2021 April
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The world: Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and Queen Elizabeth's husband, has passed away. So has DMX, American rapper. Big facebook breach reported, etc. Doesn't seem like news, really. My phone number was among the data leaked. The country is still experiencing a surge in cases, hospitals and ICUs still bursting to capacity. Yet in spite of the crisis, the president has not been around. This has prompted questions of whether he's still alive. This in turn prompted multiple proof-of-life photos and videos from the senator-who-is-also-presidential-assistant, some of which may or may have been photoshopped. We are told he will
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The on-site process Got my first shot of the Sinovac vaccine earlier today at Pinyahan Elementary School in Quezon City. My appointment was for 9am, I arrived on-site a bit before 8:30am. There was a short queue outside, so I waited there for a bit.
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It's April! Or as it's otherwise known, March 2020 month 13. As is usual, we are suffering the sweltering summer heat. Also, it's Easter Sunday, if that means anything to you. The world: Surprising almost no one, the PH government extended the ECQ lockdown in the NCR+ bubble. Anyone with half a brain could have told you that the one week ECQ was no way going to be enough, given what we know about the virus' life cycle. Meanwhile, we continued to hit record numbers of new cases, our 7-day rolling average now the highest in SEA since the pandemic
2021 March
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It's the last weekend of March. It feels like the month went by quickly. The world: Local covid response: The government introduced the concept of an "NCR Plus" bubble last Monday, restricting travel in and out of the NCR and adjacent provinces, in response to the rising cases. Still, the daily counts kept rising, hitting record highs of almost 10k cases daily. Even before the dust has settled on the bubble response, they decided to announce last night a reversion to the stricter ECQ. Shades of last year, during the run up to the first lockdown announcement: rumors circulated via -
The world: Over the past couple of days, our nationwide daily covid cases broke 7000+, the highest recorded so far. Have to be super careful when going out for errands. Not that I wasn't being careful even before, mind you. Just now, government has announced we are still under GCQ (see my post about the PH quarantine levels), but with more restrictions, etc. Looks like they are still hesitant to provide a stronger lockdown which would require paying people to stay home so they don't starve to death. Links of interest: The internet is splitting apart. The Internet Archive wants
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Happy Pi Day! The world: It's the one year anniversary of the world's longest lockdown. In some kind of sick anniversary celebration, local covid cases are on the rise. Yesterday, 5000 new cases were reported, the highest daily rate in 6 months or so. And now a Philippine variant has been detected. Now is not the time to be complacent, we all need to be more careful. The government seems unwilling to impose another widespread ECQ and are focusing on targetted, granular lockdowns. Not sure how effective this would be. Links of interest: An opinionated list of best practices for
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March has begun. Did it ever really end? The world: Vaccination finally starts in the country, with initial donated batches of Sinovac and AstraZeneca vaccine arriving in the country. Just in time for the one year anniversary of the world's longest lockdown. SinoVac isn't the best choice, but many of my doctor friends say they'll settle for it if that's what's available for them. I think QC is planning to use AstraZeneca for their citizens, but worrying is that AZ's efficacy has been shown to be not so good against certain variants such as the South African one, which has
2021 February
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“please respect my belief that your beliefs are bullshit”
2021 January
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A while back I saw this tweet talking about drawing memes from before the internet, and I was reminded that was a thing we had around here too when we were kids! We had our own version of that "giraffe in the window" drawing, except the one I remember was made so that you could switch the answer to "cat hugging a pole outside the window" to troll whoever you were asking to guess: The most common ones I remember were the ones involving a "man wearing a straw hat/salakot", a typical depiction of rural people back in the day.
2020 December
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Both the site (https://patawadpatawad.blogspot.com/) and the qr code are valid, props for that!
2020 August
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These weeknotes are coming in late in the day because of reasons. (The reasons being laziness and procrastination.) Actually, I feel like I've been kind of phoning in the weeknotes over the past few weeks, they've mostly been "hey, I've been busy, so nothing of significance happened, but here are some things I watched/played." Supposedly one of the side effects of writing regular updates is that you tend to look out for more interesting things to do so you have something to write about, even on an unconscious level. In the past few weeks, that has been problematic because (a)
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Still kind of busy, although there's a bunch of things I hope I can finally wrap up this week, so I can move on to the long list of other things I want to be doing. The world continues to be bleak, so I'm still hiding from it. My stuff: Forty-two. I thought about just merging these into a single post for the day, but nah, this seems better. Reworking the old charity side project still ongoing. I was hoping to finish all the changes last week and next week would be testing and deployment, but stuff got in the
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Kind of a busy week for me again, so the week kind of passed me by quickly. It's August! In one month it will be (PH) Christmas season! It feels like July went by more quickly than other quarantine months. My stuff: A bit of consulting work. Reworking the old charity side project still ongoing. I was hoping to finish all the changes last week and next week would be testing and deployment, but stuff got in the way (and estimates may have been a bit off), but the spillover is small and we should still be fine for finishing
2020 July
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The world: hm. I was a bit busy this week, so I wasn't paying too much attention, so I don't have too much to rail against today. Well of course, things are still ongoing. There's still the pandemic, fascist police state philosophy continues to rear it's ugly head in the US, PH gov't continues to be dumb, etc., but this week seemed a bit tame comparably. On July 26, 2020, 8 a.m. I wrote: Pandemic thoughts and updates, July 26 edition: Watching mass via Facebook again today. The nearby Church actually holds services, but last I heard it was only
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My country: There are days when I have to consciously temper my rage at the shenanigans of this government. I can't write about them today. My stuff: This week's pandemic notes. Had a busy work week again; at the same time I also picked up an older charity project where the client asked for UI updates. Had issues with running the old code, and it was small enough, so I decided to rewrite it in a new tech stack. Might write about it at some point. Gaming: I am like 98% through the FF7R hard mode run. I'm totally making
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My country: Friday afternoon the House of Representatives voted to deny the franchise application of the nation's biggest broadcaster ABS-CBN. This despite all agencies of the executive testifying that the company had no violations. Justifications cited were mostly personal reasons. The Palace claims they remained neutral on this issue, but no one really believes that. Probably not even then. What now, Philippines? My stuff: This week's pandemic notes. Had a busy week work-wise. Learning a lot about Vue and Laravel though, so that's fun! Gaming: I am like 95% through the FF7R hard mode run. Only a 5% difference from
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My country: Friday afternoon the president sighed the controversial "Anti-terror law" that vastly expands police powers, allows people to be arrested without warrants on mere suspicion of terrorism etc. Interesting timing, right after China applies a new anti-terror low to Hong Kong (and rightly gets castigated for it by countries all over the world) and also right after the PNP (who promise not to abuse their newfound powers) are under criticism for killing some soldiers in a misencounter and tampering with the crime scene to cover it up. Many are afraid of the chilling impact on freedom of speech, but
2020 June
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My stuff: This week's pandemic notes. Easily the most annoying thing this week: our broadband modem conked out Wednesday night. Customer support isn't super responsive for local telcos: I called their support line the next day (support line is not even available 24/7!), got put on hold for 45 minutes TWICE before they agreed to send a repair crew over the next day (Friday). Friday morning I got a text that the technician visit was actually scheduled for SATURDAY morning. They arrive Saturday AFTERNOON, due to traffic apparently. And unluckily, they are out of spare modems for the replacement. They
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My stuff: This week's pandemic notes. Some days still hot, but weather beginning to turn for the better. Sleep kind of better and a bit more regular too. Did my quarterly medical checkup this past week (slightly delayed). No issues, but I need to do an FBS test for next time. Sleep schedule kind of settling back into my usual biphasic sleep. Although the second phase seems to move around a lot... Not much work-wise the past week, and a bit more family-related expenses. Medical and government stuff. Gaming: still playing a lot of Final Fantasy VII Remake. I think
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Surprisingly, no new crises have emerged during the past week. I think. More of the same crises, carrying on. Last Friday was the PH independence day holiday. I didn't feel like celebrating. It doesn't feel like we are free. In any case, a protest rally against the yet-to-be-signed terror bill took place at the university that morning, inspite of threats from the authorities that it wasn't allowed. The protestors spaced themselves out and everything. Some friends reported trouble getting into the university though. Apparently a heavy police/military presence was manning many of the entrances for some reason. "Basta". News report.