This is so unlike me to arrive in another country in the afternoon. Normally I take the earliest flight out of Manila so I can take advantage of my free day after arriving. This time, I’m with one of my bffs who has a toddler. They had to bring the son first to her brother who will/had sent the kid to daycare so my friend’s husband can drive us to NAIA.

The last time my bff was here was 20 years ago. She said things have changed so much that she failed to recognize HCMC. She was surprised that 4-wheel vehicles outnumbered motorbikes now. When she was last here, it was just motorbikes. She was also wondering why all cars look relatively new and half of them were EVs or hybrid.

Our Grab ride was cheap—only about PHP 200 from airport to our hotel in District 1!

The good thing about traveling with a friend from childhood is that more or less you’re on the same wavelength. Our agenda after checking in our hotel is just this: Vietnamese coffee, pho, and massage.

It seems like we’re located in an expensive part of town because there were a number of older white tourists all around. We were just spitting distance from Hyatt and a large Louis Vuitton store. Our meal was cheaper compared to Manila but it wasn’t as cheap as I expected because it cost us PHP 500 each.

We were so full and satisfied with our dinner. 😎

It was like Manila without potholes and heavy traffic. The vibe is more or less the same. Street vendors selling cigarettes and banh mi. Trash/dumpster at the corner and broken sidewalks. Same same. Bangkok also exuded the same vibe. Southeast Asia can be so familiar and yet each country is also distinct from one another.

I left so many stuff at home. 🥴 I had to rush last-minute errands and address work-related issues that had thrown me off-balance. I’m supposed go online this morning because I had a terrible article that I was editing last night. The reporter may come back to me this morning… but I’m dealing with airport stuff right now.

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This interview of National Artist Nora Aunor was hilarious. Her stories about her drunkeness sounded familiar—because she was me or I am her when drunk. We could’ve hit it off.

I am not easily star-struck but there are only a few people who I asked to be photographed with while getting tongue-tied: goalkeeper Neil Etheridge, long-time Purefoods basketball player Alvin Patrimonio, and actress Nora Aunor.

When I was still with my old TV station, I was covering/live tweeting the fundraiser our broadcast company did for victims of Typhoon Pablo (was it?). There were celebrities manning the phones, performing, hosting, etc. I didn’t care much for them so I just continued to work. But when Nora Aunor came in, I was star-struck. I stopped whatever I was doing and watched her open her bag and pull out wads of cash in thousand peso bills. I heard her say, pasensya na, konti lang to. Kawawa naman sila…

My heart melted. She was so humble and shy. I got shy, too. I would have wanted to have taken a photo with her. She was just literally at arm’s length. I would’ve bragged to my long-dead father and his mother that I had a photo taken with their idol. Well, technically Nora was my grandma’s idol and my father… It was just transference. I would have wanted to have a chat with her, I wanted to tell her that my lola, until her dying day, was a solid Noranian.

But I didn’t. I was just too shy. I should’ve.

Now she’s gone.

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Fresh air. Light. Wohoo! This is very important now that I need ventilation inside my tiny home. Summer months are always brutal.

Staying home during the Holy Week is perfectly fine. I want to just relax and recharge my battery. I don’t want the stress of having to deal with people, like this:

Nope, I’m perfectly fine here at home. I’ll do my gala on other days. I don’t want to people. I’m already old and cranky and people-ing is no longer me.

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It’s like a tradition now: breakfast at the community market on Sundays. It’s the best way to catch some Vitamin D, exercise (around 3,500 steps) and food. I brought Twin I with me, who now developed an obsession for walking. Yesterday she went around the campus and went up the mountain (upper campus) despite the heat. Twin A, on the other hand, also went walking with a girl friend yesterday but a few hours earlier than her twin.

It’s good that my daughters are now developing their love for the outdoors. I have been training them since they were babies; I always brought them to the beach and every summer months I bring them here in my hometown so they can run around freely at the park or anywhere on campus. On weekends in QC, I brought them to UP Diliman so they can play under the trees.

One of the major considerations I had for moving back here is the accessibility of the outdoors for my girls. All they have to do is walk out of our front door and they have the open field and mountain to climb if they get bored. And now they’re bored, which is a good thing. Boredoom pushes kids to be creative and to explore the world around them. They can also move about on their own because my hometown is safe; I won’t have to worry that much compared to when we were still in Metro Manila.

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My faith in humanity (somewhat) is restored. I almost believed that Koreans are bad news and I hate the fact that they look down on Filipinos—they just use you and take advantage of you. They’re not nice. I know it’s not a fair assessment but I really have a tainted view of them, especially with my experiences with them in my personal and professional life.

This interview of Ryan Bang by Karen Davila changed my mind. Ryan is really a blessing and his outlook in life is admirable. He also goes to the same church as we do, only I think he goes to BGC branch. What’s surprising is that it was Yeng Constantino who brought him to church.

I really do pray for his happiness and success. Despite our religion, he hasn’t judged Vice Ganda, a trans, and even made her his surrogate parent who guided him in his showbiz career.

Because who are we to judge, right?

I didn’t know he and James Reid were batchmates in Pinoy Big Brother. My Pinoy showbiz IQ is really low. 🤣

I worked on a Maundy Thursday because no editor picked up my story the day before so I had to continue working the next day. I also had to answer messages from our APAC boss and other people because I forgot to turn on the auto-reply function on Outlook, saying that I am away.

In-between work, I did laundry, from 6 am until afternoon. I did a tub clean in the evening because it takes 2 hrs. I washed and hung the blankets and bed sheets at 7 am, by lunch they’re all dry. I was able to fold and put them away on the same day—that’s how hot it was yesterday. Putting away the blankets gives me more space for additional laundry to hang.

As I’ve said before, one of the deal breakers for me in choosing an apartment is having a laundry area. I needed a space where I can line-dry clothes. Yes, we can have a dryer and save space (my contractor also made provision for a dryer) but this is ridiculous when the Philippines has plenty of sunshine. Line drying is also kinder to your clothes—they last longer. I also like the way clothes smell after it got disinfected by sunshine.

That’s why I went over budget with the construction of my tiny home because I told my contractor I want a decent laundry area with plenty of space for line drying. Steel trusses aren’t cheap, you know. Laundry area was just an afterthought when my father built our two childhood homes. We always had to do laundry more than once a week because we didn’t have enough space to hang our clothes to dry. We always had to beat the rain to rescue our clothes before they get drenched.

Since moving to my house, we can afford to do laundry just once a week because I have plenty of line drying space. I also don’t have to beat the rain. I can leave my clothes drying for a week during southwest monsoon season, when rains don’t stop. The only time I wished for a dryer is when we have non-stop rains for two weeks.

My laundry rooftop and balcony also serve as a drying area for all the things I wanted the sun to disinfect like matresses and dish racks.

I can’t express how much I love living in a house, albeit small, that I designed for myself, according to the way we live. We really didn’t have to have a large house that’s hard to clean. We just needed an efficient space with ample storage.

My house is dark inside even during daytime so I’m going to have the accordion screen door installed tomorrow so I can let more sunshine and fresh air in without letting insects invade my house.

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We drove to Caliraya at 4:22 pm today… just because. We had been stuck inside our house for two straight days because of the heatwave so Twin I had been pestering me to go somewhere.

We brought my bff’s daughter along because she has been stewing in their house as well.

We tried to find an open restaurant on a Good Friday… And we did! It was perched on a good spot as well.

Heat index in my town yesterday hit 50 degrees C. 🫠 It was in the news. No wonder I felt really rotten. Today was no different either. I was blowing off my nose during early morning training (financials). I sounded like I was near death during the call with my manager in the afternoon.

I still have no refrigerator, hence, no icy drinks. Panasonic has yet to deliver the unit that is supposed to replace my old one that has a factory defect.

I had so much trouble finishing work that I submitted my story for editing really late… so no editor picked it up. 😑 That means I have to work tomorrow to publish that article or else it will go stale.

Just as I was looking forward to a real mental health break this Holy Week… 😭

I was planning to go on a drive southeast to cool off but I don’t know if I can because I’ve been popping cold tablets and sometimes they have narcotic side effects. I was thinking of going on a food crawl here in our home province and/or go on a hike to some of the waterfalls nearby.

It’s hard to be sick during a heat wave. 😷