Political parasites

This guy is a partylist congressman, who is what I can call a political parasite/whore without any shame at all. I had interviewed him in the past a couple of times but I didn’t produce any story after those interviews because there was no substance at all. Such a waste of space.

Anyway, he has been spreading all over social media that he is freely giving away Ivermectin as cure for COVID-19. This idiot 1) wasted people’s money buying an anti-parasitic drug for animals that 2) could harm people taking it, especially with the wrong dosage. This is what the US FDA has to say about this:

Here’s What You Need to Know about Ivermectin

  • FDA has not approved ivermectin for use in treating or preventing COVID-19 in humans. Ivermectin tablets are approved at very specific doses for some parasitic worms, and there are topical (on the skin) formulations for head lice and skin conditions like rosacea. Ivermectin is not an anti-viral (a drug for treating viruses).
  • Taking large doses of this drug is dangerous and can cause serious harm. 
  • If you have a prescription for ivermectin for an FDA-approved use, get it from a legitimate source and take it exactly as prescribed. 
  • Never use medications intended for animals on yourself. Ivermectin preparations for animals are very different from those approved for humans. 

What we need are vaccines, not anti-parasitics drugs for horses! I just want to hit his face with my classmate’s urn.


Meanwhile, I’m presenting my haul from the last two Lazada sale (3.3 and birthday sale)…I got 480 pcs of sticker tiles to make my ugly bathroom more tolerable. My landlady didn’t even fix the bathroom when we moved in. I refuse to spend so much for tiles to make my bathroom more presentable. Even this already cost me PHP 3,000.

I just have to solve the problem of the floor tiles. I don’t know if re-grouting will solve its dingy-ness or I should waste money for something that is not mine and have the floor re-tiled. I don’t think my landlady will be willing to shoulder an expense like that for aesthetic reasons. Maybe I should just buy more exchange traded funds (ETF). I bought it at PHP 100 per share last week and now it’s at PHP 98.35. I have to even out my portfolio.

So I have to hold out and make do with what I have and be satisfied with just repainting/refreshing the walls of the apartment. I should save up until I have my lot and tiny house constructed. My friend just told me the other day that there is a 150 sqm lot that is for sale somewhere in our hometown for PHP 1.6m, which is a bit expensive given its location. Maybe I should look around some more. I wish I can drive to Anilao and check out some lots…

Patience. Patience. No one is chasing me. A better option will come up.


Another friend asked me, are you still angry? I said, hmmmm somewhat. If my anger is triggered, then I will be a seething tiger and I’ll be in a bad mood for two days. But most of the days I try to bury it and try to move on. I just pray that he doesn’t catch COVID and his lover doesn’t mangle his home care if ever gets sick of it–he has an abnormally high risk of heart attack due to elevated LDL. If she turns out to be that young bitch, then I don’t know if she can handle 24/7 care of another person while she is still very much under the supervision of her parents.

Taking care of critically ill loved ones requires you to put brakes on your own life. Their needs come first before your own. I’ve had experience taking care and raising premature infants in the neonatal ICU (they allowed me to stay there for more than a month since I had two infants). My children battled sepsis, pneumonia, and a host of other things for more than a month and everyday I didn’t know if they would live or die. I was running around Metro Manila and Laguna looking for blood for transfusions. I diligently monitored their O2 sats and heartbeats every moment I could while watching various tubes sticking into their bodies that were barely bigger than my hand. I didn’t cry at that time; I could not afford to be emotional during those days. I learned how to be level-headed and be lucid in times of intense emotional moments. I’ve also nursed my parents, especially my father, when he was in and out of the hospital for years. I don’t know how I was able to do those things. I’ve schooled myself to be a highly functional individual and learned to compartmentalize so I could cope. That’s why when my father died, I was the only one who was functioning in my family even if I only had three hours of sleep that entire week. I facilitated the legal procedures, the paperwork, the arrangements for the wake, the housekeeping, the financials, the cremation, etc. Then I crashed after all was said and done. I crash only when I allow myself to crash.

So would you help if he gets sick, my friend asked. I said if I’m asked to, I will. But I just wish he’d just leave the country soon because he’s going to be safer elsewhere than here because this country is going to the dogs. You still love him, don’t you, my friend said. I told him, that’s already a given, I’ve already come into terms with that; you don’t easily pull a switch and that is that. Unlike J, who just–poof!–love is gone. I wondered if he really even loved me. Maybe it was just infatuation.

I am just waiting for the moment that I will become indifferent. It has been almost four months. Four fucking long months. I wish i could just fast-forward time and be done with it.

When will you pivot?

I was chatting on WhatsApp last night with a colleague who just left my company last week. She told me about how she couldn’t take her manager anymore and she tolerated that abusive creature for four years before my colleague has finally called it quits. She’s supposed to have started her therapy today. I told her it’s smart of her to seek counseling after the shit she went through with her boss, whom I don’t have to directly deal with, thankfully.

This colleague also sensed that I’m almost at the end of my tether and she told me to jump before things get worse. With the way things how the new owner is running our company, it looks like things aren’t going to get better. I told her I will just have get my shit together first and get out of this funk before I could pivot. It’s hard to think straight with the lockdowns, the entire shit that is the pandemic, and this heartbreak. I need to be level-headed about this and make sure it’s not just the anger and grief that are doing the thinking for me. It’s also hard to make the jump when almost all companies are laying off people.

The right time will come, I told her. In the meantime, I need to do everything I can to stay sane.


Relief goods for a friend. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I have so much love to give but I no longer have the right to give it to the person I wanted to receive it so I channel it elsewhere. So I cooked for a friend whom I call a condominium-stranded individual (I’ve patterned it after the government’s term, locally stranded individual) and sent the food via Grab this afternoon. I knew that ordering food via Grab by tomorrow will be difficult because traditionally businesses shut down during Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. This is to give appreciation to this friend who always checked on me if I slept well and pulled myself out of my bed during the darkest days. He said he knows the road I’m traveling on now very well because he has been on this road when he broke up with his boyfriend some time ago. Days after J and I broke up, this friend took me out to lunch to cheer me up. Then last February, we had lunch again somewhere near Tomas Morato just to see how I am progressing because I’ve been shutting myself out of the world. In March, days before the cases started spiking, we dined al fresco in Makati with some friends in the industry just to check on each other. We all work for competing newswire agencies but it has never been a hindrance to our friendship that has been blossoming for 15 years now. We don’t see each other often but they’re there when I need them the most. Right after J and I talked in his condo for the last time in December, I drove straight to one of those friends’ house in Parañaque because I couldn’t face going home to the apartment that I used to share with J without going through some debriefing. I needed somebody to talk to, to make sense of what just happened. This friend is deathly afraid of Covid but she let me in her home and offered her spare bedroom for me to sleep in that night because it seemed like I was in no condition to drive all the way to QC. I declined and told her I need to go home that night because I’m just delaying the inevitable. I needed to be alone.

I have so much love to give. So I send it to people who do not reject it.

My muslin curtain. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I already finished one panel that is 2.5 yards long and 60″ wide. I’m already on my 2nd one. Well technically I already finished two panels but the other one is much shorter because that panel will be used for that section above my aircon.

Handstitches. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I’m even surprised at how my hand stitches look even and dainty. I sew my curtains while watching Youtube videos of small homes and alternative living setups, to make my brain occupied and not overthink about somebody.

United colors of Benetton

US is full of racists and I understand, based on first hand stories and literature, that Asians are the invisible colors there. We tend to try our darned best to blend in and not raise hell.

From J, I learned that the affirmative action was a disservice to Asian Americans. They get left out. They get dismissed and are the least priority.

From my relatives, the stories are like the expectation is that they need to do well, extremely well, for them to be acceptable. There was no other way. Asians needed to work doubly hard so that they can achieve at least the same level of acceptability or success as the whites do.

What I miss about J is the dining table conversations we have about these things (well it was just me listening and him talking). The Atlanta shootings of Asian Americans would surely fire him up and he would be talking nonstop over breakfast about this and that. The photo of that Chinese grandma attacked in California would make him worry about his grandma and also his brother in Alabama, of all places.

Xiao Zhen Xie was attacked in San Francisco. (GoFundMe.com)

They were actually the first thing on my mind when the killings in Atlanta happened.

Asian discrimination of Asians is present too and I’ve been a recipient of that. There was one time I cried when I was explaining to J why I didn’t like being in Singapore. He didn’t understand the hierarchy among Asians, him being Korean and all.

Since working with this xxx who looked down on Filipinos, he somehow got the idea where I was coming from. Why I had to assert myself, that I’m as good as everybody else. That our being poor is not an excuse to dismiss us that we are all gold diggers, incompetent, and brainless.

I remember a coworker remarking that I must have Chinese blood because I was skilled, very good in what I do, and well spoken. I say WTF 🤬 can’t I just be Filipino and just as good? That’s how low the view us.

I always get this: “Oh you’re not Filipino/can’t be Filipino. You’re fair and pretty or this and that.” WTF WTF WTF!

Yeah, racism is one of the evils of this life. It tastes bad.


I needed this alcohol break. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Yesterday I had back to back webinars and calls and I was writing and editing in between. I barely had time to eat.

But it was good. It made up for the patapon days I had that dragged me down. I have to admit my blog post the other day riled me up when I recalled this young biatch of J’s and the treatment I received. I keep suppressing my emotions so I can move on but when they surface, it’s like being hit by a train.

Repeat after me: I deserve better. I deserve better. I deserve better.

What is better? Me. I should love me. I don’t need anyone. No one else would look out for me. No one else would love my children and accept them. Except me.

No more emotions. It makes me weak.

Baggage

I had been unhappy for many, many years that I evolved into being a zombie. Nowadays, I am a prickly Mimosa pudica that shirks everytime that grief button is pushed.

I wish I could just forget.

I just want to be happy. Is it too much to ask?

Smaller world

Taking shelter from the rain. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

5000 new cases yesterday, the highest since August. This is why they try to curtail movement again. That’s the only thing this brainless government knows how to do. No comprehensive vaccine program, no useful contact-tracing program where our records are not stolen by scammers, no nothing. It’s like being in Myanmar right now.

It’s kinda like being on a semi-lockdown again on the anniversary of the COVID-19 lockdown. I can’t explain what I’m feeling right now because I am trying to suppress any strong emotion these days. The closest thing I can say is I’ve given up hope that we will be ok.

UP Diliman started banning joggers and bikers again until further notice. My daughters and I tried cycling along University Ave but it rained. We had to go back and just bought Korean ice cream from Seoul Meat on the way home to make them feel better.

Finishing their “dirty” ice cream near Mang Larry’s during our exercise last week, before UP campus had shut down. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I couldn’t bring them elsewhere to have our exercise. Police had set up checkpoints at the border of QC and Rizal so we can’t go to Angono or Binangonan for biking. I guess that would be the same case everywhere. No more going home to Laguna this Holy Week. I can’t have my Laguna biking trip. I wonder if we can still go to Anilao a week after that. I booked Blue Ribbon resort for four days before cases started spiking.

Circumstances are really forcing me to live inside my head again. I want to scream. I want to cry but I’m tired of crying. Been crying for exactly three months now. I’m stuck. In my room. The worst place to be stuck because I shared this room with him for two years. I couldn’t move houses because at the moment it’s better to be in this location since it’s near UP. My brain needs the openness of my university, figuratively and literally. It’s also convenient to have supermarkets within walking distance when you are trying to avoid people.

I want to be in Japan right now. To be in Gifu and Ishikawa. Once this madness is all over, that’s where I will be.

Taken for granted

Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I now know the reason relationship J happened. The raison d’etre.

It is teaching me now to walk away from a person who is just taking you for granted. The relationship gave me the red flags to watch out for. It is teaching me that just because that person happened to be by your side physically, it doesn’t mean he loves you and you deserve to be treated like that. It doesn’t mean things will improve even if you push more to win his love. You can never win the love of a person who is just taking you for granted. Do not be with somebody who didn’t think you are precious because he will not take care of you and not think that you are worth his time and effort.

When you’re giving much more energy than you’re receiving, walk away.

Do not accept chump change of affection.

You are a good, respectable, and intelligent person. You have so much love to give. You deserve love and respect. Nothing less.

It’s better to be alone than be with somebody who doesn’t love and appreciate you. Or else you will be one mess of a person popping antidepressants, thinking that things are fine because he is gaslighting you.

He fell in love with you. But falling in love with you is much different from loving you. The latter requires more work and it is the acceptance of the person you are today, rather than the person he initially thought you were when he fell in love with you.

It’s ok to be alone. It’s better to be alone.