I’m not myself today. I edited 6 stories, I think, while doing some admin stuff. It was supposed to be ok but I wasn’t. I should have just let this be a basura day but I worked my ass off even after publishing two stories yesterday.
I felt ugly and fat today. I feel inconsequential. I just want to lay on a hammock and let this feeling fade away.
Being triggered so much last night reminded me that I should be kinder to myself. I need to put these feelings on paper, with color. Just to let this all out. I’m not good with drawing and painting but it’s an outlet that is different from my day job. Cheaper than photography too.
I clicked. Yes, I finally bought that Kuretake Gansai Tambi. I justified the expense as necessary for my mental health. And that #1 brush.
Art and photo by CallMeCreation.com
I put them in frames temporarily so that the cats wouldn’t be able to destroy them. The Baguio trees would be given to Kr while the flowers would be hung downstairs until I produce better ones.
UPDATE: I couldn’t sleep
Art and photo by CallMeCreation.comI used paintbrush #000 and it’s freaking hard! Art and photo by CallMeCreation.com
My gay friend, K, told me he’s in Makati Med for a burst appendix. He should’ve told me earlier so I could’ve visited him. He said it’s ok, he was in a lot of pain anyway. I told him I’m gonna send him home cooked food when he comes home to his condo. He says he loves my cooking and was delighted. I’ll throw in a Chinese botanical drawing to cheer him up. He has been very supportive of my art therapy.
I have a lot of friends, I have to remind myself. They love me and I love them. I should count my blessings.
This feeling should fade away. Tomorrow will be better. I’ll just have to adjust and work somewhere else probably.
Maybe on Saturday we can go to National Art Museum and then to Intramuros. Have lunch or dinner along Manila Bay.
This clip makes you think Metro Manila is ok. 😶 So deceptive.
This gave me a headache. I just realized Ayala Museum faces Dela Rosa St. at an angle so it took me some time before I was able to determine how slanted this facade was. I need to adjust some more lines that don’t align. 😑 And I painstakingly counted all the glass panes. *wrinkles growing on my forehead* I don’t want Leandro Locsin Jr. to come after me with an axe for sabotaging his building.
Duh. Art and photo by CallMeCreation.com
I have my vanishing points mixed up. I need more exercises on vanishing points. 🤔
So it is done. I no longer have an official passport in the next 3 weeks.
Punched out passport. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I had been lining up the whole day today. First, for the girls’ second dose of Pfizer. Thankfully, it only took us an hour compared to 2.5 hours the first time. I drove them home and I went to Robinsons Novaliches where the satellite DFA office was for NCR North.
Queue going inside the mall. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
After entering the mall, I decided to have brunch first at McDonald’s and finish some digest I need to publish today. It was hard to concentrate 😫 but I had to finish what I can. Then I lined up again at DFA. The actual process was just less than 30 mins because everything was done online and the clerks just needed to verify and have my fingerprints and photo taken but it was the queue that took forever. This was different from what some friends told me when they just breezed through their renewal process in some locations like Robinsons Magnolia or SM Aura.
On the way back home I was debating whether I should drop by QC Circle to buy flowers. Well, well, well… Commonwealth Avenue in Fairview was lined with plant stores. Hahahaha! That decided for me. I bought four more flowering plants since some of mine at home dried up despite watering them twice a day. It’s just that it’s so freaking hot these days.
It was so hot that when I got home I was so exhausted. The heat sucked the life out of me and I just fell asleep. It was so hot that I was tempted to buy a giant Megabox plastic bin in Handyman that I can fill up with water so I can just soak in there.
As part of my urban sketching practice, I want to visit Escolta, Manila—the old shopping district in Manila before and after WW2 before Makati CBD came into being—to sketch the old Art Deco buildings there.
View from the office of One/Zero architects in First United Building shows the splendour of the past (Photo from https://i-discoverasia.com/escolta-street-2/)Photo from Instagram @ysabeldediosPhoto from Instagram @rylejustinuy
I should have done it in January when the heat was less deadly.
Escolta was the old CBD that’s why it was the fashionable area of the city then. The old banks’ and trading houses’ headquarters were located there. The old tranvia of Manila plied Escolta then.
Tranvia that was run by Manila Electric Co (Now the country’s biggest power distributor)Photo from https://skyrisecities.com/news/2017/03/manilas-long-lost-tranvias-once-envy-asia
By the 1920s and into the ’30s, the Manila Tramway became one of the most extensive tram networks in Asia, rivalling those in far more populated cities like Hong Kong (600,000 by 1930) and Tokyo (4,000,000 by 1930). Its 100-kilometre urban and interurban service carried a recorded 35 million passengers during its peak year in 1925. The tramway was a central part of the rapidly modernizing city, as the former colonial port town was growing up fast. The American influence and capital that had flowed into the Philippines following the US takeover brought with it a host of impressive Beaux-Arts and later Art Deco edifices, as a series of new office towers, government buildings, and train stations began to transform the Philippine capital.
Pedestrians in the photos were smartly dressed. The tranvia network was completely destroyed after WW2. Well, Manila was the most devastated city in the world after Warsaw when the war ended. The crafty Americans gave the Philippines independence right after because the country was so war-torn and expensive to rebuild. We were left to our own devices after that.
One of these days I would brave Manila and seek some haunting scene that I could sketch. Maybe I can start with the old Luneta Hotel.
Because I often wear uncomfortable footwear whenever I am in Singapore, I always end up paying for expensive foot massages to ease my aching muscles. SGD 50 (PHP 1,673) for 60 mins is already considered ok for foot massage in Singapore but highway robbery in Manila. More so in the provinces. For that price I could have 60 mins of Karada massage in Makati or full body massage with foot reflexology for 90 mins.
Sigh. You pay pretty money for some comfort.
So for this reason I still love Manila–the drama queen of Southeast Asia, where everything seems to happen at the same time: trains colliding, bus bombing, parking altercation shootings, riots, earthquake scaremongering, epic traffic jams, and Biblical floods.
I took this photo during one of my walks in Singapore. Reminded me so much of our Old Post Office in Liwasang Bonifacio and the potential of that old Neo-Classical building. In fact, the company behind this Fullerton Hotel in Singapore had talked to Philippine Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima about wanting to develop the decrepit old building into a hotel similar to what they have done in Singapore.
The thing here is the Old Post Office is sinking, i think. Its foundation is already lower than sea level/ Pasig River and I’ve been traversing the road behind the building going to Intramuros for years. When it rains, vehicles cannot pass through that road anymore because of flood either from trapped rainwater or the overflowing river.
But then, it would be nice to put the old building back on the map. One of the old beautiful buildings that survived the massive bombing after World War 2.
