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. 😷

Twin I passed down her colds to me. The virus must have been incubating in her before we checked into the hotel. She got sick the next day after she, her twin and their friends went swimming in the hotel pool at night. Of course her sister and I caught it. We’re all sick and stewing in our house right now. 😷

It was a battle between sleeping this off and editing. And there were lots to do yesterday. I was still working until evening and it was so draining (Japanese stories are a lot of work 😣).

I have a headache coming now.

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I have no agenda for today. I just woke up my birthday girls so we can eat at Mary Grace at the mall and then later meet their elementary bffs who will sleep over. I transferred to the smaller room next door. I just checked out some stores because this is an area of SM North that I seldom or have never been to because this mall is massive—one of the biggest in the world.

Despite its size, it’s still packed with people, like it’s Christmas rush or sales day. But no, it’s just an ordinary weekend and Manileños want to cool off. This is the kind of consumerism that foreign businesses want to capture. Fueled by OFW remittances, domestic consumption is alive and kicking.

SM North is huge that it can devote a large store just for Gashapons. These vendo machines for toys just line up streets of Akihabara in Tokyo or outside of supermarkets. I’ve never seen Gashapons this many in one spot anywhere else. Who buys these things? Well, apparently people make the trek here from all over just to get their hands on these trinkets. They’re not cheap ha. Almost PHP 200 per capsule = one combo meal at Jollibee or McDonald’s. In Singapore they’re much more expensive. The ones I saw in Don Donki are about SGD 10. The last time I was in Japan, it was about JPY 300 (about PHP 150 or less), mostly in Nipponbashi Denden Town.

When I was already on my own and my kids have met their friends, I went to book stores. I went to Booksale but I didn’t see books that I liked. Then went to Biblio and was tempted to buy more…

But I held back. I HAVE STACKS OF BOOKS on the shelf in my room that I still need to finish. 🤦🏻‍♀️ But how can I resist this??? 👇

I’m so dead inside. I worked on an analysis piece the whole day yesterday while I edited one or two stories. Then today I had to chase a story 20,000 km away from me.

I had to rework the piece as two editors came down hard. In between, I had to drive to QC and check into our hotel.

And still write and tweak and edit.

Just came out to the mall to send off my daughters to meet their dadbecause they’re going to have their birthday dinner with him. I had dinner alone.

Went back to the room and worked. And worked. And worked. 🫠 I almost forgot to book my massage! It was almost 9 pm so I was the last customer. Even when I was being squished, I still had to check my phone every now and then because the third editor might message me before clearing my article for publication. 🥲

I’m so dead inside.