I only knew about the typhoon yesterday afternoon. It’s really odd since it’s still supposedly summer and we never had typhoons in May. Well, that’s climate change for you. The typhoon is still on eastern Philippines while we are in the west. However, this typhoon is pulling up winds from the southwest where we are.

It was a good thing I chased the sun yesterday and did freediving until sunset. Diving today was just exhausting. It wasn’t raining but you can feel the swirling currents even just looking at the surface.

Battling the currents at Sombrero island was beyond what my will power can take. I was on standby mode so I can take care of my sister-in-law and my nephews who are novice snorklers, so they had to wear life vests. My older nephew and my SIL were taken away by the current; my SIL was brought back by the boatman from another boat with me pushing/guiding my SIL’s behind and then I guided my nephew to my diving buoy. We secured the buoy with a long line connected to the boat and that was their anchor. Meanwhile, I was also keeping an eye on my daughters who were diving on their own. I told them to keep close to the line.

What makes this dive such a disappointment was that the corals are dead. It wasn’t like this four years ago! This is coral bleaching, I thought. The die off was massive and it broke my heart. 

Upon research, my suspicion was right that there was massive coral bleaching, not only in Sombrero Island, not just Mabini, but it seems like the whole of Batangas. This paper described the bleaching in Lian town, while this news article written by my friend talked about the bleaching in Calatagan.

This happened in 2020, the year we had to stay in place because of Covid.

The worst thing here is, we couldn’t do anything about it. It’s the rising temperatures that kills kilometers and kilometers of coral reefs. 😭

We shouldn’t have spent an hour battling currents. I told the boatmen to proceed to the cove in Maricaban Island, near Sepoc Beach. The beach there offered calmer waters and better living things. These were not coral gardens but gardens nevertheless and it looks like the start of a coral colony.

The boat ride back to the resort was scary as it began to rain. The wind was picking up. It was the end of this diving trip.

After a buffet lunch, we spent the afternoon warming our bodies here in this pool while it rained. Parts of Mabini have hot springs owing to the stratovolcano, Mt. Panay, on the western side of the peninsula, where we are.

We couldn’t do anything the rest of the day. It didn’t stop raining. So I finally asked the front desk for a massage, then had it after dinner to remove the huge knots on my back and shoulders.

My masseuse told me that there are several resorts for sale in the area. If only I have millions to spare…

It has been sooooooo long since I went freediving. I missed it so much. I haven’t exercised my lungs by this much in a long time. I looooove my long fins. I love going deeper and swimming with sea turtles. I think there were two in our resort’s house reef.

I must do this regularly now I have finished moving house and we’re settled in. I’m not flying out every month so I have more time for hobbies.

Tomorrow we will be diving near Sombrero Island and Sepoc beach. I must practice going deeper.

I love the sea. How I missed you. ❤️

I’m now in the dark, in this hammock, listening to my beach playlist and dreaming away the night. ❤️

Awwwww. I destroyed my smart watch. I didn’t realize I was diving deep. It probably wasn’t able to take the pressure so now it’s no longer turning on. 😕 It’s water resistant because it has a swimming function and measures laps and calories expended.

RIP Oppo Watch. 💔

The whole story here on ABC.

The most vulnerable to homelessness are women who aren’t financially literate. Even high fliers can fall and become homeless, like Glen-marie here. This is what I’ve learned early on in life. My mom taught me that for every 1,000 I earn, I should sock away 100. Whatever I have saved would tide me by in an emergency or would let me walk away from a crappy job.

That was the thing I did, even in my first job out of college.

I tried to learn about investing and be wise with my money. I tried to earn extra from writing and editing gigs to selling stuff on ebay.

When I was at the bottom, just scraping by during the lowest point in my life, I realized that I was in a very vulnerable position. In an instant, I can be homeless and my kids and I would be scrambling for a place to go and be uprooted in a snap. If I lost my job, that’s it, I’m done.

So with all the willpower left in me, I built a tiny house. This ensures that even if I lose my job or I fall ill, I still have a roof over my head.

Glen-marie and many others like her weren’t prepared. They relied on men to handle finances; they didn’t protect themselves. This financial illiteracy is also the number one cause why women can’t walk away from abusive relationships. They are not financially independent.

It’s scary to be insecure like that, having no savings as a buffer for life’s unexected turns.

Speaking of independence, the divorce bill has been approved at the Lower House. It just needs to hurdle the second/third reading at the Senate before a bicameral conference and hopefully it will not be watered down on the floor deliberations.

This would free me from so much burden that comes with annulment. Going to court and wasting time to appear in hearings like a criminal… Annulment is just too taxing, too expensive, too anti-women.

Oh please, please, please let divorce be finally legal here.

After my visit to the doctor, I went to the other compounds asking around if they’ve seen an orange cat. Nope, they said. So what I did was, out of desperation, I called pssssswwwssssss pssssssswwwwssssss as I always do with all the cats that have gone through me.

Then I heard it, the small meow. As I traced the source of that meow, my pssssswssss grew louder and the more the cat responded. After a lengthy search, I finally found Oyen, locked in one of the halls in the church next door.

He hasn’t eaten in three days! If I hadn’t been proactive in searching for him, he could have died with dehydration and starvation.

I knew he was alive and was stuck somewhere. He isn’t that mature enough to go gallivanting far, as males in heat usually do.

Cats normally just roam around within a 200-meter radius, as one dude here in this uni campus found out. He put a tracker on the strays cared for by a volunteer group called Cats of XXX (name of our uni). Then he plotted the whereabouts of those cats for xx months in different cat territories. So that’s how he found out that cat colonies have specific areas they guard as their own and they never or seldom stray within that 200-m radius.

Anyway, that background info made me hopeful Oyen is just somewhere near. Unless he was picked up by someone, I believed he can be found soon. I was right.

I feel sad for Ninja though. She is separated from her family and her carefree life here but it is for the best. She is going to be well taken care of by my friend who I know has been a cat lady for a long time.

A family friend messaged me that he and his wife are going to talk it over if they can adopt the remaining cats for their homestead some towns away from here. He hasn’t messaged back yet 😕.

For now, I know all the kittens are alive and thriving and I’m at peace with that. Two already found loving homes, the remaining three are still waiting to be adopted. But I think we will keep Tabby/Gorilla/Tiger. (Twin I keeps on calling her Gorilla 😑)

Since I’m on a roll this week, I continued with my quest to do the important stuff that I keep putting off—this time is oil change.

Good thing that I only choose to have mineral oil (every 5k km change) instead of the synthetic one (every 7k to 10k km) because I want my car to be checked more frequently. Because of that, the mechanic found that one of the oil plugs has lost its threads and must be changed. If it weren’t for the more frequent oil changes, I wouldn’t have caught it and I would have a very leaky car traversing SLEX and EDSA.

I thought this is the last day I would be checking in with a doctor. Nope. I would be passed on to a plastic/facial surgeon on Tue to excise the lump on my forehead. Need to see what it is really and while it is not a cyst because this lump is hard, it’s better to check if this is benign and not worrisome. I would have to ask for a leave of absence on the day of the surgery.

This is the price I pay for making sure that I’m healthy so my kids won’t be burdened with my medical issues later on. As my friend who I met yesterday said, I shouldn’t neglect these things. His mom’s breast cancer came back and had a mastectomy last month. She would go through a month of daily radiation treatment in June but thankfully she doesn’t have to go through chemo again. She said chemo just killed her body the first time around and it was so rough going through the whole series.

“Yeah, you should do you sono-mammogram every year, even if you don’t have a family history,” he said. His sister is starting her regular monitoring now. Their aunt died of colon cancer so they have to be doubly careful.

Hoping all things are ok with me so my kids have less things to worry about.

I looked for Oyen this morning outside our compound and asked the handyman around the church premises if he saw an orange kitten. No sign of Oyen.

I don’t smell any dead body around our garden so he may not be dead yet. I just hope somebody picked him up to adopt. I hope he is in good hands. 😭

I’m on my way now to QC to bring our void a.k.a. Ninja the black cat to a friend.

I had chased her around the garden and after an hour, I called all the cats to feed and finally got her.

She hasn’t cried yet and she is just inside the cage quietly resting. There was a poignant scene where tabby a.k.a. Tiger was looking at Ninja from outside the cage. As if they’re talking with Tabby assuring Ninja she is going to be all right. Maybe that’s why she no longer resisted and isn’t crying now.

Poor Ninja. She’s not crying because she was terrified. When we took her out of the cat carrier, she started bouncing off the mirrored walls of my friend’s condo lobby. When I caught her, I could feel her very fast heart beat. I was afraid that she would die of heart attack (a vet high school classmate of mine said it happens).

When I drove off, my friend said Ninja, now called Brownie by her son, is hiding in the bathroom of her unit. I hope she recovers soon and won’t get too lonely. I gave her a bottle of prazinate so she can continuously deworm her new cat.

After leaving QC, I took C5 and dropped by Decathlon Pasig. I bought goggles for my girls (because Twin I said she prefers to dive with it instead of a diving mask but I think that’s better for diving pool). I wasn’t planning on buying swim goggles because I like my diving mask and it’s better for compression when you go deeper.

But then I saw this!

I tried the – 4.00 corrective goggles and—I can see!!! OMGosh I’m so happy! I don’t have to wear my contacts underwater.

But swim goggles like this is not safe at certain depths because of the pressure. It would make your eyes pop out of their sockets. Diving masks have enough space between your eyes and the glass, lessening the pressure on your eyes as you go deepeer. Some divers in a forum said the max he can dive with swim goggles is at 3.8m, one guy said max is 15m and not more than that.

I bought a waterproof pouch and a microfiber towel because I don’t have that. I need these while I’m in the boat during a dive.

My girls and I, with my brother’s sons, will be going to Anilao this Friday to cap off my week-long leave. 🏖️

So far so good. All the things I planned for my leave pushed through. Yesterday, I was able to see my new gastro doctor, then I bought new tires, have them balanced and aligned.

The worst thing that can happen is to have a car tire explode while driving to Anilao, which happened to me on my way to my Mom’s on Christmas Eve 2020 (or was it 2021?).

And finally, I had the car washed yesterday, after so many months! I was too busy to have it done since I keep chasing their shop hours.

After Decathlon today, I decided to go to BGC to soak in civilization. Had coffee at Burgos Circle. Messaged a friend (former reporter) and we had an impromptu catch up until 8 pm.

Another productive day.

Oyen didn’t come home tonight. I think I was able to feed him this morning before I went out for my check up with my doctor. I hope he hasn’t been hit by a car since he wanders off farther than his siblings. The other kitties just stay within our compound. I also hope no snake bit and ate him up 😭 or a menacing male cat has gotten to him.

I went looking for him in the dark but he’s nowhere to be found.

Oyen come home!

I can’t keep up with all the cleaning and cooking. If I cook in the morning, I would have to order out for lunch or dinner. I just can’t keep cooking three times a day 😩. Yesterday, I transformed leftover meatloaf into omurice for breakfast that turned into brunch. Then after church I ordered crispy liempo (for the girls) and siomai (for me) for dinner.

I couldn’t have fatty food because I have to keep my triglycerides and cholesterol down. Although my last bloodwork done showed I was fine (except for the pancreatitis in December), I still need to watch what I eat. I was supposed to have my blood test done this morning but I overfasted so I have to push it back for tomorrow. Aside from my gynecologist’s preliminary diagnosis of impaired glucose tolerance, my new gastroenterologist is also checking if my acute pancreatitis was just caused by too much alcohol (because of the high school homecoming drinking) or I really have an impaired pancreas due to worse causes (I hope not). So she added lipase to my long list of tests for tomorrow. If it comes back elevated, then I would have to do another CT scan. Same for the enlarged liver; she is checking if it’s alcohol-induced or I must do a radical change of my diet.

*Funny, I just checked if I had lipase test done to me in December and there was none. Same for the triglycerides LDL, HDL, etc. Geez, that’s why I don’t like that first gastro doctor 😡*

She said it’s not caused by bile duct blockage since my CT scan was clear. It’s not caused by gallstones since I no longer have a gall bladder. So it’s alcohol or high triglycerides.

I think it’s my alcohol abuse over the past 4 years, especially right after the breakup with the last ex. I was able to keep my triglycerides down after he was gone. I controlled red meat consumption after the blood work requested by my psychiatrist prior to medicating me showed that I had elevated triglycerides and bad cholesterol. Subsequent tests showed it went back to normal after refraining from red meat.

My prayer and fasting during Twin A’s hospitalization last year worsened my situation. Hyperacidity went from bad to worse because I just consumed fruit juices during my fast. Because in December I got in a very celebratory mood with my high school classmates—kablam!= Pancreatitis and enlarged liver/fatty liver. 

Fatty liver was also no surprise because I have PCOS. Ugh! PCOS also causes insulin resistance 😭

I really, really have to take care of my pancreas or else I may end up with chronic pancreatitis and then pancreatic cancer. 🤦🏻‍♀️

This means I would have to prepare separate food for myself. Fish, chicken, and veggies only.