I am accompanied by my cats in my isolation. I still feel bad, head is heavy, still have colds but no fever. My body wants to break into a fever but can’t, which is frustrating. My whole body aches so I’ve been popping flu meds every 6 hrs.

The beauty of my situation right now is that I can send my kids to the other house so I can move freely in my house while I’m still contagious. My cleaning lady was doing my laundry downstairs while I get myself food and do my bathroom business. Then I locked myself in my airconditioned bedroom.

Then the power went out. 😵‍💫

Our perennial problem: low power supply. Our power plants are old and we need more capacity. Our power, unlike the rest of Southeast Asia, is not subsidized and we pay market rates for it, making us the country with the most expensive electricity rates in Asia after Japan. Renewable energy’s problem is its unreliability (Mother nature is a bitch, right?) and it is not a simple plug and play into the national grid. You cannot just dispatch RE during peaking hours in a simple snap. It fluctuates and the grid would go haywire because of that. What we need are baseload plants and these can only be provided for now by fossil fuel-fired power plants and geothermal plants. The development of such facilities takes 10 years, or longer in the case of geothermals.

Today’s power outage is brought to you by the shutdown of  Ilijan gas-fired plant in Pangasinan. That plant is so old that it has to be decommissioned in my view. Anyway, that’s always the problem, we lack enough baseload that if one of them shuts down, the whole Luzon grid goes into chaos. Why didn’t we have enough baseload? When power was not yet liberalized under EPIRA, the government did not invest in the development of new power plants. Population growth and urbanization caught up with this acute power supply that “brownouts” or blackouts (as known outside the Philippines) are a normal occurrence in the 1980s and 1990s. I grew up with regular power outages that we have several rechargeable lamps charging all day and kerosone lamps on standby so we could do homework at night.

After EPIRA law was passed, all the assets of the government under PSALM were privatized so that these can be rehabilitated and efficiently run by the private sector. Prior to privatization, the National Power Corp (Napocor) had bastardized these and made them into milking cows. Marcos Sr had a nuclear power plant built in Bataan but it was riddled with corruption (Marcos et al milked it to death) that it couldn’t be run even before it could start operations. Doing so would cause another Chernobyl, they said. It’s several billion dollars’ worth of white elephant sitting on a major fault line. I do not trust the government when it comes to such things.

So long story short, we didn’t have power this afternoon and it’s so freaking hot in my room. I had to get out.

I’ve been writing about this privatization shit for almost two decades and yet here we are, still having this same crap. The power crisis is as old as I am. Damn it. Yes we have been deploying RE projects here and there but they’re not enough. Some are off-grid, some are on-grid. Under development are five baseload power plants but these are fossil fuel-fired that by the time they will get commissioned, it would be too costly to run them because of ESG standards shit imposed by insurance firms, project finance dudes, and the overall investment community.

Well, they did warn people on social media and mainstream media news that Covid cases in hospitals have risen. My TV reporter friend, whose wife is a cardiologist at Medical City, said the Covid ward is full and wife has a lot of patients admitted there. I remember when Twin A was in the hospital last year, we were having a hard time getting transferred to Philippine Children’s Medical Center because they have already dismantled their Covid ward. I guess hospitals need to bring these back now that we’re having a surge of cases.

Just when I was supposed to send a message to my surgeon for a check up tomorrow 🤦🏻‍♀️… Nope, 1 week of isolation is in order.

I just don’t know where I got this. I didn’t go out of the house since I came back from Anilao this weekend. Ah I went out Monday night to withdraw cash and then I went to Alfamart to buy toilet paper. Then we just went to the supermarket on Wed then yesterday to SM and CityMall. I think I already had Covid yesterday because the back of my throat was already scratchy.

I did the Covid test because I feel like I have flu but the persistent scratchiness at the back of my throat was something else. Now I my head feels heavy but I don’t have a fever but my body feels like it wants to have a fever. You know that feeling?

I feel so rotten now. If only I could just sleep this off. When I had the Delta variant, I had long Covid, with brain fog lasting until December (and I had Covid in September 2021). I had blood clots then. My menstruation was unusually heavy and long during my bout with Delta. I had clots and they were a lot, just like when I gave birth. It was bloody hell at that time.

My sisters gave me melatonin tablets to help with sleep and reduce blood clotting. Well, yeah, it’s a cause for concern when I have too much platelets.

It will be a long week…

I need to count calories again. The last time I used MyFitness Pal was in 2018, when I was strictly watching my calorie intake due to my risk of developing diabetes that runs in the family. I stopped using MyFitness Pal/calorie counting when ex and I started going out because we often dined outside. I didn’t want to be a party pooper by being picky about food.

Well, I’m now pre-diabetic (both my FBS and HbA1c are slightly elevated) and I have slightly elevated WBC and platelet count (a little above the high end of the normal range), which have been observed in patients with insulin resistance. What’s worrisome is that estrogen also causes thrombocytosis (high platelet count), which means I can’t use the pill longer to ease me into perimenopause. This is why my gynecologist wanted to check everything; she wanted to see whether I was at risk of developing exactly this.

On the bright side, my triglycerides and LDL are normal, my HDL is high (I credit my oatmeal habit). Lipase is at the median of the normal range so my pancreas is now good. My uric acid is a bit higher than normal because I’m fond of using fish sauce as a dipping sauce and in my quest to avoid cholesterol, I turned to eating fish like mackerel, sardines, and salmon that in turn contain lots of purines. I also love mushrooms. I eat oatmeal for breakfast. 😩 Plus everyone in my family (siblings, father) has high uric acid and almost all of my father’s siblings have gout. It also comes with the territory of diabetics.

Speaking of red meat, my creatinine is below the normal range. If the low end of the normal range is 0.6, then I’m 0.55. Either I overdid my “no red meat” diet or I should do more cardio exercises because I don’t have enough muscle mass, hence, the low creatinine.

My doctor is still abroad so I have to wait until June 11 for my next check up with her. She told me if my tests showed I’m really pre-diabetic, she will give me something to help bring down my blood sugar.

Ah well, ageing hurts, ageing is hard, ageing humbles you.

I should also check out the univesrsity pool schedule so I can augment walking with swimming. 😩

My girls and I went to the nearest SM to buy them dresses because they will go onstage to receive awards for being top of their class on June 17. I also brought my new Oppo watch to the Oppo Service Center because that dratted thing drains quickly. It’s either the software update is to blame or it is a lemon.

My girls have finally developed an interest in reading. Well, they were reading Percy Jackson and Diary of  Wimpy Kid before. Now they have developed more mature taste in reading materials. Finally, somebody else will read my books!

I have a friend and he has been my classmate since kindergarten. A couple of years ago, we were drinking with my bffs and we were talking about his dating adventures. He said he loved preying on single moms because they are “game” as they’re thirsty and he gets someone to mother him as a bonus.

*I wasn’t yet a single parent then but I knew at the back of my mind that I was heading in that direction.*

I told him he is still a friend but I wanted to punch him because he is an asshole. He laughed and thought it was just the alcohol talking.

I repeated my comment. You are an asshole, I said.

This memory suddenly sprung up after reading something on social media about single moms. There’s this one “digital creator” who did nothing but take selfies with duck lips and in various provocative poses. Then there were comments about attracting new bfs, being a thirst trap, and whatnot. This then triggered that memory about what my friend said about solo moms being “thirsty” and “game” and are clear targets for predators.

It’s really triggering because I may have been a victim of a predator who took advantage of my vulnerability. God knows he may be targeting solo moms now, too, just like my friend. If he is, then ewww, such a low-life.

It was so triggering that I had dreamed about it today. I was so relieved after waking up and realizing that I’m not in that situation now.

You think these people are fictional, found only in the movies or books. But no, they’re very real.

I braved the wet roof of my laundry area yesterday so I can peel off the toppled banana trees that were blown off onto my property. I then reinstalled the solar panels of my stairs’ flood lights and cleaned off the debris left by the typhoon. The clean laundry that was hanging to dry was washed again because it got messed by the strong winds and rain. It smelled of fabric that didn’t dry properly 🤢. Since I had to do several cycles, I was doing laundry until 8:30 pm 🤦🏻‍♀️

I’m now back to the daily grind and I’m mentally exhausted already. I didn’t even have time to claim my blood test results because that damned lab hasn’t emailed the results. 😡

While I was in Anilao, I had a dream wherein I was in a room, fretting, full of anxiety because I still haven’t had any story to write. When I woke up, my insides were twisted and my heart was beating crazily. That’s how much I dread returning to work.

So now I’m back. Same-same shit. My Indonesia reporter told me he’s got a job offer from an investment bank. My Manila reporter is not engaging with me because she’s so down because my manager killed her story again. I’m afraid I will lose her and resign soon. I sent an SOS email to our APAC head and asked for a call with her so I can have clarification as to why this is happening.

It is what it is. If I lose them both, it’s no longer my fault and I will pin the blame all on management.

*sigh* 😩

I want to go back here again.

Half of my plans for the weekend disappeared with the strong winds. We stayed in Anilao for three days, thinking I could still dive on the house reef—which turned out to be the best coral diving during our entire stay—on Saturday afternoon before sunset and early morning before we leave. Nope, the weather said.

I couldn’t even make sketches or watercolor painting on my art book. Power went out this morning so packing our stuff in the dark was tough.

We left even before official check out time because I thought I could outrun the typhoon. Hehe, fat chance. I drove through it. Good thing I had new tires so I had one less thing to worry about.

The typhoon in Batangas was mild but the more we drove to the east, the wilder the rain became. When we got to our town, we saw how strong the typhoon was: trees were uprooted and some streets were flooded. Some barangays had no water since the utility had to cut the supply off due to fluctuating power that could short the pumps. Good thing we have our reservoir, which stores potable water good for three days for two households. (Yes, I have measured it when I emptied it in October for cleaning.) My older sister is now asking me to ask my contractor how much would it cost to have another tank installed.

Another good thing is that we have four tanks of rain water to flush the toilet in my mom’s house so we know if disaster strikes, we can still poop and clean the bathroom.

We have a power generator set on standby but for the life of me I forgot how to turn on and run that thing. I’ll somehow know how to operate that when desperate. It is also imperative now to invest in a solar power system since I think our typhoons will be nasty this year given the very hot summer that we had. The Pacific Ocean is warmer than it has been the past years so the typhoons this time will be stronger.

Trees in my neighbor’s backyard were down and some of the banana trees went over my fence, knocking out my small solar panels. Thankfully, my trees are still upright, even my beach umbrella was still standing and unharmed. I did a good job of securing that thing on my stairs’ handrails.

I had been craving for arrozcaldo the entire day but we haven’t found any arrozcaldo places along the road. Well, if I can’t buy it, then I can make it.

Perfect for a stormy weather like this. ❤️