My phone rang and woke me up around 0:30. „you volunteered to host refugees, here is a mother with two kids and a cat. Cn you host?“ … „ok, when?“ … „now.“ 15 min later, they arrived with a volunteer. 🧵🧶 1/n
2/n I went down to welcome. We could communicate with google translate. The driver said he would like to help them carry up the luggage 🎒into the flat, the single bag they had was smaller than my laptop bag and the cat cage. I sensed he wanted to check inside.
3/n I showed him sleeping kids and id to ensure him. He smiled, gave me a phone number and left. The family have been on the road for 4 days. „How long can we stay?“ „let’s sleep and talk tomorrow“ a conversation in silence. The three and 15 y/o were nervous.
4/n I could not sleep. Now the war came home, I thought. Can we handle? The next morning, they woke up early and asked again „how long can we stay? I need health insurance for my son. He is sick. We need to be registered.” I sensed a mom in max. functioning mode.
5/n before my work started we rushed to get some urgent shopping to supply cat and kids. Then We gave her internet access and room to calm down after this journey. Once they realized being in security, they all slept, all day and all night.
How devastating it is for innocent families to flee their homes for an uncertain future because of one man’s greed.
In my own little way I’m helping a refugee family remotely by helping the dad with his work as he is now under my wing as they escaped to one of the markets I’m in charge of. I gave him all the leads I was working on and in the following days I will be introducing him to some of my sources.
We don’t know how long this war will last. I hope not long.
So i tried the initial wash and the washing itself is challenging because the colors just stay in place. So no, gansai colors aren’t meant for washes. They should be for layering only.
Second layering. Art and photo by CallMeCreation.com
This sketch is done on an A5 sketchbook and you could only imagine how small those kois are. It’s difficult coloring them without messing them up.
Third and fourth layering. Art and photo by CallMeCreation.com
I’m just letting this completely dry and I’ll pencil over some grass and bushes and make an outline of the azaleas.
UPDATE
With pencil-over. Art and photo by CallMeCreation.com
All I can say is, gansai colors are very hard to control.
I know now what this is best for: flowers.
While I was drawing, Breaking Benjamin was playing and it was the song “I will Not Bow”. It was the song that strengthened my resolve to keep fighting everyday when my girls were on life support when they were born. I played it everyday while driving to the hospital for a month.
It’s now my anthem; I will keep fighting and I will survive this. I will no longer break. He will no longer break me.
Fall
Now the dark begins to rise Save your breath, it’s far from over Leave the lost and dead behind Now’s your chance to run for cover
I don’t wanna change the world I just wanna leave it colder Light the fuse and burn it up Take the path that leads to nowhere
All is lost again But I’m not giving in
I will not bow I will not break I will shut the world away I will not fall I will not fade I will take your breath away
Fall
Watch the end through dying eyes Now the dark is taking over Show me where forever dies Take the fall and run to Heaven
All is lost again But I’m not giving in
I will not bow I will not break I will shut the world away I will not fall I will not fade I will take your breath away
And I’ll survive, paranoid I have lost the will to change And I’m not proud, cold-blooded fake I will shut the world away
I will not bow I will not break I will shut the world away I will not fall I will not fade I will take your breath away
And I’ll survive; paranoid I have lost the will to change And I’m not proud, cold-blooded fake I will shut the world away
As I mentioned yesterday, there were several miscalculations that Putin had in his invasion of Ukraine. He had underestimated the resistance from ordinary citizens of Ukraine and across the world.
Nonetheless, given Russia’s overwhelming forces and Mr Putin’s ruthless nature, expect the invaders to make gains in the coming days. The attacks on Kyiv will grow fiercer. One consequence of that? Growing anger in the West—among ordinary people as well as national leaders. More military gear, including, remarkably, anti-tank rockets and Stinger missiles from Germany, is heading to Ukraine. Sanctions on Russia are becoming more severe. Beyond the exclusion of some Russian banks from the SWIFT system, more serious are the efforts by Europe and America to stop Russia’s central bank accessing much of its $600bn-plus in foreign reserves. Watch on Monday how markets react to that. It’s unlikely to be pretty for Russia, especially the rouble. Some sort of Russian retaliation towards the West should be expected. The price of oil and gas could yet surge.
Now its currency tumbled 40% while interest rates climbed 20%. Such rough economic fallout will surely make ordinary Russians grow angry at Putin and bolder in their opposition to this war. Ukraine is now urging Visa and Mastercard to suspend the facilitation of payments in Russia, further hurting its people.
And apparently some people in the US are preparing for a possible nuclear war, giving rise to the Cold War era fear harbored by people on both sides of the Atlantic for decades before the fall of USSR.
My mother just let me know that she sent me iodine pills.
Little does she know that I like living in Washington, as close to ground zero as possible, because I have zero interest in pushing a shopping cart around a post-apocalyptic landscape, a la Cormack McCarthy.
On the home front, the price of liquefied petroleum gas—the main fuel for cooking in Filipino homes—is now increasing by at least PHP 7 per kg = PHP 77 more for an 11kg tank. I think it has now gone above PHP 1000 per 11kg tank when a few months ago it was just at PHP 700+. The Department of Energy said its petition to suspend the excise tax on fuels is still pending in Congress, the delegates of which are already busy campaigning. If we don’t halt the excise taxes on the fuels, the cost of goods and services would skyrocket in the next week or two.
The market volatility would send valuations askew again and some deals would have to be delayed given the instability. I had been busy scanning the news for developments and how the markets are behaving since it is now determining the angles for the news I should be aiming for.
Today’s press conference. The most critical info during this session is how much more are we going to pay for our electricity this coming summer and is our supply enough given the constraints that we are facing. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
With this so much tension in the world today (including the escalating deaths in HK due to a belated spike in Covid cases), my colleague now asked me is the apocalypse here now?
If such is the case, I’m glad I’m out of my former hellhole so I can concentrate on my remaining time on earth with my daughters. I was chatting with a fellow editor-journo who told me he is escaping from the city and is moving his family to Sta. Rosa, Laguna. His house will be finished this week and they will start moving next week. Good for you, I told him. I will be following you but further down south because I’m tired of the city too. If the world is going to end, at least we will be more comfortable than being stuck in the city and Metro Manila is the worst place to be during an apocalypse. EDSA is already an Armageddon in itself.
But before the world ends, I have a press conference to attend on Thursday in Makati and our Manila reporter and I would be working again in a coffee shop somewhere near the company HQ that will hold the conference. Face to face meetings are coming back and the government is going to bring down the Covid Alert Level to number 1 starting tomorrow. They finally decided to live with Covid as the new normal instead of following China’s/HK’s stance of zero-Covid policy.
Hopefully face to face schooling will follow because the children are really suffering from two years of remote learning. These are the “lost years” for them.
And before the world ends, I still have transcriptions to finish. Hopefully I can publish two stories tomorrow.
And oh, let me go diving first. It’s so freaking hot these days.
Bagalangit Hideaways, Anilao, Mabini, Batangas. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
If there’s one thing that Putin must learn from the Americans, it’s Vietnam. A superpower cannot win against a country that is defended by volunteer citizens who had everything to lose. That’s what the US miscalculated about the Vietnam War. Drunk with its success in WW2 and Korean War, it thought it could win any war it can dip its bloody hands on. It did not see that the Vietnamese, fighting with what was equivalent to sticks, could win a war. The Americans were fighting a war that is not theirs.
As Ukraine continues to wage a surprisingly successful resistance against Russia, Ukrainian civilians and volunteers are playing a crucial role in defending their county— one for which they have been preparing for the past eight years, since the last major Russian incursion in 2014.
Ukrainian volunteers, one holding an AK-47 rifle, protect a main road leading into Kyiv, Ukraine, on February 25, 2022. Daniel Leal/AFP via Getty Images
Putin’s war is not Russia’s war. Its citizens have boldly spoken, even to the point of risking death in a country where anything against the government spells “disappearance”.
I read one opinion that this is Putin’s miscalculation. His power/influence in Russia is waning, hence, this desperate act of a despot. Russians may start pushing back and oust him. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has shown grit and determination by being in the frontlines together with the resistance.
US defense official says Moscow’s troops increasingly frustrated by ‘very determined resistance’; Ukrainian president urges Russians to pressure Putin to stop invasion
NATO can’t do anything right now because Ukraine is not yet part of NATO. But has NATO done anything of significance in any of the wars in Europe? I really can’t remember…as a student of international affairs/news, I really can’t. I may be wrong but please do remind me. In any case, trade embargoes by US and EU can’t do anything to Russia. It has gas, it has oil, it has rare earth minerals, it has a lot of the raw materials needed to manufacture semiconductors. It can easily turn to China and other rogue states for trade.
Then why on earth people from Asia like me watching the situation in Ukraine with bated breath? Because our version of Russia is China. If US and EU could not stop Putin from invading an independent democratic country like Ukraine, then nothing is going to stop China from invading Taiwan and other parts of Asia like the Philippines (it has been encroaching on our territory, mind you). Xi Jinping is just clapping in Beijing, watching with glee as things unravel from Eastern Europe.
God help us all.
Writing yesterday’s blog entry riled me up so much that I barely slept. I kept waking up every 30 mins and now I have a very nasty headache despite being asleep for most of today. Maybe every conversation with these friends should come with trigger warning signs.
The thing I should learn now is how to train myself from being triggered. My blogging and long-hand journal writing should have helped me with that. I should tell my shrink that it’s not making a dent now…I still exhibit PTSD. How long will I be like this?
In some cases, particularly where it is not treated, PTSD can last a very long time, perhaps the remainder of one’s life. Most people with longstanding PTSD find that the symptoms are not steady in their severity. For some people, PTSD symptoms gradually fade over time. Other people find that symptoms may increase when they encounter reminders of their traumatic events.
My reactions to triggering events and my preference to stay indoors and not meet people is my “fight-or-flight” response to this trauma. My abhorrence towards dating and my retreat to my hometown is a manifestation of that. I’m just preserving myself from abusers/predators like J. Survival mode. While I didn’t fight back and didn’t act on getting even with him, I cannot say the same for my friends in the industry and allied industries. I cannot control them.
As a predator, he is the type who will chase anyone with a vagina and I’m not going to be surprised if he’s chasing after some random salesperson or he goes after every one he employed in his lab. The girl he cheated me with is in some kind of networking or multilevel marketing shindig that is equivalent to scamming people. She even calls herself CEO. Duh. I no longer care who he chases, but if his shenanigans reach my doorstep or my turf, he will suffer the consequences.
Fight or flight. One day I will fight back. But I choose my battles. Not today though. Not today.
OOOhh I’m still angry. I’m still riled up. I should light up my lavender candle and start sketching until I fall asleep.
Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I shouldn’t be angry. Anger means I have feelings for him, even if it’s negative. I should teach myself how to be apathetic. Apathy is the best revenge.
Ahh, this song is satisfying. Nice to sing while taking a shower.
