As former Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago said, stupid is forever. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Now you’ve angered Atty. Mike Navallo, SC spokesperson and former ABS-CBN reporter. 🤣 Mike was one of those reporters victimized by the Duterte troll army when he was just reporting the truth. He was already a lawyer then but still chose to be in the field. I remember defending him on Twitter from the trolls.

Now, now, I know this statement isn’t just him—it’s the whole of SC— but you know, I can’t help but think of how this is Mike’s way of getting back at the DDS zombies.

The SC will hunt down these purveyors of fake news and misinformation.

---

I was tempted to go to the in-campus co-working space where I worked last Friday. I couldn’t think straight today, there were so many distractions. I couldn’t work on the invoices from my HK trip, the analysis piece that’s two weeks overdue, and another op-ed piece. 😢

In between work, I hopped to the coffee shop next door to have coffee with BFFs on separate time slots.

However tempted I was, I was just too lazy to throw on some outside clothes and fix my face so I won’t look like a slob. So I kept pushing it back until I realized it was already 5 pm. 😬

And this creature was slowing me down today.

Yes, tomorrow I must face work again, chase after people who keep ghosting me. Beg new people for interviews…

But let me just enjoy the weekend for a bit.

I brought Twin I to the weekend community market for breakfast so she can see for herself the items being sold every week. I also made her choose the meals that we would be bringing home. My refrigerator is still at the service center since they’re still testing for leaks. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Brutal hot summer days are upon us  🫠 I have to transfer my peppers from my staircase to under the trees in my garden.

My handsome boy would also have to hide under the water tanks to keep cool.

Meanwhile, I do stupid things because I’m just a little girl with adult money…

I’m sorry, I’m a sucker for Nokia fliphones. HMD, the Chinese company that bought Nokia, has a winner here.

This is 4G and I will use this to house my Smart SIM when I’m abroad while my workhorse Oppo phone has the local SIM for local calls and data (because werk, werk, werk).

I only need my Smart SIM for OTPs when I do online banking while abroad and I want a smaller 2nd phone in my handbag. The other Oppo 2nd phones I use whenever I travel are now going to my nephews.

It’s available on Lazada (cheaper on Lazada than Shopee) via HMD’s official store.

I am just amazed at the idiocy of the DDS base. They are on a different realm. A simple Google will reveal this:

---

I have yet to read Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (I have a copy of it here somewhere) but his explanation of why he didn’t let his characters rebel against that dystopian world, that hopeless and helpless situation of just being clones of humans for organ harvesting, is more telling. From a writer’s perspective, it is more fascinating to think and show how people navigate narrow paths and try to find sparks of joy in that bleak kind of life.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Faber Books (@faberbooks)

Somehow, Ishiguro gave me a glimpse of why people remain static, remain poor, or remain in loveless marriages. Perhaps, I should be more understanding and have more patience towards people who are static because not all people are like me who had the strength, the temperament, and the will to fight bigger forces head-on to effect change. Perhaps, I should broaden my mind that many people are just content to survive and make the best of the bad hand they’re dealt. That perhaps, they leave it to people like Madame to fight for change because those things are too big for them. Because not everyone is like or built like Katniss Everdeen of the Hunger Games series. Not everyone is like the rebellious androids in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (a.k.a. Bladerunner) who gained consciousness and empathy—who became sentient—and escaped or fought the oppressive system.

And maybe, just maybe, this is the reason why the Philippines will always be like this. Many like to remain asleep maybe because survival alone takes a lot of energy.

How can I work if this kitty keeps on invading my space? I shifted her so I can work.

But then she moved closer to me. 🤦🏻‍♀️

---

In today’s soap opera episode, pa-victim Kitty Duterte has been ranting on social media about how his father is being mistreated and her clothes were torn by those who forcibly took his father away, yada yada yada…

The audacity. Especially when they’re playing this card…

They’re all optics. He has played this game over and over for years.

I remember joining protests along Edsa several times, even though it was a bit dangerous, because the extra-judicial killings and the overall presidency of this madman are not something a democratic country should tolerate.

What I’ve been fighting for is my country, not personalities. A lot of Filipinos are under this personality cult, just like the MAGAs in the US.

Meanwhile, some tea has been spilt. According to the grapevine, Duterte tried going to China to seek protection from his overlord, Xi Jinping. Apparently, CCP abandoned Duterte and didn’t protect him from the ICC, just like what the US did for Israel’s Netanyahu when the latter was indicted by ICC. Duterte was in HK when the overlords told him to leave China because they cannot turn away Interpol (because China is part/member of it even though it has withdrawn from ICC). This is the reason why Interpol caught up with Duterte at NAIA yesterday.

I cannot forget the stories covered by my colleagues in mass media. Kian delos Santos‘ senseless murder—and many more like him—lived in my mind for years. Just reading about those stories gave me literal nightmares. The Philippines was a killing field in those Duterte years.

I wonder how our photojournalists haven’t gotten PTSD for taking photos of harrowing images like this above.

Rodrigo Duterte is Idi Amin reincarnate. He should pay for all the lives he took.

“Tama na po, may exam pa ako bukas!” Those last words by Kian still break my heart