Tag Archives: home

Homeward bound

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Breakfast by the balcony. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Well, surprisingly I was able to sleep before 12 midnight last night then that meant I was already awake at around 5:30 am. By 6 am I gave up and made breakfast for all of us. My sisters and my mom had to leave at 9 am due to prior commitments today. My girls and I had a more leisurely breakfast and allowed us to clean the entire place before checking out.

This gave me the chance to walk around the lagoon to fetch my car from the country club.

The pathway behind our condo unit. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Flowers that I will copy. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
This way to the beach. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
This way to the country club. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Lovely lotus that I will also copy. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

We left the resort at 11 am and I showed the girls the reason the place was called Pico de Loro.

The protruding stone formation looks like the beak of a parrot from another angle. I saw the likeness last Saturday when we were approaching the resort. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

This was a popular hiking destination before it was overrun by amateur hikers that disturbed the flora and fauna of the area. The DENR closed the area permanently since the pandemic began.

Meanwhile, we encountered the monkeys of the mountain pass of Nasugbu and Ternate again. This time, I was ready with my digicam next to me.

A family of monkeys. I stopped by the road to take a picture, Photo by CallMeCreation.com

The inventor of the buko pie, hence, the name The Original. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

They ran out of buko pies at 2 pm. Oh well.

Blueberry cheesecake. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

When we arrived in my hometown, we ate in a resto-bar owned by a high school-mate. After college he took up culinary arts at CCA and decided to open restaurants in our town. Here is Twin I enjoying the blueberry cheesecake pie.

My favorite chocolate chip cookies. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Then I dropped by the confectionery that I had been going to for 25 years. This has been my comfort food since my high school days. Love, love, love it. Bought 400g of this to bring home.

My undergrad college. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Its facade hasn’t changed much since 20+ years ago. We used to sit on the plant boxes or the steps and just hang out in between classes or just people watch.

I waited for my best friend, T, to finish work so we can have dinner together.

Sitting under the kalachuchi tree where we used to hang out.

We were planning our next dinner/lunch probably this weekend but we’ll do it out of town. T then drove me home and I called the girls to talk to Tita T because we were planning to bring the girls to a K-Pop concert in July and August. She and the girls chatted about so many things and we planned to go to S. Korea with the girls. In theory.

So tomorrow I’ll be talking to another contractor for another quote for my apartment. It’s better to shop around. I will decide later if we drive back to QC tomorrow or stay here for another day.

Meanwhile, Ate C said the cats miss me so much that they always slept on my empty bed. I told her not to wash my bed covers so that they can sleep with my smell.

Kimchi waiting for me outside my bedroom door. Photo sent by Ate C.

Meanwhile, I’m blogging on my childhood bed.

Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Of course I can’t sleep early

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I brought my sketch kit with me but the lighting in our condo unit is terrible. I’ll probably do some sketching tomorrow when we get to my mom’s house. But right now I have to pass the time writing, as is my wont when my hands get fidgety. I think I slept for four hours this afternoon so I guess I have to suffer the consequences.

I’m loving my iPad setup. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Our condo unit, however, is ok and has higher ceilings than normal SM developments, which are like being in plain boxes.


Living room with a giant tv that doesn’t have any use at all. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
The sliding doors leading to the ground floor balcony. Twin A finishing her Kumon worksheet while her cousin’s tablet is just nearby. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Told my daughter she can only play with the tablet after she finishes all the worksheets.

Dining area and kitchen. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Stairs leading to the bedrooms. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

If this unit is in the city, this is not so bad for the three of us. This is roughly the same size as our current apartment but this has two bathrooms, however, the one on the ground floor is tiny. This also has a balcony next to the master bedroom. The bigger bathroom upstairs can house a washing machine.

In the words of my children, the entire Pico de Loro resort is fancy but they like the rustic charm of the resorts in Anilao. They’re not enamored of the sandy beach; they like the corals and rocky shores of Anilao. They said, mommy, if we have money, can we have a rest house in Anilao? I said, we must not spend so much on frivolous things so we can save for a rest house. LOL as if I can but maybe, who knows?

Appreciating my city

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Quezon City Circle. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

It’s so cumbersome to be living in QC if most of your business is in Makati central business district. The travel time is hellish due to the mind-numbing traffic jam that is back to pre-covid horribleness. However, this is compensated by the fact that QC has more wide open public spaces with trees compared to surrounding cities and people do not have to go to malls to be able to access public spaces where they can bring their children.

My kids and I had bento brunch today c/o of moi because I wanted to eat maguro sashimi. I pan-seared the tuna’s surface but the inside is still raw. I like it that way, I don’t know why.

I roasted my own sesame seeds for the rice. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Chunks and chunks of tuna sashimi. I ran out of wasabi. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Soybean paste soup. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I took a nap after lunch because I slept late again last night. I had been tinkering with my older sister’s laptop that I wanted to convert into a Linux machine. Because I can.

An old Asus Vivobook. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I cleaned its innards and checked if the RAM has an expansion slot. Nope, the RAM is onboard, thus, I would be limited to just 4GB. The keyboard is ghosting so I bought a replacement to make this serviceable. The keyboard would come from Shenzhen, China so I would have to wait for weeks before I could perform another surgery on this thing.

Why am I resurrecting an old laptop? I don’t know. Maybe because I can? It has always been a hobby of mine to tinker with old laptops and Frankenstein it. I used to dual-boot computers with Windows and Linux but it’s a bit cumbersome to partition SSDs or HDDs and run out of space over time so might as well have separate machines for the two OS. Why? Because I need to brush up on Linux every now and then and teach myself how to compile drivers or work my way around GitHub. Why? Because I’m bored? I want complications? I don’t know. It’s just my way of educating myself with stuff that 95% of the people here don’t bother with.

Anyway, enough about the laptop.

So this afternoon we’re back in QC Circle because I wanted to buy more plants and have a very lush container garden again.

Tadah! I have more plants on the floor of the passenger side. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I let the girls roam free in the amusement park again and ride whatever they want with the budget I gave them.

Pedal and Paddle amusement park, QC Circle. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

It was a lovely afternoon and we took advantage of the sunshine that has been rare every afternoon this week. After I spent like PhP 500 on additional plants, I watched the afternoon go by on this concrete bench and waited for the the girls to run out of money.

Waiting. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I appreciate this city for having this Circle, UP Diliman, and LaMesa EcoPark (further up north near Fairview)—and other places I have yet to discover—so families can have affordable places where they can have picnics and have their kids run around safely. I could not imagine living in other cities and being stuck in a condo for months on end because of Covid lockdowns. I would have gone stir-crazy. Good thing I had the foresight and chose to live in QC still. I was thankful every time I could bike to UP campus in the evenings on unbearable days when I was still living inside my head and grieving.

Since we live near Maginhawa St, I am making sure we dine once a week in some of the restaurants here so we can try all of the things on offer before we leave this apartment next year. I’m going to miss this place even though last year it was painful to be still living here. Through sheer determination, I was able to exorcise J’s ghost and learned to love this home that I call mine. My apartment in my city where I’ve been living for almost 20 years.

Taking it easy

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Herbed chicken for dinner. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I was basically useless the whole morning since I was asleep most of the time. I’m sleepy still.

I fixed my container garden again after it was ravaged by the heat that battered us pre-election and election week. I pulled out the casualties and re-potted the new ones that I bought yesterday. Gardening is really therapeutic because you spend hours doing something with a blank brain. I’m still not satisfied with it so next week I’ll be adding more plants 😄

I got frustrated with the rain today that I decided to book 3 days, 2 nights in Pico de Loro. Rain or no rain, we will return to the sea. At least the rains would not be that disastrous at the beach compared to if we went camping.

Pico de Loro by Hamilo Coast.

I hiked this area (used to be called Hacienda Looc) in 1996 and it used to be surrounded by mangroves. It was a very beautiful and secluded paradise but at that time it was a scary moment because one wrong turn I faced an armed soldier…It’s ironic that I would be coming back to this area after 25 years as a guest of the land grabbers. 🥴 I’ll see if I can live with myself being here as part of the bourgeoisie set that fueled the land grabbing.

Anyway, I think I need to take a vacation leave during the week we would be here. After my trip to Singapore (if that would even push through), I think I deserve a break.

I saw in our group chat the photos of the other journos who went to have an after-party following our drinking session. The photos showed they haven’t broken up the party even if the sun was already high and bright and they were all sipping coffee. I was asked to join them before I went home at 11 pm but turned down the invite and said this tita is already dead and needs a bed. I could never do that kind of night out at this age. When I was younger, I was like that every week as I had all the energy and will. We even bar-hopped until the wee hours. I guess age really catches up with me and my priority right now is being comfortable. What I promised a friend who also attended the event last night was a lunch date because there are so many things we needed to catch up on.

two clear wine glasses with straws
Photo by Oleg Magni on Pexels.com

Hahaha! Now I get why there are those who “do lunches”: It’s because they could no longer do the cocktail hours.

I hate to say it but lunches and coffee dates are more preferable these days. 😂

S. Korea is starting to open up to tourists and I guess I can go to our Seoul office later this year. Japan has yet to follow, which is kinda frustrating because my multiple-year visa is already expiring in April next year.

Let me see first how my travel itinerary for the year shapes up. Getting OKs from London is really frustrating. Which reminds me, I have to battle it out tomorrow with bosses regarding my travels and coverage. 🤪

In the meantime, I’m staring at this Sombrero island painting. Waiting for inspiration again…

Handmade

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Broken. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I broke one of my drill bits last night because I was being stubborn. I need to replace it this weekend when we have the chance to go the mall. We will spend about three days in Makati in two serviced apartments I reserved for the Leni grand rally in Makati, which was eventually cancelled. My reservation was non-refundable. Anyway, we will treat it just like a staycation and I will be working one of those days, plus I needed to cover an event at night. It’s a relief I don’t have to drive back to QC after that.

Flower tea to start the day. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

For some strange reason I woke up early again so I was forced to confront work earlier than usual. I think our stay in Anilao has reset my body clock and now I’m back to Philippine Standard Time. It has been several nights that I get to sleep before 1 am and it has been so lovely so far. I think my body has finally withdrawn from alprazolam.

So I was productive today, editing a number of stories, communicating with sources and doing my usual admin work, writing another story…and yet I haven’t done any of the pending stories I was supposed to publish this week. 🙄 I promise I will publish two tomorrow. And I’m still waiting for a confirmation of an interview schedule…

Because I already scratched my DIY itch yesterday, it’s now the handmade itch’s turn to nag at me. So I restarted the sewing project I had so I will have new set of curtains for the living room downstairs before this month ends.

Tiny neat stitches. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I’m loving the way my house now is becoming more handmade as the time passes. This is our fourth year staying in this apartment and we still have one year more to go before we transfer permanently, I think, in our new flat in my hometown.

I don’t have mass market art on my walls and I’m making handmade curtains. I’m DIY-ing so many things in this apartment that I feel like this is already mine even though it’s not. I have my say in all of the things here whereas I didn’t have that freedom in the past. Soon I will have my couch reupholstered with a more cat-friendly fabric and I will be making more pillows. I discovered that you can buy pillow fillers from Shopee and you can refill old and saggy pillows–or make new pillows and throw out the old ones. I can make big and fluffy ones if I want to. I either can hand sew again or I buy that Brother sewing machine on my shopping list on Lazada and make my life easier.

I have so many ideas in my head that I want to execute for our new flat, like an outdoor hot tub under the fruit trees. I can buy this galvanized iron tub from FB Marketplace and put it on top of concrete blocks to have a low fire going underneath.

Perfect for a hot tub with fire roaring underneath it.

This guy made a hot tub using an old barrel and some blocks.

A brick pizza oven in the garden, a grilling station, and a small workshop or art studio. I’ve also been looking at outdoor furniture with umbrella at Ikea and at Ace Hardware. My girls and their friends can hang out there.

I got the brick oven pizza from this guy as well.

So I weighed things…my job may not be that fabulous right now but it offers me flexibility to pursue life—real life outside work. So far the arrangement is agreeable to me. I just need super fast internet, like what I have right now, then work-life balance is ok.

I have to talk to the Converge people because they still don’t have a line near my new place. I need to attend one face to face event with them so I can sweet-talk them into installing lines there…hahaha!

I’m excited.

As the ball-less misogynists lick their wounds…

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…a gentleman calls out these dickheads.

I really, really wanted to do house to house campaigning but my number one duty as a Filipino is to abide by journalism ethics. I have to restrain myself like the rest of my colleagues. We can express our political leanings but we cannot actively campaign for any personality as part of our sworn duty to be fair and just.

Speaking of journalists and elections, I just attended this webinar by Twitter for us journalists and the measures they put it place to prevent manipulation of the political discourse by preventing trolls/certain political candidates with well oiled machinery to manipulate public opinion (hello, Facebook!). Since this is a private webinar, I cannot disclose the things they have shared with us except for those they have already shared with the public such as 300 Marcos-related accounts (i.e. troll farms) taken down. This active policing of tweets has incensed Elon Musk so much that he is busy with his hostile takeover bid for Twitter. He is angry that Twitter is muzzling freedom of speech. Well Elon, if you go by Facebook, which has destroyed the Philippines, then I wish you just go to Mars and stay there. Don’t be an instrument in destroying democracies like ours.

Mr Musk has said he believes Twitter is limiting freedom of speech on the platform and he reiterated this at the Vancouver event. He has said his primary motivation would be to expand free speech – a US Constitutional right – on Twitter.

BBC.com

Was busy today with admin work that I barely had time time to edit and no time for writing three stories that I must finish until Wednesday. Because on Thursday, we will be leaving here at 5 am so that we would be in Anilao at around 7:30 am so we can dive early!!! Then work I start working at 10 am.

My head is pounding now, damn this headache. My psychiatrist’s secretary has not yet confirmed my schedule. I think this is a withdrawal symptom from stopping alprazolam ahead of schedule. I keep forgetting to take that thing. Maybe because I’ve been very calm the past few weeks that I keep forgetting that I still have to cure my anxiety. I haven’t been triggered since March and that’s a good thing and I hope it stays this way.

This is what I get for giving too much of myself to a man who doesn’t deserve me. Never again. Yeah, I’m hormonal right now and I’m angry again.

Meanwhile, aside from art, my other sources of serotonin are:

Kittykats keeping me company! Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Making our rooms cuter by installing shades to make the lighting cozier. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
My gallery wall. Look at the cat on the stairs on the upper part of the photo 😄 Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Simple things.

I’m running out of places to put my frames.

I don’t feel well. Good night.