Now that these tests are out of the way, I can concentrate on other tasks now such as scheduling my appointments with other doctors 😑 which is the hardest part.
I forgot to get my results 😑 before leaving for QC. But I guess they’re the same from last year. The fact that I suspect it was pancreatitis that pushed me to see doctors this weekend, it’s no doubt the trigger are my triglycerides that are likely much more elevated now. 🫠
I now have to prepare my own food since I have to lower my bad cholesterol and triglycerides…no more processed carbohydrates for me. Complex carbs and fish. Steamed, grilled, and broiled/boiled. Salmon, mackerel, tuna, and chicken. 😭 Sigh. I have to look for ways to make vegetables more appetizing. Sweet potatoes. I’ve already refrained from eating sweet stuff. I have to hoard smoked salmon when I see them.
Ageing is hard. But dying is harder. Choose your hard. 🚩
Back in the city. Waiting for Twin A who was having a haircut. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I wanted to drop by at Art Fair Manila this afternoon coming from the south but I had an inkling that people may be swarming the area. I just went straight home to do the usual weekend errands.
Good thing I listened to my gut feel. A journo posted on FB that it took him 15 mins to get out of the 3F parking area of Greenbelt 1. The volume of cars was more than the usual. He said it seemed like a lot of people don’t care about the 8.7% inflation rate. Or everyone went to Art Fair Manila, as one commenter said. 🤔 Hmmm, I haven’t realized that the local art scene has become more mainstream and is no longer the exclusive territory of the artsy fartsy crowd. I mean, that’s good. But then, there’s the sad reality that people go to art exhibits just to do their Tik Tok videos there and not to appreciate art, as one local artist lamented in a social media post. He/she caught some kids carelessly putting their stuff on his/her work so they can do their Tik Tok videos. 😢
I wish BDO would open up its art collection to the public because they are beautiful. I am only one of the few who got access to their collection when I attended one party there in 2018. I only was able to take a few photos of the paintings I liked for future reference. There were a lot to take in.
If I’m not mistaken, this is an Anita Magsaysay-Ho. A friend posted on FB an Anita Magsaysay-Ho painting that was sold for PHP 84.5m a few days ago 😶🌫️ Photo by CallMeCreation.comFernando Amorsolo. Photo by CallMeCreation.comAgain, if I’m not mistaken, this is a Manansala. I had a Manansala mosaic that I lost forever and ever in the old house. I think the girls’ dad took it to his province. 😭 Photo by CallMeCreation.com Photo by CallMeCreation.com This could be an Amorsolo, I think. Photo by CallMeCreation.com Now, this artist escapes me. Photo by CallMeCreation.com I never knew I would be drawn to Ang Kiukok, but I am. When I was young, I couldn’t “get” him and HR Ocampo. But the older I get, the more I appreciate Ang Kiukok’s art. Comedian Joey de Leon (who is also an fine artist) is a known collector of Ang Kiukok. Photo by CallMeCreation.com Another Ang Kiukok. I like the warm colors. Photo by CallMeCreation.com I know I wrote down the name of this artist because this doesn’t show any signature style of any national/well-known local artist. Now I can’t find it so I can’t identify this properly. But I like it just the same because this looks like something I would paint in the future. Photo by CallMeCreation.com Quite frankly, a lot of the paintings sold in Tiendesitas are imitating Zalameda so it’s hard to pick out this artist from the ones being sold everywhere. But I like the colors in this one. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Kimchi waiting for me to come home from my mommy errand this morning. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
We will be driving tonight to my hometown. I need a change of scenery to ground me and to chase the blues away. To see my BFFs to cheer me up. Perhaps take a little hike to the forested upper campus. I need to let go of things that I cannot control.
I decided to cook hotpot today.
Lots and lots of different mushrooms that I bought from Sarang Mart, meat, tofu and dumplings. Photo by CallMeCreation.comJust letting the main ingredients boil first. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I really need to shake this bad vibes off and clear away the cobwebs. I don’t know what else I should be doing to lift the dark clouds over my head.
A few hours later…
Photo by Twin A.
Remind me to leave much, much later on a Friday night. 🫠
I found forever on EDSA. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I spent half of my day yesterday just driving. 🤦♀️ Only 14km roundtrip but it felt like 120km.
I went to Greenhills to have my daughter’s phone repaired (cracked LCD) and to buy a door knob for my room here in the apartment. OMG! It’s horrific out there!
It was so exhausting that I fell asleep on my bed with my lights on. 🫠
Meanwhile, I’m trying to sell my iPad 9 with 256GB ROM to my bro since I want to shift to Samsung Galaxy Tab S8. Ipad 9’s screen is too big for me whereas Samsung’s Tab S8 can be held by one hand. Plus iPad’s RAM is 3GB vs Samsung’s 8GB RAM.
I just lightly used this because it was just too big. I didn’t use the power brick and cord because I knew eventually I would have to sell this. Photo by CallMeCreation.com Can be a semi-laptop replacement. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I told my bro that all the accessories are included like the pen and two covers, one of the covers is a keyboard combo that makes it more viable for him to be a laptop replacement when he has meetings and so on.
I tried using it as a laptop replacement but it just doesn’t cut it. The only time I was able to use it as such was when I tweaked (at my mom’s house) and read my speech during last August’s graduation rites of my undergrad college.
I could barely use it for work because it was too big to chuck in my handbag. Might as well bring my full-powered laptop with me if I still need to bring another bag.
When I travel, I find myself still reaching for my phone to scroll through IG and watch Youtube videos. It takes two hands to be able to watch anything on this iPad.
OS upgrades until 2026, security updates until 2027 or 2028.
But I’m still on a fence here since parts for iPads are easier to get here (albeit the generic ones from some Shenzen factory) than for Samsung Tabs. Resale value also lower for Android tablets.
But if I buy it now, S8 comes with a free slim case with keyboard.
I’ll visit a Samsung store to check it out before I let go of the iPad.
Hmmm so it seems like the world is conspiring against me. The Tab S8 in brick and mortar stores no longer offer the bundled keyboard case because it was a promo until supplies last. 😵💫
In other domestic developments, I finally have a door knob after destroying my door when my kitties were locked inside.
The carpenters had to put body fillers to repair the door. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
The workers have to sand this down tomorrow so to make the surface smooth and for the new coat of paint to stick.
I now have a functional door lock after months of making do with a barrel lock and a duct taped hole. 🥴
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.
I read on Twitter that carmageddon was back last Friday, the eve of the Alert Level 3 (a.k.a loosening of lockdown to whatever) implementation. I am thankful that big events are still not allowed or else I would have been one of those suffering from a three-hour traffic jam on EDSA.
I have written numerous pieces about Metro Manila traffic and the car-centric culture that we have because our government since the beginning of time did not prioritize public transportation and kept on pandering to the oligarchs and the moneyed class–the ones who can afford to buy private cars. The Philippines was the first one to have a light railway transit in ASEAN, which was financed by foreign loans and helped the Marcoses get richer by the minute (just read between the lines).
Manila in 1984, during the time of Ferdinand Marcos, oversaw construction of the first electric rail line in ASEAN, but this system subsequently suffered from a lack of decent maintenance bringing a raft of problems. Finally it was repaired and renovated; in 2004 a second LRT line was added, and this was followed in 2005 by three MRT lines. Currently a one-line LRT expansion is in the planning stages. At present the entire rail system extends 47.9 kilometers.
Update: They have already extended LRT Line 2 up to Antipolo. MRT 7would also be completed soon.
So of course it was just a piece of trophy infrastructure project. Subsequent administrations did not prioritize public transport, and thus, we got left behind. Imagine, we were ahead of Singapore by three years and look at them now! I can get around Singapore without taxis most of the time there. Riding the bus there is not like going into a battlefield like here.
We used to have a 1,100-km railway from Manila to Legazpi City in Albay and my father used to take the train daily from Makati (where they lived during their first years of marriage) to UP Los Baños where he was a research assistant). It was doable. The Philippine National Railway system fell into disrepair because of this neglect and wrong priorities of past administrations. Every year we get choked by cars on highways and small backroads because we don’t have enough trains. Don’t talk to me about the controversies about the financing of these various train projects because I’ve been writing about them for 15 years or so and bugging Finance and Transport secretaries year in and year out about this and the corruption surrounding these projects is frustrating.
So now we have carmageddon that is getting worse every year. It takes a huge toll on our mental health and it is not easing up anytime soon. Not being able to chase stories physically (via in-person news coverage) is a major drag during this pandemic but it has helped me get off that carmageddon agony for almost two years. I realized now that life is super refreshing, despite Covid, without the traffic jam that sucked my soul.
AND if the plan to build my tiny house in my hometown pans out, I guess my travel time will be cut into half but I would have to drive 65 km one way everyday to Makati. Gas and toll would eat into my budget but it would be better for my sanity I guess. If I leave early enough from my hometown (like 6 am-ish) and leave Makati by 5pm, I would be home by 6:30 or 7pm. If I leave Makati at 10 pm, I would be in our hometown by 11 pm. From Makati to Quezon City pre-pandemic I would arrive home by 9 pm if I leave at 5 pm.
I did the hometown-Makati-hometown daily for a couple of years when the girls were still babies. I brought them to my mom’s house and we lived there for three months every summer to cool off because our old house in QC was like an oven. Plus playgrounds and grassy fields where they had picnics every afternoon were just walking distance–without cars and pollution. I drove from my hometown to Makati four times a week if I can help it. It wasn’t that much of a hassle
Now that I don’t have to be in Makati regularly because we already have a permanent Manila reporter (while I do my coverage of Southeast Asia remotely), I can limit my trips to Makati in a week. I could have my meetings and coverage/conferences confined all in one or two days. What would change though is I need to fly to Singapore frequently or somewhere else in Asia regularly (at least once a month, if things go according to plan). That can be solved by hiring my mom’s driver to drive me in my car to the airport and take the earliest flight out of Manila and have him drive me back again from the airport in Manila back to our hometown. Right now I’m spoiled by Grab.
I like living where I am now because everything is convenient since I have two supermarkets within walking distance from my apartment, I have a lot of food choices within Grab distance. If I need materials, furniture, appliance or whatever, I can just pop in the nearest SM (which is like 3 km). In my hometown, I am confined to whatever is available in our tiny mall and choices are very limited. No Grab.
But I have mountains, trees, fresh air, freedom to bike anywhere, walk to anywhere.
I think I’m at that stage where I’d choose to live a boring life than suffer 6 hours on the road daily. I’m done with night life of my youth (I’ve had plenty of those). I can finally leave Metro Manila for good.
