And here we are, at the anniversary of the institution that I had been covering for 18 years.

I was hoping they would give prints of the paintings of national artists but what they gave was something they thought has more practical use…

Of course I won’t use it so I’ll just put it on the book shelf where cats can’t reach it. I have yet to have the Arturo Luz and Sena, which they gave last year, framed. 😑

We left the hotel early, before 10:30 am, to start shopping for school stuff for the girls. Huge dent to my wallet 🤣. Since it has been a while since the girls were back in civilization, I treated them and my sister to Din Tai Fung xiao long bao and noodles.

Then I brought my sister to Ikea to buy thingssssss for their house. She said she just wanted to buy the lamp but look what she ended up with:

It was so wet and wild during the drive back south…I thought super typhoon Egay has already left the Philippine Area of Responsibility (PAR). But it seems like Egay is still pulling up all the southwest monsoon rains to cause flooding in Metro Manila and nearby provinces. . .

It was a promising start. The sun came out and I thought things will be saner today.

Rainy Friday. Flooding. In Manila area. It’s a cursed place, you know. Now I remember why I was fond of wearing boots when I covered the finance department and the central bank—I always had to cross flooded streets.

No, I don’t miss this. It takes forever to book Grab in this kind of Friday. Good thing I decided to bring the car instead of leaving it at the hotel and take a taxi/Grab to BSP.

I got three stories tonight so the effort was worth it. No sign of the Marcoses, which was good, unlike in the past events. My protest of wearing pink didn’t go to waste because people kept commenting about how I stood out among the sea of blacks and greys so people who matter tonight remember me. The regulars to this kind of events still remember me, which is good in my business.

I’m so sleepy. I took antihistamine because an unidentified allergen in our room is wreaking havoc and I’m itchy all over, my throat feels scratchy, and I keep on sneezing. 🥴

In the next hour or so I would be busy adjusting this pink dress that arrived this noon. I overestimated my size so I cinched it at the waist and adjusted the hem to make it shorter or I would look like a sack of potato.

All because I’m rebelling against this government. My mom just warned me not to make myself viral on the internet by having myself photographed with any of the Marcoses.

The typhoon is waaaay up north and wouldn’t even touch land but its presence is very much felt here in the south. Look how strong the winds blowing here are and it started last night and continued throughout the day until this very moment.

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Sushi was so scared last night during the torrential rain and violent winds but she couldn’t seek comfort with me since my brother’s entire family was having dinner with us. The cats didn’t venture out to the stairs today and were just content with watching the trees swaying.

Today was just bedweather and I struggled with productivity. I just wanted to sleep and be indolent. I just edited two stories, did an interview with my trainee and—that’s it.

I hope it starts clearing by tomorrow because on Friday I would be driving to Manila at lunch, check in a hotel with my kids and older sister, then off I go to the central bank. Why bring the kids? Because we will be shopping for school stuff on Saturday. It will save me the energy as I don’t have to drive back and forth. Why with my sister? Because she wanted to go shopping as well and she didn’t want to drive.

Always the driver. 😑

So anyway, my protest dress still hasn’t arrived yet so I may have to go with plan B—little black dress. How boring.

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How cool is this? Megadeth’s drummer, Dirk Verbeuren, writing his own drum version of The Killer’s Mr. Brightside. The original drums had this frantic pace, which made the song sound like the singer was also in that state of mind. Dirk’s version took the song into another direction, like it’s more…it’s like a diesel engine—it’s a slow burn.

And as a sessionist, you gotta learn a song really quick and I love the way Dirk was methodical about it. And I can’t help thinking about the sessionists some artists have had like Alanis Morisette, who had Flea on bass and Dave Navarro for the guitars. These two had taken You Oughta Know to another level as they were just provided with Alanis’ vocals—it was basically a blank canvas. I wonder how long did it take them to study and create the sound. Because you know, each artist’s way of playing an instrument and how he/she interprets a song takes the song to a different plane. Just like this Mr. Brightside with Dirk.

I miss football but there is nothing in this universe that would bring me back to the field. My earthly body is already breaking down. But I miss it terribly.

We played against the FIFA Women’s World Cup host New Zealand this afternoon and we won. During the post-game interview, the captain of the Kiwi team said the Filipinas (they used to go with the monicker Malditas) may have wanted winning more badly than they did that’s why we won.

There’s this some kind of online criticism about having team members who do not even look native Filipinas. Well, the Filipino diaspora has benefited our teams—we have sourced players from all over the globe, those who are willing to go back to their parent’s motherland (normally it’s their mom who is Filipino) and play for us. Regretfully, the football program for women in this country is woefully lacking. It’s not a priority sport. It’s not like basketball or volleyball; every barangay in this country has a crude basketball or volleyball court. We have homegrown basketball or volleyball players, those who have been playing from grade school until they make it to the national team. For a country populated with short people, it’s surprising that Gilas Pilipinas ranks high in the FIBA World Cup. Plus we’re hosting the FIBA Basketball World Cup this year and the games are starting next month.

We’re also hosting the now the Premier Volleyball League.

But I digress. So when I was a varsity player, we didn’t have teams to play against in the SCUAA and STRAA because state colleges and universities just don’t have or don’t have enough women footballers. It’s only during special tournaments or the Palarong Pambansa that we get to have real opponents. 😑 So the national players most of the time had come from my uni, Ateneo or UST and from abroad—before we started qualifying for the AFC Women’s Asia Cup and now the FIFA World Cup. Now, the national team is predominantly comprised of women who have grown up and trained outside the Philippines. I can see it in their play—there is lack of cohesion or the teamwork is not organic. They are dependent on individual skills and not on playing off one another’s strength to have teamwork. Not like Spain when they won the World Cup, there was no superstar like Lionel Messi to carry the torch for them. It’s just pure team work.

The Filipinas’ goal keeper was also meeeehhhh 🤦🏻‍♀️ so many goalie mortal sins that she has committed.

But I hope whatever the outcome of Sunday’s game against Norway, there will be more little Filipinas who would be interested to play this sport.

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Yesterday was Marcos Jr’s second state of the nation address (SONA). I used to cover this SONA every July when I was still with local news. Thankfully, I didn’t have to do that for the last decade or else I would lose my shit every time I cover Duterte and Marcos Jr. This clip below shows the great irony of our time:

On Friday, I will be going to a government event and I plan to wear a pink (color of opposition) dress as protest. I just ordered from Uniqlo this afternoon so hopefully it would arrive before I leave for Manila on the 28th.

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This is me, I love sunsets. I can’t explain it but the beauty of life and the universe can be encapsulated by a single sunset.

I started the day with mommy duties then moved on to manager chores, editing duties, and pursuing my own stories as a journalist. At the end of the day, I went outside to clear my head and breathe in fresh air because it was a bit stuffy inside. The rain stopped at last.

I had tea while I watched Kimchi explore the stairs again. Flowers do elevate the look of a home. I love them but they don’t love me as I started sneezing again. I don’t care; they’re pretty and they make me happy.

I decided to cook adobo after watching two horrible adobo cooking demonstrations by Rachel Ray and Geoffrey Zakarian of Food Network. Uncle Roger roasted them good.

I started cooking at 8 am by bringing the chicken-pork adobo concoction to a roiling boil and then had the sauce reduced to nothing for two hours on low fire.

I chose not to use the Instant Pot because the magic is in the sauce reduction and you can’t do that on a pressure cooker. Slow cooking on top of the stove is key. 👌 Every now and then I had to adjust the taste by adding soy sauce, vinegar, a bit (teeny bit) of sugar to neutralize the sourness, and water.

While going back and forth the kitchen and my room for two hours, I realized that human traffic is impeded by the dining table position. I then tried a new orientation to see if this works better.

I think I will change the entire living area into one big dining area with a six or eight-seater table (there’s a convertible table in Ikea) since the TV/couch area is seldom used by my kids and I feed more than three people every week. But let’s see once school starts and they start bringing friends over to hang in our house, they might start using the TV area for Netflix watching. Because that’s what happened when we were in high school—everyone was coming over because of our proximity to everything.