I’m not supposed to expose myself to my kids but their screams and their constant calling out to me forced me to come face to face with them (with mask, of course).

Twin I said she fell from Twin A’s bunkbed ladder. I just don’t know how she ended up destroying the drywall in their room but there you go. 🤦🏻‍♀️

I just messaged my contractor that another repair in this house is needed. This time, it’s the fault of the residents. 🥲

This is only our first year here but my kids already managed to destroy my house. 😭

“I don’t necessarily think it’s bad if a place wants to reinvent itself or to do something different,” says Bykowicz, now the business and enterprise editor for the Baltimore Banner. “But it is uncomfortable to see a place go through such upheaval without a clear end in sight.”

NPR.org

Thus is the precarious life of journalists. We don’t have much choice these days. Even the profitable ones are laying off people.

I had a call today with fellow bureau chiefs and we were told that salary increases and bonuses are–in my most diplomatic way of putting it–rather dismal. Even if you performed well last year, the company is giving something much smaller compared to years prior since the high interest rate environment is squeezing its pockets dry. As I said here before, the parent company is very highly leveraged and given the high interest rates right now, I wouldn’t be surprised if its debt servicing has doubled. Our former APAC boss said that the owner is even being investigated by regulators because of his debts. I wonder if he really was a finance guy in the first place.

We are in a constant state of flux and it’s quite hard to find ways how to place ourselves.

Meanwhile, my sis-in-law sent me gifts that would help me in my isolation. Among then us this Kuromi figure.

To keep me from going insane inside my room. ❤️

I have throught about finishing sketches and starting some paintings in my watercolor books but it requires brain power and at the moment, my brain cells are already spent on editing and writing a stories.

What’s dangerous now in my confinement is that I have shopping apps on my phone. Because I don’t have anything else to do, I bought some fountain pen inks and a syringe for refilling the cartridges. 🤦🏻‍♀️ I exercised great restraint because I’m so tempted to buy the transparent Pilot Kakuno fountain pen. 🔥 And a Kindle. 😵‍💫 I have a tablet for my ebooks. Why would I need a Kindle?

I really need to get out soon.

I cannot get out of my room for another five days or until I test negative. Fuck.

Storm is brewing outside, making this day more dreary.

My furbaby accompanying me in my isolation. She always begs to be let in my room, oftentimes with her fluffy toy or her feather-on-stick toy.

It’s supposed to be my last day of isolation but my neighbors want me to test myself to see if I still have Covid since I’m a danger unto my mom and my daughter. The problem is the rapid test may turn out positive again even if I haven’t been taking Bioflu for two days. I was mainly taking it for my runny nose and headaches but I’ve managed without it the last 48 hrs.

Dang, I took it again a few mins ago. My nose started to get runny again. Why is that?! If my test tomorrow turns positive again, so many errands will still be left hanging. Plus we would remain dependent on our neighbors for our meals. While I do appreciate my sisters extending that kind of help, I sorely miss my own cooking. I want to go out and buy veggies. I want to make sinigang.

Oh well…

I just sent my mini pc to the service center via courier with the help of Twin I. I’m trying my best not to get impatient with my current setup because I have less screen real estate and I’m working with a slower processor (Core i3) vs my mini pc’s latest Ryzen 5 (equivalent to Core i5). I am now seeing the error of my ways, choosing a slower processor because I thought the laptop is just for writing/editing on the fly so I won’t really need a powerul machine for that.

Wrong!

There is always the possibility that my main machine will throw a tantrum so my laptop will become the main machine…

I only have to isolate until tomorrow. I did work somewhat today but I have to give in to my need to sleep before my call with my team because I was still whoozy yesterday. Covid headaches are terrible.

Unfortunately, my mini pc died right after my MS Teams call. I did everything but it still wouldn’t turn on. After so much hoops and hurdles, I finally was able to get the contact details of Machenike service center and was able to talk to the person who should receive my unit that is still very much under warranty.

I will have Twin I send this via JRS Express tomorrow. I still can’t go out but I need to send this to the service center immediately.

Why is it that I am having issues with lemons these days?!

I’m paranoid that I wasn’t able to back up anything from its SSD because it just died while I was using it. Ghad don’t let it be the motherboard!

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…