Hello everybody, how are you all? I hope you’re still holding on there.

So first day into quarantine and I think I’ve gained some imaginary pounds from all the extra meal times I can afford to take now. 😅

Although of course, I have to promise that, starting tomorrow, I’ll try to feel more obliged to be mindful of the food I eat. HAHA. I’m actually still positive that I’ll get to don my sablay come September. But yeah, with this public health crisis, and the poor systemic responses that we are employing, I’d say that that is just wishful thinking. 😬

Anyway, so life has been nauseously fast, and it has been relentlessly changing every second it likes, and it really seems that we can’t catch a thing of it as it turns and spins, and recklessly stirs and unsettles everything it can lay its cursed fingers upon. Sigh.

I know. 😐

If anything, I think my migraine has evolved into something that has vertigo-like manifestations already. I just stand up or sit down in one quiet corner and I suddenly feel the world moving under my feet. So I’m thinking that either I’m advancing into some sort of a neuropathy now or it’s just me imagining how the world is spinning out of control. 😩

So to recap, I flew home to Bacolod last March 7. I had brought with me 50kgs worth of physical baggage and prolly more kgs than that of overdue emotional baggage that are still for processing from over five long years of deferred everythings. 😅

But I’m thinking that, perhaps, most of them have become empty weights already since I think that I may have forgotten most of them and I am now too old to even bother. Imagine that. I never thought that I’ll come to a point in my life where I wouldn’t get bothered by so many things. 💁🏼 Anyway, so yeah, the rest of my stuff, I had sent through boat (3 big boxes, made up mostly of books that I had acquired during my stay), which arrived just a few days prior my flight.

In hindsight, I can say that I had been preparing (I really think so) and I had been conditioning my mind of the many changes and adjustments that I had to deal with when I get transferred. So I felt fine, and okay, and ready whichever day they’d tell me I was good to go.

You see, I had arranged for so many things in advance and all was going fine UNTIL, viola– a week after, the Philippines fell (kinda late, though) into a spiral of doom: a grave pandemic scare and offices were closing, people were panicking, infection rates were shooting up, the government did not know exactly what to do about it (it seemed), cities were put on lockdown and everybody seemed to be in an endless state of worry and panic and unrealistic alertness, it was (and it still is) chaotic. 😱

I remember how our van service driver decided to stop fetching us because work for almost everybody who rode our van service to Bacolod had ceased already and he had no more income. So I had to take the bus every day, endure the checkpoints, psychologically ready myself for the everyday possible exposure to a highly infectious virus we can’t even see, and still try to be sane in a time of universal shaking.

High mortality salience, our teachers would tell us. Because yes, I had never felt so humanly frail as the few weeks had been.

The universe has a dark sense of humor, apparently, and I hope it’s already done sickly enjoying its start of the decade extravaganza, coz it’s not funny anymore. 😕

So cut to now, the province has finally decided to put us on Enhanced Community Quarantine, which in turn will make us not have to go to work anymore (finally, too). For seriously, who can go to work in this extraordinary times? I honestly have mixed feelings about everything– how institutions & individuals have reacted to this crisis, how we have been treated and “valued” in ways that can cause you cognitive dissonance, how disturbing it is to think that life is sometimes just reduced to numbers and statistics and very impersonal data.

High mortality salience. 😵

I cannot stress that “what a time to be alive” line enough, as it sits and stays with you really long, and it gives you really bad goosebumps.

So yeah, I’ve been reading and cooking and doing household chores and learning alibata (I’ll show you in another post), and I might (I just might) finish some long forgone projects too, now that I (actually) have the time. 😅

For those who can stay at home, please do. For those who can’t, please take extra care of yourselves. To our brave front liners, thank you, you are heroes! We’ll get through this crazy times.

Let me leave you with what the Pope said in his Urbi et Orbi blessing, “Faith begins when we realize we are in need of salvation. We are not self-sufficient; by ourselves we founder: we need the Lord, like ancient navigators needed the stars.”

If we come to think of it, we are lucky because, in times like this, we still have faith and spirituality to turn to.

Let us continue to pray for one another and the world.

Stay safe and stay faithful, my friends. 🌻