I don’t remember when I fell asleep last night but I know it was early. I was waiting for my girls to come home from the university fair, where there is another free open-air concert. My sis-in-law was messaging me on all platforms, asking me where I was. I was supposed to come with my bff but I guess we’re both on Tita of Manila mode—at 9 pm we’re ready for bed. Gone are the days we go home at 3 am and still have the energy to go to church in the morning. 🙃

Since I needed the exercise and some Vitamin D, I went to the weekend community market to buy our weekend staples: pancit palabok, yogurt (for lassi), pita and hummus, spinach pizza, grilled Angus beef, and some other veggies.

I got home with a very heavy bag. I’m covered until dinner.

My girls are, of course, still in bed. I think they got home at 2 am today after they waited for Moonstar88 and Zild to play. While they snore, I’m cooling down outside my front door.

The good thing about having a private balcony facing a forest is that I can air myself (I’m sweating profusely) while just wearing my sports bra top and just be fine—I won’t be offending somebody’s vision.

I was driving back from dinner with a friend in QC last night when I decided to fetch my girls from the free open air concert. They were begging me, “Mommy, let’s not go home yet, Lola Amour is next…”

My sis-in-law was with them so I relented. And I watched this set.

So what brought me to QC?

I picked up my new checkbook from my bank. Then I attempted to open a new S&P 500 UITF. I say attempted because I can’t open a new UITF unless I open a new USD savings account. I wasn’t prepared for it yesterday because I would have made forex losses if converted at this time…

Status quo for now.

On the way to the bank, I saw that the Persian restaurant was still operating so I checked out the place by having lunch there.

Then I knocked on a familiar gate.

I visited our old home… Well, the old apartment

The new tenants completely sealed the unit and installed aircons everywhere. I wonder how extensive was the tenant’s repair job just to seal the apartment because it was porous, especially in the laundry area.

They also covered the transoms that provide light! What if there is power outage?

Messy neighbors nextdoor are gone; they left after we did. They messed up the apartment with dog pee everywhere and destroyed the wooden floors upstairs. Credit card companies have been sending demand letters to their unit for  unpaid credit card bills. Landlord had spent PHP 70k for repairs, more than what their deposit covered. Had the gall to demand the return of their deposit.

I think I have influenced my former neighbors to become cat people. They have adopted stray cats and one became a permanent outside cat but in-compound resident. Another one is a completely indoor cat with supervised outdoor (in-compound) playtime.

They have also set up shelters for stray cats outside the compound and some kind-hearted people who do their daily walks provide cat kibbles for the kitties.

I felt nostalgic. It was home for a while, you know.

But then I can feel the heat due to the absence of the mango tree that they had cut down shortly after we left. I told our ex-neighbor that it’s still cool in our province and we haven’t turned on our aircons yet. But in this compound, I can already feel it was several degrees higher already and that summer is only a week away.

And unlike Lola Amour’s song, no, it hasn’t been raining in Manila. It’s only in my hometown where it has been wet, cool, and muddy.

Yesterday was just really bad. I was beaten by my bosses for something I didn’t even write and for something beyond our control. The main point is because we don’t have any freaking reporter in Singapore! If this—berating me for something that isn’t my fault—didn’t happen, it wouldn’t have occurred to them that we need a reporter in Singapore. They thought we can get by without one. They thought Southeast Asia is uniform. They thought SEAsia is just like Australia with different states or China with different provinces.

HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SCREAM OUT LOUD IT IS NOT?!

The analysis piece that we did for three months… My boss wasn’t happy with it. She didn’t get it. She didn’t appreciate it.

I just couldn’t bear it anymore and called up M and cried.

Why do I even bother? Why?

My friend, L, and I had talked from 5 pm until 9 pm at Starbucks 6750. It made up for all those months we haven’t seen each other. One of the topics was our struggles with our bosses. We both have asshats for managers.

Driving back, while I was about 2 km away from home, my sister called and told me to go straight to the ER because she rushed our nephew who overdosed on sleeping pills. She needed to go home to get stuff because they will be admitted and the medical staff strictly told us not to leave the child alone, out of sight, for one second.

They tried inducing vomiting and pooping to get it out of his system. Activated charcoal was given to absorb all the toxins, supposedly, in his stomach. I saw the ER bill to check what else they did. Nothing in his toxicology report showed something was unusual but his blood clotting time is alarmingly long. That may not be related to this attempt at suicide—if it is an attempt at suicide.

His mom is abroad for work and is rushing back home. She really needs to acknowledge that this not just a simple General Anxiety Disorder.

It’s 11:30 pm and I just finished an analysis piece that I had been working on since November last year. Anxiety has been building up since Friday because I couldn’t finish it last week. I said I’ll do overtime and write the damned thing on Saturday.

But of course I didn’t. My mind was just blank. My brain was so tired as we tried to break that story last Friday, as I mentioned in that previous post. It drained me.

I told myself today that it’s now or never—I must finish the draft tonight or else other media may catch up. They have already seen the pattern in my questions or the questions asked by Kr during presscons or ambush interviews.

This morning I attempted to start the second paragraph but Kimchi invaded my desk. 😑 Of course I could have swept her off my table but I took it as a sign not to start on my piece since my brain was not hyped enough for this task.

At church I asked God for inspiration because my mind was completely blank. I never realized how brain-dead I was but it was like squeezing blood out of a stone—I really couldn’t write.

My prayer has been answered, finally. When I sat on my desk at 7:30 pm, words started flowing and organizing the flow of my 1,000+ word article wasn’t such a pain as I thought it would be.

After 4 hours, I was done, complete with fact-checks and rejigging of paragraphs and insertion of a table.

😭 I’m so done!

All I have to do is to send it to editors before I leave for Makati tomorrow.

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… I don’t want work travels anymore. I dreaded booking my flight and hotel to HK, where I will be attending a week-long training. Last night, I picked the same hotel I stayed in last year because that’s the nearest one within the budget range our office allows us. I mean, I just chose the path of least resistance because I no longer want to complicate my life.

Maybe it’s because I know my boss will be there. Work travel is not fun anymore.

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I’m finally done with the car registration. I was supposed to do that last Tue but all smoke emission testing centers are either closing for the day (they have car limits) or had connectivity issues. Of course, without the test, I couldn’t register my car. 😑 Wasted fuel driving back and forth.

While I was on the road, I was managing a coverage of a press briefing with two reporters under my management and this was critical to the series that we had been writing about. When I got back to my desk, I got my fingers cracking and dove in.

I still have it—I’m still sharp. Still ahead of the pack.

You see, this is why I’m still in this job despite my boss being… I’m still good at what I do. My adrenalin is still pumping when I know I’m doing something well.