2022 May
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A Quote In the river I have seen you Through love age and misery In the river I will find you for you will always be you and i will always be me Gwyn Davies, Legends of Tomorrow S07E12 The World PH/Politics: The elections have come and gone and like it not, we must live with the results. I have written some post-election thoughts here. PH/sports: Some good news though: Last Friday the UP Maroons defeated ADMU in the final game of the UAAP basketball season, ending a 36-year drought. The Maroons last won the championship after the dictatorship fell. -
A Quote A single grain of rice can tip the scale. One man alone can make a difference. -- the emperor, Mulan The World PH/Politics: Elections are tomorrow! Destiny is at hand, one way or another. The Leni/Kiko campaign held their final rally / Miting De Avance last night at Ayala Avenue in Makati, with attendance estimates reaching 800,000 attendees (!!). A lot of people, especially the Leni supporters, have pre-election anxiety. I wrote about my ballot and my final pre-election words here. PH/Covid: Thankfully, cases remain low. A lot of people have been predicting we might have a surge -
A whole new month just crept up on us huh. I don't have anything particularly witty to say at the moment. The World Putin's invasion of Ukraine is now in its 10th week. No end in sight. Not sure if it's worth it to continue tracking this here since this may go on for a while. PH/Politics: One week remains until the elections on Monday the 9th. It's the homestretch! There was some kind of Baby Marcos-aligned sortie near our house last night. I briefly considered buying a tomato. I wrote a short note about my thoughts for the last
2022 April
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The World Putin's invasion of Ukraine is now in its 9th week. Russian efforts have been refocused to eastern Ukraine, and Mariupol is about to fall. PH/Politics: VP and current presidential candidate Leni Robredo celebrated her birthday yesterday, and a grand rally was held in Pasay with an estimated over 400,000 attendees. A good number of my friends were there. It's a bit of a phenomenon really. I don't know if she will manage to win the elections, but if she does it's going to be a miracle driven by the people. PH/Politics: The Comelec has released a precinct finder -
Today is Easter Sunday, if you celebrate that kind of thing. It's kind of a good time to start afresh. And maybe also to remember we are already three and a half months into this year, the third of the pandemic. A Quote 'We're all just people.' Nanny blew a cloud of blue smoke at the chimney. 'Everyone's just people.' -- Terry Pratchett in Wyrd Sisters This one felt really poignant to me for some reason. The World Putin's invasion of Ukraine is now in its 8th week. Ukraine has managed to sink a Russian warship. PH/Politics: A bunch of -
Today is Palm Sunday, the first day of Holy Week. When I was growing up, Holy Week was traditionally a quiet time of prayer and reflection; my grandmother would chastise us if we were noisy, especially from Thursday through Saturday. The period feels a lot less sacrosanct in the modern world, either because I'm an adult now or because people usually just take this time to go on vacations or whatnot, or maybe some combination of both. The World Putin's invasion of Ukraine is now in its 7th week. More and more Russian war atrocities are coming to light. PH/Politics: -
It's April! Still the world turns. Sigh. This entry is coming in a day late because I was busy during the weekend. The World Putin's invasion of Ukraine is now in its 6th week. The Russians have withdrawn from the Kyiv region and more of their atrocities have been revealed in their wake. PH/Politics: There was another Comelec-sponsored presidential debate last night, apparently the last one, but I was unable to watch. Sounds like my preferred candidate did well though. PH/Covid: Cases continue to remain low, but we should keep our guard up. Showbusiness: The big news last week was
2022 March
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March is almost done. The summer heat is undeniably here. I am so very tired. A Quote "A single grain of rice can tip the scale. One man may be the difference between victory and defeat." - from "Mulan" (A reminder I need when I feel bad about the current state of the world and PH politics and feel like there's nothing I can do.) The World Putin's invasion of Ukraine is now in its 5th week. Ukranians are fighting back from Kyiv, and Russia has refocused it's effort around the Donbas region, claiming that was the plan all along. -
A Quote "We all change, when you think about it, we're all different people all our lives and that's okay, we've got to keep moving, so long as you remember all the people you used to be." - the Eleventh Doctor The World Putin's invasion of Ukraine is now in its 4th week. PH: The first comelec-sponsored presidential debates were last night, with one notable absence. I didn't feel the need to watch the debates this year (unlike in 2016 where I posted live commentary). I feel like the choices are much more clear-cut for this election and watching them -
A Quote "This is a hard mindset to get out of, that the world is best if it prioritizes only your priorities. I promise though that the moment you open yourself up to the idea that a diverse world creates an overall better world because it allows each person to find their own passions, and a world of happy people will create a better overall world for you because that positivity will lead to things that will make you happier (and as a nice side effect, other people are happier)." Mark Rosewater, lead designer for Magic the Gathering The World -
Just like that we are three months into the year. Time marches on. A Quote “There has to be a balance, Vin,” he said. “Somehow, we’ll find it. The balance between whom we wish to be and whom we need to be.” He sighed. “But for now,” he said, nodding to the side, “we simply have to be satisfied with who we are.” from The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson The World Putin's invasion of Russia continues, extending past 10 days. Russia is heavily hit by sanctions, which Putin says is tantamount to a declaration of war. PH: As
2022 February
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A Quote "There is no purgatory for war criminals, they go straight to hell ambassador" - Ukranian ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya The World Can you imagine a world still reeling/recovering from a global pandemic where so many people suffered, and thinking to yourself "You know what, that's not enough, the world still needs even more suffering!" That's exactly what Vladimir Putin did when he declared war on and immediately invaded Ukraine in the middle of last week. It's been at least 3 days since the invasion started and Kyiv has yet to fall. Putin is reportedly frustrated at the amount of
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A Quote “Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?” — Danielle LaPorte The World PH Elections: The surveys look bad for the good guys. Covid: NCR now averaging 500 or less new cases per day. We are still in Alert Level 2 though. The spectre of war continues to loom over Ukraine. Links of Interest That broken tech/content culture cycle: Anil Dash on how we got to our current tech dystopia Web3 Is A Mid-Life Crisis from Ryan Broderick / Garbage Day: "In many ways, Kickstarter’s weird crypto project — and the
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A Quote "If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” - E.B. White The World PH: Campaign season has officially kicked off here, so last week was full of proclamation rallies and such. Covid: Cases have continued to drop, furthering a descent into normalcy. Last few days have been averaging under 5k new cases per day, down from under
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February has managed to creep up on us yet again, leaving the pleasant January weather only a distant memory. The days are starting to get hotter, and the election season is starting to heat up. A Quote "But I also know we can do our best and still suffer the fate I most want to avoid. Such is life, though. This is the price we have to pay for living: to endure the beauty that comes with the fragility of moments." -- Winnie Lim The World PH: The legislature has signed off on a mandatory SIM card registration bill that
2022 January
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Last weekend of January. The days and nights are starting to get warmer, indicating the nearing end of January and of our pleasant weather conditions. From here on the temperatures will steadily increase until we return to the punishing midyear heat. A Quote “You gotta say your affirmations in your mouth and your heart. You say, ‘I am brave of this meeting!’ , ‘I am loved!’, ‘I smell good!’ And you can say five or three or ten until you know it.” “You gotta walk big. You gotta mean it. Like Dolly on a dinosaur. Because you got it.” “Never -
A Quote “Many people think excitement is happiness. When you are excited you are not peaceful. True happiness is based on peace.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist monk and peace activist (RIP) The World PH elections: GMA aired a series of Jessica Soho last night where she interviewed the top presidential candidates; the most infamous one declined the invite and claimed the award-winning journalist was "biased". I guess that's what happens when a lot of your history is indefensible, you treat anyone who doesn't worship you as "biased". PH covid: Daily new cases seem to have plateaued at around 30k, -
I love January; January weather is the best in the Philippines. Mornings are comfortably nippy, enough to make you want to stay in bed, and it's rare to get afternoons with the typical punishing heat. The pleasant weather also makes this month the best for taking long walks outdoors on the usually hot city streets, though I haven't been able to do this recently (I tell myself it's due to the pandemic.) Unfortunately, January is halfway over, which means our pleasant weather days are nearing their end. A Quote "The universe never tells us if we did right or wrong. -
This post is coming in late, because it's been a busy day. A Quote "Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." - Howard Thurman Related comic by Zen Pencils. The World Covid (presumably the Omicron variant) continues to tear through the country. Over the past few weeks we have seen record highs for both new cases and positivity rate. We had to go out to a big city hospital this week to get some unrelated tests done, and there was -
I wrote a bunch about 2021 yesterday, and here I am again writing some more! Welcome to season 3 of weeknotes! New Year's Day is a completely arbitrary social construct but there's a certain kind of energy in the atmosphere for the first few days of the year. The kind of energy that makes it easier to wake up early in the morning and go out for a jog or be productive or whatever resolution you may have. Perhaps it's the sense of a shared commitment from the community - a hopeful commitment to new beginnings, to becoming better and