Changi Airport is so big and yet Philippine Airlines was shoehorned in the saddest boarding gates in Terminal 1. We share the gate with three other airlines. Nowhere to sit—I’m forced to park my butt on my luggage trolley while I wait for my boarding time.
I can’t wait for this trip to end.
The only thing that cheered me today is my meeting this afternoon because it was fruitful. I need to intensify my contact/network-building more than ever since Singapore domestic news will be left to me next month.
And my bosses still don’t know about it. 😞 But I’m a friend who keeps promises. I won’t say anything until she secures her E-pass.
I needed some calories to fuel me the entire journey home… American hamburger is the key.
After 9 days of local Singaporean food. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Ok I take it back. The gate PAL is given is just at the end of the earth. Once we got past the initial gate, the situation got better.
Now why didn’t they let us in first? Why have that chokepoint of an entryway? While waiting for the train to Changi, I realized that my favorite color is red. These bags were bought six years apart. I unconsciously gravitated towards this color. 🤔
This is the face of anxiety. It has been under extreme pressure the past few days. It will be moreso in the coming days.
My best reporter called me up today. She will be leaving the company by the end of the year. She has two job offers and she’s just waiting if her E-pass will be approved under her chosen company. If it all goes well, she will tender her resignation after two weeks then give one month notice.
I cannot, for the life of me, think of somebody else to replace her because she’s that good. But I knew this day would come soon because we had been talking about this for quite some time even before I got promoted.
Now it’s really, really hard to hire good journalists in Singapore because there’s a dearth of good homegrown talent there when it comes to honest-to-goodness journalism. What can you expect from a country with an authoritarian government, right?
I have a lot of problems on my plate right now. I am just compartmentalizing each problem because I will melt down if I tackle them all. One of my problems is the Bangkok coverage, which I must solve soon.
Basically, there is nobody left in Singapore. And my company is limiting my movements. I honestly do not know what they want.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Quick watercolor book mark to manage anxiety. Art abd photo by CallMeCreation.com
If I didn’t go crazy before my APAC boss this afternoon and subtly threatened that I would go to the competitor if the company goes with its 6-month contract bullshit for non-office-based employees, she wouldn’t push the red button in London. Ghaaaad. Some calls and emails later, the global head said that there were some fuck-ups in HR that’s why our contracts were flagged again.
Ignore, she said.
I hate doing that to my APAC boss because she’s nice but my goodness, I need to stand up for myself and the rest of my team. I am underpaid compared to my peers in other news orgs. I am just sticking with this one because I like working from home, especially critical now that I am building my house and moving away from the city.
Let me just finish my house and I will revisit my options. I need to play hardball; if they would touch again our contracts, then I will have to ask for a much higher rate because the terms would be changed. The amount of work and the stress they are giving me should be compensated.
Art and photo by CallMeCreation.com
I was so incensed today that I procrastinated. My brain refused to function so I did a quick sketch to relax me.
I really, really need that week-long break. I’m already too tensed, my patience is running thin.
My gear for urban sketching.
Doing the new color swatches relaxed me, too. I removed the student-grade Tokyo Finds watercolors and left the higher grade ones from the same brand, with Winsor & Newton and Holbein thrown in the mix. I wanted to go to ArtWhale this afternoon to buy more half-pans but I had to bring Twin I to the polyclinic nearby to have her checked.
At the nurses’ station at 2ndF, waiting for Twin I’s name to be called to the pediatrician’s office. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Her temperature was elevated but I refused to administer the antigen test because she has sensitive nostrils = ridiculous nosebleeds. She was frequently urinating. So the pediatrician recommended some lab tests to check for UTI and also to check the cause of her severe nosebleeds (she lets out a lot of fresh blood, like lots). She had her nose X-rayed to check for polyps.
Waiting for our turn at the x-ray room. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Then she would be referred to an ENT specialist if there are polyps. She surmised—as a nosebleeder herslf—that Twin I has sinusitis that’s why she always has mucus in her nostrils. Later it hardens and then my girl frequently picks her nose to remove the hardened mucus, then irritates her thin membrane in the process, causing her nose to bleed. She saw that her nostrils were inflamed.
Anyway, lab test results would be out tomorrow but I would be attending this huge conference in Manila so I need to leave here at 6:30 am. Because the presidential security group will close the doors of the hotel promptly at 9 am—for security. BECAUSE DAMN THESE BUSINESSMEN, THEY INVITED MARCOS AS GUEST SPEAKER.
I don’t know how I can stand to be in the same room with this demon. He who wanted the people in EDSA strafed during the 1986 uprising. He who milked this country of billions when he was a senator and I was part of the investigative team who tackled the pork barrel case for my news org. I still have the photos of the evidence submitted to the anti-graft court in 2013.
I must shove my earbuds down my ear canal to block out his voice during his speech, which would be drivel anyway.
Stress level hit the roof before I signed off from work tonight. I received an email from HR regarding the contracts of my reporters and damn, here we go again…
I emailed my managers and asked them, why are we back here? If this keeps on cropping up, I will lose people. I also would be put in a precarious position and if push comes to shove, a competitor will love to have me and this company will just eat my dust.
Thank God for cats. They help me get rid of stress, albeit temporarily. They lower my blood pressure.
Here is Kimchi judging me again while I do my stretching. Photo by CallMeCreation.comAnd then she proceeds to mock me. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I don’t know how people can last long in this job. I remember an erstwhile bureau chief quit and asked to be demoted because she said she could not keep up. She just had a baby and there was no way she could balance being a mom, wife, and bureau chief. The only two good things about my situation is that I can work from home and I don’t have a partner. The rest are crap—in the sense that I manage the second largest if not the largest of newsroom in APAC just by the number of reporters I have. Moreover, I must be on top of the situation in 11 markets—five of them are very active whereas the others have only one or two markets (Aus and NZ) that they cover. I must monitor 11 laws/rules and regulations, 11 political situations with their own idiosyncrasies and only two markets use English as an official language—the rest are incomprehensible. AND YET I could not travel freely to these markets; I have yet to test the waters and push the envelope.
This day is just…😤
Meanwhile, a little victory due to our pushback against this Bible-thumping liar, history revisionist, and overall bitch apologist of the Marcoses.
And here are the feedback of some sellers. A friend who has a store on Shopee says this is all true. She lost customers. If there would be orders, it would be for an PHP80-item, hardly a thing that would move the needle. All the big spenders are gone. Nothing happened during 10-10 sale. She says she’s stuck with a high inventory and she couldn’t open a TikTok store or an IG store because that requires regular content. She has no room in her life for content since she’s taking care of her baby. She said this is not a matter of life and death for her since she’s just doing this as a “passive” income (her definition) since her active source of income is her online job. This boycott really hurts the sellers who are relying on Shopee for their main source of income.
Another stress-reliever of mine is planning my house.
Updated floorplan of my tiny house. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I probably have my dimensions wrong again since I’m not working on grid paper. But this is the latest layout that my contractor and I have agreen on. Just this morning, we reduced the width of the girls’ bedroom. I’m not entirely sure if I got the girls’ doorway right because I just based this on my conversation and gesticulation of my contractor i.e. there would be a corner there for their door and for my closet. But I couldn’t understand how my closet would not block their doorway. I must have misunderstood something. Anyway, I would be able to see once the partitions are up next week.
My girls prefer to have this shelving unit in their room instead of a full-blown closet because they want shelves and more shelves for stuff and books, not clothes. I have already bought them drawers for their clothes.
Photo from ikea.ph
On Friday I will pick up in Paranaque the Rockwool insulation/soundproofing for some dry wall partition to deliver to my construction site. That was an extra expense (around 22k) but I want this done well. If I can have granite kitchen countertops, why not have a soundproof partition wall?
This is how my future home looks like viewed from space…
Our houses according to Google Earth.
Yup, that entire forest at the back is my view. I will clear some of that in the near future when I’m ready to have my vegetable beds. That red encircled part of the red duplex is mine—at least the second floor part. On the extreme left in the yellow circle is the garage but that would be extended to be a communal garage to accommodate two SUVs and a sedan.
Let’s see on Friday if the house is already taking shape.
I don’t feel good right now. An article I had labored over is being questioned by a guy who has been in this job only for a year. 🙄
I’m tired because I had been editing until 7:45 pm. My brain is already fried. Then I get an email from somebody in New York about the wisdom of the story I wrote.
Just like last night, I was disturbed by an editor who asked me “do we publish this kind of stories?” I said yes, since the time I joined in 2014. I was hired to do this kind of stories because there’s plenty of this in my market and no one specializes in it.
I just want to scream.
Maybe I need to rest. Like rest for a long, long time.
My boss just sent us our numbers for 3Q22 and I’m on the top 3 most productive person in APAC. No wonder I’m so tired.
I was trying to hug my cats but those critters are useless as emotional supprt animals 😑
Kimchi being a pompous ass here after running away from me. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
My kids hugged me but they’re too busy with their own stuff. I didn’t tell them that I just needed some affection because everything went bad today. It’s not good to burden them with my emotional needs. That’s not what my kids are for. Children who are made to shoulder the happiness of their parent/s become broken human beings.
I just have to hug myself today.
I have 100 things on my to-do list but I couldn’t strike off any of them because I no longer have the energy to do them.
Out of whack hormones and sheer exhaustion, this is all what it is. Hopefully, tomorrow will be better.
I will just cry tonight. I just don’t know why I have to but it will make me feel better.
Ah, Megawide has de-risked itself because it plays fair; because of that it is now being eased out of the dirty, regulated infrastructure business of the Philippines. And the best entity to sell to is a Marcos crony—Aboitiz. Group CEO Sabin Aboitiz is super chummy with Marcos Jr so I wouldn’t be surprised if he comes out as the “next Dennis Uy”, the favorite businessman of a sitting president. During Duterte’s reign, Uy was like Pacman, gobbling everything in is his path. Government contracts were his for the taking. Now he is being chased by creditors and is set to sell most of his assets because NONE of the promised support from China pushed through. His telco, DITO Telecommunity, is looking for a buyer for Uy’s stake. The problem is, no one wants to sleep with China Telecom, Uy’s JV partner.
I can’t write such things as straightforward as this but I try my best to inject some of these insights in my stories—but I know I’m pushing the envelope. I take that risk because the investing community should be aware of the political dynamics we have here. That’s a service that cannot be quantified by our CRM but is valuable to our readers, as I was told by some of them.
It has been raining nonstop even in the absence of a typhoon. I feel I’m ballooning again so I need to walk tomorrow or something. I need to be back in shape for a marathon networking in Singapore in November. The big bosses will be flying down from London. And oh, I must bring an evening dress (*OMG I need one that fits me) because there would be an awards night for ***.
Speaking of work, my most senior but least productive reporter told me he would like to step back and have a different arrangement, like a per-article basis freelancer status because he acknowledged that he could not meet his quota.
Now this poses a big problem for me because since top management is NOT prioritizing hiring of new reporters or editors (only a senior North America editor), losing one headcount means it would not replaced. I lose it, then I lose it. As it is, competition in the region is heating up. Other news organizations are finally catching on and realized my niche is lucrative so they’re building up their own team dedicated for this niche.
I cannot lose more people.
I was having back-to-back calls today with my seniors to solve this conundrum. I also need to arrange to have my team fly to Singapore in the first week of December for a year-end training that I would be conducting. 🥴
Because I was preoccupied with admin concerns, I wasn’t able to write again my stories that have been pushed back a couple of weeks and months now. I also need to see a doctor for my left knee that has been hurting now. I don’t know if this is an old football injury that I aggravated during my walks in my hometown the a few weeks ago. I also need to bring Twin I to a pediatrician for her nosebleeds. They’re getting worse now.
How to shoehorn these doctor visits in between all these work pressures? I need to attend a conference tomorrow or on Thursday and I have a lunch meeting with some bankers and another set of bankers in the evening on Friday.
Oh geez and I need to book that resort in Batangas for that beach holiday at the end of the month.
Wait, I still need to follow up my travel arrangements and visa application for Korea.
I need to breathe.
What have I been doing? I don’t know, I haven’t been keeping track. I’m having a hard time finding mental space for all the important things to do. I only have two hands and finite amount of brain cells to balance being a manager for Southeast Asia (which is a lot of work), being a specialized journalist, a mother, and a future homeowner who needs to build her home, and at the same time I must take care of myself if I want to live beyond the age of 42.
Maybe I should cancel that Korea trip. Maybe I just take a week off in October and just go to Palawan to go island-hoping and dive for a week and burn to a crisp.
Yes, I think I should do that.
I don’t think that Korea trip with my friends is that compelling anyway. They’re planning to go to Busan when I haven’t even explored Seoul. 😶 Maybe I’ll just do that next year when it’s less hectic.
