Great way to start ruining your week

Yes, this is not a joke. 😤

The thing is under the law, confidential funds (that don’t need to be audited by the state auditor) SHOULD only be applied to intelligence funds. There are specific uses for this kind of confidential funds and SHOULD NOT be abused for other purposes, like TRAVEL. WTF are they going to use it for during their travels???

Confidential funds may also be used to pay rewards to informers; uncover or prevent illegal activities that pose a clear and present danger to the agency, its personnel and facilities; and others that may be authorized in the General Appropriations Act.

The circular provided that the conduct of confidential activities, as far as practicable, be done in collaboration with law enforcement agencies.Confidential funds may also be used to pay rewards to informers; uncover or prevent illegal activities that pose a clear and present danger to the agency, its personnel and facilities; and others that may be authorized in the General Appropriations Act.

The circular provided that the conduct of confidential activities, as far as practicable, be done in collaboration with law enforcement agencies.

Rappler.com

And because there is zero checks and balances in this government because everyone else is under the Marcos machinery (The House Speaker is Marcos Jr’s uncle, the deputy speaker is his son, the brainless Sandro Marcos, and Senate is basically a Duterte-Marcos upper chamber), what can you expect? Budgets are hardly deliberated on.

Good morning, Philippines! LIZA ARANETA MARCOS has a huge wardrobe budget.

And this is another thing that happened today:

For USD earners like me (but don’t give a fuck), this is good on a myopic level because you get more pesos on your dollar.

But for those who think about the bigger picture like me, this means that all goods and services are going to be a lot more expensive. We are a net importer of oil = transportation costs will be much higher. As it is, Grab is more expensive here now compared to Singapore or just about the same.

Double whammy! OMG!

This redounds to cost of food because our goods are transported by trucks, not trains. We are an archipelago so goods are either flown or shipped by vessels fed by oil, not LNG. We also import rice, flour, and other basic commodities. Even onion and garlic! And salt! It’s quite ironic the we are surrounded by millions of km of coastlines and yet we are importing salt!

Cost of power is also climbing because our base load power plants are fed by imported coal and diesel. As it is, gasoline is cheaper than diesel nowadays. And the Filipinos pay electricity through our noses because we pay market rate. Our power is not subsidized, unlike our neighbors. That’s why Indonesia’s inflation rate is artificial in the sense the true cost of goods and are not reflected in the prices that they pay for because its government is shouldering a good part of their expenses (from power to medicines) through state-owned enterprises that own own almost everything. How can you even have three state-owned pharmaceutical companies? Their train fares are subsidized. Just about everything is subsidized.

Anyway, I digress. The point here is, the peso is weakening at a faster rate than expected because it could not shadow the actions of the US Fed. The gap between the USTr and our own benchmark rates has widened, thus, hot money from emerging markets have fled faster. We couldn’t shadow the latest actions (and future actions of FOMC given their latest hawkish stance) because any sizeable rate hikes (like a 75-100-basis-point hike) would kill our very fragile economy now. The BSP has to prioritize the economy before tempering the sinking peso.

This faster fall of the peso will kill our exports as well. Why? Half of our exports is comprised of electronics and semiconductors. Traditionally, these exporters order raw materials (because we don’t process our own minerals like silicon, silver, gold, nickel, and copper) abroad around third quarter in preparation for the orders for Christmas (hello iPhones and iPads). With the way things are, the raw materials have become more expensive now. Then this makes the cost of manufacturing semicon and electronics more expensive = costlier exports.

So I will punch any Marcos apologist right smack on their face if they say that this is good for the economy and that Marcos is making us richer by making us earn more pesos to the dollar. 🙄 Spare me this stupidity. A former reporter (who is now a lawyer) messaged me about this forex thing and she told me that an uncle of her brother-in-law said that this is great and in any case Marcos will make things better because the Marcoses will bring out their gold stash (a.k.a. the mythical Tallano Gold) to help the Philippines. And the sad part here is he was being serious about it, my friend said. Then multiply that to the 31 million who voted for Marcos. This is the level of stupidity reigning over the country today.

Social media has made Filipinos more stupid.

AND THE FUCKTARD MARCOSES ARE ROBBING US RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR EYES! Legalized stealing.

OMG 🤬

How can I even…

I need a drink.

On the brighter side of life, my 10-hour nilaga is stupendous!

Lots of veggies and peppercorns. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

The soup is 👌 *chef’s kiss*

I’m keeping the broth again for future dishes like pho or some egg noodle dish? Ramen? Soba? I can’t wait for my Instant Pot so I can experiment with new dishes I can cook with it.

Kidnappings and organ harvesting come closer to home

This was sent to me by my older sister as she warned us siblings about two recent attempted abduction cases in our small hometown. And to think I had allowed Twin A this weekend to walk alone to buy something just outside the campus.

The case above is one abduction attempt near the university campus.

This is the recent video of the interview with the victim, she was relating to the barangay officials how she avoided being forced into a white van.

This other one was yesterday:

This one is just today.

Before the pandemic, there was a spate of reports about white vans abducting children and these were linked to rape/organ harvesting. This can just be urban legends but there were reports of children’s corpses found along creeks without major organs.

According to the grapevine the kidnapped children/harvested organs are flown to China, given that the amount of money rich parents pay to save their only child (as a result of one-child policy before they loosened it) is astronomical. Although this has not been established yet, there are anecdotal evidence of organ harvesting happening in provinces before Covid.

The Philippines has an international reputation as one of the global hotspots for organ trafficking. In 2007, it was named as one of the organ-exporting countries in the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) report, along with India, Pakistan, China, Egypt and Colombia.

Channel News Asia: Kidney for sale: Inside Philippines’ illegal organ trade

Similar reports were published in Latin America, with adults being kidnapped and organs harvested. The United Nations has been after this grisly crime, but these reports are largely ignored as they are relegated to urban legend status.

Philippine Senate has investigated the alarming rate of child kidnappings related to organ harvesting but it has gone nowhere. It only died down a bit because of Covid but now they’re back.

I had been keeping my old phone and a basic smart phone in my drawer to give my girls after they take the entrance exams. But because of these alarming reports, I immediately gave the phones to the girls today so I can track them down (through a geo-location app) and have a means to call them, especially when I’m away. Well, that was the main reason why I was set to give them phones: they would soon be junior high schoolers and they would be commuting to school on their own. I’d rather have peace of mind that the girls have some kind of protection and I can monitor them than worry about the negative effects of mobile phones. They are already more mature now—a far cry from what they were when J met them in 2018. They are more responsible now and are easier to discipline. Without prodding from me, they had been doing study groups with their friends remotely and I can hear/watch them during some of their study sessions.

They also had been working hard on their review school.

I think it’s time that they can be given phones so I can call them every now and then. Or they can call me if something was amiss.

I will also buy them pepper sprays, stun guns, and whistles (as a high school classmate suggested) that they should always bring in their bags or pockets.


Meanwhile, it’s traditional for mainstream media to report about the problems of public school education every time the school year starts. I had produced special reports about these when I was still working for a newspaper. But I went beyond the usual classroom shortage and ill-equipped teachers. I focused on indigenous people and the lack of support from the national government and the malnutrition among Filipino school children. I also reported about the high worm infestation among school children in the Philippines and my research brought me to UNDP to talk/write about this.

I reported such things not to antagonize the Department of Education but to shed light on a systemic problem.

These journalists who shined on the misguided focus of Sara Duterte (bringing back ROTC instead of addressing the lack of facilities and learning resources, really???) are now getting attacked. It prompted me to defend them on Twitter.

Being a journalist in this country in the time of Duterte and Marcos is really a dangerous job. Not only security-wise but also our mental health hangs on a balance. Our jobs require us to be active on social media but then being on social media kills us softly.

And here we go again:

Marcos and his cronies are really out there to kill ABS-CBN.

It’s so stressful today. I wish I could just shut out the world and not read news but that’s impossible because I’m in the business of news production and I always have to be on top of all important news not only in the Philippines, but also in Asia. Like we have upcoming national elections in Malaysia while Softbank is set to exit Alibaba. I start the day reading general and business news (I have two subscriptions) and checking Twitter for breaking news.

By 12 noon I’m already a mass of nerves.

Thank goodness for my comical cats.

I’m about to check out from Lazada/Shopee some pepper sprays, stun guns, whistles, mechanical keyboards, and key caps 😂

Hero

Was Ninoy a hero?

He was a spark.

His assassination was a miscalculation on the Marcoses’ part.

He knew he was going to be killed the moment he steps on Philippine soil. But I guess, it was a carefully calculated move on his part.

Primitivo Mijares knew he will be killed writing that book.

He was a spark.

Everyone who got imprisoned and/or killed were sparks.

And when you have multiple sparks then the gasoline tank tips over… You have hell.

Apparently that hell wasn’t enough to burn the Marcoses. Lucifer kicked them out because he will be without a throne if they lingered more.

So now we have them back.

Today we commemorate the assassination of Ninoy at the Manila International Airport (now Ninoy Aquino International Airport). This government wants to change its name back to MIA as part of their historical revisionism. Those who are not poisoned by the Marcoses and their money remember.


At 6:30 am this morning my older sister and I walked to one of the subdivisions outside the university campus to buy food from the pop-up weekend market.

Good thing it didn’t rain. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I guess our eyes were hungrier than our stomachs. We bought a lot. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
We bought some sourdough bread and sourdough pizza. They were pricey but good. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Also bought some green products like handmade soaps, shampoo bars and reusable feminine pads for me and the girls. I started using cloth napkins last year but the shampoo bars was just a new thing for me. After using one of Human Nature’s shampoo bars for two weeks, I noticed that my hairfall was lesser compared to when I was still using the Korean shampoo I regularly bought. I hope that this will solve my thinning hair problem. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

After taking our haul back home (burning around 175 kcal), we walked towards the heart of the campus to buy fresh milk and yoghurt again. I saw these mushroom chips but my goodness, this will make uric acid shoot through the roof.

I love mushrooms but my joints don’t like them. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Unkept front yard. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

My mother is quite ambitious. Once upon a time she was on an orchid shopping binge, buying all the orchids she fancied and had them mounted on driftwood to mimic the natural habitat of epiphytes. But then she’s really not a gardener so she just left it to the househelp to maintain it for her. However, gardening is not a priority in this household.

Even though this side of my mom’s property is not included in my future domain, I told my mom I am commandeering this garden because none of her 3 other children are exhibiting any interest in it. No one protested. They can’t even bothered by it. My sisters do not even like having animals to take care of.

I will plant a lot of roses, yellow bells, and other ornamental plants. Edible plants will be planted in between, like herbs and some salad greens.

The garden that will be legally mine will be this:

Cicadas are having a concert
I went to the balcony to sketch while I listened to the cicadas and other forest sounds. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
The light was already dying. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I couldn’t finish because mosquitoes were already eating me alive. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

The following are part of my photo dump from yesterday:

If you’re late for class, this becomes the walkway of shame if you were an underclassman. The high school seniors’ classrooms were just on the right side of this walkway. Most seniors I knew back then often looked out the windows when bored. Which was often. 🤣 But if you happened to be a high school senior yourself, your classmates/batchmates would clap their hands and rain you with catcalls. 😂😂😂
This, my friends, is the walkway to my home. I was so naive before. Some boys would walk beside me and chat while I was going home…and it would take some time before I realized I was “being walked home” by a boy. Hahahaha! Some would ask if they could go under my umbrella because they didn’t bring any. One day a boy I was crushing on often walked me home, especially after theater rehearsals… He is now a happy gay man. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I knew something was wrong. I had always been a fairy godmother. HOHOHOHOHO! I just don’t know why gay men were/are still attracted to me. LOL.

I QUIT

I will quit caring about this job. I think I’m burning out.

Today was a shitty day. I don’t have the strength to write about it. It’s just…😡

I’ll just tune out after six. That’s it. I’ve been pushing myself too far and hard the past few months. I shouldn’t. Even if I’m out there to prove something, what will it bring me? Nothing. I don’t get gold coins for being extra.

So that’s it. I log on in the morning, do my job, then log off at 6 pm.


Screen cap from Nikkei Asia, article written by a friend.

This is laughable. It has become a “blockbuster hit” because Imee Marcos bought all the tickets and gave them away to schools and government agencies.

Damn.

“It’s clear that they were trying to evoke sympathy, that we were supposed to feel sorry for them,” said Miguel Reyes, a University of the Philippines researcher who has studied the Marcos regime and the family…

…The film’s release comes just a month before the country marks the 50th anniversary of the declaration of Marcos’ martial law next month, which will likely put the old regime’s brutal legacy in focus.

All the more we need to educate the public about the crimes the Marcoses committed and brought the country down on its knees.

My children are better than most of the adults in this country. They had been researching on their own about the Manila Film Center tragedy, Archimedes Trajano, and Boyet and Primitivo Mijares. They did it without prodding from me. They did it on their own volition; they were curious why I am so against the Marcoses. They were watching video clips. These are just some of the thousands of stories that are out there to tell the truth about this family.

This crappy movie was just bizarre.


To continue with today’s theme—shit—here we have a story about sewerage woes in UK beaches.

This is the reason I never went back to Boracay. My last trip there was in 2009 and that trip wasn’t enjoyable because of this above ⬆. People who go there to see and be seen don’t realize they are swimming in their own crap. My mom (who is an expert on this) said the mere presence of algal bloom on the shores of Boracay every summer is indicative of the high nutrient content (i.e. sewerage). This is the same reason she never went back.

For an underwater enthusiast like me, there are much better alternatives to Boracay. However, people flock there to see and be seen. To party. To have sex (in the case of my gay friend K). To be able to say, yeah, we are in Boracay, like it was a badge of honor.

No thank you. I don’t want to swim in sewerage water.

I was tempted by my friend B to stay with her last summer because of the kite surfing part. But naahhhh. I was better off diving in Anilao.

To cap off this day, here’s some reality check:

And all I can say is when you’re 40, you no longer give a crap and you dig an underground lair for yourself and be content like a mole.

Lovely.

20th day without a car

This story from The New York Times struck a chord somewhere, not because I have a similar story, but because the pain indirectly expressed here is universal. Pain just comes in different degrees and forms.

“What is true? The note I wrote on a slip of paper and put in the drawer of my bedside table after we broke it off that final time: ‘Long after you are gone, my stones will hold your warmth.'”

Awww, journalists are really masochists. Why is she doing this to herself?

Nope, don’t try to answer. I already answered my own question.


Some literal positive news today

And I really love how people are responding to this. 😂

St Peter Memorial 😂

These past few weeks were very challenging for Philippine media, with the revocation of Rappler’s registration statement at the SEC, the red tagging of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines and Bulatlat.com (where my first investigative piece about juvenile justice was published). This Marcos administration 2.0 is hell-bent on shutting free media down.

Anything that publishes the truth is being persecuted by this government.

My fellow journalists are now having drinks in Cubao X and as much as I want to join them, I can’t because 1) I don’t have a car; 2) I feel like staying in bed more; and 3) my doctor hasn’t given me the clearance to have alcohol. The last time I was with them, I had to exercise great self-control because beer was free-flowing and Johnnie Walker was table-hopping.

I just sent them a bottle of wine via Grab as a goodwill gesture and in solidarity. We all had tough weeks. Will probably join them next time.

14th day without a car

I didn’t want to think about what to serve my kids for brunch so I opted for the easiest, which is omurice with leftwovers combined to make fried rice. We’re supposed to go to the health center of a nearby barangay for my 2nd booster shot later in the day.

Omurice. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Surprisingly it was easier to book Grab today. Probably because our destinations are all nearby.

Coming back from the barangay health center. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Unfortunately for the girls, the booster shots for their age group haven’t been approved yet. So they just had to settle for a trip to the salon to fix their disastrous haircuts.

Twin I with a better haircut. She’s quite happy. Photo by her.

We had an early dinner at the nearby Vietnamese restaurant because I was feeling sick after the booster and was not in the mood to cook.

I took a nap after this as I was already aching all over, my head was pounding and that my eyelids were ready to shut. I thought the booster #2 would be easier. Nope, I was still feeling sick despite having 4 vax shots now.

Meanwhile, my journalist group chat has been discussing that the Imelda Marcos-style living is back in Malacanang, without any regard for the citizens who are suffering from high prices and struggling with high transportation costs or the lack of means of transportation.

It will be a very long 6 years.

Right now I’m not in the mood to be sociable and I just want to shut myself in my room. The girls are going to be fetched by their dad in a few minutes. I’m so irritated with the world today. People think that just because you’re responding to them, they can just take you for granted.

I’m tired of it. It happens again and again. So no, I choose myself this time. Goodbye.