I lack sleep. I was holding a vigil because the US online store of the brand I patronize had a surprise sale—for a very short time only.

I swooped in, loaded my cart, and checked out. These are going to be Christmas gifts for the women in the family.

It took me hours before purchasing for myself though. I had to read so many reviews about my choices across different brands before finally clicking “checkout.”

Meanwhile…

What in the world?! That’s the price of a brand new sedan or hatchback! Whhyyyyyyyy?!

Who in the world would buy these? Are these made with human skin?

Despite the astronomical price, these bags easily get broken, the hardware giving up or the skin peeling off 🥴

No thank you.

I did nothing yesterday but watch Finding Your Roots (PBS) on YouTube that’s why I was late to the 5 pm church service. Yes, it was that late.

It was so fascinating how thorough they are with their research, especially with the documentation of black slaves. It was an emotional roller coaster ride for most guests.

I wish I have access to PBS so I could watch full episodes. 🥺 I love history.

I was wondering how far back can we go when it comes to my family. Maybe, someone might have been a writer, a thespian, or a musician back then. However, I doubt if we can go earlier than my great grandfather on my mom’s side. First of all, it was just in 1849 when the Spaniards forced the Spanish last names on the indios so tax collection would be easier. Prior to that, the records on my maternal side maybe would just indicate “Alfonso, son of David the Tall” which was the normal practice for the lower class or the indios. They didn’t have last names and they just identified as “son of” then the description of that person, hence we have Rajah Matanda (Rajah the Old) in our history books. It was the rich who had proper documentation then, just like in my paternal grandma’s side. We had/have a family tree, made in 1960s, hanging in one of my grand uncle’s houses. That house always figured in my nightmares as a child because it was dark and very old. It looked like it hasn’t been touched since the 1960s.

Anyway, in that family tree, I could trace the Spanish side of the family—a Spandiard married into the family and he was an industrious man who fenced all the land that he could fence. That’s why that family ended up with so much land and became rich/richer. He must have been a rarity in those times because when you’re an Español, you were automatically an upperclass human and can just be indolent, if you’re crafty enough. It doesn’t matter if you were just a petty thief in the old country. You can fashion yourself as someone in the new world—in the far-flung backwater Islas de Filipinas—as long as you are a pureblood Spaniard from the Iberian peninsula (peninsulares). This was best illustrated by Jose Rizal in Noli Me Tangere in the form of Don Tiburcio, the fake Spanish doctor whom social climber Doña Victorina de Espadaña married. The Philippines was not populated by the peninsulares because we are so far from continental Europe. There was little incentive for the Spaniards to come here, except if you’re a criminal on the run or have zero prospects back in Spain. Or a Spanish friar. We were just governed by the Spanish empire by proxy through Mexico. This explains why we Filipinos have fewer white or Eurasian features compared to the Mexicans. Mexico is just halfway across the world from Spain whereas the Islas required a full circumnavigation.

On my maternal side, family lore is handed down orally. Nothing has been written down. We don’t even have the Chinese name of our forefathers on my grandpa’s side and on grandma’s side. A cousin several times removed whom my uncle met in the US was the one who told him the original Chinese name. Now I have to pester my uncle for that info while he is still alive and has his mental faculties intact.

I don’t have info as to what was my maternal great grandfather’s trade. I just know he was a Katipunero during the revolt against Spain. My great grandma lived until my mom was in her elementary school years and she and an uncle slept on either side of her when they were growing up.

My maternal grandpa was very industrious. He was able to reach high school—a rarity in those days during the American colonial period—and the only way he could go to school then was by taking lodgings with a household near the school as his family lived in the mountains. That’s where he met my grandma (who only finished 2nd Grade but could do sums); she was the daughter of the landlord. (In contrast, my paternal grandma went to finishing school and her siblings went to law school or finished college in Manila. That’s why she could speak and read Spanish and English). My maternal grandpa said he brought with him a potful of uncooked rice from home every week and that would be consumed all throughout the week.

He boarded a ship (as a stowaway) bound for California, USA. He became a muchacho (errand boy), a cook, a grocer, etc. This is why he could hold conversations in English. He told me his favorite fruit was peach that’s why his children from the US always sent him canned peaches (before imports came flooding our market with it). He could have stayed in the US and just live there but he went back home to marry my grandma. My grandpa bought land (several hectares of it in two provinces). He built an elementary school in his village so children didn’t have to board with strangers just to be able to go to school like he did. Everyone in my maternal side has a fond memory of him and his cooking. I loved his Southern-style fried chicken while my older cousins still hanker for his pork cracklings. He didn’t like cooking on the gas stove; that was for my grandma. He preferred cooking on his wood and ash stove. I had watched him cook his magic there, in his tattered cookhouse. He still had the beat-up dining table that my mom and his siblings used to eat on and utilized it as his worktop. I wonder where all those went 🤔.

My paternal grandpa was a witch doctor and a farmer. I doubt if our last name is our real last name because he was a child born out of wedlock. He was an only child—uncommon in those times when families have more than 6 children. My great grandma could have invented a last name for my grandpa because it was not normal to have an illegitimate child acknowledged by the father in those days, even if half the town knew who he was…

He and my rich grandma eloped, lived for a while in a hacienda in San Pablo. He worked there as a majordomo (butler) for that rich don, who was a friend of President Manuel Quezon. The president visited the hacienda while my grandpa was working there.

However, my grandma insisted on going back home and inserted her family in the middle of the clan even though she and her family were ostracized. The problem with her is that she wanted it all—romantic love and comfort—at the expense of her children and husband’s happiness. All throughout their lives, my grandma and grandpa lived separately. My grandma lived in her house surrounded by homes of her siblings, while grandpa went home to his farm, several kilometers away from town. They just visited each other. Because how can you tolerate living smack in the middle of a community that looks down on you?

My father and the rest of his siblings were always taught by my grandma not to go against their rich cousins, always have their heads down and not fight back. She taught them to be subservient and to be inferior at all times. Oh God, forgive me, but I blame her for all the trauma that my father carried, which we his children bore as well. Being a child of a raging alcoholic narcissist is not fun. I’m still trying to heal from that generational trauma. In my angriest moments, I called my grandma in my head a spoiled little princess who wanted the world and didn’t care whom she would hurt.

But maybe that was unfair of me because she was nice to me. She loved us as offsprings of his favorite child. Yes, my father was a mama’s boy, which compounded to a lot of problems (hence, his narcissism). I don’t know how to deal with my past—I’m very conflicted. My ex-spouse is the same as my father, a spoiled favored child, a narcissist who could never owe up to his actions. Everyone and everything is at fault but never him. My therapist said we get attracted to the same kind of people we grew up with. I learned this from my mom, my therapist said…

I am writing this down so it will not just be oral history for my children. They need a record of their past. I wish I could dig through records in my parents’ hometown to get more data from both sides of my family before they all get lost.

There is freedom in homeownership but there is also immense responsibility. All repairs and maintenance are solely mine. If I miss a beat or go cheap, I will pay the full price later on.

My shower heater finally gave up its ghost after 6 faithful years of service. I brought it from our apartment in QC and it was able to service us for a whole year in my new house before giving up. I had my contractor replace it and have him do other minor repairs and updates around the house (e.g. dry wall my kids destroyed).

I don’t go cheap with appliances and materials because I don’t want headaches later on.

We’re now in PGH FMAB for Twin A’s check up. We’re surrounded by babies and toddlers coughing like dogs. Experience taught me this kind of environment is a petri dish of various highly contagious diseases.

There was a time when my twin babies and I were waiting for our turn at our pediatrician’s clinic, we were surrounded by children sick with pneumonia. Masks then were not mandatory. After 2 days, my kids were struck down by pneumonia as well because the waiting area was ventillated by a huge industrial fan that probably spread the airborne droplets. I had it bad, being the last one in our household who contracted it. 😷

This is the reason why I hate waiting for doctors. I spend hours at the waiting area and get exposed to pathogens then get sicker than I originally was.

I don’t know what we’re facing now. I have a strong feeling that we will have to do the biopsy. Twin A’s uric acid is above normal even though she has been off her TB meds now for 10 days. It’s 6.6 when normal range is 2.0-6.0. 😩

Being a parent, a mother specifically, is not for the selfish/self-centered. It’s not for the weak. I just scrounge around for energy to plod on but most of the time I am running on empty, physically and emotionally. I’m tired but I just push on. If it’s more than TB that we’re still facing, then bring it on. God, I’m so tired.

Thank God I am wrong.

Our IDS said clinical presentation shows our patient is OK and that she has recovered from TB. As long as there is no omental caking and no thickening of any lining, that’s good. The lymph nodes are small to be of any major concern; these are residual nodules from the infection. If we have to be granular, it would be too invasive to do biopsy because the nodules are at her back. No more MRI scans because Twin A already has too many scans at this point. An MRI would be done if there are symptoms again. Her medication has already been protracted and it’s not good for her kidneys to be bombarded by powerful antibiotics for more than a year.

She said GI TB has too many complications and is really difficult to treat. We are blessed that Twin A didn’t have stricture or obstruction of GI organs, especially the intestines. She told us that one of her patients who was admitted the same time as Twin A last year had to undergo surgery because his intestine got twisted (obstruction) and had to be cut. This is a complication of GI TB. Thankfully, the kid is already ok now.

Since MRI is clear, save for the small nodules, and clinical evidence shows that Twin A has already recovered, we only have to go back to our IDS after 6 months. ❤️

I am so relieved.

I left at 6:30 am arrived at 8:30 to my seminar this morning and I was still early by an hour. At least this was not a repeat of my 3-hr drama last week.

Note to self: avoid Monday morning coverages.

I got the stories I wanted and have arranged coffee dates in Manila, HK, and SG soon. 😁

I was with a colleague, B, who had to cover the same event. He was my junior and I was his editor in the paper where we both came from and I also recruited him to join our team when I jumped platforms. He often asked me if I could be one of his reference persons and I wrote letters of endorsements for him when he was applying for scholarships or trainings abroad. Long story short, we had a long history together so it was just natural for us to talk about so many things while we were working today.

We were chatting about his lifestyle right now, how he enjoys being a freelancer, with several jobs that do not tie him down. His philosophy now is, “I don’t wanna work past 3 pm. When I’m done, I’m done so I can do other things or rest.”

His last steady job burnt him out—he was writing 10 stories a day. I said why the heck did you even do that?! He said it was the nature of his beat/s and as long as there were stories, he can’t stop because—as GMA’s  24 Oras newscast says— di natutulog ang mga balita (because news doesn’t sleep). We were the last generation of reporters who didn’t balk at “borrowing” documents critical for reportage or learning how to read upside down because we couldn’t touch the document that was on the table of the source we were talking to. I still literally bodyslam the elevator doors so I can quickly do an “ambush” interview. Just today, I followed my source to his car because we were talking about something critical. This colleague and I are trained to stalk people and wait for hours for the opportunity to do a 5-min interview.

Why am I relating this? Because B told me the new generation of reporters he is encountering in the field and the ones he is training right now do not know how to do interviews, what to do during presscons, how to be enterprising, how to research for information or events to catch sources, or even research how a source looks like so they would know who to watch out for in large events. Or even a chance encounter.

“These are pandemic journos. They learned journalism in school when schooling was done purely online,” he said.

Some of the slightly “older” journos started their careers during the pandemic, when news was delivered to them via press releases or presscons were conducted online. For three years, that’s all the kind of journalism they knew. That’s why the new grads and the slightly older ones didn’t know how to cover—even register for an event!

“OMG! No wonder Tita M and I were the only ones asking questions during the XXX forum last week!” I exclaimed to B.

He said yes, we were the last journos who ask questions during briefings. When B left his regular job, one staff in a government agency that he used to cover said, “You know B, no one is asking questions during xxx briefing since you left.” 🤦🏻‍♀️

B told me this is the reason why news stories these days in every print/online platforms are copycats of one another.

Another young reporter asked where he got the story about xxx. He said, “I just got the data from this agency’s website but I won’t give it to you because it’s already there, it’s public.” These journos do not know how to do their research and to trawl the internet to look for news pegs or leads. 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️ I came from a generation where we do our rounds of government offices to sniff out leads. We befriend janitors, security guards, receptionists, etc to learn who came into the office of so and so. We would learn about the agenda, we would know who are fighting what. I taught these things to my students when I was still part-time faculty member about 10 to 11 years ago.

I think this strengthened my resolve to go back to teaching. We cannot have this kind of media landscape, where news no longer provokes us to think, to search for the truth, to ask, and demand accountability. I know the economics of media doesn’t make sense right now but somewhere, somehow there is a way…The New York Times showed us it can be done. Quality news reportage, exclusivity, and value-add command subscription. That’s how our company and our rivals make money.

It’s really sad.

I woke up at 5 am; for my body it has become automatic. I turned off the aircon and turned on the ceiling light in my daughters’ bedroom and told them to get up. I asked them if they want bacon, cheese and bread or bacon and rice for breakfast.

“Mommy, we don’t have school. It’s ____(name of the local festival)____ today,” Twin I said.

🤦🏻‍♀️

Gee… Now I’m fully awake and can’t go back to sleep. Precious sleep. 😴

Yesterday life was peaceful because it’s the mid-autumn festival so the whole of East Asia is off: mainland China, Japan, and Korea. I was the only one holding the fort because my Australian colleague had to sign off early, I think, to celebrate as well since she’s ethnic Chinese. Good thing only one story popped up, from the Philippines. Another one from Australia popped up late but a freelancer editor got it.

I was supposed to tick off my to–do list but Monday… My brain refused to do anything else. I was jotting down stuff while in a call (a regular one with editorial x commercial teams) when my Kakuno EF acted weirdly. Writing with it was rough.

I checked and it turns out the ink was already gone. Then I rapidly descended into the rabbit hole of fountain pens again.

I had tried to refill a clean, empty cartridge with the syringe on the right a few weeks ago. I ordered this from Lazada, thinking the blunt and larger needle was better. However, it turned out to be messy. It’s hard to draw ink, and when I push the ink out of the syringe, it produced bubbles.

So yesterday I tried the insulin syringe that I bought from Mercury for only PHP 13. I was a bit skeptical but I did it anyway. Well, well, well… It was so smooth that I was surprised that drawing ink was painless. Injecting the ink into the clean catridge was quick and it didn’t produce bubbles.

For only PHP 13. 😁

The PHP 50 syringe from Lazada was fiddly to use. I read that the ink catridge converter was much challenging to use so it was better to use the empty Namiki cartridges and fill them up with a syringe.

So there goes my productivity. 😝

I played with my outside kitties last night before taking a shower and going to bed. They are the sweetest little things. I will have them spayed next week and then later give them vaccines.

Kimchi is still growling at them whenever they try to enter my front door.

Let’s see if the two groups can adjust with each other. I really want to keep Socks and Gorilla out of the elements.

I had been contemplating about having a skylight in my kitchen because my house is dark even in daytime. But that’s stupid because my house is just one year old and here I am, thinking of new construction works again.

I guess the band-aid solution is to order and have an accordion screen door installed on my front door so I can have it perpetually open and let in more light. It has been a year since and I kept putting it off for some reason…ah well, Twin A got sick so all my energy and resources went into her care.

Which brings me to my dilemma now. I have a huge chunk of cash just languishing in my bank accounts instead of growing in investment instruments. I am holding on to it because I am so afraid of being unprepared for medical emergencies. I’m insured (HMO + health insurance for critical illness) but my kids are not. My job doesn’t include such things so I pay for everything in cash. Now that it seems like our saga with Twin A’s GI TB is not yet concluded, I have to keep cash accessible all the time.

I’m afraid that we would have to do the biopsy and go through that whole rule out lymphoma thing. But our discharge orders indicated that GI TB, lymphoma unlikely… So I’m holding on to that.

One time I jokingly said that my life can be divided into two parts: Life before watching Grave of the Fireflies and life after Grave of the Fireflies. It’s that earth-shattering for me. The worst part is, this movie is a true story of Akiyuki Nosaka.

This is a beautiful movie but I will never watch it again. It broke me. The only Studio Ghibli movie I will not watch again. I told friends that right after watching Oppenheimer, they should watch Grave of the Fireflies and see the polar opposites of the war.

Now that it’s available on Netflix, this movie teases me. Like it’s beckoning, “come on, you know you want to watch me.” But then, I’m in  an emotionally vulnerable position right now so it would be a huge mistake to try and watch this again.

I’ll just wait for The Boy and the Heron to pop in Netflix and have my Studio Ghibli binge later.