This person, whom I refuse to name on this blog, is the primary mother troll who had released his troll farm on me a few years ago when I criticized a government agency (which allegedly employed him as an attack dog a.k.a. social media handler) regarding an infrastructure project bidding.
For two weeks they tried to destroy me online. Even attacked my company’s social media assets, much to the shock and confusion of our APAC and global headquarters.
I do believe the universe will be out to get you if you haven’t been nice.
My friends and I are ROFLing now.
Speaking of trolls, I once again dodged the prinicpal of these creatures by leaving the conference venue early today. I AGAIN didn’t check the program—it was only during the welcoming remarks did I learn that Marcos is supposed to speak this afternoon. 🤦♀️ So the conference delegates were told to avoid going in and out of the area by 2 pm because the Presidential Security Group needed to check and secure the premises.
I used our PH reporter’s media pass that’s why I had a different name on my tag. Our PH reporter is in another event across the metro.
I left at 11:30 am. Good thing I was able to ambush interview my targets early.
I really can’t stomach the thought of being in the same room as this thief.
I just can’t.
I have covered past presidents and sat through some of their speeches but the last two presidents… 🤬 Nope.
I quickly escaped to SM MOA (since I was just at Marriott) to write my stories, buy Christmas gifts, and then I took Skyway so I can fly back home.
Or so I thought I could get back home quickly.
It still took me two hours to get home. I left at past 3 pm, I arrived at past 5 pm. 🫠 And to think that I already used Skyway to bypass Edsa or C5 to reach QC. 😵💫
I just want to stay put in the next few days… Traffic jams are so bad that they suck the soul out of you.
All coffee/dinner with friends would have to be pushed back after Christmas. It’s just insane to be on the road these days.
Ah EDSA, how I hate thee. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I left my hometown at 9:30 am today. It took me only 1 hour and 10 mins (~61 km) to reach Grand Hyatt in BGC. The funny thing here is it took me 30 mins (16km) from BGC to reach my apartment 🤨 That’s how much of a time waster traveling around Metro Manila is.
Before I left this morning, I debated whether I should walk around the university campus or just hit the treadmill. Treadmill won because I brought an extra sport shirt by mistake since I thought it was my exercise pants. Can’t walk comfortably in jeans since I would be sweating profusely. So treadmill it is.
Before leaving, I checked the construction site and talked to my contractor since I decided to change the plan and I want to move the TV wall near my bedroom door because it makes more sense. The dining table (I will bring my existing one and eventually buy a round tulip table which looks and feels better in a small space) will be placed in the middle of it all, near the original TV wall. So my dining area will have my art gallery wall as backdrop.
More cement and sand.Future bedroom. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
This 10 sqm room will be my future room and everything here will be demolished, except for the wooden floor. The windows will be changed and this will become a fire exit as well so it has to be bigger and I will have a balcony outside as that will serve as the fire exit platform. I will have a million power outlets.
I told him that the interior paint will just be semi-glossy white since I will be hanging a lot of art and the walls’ clinical look will be broken by my printed curtains. Since I know how to sew curtains. I can change the look of my interiors by sewing lots of curtains.
Maybe the next time I visit this, probably next weekend (not this coming weekend) the bathroom walls and the kitchen counters will be up.
I read on Twitter that carmageddon was back last Friday, the eve of the Alert Level 3 (a.k.a loosening of lockdown to whatever) implementation. I am thankful that big events are still not allowed or else I would have been one of those suffering from a three-hour traffic jam on EDSA.
I have written numerous pieces about Metro Manila traffic and the car-centric culture that we have because our government since the beginning of time did not prioritize public transportation and kept on pandering to the oligarchs and the moneyed class–the ones who can afford to buy private cars. The Philippines was the first one to have a light railway transit in ASEAN, which was financed by foreign loans and helped the Marcoses get richer by the minute (just read between the lines).
Manila in 1984, during the time of Ferdinand Marcos, oversaw construction of the first electric rail line in ASEAN, but this system subsequently suffered from a lack of decent maintenance bringing a raft of problems. Finally it was repaired and renovated; in 2004 a second LRT line was added, and this was followed in 2005 by three MRT lines. Currently a one-line LRT expansion is in the planning stages. At present the entire rail system extends 47.9 kilometers.
Update: They have already extended LRT Line 2 up to Antipolo. MRT 7would also be completed soon.
So of course it was just a piece of trophy infrastructure project. Subsequent administrations did not prioritize public transport, and thus, we got left behind. Imagine, we were ahead of Singapore by three years and look at them now! I can get around Singapore without taxis most of the time there. Riding the bus there is not like going into a battlefield like here.
We used to have a 1,100-km railway from Manila to Legazpi City in Albay and my father used to take the train daily from Makati (where they lived during their first years of marriage) to UP Los Baños where he was a research assistant). It was doable. The Philippine National Railway system fell into disrepair because of this neglect and wrong priorities of past administrations. Every year we get choked by cars on highways and small backroads because we don’t have enough trains. Don’t talk to me about the controversies about the financing of these various train projects because I’ve been writing about them for 15 years or so and bugging Finance and Transport secretaries year in and year out about this and the corruption surrounding these projects is frustrating.
So now we have carmageddon that is getting worse every year. It takes a huge toll on our mental health and it is not easing up anytime soon. Not being able to chase stories physically (via in-person news coverage) is a major drag during this pandemic but it has helped me get off that carmageddon agony for almost two years. I realized now that life is super refreshing, despite Covid, without the traffic jam that sucked my soul.
AND if the plan to build my tiny house in my hometown pans out, I guess my travel time will be cut into half but I would have to drive 65 km one way everyday to Makati. Gas and toll would eat into my budget but it would be better for my sanity I guess. If I leave early enough from my hometown (like 6 am-ish) and leave Makati by 5pm, I would be home by 6:30 or 7pm. If I leave Makati at 10 pm, I would be in our hometown by 11 pm. From Makati to Quezon City pre-pandemic I would arrive home by 9 pm if I leave at 5 pm.
I did the hometown-Makati-hometown daily for a couple of years when the girls were still babies. I brought them to my mom’s house and we lived there for three months every summer to cool off because our old house in QC was like an oven. Plus playgrounds and grassy fields where they had picnics every afternoon were just walking distance–without cars and pollution. I drove from my hometown to Makati four times a week if I can help it. It wasn’t that much of a hassle
Now that I don’t have to be in Makati regularly because we already have a permanent Manila reporter (while I do my coverage of Southeast Asia remotely), I can limit my trips to Makati in a week. I could have my meetings and coverage/conferences confined all in one or two days. What would change though is I need to fly to Singapore frequently or somewhere else in Asia regularly (at least once a month, if things go according to plan). That can be solved by hiring my mom’s driver to drive me in my car to the airport and take the earliest flight out of Manila and have him drive me back again from the airport in Manila back to our hometown. Right now I’m spoiled by Grab.
I like living where I am now because everything is convenient since I have two supermarkets within walking distance from my apartment, I have a lot of food choices within Grab distance. If I need materials, furniture, appliance or whatever, I can just pop in the nearest SM (which is like 3 km). In my hometown, I am confined to whatever is available in our tiny mall and choices are very limited. No Grab.
But I have mountains, trees, fresh air, freedom to bike anywhere, walk to anywhere.
I think I’m at that stage where I’d choose to live a boring life than suffer 6 hours on the road daily. I’m done with night life of my youth (I’ve had plenty of those). I can finally leave Metro Manila for good.
For several quarters, car sales in the Philippines has grown by double-digits. Thanks to very low interest rates and down payments, car ownership has become so easy in a country that has managed to expand above 5% for several years. Unfortunately, roads have not expanded at the same rate as car sales. Add to that the incompetent MMDA chief who has made election campaigning his top priority. Metro Manila roads now are hopeless.
It’s carmageddon all the way until the end of Christmas holidays.
The 3-hour travel time from Makati to Quezon City used to be just a one-off thing–something you will encounter during really bad traffic situations like last-week-before-Christmas-break rush or during freak events like huge rallies in some parts of the metro.
But no, 3-hour travel time now is the norm. I encounter this at least once a week. It’s better to drive from Makati to Los Banos, Laguna on any given day because it’ll only take you 1.5 hrs compared to Makati-QC, which can take you 2-3 hrs after 5 pm.
If only the effing trains really work. Not the kind of sh*t you encounter at 6 am-7 am: the kilometer-long lines leading up to the train platforms. Not the kind of crap you have to face when the trains break down because maintenance work could only salvage a small part of the whole system. Because the government has been dilly-dallying for so long, pandering to populist noise. Because officials had been milking the rail system for heaven knows how long.
Because people refused to pay up as well. You want convenience, you pay for convenience. Train rides are not free.
I used to take public transport because I can. Now it seems like it can kill me in so many ways.
Already declared my desire to move back south. It’ll keep me sane for a few more years, I think.
