Delta is just getting started. Then here comes Lambda, which researchers say is more worrisome as this seems to be more resistant to existing vaccines right now. The DOH today announced that it’s finally here and the fact that the UP-Philippine Genome Center’s tests are late, that variant could be anywhere now attacking everyone. Even Israel, the most vaccinated country in the world, has acknowledged that their preferred vaccines, BioNT/Pfizer could not hold up against Delta so now they’re having people vaccinated with boosters. How can we even face off Delta and Lambda with Sinovac when most of us only had that choice? Then people are not even rallying, crying foul over the PHP 67bn “lost” by DOH. Most of the vaccines that we have here are donated; we could still not account for the loans that were supposed to buy vaccines.

Everything is so messed up right now.

Last year, I was exaggerating to friends and co-workers that I will only be able to go back to our office in Singapore in 2023. It seems like it’s coming true. I don’t see any ending to this yet.

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My kids, meanwhile, are so bored out of their skulls and I can’t blame them for trying out new stunts. The books I ordered from Big Bad Wolf are still stuck at Customs, while the Nancy Drew book I just bought from Carousell would still have to be shipped.

So here’s my daughter, Twin I, sleeping a la Harry Potter in that “secret reading room” (a big closet that seems to have no real purpose). Just because.

I’m suffering from abdominal cramps and body aches because of my period but I had to get out of the house because we ran out of vegetables. I was half-afraid that I wouldn’t be allowed to go inside UP to buy from the vegetable stall inside the campus. Good thing I was wrong. Being able to get inside the campus and being around trees felt good.

Then I went to buy tea for me and the girls near Bahay ng Alumni, as a treat for being able to go out after 10 days.

And since I was already up and about, I took the opportunity to have my car washed after weeks, if not months, of letting it get dirty because it was raining non-stop.

If the lockdown is lifted by the time I am on leave from work, then I need to attend to the under chassis again and have it checked (just for safety, 16-year-old cars have a looooootttt of wear-and-tear issues). Then have its aircon cleaned. Gee, it sounds exactly like what I did last year when I went on leave, the same month.

Elections

I would also have to reactivate my voter’s ID with the Commission on Elections (Comelec) during my leave because I have skipped several elections as I was working on election days. I probably got delisted.

But this is one election where every single vote would count so I would exert extra effort. Gotta vote out Duterte and his minions.

Speaking of elections, I was invited by the chair of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) to join them at their headquarters on election week. Well, she volunteered me to join them (LOL!). That’s why I have to move my voting precinct from my hometown to QC so it would be feasible for me. PPCRV and the National Citizens Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) have worked with Comelec in the past as the citizen’s arm–as watchdogs–every elections. However, the two of them have become toothless last elections because–I don’t know… They get drowned out by the DDS on social media. I don’t know what happened there–no protests or batting of eyelash when the 7-hour glitch happened that allowed the nincompoop senators to enter the magic 12 and none from the opposition got a place.

Anyway, I had always volunteered for the PPCRV ever since I was legally allowed to vote. I remember then that it was PPCRV-Namfrel, but then somewhere along the way the two groups had a falling out.

Anyway, it was just PPCRV that was left working with the Catholic Church. Why was I working with the Catholic Church? Well our house is literally spitting distance from our parish. It was convenient. On election day, I would be assigned to one remote precinct to oversee the literal counting of votes because I had a car and I can drive. I had with me a physical spreadsheet to record the votes and sent the numbers via text messages (analog phones, yes) to the command center, usually at the parish office next to our house and that’s where my mom was stationed. She usually also volunteered for PPCRV (both of us were given PPCRV shirts to wear on election day so that Comelec officials would allow us to witness vote counting). These are then recorded in the lone computer at the center and then the data are sent to the national command center in Metro Manila. If I remember it right, they had at one time stationed themselves at La Salle Greenhills. Yes, this was pre-automation, when every ballot box could physically be stolen. In rural areas, there were many instances of politicians’ private armies stealing the ballot boxes or ambushing the vehicles that were carrying the ballot boxes to the Comelec center of a province.

I wasn’t able to volunteer during the 2016 presidential elections because I was already working for my current company, which doesn’t care for our national elections, so it was supposed to be business as usual for me. Ditto during the 2019 elections, plus I couldn’t leave J stranded at home so that is that.

Now let’s see how next year’s elections would be. Myla told me I would be stationed at the national HQ because she needs journalists there. Or so her pitch to me was that. I can’t remember now what she said.

Come to think of it, I had always volunteered for so many causes that I don’t remember how I am able to accomplish other things. I’m all over the place.