If Marcos Jr wins, it will be worse than having Duterte for the second time. OMG 😱
We need to reach out to the masses. I want to render my services for free as a communication strategist for Team Robredo. They have no unifying theme. 🤦🏻♀️ The campaign is organic, yes, but it lacks cohesiveness as a result. The messaging is undefined. The actionable message is lacking, there is no aspirational thrust.
We need to do something!!!
I had been refraining from writing anything political during the Christmas break because I don’t want to be stressed out. So I’ve been writing about inane stuff to take my mind off stressors like the thing above 🤦🏻♀️
So back to inconsequential stuff, I picked up my glasses and contacts in Cubao, then went to Tiendesitas to buy cat supplies. Because I’m still a bit apprehensive about dining out indoors, I still wear two masks (surgical and cloth) and sunglasses in lieu of face shield. Because I still haven’t had my booster shot yet. I’ve been trying to book online but there’s no schedule yet for A3 people for QC. After experiencing Covid, I’m more adamant at having the vax ASAP.
My sister said I look like somebody who’s hiding from the paparazzi. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I then jumped to Makati to get myself another pair of shoes before I pick up the girls from the airport at around 5 pm.
Wrong move. There were a lot of people!!! Like there’s no more pandemic and omicron is just another Greek letter that doesn’t mean anything. It gave me some heebie-jeebies. Because of this, I wasn’t able to find that pair of shoes I need because it seems like face-to-face press conferences and meetings will be more frequent next year and I don’t have enough good shoes for such occasions.
I think I would have to buy online and grin and bear it if the pair of shoes turns out to be painful to wear. 😬
Kimchi ruining whatever I am working on. Such a petulant child. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I got stressed yesterday with all the drama that’s happening in national news that I was able to finish one curtain panel that I sewed by hand. Right after the 8 yards of fabric I ordered from Shopee arrived, I sewed like mad to relieve me of stress and forget that the Philippines will soon be doomed.
If only Singapore is not that expensive, I would be willing to move and forget about the idiots that will be voting for the equally idiotic people running for office.
Kinda proud of my dainty stitches. Photo by CallMeCreation.comNearly finished. It has a satiny texture to this. Photo by CallMeCreation.comEt voila! My first granny curtain panel. I intentionally made it short so the curtain wouldn’t cover the modem and the aircon unit. I need to finish the masks that I need to ship out this week so I can proceed with sewing the two panels of 3-yard curtains that I must immediately hang in this room so this 1.5 yard panel would not look out of place. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I’ll get rid of the stuffed toys on the shelf because they look so juvenile. I just put them there because the shelves were empty and looked forlorn when I sent the Gundam figures to J and I had to have something there in the interim. Now I can put books there as they started to overflow from my closet.
My daughter, Twin A, started choosing fabrics on Shopee and said I should start sewing the curtains for our future flat. I said, darling, we still don’t know how big the windows will be. That’s the reason why I’m not cutting this curtain rod because I’ll be taking this and the other the curtain rods with us.
I needed a creative outlet to escape reality for a while. So I resorted to sewing. I’m not yet brave enough to pick up the brush or charcoal. I need to watch more Domestika courses on sketching and watercolor paintings before I venture into those again.
I think I will be sewing a lot of things before I can get back into the groove and start traveling again. When I assume my new role probably by next year, I need to fly to all the cities we are covering, starting with Ho Chi Minh (I have already lined up my meetings). But Covid is coming back with a vengeance as cases start to rise again in Europe.
It’s like a never-ending cycle. A friend who is in Spain now says people’s attitude there is like there’s no more pandemic. No one is wearing masks there. They go about their business like it’s nothing. She still does though, as a precaution.
And now you have this. When will they ever learn???
My second dose was in May, so it has been six months. I need a booster. I don’t want to get Covid again. Hell no. Once is enough. I have this aversion now to humans in tight spaces. Or even in the open if their number is above five.
Meanwhile, we’re headed for disaster.
Ah, Gloria, the Cersei Lannister of this realm
The evil witch Gloria has her pawns playing her game of thrones.
Kimchi in her double decker bed. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Every cell in my body was protesting against returning to work today. I just wanted to sleep and read. But no, I have responsibilities to my team and I was needed today so I got my butt out of bed.
Then I wrote a story in under an hour this afternoon about a topic I wrote about two weeks ago, which was one of the top 5 most read stories in the region for us. I think I’ve got some of my mojo back. Probably I need a longer time to recharge so I can get back to my old productive self. Driving to my hometown, seeing old friends and bantering with them did wonders.
I didn’t realize that shutting the world out drains me more. Shunning the world and shutting myself in my apartment because I’m afraid of catching Covid again sucked the life out of me.
Maybe I need to drive back to see old friends again and/or drive to Makati and have dinner with friends from the industry whom I haven’t seen for 8 mos or more than a year.
Speaking of friend, one friend from the corporate communications industry sent me a a grazing box with cream cheese and caviar and the usual contents of a charcuterie board as a birthday gift. Too bad I can’t drink alcohol these days, as the doctor ordered. I still enjoyed it with my children even without wine.
Mmmm. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I think I will make a huge charcuterie board for Christmas and one leg of Chinese ham. Make my wicked potato salad, which all of my friends said it was the best potato salad they ate.
Maaari nang magregister sa QC Vax Easy Plus (https://t.co/tqqTpffy5B) ang MINORS (12-17yrs old) na residente o nag-aaral sa ating lungsod para sa nalalapit na pagbabakuna ng mga menor de edad. pic.twitter.com/ltR11I3Uj5
Finally, they will start vaccinating children 12 to 17 year old with comorbidity. My kids aren’t qualified yet since they’re still 10 years old but hopefully they will have the vax before the new school year starts in July 2022. I feel bad for them that they haven’t seen their friends in almost two years. Going to school online for this long really takes a toll.
Meanwhile, individuals who are immunocompromised can receive their booster dose in the coming weeks.
The DOH is expected to provide a specific list of people who will be eligible to receive a third dose as immunocompromised individuals in the coming weeks.
For now the HTAC has recommended individuals with the following conditions be considered.
I have gained back the weight I lost during my Covid episode. I think I need to start biking short distances to regain my strength back. Or start walking first around UP campus. I don’t want to end up like a blimp before Christmas.
Speaking of Christmas, my househelp will be going home to her province, so there will be no one left to look after the cats. What I will be doing is I will drive the girls to my mom’s place again, come back here in QC and the cats and I will be staring at one another for a couple of weeks then I will bring the girls back before New Year.
That sounds lovely. <3
The surging commodity prices have hit oil-importing countries like the Philippines, pushing up prices of goods and services. Jeepney drivers, already crippled by the limited number of passengers they can carry per trip, are crying for help.
The skyrocketing prices of industrial metals have made thieves and scavengers a lot of money.
A Toyota Prius hybrid reported stolen last month in Nagakute, Aichi Prefecture, was later recovered with its catalytic converter cut out.
“I’d never heard of such a case in this prefecture until now,” a source close to the police said.
American and British police would be unlikely to say the same. Emissions-reducing catalytic converters have become a target of choice for thieves worldwide, notably in the U.S. and the U.K., as the precious industrial metals they contain have surged in price.
The pandemic’s lingering effects would be felt for quite a while even though mobility has been eased up a bit.
My colleague in Singapore attended a conference in Marina Bay Sands and sent a photo of her dining alone in one huge table. She said it felt so weird. It sounds so odd now that face to face conferences are being held now even if the number of cases remain worrisome.
We had an editorial meeting this morning with the global managing editor and we were told the parent company may implement a flexi working arrangement from now on, especially for journalists. We don’t have to report to the office that regularly since it would depend on where we would be more productive. This may be used to justify my remote working arrangement in the future if the time comes they would force me to plant myself in Singapore. The cost of education there will kill a single parent like me that’s why it’s best I stay here. As a foreigner, my kids will not be assured of slots in Singapore public schools so they will always be on the waiting list every year. That has been the dilemma of Filipinos living there who don’t have the “expat package” that skilled foreign workers used to enjoy when they are assigned to Singapore. I have one friend who sent his entire family back home to the Philippines so they could enroll the children here after living in Singapore for so long. I don’t want that for my kids.
So let’s see by next year what the people upstairs would say.
I know that tourism is the lifeblood of some cities, provinces, and countries but until we have everybody inoculated and not take precautions (please, no to crowds!), the virus will continue to mutate. Chinese tour groups are notorious for the lack of crowd control or the volume of people. If the virus mutates again from China, God knows what kind of monster will come out of there again. We should refrain from encouraging this kind of complacency.
Meanwhile, the dolomite beach along Manila Bay is I think politically instigated, to show that stupid project is not a waste of people’s money when funds should have been channeled to pandemic response.
This is really stupid.
What Dr. Mojica says is true. Presidential aspirants who promise to build hospitals do not know what the problem is, therefore, they do not know how to solve a health crisis like Covid. Mojica says that hundreds of hospitals will not solve the pandemic if you do not fix the contact tracing, air circulation in public utility vehicles, offices, schools and public places and not enough vaccines/low vaccination rate. These hundreds of hospitals will still be filled with Covid patients to the brim. He asks, where will you get healthcare workers? “We do not multiply when we get wet,” he said.
As I said in my post on LinkedIn, you are like groping in the dark and Covid will just hit you from out of nowhere because there is no contact tracing, no access to low-cost testing, and no support for quarantined breadwinner from poor families. You can’t just go on cycles of lockdowns that kill livelihoods and spur reckless behaviors, like that of the uncontrolled tourists in the two examples above.
I don’t want to get sick with Covid again. Nope.
Adjusted floor plan. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
So after discussing with my siblings and mom the plan, I was told, no, I cannot eat floor area in the main house so the room that I will be taking from the main house will remain narrow. So I decided to keep the existing walls and just make another wall to extend my room and make a separate office/walk-in closet. The girls’ room will be transferred to the corner of the unit and will be occupying the rest of the eastern wall. There will be just a wee bit of space for hanging out/lounging for my girls and their friends. We don’t really watch TV that much but this will be for the girls’ movie nights with friends, which I regularly had with my friends when we were in high school because our house was so near our school.
It looks tight because I have my dimensions off (this is not to scale) but the general idea is there. The bar stools can be pushed under the counter for more walking space but I think this will not be that small. I have inspected the space yesterday and it’s doable and is more spacious than I thought. I can also have transoms all around the entire east, north and western walls because there are gaps between the support beams and the naked ceiling. There will be sunlight all around.
Then I told my mom that I will just follow the vaulted ceiling and not have a dropped ceiling so that the entire unit will feel more spacious. My house will feel like a church with super high vaulted ceilings. I think I wouldn’t need a/c in the living/kitchen area and just have my window-type inverter a/c units in our rooms because of the number of windows and the vaulted ceiling will keep it well ventilated. Plus my hometown is generally cooler than Metro Manila since it is at the foot of a mountain.
Meanwhile, the girls are having fun with their older cousin and the younger one. They played all day long until it was time for Kuya P to go home at around 8 pm.
The four of them in a group hug. Another kuya in the background.Photo by CallMeCreation.com
We brought their bikes so at least they can bike around the area. They need a lot of exercise and fresh air and more playmates.
I have one week of freedom. And the cats have peace.
Kimchi taking advantage the absence of the girls and my bedsheet-changing day.
