Because we’re tethered to our (remote) phone system, you need to observe the usual breaks like morning tea (30 minutes) and lunch (also 30 minutes). So what can you do in 20 minutes?
I had chicken hearts in the freezer which I brought out and with some leftover chicken breast, prepared it like one does with adobo- apple cider vinegar, diced onions and garlic, Kikkoman soy sauce and a bay leaf. Leave it to simmer until the liquid evaporates to this moorish, salty thick sauce with the hearts all tender. Problem was, got caught up with goddamned work that it burned.
Burned goddamn itttttttttttttt. Was looking forward to having it for dinner with rice and fried eggs doused with sesame oil and chilli oil. Day literally ruined.
For dinner: ‘essential’ spaghetti
The word essential is popular these days in New Zealand: during the lockdown only essential services will be open; essential workers only would be allowed out, to work. The definition is simple- something indispensable, crucial. But the reality is that we live in a time when we’re spoiled for choice- everything is literally essential.
We’re fortunate that the scale of this tragedy is such that a lot of us can still hold on to our ridiculous ideas of what are essentials to us. I have a lot of these and I make no apologies because I worked hard for them (is this a good enough, valid argument??).
But what happens when we’re all wrong, when I’m wrong, and the current situation worsens?
My first thoughts when the lockdown was announced were; what am I going to cook? Do I have enough food supplies? Do we have enough freezer space?
As it turns out, only the 1st thought/question had a positive answer- I could cook anything I wanted. I didn’t want to make anything complicated, or have a menu heavy on the things that I wanted to cut down on like fats and salt. The thing is, you can never have enough food supplies and because I actually shop everyday, I couldn’t really stretch my foresight far enough; lists just don’t work. I was at the supermarket today and while everything was calm, I was in such a state that I couldn’t focus.
Shall I get squash? (pureed, roasted); almonds maybe (I’ve always wanted to try making almond butter); floury potatoes or all-rounders? Shall we do lamb, or wait when its closer to Easter? Should I get bone broth? Do I need dashi? Do they have fresh sage? Salmon fillets seem cheaper.
So no, there’s no such thing as enough food supplies and we actually need a freezer because even with two refrigerators, the space isn’t enough. We were organising to buy a freezer but didn’t get to in time when alert level 4 was announced to happen on Monday.
I don’t think I’ll survive a pandemic where the comforts we are fortunate to have would not be available. Doyet injured herself today making ‘ukoy’ for chrissakes 😅. That’s just us- we live to eat. Take the food away and I’ll just go to the nearest river to end everything.
Without the comfort of food, life is fucking pointless.
I want to go to the supermarket so bad, but the whole process in this lockdown period needs a list, a set of precautions and timing.
Now that there’s no work structure to speak of, I find myself freed even more to work and I’m glad that creativity is both my work and my passion. With no boundaries and timelines (well, I have four weeks), I feel that I can fulfil both- hopefully.
I’m exhausted. Full day. That’s all. Off to bed, or lying in bed watching season 3 of Westworld and thinking which was a more formidable adversary- AI gone berserk or a virus you can’t see?
Had to wake up at 7am to prepare for remote work which is weird because no one can really see you at your work desk still in your pyjamas, face unwashed, teeth unbrushed, but there’s this need for some normalcy, for some semblance of the usual routine- and this is just day 1.
Which turned out to be uneventful. Work is work and I’ve always been good at it because I like it, but I don’t want to talk about it because it already consumes so much of my life. By 4pm, I feel exhausted and I had to lie down for a while and felt a bit guilty about answering emails in bed- but you can, I tell myself!
It was a gorgeous sunny day and walking around the house for breaks, I would watch the dairy just across the house where people came and went as if everything was normal- maybe it is, until you get infected, no?
There are moments of anxiety which is stupid because I get anxious about stupid things like, how are we going to celebrate Easter? How will I get good sirloin or Lewis Road butter?
But this is me- this is my life and my reality.
I did two batches of laundry.
I checked online if Smith and Caughey’s was delivering but they’re not.
Thank God Sephora is.
Should I grow out my hair?
Have to finish up drawing an exercise regimen.
I am 72kgs and I can see my abs in the morning when I haven’t eaten anything- all it takes for them to show now is regular abwork and cardio which I can now do because we’re stuck at home for four weeks.
I can also further lower my cholesterol level and get a perfect score by the time i do my regular bloodwork.
I can sort my clothes.
I can stop buying clothes and be able to save.
I can buy that new iPad because I’ve been able to save from not buying clothes.
This is my life and my reality.
I’ve read I think in the New York Times that you’re worse off if you have Vitamin D deficiency- tried to find the article, but couldn’t- so here I am getting some sun.
It’s cold now. Summer officially ended on March 1st. Winter is coming I could hear in my head, and delivered Game of Thrones style. Good news- Uber and taxis have been deemed essential services!
Honestly, if we all had time to prepare properly, I would’ve made and stocked my freezer (attempted to buy a freezer but either all the good ones were sold out or they weren't delivering) with adobo, sisig and pork barbecue.
Only essential services and businesses will be open and non-essential travel is prohibited
I’ve been doing remote work for over 4 years now and I have it down pat- all I need is my trusted MacBook and a good wifi connection.
I’ve flirted with the idea of going back to school a couple of times and realised later that I wanted to do this because I find it hard to learn in a non-classroom environment. I can pick up a lot of things like graphic design for example which has become my main career, and lately there’s basic video-making and photography, but it’s always been a case that’s more about passion and necessity.
It works for now, but I know that there’s so much more room to learn about these things beyond what I currently use them for- in spite of my constant complaint that I’d rather write instead.
I probably have to accept the fact that this IS my life; that there’s probably no novel down the road, and yet the thought of 25,000 more images in lieu of that terrifies me- and makes me sad 😢
They don’t call it a town, so what do you call it then?
There was an adequate supermarket with just four aisles, a pub (of course) and restaurant, a small museum because it seemed that every place no matter how small had one, a nice cafe (at least) and endless fields of hops. The population was apparently 250, with about 50 or so transients working the hop fields (so someone said at the pub-restaurant where we had dinner the day we arrived). We waited for that awful meal for about 40 minutes but it was too hot to complain. We heard a smattering of languages from groups of men of a range of ages, all caucasian, their downy forearms and sun-burnt necks sporting a uniform coat of dust and huddled over pitches of lager. Would you hit on that, I asked S (we always asked her this question because S had been unattached for quite some time), nodding my head at a lanky Russian in a staind wife-beater singlet. Too thin and probably has gonorrhoea, she replied bored. How about that one? (a young Spanish guy with a perpetual grin and very white teeth). S sighed and then moaned, is this it?
I have a $2,000 new iPhone with supposedly upgraded imaging/camera capabilities but four shots later, this container of Nutri-Grain high protein cereal still looks like dog biscuits. Or little square turds.
And I’m exhausted. No one knows though, no one can tell. I am warm, friendly and efficient on the phone. I feel I can save someone’s life over the phone if they happen to be right on the ledge of a building and ready to jump. You’ll be fine, I murmur. Everything’s going to be fine.
By 2pm, the Nutri-Grain has revealed its true nature; in spite of the high protein it claims to have, it is nothing but sugar. I’ve burned it all off and I feel like I’m dying. My veins seem emptied of blood and I feel light-headed. The person over the phone that I’m in a meeting with thinks she’s being efficient by deliberately not believing in what I’m saying. After the meeting finishes, she starts to say goodbye and I hang up before she could finish, the fucking bitch.
Lunch options after 12pm are scarce; Burger King (vomit), the Z fuel and service station (pretentious craft artisan pie & overpriced sandwiches) and the cafe across the road run by an Asian guy with the squarest shaped head I have ever seen on a person. I choose the cheapest (Asian guy’s cafe).
There is nothing left in his cabinets save for a chicken kebab, a spicy chicken nugget in the shape of a lightning bolt and some sandwiches. I pick the first two along with an egg sand-which.
At 4pm, I feel even worse. I feel like I want to vomit. The 4pm summer sun outside looks like noon in another country like maybe fucking Saudi Arabia. Nothing is worse than a stomach-full of shitty, greasy food in the summer, inside an artificially cooled environment.
Four-thirty arrives and you hear the shuffling of people getting ready to go home.
See you tomorrow for the meeting a colleague calls out. Yup, see you tomorrow I reply, cool, calm and as happy as a goddamned cucumber.
(PS: I did vomit when I got home, crawled into bed at 8 and called in sick the next day)
I received one of these inexpensive, starter barista-style coffee machines as a Christmas gift which was perfect because the last couple of months I had been yakking on and on about how banal capsule-coffee had become; the taste was predictable; that I wanted something more organic & robust; yadda, yadda, yadda.
And so Christmas came and we set it up; I got specialist beans from Starbucks (the machine had its own built-in grinder), Koffee Kult and Kokako and made my 1st cup- which was a fail, because the beans were ground too coarsely and no water was going through. We went through three attempts and got coffee so strong, that 10 minutes after drinking it, I could actually hear my own heart beating.
Long story short, from what I can tell and I am not by any means a coffee connoisseur (I adore Starbucks for one), the coffee made by it and the one from my current Nespresso, seem the same.
And I’m not really complaining, I actually don’t care.
What I do care about is how it takes me about 8 minutes to make a cup of coffee, from the grinding, the heating of the milk and to the cleaning of it; which is why I’ve still kept and continue to use my Nespresso for those days when 8 minutes could be better spent elsewhere.
Apparently, you should avoid discarding the grounds the drain so I’ve taken to collecting them in a glass jar which at the moment, is just about ready to be emptied.
‘Preekend’ is defined by the Urban Dictionary as ‘the time period that starts after lunch on Friday and ends when the weekend starts. Usually in this time period it is particularly hard to focus on work tasks and it is more likely that people are chatting, shopping online and/or doing other non-work related activities.”
Which is just about right because working for only 37.5 hours a week (officially), I find that because I leave work at 2pm or earlier on Fridays, I sometimes already abbreviate my day- (I still work a lot) by doing tasks I know I’d finish by lunch and move longer, more complicated ones to Monday. And I would either work through lunch or have a shorter one so I could leave without rushing at 1 or 2pm.
I don’t mind 40-hour work weeks (or more), but to be able to get off early on Fridays means you can get stuff done you normally would apply annual leave for like doctor’s appointments, facials, shopping and other non-work related stuff because obviously, you’re off from work- welcome to the preekend!
Caught this word watching the 1st episode of the HBO show ‘Succession’ which is a family fighting control of their family empire.
The cast of HBO’s "Succession”.
We grew up hearing of families fighting over money and inheritances and my mom would point out to us that we should count ourselves lucky because we had nothing to fight over 😂.
When I think about it I could say that if we did, we would be different- that we grew up strongly instilled with the reminder that acquiring and maintaining wealth literally came with a price, and that if you wanted to pursue it, you paid that price. But maybe I’m just saying that because we grew up not really having to deal with how to divide $14 billion dollars.
Anyhow, champagne and caviar or ethically-sourced grade 12 Kobe beef dinner aside or whatever the rich eat these days, we went to the Auckland Night Markets in Papatoetoe for dinner. The last couple of months, I’ve been doing Connie’s Korean Bulgogi stand and ordering nothing but the pan-fried pork belly with noodles.
The pork is braised I think in some broth before the liquid evaporates and then it fries in its fat. The vermicelli is cooked along with it and when they serve you a portion, they ladle into it this sweet, sticky broth to finish it off.
I’m not complaining, not really.
I bought amazing gifts for myself; gifts that allow me to continue earning money that I could in return, give amazing gifts to the people I love as well as more gifts for myself (a win-win).
My health is okay and will be better because finally, I have self-control; the lechon can wait until April 2020.
The world is shittier than ever, but I’m not adding to the sludge of shit by creating/sharing my own shit. The rare tweet aside, I’ve closed the door on the situation in the US and the Philippines. Let people who do their beds, lie on it.
It’s a fear that feels similar to going away on a long trip and agonising, sitting on the plane, that you’ve forgotten something really important.
Not that you can do anything about it at that point, 30,000 feet up in the air. But you go through the range of emotions as if it’s already happened.
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve gone back to the house from the bus stop three times because I couldn’t remember if I had turned off the clothes iron. Several hundred thousand dollars up in smoke; do I still pay the mortgage?; how much am I insured? How do I rebuild my wardrobe?
Sometimes I comfort myself with the fact that in my bag (and I bring a big bag to work everyday), I have my Macbook, my pills 💊 enough for a week, and a toiletry bag with perfume, anti-perspirant and moisturisers. I could find a temporary place somewhere and literally start all over again wth just a laptop, an Internet connection and a week’s worth of stuff that guarantees you don’t look or feel any worse than you already are.
Appearances are important to me. I look in the mirror and I feel calmed. That person looking back at me is what I’ve made that person to be- I have some degree of control over that.
The year feels like a fire that has raged out of control and now I am looking at the embers and thinking, it’s gone. But what’s gone really? The thing is when you’re middle-aged, everything becomes an accounting- your age, your mortgage, your income in 5 years, your blood pressure and time itself.
(at this point, I’ve actually lost my train of thought but I must admit that I was never good at making essays so I’m leaving this here as is, and moving on! Time is ticking! We can’t waste our time expounding on arguments and believing that resolving them on paper does any one any good.)
“I don’t write anymore because I no longer feel lonely”
Game of Thrones done and that was nearly a decade worth of episodes which makes you re-think of how you perceive the passage of time. Are you living life on your terms or is it hinged on superficial stuff that you consume like content-streaming?
Loving my Huawei P30 pro (shot above taken by it) but wondering how the current persecution of the company and anti-Chinese anything in general is going to affect it down the track.
Where are you Lei?
It’s June. Half the year gone.
Love should be steady and consistent.
When you finally warm up to the reality of home-ownership and open your wallet accordingly
Where do you see yourself 3 years from now?
It was Matt’s birthday last Friday but because everyone’s schedules was all over, dinner was re-set for Saturday. We went to Kalye Manila, a Filipino restaurant. Matt ordered everything he wanted to eat; he had sisig, tokwa’t baboy and lechon kawali. His grandmother would’ve been horrified, but he’s 23; he could eat anything he wants and does.
