I’m running out of time trying to finish a long piece before the whole of Asia goes on holiday for the Lunar New Year. People in Hong Kong and Malaysia will be slowing down tomorrow and everyone will be off the entire week next week.
I haven’t been really productive as I should have been because I’m always sleepy during the day. I woke up at 5 am today after sleeping at around past 3 am to cook breakfast. Ate C was sick after getting her booster shot so I had to take over.
Slept at 6 am again then got woken up at 7 because the cats kept opening my door (since it’s broken, it had no resistance). I desperately wanted a quick shuteye so I threw out the cats, stuck something to my door so they can’t push it, and slept. But work beckoned at 9 am. π
Enough is enough. I went to SM Marikina this evening to buy a barrel lock, some door handles, wood glue and other stuff.
It’s ugly AF but it does the job. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
That should keep out the cats. I’ll solve the ugliness later.
During the small hours that I’m awake, I try to make myself fall asleep by thinking of projects I must do. One of those times I thought about removing my piano setup near the stairs and replace it with some drawers to corral my kids’ stuff that overflowed from their small study area.
Now it’s neater. That painting above was done by my sister. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Bike helmets, shopping bags, and cat supplies are also stuffed in there.
And of course, my cats have started to claim the area as their own.
Photo by CallMeCreation.com Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Now I need to go to Mr DIY again for fake indoor plants/flowers. Because cats.
Writing a longish article today was super laborious that it felt like giving birth. I wanted to crack my head on the table just to get things going.
And I have three more articles to go. Why I’m in a rut like this again?! π€¦π»ββοΈ
I need to go out.
Where will I go? Yesterday we logged 37k new cases. People around my apartment are coughing. My other neighbors caught the omicron bug.
I need to drive tomorrow. Writer’s block again.
Earlier tonight I was able to open my Shutterfly account, which is a repository of all my digital photos in the early 2000s. And I saw these:
My sister just called him Baby so the name stuck. He was our cat who stayed with my dad in his room when he died in his sleep. He didn’t leave my dad until my brother came. He was such a beautiful cat. A week after my dad was cremated, this cat just ran away.
He reminds me of my fat cat, Kimchi, who currently has an infection on her right eye (see the pink rims?). It’s such a labor of love catching her and restraining her so that we can give her eye drops at least twice a day. She’s such a grumpy cat.
Photo by ΠΠ°ΡΠ³Π°ΡΠΈΡΠ° ΠΡΠΊΠΎΠ²ΡΠΊΠ°Ρ on Pexels.com
I don’t know if I should be upset but I have recurring dreams about or set in our old house where I grew up. It was a small house in an area that J would have called ghetto. But it was a place where I learned how to deal with people from all walks of life. My father was obsessed with home ownership as he grew up materially/financially insecure. Home ownership was something my parents worked at even though they were struggling PhD students/candidates, assistant professors working on their tenure, putting four children though private school. So that was they all could afford–a small house in a neighborhood that you had to access through an esquinita (street corner turning into an alley). But as early as 1984 they were already working on building a bigger house right inside the university so they knew we won’t have to stay there that long.
Anyway, for the past few weeks or months, I had vague dreams set in that place or a similar-looking place. I cannot remember what exactly those dreams were but I knew by feeling it was set there or it was about it.
It was sort of…comforting. It was familiar, it was like being in a womb. After waking up, I have some kind of feeling similar to what I feel when I hear the song “These Dreams” by Heart.
I don’t know…maybe I’m looking for some kind of comfort because I’m just a fraud. I pretend and put up a front that I am brave and a strong single mother and I get things together but in reality I’m just scared and insecure. Maybe I just want to feel protected. Maybe I’m just tired being strong.
This is also probably why Kimchi keeps on sleeping near me or with me. It’s familiar, it’s comforting. It’s like being in a womb. She can just let go because she knows she is protected.
I was working today when I found Kimchi tucked in between my comforter, sleeping soundly, like everything is alright in the world. I don’t know how she managed to get herself wrapped around my sheets but there she is, savoring the smell of her human mommy. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I received this from my Zennya app two days ago. This is how terrible the situation is right now. The DOH reported 33k new cases today, and this does not include those who just used antigen tests and those who chose not to test at all because of the lack of test kits or testing labs still operating at capacity. My nephew tested positive for Covid via antigen test after exhibiting symptoms (he’s still unvaccinated because vaccination for kids 5-11 years old have not started yet). He has fever, colds, cough, vomiting, headaches…Of course my mom’s entire household may be infected too, it’s just that they’ve already had their booster shots so the symptoms are not that bad or no symptoms at all. They need to isolate again for 10 days.
My sister says she suspects that the carrier is their bi-weekly cleaner who refuses to be vaccinated.
One of my high school classmates who’s a nurse said there is an unusual surge of people now wanting to be vaccinated. I told him, who wouldn’t want to be vaccinated in this situation?
Even though there’s no strict lockdown now, people are just too afraid to go out. Yesterday only a few like me dared to go out because of vaccination. A reporter posted on Facebook that she was the only customer in a restaurant in Greenbelt today. Greenbelt is deserted.
Meanwhile, Comelec’s database was hacked again ahead of the national elections. The hack in 2016 was the biggest data breach, topping that of Turkey, that same month.
A Manila Bulletin piece said that hackers were able to enter the Comelecβs system and downloaded 60 gigabytesβ worth of files that include usernames and PINS of vote-counting machines, which will be used for the 2022 polls. #PHVote#WeDecide
Comelec is denying Manila Bulletin’s story but I’d rather believe Art Samaniego (who broke the story about BDO Unibank’s security breach that led to funds of 700 depositors being siphoned off) than a government agency that has been told by the National Privacy Commission that it is guilty of violating the Data Privacy Act for the 2016 hacking incident.
To help me balance these WTF news, I just turn to my cats. They’re my stress relievers. They’re so lovely to squish.
Kimchi is a cow. I need to exercise her. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Our laser pointer got broken. I need to buy a new one to exercise the cats.
I still feel like crap today because of the after effects of the booster shot but I had back to back calls today. No rest for the weary. My head was pounding and I felt feverish at times so I had to lie down in between calls. Finally at around 4 pm I took a nap and woke up at 5 pm and I no longer felt uploading one story on our CMS.
My boss told me our global head is going to call me in the coming weeks regarding my promotion and the alternative to moving to Singapore. I am adamant that I will not move to Singapore.
Look, if these companies in Forbes’ list can grant remote working, why can’t my company too? I mean there is little reason for them to plant me there when all the admin stuff is already concentrated in London. Client meetings and such can be scheduled when I fly in there.
It was different when J was still here. I would have worked my way into transferring to Singapore if he chose to do so for his career. But things are different now.
The hearing of Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr’s disqualification case before the Commission on Elections (Comelec) was slated for today. The coward was a no-show. The criminal has been convicted of tax evasion by the lower courts several years ago and now he faces three petitions for his disqualification. He keeps on submitting dubious documents as he tries to worm his way out of this one.
I wish this was a satire or a joke. BUT IT IS NOT! OMG! Even my kids could make up better excuses than this. *facepalm* People online are joking that we now have a new Covid variant called Zoomicron, which can be transmitted through Zoom.
No, you can’t make this up. It’s too stupid. But here it is, it’s all over the news.
One of the Commissioners is now livid.
They want to delay this as long as they can so he can continue to run even though he is a convicted criminal.
Meanwhile, we stocked up on KN95/KN94 masks because double masking with surgical + cloth for a better fit doesn’t cut it anymore.
Yep, the growth is exponential. Good luck to all of us. I was chatting with a source last night and he projected that we will be hitting 50k cases by Monday and then 100k towards the end of the month. By Feb this will taper off but before that, all of us would have caught it by then. He told me he already stocked up on oxygen tanks and meds. Forget about hospitals, he told me, we are incapable of getting help from the hospitals now. I told my sisters that they should make sure the oxygen tank at home is filled up just in case my mom gets hit again.
So 2022 is like a repeat of 2021, only that we are just too tired of the shit of last year. Year 3 of bullshit. So people are now turning to little things like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson taking on Cookie Monster on Twitter for some amusement.
I envy my cats. No stress, no problems. The only stressors they have are my two-legged children disturbing their peace.
Lucky cat. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
As Twin I said, in her next life she wants to be our cat.
I had been feeling dissatisfied with my computer keyboard as the keys keep getting stuck. I knew it was because it was dirty and it has been a few years old (probably six years old or more?). I had been window shopping for keyboards online and the ones I like are a few thousands of pesos…something I could not justify yet given that my current Logitech keyboard is perfectly serviceable.
Then I tried cleaning it myself.
With Youtube, a lot of patience, a stick vacuum cleaner, alcohol sprayer, a lot of cotton buds, and Wipeout (which you can get from any cleaning supplies section of a hardware or supermarket), I started disassembling my keyboard.
Before cleaning. Itβs a petridish harboring pathogenic microorganisms and whatnot. Photo by CallMeCreation.comWipeout and tweezers. Photo by CallMeCreation.comI was half afraid that I won’t be able to return the keys. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Before
After
I sprayed everything with alcohol and cleaned it with cotton buds and a small and stiff paint brush. Then I used the vacuum cleaner (with a long nose attachment) to suck out the remaining dirt lurking in the membrane.Then I lubricated the shafts with Wipeout (it has lanolin) so they won’t get stuck when I press the keys.
Before
After
Here comes the hard part: taking off everything and cleaning each key with alcohol and in-between the keys and the membranes. I think it took me an hour or so. And one by one I lubricated the keys before returning them to their proper positions.
And for the love of God, if you’re anything like me who gets lost in mall parking spaces and wandering around trying to remember where I parked my car, PLEASE TAKE A PHOTO OF YOUR KEYBOARD before disassembling it. You may forget where the quotation marks and the colons are placed.
No, I didn’t forget to take a photo of my keyboard since one guy whose tutorial I watched reminded me of it. I could only imagine my frustration trying to piece back together my keyboard without a photo to guide me. This guy, didn’t take a photo so he swapped keys and had to take off the keys and put them back in again. So it’s kinda assuring to know that I’m not the only one who’s dumb like that.
Here is the video to show you how to lubricate the keys of a membrane keyboard. I don’t know if it’s the same for a mechanical keyboard but he warned that the clackety-clack of the mechanical keyboard may get muted if you lubricate the keys too much. It did turn by formerly clackety-clack keyboard silent now.
A clean, new-ish keyboard to inspire my workday…
I saved myself about PHP 2,000. If I didn’t solve the key-sticking problem by cleaning my old Logitech keyboard, then I would have been clicking my way into buying that Logitech K580 that I could also use with my iPad 9
Oh well, it was an unnecessary expense anyway.
There were a lot of cat hair underneath the keys. My cats love sitting or lying on anything that I am working on or working with, which includes keyboards, the printer, or my iPad.
This monster loves sitting on my iPad. See the cover? It’s full of scratches. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I love my little monsters anyway.
Sushi is savoring my petting. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
