very wet so I will just revisit this tomorrow when it’s completely dry.

Why did I do this?

Nothing. Just to track my progress when it comes to technique i.e. showing the opacity and how to do reflections on water. The first time I did this, Laguna Lake didn’t look like a lake at all; it was just a muddy valley. Now at least there’s a semblance of water reflecting the sky. I also mixed cadmium yellow + cobalt violet and cadmium orange + cobalt violet to produce different browns for the lake shore that would go with sunset and the lake. For the other part of the lake, it was a mixture of imperial violet + blue gray deep of varying degrees. Using the pre-mixed browns and grays made my first drawing muddy and it lacked opacity that is needed when sunlight changes every second. Watching other artists on Instagram is helping me to rely less on pre-mixed colors and create my own.

This is still ugly in my eyes so I need to continue improving this. Probably next year.

From dust to dust

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Christ the King Columbarium. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Today is my uncle’s inurnment, roughly three years after he suddenly died of suspected Covid during the early days of the pandemic. Almost all his surviving siblings came, so a number of my cousins were there, too.

From our departure from my apartment to Christ the King Seminary that is 15 minutes away, I saw the trees shedding their leaves and the branches have become bare. Dried leaves have been floating around, riding the wind. It’s the signal that the long hot and dry season is upon us. The trees have prepared for the dry spell; by late April and May, they will be a riot of colors as they show off their blooms.

In the garden, in the middle of the Christ the King Columbarium. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

My uncle has become dust while the world around us continues with the cycle of life. Leaves are dying so enough resources can be channeled by the trees into producing flowers and then the seeds may be spread before the rainy season starts, to nurture new life.

We die in different ways. There are times that our bodies have died and given up the ghost, so that the spirit can continue to live. There are times when our bodies continue to live even if our spirits have died. How do we then go on?

We just…go on…and continue with the cycle of life. We have lost our leaves and we can channel our remaining energy into planting seeds so we may live another life.

My time in this apartment is up and I’m closing this chapter in my life. I have loved, lived, and died in this home so I have planted my seeds elsewhere. Like the sturgeon and salmon, I’m going back to where I came from to give new life to my spawns while I…

I don’t know.

Maybe like the salmon, I will go back to where I came from to die. Or be like the sturgeon, I will live to a hundred even after spawning. I have no idea what I will be; all I know is that my 5 years in this apartment are enough and it’s time to leave behind the ghosts of the past. This apartment always reminds me that I was not good enough.

My new home, on the other hand, is a reminder that I am good. That I am enough. No one will treat me like dirt because I am not good enough. In this new life that I have planted, no one is allowed to treat me like dirt again. And before I become dust, I vow that I will live my life with dignity and grace.

Odd

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I had to make an advisory to other editors that our Philippines reporter and I will take the day off because idiot president hastily declared a holiday late Thursday afternoon. We could have made better plans for the long weekend.

Despite the declaration of a holiday, the event at the central bank pushed through. Of course, you can’t reset a thing like this without making a mess of bank presidents’, CEOs and conglomerate owners’ schedules.

The good thing here though is that the roads are less congested. Wohoo!

On the way to Makati to pick up another journo. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I worked for a bit at Starbucks in G5 because of companies (or rather pushy PRs) that insist on their own way, forgetting that there is such thing as editorial independence. Diva execs, pushy PRs, and unreasonable company policies–what a way to end the week.

A bit of a pain to work with MS Outlook on Android because it doesn’t have a search function and html formatting editor but it will do because my Samsung tablet is much lighter than my laptop. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Upon arriving at the central bank, I noticed there were new paintings at the 3rd floor lobby. One staff member told me they have just acquired the collection of UCPB and that is now scattered all over the main building. Unfortunately, I only had time to see three paintings when there must have been hundreds of them. I had to work my butt off last night.

I will never probably understand or appreciate an HR Ocampo piece. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
1898 by Edwin Wilwayco. I like this take on the Philippine flag. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Jose Joya, an artist that I could not appreciate when I was younger but now I do. It’s not about what you need to see but how an artwork makes you feel. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

One time I will tell my friends at the BSP comms dept I will drop by to see the sculptures and paintings in their collection during one less hectic day. It’s not easy to gain access there and I had been going in and out of their premises regularly for years as a reporter. Might as well take advantage of that.

They gave me this uncut live currency to add to my collection of like items and commemorative coins. I’m still looking for the uncut 20-peso bills where I had former central bank governors sign their names. Two of them sadly passed on. That item is one of the, if not the most precious souvenir I had kept as a banking reporter. The girls’ dad must have it with him, including my analog cameras.

Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Psychosomatic

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It turns out nothing is wrong with me. My bad cholesterol, uric acid, and triglycerides are back to normal from their stratospheric heights in 2021 while my blood sugar (both FBS and hba1c) remains normal. My major organs are fine (unremarkable, the interpretations said). So what’s the deal with my stomach pain that knocked the wind out of me?

It’s stomach acids, not the pancreas, my attending physician said. If I respond to the drug he gave me, then it’s acids. If I don’t, then it’s likely ulcer and I need an endoscopy to ascertain it. But my GI specialist isn’t that perturbed because there is no bleeding or signs that I am at that point. He just gave me an order for the pancreas scan if I wanted to but he says it’s not needed unless I get another similar attack. I will have that scan because stomach acids cannot explain the pain that radiated to my back.

Shit! It’s really stress. It’s eating me alive.

I am really, really done for.

And you know what’s the tragic thing here? They don’t f*cking care if you die. You’re just another tool. Another cog. You are replaceable.

Just like our in-house legal counsel. He had cancer and he worked himself to death. He loved his job because he was a journalist first and then a lawyer second. He bit the bullet for us whenever we had lawsuits. And now, he is forgotten. The new management didn’t even get to know him.

I checked my house first before going to the hospital this afternoon.

This staircase will be torn down soon. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Digging deep for the expanded base for my new industrial strength staircase. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
The outside night light. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I can finally close my bathroom door as my granite countertop has been trimmed. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Finally, a proper window. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
The shelves on the tapered side of the counter. For toiletries maybe? Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Cabinet for toilet paper and cleaning supplies. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Bookshelves/lookout platform for my cats. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I strolled a bit to go to the jeepney stop because it’s better to take public transport than bring my car. I don’t want to fight for parking space at the hospital. The campus is teeming with students again after almost 3 years. The first semester was hybrid so it was still like a ghost town here from August to December.

The students are back for the second semester. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I decided to go back to QC early (3 pm) since traffic was light and took the mountain bypass road that I had grown to love through the years.

Faculty housing on my right. My bro didn’t move from their apartment to a three-bedroom housing unit because he didn’t want to maintain a lawn. His own townhouse now doesn’t have any lawn or garden at all. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Driving through a secondary forest. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Maybe moving back here is the right choice. My stress is not as pronounced compared to when I’m back at my apartment in QC. Maybe because I’m cooped up in there. Maybe because I’ve always been a provinciana that the knots in my whole body uncoil when I see trees.

I’ve always been…that I know

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“Because I love painting. I have to paint. I have always been a painter, that I know.”

“A born painter?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I can’t do anything else, and believe me, I’ve tried.”

How painful is it when the only thing you know how to do and love to do suddenly leaves you?

Just like when I couldn’t write. It’s like the light has gone out in my world. Thank God I was able to write today. Two stories. I’m myself again.

More about that later.

The dialogue above is from the movie At Eternity’s Gate and I can’t find it on Netflix. Probably Google has it on Google TV…Ah I just looked. It’s not available in my country. Based on the trailer, it seems like Willem Dafoe was born to play Vincent Van Gogh. He looked believable. He was so good in this that he received his fourth Oscar nomination for this.

So now back to this writer’s block…It took an enormous amount of willpower to force myself to write today. Promptly at 9 am, I started to tap on my keyboard. The most difficult thing to write is the first sentence. In journalism, it’s the lead. Once you’ve done with it, everything else will follow.

From thewritepractice.com

I also willed myself to write because I know I will get fucked up if I can’t push this story out today. I know I will have more trouble writing if I push it for another day. And another. And another. Until it gets so bad that I won’t be able to write for months.

Good thing I was already done with the story when I attended the call with our global editor in the afternoon. I don’t know why I had to ask about that thing that drives me nuts about the hiring when I knew the answer already. Still I asked. I should have known that it will still be the same—what do I expect? 🤦‍♀️

It’s like I intentionally wanted to get hit by a train and watch the train wreck while squished between the wheels and the track.

I don’t know if there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.