11/30/2023 ‒
There are thirteen months in a planner

"Hindi talaga kayo nagsi-sticker ever since, ano?" the barista asked me.

"Hindi," I answered, although I know it isn't true. I did do the whole Starbucks sticker thing, twice, at least twice. I did it with the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf at least twice. And then I realized I didn't really get to use those planners as much, so I stopped... only to get a Moleskine planner once, and a Mark's planner (the ones co-branded with Monocle, of course) twice.

And then I shifted to Muji planners, and even then I didn't get around to using them... but to be fair, it was 2020, and there was nothing to write in your planners. If I'm being honest, the only time I really picked up the habit was this year. All my meetings with industry titans, all my appointments with doctors and therapists, all my editorial deadlines, and all - well, not all, but a lot of my rawest thoughts, for when I found myself needing to write but not having anything else to write on. Sometimes, you see it - take my essay last week from Hong Kong - but most of the time, you don't, as if that matters.

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11/28/2023 ‒
Specific horror stories

I remember reading somewhere about "Asian horror stories" - and it's not supernatural or creepy or anything. It could be as simple as not realizing you haven't turned on the rice cooker until the time you're ready to have lunch.

Yeah, that happened to me, and while it is an inconvenience, modern rice cookers mean you don't have to wait that long. Me, now that I live alone, I only cook one cup of rice a day for both lunch and dinner, which means a cooking time of roughly twenty minutes, and a steaming time (I don't know how to call it exactly, but you know the thing we call inin in Filipino?) of roughly ten minutes more. For good measure, I keep the rice cooker plugged in for 45 minutes, including both cooking and inin time. I can cut the latter if I'm really hungry; I'll just have to let up with slightly wetter rice.

Thing is, I've finally shifted to brown rice. Health reasons. My weight is actually going up and my doctor pointed out that my heart rate is higher than usual and so is my blood pressure. "Go back to exercising," she said, and I have two thoughts in my head. One, I have been so tired recently, and the bed is just so appealing. Two, I don't think I'll ever go to the gym because, you know, stupid reasons.

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11/21/2023 ‒
Efficiency tourism

Yeah, I sat at the counter first. It was too cumbersome to mention it on this so-called essay.

This is one of those very rare cases when the changes to the site formerly known (and forever will be known) as Twitter lead to something acceptable.

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11/04/2023 ‒
One or the other

I learned in the last few years - take note of the timeline - that when I'm feeling particularly sad, I get really tired. Like, out of the blue, I get sleepy, the kind of sleepy that can only be fixed by calling it a night.

I'm not sure why exactly, although I suppose you're not ought to dig deeper into how these things work for you, and most likely you alone. I once figured it's my body telling me I need to rest because it will be better tomorrow, or at least I will be able to think things through once I've had a chance to retreat and rest.

That said, I only became acutely aware of it in the last year or so. I think it's because I subconsciously tried not to look like I was having a bad day. I had this fear that if I hinted at that, then other people - you know, you know - would be dragged along with me as well. Or maybe that was never the case, that it was me explaining away why I should never feel bad. I felt everyone had something to say about why I should never throw tantrums or express my emotions. Or maybe it's because now I have a bit more freedom now and I can allow what I feel to bubble into the surface more... but then, you don't want the neighbors complaining, still.

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