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. 👗👛💄
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. 🤣
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.
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.
Inside a taxi on the way home. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I left my car at the auto shop. I am car-less for a month and I pray that I won’t have any event in Makati that I need to go to because OMG it’s so hard to book Grab today and all days. 😭
Rainy Sunday. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I feel forlorn. I’m immobile. First time I am car-less in Metro Manila since 2009. I hope I will have it back before July 22. 😭😭😭
Meanwhile, the girls are having dinner with their dad and paternal aunts and uncles tonight. All is supposed to be well but suddenly Twin A sent me this screenshot (from I don’t know whose phone). It’s an FB post of their dad that says “Happy Fathers’ Day, regular customers!”
I don’t care if he has a harem or he takes out prostitutes regularly but he forgets he has children who can see his social media posts and they’re all girls 🤬 No delicadeza at all!
Now I don’t know how I would do damage control but I have to talk to my children about female dignity and we are more than sex objects. This is all upsetting.
You see, they have developed abhorrence towards the male sex because of what their dad did/is doing and what Tito J did/is doing. They no longer call J as Tito J but they call him by a codename or sometimes he goes nameless when they happen to remember him/or an incident with him in it. That’s how they hate him now. It doesn’t help that they saw and keep seeing J’s gf online who they think is a slut or not different from the women in the above screenshot. They adored him before. They looked up to him. Twin I was even copying his habits like tea drinking and she came to like vegetables. Now she dropped the tea drinking after she discovered about his gf. I could only feel pity towards my girl whose only male role model became eroded.
And now they’re seeing their dad’s perversion.
They told me once when they slept in their dad’s house that they used his laptop and saw a lot of “photos of women” (oh dear lord, I hope is not porn) in the hard drive or somewhere in his computer.
This is what I’m afraid of. Without a proper male role model, they may have a distorted view of the opposite sex and may get into wrong/troubled relationships in the future. I grew up seeing my mother’s co-dependence so that’s what I learned from her, hence, I inherited the same behavioral defect, which my first shrink told me.
I am afraid that my girls would only see their value if they’re all “sexed up” because that’s how the men in their lives see women: as sex objects. If the women that the the girls’ father figures keep always show their boobs, are preoccupied with their looks, and are scantily clad in public, they would think that is the beauty standard. Since I don’t do those, they would think that must be the reason why I always get cheated on. Even though they know it’s not, at the back of their minds it could be one of those things. Right now, both of them feel they’re ugly and have very low self-esteem. Despite my best efforts to lift up their self-esteem and their morale, if they don’t have a male authoritative figure who can say that they’re beautiful and smart, they would forever have these chips on their shoulders. How do I know? Because I grew up like that. I always thought myself ugly and unworthy of anything because my father is a narcissistic idiot.
Now I’m treading treacherous waters. How do I navigate this difficult narrative? My closest male friend is gay. They’re all gay! So who to talk to about this? I need to ask my brother to help correct this distortion.
They’re adolescents now. How do I talk to them about healthy self-image when I struggle with it myself?😥
Yesterday morning, my neighbors’ cars were towed by the MMDA traffic patrol for obstruction of sidewalks. My neighbors’ landlady was so angry about the whole commotion, telling the traffic patrol group that they were not illegally parked because that was a designated parking area for her tenants. The problem, however, is that the parking slots were too short so the SUVs parked there ate up the sidewalk. So the video here showed some of my neighbors’ SUVs being towed away.
Whooops! They were towed again today.
Good thing I was parked inside the compound after my car repairs were done.
Meanwhile, the new national security advisor of Marcos Jr wants the US, Europe, and Japan to impose a trade embargo on us with her pronouncements. The witch.
As a lawyer-friend said: “You can’t possibly be neutral if you’re pivoting to one belligerent. The principal right of the neutral nation is that of inviolability; its principal duties are those of abstention and impartiality (the Hague III, Art 2, law on neutrality).”
The problem with these narcissists is that they think we are among the big guys that whatever we do has weight. Nope, we’re just mosquitos and trade embargoes will kill us.
I’ve loaded the food and drinks at the back of the car, the fins and snorkel sets, and the diving buoy. I’m busy packing now but my bossy cat, Kimchi, doesn’t want me to go.
Look at that angry face, Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I thought I could bring the bikes with us since we would be heading straight to my hometown after this. Nope. Our stuff wouldn’t fit.
Which brings me to the point that a sedan wouldn’t really do us any good since we usually go for outdoor stuff. We do a lot of driving and Philippine provincial roads do not play nice with cars with low clearance.
I saw this displayed at SM Marikina earlier this week and I thought it was roomy enough for us.
The two backseat rows fold flat for cargo, which is great because I haul bikes, a piano, and some furniture. More frequently than average people. Since I’m moving back to my hometown, I guess my sister-in-law and my nephew would be tagging along with us more often because my brother is lazy and doesn’t like driving.
But then again, this is the wrong time to be thinking about this. Probably when we have finally settled in our own home and we have emerged from the recession, I will revisit this Toyota Avanza.
I really don’t understand this metric. This is used by companies wanting unrealistic valuation and investors bit the bullet because…they need to close a deal and show their LPs that they’re doing “something”.
Now that startups and even the unicorns and listed tech companies are laying off people by the thousands (I just edited a story about this in Asia a few weeks ago) as funding dries up and investors begin to see reason. Gone are the days when Uber and WeWork burn money like it’s growing on trees. Things are so bad right now that those who have jumped from their stable jobs to hustle on their startups are seeing doors close on them. Cost of money is rising, with inflation hitting multiple-year record highs, hence, we see central banks looking through their tool kits to stem possible runaway inflation. Investors are now turning off the tap and begin to be more selective in their deals. Companies that I’ve talked to are preferring cash over anything else these days.
Just today, Philippines Statistics Authority reported that last month’s inflation rate was the highest in four years at 5.4%, from 4.9% in April. Gone were the days when I was reporting inflation rate at 1%, T-bills at near-zero levels, and very loose policy rates (which was boring us to tears) that banks and insurance companies were looking at alternative investment vehicles in search of higher yields.
As it stands, inflation is emerging as a big headache for the incoming administration of President-elect Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., who is yet to reveal his full economic plans for the country.
The BSP is racing to control prices and has already made its first decisive action to fight inflation last month by hiking rates for the first time in three years. Diokno, who will cut short his term as BSP governor to join the Marcos cabinet as finance secretary, hinted at another rate hike in June.
Philippine Star
I feel bad for my brother, who is trying to close a housing loan with PS Bank and he has been racing against time. If he can’t close the loan (because the Register of Deeds is slow in releasing the title), he has to work again on the loan with higher rates for the townhouse he is trying to buy.
This situation will squeeze small and medium enterprises with existing loans; if they don’t have fixed-rate loans, then this will hurt them so much.
Recession is very much in the offing.
I just bought vegetables and a few oranges last night and I spent PhP 1,200 that is good for four people for a week. And that’s not even the same amount of vegetables I used to buy six months or a year ago.
It hurts a middle class citizen like me but I’m luckier that I can still spend for “frivolous needs” like wheel alignment and clothes shopping because my children got bigger again and no longer fit in their clothes I bought a few months ago.
Clothes and and sandals shopping at SM tonightHaving my car’s wheels aligned and steering wheel straightened outthis afternoonPhotos by CallMeCreation.com
This, however, is a different story for those who belong to the lower economic strata who can barely budget their PHP 570-a-day minimum wage, which includes costly transport costs. It’s no wonder why people still gravitate towards the long queues at MRT and EDSA Carousel buses because right now these are still free. Filipinos could no longer afford basic transportation costs.
PANOORIN: Maagang humaba ang pila ng mga pasahero na sasakay sa EDSA carousel bus sa Monumento Caloocan ngayong Martes. Ang ibang pasahero, mas pinipili raw mag-commute kaysa magdala ng sasakyan dahil sa mahal ng gasolina ngayon. | via @_jamesJApic.twitter.com/SavZuNrlDo
I have to be selective with the face-to-face meetings because petroleum is so precious right now. I had filled up my tank (which was already half-full) tonight for around PHP 1,700, which a year ago would be enough to fill up my car from near-empty.
Despite the high cost of driving your own car, people like me bite the bullet because there are no Grab cars (heard they decommissioned a lot of Grab cars because they’re older than 5 years already), the queues in MRT and buses are out of this world, and the traffic is much worse than pre-pandemic levels.
We are in a fucking transportation crisis.
Metro Manila is no longer livable.
I had been living here full-time for more than 20 years and I can see how things have deteriorated over time. I can’t wait to move back to my hometown (even if that means I lose my autonomy because I will be nearer my siblings who can poke their heads into my business) because I’m so tired of the drive. The driving time of my brother and mine were the same last Saturday. His 70 km vs my 14 km both for 1.5 hrs. This is really absurd.
