Tag Archives: crisis

30 days without a car

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I sent a message to my car guy to ask when can I go and pick up my car. He hasn’t replied yet. And it’s not a good sign.

Meanwhile, I’m so mentally exhausted today after spending hours trying to come across as intelligent and knowledgeable about the industries of my interviewees. Good thing I seemed to have passed and the discussions were good; I was able to extract enough for a 1,000-word article for each interview today.

a woman being interviewed by a reporter
Photo by Greta Hoffman on Pexels.com

I’m also struggling to finish an article, which was based on an interview by my newest reporter. From the transcript, it shows that she had trouble pivoting or taking control of the interview. The interviewee refused to budge and does not answer the questions directly or is beating around the bush. This reporter sent an SOS to help her write the story. Now that I’m deep into it, it took me a while to figure out how to structure the story. Interviewing difficult people requires great skill and unfortunately I wasn’t there to help my reporter go around the interviewee to grill him more.

You see, being a journalist involves a lot of mind games and interviews are like a football game. You need to always have the ball in your control and you call the shots, which information you need or don’t need. If they give you more motherhood statements than real information, flip the court and have the ball back under your feet. You juggle the ball around your interviewee until you get what you need and move to strike a goal.

The sooner reporters know about how cerebral this work is, the better they are in interviewing/data gathering.

However, there are instances that you just have to walk away because talking to a stonewalling interviewee is more trouble than his company/story is worth. Know when to walk away.

Because this day has left me mentally drained, I am just going to indulge in brainless activity—watching Youtube videos of creative people.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/15/business/stock-market-recession-half-year.html

Expect more market routs from hereon. Hello my portfolio…are you still ok? My paper losses have been mounting.

“The odds of a recession have gone up, but the markets have not fully priced in the recession case yet,” Ms. Hoxha said. “Not only is the Fed having to correct being too dovish last year, it has to unwind its balance sheet” by selling the bonds and other securities it bought to support the economy and markets.

These idiots on WallStreet are in denial. People on Main Street have been hurting a lot with the increase in basic goods and services–that is already an indication that the economy is spiraling down since people are no longer willing to shell out more money and are now focused on just buying the basic stuff–if they have the cash to buy in the first place.

People have yet to price in this double whammy that China may fall due to mortgage-fueled credit crunch. Many China-funded projects abroad have stalled and expansion plans have been shelved.

Large banks in China are in trouble as well. They have lent tens of billions to poor countries as part of China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative. A significant portion of their credit portfolio is likely to become nonperforming as their borrowers are unable to service the debt due to the global economic downturn.

The most recent economic implosion and the collapse of the government of Sri Lanka will likely force their Chinese lenders to write off a large portion of the loans. If big Chinese banks themselves face rising nonperforming loans abroad, they will be less able to help bail out insolvent small or medium-sized banks at home.

Minxin Pei, Nikkei Asia

Locally, the likes of Dennis Uy of Undenna had depended too much on China backing that none of his new companies/ventures took off. He had to sell his huge assets/liabilities to Enrique Razon, including his stake in the Malampaya gas fields. As for infrastructure projects that the Duterte admin had been depending on like the Southrail project, it’s already dead as China rejected the proposal to finance it. Now the government under Marcos Jr is scrambling where/how to procure financing for this.

Stupid.

It’s no longer a question of whether the world will go into a recession. It’s a question of how deep is it going to be and how long will it take before we can bounce back.

Meanwhile, another catfisher is on to me again on IG today. My daughters and I were reverse-searching the photos that we are sure 100% stolen. Again from another Thai guy (THEY’RE EVEN NOT CUTE, just ordinary). There seems to be a trend: At first the ones that were bothering me were Caucasian guys who I keep on blocking. Then Chinese guys–blocked. Then for the entire year last year until early this year, almost all are Koreans. Blocked. Now Thais. Blocked. But I wanted to play a revenge game with them, but my daughters said, Mommy, don’t bother. It may just backfire on you. Ok, my daughters have more sense than me. Blocked.

Do I look desperate??? Geez. I just wanted to show the world, especially my stupid exes, that I am well and they’re not a loss, hence, my decent photo. Maybe I should just change my photo into that of my cats.

28 days without a car

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Yup, it’s almost a month since I went out of my 4-km radius. To make matters worse, it has been raining so I couldn’t ride the bike to go anywhere. Physically yes, I can bike under the rain but I don’t want to risk getting sick before I am to leave the country for the first time since July 2019 (Jakarta).

I can last a month without seeing other people. 🤔 The introverted side of me is ok with that.

So today I’m just stuck here as usual and I’m cleaning out my refrigerator so I’m using the last bit of ingredients in my pantry before I do another big shop.

Tonkatsu rice bowl with egg. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I made tonkatsu, which turned out good because I finally figured out how to do double frying as I’ve seen from Imamu’s Room Youtube channel. My kids loved it because it was crunchy and I seasoned the meat last night so the meat was savory. Since I don’t have mentsuyu to cook the pork with the egg, so I just made a runny sunny-side up fried egg to top my rice bowl. I paired this with miso soup with kombu.

For dinner, I made ramen and eggplant tempura and eggplant fritters.

Garlic pork tonkatsu ramen. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Eggplant tempura and eggplant fritters. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I’m down to my last vegetable dish tomorrow (sauteed squash with string beans) and I’m thinking whether I should add coconut milk and a bit of chili flakes since I don’t have sambal. Oh, I should remember to buy sambal and bak kut teh spices when I shop in Singapore. (*Makes a mental note*) I should haul my ass out of this house tomorrow to shop for fresh veggies.

Cooking is some kind of stress-reliever for me—as long as I don’t have to do the wash up after.

Next year when it will just be the three of us, I would be batch cooking and probably supplement it by hiring my mom’s cook on weekends. (Ate C and I agreed that I would be releasing her from my employment and I will just finance her last year in college as my scholar with the usual monthly allowance, her tuition, and other school expenses. She would be staying with her sister until she finishes college. It’s just for a year). Imamu’s Room and Nami on Youtube have tutorials on how to prep bento lunches–packed meals for my girls and prepared lunches for me because I’m too busy with work to bother cooking during weekdays.

I will buy a robo-vacuum for daily cleaning and hire my mom’s bi-weekly cleaning lady for general cleaning during weekends. Besides, it wouldn’t be that hard to clean a 52-sqm apartment. The girls are already folding and putting away clean laundry as part of their daily chores and I would start them now with doing their own laundry with our automatic washing machine. How hard can it be?

The only thing that I dread doing starting next year is the daily litter box cleaning, because my critters are useless 🙄. When you are owned by a cat, you clean up after them for life. That is a fact.

Yup, I couldn’t lie on my bed because they have already commandeered it. I adjust 😂. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

We are in a scarier environment now with the China credit crunch unraveling further. While US economists/pundits are debating whether they are already in recession, China logs the slowest YoY growth in eons, registering 0.4% growth in 2Q22. Then here comes the threat of end-buyers/homebuyers not paying their loans because housing projects couldn’t proceed as real estate companies suffer from the Evergrande fallout.

China’s real estate sector is grappling with a crisis that has seen developers squeezed by eye-watering levels of debt, sparking a string of bond defaults among major groups including Shimao and China Evergrande — the world’s most indebted developer with about $300 billion in liabilities.

This is like the US subprime crisis of 2007-2008, just a different flavor and shown with subtitles.

When the world’s two largest economies are hobbling, then not far behind is probably the Great Financial Crisis 2.0. We are going to see a domino effect that could further weigh down emerging markets like ours, which are already suffering from sky-high prices of goods and services. I’ve been editing a number of stories that point to tightening of belts and external funding already coming in trickles. Soon the tap will be turned off for the time being as market chaos reigns. Huge valuation differences and forex issues (especially for the Philippines, which saw its currency weakening from 53 to 56 in just 30 days) are holding up deals.

This is a tough year; next year would be horrible.

I should move quickly and have my house up before December so if there is some kind of financial fuck-up that may happen, being homeless will be the least of my problems. I have logged a lot of paper losses from my investments and I’m kicking myself for not shifting my pure equity funds last year into fixed income because I was too lazy. I’ll just treat this market rout into a buying opportunity.

We should treat food insecurity with self-sufficiency and generosity. I will plant an edible garden and alongside that is encouraging people to do the same. A half kilo of minced meat and eggs with lots of vegetables go a long way for food-insecure families.

I’m holding everything with bated breath.

And the economic crisis is sinking us deeper and deeper

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This should make dollar-earners like me happy. But no, this makes all goods more expensive because we are a net oil-importing country. Among other things that we also import are rice, durable goods, and just about everything. We even import onions and garlic from Taiwan.

WTF.

Jeepney drivers are already sleeping inside their jeeps because they could no longer afford to go home because they no longer earn anything as gas prices continue to climb.

The group of journos I am with right now are starting a movement to create news content in bite sizes for Tiktok to combat disinformation on such platforms. A friend just did a Tiktok of the horrible commuting life in Metro Manila. I took it upon myself to create a Tiktok about the impossibility of PHP20/kg rice that was the campaign promise of Marcos Jr. Another friend will be releasing tomorrow a Tiktok of the forex situation now.

Because Marcos trolls are very active on social media now, trying to paint the false picture that things are hunky dory and that they claim only detractors are saying we have a crisis. That’s what they did to that friend’s Tiktok video about the horrors of commuting in Manila; they mass-reported it as “dangerous” so her video was taken down even without the benefit of being properly reviewed by Tiktok.

A crisis of food accessibility, economic, and information. We are in deep shit.

And I and my colleagues have an important role to play.

How many times do I have to experience being fished by a fake profile on Instagram? Since I don’t look like I’m in my 40s, they think I am single and ready to mingle. When they message (even if my profile is set to private, they can still message me) I always tell them, I’m 42 and a single mother, so go away. On IG, it’s usually those claiming to be Chinese/Taiwanese or Korean living out of their home countries. On Twitter, it’s usually American servicemen and I ignore them because their kind always think Filipino women can easily be bought with dollars and promises of being flown out of the Philippines.

Oh sorry, I’m not one of those. I don’t blame those who belong to the lower economic strata for targeting AFAMs (A Foreigner Assigned in Manila) so they can get out of poverty/Philippines. However, these foreigners shouldn’t generalize that all Filipino women are into that kind of thing. It’s insulting.

Men are dirty. I’ve truly lost trust in them.

I sound so bitter. But can you blame me?

While attending an ADB financial forum in my house clothes and a four-legged officemate.

I was so busy today that I only had 30 minutes to eat lunch and have a bathroom break. I had to write a story, edit, do admin work, and attend conferences/webinars. On top of that I had calls in between and trying to have my internet connection fixed. I finally succumbed and contacted the corp comm team of my ISP and asked them to expedite my internet repairs. After a few hours, my connection was fixed 🙄. I really don’t want to use my connections for such things but Internet is very critical to my job.

Oh, and those white earbuds that I’m wearing in that photo are my new Oppo earbuds that I was able to buy on sale. I didn’t realize how freeing such thing could be. I was talking somebody on my phone, that was just on my phone stand on my desk, while I was walking around in my room. Good for driving as well. I don’t know why I resisted buying this for so long. Ah, because I’m an audiophile and I always thought their bass is pale at best compared to the sound of my over-the-ear Audiotechnica bluetooth headphones. Well, the earbuds are just ok for exercising and for phonecalls but for listening to music, nothing beats the over-the-ear ones and of course, speakers with a subwoofer.

Today is much better. I finally reconciled that yeah, a double-digit raise is not so bad even if I didn’t get the pay level I wanted. As for my people, I will just have to ask for concessions for transportation allowances for them given the high cost of transportation and generally everything else.

Let’s see.