It’s deceptively calm this entire January and I’m scared what kind of disruption will shatter this. Maybe I’m a bit relaxed because my boss is super busy chasing her own stories so she has less time to criticize me.

In any case, I’m enjoying these relatively calm days. My week will be quieter than normal because Asia will shut down for the Lunar New Year/Spring Festival. I will hold the fort together with my Australian colleague for the rest of the week.

After that nasty bout of flu, I can now walk around and breathe in fresh air. Have sunlight on my face, too.

I did my usual 3 km walk after church service and it was such a relief. I was scared I had turned into a blimp after my week-long confinement inside my tiny home. I can finally stretch my muscles.

Economists have never liked tariffs. I am surrounded by economists, in my personal life (got two of them for siblings) and in my professional life so more or less I know their sentiments. Protectionism always has a way to slap you in the face and most of that will be in the form of unforgiving inflation.

When the US imposed tariffs in the 1930s, it was followed by the Great Depression. It’s not a coincidence. For those who paid attention during their Economics 101 class, they know that tariffs on agri commodities contributed to build up to the Great Depression. And periods of strife and hunger lead to wars/uprising.

So Donald Trump is repeating what Republicans of the past did. He didn’t study history.

Now the question is, should I shift a bigger allocation now to the S&P 500 UITF when I know in two years it will tank? Maybe I should start buying when everything falls from the sky? The problem is, the US economy may not be able to recover from it and cede the throne of being the biggest economy and “leader of the free world” to China. Would it be useless if I continue the current allocation for my PSE feeder fund when I know it will follow Wall Street?

Maybe I should go debt all the way. Yeah, fixed income mutual funds thrive during recessions. I know that interest rates will go sky-high again as tariffs will push inflation to God knows where.

I should rethink my visit to my bank branch in QC next week.

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The dry season is already here and my pathetic garden is starting to bear fruit, like the bell peppers I sowed a few months ago. The lone pomelo fruit that was left after Typhoon Kristine ravaged my yard is still there, holding on.

The cooler days and nights allowed me to cut my electric bill in half since we’re just using our electric fans. However, I already felt like the 23 to 24-degree nights are disappearing so I would have to call in the aircon guys again to clean my units before we return to heavy usage of my power hoggers.

I should enjoy the remaining cooler days outside before the hot summer sun kills us again.

The three of us are down with flu. My kids insisted on sleeping with me in my tiny room so we’re bit of a squeeze here. I couldn’t file for sick leave because I must meet my story quota for the month. It’s so difficult trying to concentrate on writing a story while chasing people and editing when you just want to sleep. The sink is a mess because I have no energy to cook or wash the dishes. Food was delivered from my mom’s house or via Grab. Cleaning the litter box was a struggle.

Ah school… The petri dish. You can’t escape illnesses if you have school-age children. My girls learned through chat that a lot of their classmates are also down with flu.

All my plans of attending meetings and covering presscons have gone the drain. 😑

And why the fuck is Zuckerberg pushing JD Vance down my throat?!

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This anime has hit me hard the first time I watched this. It was a time in my life I knew everything wasn’t working out and I wanted to escape and be myself again.

I started sobbing at this scene at the crater. It’s like two people running along separate parallel lines but it turns out the lines are perpendicular and at one point they will meet for a brief moment. Then the lines will drift away again, never to meet.

Maybe that person’s line and mine haven’t met yet. Maybe we’re leading lives that are parallel but somewhere near the end, they shall meet. It doesn’t matter if it’s long and late, what matters is the lines will meet.

But for now, we’re just going to trudge this Mobius strip.

This is not a cabinet. This is a junk drawer.

@msnbc

WATCH: MSNBC’s @The Rachel Maddow Show breaks down Donald Trump’s apparent nepotism in the early staffing of his second administration, in comparison to President Biden’s pardoning of his son, Hunter, to spare him politically motivated prosecution by Trump’s acolytes. #hunterbiden #joebiden #legal #rachelmaddow #politics

♬ original sound – MSNBC

Interesting four years ahead of us.

Stupidity over science. 🤦🏻‍♀️

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I battling flu symptoms, which I got from Twin I, who has been sleeping with me because of flu. She had a 39-degree fever last night and I had to sponge bathe her to bring her temperature down. I’m wondering if I can still set meetings this week. 😭

Anyway, I was at Uptown Mall in BGC yesterday to have lunch with my ex-colleagues in the newspaper where we began our business journ careers (well except for our ex-boss). One of us is already a public attorney defending the poor in court and I owe him a blitz torte from a famous bakery in my hometown. (Atty had his undergrad in our uni so that is one of the things he missed from our uni).

Before lunch I walked to Mitsukoshi, which is just two blocks away, to buy organizational carts from Nitori.

And damn, those things were heavy. I had to book a Grab car to Uptown, which ia ridiculously near, because I can’t bear to carry these anymore.

After lunch, I went to Biblio to buy myself and Twin A more books. We are number 1 tsundoku. 🤦🏻‍♀️ I’m sorry. 😭

And I have a substantial book haul. Again.

I wish I would be ok tomorrow.

Good thing I’m already down with the vet visit for Socks. That kitty was limping last Thursday and I had to quickly set an appointment with our vet. I tried to feel if the hind leg was broken but it seems like it wasn’t so I didn’t have bring him to the vet ER.

The vet found a laceration on the paw and it was bleeding. His balls also had wounds, like he scraped them on a fence. Bad kitty.

She injected my kitty with anti-inflammatory drug and cleaned the wound. I was prescribed a low-grade antibiotic just to keep infection at bay and vitamins. After 24 hrs of administering the meds, Socks can already put his hind paw on the ground. After 48 hrs he’s already running around like nothing happened.

I’m thankful that I have moments like this everyday and I’m not rushing to another job on a weekend to keep a roof over my head. I am thankful that I have a cleaning lady scrubbing the steps for me so I don’t have to forfeit my weekend, which is reserved for rest. I am thankful that I have a village with me to help me raise my girls.

I remember having this same feeling when I learned a cousin-in-law hanged herself inside a closet. She was suffering from post-partum depression and just had twins, a few months ahead of me. Her husband, my cousin, is a cardiologist who had to work all the time. She didn’t have the support system that new mothers have that traditional Asian families provide. She’s white and my cousin is half-white.

I’ve had post partum depression as well and it’s common for mothers of twins (multiple births in general). My grandma also had it and she had two sets of twins. My mom said she remembered hearing that they had to have my grandpa’s sisters come in to help my grandma because of that. Twin mothers have twice the level of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), the pregnancy hormone, compared to a mother carrying a single baby. So once the twin mom gives birth, the hCG suddenly crashes down to earth and that wreaks havoc on the body and brain. It’s really, really crazy.

I was lucky I was with my mom during my last two months of pregnancy and until my babies were 6 months old. I knew I needed all the help I can get so I went home to my mom. She was there with me helping with the late night feedings and then the nannies (I had two) came in the morning to take the babies away so I can sleep. I was encouraged to go out to have some air. Somebody else was there to cook and clean. I had my sisters with me who can entertain my babies. I’ve had my mom and sis-in-law with me to help me with bathing newborns and burping them, and to teach me how to massage my premature babies’ legs so they will become strong. Twin A was a colicky baby and I had everyone helping me in calming her down, massaging her tummy, and basically taking the colicky baby away from me because she was screaming her head off and I had the strong urge to shake her. Actually I did shake her and I realized that I was killing her, I put her on the bed and screamed for help and told them to take her away from me before I killed my baby who wouldn’t stop crying. I was only sleeping an hour every night, I barely ate, it was difficult to take showers because I had a CS birth, I was aching all over but I had my village to help out.

My cousin-in-law had none of that support system. She was left alone with two infants, with her hormones crashing, barely sleeping, barely eating, unwashed, dealing with a messy home, and a husband who is always at the hospital. She didn’t have a village. She didn’t have anybody.

That’s when I knew my decision to stay in this poor, third world country ten years prior to giving birth (when I was in my twenties) is the right one. Everyone was leaving the Philippines and I got ridiculed for staying behind. I did plan to study abroad but I knew I would always be coming back home. I have my village here. My support system. I wouldn’t have made it without them.

A friend (who may no longer be a friend) told me to transfer to Singapore to give my kids a better education because it’s more advanced there. I told her, at what price? I will be alone and will be busy with work so I won’t be able to focus on my children. She never had kids so she wouldn’t understand that it’s difficult to be a single mom abroad without that support system. My children also will be subjected to too much pressure studying, with cram schools and standardized tests to measure “intelligence” (but basically just rote learning), which will be the basis for their value in life in Singapore. The kiasu mentality there doubles the pressure. I had to weigh the pros and cons like, academic excellence vs healthy, well-rounded childhood. Mental fortitude and higher emotional quotient are more important to me so my children can survive the rigors of life. My kids can always go abroad for higher degrees and they can get scholarships like many of my friends and relatives/sibling had. For now, I’m thankful that my children aren’t jumping off balconies due to depression and school and societal pressures.

Just last night, I fed six kids dinner, including my own, because they decided to hang out at our house after school. That would have been next to impossible in east Asia where kids had to study for another four hours in cram school then vege out infront of their screens to play video games to decompress.

Now why am I talking about this? People are flooding Xiaohongshu and Tiktok with videos about their recent discoveries. They realized that US is not the greatest country in the world as they were led to believe. The Europeans had been telling them, “we told you so, you just didn’t listen.” Yes, in the comments.

I didn’t buy that American Dream actually. My relatives on my maternal side were ready to finance my plane tickets to the US and were prepared to host me (provided that I worked in their deli in Chicago while I figure out life). But I didn’t go. My other cousin, who is just two weeks younger than me, took the offer and she and my sister lived with each other for quite a bit but our cousin left to live with her other relatives (her maternal side) in other states so she can see more and weigh if she would like it there. My sister also went to our relatives on our paternal side to check their neck of the woods.

My sister lived there for half a year and came back home. She said she didn’t like the life my relatives were leading and everyone else’s trajectory. It’s just work, work, work. America is founded on the Puritan belief that work is a moral good and a way to express their belief, so the work culture is their way of life. This mindset has redounded even to the non-religious and to people of different religions. It is the foundation of America, the country run by corporations. My sister and this cousin both went back home. They both have choices to stay or go home, while some Pinoys in the same deli didn’t and they needed to stay in the US to seek a better life. My cousin said she would die in the US because a unit of insulin was USD 100 (thankfully it now dropped to USD 35) for the uninsured whereas in the Philippines it can be PHP 500-PHP 1,200. It can also be free in the Philippines through Department of Health Insulin Medicines Access Program. (As a side note, the PH DOH also gives free TB meds for the poor under the TB DOTS program. Imagine, a third world country giving free medicines to its people…I don’t think the US government gives away anything for free).

My sister lived in Australia but came back. While she said she liked it there, there was little incentive for her to stay there for good. Right now she travels the world to give talks in conferences and whatnot. She is one of the few in experts in her field and she doesn’t have to live away from family to do her own thing. Besides, her dollars as a consultant to a global organization go a long way here.

We are the privileged ones so we can afford to stay home and still be comfortable. Those who aren’t are forced to seek their fortunes elsewhere but many said on chat groups and on social media, if they had a choice, they still wanted to be with their families and friends. Yes we have a shitty government and the electorate is dumb but US is the same. The UK is the same. Elsewhere is the same, it’s just that the degrees vary. It’s just a matter of choosing your own poison.

Others opted to go away because of the said shitty government. Can’t blame them and very valid. Again, choose your own poison.