I finally caved in. Bought myself a mid-priced fountain pain for watercolor sketching or ink sketching in general.

Drawing is a lot smoother compared to using fine liners. I have resurrected this pencil sketch of the UP Carillon I initially drew last year when we were still living in QC.

I’m happy with this purchase but boy, it pulled me into a rabit hole I can’t get out of now. I have watched videos of how to refill the cartridges with ink using a syringe and why this method is better than using a cartridge converter. I also researched on various inks and which would be the best for watercolor/washings and which inks would not clog the pens. There were also videos of how to clean fountain pens. It’s all so… tedious and uet fascinating. You bet I’m going to buy blunt-ended syringes and a bottle of Pilot blue-black ink. Once it’s completely dry, it won’t bleed when you watercolor, they said.

And knowing me, once I get enamored, I will upgrade to a better model and damn it, it’s going to be a very expensive hobby. 😩 I remember my father having a lotnof ink bottles on his desk because he was refilling his own pens. He juat loved pens like I do now.

I have a friend from college who  suddenly died two days ago. I sought a common friend at 5:30 am today to ask what happened. She said common friend was diagnosed with leukemia on 10 April and was admitted immediately to the ICU. He died on the 15th.

He didn’t stand a chance. It was too fast, like he wasn’t even given a chance to have treatment. His wife posted on Facebook (I checked after I learned) that her husband wanted to live and was fighting hard. I’m so sorry, C, rest in peace. You don’t have to hurt anymore.

I guess his leukemia didn’t present symptoms until it was already too advanced. I researched and learned that this happens to adults with chronic myelogenous leukemia. This common friend told me that this is a wakeup call for us in our age group to have ourselves checked regularly.

This jolted me. I finally decided that I won’t join the out-of-town data analytics training in early May and instead I should spend part of my annual personal time off for medical checkups. I ghosted my gynecologist for a year in 2023 after my tests showed I was fine. I should go back and have to re-do my pap smear and all tests that constitute an executive checkup. I should get another gastroenterologist because my previous one didn’t care a fig about me. My CT scan last December showed an inflamed fatty liver and pancreas. Another friend told me that unhealthy liver can be reversed but once the pancreas is hit—it’s gonna be tough. Women who have polycystic ovary syndrome (which I had known I have since high school) have a higher risk of developing pancreatic cancer or insulin resistance.

I shouldn’t leave everything to chance. Because as I wrote here before, genetics is shit. Even though lymphoma is generally regarded not genetic (but I doubt it because my grandpa and his daughter, my aunt, both died of it), there may be gene mutations that I may have inherited. I don’t want to leave my children motherless at this stage. I should have myself screened regularly.

I have already abstained from alcohol and too much stimulants like caffeine as they have been triggering my gastric problems. Plus it’s healthier. I’ve been controlling consumption of red meat. I haven’t been grilling steak or porkchops as often as I did in the past.

This is a wakeup call.

I had a call early this evening to prep my panelists for next week. Why do I feel like I asked the wrong questions and I looked like a dweeb? Maybe because the guide questions set before me were dumb and I was grasping for the middle ground. At the end of the call, I finally figured out what they want to talk and argue about. But I still felt like a dweeb and I hate that.

I also feel like I need to change something with my background. I’m not sure if I look like I’m in a home office and not a bedroom. I don’t like having virtual backgrounds because they make me look like I’m floating in space and not a real person. I can’t turn around my table because of limited space.

I’ve been sending emails requesting for interviews and most have responded positively. However, scheduling is a bitch. All of my online interviews will look like this (above).

Yes, Johnny Depp, you’re right. Sometimes the dam breaks because it couldn’t hold on much longer. The cracks are just too great. We cry because our dams break. And it’s ok.

But I’m in a good place now. Last month was bad but I was holding it as far as I could. I’m enjoying whatever momentary peace I have now.

Today is just unbearably hot. I water my plants everyday but the heat is just too much. To think that I’m already surrounded by my trees, the temperature is still unbearble. I am so thankful we’re no longer in Metro Manila because my electric bill would probably be 10k by now and my aircon working doubly hard to keep us cool 24/7.

I could only come out of my house at 4 pm to feed and give water to the cats outside and water the plants. It’s just too hot to do anything.

By 5 pm I come out of the balcony and try to catch some sun and watch birds roost.

I enjoy moments like this.

I am, however, contemplating whether I can forfeit this simple joy for another job because my next job may be more hectic than this. A friend from a rival newswire messaged me on Viber that they are looking for a Manila-based global editor. She doesn’t have the details but it’s more or less general news and business and it’s Asia/EMEA hours. She gave me the email address of the person hiring.

I will reach out to him tonight.

I am still weighing but this could be the reason why the PR writing thing is not yet working out. The universe is conspiring for me to do this journalism thing. Deep down I’m still a news hound through and through.

Last week I approached one of my sources and I made a business proposal since he has been consulting me for PR stuff anyway. He said he couldn’t have a contract approved by his firm because I’m still attached to my current company. Well, this makes sense because they’re global and it’s hard to have something under the table, even just as an initial engagement. I said yeah, let’s have something formal once I get out of my current job.

But it’s chicken and egg situation; I can’t get out if I couldn’t get enough clients to sustain me and right now I have zero.

Let’s see how this goes.

Meanwhile, this same friend sent me photos of their shooting-the-rapids getaway this weekend.

The river and the falls are just 30 mins away from my house. She said it was just a spontaneous thing they did—they just hired a boat and boat men and went riding the rapids and spent the night in Caliraya.

I am itching to go somewhere. We may do it this Labor Day.

…I will go bankrupt because I will be watching all the musicals and plays that I could fit into my schedule. I would go off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway to watch other interesting things.

That said, I will be skipping Miss Saigon in Manila this time around. My good friend, G, told me that the actress playing Kim was bad. Not really horrible but she sounds like she’s running out of breath when the singing required of Kim is very demanding and she couldn’t embody the role. Just because she has Filipino blood (she’s Filipino-Aussie) doesn’t mean she is already deserving to be Kim. From Lea Salonga (the original Kim) down to the last Kim before this one, the role in major Mis Saigon runs (West End, Broadway, global tour) most of the time has been won by a Filipino. We are known to be a vocal powerhouse but sadly this current Kim ain’t it.

The only redeeming factor of this Miss Saigon run is the Engineer–who has a very gay take on the role. My friend, G, said that the current Engineer is “very fresh”–a role that has been originated by Jonathan Pryce in the original production. But then, the Engineer role has been played by a female before—by another Filipino.

As Isay Alvarez (the original Gigi Van Tranh) said, Cameron Mackintosh was looking for the perfect Kim all over the world and found her in the Philippines. He went to Manila to find Kim but ended up leaving Manila with 12 Filipinos to bring to West End.

Anyway, I may change my mind when I come back from Singapore or maybe I would just skip it all together and just dive in Anilao.

Just looking at my schedule in Singapore next week makes me exhausted. Starting Monday morning I will have back-to-back-to-back meetings until evening for drinks. Until Thursday. Ugh.

I’m still composing emails and coordinating the coverage for our conferences and I will be having calls with my panelists because I will be moderating one session.

It’s sooooo freaking hot these days. 🫠

I’ve seen these posts on Instagram and the comments section are filled with people, especially from India, wanting to study and eventually work in S. Korea because of the false reality that K-pop and K-dramas present to the world.

However, there are sobering comments as well that warn people that’s not what it’s cracked up to be. First off, their degrees obtained in S. Korea will not land them jobs in S. Korea because there are more qualified graduates from among the local population who have gone through the hypercompetitive educational system of the country. Top Korean universities have already filtered their students, whereas foreign students don’t go through the wringer. They accept all foreign students regardless of their GPAs or whatever scoring system they have, since they pay more than locals.

Local corporations, of course, choose the best locals from the top schools so why would they even hire foreigners? The reason why a lot of Koreans study English here in the Philippines is because of the hypercompetitive jobs market back home. Those from more modest background can’t afford to study in Australia, US, and UK so they choose the “English-lite” version–the Philippines–to learn the language for cheap. They need the extra edge of having functional English as a second language (ESL) when applying for jobs back home even though they may not even use it in their jobs and everyday life there. It’s the local employers’ way of filtering candidates, which is quite unfair as that already culls out those who could not afford to go abroad for ESL education. Hiring ESL tutors in Korea is more expensive. Several Koreans have already told me about this. My nephew’s best friend is Korean whose family settled in our hometown. The kid had to leave for a while to serve in the military and is now back to study in UP Diliman.

But I digress.

What I’m saying here is that the social construction of reality these K-dramas and the K-pop culture is like a bait-and-switch for the impressionable younger generation who are now so enamored of the country that when they land in Korea, they end up struggling or disappointed. This is what the Instagram post was about. She probably couldn’t express it well since it seems like English is not even her first language. What others are pointing out in the comments is that she is struggling because her expectation vs reality was very wide. She came unprepared.

Even though I love coming to Japan for the sights and food and I am fan of anime and their movies, I never considered moving there. I know about the realities of living there from friends who have moved there (they have Japanese blood so it was easy for them to migrate). Isolation is my number one fear and even the locals suffer from that. Language skills can easily be overcome but the barrier is still there. Xenophobia is another issue, which is very high among the locals, especially the older generation. I cannot subject my kids to those difficulties just because of naïveté. I’d rather they plant roots here first and let them explore on their own once their prefrontal cortexes are more developed. When they have roots, they will always have somewhere to come back to when things don’t work out versus having none and in the end they feel like they don’t belong anywhere.

I’ve written about social construction of reality when I was in graduate school pursuing media studies. I wanted my thesis to head in that direction but I figured I would graduate sooner if I do something closer to home, which is business journalism and systems theory. I have already seen this romanticization of S. Korea 20 years ago when I was still watching K-movies and K-dramas. I already thought that this was already unhealthy and I may become a victim of bait and switch. For somebody with a master’s degree on media studies, I should know better, right?

Anyway, I feel bad about those who fall for this false reality because they would have a rude awakening that it’s all not romantic being there, that not all Korean men are like the ones they have been watching in those dramas, and that working there is not as easy as they paint it to be.

I saw myself in the mirror before I left for Metro Manila this morning to cover a conference. I didn’t like what I saw.

I saw myself again when I was buying linen pants from Uniqlo that I will take with me to Singapore. I didn’t like myself.

I had let myself go.

The stress of the past couple of months and my fear of having an empty stomach that may trigger too much gastric acid production is now very evident on my physique.

I don’t like it. I don’t want to hate myself but I hate what I’m seeing.

I have to start over again. Start calorie-counting. Start to obsessively walk.

I need discipline again.

I painted again last night, just to relieve myself of anxiety over going back to work after a relaxing two-day holiday. It’s a very loose painting for exercising water control and impressions.

Need to use gouache more boldly by painting a scene from any Studio Ghibli movie.

Was I productive today? Not so much but I was able to do one interview and two potential interviews. My effort and my toll+diesel became worth it because I was able to chat with L during lunch and after work. But we were so busy that we had to part ways 30 mins after we finished work.