Pilot episode: Disturbing events in the US

“The events unfolding in the US since the start of 2025 look like the pilot episode of a multiseason political TV series — amusing as fictional drama but disturbing as a real newscast.”

Not to be self-important about it, but those are my own words, which I posted earlier today on my Tumblr and BlueSky accounts. I’m quoting myself simply because I don’t want to be accused of plagiarizing myself.

It’s not even a unique observation. Many others, I imagine, have the same idea, though they may say it differently.

Pandemic shopping spree

Three of the more than 30 pens I have.

I’ve never fancied myself as a collector of anything – except maybe random facts and anecdotes and, in my younger years, books.

And yet now I find myself with a collection of various items related to my interests – fountain pens, inks, ballpoint pens, watercolor sets, sketchbooks, notebooks, melodicas, and harmonicas. 

You turn gray – and then you dye

That’s my hair undyed.

Sometimes I dye my hair dark brown, its natural color before the gray strands started showing up. 

I’m not trying to hide my age. As I write this, I’m just two months into my 61st year.

I don’t mind being gray-headed – if my entire head were gray. But it’s still in its salt-and-pepper transition stage.

Milestone

My work-from-home setup.

I marked a milestone in my life at a bad time. I turned 60 on Nov. 17, 2021, in the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

At that age, you become more conscious about your health, and with a pandemic hanging over your head, you worry even more.

Holed up at home working

The INQUIRER.net office, on Mola Street in Makati, is so near to where I live — a quick walk of two blocks — that I’ve never taken the option allowed by management, under certain conditions, to work from home. 

Rain or shine, holiday or regular working day, I preferred the ritual of walking to the office and on the way grabbing some take-out food to eat at my work station as I started my 4 p.m.-to-1 a.m. shift.

From nearby stores, I would usually pick up any of the following — a dozen pork-shrimp siomai from Hen Lin or a Cheesy Beef Pinatubo from Jamaican Pattie or a spicy beef doner with cheese from Turks or a Baecon Ko burger from Frappe Connection or a two-piece fried chicken with Yangchao fried rice or panic canton from MarJim’s Chicken Corner — or in a rush, even some random items from 7-Eleven.

And after work, I would usually pop in at  Z Bar, just a few blocks from the office, for few beers — that is, if I get off work before the 4 a.m. closing time. Otherwise, I would walk a few more blocks down Kamagong Street to Tapadera, a 24-hour watering hole (except on Saturdays and Sundays when it’s closed).

Anyway. I wasn’t trying to impress the bosses with my insistence on being at the office. I was merely avoiding the obvious domestic distractions, which for me were mainly a bed beckoning for me to take a nap, which could easily stretch out to two hours, and a guitar teasing me into trying out a song I had just learned from a YouTube tutorial as if the other internet click-bait distractions weren’t enough.