Tag Archives: COVID-19

Karl

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If there’s a larger than life I personality I want to be friends with, it would be Karl Lagerfeld or Rajiv Surendra.

Karl’s life is interesting—not because of money that came with his life but it doesn’t hurt, no?—but he lived beautifully and he chased intellectualism not just for the sake of it but because he was very curious. Of course he was sort of a snob and he was raised by a ruthless mother but for some reason he loved her dearly. From his stories (published in Vogue and other interviews), his mother sounds like Elton John’s mother (gleaned from the movie Rocketman).

Anyway, I remember one article in Vogue (when I was still a devoted reader) that he spoke several languages and read in French, German, and English. He loved books. He was one of the biggest bibliophiles there is. He collected books and read them all. He was interested in so many things, especially history. His library is one of my dream libraries and I could happily pass my days in there. We can talk about politics, history, philosophy, art—so many things—over tea and biscuits (he eliminated sweets from his diet).

Photo from MyModernMet.com

I also remember his love for wearing Hedi Slimane suits. There was an article in Vogue where he discussed his weariness of flying/airports post 9/11 (how strictly insane and tedious flying became right after 9/11) so he had outfitted several SUVs to be luxurious cabins so he can cross countries in Europe without having to suffer the indignities of stripping your clothes/shoes just authorities can scan you for possible deadly weapons or bombs.

I wish I have his discipline of sketching all the time. He wanted to be a cartoonist, not a fashion designer at first. He figured he could make a better living out of sketching clothes.

I could feel his frustration of wanting to play the piano but this desire to learn it was stamped out by his incorrigible mother. I figured those who leaned towards the arts sometimes find themselves drawn to other art forms as a way to express themselves.

Hmm, the two persons I mentioned above have another thing in common: they’re both gay. I’m good friends with gay men and as I told one gay man in Singapore, I am a fairy princess. I like the company of gay men because they’re interesting and they like my friendship. I had been to gay bars in Manila with K and his friends are fun to be with; we were dancing on the ledge of a bar until the wee hours (this was before I got married).

hand-stitching again. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I’m back to sewing again as a form of procrastination. I can’t finish the poppy sketch yet since it’s complicated for my bleeding brain (I just finished an article today). I think the curtain panels will be up in the girls’ room by the end of this week.

I’m also teaching a colleague how to survive the China lockdown because he doesn’t know how to cook. His initial lockdowns were in Kuala Lumpur and he was privileged enough not to worry about supplies when he was there. I told him to grab lots of Indomee instant noodles (he’s Chinese Malaysian) and do this:

Lucky Me Pancit Canton by Monde Nissin. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Teaching him what to buy and what to do with them. Gah! I wonder how these people survive all these years by just eating out.

Screenshot from NIkkei Asia

This zero-Covid policy of China has seen a lot of businesses wanting to flee HK. My former APAC boss is now in Manila to escape the draconian policies of HK and give her toddlers a respite from being locked up indoors.

In contrast, Singapore is now allowing people to be maskless if outdoors. My friend-colleague said it’s such a relief especially if she’s taking her walks for her daily exercise. Our new APAC head, who’s based in Seoul, said most people there have been getting Covid that it doesn’t make sense to control movement. So the rest of the world has adopted the living-with-Covid policy and is now opening up borders.

I’m raring to go to the sea.

Maricaban, Batangas. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

This photo was taken when we took the boat from Eagle Point Resort to Maricaban island. The diving was not good but the winds were violent in Sombrero island so we were taken here. Some of these boats took novice scuba divers where we were freediving.

Ahhhh, diving. I really, really missed you.

Blunders

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As I mentioned yesterday, there were several miscalculations that Putin had in his invasion of Ukraine. He had underestimated the resistance from ordinary citizens of Ukraine and across the world.

Nonetheless, given Russia’s overwhelming forces and Mr Putin’s ruthless nature, expect the invaders to make gains in the coming days. The attacks on Kyiv will grow fiercer. One consequence of that? Growing anger in the West—among ordinary people as well as national leaders. More military gear, including, remarkably, anti-tank rockets and Stinger missiles from Germany, is heading to Ukraine. Sanctions on Russia are becoming more severe. Beyond the exclusion of some Russian banks from the SWIFT system, more serious are the efforts by Europe and America to stop Russia’s central bank accessing much of its $600bn-plus in foreign reserves. Watch on Monday how markets react to that. It’s unlikely to be pretty for Russia, especially the rouble. Some sort of Russian retaliation towards the West should be expected. The price of oil and gas could yet surge.

The Economist’s
Adam Roberts, Digital Editor

Now its currency tumbled 40% while interest rates climbed 20%. Such rough economic fallout will surely make ordinary Russians grow angry at Putin and bolder in their opposition to this war. Ukraine is now urging Visa and Mastercard to suspend the facilitation of payments in Russia, further hurting its people.

And apparently some people in the US are preparing for a possible nuclear war, giving rise to the Cold War era fear harbored by people on both sides of the Atlantic for decades before the fall of USSR.

On the home front, the price of liquefied petroleum gas—the main fuel for cooking in Filipino homes—is now increasing by at least PHP 7 per kg = PHP 77 more for an 11kg tank. I think it has now gone above PHP 1000 per 11kg tank when a few months ago it was just at PHP 700+. The Department of Energy said its petition to suspend the excise tax on fuels is still pending in Congress, the delegates of which are already busy campaigning. If we don’t halt the excise taxes on the fuels, the cost of goods and services would skyrocket in the next week or two.

The market volatility would send valuations askew again and some deals would have to be delayed given the instability. I had been busy scanning the news for developments and how the markets are behaving since it is now determining the angles for the news I should be aiming for.

Today’s press conference. The most critical info during this session is how much more are we going to pay for our electricity this coming summer and is our supply enough given the constraints that we are facing. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

With this so much tension in the world today (including the escalating deaths in HK due to a belated spike in Covid cases), my colleague now asked me is the apocalypse here now?

If such is the case, I’m glad I’m out of my former hellhole so I can concentrate on my remaining time on earth with my daughters. I was chatting with a fellow editor-journo who told me he is escaping from the city and is moving his family to Sta. Rosa, Laguna. His house will be finished this week and they will start moving next week. Good for you, I told him. I will be following you but further down south because I’m tired of the city too. If the world is going to end, at least we will be more comfortable than being stuck in the city and Metro Manila is the worst place to be during an apocalypse. EDSA is already an Armageddon in itself.

But before the world ends, I have a press conference to attend on Thursday in Makati and our Manila reporter and I would be working again in a coffee shop somewhere near the company HQ that will hold the conference. Face to face meetings are coming back and the government is going to bring down the Covid Alert Level to number 1 starting tomorrow. They finally decided to live with Covid as the new normal instead of following China’s/HK’s stance of zero-Covid policy.

Metro Manila and 38 other areas will be under Alert Level 1 from March 1-15
Read more: https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/?p=1561207#ixzz7MBdIWszb
Follow us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook

Hopefully face to face schooling will follow because the children are really suffering from two years of remote learning. These are the “lost years” for them.

And before the world ends, I still have transcriptions to finish. Hopefully I can publish two stories tomorrow.

And oh, let me go diving first. It’s so freaking hot these days.

Bagalangit Hideaways, Anilao, Mabini, Batangas. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Coward

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Bongbong Marcos won’t attend forum for presidential bets, says KBP prexy

FILE PHOTO: Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. INQUIRER FILES

He has never participated in any public forum that is not scripted or not assured that he would be coddled. Because he is a stupid coward who does not have anything to say. Because he is an empty, drug-addled vessel.

And his social media trolls will just demonize media and blame us for our biases.

How do we battle these devils of disinformation and lies? How do we convince voters that he shouldn’t lead us? How how how how???

I want to raze the Philippines to the ground if he wins. OMG that would be a nightmare.

Meanwhile, my doctor said we will be going back to once every three nights of alprazolam because of my sleeping issues. She says a lot of her patients who had Covid still have sleep problems, too. I can take melatonin in-between to help me get my sleeping hours back to normal again. It is really affecting my productivity.

I told her it feels like I’m operating in a different timezone.

She was alarmed when I told her that I always get awakened at 3 am or 5 am despite sleeping at 2 am and that time a week or two ago when I slept at 7 am because I was really struggling with falling asleep even without triggers. I told her I don’t understand why I have this problem when I no longer feel the same kind of J-triggered anxiety like before or I don’t have anxiety like I used to. Despite what I wrote yesterday, I slept undisturbed until 7:30 am last night until this morning because I was on alprazolam. I wasn’t triggered. Before, my sleep was very disturbed even after taking alprazolam because/whenever I got triggered. So this is an improvement.

So there you go, I’m still on tranquilizers when I’m supposed to be off it by now and only the antidepressant escitalopram is supposed to remain. *sigh* So the whole of February is trying to be normal and hopefully by March I’m back on Singapore/Manila timezone (GMT 8+).

Here are my colleagues who are with me during my zombie moments:

Cat and Chonky cat. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Speaking of colleagues, I chatted with my outgoing APAC boss (who is supposed to be on terminal leave since yesterday) and told me she already submitted to the global head the promotions and raises for colleagues I recommended, and for mine as well.

Then the incoming APAC boss told me that I don’t have to be in Singapore. Yey. So I just have to wait for the call from the global office about my appointment and my manager’s reassignment to HQ. Once these become official, I will start planning trips to markets where there are no quarantine requirements (Thailand comes to mind). I have yet to wait for Singapore to welcome tourists from Manila. I really have no idea how our new office looks like as I was told we have transferred to a new building, several train stations away from our last office, ergo, different zip code.

We have also transferred buildings in Hong Kong. With the way things are in HK right now (zero-covid policy), I doubt if I would be flying there in the next 24 months.

Our old HK office. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
The ampao that my former APAC boss gave my girls for 2019 Lunar New Year. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

To cap this unproductive day, here’s Florence Welch of Florence + The Machine. If God would grant me a great voice, I would ask Him for Florence’s or Anne Wilson’s of Heart.

Hopefully the dog days are over.

Coffee conversations

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I miss having coffee conversations. After an event/coverage, my journo friends and I usually work in some coffee shop in Makati or Ortigas. In-between typing our stories are conversations that can be mundane or these can be mature talks about life.

It has been a long time since I’ve had that. I miss it.

Everybody’s sick right now. Friends are posting their Covid-positive results on FB or are counting the days they would be out of quarantine. So it’s very scary to venture out right now. After my bout with Covid last year… Nope. I can’t even go out to the neighborhood Bo’s Coffee to change scenery to write. I’ve had another excruciating afternoon polishing a story I did with our new hire. I think I need better mental stimulation other than reading news.

I think I’ll cheer myself up by buying flowers tomorrow and set up a working space outside our front door so I won’t be too cooped up. I’ve been having conversations with my cats lately 🤦🏻‍♀️

When your child’s life is hanging by a thread

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white and blue graphing paper
Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

A colleague’s daughter suffered a three-hour seizure episode and had a hard time getting admitted to any ER because every hospital in the metro is full of Covid cases. She is intubated and on life support now, in the FEU parking lot because there really is no space for her. She is around 7 years old or younger.

The cost now of hospitalization is very high as he posted on FB:

Right now, she’s confined in one of the tents in FEU. Because of COVID safety protocols, the bill can reach PHP 50k (USD 1k) per day because PHP 4k per PPE plus PHP 5k per swab of each doctor and nurse watching over her on rotation. I don’t know yet how much the intubation, bloodwork, x-ray and other tests would cost. I no longer have the strength to ask. As long as G’s condition stabilizes, that’s all I want to hear. But we may still be far from that.

I contacted his boss (this colleague isthe Philippine correspondent of a sister publication so he’s not under me) to inform him of what’s going on and to ask if something can be done to help ease his financial burden, like a salary advance or loan from our mother company or maybe the company employees pass the hat. This afternoon my colleague showed me his running bill for 24 hrs and it’s already more than PHP 100k. He told me that apparently his daughter has been having seizures for 24 hrs but they just didn’t know because those were just ticks and they were sleeping so they weren’t aware. Because of that, her brain may have been deprived of oxygen.

The child’s mother (also a friend) posted on FB that the doctor said she may already be brain dead; she hasn’t woken up yet.

I have asked our journo organization here to extend financial help to ease his worries. The current president is a good friend of mine and he said he will raise it to the board.

I know how it is when your child/children are on life support, fighting to see another day. I didn’t have the strength to cry at that time whenever I saw my twins full of tubes, watching their monitors, hoping that I won’t see a flat line. I held up and didn’t allow myself to be weak because once I start crying, I will crumble and never function anymore. I never rested; the day I got released from my hospital confinement after my Caesarian section, I traveled to my twins’ hospital everyday. CS mothers are usually given enough time to rest; I didn’t allow myself to rest. I needed to be with my babies everyday and express breast milk because they needed to be fed via gavage tubes since they were too premature to suck on their own.

I couldn’t think about hospital expenses at that point; my thoughts were on my children’s survival. I saved money to prepare for my children’s birth but I didn’t expect that they would be spending 31 days in the NICU. It’s hard to think about bills when you don’t know whether the doctor will just suddenly come to you and say your child/children have flatlined and are never coming back.

You cling to hope. To hell with hospital bills.

So I’m doing everything in my power to help this colleague.

As part of this reflection about life and death, I started writing ahain on my old-school journal so I can finally close this 2021 chapter. I needed to fill up the gaps from the moment I stopped writing in July to my Covid episode, to my reflections of 2021. So I can leave it all behind.

My 2021 journal. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Why do I bother doing it? So that my children can have something tangible to hold on to when I die. My memories will live with them. Twin I declared, no Mommy, you are immortal. You will live forever.

Yes darling, I said in my head, I will live on these pages, and on my blog.

33,000 and counting

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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.

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.