Typhoon Long Weekend musings

Dear diary,

Hello once again my dear friend, it seems that this blog is still going strong, and 2026 proves to be a year of relatively many entries.

First of all, before diving into anything else, after reading the previous blog post about improving myself and solving my bad back, I am rather proud to announce that I have completely solved it by simply getting a harder foam mattress from IKEA for only about 5kNTD, also, been doing weights, think it actually helps my arm get more toned. Also, after going on a crash diet of mainly nuts and beans after the partner left (to go back home for 1.5 months), I've finally succeeded in fitting into my jeans which was too tight ever since last year, though I think I've ruined that success after a trip to the buffet yesterday. 

Ze partner have left to visit family for a month and a half, which gives me a crap ton of time by myself. There are some activities which I have been enjoying alone (though it'll still be nicer to do them with said partner), I've gone and had the fishiest buffet hotpot ever, went to the pool on a weekend for a swim and reading by the pool, and walking for many kilometers in the evening. I try to keep active, however these few days the typhoon have been inhibiting that, at least I've walked about 11km prior to the typhoon holiday.

Have been quite productive in clearing backlogs of things I need to do like going to war with the toilet mold (that took quite a bit of time), cutting up done for socks to be reused as disposable floor wipes, watching live action Avatar (a lot of people are dissing the Netflix live action adaptation but I've actually been quite enjoying it... though I'm probably too old for it), reading books, backing up my iPhone backup, Sandisk, to my Micron SSD (basically backing up my backup of my backup, I'm nuts like that), cleaning things up and installing the ledge to hold the extension behind the table, Petit Bloc, and writing this blog. There's probably so much more, feel like I've iteratively been improving the room non-stop and yet there's still a lot to deal with, such as that unsightly mess in front of me on the top right corner of the table, and taking stock of what I have on the vanity shelf close to the door. Guess all I have is time so no rush. 

It's been awhile since I've used this laptop for such a long time, I'm always dissing it, but it's good enough really. Edit: I take back my words, before I could finish this post, File Explorer crashed on me.

Anyways, some updates worth mentioning is that, we went to the Philippines, it was very beautiful, had a lot of novel experience there, such as, flagging down a tuk tuk transporting fish, sat on someone's motorbike (habal-habal) and projectile vomited while on the moving motorbike due to food poisoning, and getting ripped off on multiple occasions. Also went canyoneering and slid down rocks, have panic attacks on most of the activity because most of them are water based, went snorkeling for the first time, so many beautiful fishes, swam alongside 2 turtles, saw whale sharks, saw a huge cotton candy waterfall, saw the photographer free dive with nothing but a pair of flippers, it was an amazing trip, its a shame regarding the food poisoning, wasn't able to go all out for those whole week, and it also caused some friction between me and said partner. I especially liked the conversation with my partner when we were in this nice property with lounge chairs overlooking the stars and ocean at night, and us being afraid of wild dogs while exploring the vicinity of the property, the price we paid there could barely get us a decent room here, and it even includes free breakfast by the beach with servers knocking on your door to tell you your breakfast is ready! I remember when we first landed into the chaos, we didn't know how anything works and we got to Moalboal without any cash, it was late at night, we have no cash, and none of the ATMs seems to work, and the roads were incredibly chaotic and we were very hungry and tired, a very stressful way to start the trip! But, it made us both feel alive, and the problem was solved in the end.

We swam with turtles! At one point, we had 2 turtles all to ourselves! I still had phobia from the almost drowning incident in Geneva, so I did a lot of the water based activity while being on the edge of a panic attack, totally worth it though

Absolutely breathtaking sardine run, these footages were captured by locals who's really good at free diving. I'm not sure weather to be more impressed by the swarm of fishes, or the free diver who goes through the shallow and depths of the water so effortlessly. One thing I noticed however, was how bad the coral bleaching is... most of the corals were pretty black/grey/white ish, it wasn't colorful anymore

Enjoyed the sunset on the balcony

Early morning whale shark watching boats

Tumalog falls

Sumilon island, mind you, this is the peakest of peak season (easter) and there's still so much space

Felt quite fancy

That trip pretty much gave me slight depression since it's such a whiplash when it's time to come back to reality, it makes life seem so dull. Sigh... even now, looking back at the pictures is just, wow that was such an amazing experience.

We've also taken up French and would do 2 pages of our French book every night. The partner is a good teacher and very insistent on my learnings.

Currently day drinking as it rains outside, it's quite cozy. For some reason, I kind of stank, despite showering yesterday. The typhoon wasn't that serious after all, despite being the biggest (measured in storm diameter, not strongest though) since 1987. On the day of the typhoon holiday, it didn't even rain, it's just cloudy most of the day. Guess it's better to be cautious than sorry. The ants don't lie though, every time prior to a huge storm, there would be a huge number of ants lining the caulk that joins the floor and walls, personally, I don't mind them, but the partner is very distressed about it. So, during the previous storm where actual flooding happened and people actually died or got injured, the ants appeared in great numbers prior to the storm, however, this time, I barely notice any, a bit more than usual yes, but not as bad as last time, and surely enough, this typhoon didn't prove to be as violent as people feared.

As you can see, it's not even raining. News later report that a lot of people have been taking advantage of this incredibly rare holiday to go on family trips to the mall and Cotsco, which is totally understandable

Said partner took voluntary redundancy lately, I'm scared and excited for her since she's had that job longer than any of her relationships lol. So, this is basically a very very new chapter for her into the unknown, despite the cushy and flexible nature of the job, I guess it is indeed time for a change, for better or worse... hopefully better though. She cried when it was time for the last conversation with her manager, which is completely understandable, the manager is probably one of the most stable constant in her life for a really long time, almost half a decade!

For the past month I've also been going to shops offering birthday deals. The deals nowadays isn't as impressive as a couple years ago, but, it's still reasonable, and it's been fun trying out all the new eateries this city have to offer. 

I've finally came out to my parents, obviously, it didn't go down well, they tried to guilt trip me, obviously it didn't work. They're going to come visit soon, probably to try and un-gay me. They said they plan to live in my room to save on hotel cost, the room is going to be a squish, I've told them about it but they don't want to spend money on an overpriced hotel, which is fair enough. For the price of a moldy hotel room here equates to a five star newly built hotel back home... but I will still try to video call them one day just to give them an idea of the actual size of where they're planning to stay for 2 weeks.

That being said, if I'm being honest, even though I have lots to appreciate in life, and there are lots of things that I enjoy, sometimes I can't help but think nobody would be envious of my life. Like, I'm cracking on, still living in a single room, not married, savings barely enough for anything substantial, imagine doing this through your 40s or 50s... I guess it's not the worst thing in the world but man.... at the same time I like how much flexibility I have, and I've travelled a lot these past few years, and adventure still awaits in the future. But sometimes, I wish I have a bigger place, a vehicle to drive around, isn't that a hallmark of an adult? Not walking everywhere carrying heavy things on busy pavements that's barely enough for one person to fit through, smoking in fumes produced by the cars and scooters on a busy road, and getting drenched. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in poverty compared to the people around me, and I wallow in self pity, sometimes, all I want is a covered front porch with a car, and a slightly bigger house that I can easily afford. It's true its fun and convenient here, go downstairs and there's the riverside, the pool, the park, all the shops and conveniences, but it just isn't what I pictured what an adult should be, in many ways, this place is quite deprived of a lot of things such as space and affordable housing. At the same time, I've never been happier, I came from a really big house but most times I felt depressed. Snapping out of my self pity, I understand that even the richest of people here need to walk all the way to the riverside to get to their car or park their cars in awkward tight spots, with efficient public transport, there really isn't a need for a car. I live in one of the densest city in the world, with the most insane property prices, chill out. But oh do I want to be able to afford fine dining every once in a while, go on trips without worrying about train times and booking in advance, and have a cleaner, these are things which seems to be normalized on social media, which is probably not the best place if I'm easily influenced I guess. 

Work seems steady, there's a goal on what we need to do now, and I think I'm getting the hang of it, however, the prospects of getting a raise is slim, and I could really really use a raise, with the constant rise of the cost of living and whatnot. 

Oh our team exhibited our project in Computex, which is great. At least the product we're working on were put on display, hopefully it will be a good garnish for my resume. However, there were quite a few negative comments directed at our project, about things we already knew were lacking, from our previous managers and people who've worked on similar things, hurts my little heart, but more importantly, confirmed things I was afraid of. Working on AI robots sounds impressive, but I'm not at all confident about my skills. So far, all of the job offers I had feels like its not by merit, the first job I had the company seems really whatever about things, I think they just gave me the position because they wanted to hit some quota from the government, after they did, we all got laid off the next year. The second company is because of a referral from my previous manager, there weren't any test or very difficult interviews. So far, all the of the more prestigious companies that I've interviewed liked my personality, but I couldn't do their test to save my life hence I got disqualified.

 I have huge insecurity about my job prospects in the future, we have big plans and dreams of going to Europe out of all places to set life up, and they are not exactly known for having lots of vacancy, especially when the locals are already struggling finding a job. Sometimes, it truly feels like our ideal future seems far away and hard to reach. 

At least I know AI's not going to take my job any time soon. I have been using AI very intensively don't get me wrong and it does speed up development by 1000%, but it's more like a tool, without proper supervision, AI seems to mess things up real bad, things that's easy to spot from a real human being, and I'm not talking about the performance of dumbed down version of AI like GPTMini or whatnot, I'm talking about Claude Sonnet/Opus, even they couldn't figure out why the .msg files aren't compiling, took one look at the issue and I figured it out. 

Speaking of AI, I asked chatGPT to do a personality analysis from one of my blog post, one thing it said that made an impression is that I have goals and good at identifying problems in my life, but I don't do anything about it... which is absolutely true to be honest. Currently I'm terrified about the Europe plan, but I guess I should be doing something about it more aggressively... it's just that... it's tiring, and I'm not keen on living life so aggressively. 

Anyways, thanks for reading again future me, the paragraphs throws tangents, but that's what happens when you want someone to know all the highlights of different aspects of their life! So long for now my trusty friend, till we meet again.