ooff

I get nervous all the time like the next person, but I usually get over it once I make a more accurate and logical assessment of the situation. I’ve never had anxiety but I’m starting to believe that the more you think about it, the more you repeat it, and the more you hear about it from people around you, the more real it becomes until you become, well, fucking anxious.

The whole three months of the year was a build-up to stuff at work that I thought was going to be epically challenging. Well, it wasn’t. It was epic for sure (AI! Marketing Automation! Generative Video!), but hardly challenging. You ride it like you would a good wave and at the back of your mind, you knew that you were going to do well- and so what’s next?

A co-worker is leaving today after nearly 14 years. We started in the same year and have been inseparable in a way that can only be described as meant to be. We were the A-team. We accomplished a shit-load of stuff, most of which we did from scratch. We were looking at a couple more high-octane times. So when they say without any warning that they’re leaving, the impact of it for me anyway, is like being shot by a bullet. But you’re still moving very fast so you can’t feel the pain. Not yet - and so what’s next?

These days

1. Dieting is back in the house but we vowed not to let that destabilise a healthy routine; you’re not settling into bed to binge on some stupid show just because you don’t have enough calories to go on a run. So we’ve been going to libraries and getting books to read in lieu of another season of Married At First Sight Australia, and Auckland has some of the best libraries that I’ve seen anywhere. There’s nothing more mentally cleansing than another volume of Alice Munro + a Starbucks cold brew.

2. Praying for Pope Francis. Why the fuck would God take the good people and leave us with the cunts?

3. Booked tickets for the Philippines for the holidays because it’s never too early to prepare for these things mentally.

4. Still need a non-family purpose trip, so scratch LA because it burned down, plus nobody I know really wants to step into American soil for fear of being contaminated (you know what I mean), so that leaves Japan or Tahiti.

5. It’s the Oscars today and I’m on Team Demi.

#Friday #Vibe

Wish you were here...

Shānmǔ shēngrì kuàilè, xīnnián kuàilè

When did we all start celebrating other culture’s/people’s holidays?

Don’t mind it and the only time that I do mind is when some idiot drags it through the political/racial mud and calls it freedom of speech.

So today is the Chinese New Year and because S wasn’t able to celebrate his birthday yesterday, we thought that we were clever for doing a double-celebration; if that isn’t lucky I don’t know what is.

For good measure, I made sure to make dishes that were auspicious - spring rolls, dumplings and noodles which I got from the supermarket on my lunch break. On our cat’s Insta feed, there was some lady peddling advice on Feng Shui. Apparently, one needs to clean up the south-east part of the house which turned out to be our spare bedroom, the bed of which was filled with unsorted laundry from last week. So I cleaned that up and finished all the dishes in 30 minute.

I thought I could feel a hum in our house, that invisible pulse of energy that meant we were prepared and fortified for the coming year- never mind that NONE OF US WERE CHINESE.

Wonderland

In Auckland city alone, there are over 4,000 parks and reserves, covering almost 11% of the land area. There are no snakes, poisonous plants, pesky insects, scary predators or weird people with bad intentions.

If you feel like reconnecting with nature or simply decompressing, you don’t need to drive far; there’s always a patch of green somewhere.

Epiphany

Over dinner at the second reincarnation of this chicken place in Pukekohe, B asked us the all important post-Christmas question of, ‘when will you take down your Christmas tree?’. I joked that we would still have it standing on the 17th of January so that we would have the pleasure of having M retrieve her birthday gift from under it.

M grinned, making a face and while we all laughed, deep inside, I was still baffled that a woman who has perfected thoughtful, tasteful and financially appropriate gift-giving could forego NOT putting up a tree in her flat. But that’s a boundary we didn’t want to cross; it’s her space and she had all the right in the world to do anything she wanted to do in it including NOT putting up Christmas decorations. It rankled, but I had to respect it.

The answer was that we didn't have a date, or rather, we left it to when we got around to doing a major start of the year clean-up which could be anytime up to the 1st week of February. It wasn’t really a big deal and besides, we liked having the twinkling lights.

‘Tradition states that you could have it up until the Epiphany- 12 days after Christmas- and if you don't, it would be bad luck.” B declares after having looked it up on Google.

Well then, nothing like the Asian in me to be immediately convinced at the mention of two words: ‘bad luck.’

We ended up removing all the Christmas decorations on the 1st of January.

Goodbye 2024, hello 2025

(NOT) New Year resolutions

I just realised today that I may have confused tasks I need to do (and can actually do), with New Year resolutions (which you’re not obliged to do).

So here’s my (initial) list:

1. Have a proper pedicure

2. Go to an actual dermatologist

3. Finish culling your clothes

4. Go to the gym during the working week

5. Study stuff properly

6. Put financial savings into aggressive mode

7. EAT more vegetables

8. Bake PROPER stuff

9. Better food planning

10. Better time planning

Christmas 2024 photo dump

You're officially an adult when you put up your first Christmas tree

Thanks Toni

KFC forever

I wouldn’t mind having KFC for Christmas, but it doesn’t mean that if I can, I should #JustSaying. This was just for an early dinner

How time flies

Lechon belly

After all the drama, it turned out great

Best of both worlds

My two favourite Filipino ice-cream flavours are use and Quezo Real; why not have both?

Christmas is not about the gifts, but

Thank you for all my amazing gifts this year

A classic

The fruitcake was in our proper freezer for two years; makes you think of stocking up for the apocalypse

Christmas brunch

To be honest, I didn’t like the ham this year

Christmas dinner

and food yet again, this time in the city

The weekend

Had to pick up some gifts at Smith & Caughey in the city so I thought, might as well see that Olafur Eliasson exhibit at the Auckland Gallery, as well as those Impressionists generously gifted by a wealthy, Republican-supporting American hedge-fund one-percenter, the late Julian Robertson.

“My wife didn’t like the Picasso,” Robertson says in a video clip during an interview with a New Zealand journalist some years back, “…so I put it in the bathroom.”

The collection includes several other Picassos, a Cézanne, a Gauguin, a Matisse, several Braques, and works by lesser-known (or perhaps just less famous) artists.

The Eliasson exhibition was fun. Various rooms featured playful light installations that invited you to see yourself as projected multi-colored shadows. One dark room sprayed a fine mist of water, which captured and reflected light like a rainbow.

But my favorite was an installation of frozen river ice, slowly melting into a metal cistern. The dripping water was amplified to create a mournfully elegant audio effect.

The Robertsons would have loved the installation and probably wouldn’t have thought twice about installing it in their swanky 6,000-square-foot Central Park apartment.

After all, nothing says “soothing bedtime ambiance” like the sound of the planet dying—especially when you know it won’t really affect you.

5 days before Christmas

The bathroom was finally done, along with a million touch-ups for the laundry area and the toilet. The man from the vanity place took one look at the stain on the quartz top and declared gravely that if it ‘looks like a thumbprint, then it most likely is a thumbprint’.

I was bracing myself for a 2-3 week wait for another custom-cut replacement if it wasn’t.

So that’s done.

Final round of work meetings with everyone making the usual small-talk and the big question of ‘what are you doing this Christmas’? I was tempted to do an animated spiel of all the quirky, non-traditional things we had planned to do, but I was actually exhausted this week so I simply said, ‘just spending it at home’, which was essentially true.

You can do a lot at home.

I’ve always fantasised about spending Christmas elsewhere, but I must say that the allure of spending it with people you actually love and care about has a stronger pull, though if I was paid to spend it in New York, I probably would!

Anyways, took Friday off to get things ready like clean the house, clear out the fridge and just generally relax as I’m still working on the 23rd and half the day on the 24th.

Partayyyy

Hard to believe that I literally go to only two scheduled social-affairs a year, and now that B&E have moved on from hosting their epic New Year soirees, there’s only one left- our work-do.

That’s nearly 14 of some of the most memorable get-togethers with people you see five days of the week.

We’ve done everything from simple barbecues (at a colleagues spacious home), to hotels, historic venues and even a boat (actually missed one). And I look forward to it because it’s the only time I get to drink alcohol (prior to New Year’s) which in hindsight, has probably saved my life. Before leaving the Philippines permanently, I was literally drinking every other day. It was fun but it couldn’t have been healthy.

And I make an effort, because why not? I buy an entirely new outfit (like literally even the shoes shown on the lookbook) which is also my outfit for Christmas dinner. I get to either have a puff of someone’s cigarette or better still, get an entire cigarette all to myself (thanks D!). I miss smoking, but I’ll be damned if I ever go back to the habit.

And I get to finally see who my co-workers really are are outside of work which can be very entertaining (!).

The answer is YES

I don’t have a lot of friends, and I’m glad that within this small circle, WE ALL SHARE the same political values.

At this point, would you really care about ethics, when the line in the sand has never been drawn more clearly or more deeply?

DITCH THEM, GHOST THEM if you haven’t already; life is too short to waste on total cunts.

Wedded bliss

Congratulations B & E.

When you're ready but life (or other people) aren't

I’ve purchased the towels. I’ve decided on and bought the shelving. Waited for and got great deals from Black Friday promotions for bath mats, runners, decor (vase, fake coral, real calla lily leaves from the garden in the photo) and even several month’s supply of toiletries (Sans Ceuticals and Aesop) so you know, it would look good on the shelves.

I already knew how the bathroom was going to look and more importantly, what looked good in it even before the renovation started.

But for something so tiny, it’s far from done. I mean, the issues aren’t really dramatic- visible gaps in the door and window framing, the problematic walk-in shower, a factory stain on the custom-sized quartz vanity top, unfinished electricals - but it’s just baffling how something so straightforward (yes it is because I finally paid attention during the renovation process) can stretch out longe that it should just because some people actually don’t do their job well.

And that’s the fucking truth.

the tree is up

We’ve had several memorable Christmas trees growing up.

The earliest one I could remember - and I could be wrong because my memory is so bad- was a shrub in a pot and there were Christmas balls hung on the stems.

Then my mother went through her crafty phase. She had the idea of filling a chicken coop/fencing wire thingy shaped into a cone, with shiny green cellophane cut and pinched to resemble ‘leaves’. The cone ended up being so big that for some reason, we only filled the part that was visible; a trick I still use to this day, because why waste ornaments on a side nobody sees??

Then we had the infamous soap-sud tree! We used the branches of this tree that grows beside the river called pakar. We wanted something that came out of a winter’s day when the whole world was covered in snow. To achieve the snow-effect, we dissolved packets of laundry powder detergent in as little water as possible, and whipped it up to create dense suds that resembled meringue.

These were draped onto the branches to create the illusion of fallen snow. I can’t remember now how it lasted, but as we grew older and conventional, store-bought trees came to the shops, you realise how more fun it was to create something out of nothing with your family.

Unfortunately, while I’m creative at other things, crafty DIY stuff seems to be impervious to my enthusiastic attempts. So I’ve given up and have resigned to the fact that when it comes to Christmas trees, the safest route for me was to do a conventional one with conventional materials.

This year, we’ve decided on a gold and white theme and New Zealand being the small country that it is, didn’t have what I was looking for but thank God fo Amazon.

The future looks so bright

My reasoning is, if it’s something you use every day, it has to be good. It needs to last. It needs to add something to your personality. It shouldn’t make you look like a sad fool.

But no, I didn’t get a new pair of sunglasses because the only time I ever do is when I lose my current pair which I’ve done EIGHT TIMES (#RaybanCurse).

I finally gave in and went to my optometrist to have lenses put into this pair of Prada frames that I’ve had for a while. Didn’t really want to spend $$$$ putting in progressive lenses, so just opted for distance and transition lenses.

Go retro

Wayfarer Reverse acetate sunglasses

Go Big

Wayfarer Reverse

Go Classic

Aviator Classic, gold and purple

Go NEW

New Clubmaster in blue and silver

This Monday

Monday was great, because I guess it started off differently.

Sam had to drop the car off for servicing at around 7 a.m., so I tagged along. We had bagels and coffee at a totally empty Krispy Kreme store just around the corner, and it was one of those mornings when everything was just right. I never really took a shine to bagels, but the KK house-baked one had a nice crisp exterior with a pillowy soft centre. The avocado was fresh, and the coffee was nice and strong. Traffic was light and the sun was out against an utterly cloudless blue sky.

What could go wrong? Well, nothing really. Or if to does, who gives a fuck right? It’s not personal.

You just do your very best to solve it, get on top of it, put it away.