Tag Archives: work at home

Almost real carbonara

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Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I cooked carbonara for dinner last night using the near-authentic recipe. I didn’t have the Italian guanciale so I used the closest thing: pork that is used to make bacon.

I fried the pork in its own fat while I whisked 4 eggs with hard cheddar cheese (I didn’t have a block of parmesan; I had mozzarella but that’s too soft). When the pork fat was rendered, I turned the heat down and combined the spaghetti with the pork and coated it with the little oil that came out. When everything was coated, I turned off the heat and added the eggs with cheese. I made sure the eggs did not curdle and come out like scrambled eggs. When the egg-cheese combination made the pasta creamy, I immediately served it to my waiting customers.

They liked it. It’s less heavy compared to the bastardized version of carbonara with cream, butter and bell peppers.

Add ground pepper for a little bit of ooomph.

Later, I played this on my mobile phone:

Because I wanted to be brainless.

I have two analysis pieces to rewrite 🤦🏻‍♀️. And couple of more leads to follow up. My poaching of journos are always unsuccessful. Either they’re jumping to VC firms or they just wanna stay put because chasing deals from USD 5m to infinity is not their cup of tea.

It’s hard to recruit people in non-English-speaking markets!!!

One of these days I’ll turn to RPGs to decompress. Buy a Nintendo Switch and play Legend of Zelda.

Or live in Anilao and jump into the sea when I feel stressed.

WTF! It’s 6 am and I’m still awake. How am I going to work today?!

I need to sleeeeeep. 😴

Daylight. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Happiness is a choice

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Today I watched a contestant in America’s Got Talent who has terminal cancer (last test showed cancer spread now in several vital organs). She said (paraphrasing) that you don’t have to wait until the bad times are gone to be happy. You can choose to be happy. She has 2% survival rate but she said it’s better than zero, and it’s something.

Happiness is a choice. After six months of grief, I choose to be happy in small ways. The camping we did last two days was refreshing and I want to do it again. I found my old self again, the one who climbed mountains and camped. The one who swam in seas. The girl who is happy going to different places. The one who is happy browsing through secondhand book shops. The girl who is happy curling up with a book on a rainy day.

I don’t have to be over this grief to be happy. I can carry it for a long time but I should make sure that I am growing so that grief would not be a big part of me like in Day 1.

Grabbed from Instagram

I have come so far, looking back. It’s still there and I think I have to accept that it won’t go away easily. It’s just forcing me to grow around it, this grief.

The only thing I wrote on my journal on that fateful day. I’ve come so far. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

And I took care of myself. I am finding simple joys in little things. Like adding RAM on my laptop and it’s a skill that none of my girl friends, as far as I know, have. Just like refurbishing furniture and painting walls. Being an all-around domestic goddess.

I’ve been operating on my laptops for quite some time now. Like adding RAM and SSD and attaching disconnected flex cables. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I had been messy when J was still here because I was busy and had been attending to 101 things all at the same time. Now that I’m taking life slowly, I finally got to my old neater self.

Assembling dual monitor swivel arms that I bought from Lazada. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
A much neater and bigger desk space. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

It brings me peace that my workspace is neater now. I hope this would inspire me to be more productive when I get back to work next week.

I’m thinking of going to the onsen in my hometown and have a dip there for 4 hours. Just because.

I choose to be happy.

Exhausted

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Waiting shed at the entrance of UP Diliman designed by National Artist Napoleon Abueva. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I haven’t ridden my bike at all this week as I have been working too much the past few days. On Wednesday I was still editing a dreadful analysis piece until 11:30 pm so until the next day I was so exhausted and brain-dead.

And tonight, I finished the only article I wrote for the week past 6 pm when editors from East and Southeast Asia have already retired for the weekend. The rest of the week I was wrestling with a lot of articles that required a lot of brain cells to fix. All my requests for interview were ignored. It is indeed soul-crushing.

The government has now declared Metro Manila and nearby provinces to be under general community quarantine (GCQ) albeit with heightened restrictions and I really lost track of what is allowed and not allowed in the new lockdown-not-lockdown classification. I want to go diving but the daily new cases are still high at almost 7,000 as of today. I don’t know where I can go to have a breath of fresh air and a different scenery.

I’m so tired.

I need to be away, I guess. For a week. To where, I don’t know. To do what, I don’t know. Even though I’m fully vaccinated, I’m still not protected from Covid because of the low efficacy of Sinovac’s vaccine. This limits my options. Maybe I’ll just drive to nowhere.

Everyday is a battle

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We’re on the third day of ECQ a.k.a. No One Leaves the House. It’s dragging me down mentally and emotionally. I couldn’t bike or walk outside the 6-9 am window because I’m a nocturnal creature so I wake up late. I tried exercising every morning a couple of years ago but I always end up tired by midday, which is hard for me when I need full concentration during writing or editing. So now I’m stuck.

I haven’t had any in-person intelligent adult conversation in weeks. This is driving me nuts. I just want to randomly call friends but I know I would just be a nuisance to them so I haven’t done it. Been ranting about this government on Twitter for God knows how long. It’s maddening. I must stop doom-scrolling in the next few days to ease the tension in my mind and body.

I had been sick the past few days; it’s probably psychosomatic. Probably too high gastric acids due to stress. I just woke up with this gut-wrenching stomach pain that I associate with hyperacidity, an affliction I haven’t experienced again since 2014 when I had my gall bladder removed. Following that stomachache on Monday was the debilitating diarrhea that left me weak and almost dehydrated.

But I had to work yesterday. I edited one story and wrote one story as well. The day before I did an hour-long interview despite the pain and overall weakness that I felt.

Cat loft. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Again, thank God for cats. They’re my stress-relievers. It’s also a constant battle to keep Kimchi from climbing the curtains and going up the windows and the shelves.

Kimchi up again on the shelf. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Despite that, they’re good company and they always crave my presence and always beg to be let in my room and just lie on the floor to be with me. For them, I am their mommy.

Sushi keeping me company while I sew curtains to replace the ones destroyed by her sister. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Pledge

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My battlestation. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Today I will be a badass journalist.

I had never been enough to anybody. So I promise myself I will never be pathetic again.

No one will come close to hurt me again.

No more looking back. Bawal maging marupok, nakamamatay.