14th day without a car

Posted on by

I didn’t want to think about what to serve my kids for brunch so I opted for the easiest, which is omurice with leftwovers combined to make fried rice. We’re supposed to go to the health center of a nearby barangay for my 2nd booster shot later in the day.

Omurice. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Surprisingly it was easier to book Grab today. Probably because our destinations are all nearby.

Coming back from the barangay health center. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Unfortunately for the girls, the booster shots for their age group haven’t been approved yet. So they just had to settle for a trip to the salon to fix their disastrous haircuts.

Twin I with a better haircut. She’s quite happy. Photo by her.

We had an early dinner at the nearby Vietnamese restaurant because I was feeling sick after the booster and was not in the mood to cook.

Pho and fried spring rolls. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I took a nap after this as I was already aching all over, my head was pounding and that my eyelids were ready to shut. I thought the booster #2 would be easier. Nope, I was still feeling sick despite having 4 vax shots now.

Meanwhile, my journalist group chat has been discussing that the Imelda Marcos-style living is back in Malacanang, without any regard for the citizens who are suffering from high prices and struggling with high transportation costs or the lack of means of transportation.

It will be a very long 6 years.

Right now I’m not in the mood to be sociable and I just want to shut myself in my room. The girls are going to be fetched by their dad in a few minutes. I’m so irritated with the world today. People think that just because you’re responding to them, they can just take you for granted.

I’m tired of it. It happens again and again. So no, I choose myself this time. Goodbye.

Day 13 without a car

Posted on by
New bumper.

So my all-around mechanic sent me photos of how my car looks right now. They said the body needs some scuffing before applying primer and buffing.

They evened out the dents and scratches with body fillers. Hopefully in the next few days there would be no thunderstorm so I can have my car ASAP. I’m already dying inside.

Meanwhile, I found myself finishing work earlier than usual that I decided to go to the salon and have a hair treatment. I think I won’t have any time next week before the event at the central bank so better do it now.

Went to the salon I had been going to for the last 10 years. ON foot. Under the rain. Yes, I cannot emphasize this enough that I don’t have a car, just like an alcoholic would go on and on about not having anything else to drink

Mirror selfie.
Yeah, I’m alright.

So this would be my look for next week. I look decent enough for the executives I would be chasing all around either at the Metropolitan Art Museum or at Fort San Antonio Abad.

I figured I’ll just take LRT2 and then LRT1 and disembark at Vito Cruz then take a taxi from there to Hotel Jen and work from there from noon until I need to go to the central bank.

Please don’t rain!!!

I had been going to this event since 2007 so I know what to expect. I once went there wearing high heeled shoes so I ended the night with a lot of blisters. 👠 I will never torture my feet again like that. 👗👛💄

Day 12 of no car

Posted on by
Art by CallMeCreation.com

I am going insane.

I no longer know what to do without a car. This is like having withdrawal symptoms. I am now making memes for the amusement of my kids.

I need the car next week because I need to meet a general partner and an investment banker. I couldn’t commit to a date because I don’t want to go to Makati from QC via Grab because it will kill my wallet.

I’m still figuring out how I will get to Hotel Jen for the central bank event without catching Covid again.

The weekend is almost here again. Funny how days pass by so quickly now compared to last year when everything seemed to drag and torture me. The difference in mindset makes a lot of difference in how I see things now.

I’m loving life right now. ❤️

Even though I’m going insane without a car and I couldn’t go anywhere. 🤣

Day 11 without a car

Posted on by

I got lazy and didn’t go to the vax center for the Covid booster. Because it rained. Hard to get a taxi.

Then my 2-3 pm interview with a Singapore telemed startup got cancelled because the founder had a personal emergency. Another rescheduling issue on my plate.

Spent the rest of the day closing the loop for the contract of my new/old hire and finally it got signed by him and a director from our HK office. I don’t want to deal with London office for a while, if I could.

I didn’t know where my day went because I barely left my seat. It was exhausting. Just as I thought my day already ended, my Outlook’s alarm went off, reminding me I still had an MS Teams call with London people 🙄 I didn’t have time to cook myself a proper meal so I had this:

Noodles with spicy fish cake. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

While I was having my late dinner, Twin I was torturing Kimchi.

Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Half of my cats’ day is spent sleeping and the other half is spent trying to avoid the girls 😂.

A lot of people are reacting to my profile picture change, which is unnerving. One friend said, hey you got a love life? I said yes, with Park Seo-Joon but he doesn’t know it. 🤣 But kidding aside, this is just me saying I am just one session away from graduating from psychotherapy.

I’m supposed to take my antidepressant until August only. I think I’m on track. And my shrink will let me go after that.

I changed photos today because I’m no longer grieving. My old profile photo was taken right after I had my hair chopped off a few days after the breakup. That photo was an act of defiance but it still reflected my grief.

This new photo is like a graduation photo; I now have a genuine smile. I’m growing my hair back. I will wear it longer. I have more crow’s feet but I’m wearing it as a badge of honor.

I am truly moving on.

Why do we hold on? I learned that we couldn’t move on because we believe what we had before was the best we could ever have. We don’t let go. We become prisoners of what we had, of the past, because we believed that it was best thing and would not be able to have it again.

But once we realize that there’s something better for us after the dust has settled, we easily can let go.

That’s what happened to me. I realized that while I was dancing in my room to my Spotify tunes that I had been constricted for a long time when I was with J. I conformed and molded myself to his liking. To make him happy and accept me. But in doing so I killed a part of me.

And in the end he didn’t even accept the whole of me.

Now that I’m free, in the truest sense, I realized I missed this crazy part of me. I missed the artist in me. I missed singing. I missed the playful me who goes into escapades because I can.

I am now a better version of me, a happier me that he will never see.

That better version of me that somebody else would be able to appreciate one day.

10th day of being carless

Posted on by

So I miss my car, that heap of rusted teenager car. The car shop sent me photos of my very rusty back bumper that they will replace with a new one.

So wow, it’s only the paint that has been making it look decent all this time.

After the ironworks comes the paint. Hopefully the rains will stop so the humidity will not affect the painting and drying process.

Keeping my fingers crossed that I can hail a taxi tomorrow for my second Covid vax booster and hopefully they can enter my data soon in VaxCertPh so I can generate the ID before I leave for Singapore. Traveling these days is so much of a hassle that I wonder if it’s still worth coming to Seoul in September or October.

I just had a stressful couple of weeks because I had some kind of battle of wills with the parent firm’s HR dept in London. And there’s this guy from legal (also in London) whom I want to punch in the face. He wants to change our contracts in SEAsia to freelancer mode to be paid on a per article basis due to “legal risks” in the old contracts our old company had prior to being acquired by this parent that does not have any idea how to run a media company.

That made me fume.

I told my boss in Shanghai via MS Teams that I will quit and the rest of the team will follow if they touch any of our contracts. It was a risky move but I stood my ground. I asked them to talk to our global editor and even the chief of correspondents (who unfortunately is on holiday) to talk some sense into this asshole.

woman sitting in front of macbook
Photo by energepic.com on Pexels.com

So I spent the next 24 hours on tenterhooks. My stomach acids went on overdrive and I was in and out of the bathroom this morning while waiting for the verdict.

Finally, the asshole grudgingly relented after calls and calls and some more calls from bosses.

And I searched for him on LinkedIn, the asshole turned out to be this KID who just graduated from law school and is just a legal analyst and yet to be a solicitor. The kind of language he used and the tone of his email sounded like he’s the fucking boss.

I wanted to punch him on the nose. I wanted to kill him.

So now I understand why they’re not announcing my promotion. Doing so would force them to overhaul my contract and that could lead to another battle of wills with London and this d*ckhead.

I knew from the get-go that my transfer to Singapore would have been very complicated had I requested it.

I showed a friend in Edinburgh the LinkedIn profile of that KID and said just give me one chance to make his nose bleed when I get to London. Just one punch would make me so happy.

You know, I was just cheerful last night that I was dancing in my room to my playlist. Then that “ping” from my Outlook and that email thread from that KID who was throwing his weight around eroded the rare happy mode I was in.

No. No one is allowed to ruin my happy mode. Ok?