It’s the start of the “ber” months and that means Filipinos are starting to decorate for the Christmas season.
And I’m not yet ready.
I mean, not only financially, but also for things that I need to fulfill, meet, or just do.
I haven’t been to the beach!!!
We cancelled the family trip to Singapore next month due to the worsening condition of my other nephew so I’m racking my brain searching for alternatives. The original plan was to go to Singapore for a long weekend with my kids, my mom, and my sisters and nephew and I will stay behind for work after they fly home. But circumstances have changed—good thing I haven’t registered for the conference that I was targeting and haven’t booked anything yet.
I haven’t done anything with my life so far…ah well I did quit my post as manager. That’s it. I haven’t gone on a solo leisure travel since 2018.
Ah but I did buy a car without in-house financing or bank loans so that took out a huge chunk of my savings… 🤔 No wonder I feel poor these days—I’m trying to build up my bank accounts that I emptied last July so I don’t have any frivolous purchases recently.
Ah well, this is a necessity. I attend a lot of conferences. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I had been monitoring the situation since last week and this escalated with the death of a motorcycle taxi driver when he was ran over by the police. I told our Jakarta reporter to leave and fly to Bangkok immediately because there is a huge possibility that Prabowo Subianto will declare martial law. He is the former son-in-law of Suharto, the Indonesian dictator, so it’s not far-fetched that he will follow in his former father-in-law’s footsteps.
Right now, the Indonesian government has blocked social media to immobilize the people. But no, Indonesia will go down in flames before the people will be silenced.
Our JKT reporter will be flying out this weekend and I advised him not to go out of his apartment until he goes to the airport. They will let a foreigner leave before a possible lockdown but it would be tricky for foreigners to move around once martial law is imposed.
Meanwhile, Bangkok is not really a slice of heaven these days. The Thai high court has removed Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra from office for her bungling of the Cambodia conflict.
But as my sources in Thailand say, the markets are used to events like this, so life goes on.
However, I’m tasked to write an analysis piece on Thailand’s slowing economy, declining birth rate, sky-high household debt, and flat consumer spending. I have to take a trip there myself. 🤔
Back at home, the controversy over ghost flood projects have given birth to the public shaming of the children of government contractors who flaunt their lavish lifestyles on social media. These daughters (most of them are women) and wives of these government contractors show videos in Instagram and Tiktok their private planes, million-peso handbags…
… while we ordinary Filipinos wade through floods.
Quezon City had a freak storm that dumped a month’s worth of rainfall in just a single day. People were unprepared. The infrastructure cannot handle the volume of water that came rushing to the streets.
Our former neighbor told me that they were in UP Town Mall when it happened. The mall got flooded! She also said that the flood water at the intersection where Save More was up to waist-level. That area is 200 meters from our old apartment.
This area is just 100 meters away from our old apartment in QC.
To think the UP Diliman became flooded! Hello! That place has a lot of land and trees that could absorb all that water — but noooooo, the soil is inundated with water that the campus became a swamp. The students in dorms had to be evacuated in several academic buildings to spend the night there.
Ghost flood control projects + climate change = Metro Manila sinks. God help us.
It was really a good call on my part to leave Metro Manila.
We went to the public market today in our town to buy Filipiniana costumes for Monday.
Trying it on. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
The Linggo ng Wika celebration — supposedly slated on the week of Manuel L. Quezon’s birthday every August 19 — was delayed due to several class suspensions and whatnot. Good thing we still had this weekend to prepare my kids’ costumes.
An array of baro’t saya to choose from. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Good thing we checked this out first before driving to Lumban because the outfits were a lot cheaper, around PHP 500 per set. The Filipiniana in Lumban are the real deal — the type that you wear for formal occasions and not as costumes so the prices are premium. I’m not willing to pay that price just for a school costume.
Meanwhile, one of my bffs saw that a high school classmate is selling their family home. The seller was my bandmate and we used to have our studio there, which was their former storage room.
This used to be our band studio. They already stripped it all off, including the ceiling. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
This was just a storage room that we turned into our practice studio. I used to go here everyday for practices and every 7 pm, we drove to the city where we used to play regular gigs.
So many memories are packed into this small room. And that house. His parents welcomed us with open arms and they didn’t mind the noise that we used to make. His dad passed several years ago and now it’s time to for his mom and nephew/niece to leave the place. Climate change = stronger typhoons made it impossible to live here now. They often get flooded since they’re just at the foot of a hill and all the water from the hilltop cascades into their subdivision. It wasn’t like this when we were growing up. 😢
Inside the very cold ballroom. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
This is not a good way to waste gas and toll. The event I attended in the morning was useless. I was 2 hrs late but it was ok since it wasn’t relevant to me. I was just hoping there was a senior executive around but nope, it was purely a marketing event.
The afternoon conference was so-so. At least I got to exchange cards with a few CEOs and had one quick interview with a government official who I used to cover closely 16-17 years ago when he used to be a CEO. The story was thin but I’m desperate. Thank God for the email interviews I did (I was very persistent) so these helped me shore up my numbers.
At Bonifacio High Street. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Then it rained. I guess I won’t be going home early tonight.
The government—DILG to be exact—yesterday cancelled classes for today. I doubt if Remulla consulted PAGASA or even NDRRMC before declaring it. The annoucement was made “cute” to appeal to Gen As (ugh!).
No rain. No wind today. Wasted a perfectly fine school day.
Based on this Himawari satellite image, tomorrow may not be that rainy so I can risk driving to BGC to attend two events.
