Practice in perspective drawing

Posted on March 4, 2022 by admin

*Ayala Museum viewed from PLDT/Dela Rosa St.*

This gave me a headache. I just realized Ayala Museum faces Dela Rosa St. at an angle so it took me some time before I was able to determine how slanted this facade was. I need to adjust some more lines that don’t align. 😑 And I painstakingly counted all the glass panes. *wrinkles growing on my forehead* I don’t want Leandro Locsin Jr. to come after me with an axe for sabotaging his building.

*Duh. Art and photo by CallMeCreation.com*

I have my vanishing points mixed up. I need more exercises on vanishing points. 🤔

So it is done. I no longer have an official passport in the next 3 weeks.

*Punched out passport. Photo by CallMeCreation.com*

I had been lining up the whole day today. First, for the girls’ second dose of Pfizer. Thankfully, it only took us an hour compared to 2.5 hours the first time. I drove them home and I went to Robinsons Novaliches where the satellite DFA office was for NCR North.

*Queue going inside the mall. Photo by CallMeCreation.com*

After entering the mall, I decided to have brunch first at McDonald’s and finish some digest I need to publish today. It was hard to concentrate 😫 but I had to finish what I can. Then I lined up again at DFA. The actual process was just less than 30 mins because everything was done online and the clerks just needed to verify and have my fingerprints and photo taken but it was the queue that took forever. This was different from what some friends told me when they just breezed through their renewal process in some locations like Robinsons Magnolia or SM Aura.

On the way back home I was debating whether I should drop by QC Circle to buy flowers. Well, well, well… Commonwealth Avenue in Fairview was lined with plant stores. Hahahaha! That decided for me. I bought four more flowering plants since some of mine at home dried up despite watering them twice a day. It’s just that it’s so freaking hot these days.

It was so hot that when I got home I was so exhausted. The heat sucked the life out of me and I just fell asleep. It was so hot that I was tempted to buy a giant Megabox plastic bin in Handyman that I can fill up with water so I can just soak in there.

As part of my urban sketching practice, I want to visit Escolta, Manila—the old shopping district in Manila before and after WW2 before Makati CBD came into being—to sketch the old Art Deco buildings there.

*View from the office of One/Zero architects in First United Building shows the splendour of the past* (Photo from https://i-discoverasia.com/escolta-street-2/)

I should have done it in January when the heat was less deadly.

Escolta was the old CBD that’s why it was the fashionable area of the city then. The old banks’ and trading houses’ headquarters were located there. The old tranvia of Manila plied Escolta then.

*Tranvia that was run by Manila Electric Co (Now the country’s biggest power distributor)* *Photo from https://skyrisecities.com/news/2017/03/manilas-long-lost-tranvias-once-envy-asia*

By the 1920s and into the ’30s, the Manila Tramway became one of the most extensive tram networks in Asia, rivalling those in far more populated cities like Hong Kong (600,000 by 1930) and Tokyo (4,000,000 by 1930). Its 100-kilometre urban and interurban service carried a recorded 35 million passengers during its peak year in 1925. The tramway was a central part of the rapidly modernizing city, as the former colonial port town was growing up fast. The American influence and capital that had flowed into the Philippines following the US takeover brought with it a host of impressive Beaux-Arts and later Art Deco edifices, as a series of new office towers, government buildings, and train stations began to transform the Philippine capital.
Manila’s Long-Lost ‘Tranvias’ Once the Envy of Asia

Pedestrians in the photos were smartly dressed. The tranvia network was completely destroyed after WW2. Well, Manila was the most devastated city in the world after Warsaw when the war ended. The crafty Americans gave the Philippines independence right after because the country was so war-torn and expensive to rebuild. We were left to our own devices after that.

One of these days I would brave Manila and seek some haunting scene that I could sketch. Maybe I can start with the old Luneta Hotel.

HOT! HOT! HOT!

Posted on March 2, 2022 by admin

I swear the Philippines may have carved out itself from Earth and made its own orbit closer to the sun. It has been freaking hot this week that I’ve been looking at possible staycation venues just to cool off.

*Anilao Awari Bay Resort. April 2019. Photo by CallMeCreation.com*

But I remembered that we still have the reservation at Blue Ribbon from last year so I asked management if we could book it on 17-19 April. I shortly got an email from them confirming the dates.

Wheeeeeeeeee!

So I could dive in the morning, then have breakfast, then work. Then dive again in the afternoon to take a break from work. Lovely. ❤️❤️❤️ I need to order the diving donut and new freediving flippers soon. ❤️❤️❤️

*In Maricaban Island, Batangas. May 2019. Photo by CallMeCreation.com*

But before this, maybe I can book a room at Twin Lakes Hotel in Tagaytay to be able to have a cooler break this month before the AGM season starts after Holy Week. Face-to-face meetings are back so I may have to physically attend some of those.

I should also book succeeding Anilao trips early. Oh wait, I still have a Boracay trip with B. 🤪

Twin I said one of the reasons why she doesn’t want to live in Singapore is that there are no coral reefs there that we can go to in a heartbeat. Yep, that’s true. Only jellyfish in Palawan Beach 😂 Or you have to go to Indonesia to have a proper beach getaway.

In the throes of my anxiety attack because of that painting that was sent to me early last month, I ordered something from Shopee to make me feel a bit better, like a love letter to myself: a made-to-order planner cover for only PHP 600. It’s PU leather so it’s cheaper than the real leather version of this, which is around PHP 1,600. I think I will order that later. But this one still looks good and looks sturdy.

*Tadah! Maroon (color of UP) side by side with the plastic ring binder planner that it will replace. Photo by CallMeCreation.com*

I’ve been a planner junkie since elementary. I feel more organized if I jot things down and not rely so much on electronic calendars (they’re for alarms only for me).

Gold hardware. *Photo by CallMeCreation.com*

The manufacturer gave me a choice of colors for the cover and the hardware. I figured to get myself my school color and gold hardware to match. It looks lovely and I think this will hold up better than the Filofax Domino I bought from Kinokuniya in Singapore (always my first stop after dumping my stuff at my hotel whenever I fly in). That one was a bad binder as it got frayed within a short amount of time. So much for its advertised leather cover 🤨.

Planner pages. *Photo by CallMeCreation.com*

I make my own planner pages because I could customize it. I download it from this blog that I’ve been following for years since it also offers pages for Midori Travelers Notebooks (which I searched for in Osaka). The Filofax fillers are hard to come by in Manila plus they’re more expensive here compared to the ones I buy in Singapore.

The numpad from Mofii that I ordered from Lazada also arrived today. I discovered I could not work without a numpad since I do a lot of computations for work. 😂 very ironic for somebody who evaded Math courses in college. But I deal with a lot of financial reports and doing simple financial ratios are easier with a numpad.

I really don’t like pink but I was forced to get this to match my raspberry Logitech keyboard.

My colleague in Shanghai has been telling me that he has been feeling angry and betrayed by his manager who hasn’t been responding to him, especially now that he needs to renew his working visa. He has been all over the place a few days ago and didn’t feel like working. I said you owe yourself basura days because we are not robots and there are just times that we are not 100% up to the task. We should excuse ourselves when we don’t feel like it. I told him I learned this from one of my bffs who lost her daughter to placenta abruptio when she was giving birth. She suffered from depression after that and in her grief, she allowed herself to slide during some days when depression strikes and her thoughts go back to the events that led to the death of her precious daughter. She just couldn’t comprehend the death and she was the one who told me that we need to accept that there are just things we could not find answers for. So she allotted basura days for her mental health.

She also told me to treat myself once in a while and create our own happiness.

So I told my colleague, this has been the one I’ve been doing for over a year now—just accept there are basura days and just make up for it the following day. So yesterday was my garbage day and now I’m still doing the digest that I need to publish tomorrow. And I’ve been treating myself to simple things like what I’ve been buying for myself to make me feel better or make me inspired to do my work, like my keyboard, my planner, the materials for my urban sketching. Then tomorrow I will be going out to work, do some urban sketching in between, talk to fellow journos before the start of the presscon, just interact with the outside world so I won’t live in my head anymore.

My colleague said he will adopt my strategies.

We gotta create our own pockets of happiness because sometimes the world is unfair. Self-love, because sometimes the world is harsh.

In my melancholy

Posted on February 28, 2022 by admin

*Angono, Rizal during lockdown 2020. Art and Photo by CallMeCreation.com*

The paper is still wet but when it’s completely dry I think I should make the left side darker, like grey-bluish purple clouds because it was raining in some parts of the Metro Manila when we were there.

I wonder if I could come back to this place again.

BINGO!

Posted on February 23, 2022 by admin

One of my Twitter followers called me up on my phone and told me that there are open slots for passport renewal at DFA (because I had been asking DFA on Twitter when they would be opening slots). I quickly checked and fired up three browsers (Chrome, Firefox, and Edge) so I can try three different locations. After clicking for more than an hour (refresh, refresh, search, refresh), I finally was able to book at Robinsons Novaliches next week!

Wohoooo! Hopefully it would be painless. When Singapore finally opens up (no quarantine requirements), I can finally fly there and fix things that should be fixed. And meet my sources. And I should be using my Japan Visa soon since it would expire by next year.

One down, one more to go: Car registration. I need to secure a slot online, which I read was like another Hunger Games–similar to securing a slot at DFA.

In the meantime, I would be bringing the male white feral cat that this compound has been taking care of to PAWS for neutering. My neighbor caught him now in our kitty isolation cage so he can fast and I can easily bring him to PAWS tomorrow morning. Hope everything goes smoothly.

The Ukraine crisis is wreaking havoc on everything right now. For a 100% oil importing country like the Philippines, this would spell a rapid rise in core inflation. Supply disruptions of food and durable goods plus high transport cost would drag the purchasing power of people down. Waaaaay down. That’s why I should be judicious in driving because I haven’t seen the price of premium diesel climb this high, not even during the oil price shock of 2008 when every major corporation in the country had to revise its assumptions and earnings/growth projections. Logistics problems caused by the pandemic have yet to be untangled and here we go, we now have more geopolitical tensions to throw a monkey wrench into the economic recovery of developing countries like ours.

I have to think about this while pursuing stories and I should remind my team that this should be foremost in their minds right now.

*At Starbucks. Photo by CallMeCreation.com*

A quick sketch of yesterday’s work session with our Manila reporter at Starbucks in High Street. My efforts are still subpar so I need to practice some more. Since it would be a holiday on Friday, the girls and I are thinking of going to UP or probably La Mesa Dam if it won’t rain so I can practice sketching while they go biking. We can probably have a picnic.

My sister-in-law is telling me that she wants to go to the beach before the entire country descends on every available seaside in the coming weeks. I looked at Agoda for some resorts in Anilao and saw some vacant rooms in two resorts. She’s still thinking about it because she has three boys she wants to drag with her. My brother, being a lazy driver, wouldn’t come so I would be hauling them all off. I need to buy new freediving flippers and the doughnut if we would push through.

I think yesterday’s torrential rain would be the last and the hot and dry season would be coming up. I need to check the camp sites as well so we can schedule our long-delayed camping trip.

I hope no more curve balls. I’m trying my best to get out of this funk. I’m trying my best to heal well. Oh, God, I’m trying.

It’s 2:39 am and there’s this invisible hand from out of nowhere that suddenly squeezes my heart. I want to cry but I’ve run out of tears. I’m tired of this. I couldn’t hate because it still involves feelings and he’s not worthy of that. I just want to be apathetic. That’s the ultimate goal, apathy.

Vitamin Sea

Posted on February 5, 2022 by admin

*Anilao, Mabini, Batangas. Photo by CallMeCreation.com*

Old and fresh wounds have opened up and as expected, I had trouble sleeping despite taking alprazolam. I hate this. I thought I’m done with this. I thought I’m mending. I thought I’m going to be alright. I thought wrong.

I’m still so, so far. A little thank you sends so many bitter memories and feelings. I’m like this broken vase that keeps cracking, breaking, and repairing itself with little bits and pieces of whatever could be salvaged.

I hope I’m not a zombie by Monday since Asian markets will be back again. Inflation concerns are creeping up. I should be alert and scoop up FMETF when it dips. I have US-East Asia de-SPAC stories to write. I have a lot of things to write 🤦🏻‍♀️

I want a huge dose of Vitamin sea now but I have to be careful. I checked with Blue Ribbon yesterday if my reservation for last year is still intact; they said it’s there and I just have to tell them when I will have the 4D-3N reservation. Probably we’ll go there when the winds are kinder and the diving sites are much pleasant. I would have to buy the doughnut and diving buoy. I should buy those fins meant for free dives, too. How about underwater camera???

By June probably we can go to Bohol (if resorts are already operating) or Moalboal for the sardine run. The girls suggested Palawan for my solo trip to refresh me. They know everything that’s why they are rallying behind me.

Do the things that I love to banish this pain. Do the things that make me ME and not feel small when others seem to lead shinier lives. I’m not like that. I like contemplative activities, as well as the outdoors, but I also like creating a home. I like taking care of others. K said he misses my cooking so I said we’ll have barbeque outside my apartment with other friends. Just no talk of his sexcapades with his one-night-stand boylets or else my neighbors will be scandalized.

I finished one panel. Two panels more for the girls’ bedroom. Then I will tackle the curtains for the living room.

Later today or tomorrow when I’m feeling much better, I will tackle the container garden. Seeing flowers make me happy. I like working with my hands, be it cooking, gardening or crafting. But I also like having battle of wits with CEOs for mental calisthenics. Putting a lot of platitudes on a social media profile only makes one look shallow. I’d rather have cerebral swordfights with these guys and earn their respect. During my last interview, the CEO of a firm abroad told me he enjoyed our conversation because I get it.

Hmm, maybe I should have a side gig interviewing people on TV. I can probably pitch…

I will get through this. One day there will be no more pain. I will look back when I’m 60 and say, yeah, I’ve lived a good life: raised my kids, have good friends, did the things I love and not chase shallowness and illusions. And yeah, libraries have the books I wrote.

One day, no more pain. Oh God, it hurts right now.

It’s 5:39 am. It seems like meeting daylight is a regular thing for me now.

I’ve come to hate the night. What used to be a time that offers rest and tranquility is now a time of chaos and restlessness. I can’t take alprazolam again because it’s a controlled substance, therefore, addictive. For goodness’ sake, it’s a tranquilizer!

When will this end? Haven’t I carried this cross long enough? I wish I could snap my fingers and boom–it’s gone. No, it doesn’t work that way.

I’m trying. I’m really trying.

If loving unconditionally means long-term suffering like this, then I no longer choose to love like that ever. I am really swearing off this thing called love. It’s just for my girls and the cats, that’s it. God, I can’t take this anymore.

Half-working, half-daydreaming while planning trips

Posted on January 31, 2022 by admin

I spent the morning just bathing under the gentle sunlight streaming through my curtains. I decided I will not exert much effort since most of Asia is dead starting today. I just helped a colleague upload his story in the backend and that’s it.

*Tikoy or Nián gāo* (红糖年糕) *for today* *arrived via Lalamove*

It’s Lunar New Year’s eve today but unfortunately we couldn’t go to Chinatown to see the lion and dragon dance. But in years past I did that, visiting some Chinese-owned investment houses in the Binondo area to chat with some of their traders and taking photos for my news outfit’s social media account.

I remember punctuating the Lunar New Year with the Lantern Festival in Hong Kong with J in 2019. We had the lion dance inside our office and then after work J and I walked around Sai Ying Pun area at night.

*Lion dance at our Hong Kong office. Photo by CallMeCreation.com*

*Night of the Lantern Festival at Sai Ying Pun. Photo by CallMeCreation.com*

My family is really not wholly ethnic Chinese so we really don’t celebrate it unlike some of my friends with Chinese or hispanized Chinese last names.

My mom told us that we’re Chinese on her father and mother’s side but the Chinese last name was already lost. It was common in Batangas (and also in some areas) for Chinese immigrants to adopt Tagalog or Spanish surnames to avoid discrimination. Since Batangas faces the West Philippine Sea (formerly South China Sea), some parts of the province like Nasugbu and Lemery were centers of trade with the Chinese and other Southeast Asian neighbors. So of course there were Chinese traders who wanted to emigrate to the area but I heard that Batangueños were pretty hostile to the Chinese. I don’t know if this is just some kind of legend but I was told that’s the reason why there are no native Batangueños with Chinese last names and most often than not, they had Tagalog last names (in our case, our last names are Spanish). On my father’s side, one Spanish ancestor was industrious enough to claim land “as far as his eyes can see” by fencing up tracts of land up to the mountain in our hometown. That’s how his forebears became rich (this story was reminiscent of the movie Far and Away).

*Some unread books. Photo by CallMeCreation.com*

I finally transferred my “books-to-read” for 2022 on my bookshelf that was once occupied by Gundams and then later by stuffed toys. I need to finish these books first before I buy more. Tsundoku in action. I now have all the things I love in my room: music, art, and books. Now I really don’t have any reason to venture out of my room. Hehe.

I was looking for activities or places we can go tomorrow but it seems like there are limited things we can do given that I have unvaccinated children with me.

*Celossian Flower Farm in Baras, Rizal*. *Photo from https://www.howshewanders.com*

I think we can visit the flower farm and Pililla Wind Farm tomorrow. The first and last time I was there was when J and I explored that area three years ago. We dined at the palaisdaan (fish farm) in Theresa, Rizal.