That’s it. I’m not going to S. Korea anytime soon. I just contacted Layag Resort in Anilao for a long weekend stay first week of October. If no room is available, I can push it back to the week of my birthday since they have a weekday work-from-beach promo.
I can’t travel abroad in the next 6 months except for work because I just got the quote from my 2nd contractor and I almost had a heart attack. I’m waaaay over budget. We’re talking about millions. Prices of construction materials have doubled, I reckon. I was negotiating with my contractor earlier how we can bring down the cost (Italian granite vs cheaper but still tough granite tops; hardwood vs pinewood for cabinetry). I’m constructing my house on cash basis–no bank loans. I cannot risk having a mortgage because our industry is in a flux so I always feel insecure about my job. Whatever happens, at least I have a fully paid home.
The new car can wait a bit.
As an example, this is how expensive kitchen cabinets are:
And this is just for the kitchen granite top:
Final sketch by CallMeCreation.com
It’s tight but that’s how new condos are built in Metro Manila nowadays, a two bedroom 50-sqm unit. The indoor living space of my unit (in a duplex) is about 50 sqm and it excludes the patio on the right, the space beside it and under the stairs, which will be the grill and laundry and utility area. If you add that, I guess my total living space will be around 70sqm. I can convert some part of that into a screened studio, just like my mom’s screened porch that doesn’t have any use at all except as a repository for their shoes. 🙄
And my contractor agreed to this request by the girls.
My girls’ model bedroom. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
My contractor said this would make their loft beds stable as he can anchor them against the walls. Then the girls will have a bigger floor space for an extra mattress where their friends can sleep when they have sleepovers. Contractor said there would be extra space between the loftbeds so he can build actual stairs, instead of ladders, for the girls. This way I can also divide their room with floor-to-ceiling curtains for privacy, if they want to.
So no Korea trip this October, no Japan trip in the spring. No Palawan. Just Anilao. If I need to get away, I just drive to Anilao and dive. That’s it for the next 6 months.
And I just bought again ETF when stocks were falling today. I was trying to catch a falling knife. It burned me though as I bought at 103.8, but it continued to fall. 🥴
Ah well. What can I do? I’ll just buy again at the end of the month.
Yup, it’s almost a month since I went out of my 4-km radius. To make matters worse, it has been raining so I couldn’t ride the bike to go anywhere. Physically yes, I can bike under the rain but I don’t want to risk getting sick before I am to leave the country for the first time since July 2019 (Jakarta).
I can last a month without seeing other people. 🤔 The introverted side of me is ok with that.
So today I’m just stuck here as usual and I’m cleaning out my refrigerator so I’m using the last bit of ingredients in my pantry before I do another big shop.
Tonkatsu rice bowl with egg. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I made tonkatsu, which turned out good because I finally figured out how to do double frying as I’ve seen from Imamu’s Room Youtube channel. My kids loved it because it was crunchy and I seasoned the meat last night so the meat was savory. Since I don’t have mentsuyu to cook the pork with the egg, so I just made a runny sunny-side up fried egg to top my rice bowl. I paired this with miso soup with kombu.
For dinner, I made ramen and eggplant tempura and eggplant fritters.
Garlic pork tonkatsu ramen. Photo by CallMeCreation.comEggplant tempura and eggplant fritters. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I’m down to my last vegetable dish tomorrow (sauteed squash with string beans) and I’m thinking whether I should add coconut milk and a bit of chili flakes since I don’t have sambal. Oh, I should remember to buy sambal and bak kut teh spices when I shop in Singapore. (*Makes a mental note*) I should haul my ass out of this house tomorrow to shop for fresh veggies.
Cooking is some kind of stress-reliever for me—as long as I don’t have to do the wash up after.
Next year when it will just be the three of us, I would be batch cooking and probably supplement it by hiring my mom’s cook on weekends. (Ate C and I agreed that I would be releasing her from my employment and I will just finance her last year in college as my scholar with the usual monthly allowance, her tuition, and other school expenses. She would be staying with her sister until she finishes college. It’s just for a year). Imamu’s Room and Nami on Youtube have tutorials on how to prep bento lunches–packed meals for my girls and prepared lunches for me because I’m too busy with work to bother cooking during weekdays.
I will buy a robo-vacuum for daily cleaning and hire my mom’s bi-weekly cleaning lady for general cleaning during weekends. Besides, it wouldn’t be that hard to clean a 52-sqm apartment. The girls are already folding and putting away clean laundry as part of their daily chores and I would start them now with doing their own laundry with our automatic washing machine. How hard can it be?
The only thing that I dread doing starting next year is the daily litter box cleaning, because my critters are useless 🙄. When you are owned by a cat, you clean up after them for life. That is a fact.
Yup, I couldn’t lie on my bed because they have already commandeered it. I adjust 😂. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
We are in a scarier environment now with the China credit crunch unraveling further. While US economists/pundits are debating whether they are already in recession, China logs the slowest YoY growth in eons, registering 0.4% growth in 2Q22. Then here comes the threat of end-buyers/homebuyers not paying their loans because housing projects couldn’t proceed as real estate companies suffer from the Evergrande fallout.
China’s real estate sector is grappling with a crisis that has seen developers squeezed by eye-watering levels of debt, sparking a string of bond defaults among major groups including Shimao and China Evergrande — the world’s most indebted developer with about $300 billion in liabilities.
This is like the US subprime crisis of 2007-2008, just a different flavor and shown with subtitles.
When the world’s two largest economies are hobbling, then not far behind is probably the Great Financial Crisis 2.0. We are going to see a domino effect that could further weigh down emerging markets like ours, which are already suffering from sky-high prices of goods and services. I’ve been editing a number of stories that point to tightening of belts and external funding already coming in trickles. Soon the tap will be turned off for the time being as market chaos reigns. Huge valuation differences and forex issues (especially for the Philippines, which saw its currency weakening from 53 to 56 in just 30 days) are holding up deals.
This is a tough year; next year would be horrible.
I should move quickly and have my house up before December so if there is some kind of financial fuck-up that may happen, being homeless will be the least of my problems. I have logged a lot of paper losses from my investments and I’m kicking myself for not shifting my pure equity funds last year into fixed income because I was too lazy. I’ll just treat this market rout into a buying opportunity.
We should treat food insecurity with self-sufficiency and generosity. I will plant an edible garden and alongside that is encouraging people to do the same. A half kilo of minced meat and eggs with lots of vegetables go a long way for food-insecure families.
I would have wanted to drive somewhere today but I couldn’t. I still don’t have a car.
My brain is not functioning today—you know it’s like a deflated balloon right now after the Adrenalin rush of yesterday. Imagine, I did not allow myself to cry yesterday and absorb the fact that I lost 300k because I needed presence of mind. I needed to engage with the scammer/s while I am working with the authorities. Whatever info I extracted from the criminals, I passed on to authorities.
After my Nancy Drew-esque adventure, I disengaged, as advised by the lawyer of the anti-fraud team because my identity will be stolen if I lingered long enough. The case is now with the investigators. I already gave him the ID of the point person from the syndicate that they can engage with so they can do a sting operation.
After I recovered my funds, I slept for 9 hours. All the stresses of the previous day were released today and my brain is barely functioning now.
My friend from the media relations of AEV said she was in awe of my presence of mind and guts. I said, maybe because I am a reporter so I’m used to masking stress and can still function under duress (I received a lot of threats from the scammer’s side when I refused to do what they wanted to me to do).
This is an organized crime syndicate. I did a lot of research and discovered the same modus operandi had been going on since 2019 or probably earlier. I passed on my research to the anti-fraud teams and the NBI; I think they need Interpol for this one. As my friend-colleague told me, they have scam farms (akin to boiler rooms) in Southeast Asia, scamming people from China to Venezeula. I’m not entirely sure if these boiler rooms do the same phising as what was done to me (and at some point my mom, but then my mom has an excuse that she is not internet savvy while I don’t; i blame my lack of sleep).
Image from Mothership.sg
It’s like being on the investigative journalism circuit again, doing covert info gathering. After being fueled by Adrednalin for 24 hours (forgetting to eat and sleep), my body gave up and gave in to exhaustion.
I’ve been pretending to edit a story from Vietnam the whole day today but I haven’t progressed to the fourth paragraph.
The best I could do today was to clean my keyboard, which was full of cat hair.
Cleaning my mechanical keyboard that has brown switches. Photo by CallMeCreation.comCat hair and dust bunnies from my keyboard. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I can’t complain. After the extreme stress I went through yesterday, maybe I deserve this break. Besides, Southeast Asia is dead today because of Eid al-adha.
And oh, I thank God that I also have the foresight to keep majority of my funds in trust accounts that cannot be withdrawn that easily as these require a visit to the bank branch. I also have split my ready-to-use funds into different bank accounts. Aside from *** (where I have like 6 accounts), I have *** and ***. I now have *** and ***, which I’m testing as a financial reporter for future reference. In case of fuck ups like this, I still have funds I could use.
UPDATE: I was able to recover my funds, intact. God is good to me even if I’m being stupid. Kudos to the excellent anti-fraud teams of UBP and EWB who acted swiftly. It’s a harrowing experience.
Today my EastWest Bank accounts were phished and funds and were transferred to a Union Bank account. Around PHP 300,000 or more than USD 5000.
Using my connections at Union Bank, I have reported the bank transactions and the UBP account used to funnel funds so they can freeze it. The syndicate doing this is also using my credentials to hack into my UBP account as I received SMS and emails from legit UBP number and email address about this attempt.
I think the syndicate is a crypto gang, and this is similar to just like what they did to BDO account holders at the beginning of this year. They used a UBP account as a conduit to funnel funds into crypto accounts because this bank has connections to crypto or they’re dipping their hands into crypto so it’s easier to move money from a legit bank to a crypto account and international transfers are easier. UBP has very loose eKYC, like GCash.
I don’t think I can get back the money but I’m trying to trap the syndicate. I am in constant communication now with UBP people and my next stop is NBI. I just have to make sure they have frozen the account before I go to NBI so that the scammer/s cannot withdraw the money.
Someone is still watching over me since my BDO account wasn’t touched as it was under maintenance last night until this morning. ❤️
My HSBC credit card was hacked earlier this year and some purchases in the US were made. These were reversed as I was able to prove that the physical card is with me the same time the transactions in the US were made. I think they gained access into my account when I subscribed to Windows CCleaner app or Malware Bytes. Same thing happened to my Citi credit card; there were attempts to use my card which were unauthorized but with Citi, they were the ones who immediately invalidated the transactions and shut down my credit card number.
It’s hard to do anything online these days. The problem is, everything is going online.
I really don’t understand this metric. This is used by companies wanting unrealistic valuation and investors bit the bullet because…they need to close a deal and show their LPs that they’re doing “something”.
Now that startups and even the unicorns and listed tech companies are laying off people by the thousands (I just edited a story about this in Asia a few weeks ago) as funding dries up and investors begin to see reason. Gone are the days when Uber and WeWork burn money like it’s growing on trees. Things are so bad right now that those who have jumped from their stable jobs to hustle on their startups are seeing doors close on them. Cost of money is rising, with inflation hitting multiple-year record highs, hence, we see central banks looking through their tool kits to stem possible runaway inflation. Investors are now turning off the tap and begin to be more selective in their deals. Companies that I’ve talked to are preferring cash over anything else these days.
Just today, Philippines Statistics Authority reported that last month’s inflation rate was the highest in four years at 5.4%, from 4.9% in April. Gone were the days when I was reporting inflation rate at 1%, T-bills at near-zero levels, and very loose policy rates (which was boring us to tears) that banks and insurance companies were looking at alternative investment vehicles in search of higher yields.
As it stands, inflation is emerging as a big headache for the incoming administration of President-elect Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., who is yet to reveal his full economic plans for the country.
The BSP is racing to control prices and has already made its first decisive action to fight inflation last month by hiking rates for the first time in three years. Diokno, who will cut short his term as BSP governor to join the Marcos cabinet as finance secretary, hinted at another rate hike in June.
Philippine Star
I feel bad for my brother, who is trying to close a housing loan with PS Bank and he has been racing against time. If he can’t close the loan (because the Register of Deeds is slow in releasing the title), he has to work again on the loan with higher rates for the townhouse he is trying to buy.
This situation will squeeze small and medium enterprises with existing loans; if they don’t have fixed-rate loans, then this will hurt them so much.
Recession is very much in the offing.
I just bought vegetables and a few oranges last night and I spent PhP 1,200 that is good for four people for a week. And that’s not even the same amount of vegetables I used to buy six months or a year ago.
It hurts a middle class citizen like me but I’m luckier that I can still spend for “frivolous needs” like wheel alignment and clothes shopping because my children got bigger again and no longer fit in their clothes I bought a few months ago.
Clothes and and sandals shopping at SM tonightHaving my car’s wheels aligned and steering wheel straightened outthis afternoonPhotos by CallMeCreation.com
This, however, is a different story for those who belong to the lower economic strata who can barely budget their PHP 570-a-day minimum wage, which includes costly transport costs. It’s no wonder why people still gravitate towards the long queues at MRT and EDSA Carousel buses because right now these are still free. Filipinos could no longer afford basic transportation costs.
PANOORIN: Maagang humaba ang pila ng mga pasahero na sasakay sa EDSA carousel bus sa Monumento Caloocan ngayong Martes. Ang ibang pasahero, mas pinipili raw mag-commute kaysa magdala ng sasakyan dahil sa mahal ng gasolina ngayon. | via @_jamesJApic.twitter.com/SavZuNrlDo
I have to be selective with the face-to-face meetings because petroleum is so precious right now. I had filled up my tank (which was already half-full) tonight for around PHP 1,700, which a year ago would be enough to fill up my car from near-empty.
Despite the high cost of driving your own car, people like me bite the bullet because there are no Grab cars (heard they decommissioned a lot of Grab cars because they’re older than 5 years already), the queues in MRT and buses are out of this world, and the traffic is much worse than pre-pandemic levels.
We are in a fucking transportation crisis.
Metro Manila is no longer livable.
I had been living here full-time for more than 20 years and I can see how things have deteriorated over time. I can’t wait to move back to my hometown (even if that means I lose my autonomy because I will be nearer my siblings who can poke their heads into my business) because I’m so tired of the drive. The driving time of my brother and mine were the same last Saturday. His 70 km vs my 14 km both for 1.5 hrs. This is really absurd.
I rushed in buying ETF earlier this week. It was 2 pesos more expensive than today as Nikkei index has registered the biggest fall in 4 weeks on US Fed comments about rate hikes. I had a nagging feeling then that I should wait but I ignored my inner voice and told myself what bad news could we have again? 🙄 How annoying. I could have bought more at today’s price.
The Nikkei lost 1.58 per cent to close at 27,350.30, posting its biggest daily fall since Mar 11. PHOTO: AFP
Meanwhile, I didn’t get enough sleep as a midnight email from London rocked me. My boss is transferring to another product and she didn’t tell me what was going on. My colleagues and I were running around like headless chickens even until yesterday because our reporting lines were blurred. I could not help my colleague with her request for travel because I was not yet given authority to do so. A lot of things were pending because there was no reporting line authorized under me. I wasn’t even told that my boss was no longer doing editorial work so everything fell on me, without proper compensation yet. A lot of admin work kept piling up on me even though I had no official word that these were already my official duties.
I was so confused this morning. I don’t know what to make of this. Why didn’t she tell me? I kept on adding her in team calls and in email threads when she could have just told me that she doesn’t need to be in there. I was walking on eggshells for months.
I’m thinking of attending art classes and I found an atelier near my house that offers classical drawing and painting lessons. Unfortunately their schedules are not friendly to working people like me.
I figured even if I draw and sketch everyday, I will not make a lot of improvement because the theories are lost on me. If I didn’t buy a Domestika course, I wouldn’t be able to learn about vanishing points.
Unfortunately, this atelier only offers oil painting. Although the same principles could be applied to watercolors, the latter is more finicky and the medium’s immediate permanence on paper makes it unforgiving to novices. I didn’t go for oils because I have asthma and the fumes, especially the thinners, cleaners, and solvents/varnish could trigger an attack. It’s a lot messier, too, and it demands a bigger space when practicing.
