I just didn’t have the energy yesterday. I wanted the nastiness of travel for work and the tension I had been carrying the entire week to melt away. I just want to lay flat and never move.

I arrived in Manila at half past 12 midnight of Sunday (yesterday) but technically landed at 12:12 am. Before I could get my car at ParkNFly, it was already 1:30 am. Got home at 3 and had to unpack immediately because my face cleanser was inside my luggage. I was able to sleep (had Kopiko before driving) at around past 4 am.

Half my day was already gone by just catching up on sleep.

My girls loved the gifts I brought them. Twin I said, she would prefer HK than going to SG. Now that I thought about it, they would enjoy HK more since there are better things to do there than in SG. There are hiking areas in other islands, we can go around the New Territories, or just go traipsing around Hong Kong and Kowloon. Just crossing Victoria Bay from HK to Kowloon on a ferry would already be a treat for them.

We could stay in Kowloon as hotels would be cheaper. I did that the first time I went to HK decades ago.

Anyway, back to my humble abode, my small but warm home. Being nestled in it was like having a hug.

Now I have to do a refresh of my workspace so I could mentally tackle Monday, which is giving me so much anxiety.

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It’s 10 pm. My manager is after me again. The editor who edited my story with another reporter couldn’t understand why my manager is being dictatorial and why she dips into every edits being done to me or every story I edited.

I told him (the editor) that I don’t know anymore and I give up.

Now I know why I shopped too much in HK: I was trying to self-soothe. I was dealing with bosses face-to-face for a week and I was a walking mass of nerves and unhappiness.

To think this is just Monday. I have many more Mondays to deal with until I get out of this situation.

I cleaned my kitchen and brought order back.

I am comforted when I see my small house clean and neat. However, it doesn’t melt my stress away.

I wish I could get out tomorrow to draw or just walk. My health is not getting any better with the way my manager is crushing me.

I am shortlisted in one short-term consultancy gig at ADB.

Let’s see how I will make the other gigs happen after Holy Week.

I decided to do touristy things that are not usually done by tourists, like hanging out here at Central and Western District Promenade.

I decided to take an extra day off since I thought I would be hammered this morning. Well, it turns out my co-workers and I are too tired to go drinking. The Filipino staff here (four of us) had lunch yesterday at Sushiro—for about two hours 🤣.

But after this I had back-to-back meetings with my manager and another editor. This is the time I could taste the office politics and I’m caught in the middle of it. By the end of the day at 5 pm, I was already a deflated balloon. Went around to buy some TCM (Pei pa koa is the best!) and another jar of Banila Co cleanser and went back to my hotel to freshen up. And I waited for them to message me where we were supposed to go.

7 pm came and there was no message.

The Chinese co-worker I promised to go out with messaged me that she already made plans with her friends because I was not messaging her about plans for that night. 😩

I ended up spending my Friday night tucked in and watching the documentary about the making of “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.”

Took my time getting ready this morning before checking out.

Time is too short for me to cross Macau (and I don’t want to be stuck there) so I think I’ll keep my feet on Hong Kong island for now.

I was researching last night if it’s worth the bother going to Tung Chung and ride the cable car. I was tempted but I realized it’s Saturday and it would be full of tourists. Getting Covid is not on my agenda.

So for now I’m here at the promenade, preparing for a sketching session. I need to practice because I suck at it.

Will go to Heng Fa Chuen later for lunch.

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I ended up buying too much.

BUDOL OF THE YEAR! My co-worker told me about Paradise Mall in Heng Fa Chuen where the non-touristy sports outlet stores are. It’s right in the middle of a housing estate so it’s pretty local.

Anyway, Adidas had a buy four, 50% off sale. The Gazelles and Superstars are on sale on an individual basis. Bought four pairs (one Gazelle for me, Superstar for Twin A, Ultrabounce and Retropy for Twin I and my sister who will pay for her share). Total bill (at 50% off) is HKD 1,083.50 and if you divide it by four and translate to pesos, our shoes cost PHP 1,950 a pair. Imagine, a pair of Gazelle for less than PHP 2k whereas in the Philippines it costs around PHP 7k in malls.

I had been hankering for a pair of Gazelle since high school. I couldn’t afford it then, I still couldn’t bring myself to buy it for me because my kids’ needs come first.

Going to Citygate Outlets on Lantau island is too much of a hassle and I wouldn’t know if I would get good deals like this since it’s a tourist area. I’m not even assured there would be sizes that I want.

I had been buying so much stuff. 🤦🏻‍♀️

But I’m happy I finally bought my dream sneakers.

Meanwhile, I started sketching again outside Paradise Mall, at the courtyard of the housing estate surrounding it.

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My two co-workers and I had lunch yesterday with our former head of APAC, the person who recruited me here 10 years ago. When she was asking about how is it with the new owner/parent company, all of our reactions were like this 😑.

Then we brought her to the new office and she spoke with some of the people who had worked with her and flew to HK for this week. The chats with them lasted for 1.5 hrs. After that, she was like, “none of the people I spoke with was happy.”

“What happened?! We were so happy in Bangkok,” she lamented, pertaining to the bureau chief meeting we had in 2019.

Shit happens all the time post-merger and acquisition.

Ironic.

She was happy where she is right now. After her short stint at a global PR firm (PR is not for everybody, she said), she decided to take up master in finance studies full-time. She said learning again is so exciting. Having more time for hobbies “is beautiful” and she is now pursuing baking and bird-watching. Now that the pool is open in their building, she now has the time to swim with her kids.

“I’ve got my life back,” she gushed.

I felt a twinge of envy. It’s nice to have somebody else in the family as the breadwinner. It’s nice to be able to get out of the rat race. I want to have a life outside this mess of a job.

She said she heard that the our owner is under investigation by xxx government because it was already highly leveraged when it was doing its shopping spree—and we were one of those buys. It kept on borrowing still, then slashed and burned and left the acquisitions down to the barebones. We were hardly recognizable from the companies we once were.

Now it is shopping again and kept borrowing…which may have prompted shareholders or creditors (or whoever) to alert regulators.

Stories like that seldom end well. How to deleverage? You do fire sales and the people who are directly under this chaos get the shorter end of the stick in these circumstances.

My bosses are all under pressure from above, which redounded to me. This is all too much.

I want my life back, too.

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I tried fixing it but…I was able to tone down the blueness of the clouds since I had in my kit a tube of Holbein gouache but the foreground couldn’t be made less bright because I only had watercolors with me. Watercolors could not subdue gouache so I would have to wait until I come home.

I don’t want to work today but I have a pending story still in editing hell. I need to have this published today.

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No more fog today. It helps that it’s sunny and clear because the meetings I had are all heavy. It drained me. The meeting I had with our APAC boss is not as bad as I thought it would be but it’s still…it sapped the life out of me.

My public speaking training, on the other hand, was lovely. My trainor is  very helpful and recognized my theater background that gave me good stage presence, confidence, and voice control. This same theater training was also the cause of some the things that detract me from being the best public speaker = my tendency to make myself “big” on stage. Hand gestures that go outside the “center of openness” (draw a circle around my torso, from my shoulders to the waist area), especially the high gestures, are a result of my training in theater-in-the-round. That is, the need to be seen by the people on the balcony. But in conferences, there is no orchestra nor balcony.

There are more pointers that are very useful. He said when he started doing this training for corporates, my trainor said he also was “big” but eventually unlearned it. He assured me I can unlearn it as well and be patient with myself as it takes time.

He did note that I have this tendency to lean on my left. I said I have scoliosis, so my right hip is higher than my left so I need to lean on that side to compensate for my uneven/S-curve spine. Then he said, nothing we can do about it, but at least I’m aware of that.

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So here I am again, back to chasing people. Doing my Miss Universe thing in a conference.

Tired.

I still have a meeting in 30 mins here at the hotel lobby after a successful Q&A with an investor group in Vietnam.

Do I still have the energy to do this? Just this afternoon, one of my sources sent me an RSVP for coffee next month in Singapore. I still have two pending meetings there, which I have yet to set the date and time for. Still setting up more meetings.

I’m still at odds with myself over this, regarding my love-hate relationship for this job. I just finished a draft of a story this morning, still in editing limbo but at least I have a sense of accomplishment today. I dread my one-on-one session with my APAC head tomorrow though. I don’t know what to expect but at least this time I won’t feel trapped anymore because whatever happens, I know I have a plan.

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Well umm, I did get two stories from that event but I’m tired. I went back to the hotel and dropped off my heavier stuff and joined co-workers for some Southeast Asian food.

The mango sticky rice from the Thai restaurant in my hometown was better than what I got here tonight.

After dinner, my co-workers and I went straight to a tiny bar that had an open-mic standup comedy. It was to support another co-worker who was doing the stand-up show.

It pains me that I had paid HKD 80 (PHP 570) for just one pint of this. 🫠 I won’t do it again.

I can barely see the sea. It was foggy all day and a bit chilly when we went out for dinner. Baguio-level chilly.

We had the public speaking workshop in the morning and in the afternoon was just all about collab with colleagues on stories. Time flew so fast and I just found myself wrapping up a draft at 6 pm.

Then it was Cantonese food night!

One of the claypot rice dishes is bullfrog. My co-workers thought I would be squeamish but I told them I already tried crocodile in Palawan  Now it’s my co-workers’ turn to be squeamish.

One of then asked if these crocs were caught in rivers or in the sea. I said, they have crocodile farms for harvesting. “Whuuuut?!” she was clearly scandalized. “Yeah, they harvest crocs for meat and leather,” I said.

Now it sounds more icky than cooking bullfrogs in soy sauce.

My co-workers showed me how they wash the cups and utensils with hot tea in a bowl.

They said it’s just tradition, no special meaning to it. I guess their ancestors did it more for disinfection because the tea was piping hot.

Two of my co-workers from mainland China asked me about Filipinos’ perception of mainland Chinese. I tried to be evasive because I told them it’s not pretty. They insisted but I didn’t want to play into their bait. One of them sounded ultra-nationalist. I said, this conversation is not going to end well so let’s put it this way: The Scarborough shoal is just about 198 km (123 mi) west of Subic Bay—mainland Luzon. It’s within Philippines EEZ and The Hague already ruled on it. You have to understand why Filipinos don’t like mainlanders.

I ended it and changed the subject by talking about crocodiles. And snakes being gutted in a public market in Taipei, which I couldn’t stand together with stinky tofu. I said they couldn’t pay me to try those.

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