Category Archives: business news

Disaster

Posted on by
Brent was quoted $12.73 higher at $130.84, while U.S. crude rose $9.92 to $125.60.   © Reuters March 7, 2022 09:12 JSTUpdated on March 7, 2022 11:54 JST

Brent crude hits $130 a barrel; Nikkei plunges

U.S., Europe ban on Russian products and delayed Iran nuclear talks spark fears

A friend posted on Instagram the cost of filling up his SUV. It’s more than PHP 3,000 = the cost of a new tire. Another friend posted that Grab Car costs PHP 500 from Mandaluyong to QC.

It’s really getting out of hand. By tomorrow, gas would increase by at least PHP 5 a liter. It’s going to be a nightmare for basic goods and services.

When Nikkei dropped this morning, I was able to buy ETFs in a momentary dip and it climbed back up before the market closed. Good for my portfolio, bad for the rest of the country overall.

I would be attending a webinar tomorrow by another global investment bank about this Ukraine crisis and how it is affecting ASEAN. At the same time, I have a regional conference to attend tomorrow until Friday and I’m still figuring it out how to split myself into three persons since I also have a press conference on Wednesday and a couple of deadlines.

I was craving for fish. And sushi. So I made some for our dinner.

I finally bought again a bamboo rolling mat. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Maguro sashimi. I bought frozen tuna from SaveMore last week. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I made a dip with soy sauce and roasted ginger and wasabe. Mmmmmmmm 🥰 I seared the surface of the tuna on a hot pan but it’s still raw inside.

For those who did not like raw tuna, I made Spam-egg rice rolls.

Now I ran out of ingredients to make gimbap/maki on a whim. I always must have these ingredients on hand if I suddenly craved for such. I also have on my Lazada cart dashi powder and I’m still searching for bonito flakes so I can make other Japanese dishes. I still have a tub of soybean paste for soups.

Kimchi keeping me from working this morning. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

So my cats wouldn’t want me to work. This morning Kimchi kept me from opening my notebooks and I was about to lead a meeting in a few minutes after this photo was taken. Such an obnoxious cat.

All they want to do is hang out with Mommy. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

They just want my attention. 😂 Just like the girls.

Spoke with my shrink an hour ago or so and I related the latest hiccup in my psychotherapy (i.e. the painting and the subsequent anxiety attack that ensued). She said she is keeping the current dosage of my alprazolam because she is unsure whether another similar incident would occur in the very near future that could send me into a tizzy and derail my recovery. I told her about my propensity for buying stuff to make me feel better. She said it’s ok as long as it’s under control. When she says “under control”, it’s relative to how bipolar people spend—when they’re in their mania stage (very happy), they would spend so much that they would run their credit card to the maximum credit limit. In my case, it’s the opposite; I soothe my hurt feelings (very down on serotonin) to boost my morale and I’m not spending much vis a vis my income.

She says just continue with my art therapy and always have my support system so when I get derailed I won’t sink. She also said she is validating my feelings towards the incident and I have a very good reason for feeling that way. She said it is very understandable. And she says it’s very strange that after 14 months he sends something like that when I am already trying to live my own life so it’s hard to gauge what the intention was/is. Hence, she is keeping the same dosage for my meds because the situation is unpredictable and we wouldn’t know if I would have another anxiety attack if I get triggered again for some reason. She also recommended that I go out regularly to distract me and have a healthy relationship with society.

Probably I’ll go out on Thursday or Friday and work in some coffee shop under the trees. There used to be a coffee shop at Vargas Museum in UP where I worked from time to time. Or I’ll book a diving session at Dive Plunge Club to release energy.

Blunders

Posted on by

As I mentioned yesterday, there were several miscalculations that Putin had in his invasion of Ukraine. He had underestimated the resistance from ordinary citizens of Ukraine and across the world.

Nonetheless, given Russia’s overwhelming forces and Mr Putin’s ruthless nature, expect the invaders to make gains in the coming days. The attacks on Kyiv will grow fiercer. One consequence of that? Growing anger in the West—among ordinary people as well as national leaders. More military gear, including, remarkably, anti-tank rockets and Stinger missiles from Germany, is heading to Ukraine. Sanctions on Russia are becoming more severe. Beyond the exclusion of some Russian banks from the SWIFT system, more serious are the efforts by Europe and America to stop Russia’s central bank accessing much of its $600bn-plus in foreign reserves. Watch on Monday how markets react to that. It’s unlikely to be pretty for Russia, especially the rouble. Some sort of Russian retaliation towards the West should be expected. The price of oil and gas could yet surge.

The Economist’s
Adam Roberts, Digital Editor

Now its currency tumbled 40% while interest rates climbed 20%. Such rough economic fallout will surely make ordinary Russians grow angry at Putin and bolder in their opposition to this war. Ukraine is now urging Visa and Mastercard to suspend the facilitation of payments in Russia, further hurting its people.

And apparently some people in the US are preparing for a possible nuclear war, giving rise to the Cold War era fear harbored by people on both sides of the Atlantic for decades before the fall of USSR.

On the home front, the price of liquefied petroleum gas—the main fuel for cooking in Filipino homes—is now increasing by at least PHP 7 per kg = PHP 77 more for an 11kg tank. I think it has now gone above PHP 1000 per 11kg tank when a few months ago it was just at PHP 700+. The Department of Energy said its petition to suspend the excise tax on fuels is still pending in Congress, the delegates of which are already busy campaigning. If we don’t halt the excise taxes on the fuels, the cost of goods and services would skyrocket in the next week or two.

The market volatility would send valuations askew again and some deals would have to be delayed given the instability. I had been busy scanning the news for developments and how the markets are behaving since it is now determining the angles for the news I should be aiming for.

Today’s press conference. The most critical info during this session is how much more are we going to pay for our electricity this coming summer and is our supply enough given the constraints that we are facing. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

With this so much tension in the world today (including the escalating deaths in HK due to a belated spike in Covid cases), my colleague now asked me is the apocalypse here now?

If such is the case, I’m glad I’m out of my former hellhole so I can concentrate on my remaining time on earth with my daughters. I was chatting with a fellow editor-journo who told me he is escaping from the city and is moving his family to Sta. Rosa, Laguna. His house will be finished this week and they will start moving next week. Good for you, I told him. I will be following you but further down south because I’m tired of the city too. If the world is going to end, at least we will be more comfortable than being stuck in the city and Metro Manila is the worst place to be during an apocalypse. EDSA is already an Armageddon in itself.

But before the world ends, I have a press conference to attend on Thursday in Makati and our Manila reporter and I would be working again in a coffee shop somewhere near the company HQ that will hold the conference. Face to face meetings are coming back and the government is going to bring down the Covid Alert Level to number 1 starting tomorrow. They finally decided to live with Covid as the new normal instead of following China’s/HK’s stance of zero-Covid policy.

Metro Manila and 38 other areas will be under Alert Level 1 from March 1-15
Read more: https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/?p=1561207#ixzz7MBdIWszb
Follow us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook

Hopefully face to face schooling will follow because the children are really suffering from two years of remote learning. These are the “lost years” for them.

And before the world ends, I still have transcriptions to finish. Hopefully I can publish two stories tomorrow.

And oh, let me go diving first. It’s so freaking hot these days.

Bagalangit Hideaways, Anilao, Mabini, Batangas. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Well hello, crisis!

Posted on by

Brent oil went past USD 100 per barrel today as the Ukraine crisis intensifies. EU is basically cut off from Russian gas, which could send the price of all fossil fuels skyrocketing. Two weeks ago, I was just talking with a CEO of an LNG company who assured me that the sky-high spot market prices of LNG would later come down as more bunker ships will come online and upstream players are already ramping up their production. But then here comes Putin disrupting everything. Mind you, we are still reeling from the economic fallout caused by the pandemic.

From a selfish investor’s point of view, this is a buying opportunity.

But as a regular human being, this is a disaster. Especially since the vegetables I bought today from UP already cost PHP 1,000 in total. This is the reason why the poor cannot afford to eat vegetables. Either they choose vegetables or meat, not both in one meal because there’s no way that you can spend this much for vegetables if you’re only earning PHP 500 a day. The cost of transporting these goods are now astronomical given that we have a very inefficient agricultural supply chain and the rising cost of fuel is compounding the situation.

My veggies that cost PHP 1,000. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Electricity costs will kill us this summer ☀🌡since the Philippines is highly dependent on diesel, coal, and gas to fuel base load power plants. We have a lot of renewable energy power plants but they are volatile because they are not consistent 24/7 and the grid cannot support such volatility. It needs constant supply that only base loads can offer. And so far our base load plants are fired by dirty fuels and geothermal.

This morning I brought the feral male white cat to PAWS for his neutering. All was well and right now he’s recuperating in my neighbor’s backdoor after fetching him from PAWS at past 4 pm.

Whitey inside the cage behind the door in the isolation area of PAWS. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Some PAWS merchandise to help subsidize the needs of the animals under their care. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

And finally the expensive keyboard arrived. It’s sooooo girly and clicky. Hahahaha! Some serotonin boost for me while working. I am now transcribing a lengthy interview (over an hour) and I love typing on this thing; it’s like typing on an old-school typewriter.

Raspberry color POP keyboard and mouse from Logitech. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

The mouse is really silent but hefty. The top part is held by magnets so when you accidentally drop the mouse, it will just come open but it will not break. I read that they did this to avoid breakage when you drop it; once the clicker or wheel is damaged, the mouse is already useless. The silent mouse is kinda weird to use when playing games though because you need tactile gamepads or mouse when playing.

The keyboard is heavy, which is a characteristic of real mechanical keyboards. I can swap the keys on the right side (the weird emoji shortcuts) and program them on the Logitech app. However, I don’t think I can switch other keys, unless other manufacturers make rounded keys for the likes of Logitech. This keyboard comes with extra keycaps for the emoji buttons. I thought I won’t be using them but—well, well, the emoji keys were useful when I was talking to my colleague/friend, L, this afternoon. I think I need to buy the separate numpad of similar design on Lazada. I already have it on my cart. I need it for work since I deal with a lot of numbers, ironically.

Speaking of my colleague, L, we were talking this afternoon about some stuff that she missed while she was away in Switzerland during the first two weeks of Feb. So I filled her in on the latest brouhaha involving J and the stuff I discovered. She said, “I don’t know why we always come across this kind of guys.” She also had a bad experience with a guy we code-named Jaded. Another narcissist who gaslighted her for a long, long time. He also led her on for a couple of years.

She said she recently met someone interesting in Switzerland and she wants to see him again. However, she said she has to be realistic because they’re far apart. I said at least she was able to meet a decent guy. If you consider meetings like this a hit or miss, mostly it’s a miss. As L’s friend said, for every 100 Tinder/Bumble date, there’s only one decent guy worth seeing again.

“I think you can meet up with people while healing. Don’t set so many limits for yourself,” she told me.

“But it’s scary. There are a lot of evil men out there. After my experience with J, I no longer know who is evil like him and who isn’t,” I told her.

She conceded. “Yeah, it’s hard to tell.”

She knows that because when we were talking about J that week that he and I started going out in Singapore four years ago, we were discussing that he seemed like a decent and harmless guy. How completely wrong we were. I’m still paying the price of that wrong judgment.

“He was a bad accident that caused me my sanity. I’m still undergoing psychotherapy until August. That’s why I’m scared of meeting people because I’m not yet well. I’m not yet sleeping properly,” I told her.

I’d rather stay home and stick to my friends. There are only very few decent men out there. Especially at my age group.

I’m happy that L has found a decent guy after that episode with that horrible Jaded. She was crying to me one time after Jaded invalidated her feelings and I told her he is gaslighting her…and that she is going nowhere. That was the last straw. She quit Jaded and enrolled for a CFA review. She threw herself into reviewing and she passed level 1. She is now reviewing for level 2. She sounds quite happy now.

So assignment to myself: 1) work double-time on my healing then 2) achieve some kind of certification as I mentioned here earlier–just for the heck of it–so I have something productive to occupy me and not mope around because of a person who did not add any value to me. 3) Then be a famous writer tucked away in some little hovel at the foot of a mountain (which I will be in a year). The famous part, I will be working on it 😂😂😂. Either I work on an academic book on journalism or I publish a book under fiction. I have an anthology of short stories with me but I don’t know where to publish it since most literary magazines I know of here have already stopped printing. We don’t have a version of The New Yorker here. A decade ago or so, I was working on a YA novel but I quit. One really needs a lot of concentration, discipline, and free time to be able to produce something like that.

In the meantime, I will continue urban sketching to keep me grounded and a bit happy.

BINGO!

Posted on by

One of my Twitter followers called me up on my phone and told me that there are open slots for passport renewal at DFA (because I had been asking DFA on Twitter when they would be opening slots). I quickly checked and fired up three browsers (Chrome, Firefox, and Edge) so I can try three different locations. After clicking for more than an hour (refresh, refresh, search, refresh), I finally was able to book at Robinsons Novaliches next week!

Wohoooo! Hopefully it would be painless. When Singapore finally opens up (no quarantine requirements), I can finally fly there and fix things that should be fixed. And meet my sources. And I should be using my Japan Visa soon since it would expire by next year.

One down, one more to go: Car registration. I need to secure a slot online, which I read was like another Hunger Games–similar to securing a slot at DFA.

In the meantime, I would be bringing the male white feral cat that this compound has been taking care of to PAWS for neutering. My neighbor caught him now in our kitty isolation cage so he can fast and I can easily bring him to PAWS tomorrow morning. Hope everything goes smoothly.

The Ukraine crisis is wreaking havoc on everything right now. For a 100% oil importing country like the Philippines, this would spell a rapid rise in core inflation. Supply disruptions of food and durable goods plus high transport cost would drag the purchasing power of people down. Waaaaay down. That’s why I should be judicious in driving because I haven’t seen the price of premium diesel climb this high, not even during the oil price shock of 2008 when every major corporation in the country had to revise its assumptions and earnings/growth projections. Logistics problems caused by the pandemic have yet to be untangled and here we go, we now have more geopolitical tensions to throw a monkey wrench into the economic recovery of developing countries like ours.

I have to think about this while pursuing stories and I should remind my team that this should be foremost in their minds right now.

At Starbucks. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

A quick sketch of yesterday’s work session with our Manila reporter at Starbucks in High Street. My efforts are still subpar so I need to practice some more. Since it would be a holiday on Friday, the girls and I are thinking of going to UP or probably La Mesa Dam if it won’t rain so I can practice sketching while they go biking. We can probably have a picnic.

My sister-in-law is telling me that she wants to go to the beach before the entire country descends on every available seaside in the coming weeks. I looked at Agoda for some resorts in Anilao and saw some vacant rooms in two resorts. She’s still thinking about it because she has three boys she wants to drag with her. My brother, being a lazy driver, wouldn’t come so I would be hauling them all off. I need to buy new freediving flippers and the doughnut if we would push through.

I think yesterday’s torrential rain would be the last and the hot and dry season would be coming up. I need to check the camp sites as well so we can schedule our long-delayed camping trip.

I hope no more curve balls. I’m trying my best to get out of this funk. I’m trying my best to heal well. Oh, God, I’m trying.

It’s 2:39 am and there’s this invisible hand from out of nowhere that suddenly squeezes my heart. I want to cry but I’ve run out of tears. I’m tired of this. I couldn’t hate because it still involves feelings and he’s not worthy of that. I just want to be apathetic. That’s the ultimate goal, apathy.

Investing 101

Posted on by

My high school friends and I were throwing ideas on FB Messenger about the next topics to tackle in our live stream for January. I suggested that we take up basics of investing because a lot of people even in their 40s have no idea how to go about it. I said why not we talk about what are the investment instruments that you should have when your investment horizon is 6 months, 1 year, 3-5 years, or 10years ++? I told them I remember interviewing the president of COL Financial about 13-14 years ago about this and he gave me excellent tips that I use up to this day.

I did a similar interview with then-PSE president Hans Sicat about the basics of stock market investing for my TV network. We did an #askPSE live tweet segment then to popularize stock market investing and to widen the local retail investing base.

I really should upgrade my digital camera now. *sigh* I should get what some Youtubers use for clear videos. And a good video editing software. These videos are just raw videos for posting on my TV network’s online news website and wasn’t meant for broadcast since these videos are accompanied by texts. I just collated them in my channel, which is just a dumping ground of my interviews that had nowhere to go.

Like this one:

I think this interview was done during Ayala Corp’s annual general meeting in April 2012.

I should fix my Youtube channel because I have a lot of interviews that could be used as reference or they could be standalone news stories.

On the other side of the coin, I was almost scammed this morning but good thing I was alert.

So you see I have posted the ad (on several FB groups/marketplace/platforms) that I am selling my Roland E-09 arranger keyboard and I had been receiving inquiries about it. Most were low-ballers but there was one potential buyer who was keen. Then long story short, we came to the advance payment part of the conversation.

Then he sent me a G-Cash payment alert

However, I realized that it wasn’t a notice for payment; it was a notice that he asked for payment as a remittance fee. It was fishy because the remittance fee was exorbitant.

I searched on Google and found that KKB (kanya-kanyang bayad) a.k.a. Dutch Treat is a function in G-Cash, like Venmo in the US, where you can split the bill and you can receive a payment from your friend for his share of the bill. The scammer made it look like it was a notice from Moneygram and at first glance it was convincing. But Moneygram transfers don’t look like this.

When I told the “buyer” this was a scam, he blocked me and left the FB messenger chat. I posted on Twitter and FB about this modus operandi and I asked my friends to report the scammer. I had one TV reporter friend from my old network to message the scammer that the network received a complaint about him and he would be reported to NBI.

I would check his many FB accounts if they’re still up. The fucker.

I was so incensed that I finished a floor-length curtain panel for my room to let off steam. By hand.

My granny curtains. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I’m trying to have more prints in the house because white is boring. Next time I will try graphic prints and see how it would look and if I like them. So far I’m in this cottagecore phase again, just like when I was in high school. My bedspread then were florals and I crocheted doilies, my study table was decorated with figurines of rabbits and similar designs that would go with the cottagecore aesthetic. Then when I started working, I gravitated towards Asian designs, the zen mode–the minimalism phase. I went for Budji Layug x Francisco Mañosa designs with a sprinkling of Japanese aesthetic. This is my rebellion against the horror vacui that Filipinos are known for and which my ex-in-laws were going for. I simply rejected this pack rat mentality and this design aesthetic that was an assault to the senses.

Speaking of designs, I already contacted my future contractor and he will meet my mom on Thursday or Friday and I will do a video call with them so I can explain what I wanted. It would have been great if we could have met on a weekend so I can drive down there but he’s also a busy guy as I see him posting his multiple projects. He and I used to chat a lot in high school over the ham radio. Fun times.

Perpetual power crisis

Posted on by

Rotating power outages likely in parts of Luzon for 2nd day, red alert hours longer

Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 1) — Parts of Luzon may experience power interruptions for the second day in a row Tuesday, with the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) announcing longer red alert hours.

In its Facebook page, the NGCP announced red alert hours of 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., longer than the 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. period yesterday. A red alert means power supply is insufficient to meet the projected demand for energy.

To continue, read here

This is not a one-off thing. This has been going on and on for years. We journalists have been sounding the alarm for a looooooong time. As I said in one social media post:

Developing a base load power plant takes years, at least 5 years. Securing approval for new power plant projects from the Energy Regulatory Commission takes a long time. The ultra super critical 600×2 MW coal plant Atimonan One by Merlaco PowerGen is still under development (for those in Luzon). Meanwhile, there are already a lot of renewable energy power plants here but that cannot substitute for base load power plants. It’s complicated to explain how to dispatch RE power and base load (coal, diesel) since it’s technically with the national grid. As Metro Pacific President Joey Lim said, our grid is not a complete loop. If one power plant trips, the grid cannot just simply dispatch electricity from another area/plant; basically he likened it to a one-way highway. Moreover the dispatch of solar and wind power have specific times since power from them are not available at all hours.

We were not remiss in giving the public the FYI, right? Hahahaha! This is why I have 2 rechargeable standfans, my salary from my part-time teaching in CMC for 1 semester was used to buy a gasoline genset, my “desktop” at home is a gaming laptop so when power goes out, the fun still continues. Everything that can be purchased as rechargeable, I purchased. I still don’t have a house of my own but when the time comes I already have my tiny house, I will install off-grid solar power or hybrid off-grid and on-grid system. I need to take matters into own hands because this problem will persist for a long, long time. Malampaya gas field is running out of reserves and then we have 5 gas-fed power plants that are reliant on Malampaya, which provides electricity to Luzon. We still don’t have an LNG terminal, we still don’t have an alternative to Malampaya.

Basically, this problem has been the government’s neglect. It doesn’t matter whose administration’s fault is this since this has spanned four presidents already. Trying to explain the issue and write the solutions (long-term and band-aid) is like writing a thesis.

Simultaneous online press conference. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

This is one of the reasons why I invested in dual monitors: I can multitask. But this is extreme multi-tasking as I am streaming two conferences. I paid attention to the one on the right since this is shorter and it yielded me a story, while the one on the left I muted for a while until I finished the other one. Anyway, this conference will run until Thursday and I was able to take down notes for a bit from this session.

I had four conferences this morning, back-to-back-to-back-to-back. And I wrote a time-sensitive story right after. I was still tweaking the story at past 5 pm, which got published at 8 pm. I still have three more stories to write for this week before I go off next week.

Meanwhile, my cats have been Zoom-bombing my press conferences. Good thing I didn’t need to turn on my camera for some of the sessions.

To quote Nikki Bigornia, “My cats have no chill!” Photo from webcam, CallMeCreation.com
Photo by CallMeCreation.com

And they occupied my chair. They stayed in my room the entire day I was slaving away. They always want to be in the same place where I am, even when I’m in the bathroom.