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.

They can’t afford me

“I’ll cross the bridge when I get there. But if ever, teaching will be good. I’m a lawyer. But entering government? No way. They can’t afford me,” she said with a laugh. “I’ll fire all of them.” –Liza Araneta-Marcos

Politics.com.ph

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nONqnPYgnE0

Ahh shades of Imelda Marcos. She’s scary.

And yet they don’t want to pay their taxes.

Tax expert Mon Abrea says simple math would have pushed the bill into the stratosphere. Twenty percent interest is slapped on every year the tax is left unpaid. Justice Carpio says the passage of so much time makes a case against the heirs, especially Marcos Jr., of willful refusal to pay. He says there’s a remedy for that.

NPR.org

God save the Philippines from the Marcoses. I can’t blame friends and millions of Filipinos who want to migrate if this idiot wins.

Bongbong Marcos will move the Philippines closer to China

Beijing stands ready to help Marcos family consolidate power over the long term
Alvin Camba
April 5, 2022 17:00 JST

Alvin Camba is assistant professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver and a faculty affiliate at the Climate Policy Lab at Tufts University

Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., son of the former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, is on track to win the May 9 Philippine elections.

As Bongbong has himself said, he will move to maintain a strong relationship with Beijing while not completely abandoning ties with the West. Beijing likely expects Marcos to disregard the 2016 ruling by an arbitration court in The Hague that rejected Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and kowtow to China on crucial international issues.

The makers of The Kingmaker have made their film about the Marcoses free to view for everybody. Unfortunately, Filipinos are stubborn, especially if their core beliefs are challenged–if they’re corrected.


All my plans for today were wiped out as the weather turned weird. It rained non-stop today, like it’s already August.

Parking area. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Well, it’s a good thing that it rained so Lamesa Dam and Angat Dam can be refilled, if not up to the safe level. This assures us that there will be no water shortage in the coming days…or weeks. The temperature cooled up a bit from 30s down to 26 as of this moment. But because of this weather (and lack of sunlight), I did nothing but sleep. And edit three stories. Do some admin work, touch base with a source, and listen a bit to a webinar. I’m giving myself this day to slack off because—I dunno. I don’t feel like it.

This is my day of letting steam off because of my annoyance with company leadership issues. I couldn’t help my colleague with her job requests because of reporting line issues (vague). It’s really annoying me. It’s already April and there’s nothing definite happening. They couldn’t even give me the proper transition timeline. 🙄

To rid myself of annoyance, I temporarily halted my repetitive curtain sewing and returned to my complicated poppy flower drawing. It’s making me cringe. Either I finish this or I move on to drawing humans.

I suddenly remember my lawyer-artist friend who commented about the girl I was cheated on with by my ex-husband; he said she is not a fine artist but she’s more of an illustrator (they have common friends). That’s why she kept on doing squiggles and abstract graphic arts. I trust this friend because he is a really good fine artist and he has been winning competitions left and right but he chose to be a lawyer because…he wants to earn well. So now he shifted to photography and buying expensive equipment and drones has been his pastime.

So now my question is, what do I want to become? I don’t know. I just draw and paint to express myself. I’m not even good. But it forever frustrates me that I am having a hard time drawing faces or humans for that matter. I need to up the ante. Challenge myself.

Let’s start with this:

Practicing with grid lines. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I’m not yet brave enough to do full frontal. Probably I’ll do pencil first because I’m more decent with pencils.

Atrocious handwriting

Printed exercise sheets for Twin I. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

My kids have atrocious handwriting that was not corrected in school because they had been at home for 2 years. I was too busy to pay attention to their handwriting and I didn’t know how to help them. My mother and their dad have bad handwriting so I thought it could be just that.

However, it was already Twin I who asked me for help so I had to sit up and pay attention. I remember when I was in third and fourth grade we had handwriting classes where we were taught cursive handwriting. We had writing exercises in which we shadowed the handwriting of our teacher or what was in our exercise book. So I downloaded some exercise sheets for my daughter to practice on. Hopefully this would help.

I had tried to imitate the neat handwriting of some of my artistic classmates but eventually I developed my own form/style. My father had beautiful handwriting, so did my older sister and brother. My brother’s handwriting is similar to my father’s.

I could say my handwriting is ok and oftentimes my notes are neat, even when I’m doing interviews or listening to conferences/seminars/lectures. I remember my high school and college classmates borrowing my notes because 1) they’re comprehensive; and 2) they’re neat. This skill helped me now in my note-taking as a reporter, especially when there are disputes with those complaining about my reportage. My editors in London or HK ask me to send my notes to them for defense. If my notes are unintelligible, I would have a bigger problem. So I have kept all my reporter’s notebooks from 15 years ago as they stand in court, in case someone sues me. That’s the power of good note-taking—and alongside that is good handwriting.

So I need to train my children how to take notes and improve their handwriting.


Meanwhile, my other children…

Sushi lounging on my bed while I’m working my ass off. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

So far they haven’t destroyed anything this week and last week. But they chewed on Twin I’s school exercise lying around so that’s her fault for being untidy. 🙄

Oh yeah, I have to trim their claws and give them a bath. And shop for supplies again. Ah, the things you do for your pets. 😶


My post about Radiowealth had really gone viral. 7k likes and 5.6k shares. My neighbor sent me a screenshot of my post that has been passed around in Ateneo. One of my sources also sent me a screenshot of it that is being passed around in his Rotary Club.

Of course, the BBM camp is not remiss in their duty in bashing me. So I posted this today, translated in English:

BBM people have been sharing my post about Radiowealth and attacking it, saying the site I shared (blogspot has no SSL certificate etc). The main questions remain, is it true that Marcos grabbed businesses he, his family and his cronies benefited from it? Is it true that we began to sink with the debts we incurred because of his graft and corruption? There was a BBM supporter who sent me a private FB message disputing my statements, that the closure of Radiowealth was not politically motivated but it was about the radioactivity posed by the TVs. 🤔 I had watched on our Radiowealth TV for long hours and until now I’m still alive. I haven’t transformed into an X-men. There were so many requesting FB friendship but NO, I don’t care about them. I’ve had so much experience with internet trolls. I just delete and delete friend requests and PMs. For fact-checking purposes here are links:

https://www.philstar.com/other-sections/starweek-magazine/2013/01/27/901409/domingo-guevara-road-industrialization

https://ph.news.yahoo.com/remembering-dmg-self-made-entrepreneur-091445720–finance.html

https://www.elib.gov.ph/details.php?uid=722235afc2209d5ce5dc064e1127bac3&fbclid=IwAR24bXlm6coSvRDSeDj1POyItA8dg-ZpYsxRehYflC3-tl7uu40kWC9xe2E

https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2006068

There was one fact checker from Tsek.ph (group of volunteer Philippine journalists) who messaged me on Twitter and said they went through my post and marked it True. I wanted him and the world to know that I am a journalist and I do my research well. I don’t make claims lightly. Plus, I clearly remember interviewing one lolo who mentioned this to me, it was also discussed in one of my broadcasting classes, plus my father told me about this. <<< well this last one doesn’t count as an empirical evidence but this was the one that prompted me to research about Radiowealth.

As I said before, media literacy must be taught in elementary and high school so people can be taught critical thinking and not just be brainless consumers of mass media information. It’s my advocacy. However, it’s hard now that I’m no longer in the academe. The lectures and media trainings have stopped during the lockdowns and that TV interview I had earlier this month was one of the few I did in the last two years.

I have a feeling I will have my other foot back again in academe soon…🤔

It’s the little things that cheer me up

Tagarp floor lamp. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I added this lamp to illuminate the living area because the overhead light is too bright for the girls who are just confined at their tables and for Ate C when she watches TV.

My initial watercolor efforts. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I had hung that other flower too high; I’ll just adjust it one of these days. I decided to display them to document the difficult journey I had for the month of Feb until this month. This art therapy reminds me of the struggles I’m having to get better, to move on.

My landscapes below my sister’s depressing city scapes. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Contrasting seascapes: my sister’s violent sea vs my dreamy Panglao beach side drawing. Photo by CallMe Creation.com

It’s like a documentation of the emotions I went through while I was doing my art therapy and rediscovering my love for watercoloring that I abandoned for 25 years.

I’m more of a charcoal/pencil and watercolor girl. I tried oils before but I only produced one oil painting and I was very angry at that time that’s why the resulting painting was very dark. My cousin loved it though. It’s still in my mom’s house and it’s like a foreshadowing of my married life. I gave away my oil paints, linseed oil and thinner, brushes, and knives to my sister who paints more using acrylic. She’s more likely use oil than me who never touched the oil paints for years.

Floating koi. Art and photo by CallMeCreation.com

My girls kept on laughing because the kois looked like they were floating. Well yeah, they do float in the sense the real photo captured how clean the ponds of the Himeji Castle Gardens looked like. When I was there, a worker was vacuuming the pond. I also have to learn how to do watercolors of water, glass and reflections.

I’m still relearning how to control the behavior of different brands of watercolors and there’s a big difference between Asian watercolors meant for Asian techniques and western watercolors. For example, this Kuretake Gansai Tambi is mostly opaque so it’s sort of difficult to do washes and wet-in-wet techniques when doing trees and bodies of water. No wonder this brand has so many greens…You cannot just dive in and easily create gradation using wet-in-wet because I find that the colors get muddy if I do that, hence, the weird tree reflections of the sketch above. The colors don’t flow so it’s a bit difficult. I learned that gansai were formulated for Japanese paintings that are usually done on rice paper so they don’t bleed as much like western watercolors do.

I have to explore what this kind of watercolor/gouache-like medium can do and what it’s good for.

Attempt at wash first before sketching. Let’s see if this method would be better. Art and photo by CallMeCreation.com

My FB post about Radiowealth is now shared 2,400 times and liked 3,100 times. I’ve seen a lot of comments that they didn’t know about this and were shocked to learn that Marcos really hampered the progress of Philippines then. Imagine, Radiowealth could have been the Sony or Samsung of today. The company was also manufacturing Volkswagen cars, turntables, aircons–all things industrial. We had a thriving steel industry then, ahead of Taiwan and South Korea but the companies were taken over by Marcos as well. I have all the books documenting these in my personal library.

Photo from Skytraxratings.

Philippine Airlines was Asia’s first commercial airline that was taken over by Marcos and eventually given to one of his cronies, Lucio Tan. San Miguel was once under the Spanish families (Sorianos/Ayalas) that was taken over by Eduardo Cojuangco, another very close Marcos crony, via anomalous transactions involving coconut levies taken from the backs of coconut farmers. It is still owned by him/his estate today. RPN-9 and IBC-13 were taken over by the Benedictos. The Campos family of Unilab and Greenfield (also now Del Monte and Nutri Asia) also benefited from Marcos. This is probably the reason why they don’t really do media interviews, just like the Salims of Indonesia, whose patriarch was a close associate of Suharto.

How easily people have forgotten.

And the Guevara family responded

I shared on FB the piece I wrote here yesterday and made it public. One of the family members thanked me for putting his family’s story to light and as of this moment this is being shared (now more than 450 likes and 390 shares).

Thank you, CallMeCreation.com, for sharing my family’s story. To add to this, we used to MANUFACTURE VolksWagen as well, long before China did. Take note: MANUFACTURE, not IMPORT. Sinira rin nina Marcos and his cronies yun. Not many are aware how much more damage Marcos caused while he was in power. Let us not let any of his children try to regain that. #MarcosNeverAgain#MarcosMagnanakaw

I knew about his family’s story because of one of my broadcasting courses. My father was also telling me about Radiowealth before. I remembered it when we retired that TV and replaced it with a Samsung, which was then a cheap copycat of Sony. But look at how South Korea grew into what it is now. Take note, we were very much ahead of S. Korea then. We could have been S. Korea now if not for Marcos’ greed.

As I mentioned here before, Manila was more modern than its neighbors before, with tranvias snaking Manila and neighboring towns. Escolta and other areas of Manila could be mistaken for any other cosmopolitan cities of Asia in the early late 19th to early 20th century.

It pains me that it’s only now that people learned about what I wrote about the Guevaras. Theirs is just one of the many devastating stories that the Marcoses produced.

But as Tricia Robredo–Leni’s medical doctor daughter–said, we should get out of our comfort zones and talk to communities, to those in the C,D, and E markets and tell them why this election is important. That they are just being misled to believe the lies by the Marcoses’ propaganda machinery. We shouldn’t be elitist and call those who are supporting BongBong Marcos as bobo (stupid); it was just their misfortune that the truth doesn’t reach them because we are confined to our echo chambers. As I said during my TV interview a few weeks ago, we are employing the wrong communication tactics to reach these low-income segments. Focused engagement at the grassroots level is the key and fact-checking shouldn’t be confined to online media because accessing information requires money. These low-income groups do not read newspapers because our periodicos are in English. It should reach TV and radio–the most accessible form of mass media that speak the poor’s language.

This is the role of journalists like me, put to light the truth that has long been buried by history revisionists. So people will learn and not commit the same mistakes. For people to take action.


YEY! My Kuratake Gansai Tambi finally arrived!

It comes in this green box. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Look at the lovely colors. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Color swatch. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I enjoyed making the color swatches here as I was able to test the brilliance/opaqueness/translucence of each color. The colors are easy to activate by minimal water. I can see why this is preferred by some manga artists. I’m looking forward to using this tonight. I feel giddy.

I can confine now the portable palette to urban sketching and use this for more serious coloring. I’m trying to do a Chinese botanical tonight but it’s kind of hard to finish the sketch.

Let’s see what I can do tonight.