Damn if you do, damn if you don’t. If the US Fed raises key rates by 50 basis points, heaven knows how many more banks will fold up. If it doesn’t, then it looses credibility and inflation could not be reined in. In any case, the US Fed is already f*cked as it has been for quite a while behind the curve–the favorite term spewed by central bankers in all my years as a banking reporter. The era of cheap money has overstayed its welcome and has skewed the financial markets, causing overblown valuations in the venture capital and private equity spaces, for example. Because of this, the US Fed has little room to maneuver.

Some pundits have weighed in by saying that the US Fed is highly likely to keep its eye on the road and will not allow the collapse of SVB and Signature Bank–and the write off of USD 17bn worth of Credit Suisse AT1 bonds after the UBS takeover–to deter it from taming the raging inflation.

“(The write-off) may impact investor’s views of the bonds and how much they are willing to pay for them.”

Elisabeth Rudman, global head of financial institutions at DBRS Morningstar to CNBC

This loss of market confidence will drive the cost of funding for banks even higher.

Markets are all about perception and sense of stability. Authorities come out with pronouncements that they hope will calm the markets = perception. Bond prices, stock market, alternative assets…

Speaking of which, I just finished writing an article about alternative asset investing, which looks very attractive to me right now. Alternative assets have been tokenized and digitized to make them more tradeable (liquid) and affordable (in smaller chunks of securities) instead of buying a whole Banksy art worth USD 100,000, which is out of reach for ordinary retail investors like me. Instead of buying very rare wines and whiskey by the bottle, I can have a piece of it by holding a certificate that says I partly own that rare wine/spirit stashed somewhere in the vaults of a Swiss bank (securitize). Instead of holding a piece of paper, I hold a token that I can trade on a digital platform.

And it is a legit asset class. The Harvard Business Review said that in 2020, about half of the portfolio of the ultra-high-net-worth investors (worth USD 30m and up) are comprised of alternative assets.

Anyway, gotta sleep. I have a big interview tomorrow with a global aviation company.

Series of bad decisions and bad luck brought Credit Suisse to this situation. Ah well, there is no honor among them anyway. While some regions within APAC would not be that affected as CS hasn’t been active in recent years (e.g. India), this could spell some changes in Southeast Asia.

Anyway, this mega-deal is out of my purview so I’m not beating myself up for missing this. Such move happened during the weekend when markets were sleeping.

But anything could go wrong you know, until a deal is signed.

Still haven’t gotten in touch with any of them. They could still be in limbo.

Let’s see what happens in the next few days.

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Suzume 凉芽 no Tojimari

My friend L and I watched this earlier tonight with my girls at UP Town Center. L and I sort of made a pact that we would watch all the anime shown in local cinemas. Through the years we swapped copies of anime (movies or series) across media centers, coffee shops, or wherever we can set our laptops down to copy each other’s hard drives. We fangirled at the cast of the live action movie of Rurouni Kenshin when they were here to grace the Philippine premiere in 2014. I was already on terminal leave with my old TV network but I still volunteered to cover the event because I was a fan. I had an all-access pass as an erstwhile entertainment journalist just for this three-day event.

Anyway, L and I last watched a movie together was in… 2019??? It was a Mokoto Shinkai movie as well, Weathering With You. That movie made me tear up a bit at the scene when the the main adult in the movie supported the main protagonist in his quest to free the female protagonist from the bonds of being a sort of shrine maiden who has been sacrificed for the good of mankind. Suga (the crazy detective, the main adult that has not adulted at all) said he understood Hodaka’s desperation to hear a loved one’s voice again and will do everything to be able to hear it again. At that moment I was in a relationship that I thought was steady and good. But at the back of my mind I knew if I was put in the same position as Suga and Hodaka, I would be desolate when I know I could never hear or reach that loved one forever.

Well, this blog knows the rest of what happened to me.

But I digress.

In Suzume, I was moved by the scene where Suzume finally had closure 12 years after her mother died/disappeared following the Great Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011. For years she never understood and accepted the death of her mother, along with 20,000 people who never got home on 11 March 2011. Suzume herself was half-living, half-dead while she looked for her mother, roaming around the apocalyptic landscape. She always told herself that she had to find mama because mama would be worried and would be looking for her. She was half-frozen when her aunt found her hugging the wooden chair her mama made for her.

I also caught something in my throat during the scene where Suzume’s aunt and Suzume had a shouting match, unleashing 12 years’ worth of pent-up fury, for being forced to have each other because of the difficult circumstances. “Give me back those 10 years I lost!” shouted Tamaki.

I felt that. It’s not easy to be a single parent, whether it’s your own child or not. Your child is your burden alone. Only love gives you the strength to carry on; the road is very difficult and sometimes you just want to give up but you have no choice but to go on and move forward.

Hence the kanji 凉芽 for suzume, with 凉 = sadness/sorrow/grief and 芽 = to sprout/the beginning of something.

It’s about your personal grief and again the sorrow that permeates over the places that had been destroyed and became desolate. All the memories of people who never got home or saw their loved ones again.

Suzume 凉芽 = moving forward from grief.

Finding closure to start a new beginning.

How very apt.

It’s like the hardships of more than two years will be culminating into this event in May, opening this new life that I will be building in my new house with my children.

Suzume 凉芽 = from sorrow to moving on

I’m a bit lost.

I don’t know, I’m a bit overwhelmed these days. I have mixed emotions about our big move.

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Yesterday, my girls and I had a late afternoon walk to savor the cooler temperature. Metro Manila is turning into an oven nowadays but here in my hometown it’s just right.

We walked some more to go outside the university campus to buy school supplies for their school project. I swear it’s always easier to buy school stuff here than back in QC because that means traveling to a mall to a National Bookstore branch. Small shops here are super accessible. They may not carry the whole range of stuff people may or may not need but they cover the basics. I don’t have to drive to get them and I survived my school years with just the likes of them catering to my needs. I just walked. If I needed Japanese paper for some school art project, I just run to those stores. No need to bother my parents. In my current setup (in past 7 years), I always have to drive at the last minute for school supplies/project materials because stores like these are concentrated in commercial centers like malls or within universities so I still need to drive. Or if we have time, I ask Ate C to buy in the next barangay where an Ansons store is located.

Anyway, after that school chore is done, we walked to a small restaurant where we had dinner with my bro’s family.

It’s almost done ❤️ my tiny house not on wheels. They’re still making the new staircase but basically this area outside will be my patio/grill station and I will try to make a brick pizza oven. On the far right will be my laundry/utility area that will be covered with polycarbonate roofing.

They have to build my industrial-grade steel staircase and then set the pavers for the patio and make my laundry/utility area and install the roofing. Then landscaping.

They finally cut the jackfruit tree. The mid-landing of my staircase is wide enough to accomodate a bistro table and chair. Or just a bench would suffice.

Even though one tree died for my house, I still have plenty in my yard. In the mornings I hear the breeze and the birds chirping. In the evenings I hear the cicadas.

I’m getting impatient now but at the same time I’m already feeling nostalgic about the apartment I’m going leave behind. That apartment is old and it has lots of vermin but I was able to make a somewhat comfortable existence in it for almost 5 years. I will miss the convenience of the place as I am flanked by two supermarkets, a laundromat across the street, a huge number of food places to try and go to. I will miss Grab Food and Grab Car. I will miss Zennya.

Anyway, it’s still midday. We are going out later to walk around the campus.

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I’m now in the room where I lived since 1992. It is where my girls first cried their lungs out for six months after staying in the NICU for 32 days in 2011. It’s a storage room for now, where things that have no place are dumped—just like me.

The storage boxes above contain my journalism memories of the past 17 years. These are my old notebooks and newspaper copies that featured my investigative pieces that were published every Sunday by my old company. I must sift through them and throw away 90% of them. I still have my childhood crap somewhere in this house that I need to sort and throw away. My diaries since 1989. That’s a lot of crap. I only stopped writing on journals when I discovered blogging in 2003. I tried keeping handwritten journals after that but it was just too painful to write the things I needed to write…I could have saved myself from staying in a bad marriage if I allowed myself to vent out and parse through the things I’ve been through.

Oh well, what is done is done. It is what it is.

I’m now close to perfecting my chicken rice. I discovered that poaching the chicken first with the usual ginger, onions/scallions, a bit of sugar, and salt (or salt substitute) and then cooking it on top of the rice (with the chicken rice mix that I buy in Singapore) in the rice cooker produce a nicely done chicken. Not Tong Fong Fatt level but better than the Wee Nam Kee here.

Before leaving the apartment this afternoon, my sister asked if I have badminton rackets that I want to give away because their maid’s child needed a racket. I remember buying them a couple of years ago, when I deluded myself into thinking that my kids and I would be playing regularly in UP Diliman on weekends.

Goodbye, rackets. You didn’t have much use. I’m throwing away the memories that came with these because I bought them from Decathlon with the ex.

The girls were so little then. 😊

Now they’re into this:

I’m hormonal today. I feel melancholic. I shouldn’t let my mind wander to the past.

I feel bad about my crappy editing today. I’m just not up to it. Another editor questioned my edits and I was like, yeah ok, I did badly today.

There were just too many things piling on top of me. Like I needed to negotiate the pay for the freelancer that we are about to hire. I never got to that because my reporters figured they needed to submit all their stories today for editing. I also drafted the business case for hiring the freelancer and but I have yet to submit the docs to the talent acquisition team. On top of that, I have three pending stories I need to write and they’re still nagging me at the back of my brain. I also farmed out coverage/leads to follow for my team. Scheduled interviews and read more stories to be abreast of the latest business news globally and took down notes.

I was supposed to go to my bank because my atm cards are soon expiring. Once I move out of this apartment, dealing with my bank physically would be too much of a chore. But nope. I was stuck with too much work.

And the thing I made last night… I could no longer improve it. I did what I could. That is that. I’ll just revisit this when I’m no longer pissed.

Because I’m pissed, wanted to vent my fury and just do freehand washes with my mopping brush. I went for pastels to calm me down.

That’s it. A quick drawing to release tension.