¿Qué tal? (‘How are you?’ in informal Spanish)1 Welcome to Semi-Online #27, and thanks for subscribing/following despite my infrequent updates. Because, you know, semi-online life + disability. 🤷🏽‍♀️

If you’re new here, hi, and thanks for reading! I also offer my sincere apologies for hitting you with this Subscribe button. But Substack says I must even if it still doesn’t want to implement non-Stripe payment gateways for its Global South writers:

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I haven’t done any content rundowns in a while too, so I’m rusty. If you’re looking for frequent news rundowns and in-depth coverage, analyses, and commentaries, I highly recommend reading , , and / instead. And everyone listed on too, because most of them post here much more often than I do and are good writers. 😂

Here are the other things that caught my attention from January 2026 onward. Think of this update as an intermission number before Real Life calls again.

Read

I have several drafts for this Substack and The Reading Spree in various stages of completion. But one did meet the Publish button back in January; on the book blog, I discussed the latest installments of The Murderbot Diaries and Trese, along with the last volume of the local sci-fi series Seroks.

Ever since “How a Philippines-based ops tried to bury Jeffrey Epstein’s bad press” was published by The Philippine Star, I’ve really wanted to know who these local workers are. Are they freelancers? PR agency employees? Consultants? Which agency or agencies? Do I know them personally? How’s their conscience doing, and do they sleep well at night?

File this under ‘I wish I wrote it’: “The First AI Crisis Is Psychological” on The Atlantic. Follow it up with two more AI-related articles: Vox’s “People still love Wikipedia. Can it survive AI?”, and “From deepfake porn to deadly advice: AI’s dark year” on e27 from back in January. Man, January seems like an entire lifetime ago.

A Brunei-based friend told me last year that that nation’s history books say it once owned part of the Philippines — or, in slightly less offensive terms, part of the Philippines was part of its territory. My response: “Bullshit.” Well… I was wrong; we were a part of the Sultanate. Then again, I think my friend was also right in saying, “We’ll never know how accurate or distorted historical accounts are.” 🤷🏽‍♀️

Another Esquire Philippines piece, this time on something that bothers me whenever I see it, whether on public feeds or private posts. Read “Opinion: The Weaponization of the ‘Haha’ React Emoji.”

The survivor and her family won the trial, but they paid a heavy price. Read “The Trial of Gisèle Pelicot’s Rapists United France and Fractured Her Family” on The New Yorker.

I’m a sucker for longreads on strange places (see: Visit Sunny Chernobyl and Other Adventures in the World’s Most Polluted Places). Here’s a good one on Antarctica, a.k.a. “The Most Beautiful Freezer in the World.”

We’ve seen a lot of ICE-related headlines since its personnel began terrorizing US immigrants and citizens, and they become worse the longer their ‘campaign’ goes on. But this one stuck with me: “These young brothers sacrifice normal teenage life to be full-time ICE watchers in Minneapolis — and say they won’t regret it” on CNN US.

Here’s a good read for Philippine writers on the current state of book publishing… if you’re OK with this literary gatekeeper’s slightly condescending tone. I guess they really can’t help themselves.

And here are the details on how MacKenzie Scott shares her wealth with more-than-deserving organizations, via The Wall Street Journal.

A stray PhilStar Life article from 2023 😆 It’s such a shame that people here still need to be taught that dining/being alone isn’t bad. If you ask me, those who look down on us and feel pity, etc. are simply fearful of solitude, and/or hate their own company. Sounds like a THEM problem!

Read + Watch

Pair Interaksyon’s “Manila archdiocese opens spiritual liberation center amid rise in exorcism cases” with this documentary from Al Jazeera’s 101 East:

And after months of people raving about and cashing in on analogcore, and more than a year since I wrote this:

…we’re now seeing some pushback. Esquire Philippines’ “Analogcore: Another Aesthetic You Can’t Afford” goes well with Levi Hildebrand’s proclamation of failure for it:

I’ve mentioned budots here in 2024. Today I’m adding two more references: this The Washington Post feature from August 2025, and this short documentary:

Watch

• Disney+: Three Predator movies (Badlands, Prey, and Killer of Killers) and Zootopia 2. Wonder Man is also an excellent series from Marvel Studios, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Ben Kingsley turn in amazing performances.

• HBO Max: I’m gonna see some 2026 Oscar winners before I cancel my quarterly subscription 😆 One Battle After Another, Sinners, and Weapons are on the queue!

• Netflix: Love, Death & Robots season 4, Everyone Knows Every Juan, Sunshine, and Kontrabida Academy. Plus: A new season of Midnight Diner is in the works!

Listen

I haven’t listened to full albums in a long time! But FKA Twigs’ EUSEXUA and EUSEXUA Afterglow are filled with bangers (heh). And Robyn’s Sexistential will be out in a few days (March 27)!

Also check out I Want My MTV Rewind for that (American) nostalgia hit. And NPR has been on a winning streak with its Tiny Desk Concerts. I mean, De La Soul, Jill Scott, Sarah McLachlan, Sixpence None the Richer, David Byrne, Goo Goo Dolls, Tame Impala, and Amerie? Damn 💗

Try

I’ve been looking at potential replacements for Google Workspace. Right now, Lark seems to be a good one. Does anyone here have any experience with it? The downside is that it’s owned by ByteDance. Uhhhh…?

I’ve also been using Ubuntu since 2009. I don’t miss Microsoft Windows, and I’ve never been into the Apple ecosystem at all. There have been occasions though when I had to use Windows apps for unavoidable reasons. VirtualBox was my go-to for that (basically, you install an OS inside your main OS with it), but it gave me technical headaches after every update/upgrade. So this week I finally ditched it for GNOME Boxes, and… WHY DIDN’T I DO THIS EARLIER???

Also, this month I learned about solo role-playing games (RPGs). Blackwell Games has a great selection; I’m looking at For Small Creatures Such as We and Dead Air: A Game About Radio Activity.

Go

Lastly, I thought I could avoid this year’s Manila Pen Show. Like countless people, I’m short on funds, and it’s dangerous for me to wander the show floor and see so many temptations. Plus, my SSCD and social anxiety don’t help at all with noise and crowds.

But I did register for one MPS workshop. It’s after hours, so I’m safe from the show floor and crowds. And despite being in the fountain-pen hobby on and off for 12 years now, it’s never too late to learn the basics, especially since the three nibmeisters in this city are set to raise their prices this year or already have.

Let me know if you’ll be at MPS this weekend — and/or if you have any news and media suggestions for me! 😊

Semi-Online is a free newsletter and accepts tips via Ko-fi and Buy Me a Coffee.

Semi-Online is also listed on three Substack directories: Stack Natin, Periphery (formerly Asian Writers’ Collective), and SmallStack. Check them out and discover excellent longform writing from creators based in the Philippines, the Filipino diaspora, and Asians worldwide + Substacks with fewer than 1,000 subscribers!

If you have any feedback, suggestions, and/or complaints about this newsletter, please comment below, email me; or talk to me on Mastodon, Bluesky, and Instagram.

Talofa (‘Hello’ in Samoan) and welcome to Semi-Online #26.1

Well… Life happened, I’m still disabled and on work hiatus, and my physical and mental health were burnt several times over by June 2025. So I stopped writing anything online for a while and paused all works-in-progress indefinitely. Makalat pa rin ako on Instagram and Threads, though. 😉

Progress!

I’ve made some positive and not-makalat life decisions this year, so this year wasn’t a total washout.

First: I quit drinking alcohol back in February 2025. Apart from four light craft beers back in May 2025, I’ve stayed sober since. (How can I say no to ube- and mango-flavored beer?) I haven’t been alcohol-free for this long–maybe not since my teens or twenties, and that’s several lifetimes ago!–and I really miss my beloved single-malt whisky sometimes. But my heart, liver, and vestibular system are very thankful for the sobriety. I also marked five years of no cigarettes last June, after 21 years of smoking up to a pack of Marlboro Reds per day. I intend to keep both hot streaks going in 2026 onward!

Second: I’m also reviving the old book blog. Man, I haven’t made an editorial calendar in a long time!

Third: I still haven’t stopped writing for myself. After decades of spotty journaling habits and taking multiple years to finish single notebooks, I surprised myself this year with these books inked from first page to last page and last line:

If I’m going to be obsessed with journaling, affordable fountain pens, inks, nibs, paper, and photo printers, and spend money I really shouldn’t spend on them, I’d better be really productive with it, right? Kailangan ng ROI! 😂

These personal rules helped with my massive brain-to-paper dumps:

1. Don’t worry about who can see these books and how my honesty and memories can be (mis)interpreted. Just get it all down in writing!

2. Use old travel photos and even random photos and screenshots as writing prompts. I was really surprised by what came out and what details and emotions stuck with me through the years and decades, and how some of my older photos can still be relevant to me today. Next year’s mission: to learn how to draw.

3. Go against my tendency to reuse old journals for future articles, newsletters, stories, and essays. Self, alam kong mahirap ang buhay and content is life. But please don’t mine your own material for money!

4. Repeat to infinity: Personal canon can differ from actual, hard facts. Accept the latter, revise the former, and move on.

I’m definitely carrying this habit over to next year onward, too. It was great to hear my voice again instead of being overwhelmed and drowned by everyone else’s. Plus, therapy is fucking expensive. 🤷‍♀️

Not-so-social media

Which brings me to this particular misnomer, something I’ve already discussed before but seems to be even more prevalent now.

I think retreating into my own mind and going back to paper was good for me. Then and now, there are too many platforms, too much scamming and grifting and doxing, too many people making too much noise, too much to raise hell at, too much rage and outrage, too much misinterpretation and misinformed responses, too much private data being stolen and sold and weaponized, too many trends to ride on and forget, too much of being advertised to and being talked at.

I’m exhausted. Aren’t you? Humans were never meant to hear everyone yelling into the abyss at the same time, nor can we instantly comment on and rage at and contest everything to prove to others that we truly care about things, people, and events. At this point, self-preservation is much more important to me than loud and public involvement and others’ opinions. I’m choosing my battles and choosing wisely.

There are now also more reasons for others to yearn for large chunks of offline time. Among them: rampant disinformation and social isolation/disconnection, influencers plagiarizing others’ life stories for clout (the FUCK?), AI slop EVERYWHERE plus using AI for misinformation campaigns and crimes, and governments weaponizing internet access and demanding account access to cross immigration borders.

I know the world has always been this mad, especially for us in the Global South. But I’m also always genuinely surprised when we as a species find new lows to hit.

Some questions + New online habits

In recent months, I’ve read about others taking the same routes I did: disconnecting and taking up ‘old-school’ hobbies, and shifting to private messaging and chats–and decidedly not sharing anything on main social media feeds anymore, whether in public or private mode. This last item, I also see more often now in my own friend groups.

There have been more drastic responses, like trying to disappear from the internet altogether (1, 2). Going 100% offline appeals to me sometimes, along with just decamping and resettling like a person with White privilege and without all the visas and racism and pesky neighbors. Like so:

But I know I can’t fully disappear online or relocate to a better-off colonized land on a whim. And I’m not seeing anything specific I can apply to my own half-in, half-out circumstances. Like:

1. Because I’m disabled and I can’t meet up with friends in person all that often: How can I maintain solid social ties without having those ties feel superficial or lacking because they’re primarily online? Better yet, how can I meet new people and still have control over my physical and sensory SSCD triggers? Isolation is self-protection for me, but my social life’s utterly shot to shit.

2. Because I work online/remotely: How can I (re)build productive work habits and not be sucked back in by inane time-wasters?

3. Because I am in the Philippines, a.k.a. the social media capital of the world: How to ease my usage when literally most of our population is staring at screens all day, every day?

I’m also tweaking my content consumption habits and sources to minimize temptations and disruptions:

• Using dedicated apps (i.e., Meco for email newsletters; Feedly for blogs, RSS feeds and Substacks)

• Silencing all notifications for social media and messaging apps, or deleting them from devices altogether

• Using word and phrase filters–Instagram, Threads, Mastodon, and Bluesky all have them

• Unfriending those who aren’t really my friends now, say, elementary/high school/college classmates I haven’t seen since graduation, colleagues former and current whom I don’t really like, random relatives who ask me for money every Christmas season ☠️, and former friends who treated me badly and haven’t apologized for their crap

• Unfollow icky influencers, most sellers/retailers, and celebrities. I mean…

Consider this a call for advice. Let me know what works for you! 😘

Random stuff

I had my decade-old Pilot Kakuno fountain pen painted with a favorite book character! Gotta love Murderbot.

Contact Sisters Studio if you want your own pens painted.

I also said goodbye to Spotify after 11 years and moved to YouTube Music. I think I’ll write about streaming again next year (because this piece deserves an update!), so the full pros and cons of this move will be in that newsletter.

In the meantime, here’s what I love about the latter that the former doesn’t have: NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts.

Apparently, the stuff I grew up with in the ‘90s is now prime horror material—and now called ‘analog horror’. The horror! 🤣 Channel 10 - Manila doesn’t allow embeds, so a link will have to do.

And still on YouTube, its algorithm served me several Live feeds of old Anthony Bourdain shows. This one showing A Cook’s Tour episodes is fun to watch and bittersweet:

And because it’s peak holiday season here–I always say there are only three permanent things in this world: death, taxes, and Ms. Polly’s chocolate cake. I’m so happy to see her get her flowers 💗

Thus ends my proof of life. Happy holidays to those who celebrate, and I’ll see you again next year! Treat yourself and others well, and make good life choices 🎉🎉🎉

Semi-Online is a free newsletter and accepts tips via Ko-fi and Buy Me a Coffee.

Semi-Online is also listed on three Substack directories: Stack Natin, Periphery (formerly Asian Writers’ Collective), and SmallStack. Check them out and discover excellent longform writing from creators based in the Philippines, the Filipino diaspora, and Asians worldwide + Substacks with fewer than 1,000 subscribers!

If you have any feedback, suggestions, and/or complaints about this newsletter, please comment below, email me, or talk to me on Mastodon.

If you’re reading this newsletter via email: This edition runs longer than usual, so your email service may clip it. Please click on the ‘View entire message’ link if you’re on GMail, or similar links if you're using other email services.

If you’re reading via RSS feed or using the Substack app or other newsletter apps, you’re good. No need to do anything else. 👍🏽

Sabaidi (ສະບາຍດີ; ‘Hello’ in Lao), and welcome to Semi-Online #25.

I’ve been feeling better these past few weeks and enjoying improved mobility, so I’ve gone back to some long-delayed personal stuff, like my MFA thesis turned work-in-progress that I hope to turn into a published book someday. I created a proposal for it, defended that to a three-person panel, and got the green light in September 2019, PCP (Pre-COVID-19 Pandemic). I then went AWOL from the program in 2022 but kept working on it until 2023, when I hit the Pause button.

A peek into history

Before my 2019 panel defense, I read several autobiographies relevant to my work and skimmed through some I was just curious about. One of those I skimmed was by Melanio Pascual Calpo, my paternal grandfather. He finished writing This is My Life in 1976, and he made several hardbound and typewritten duplicates for his children. He died in 1989 without adding anything more to it.

Those duplicates deteriorated over time or were completely lost. I think there were only two left by the early 2000s, and they were in pretty bad shape. My older brother was tasked with scanning the typed pages and photographs for posterity before Father Time and bad storage habits took them all away for good. The final product was a CD-ROM, with each chapter rendered in good ol’ HTML frames:

During my autobio-skimming stage, I took those HTML pages and compiled them into a PDF for easier reading on a tablet.1 So you could say that Lolo’s book took on a third form! I’d also focused then on a chapter titled “The Writer”. It was about Lolo’s published short stories and a look at creative writing in the Philippines in an era when it wasn’t considered professional work, or at least it wasn’t described along those lines then. This chapter’s quite short compared to the others and leads me to more questions than answers, plus I still haven’t finished reading the whole book. But I’d say that chapter alone makes the whole book valuable to me.

Lolo never meant for his autobiography to be read by anyone who isn’t an immediate family member or a direct descendant, so I’m keeping its contents private. But some parts of “The Writer” could be considered public record; his stories were printed in publications sold nationwide. So I think it’s OK to show you this screenshot:

I posted this on my personal socials back in 2019, read the rest of the chapter, laughed at what Lolo wrote because goddamn, he was cranky AF and editors are still ‘unreasonable’ today, and moved on to other things.

The 98-year-old ‘surprise’

Let’s skip to May 2025. Atty. Nick Pichay, my former professor for playwriting techniques, had delivered this year’s Paz Latorena Memorial Lecture at the University of Sto. Tomas (UST), the oldest university in the Philippines and Asia at 414 years old. I’m happy he was chosen for it, but there was also a tiny bell ringing in my head that wasn’t SSCD-related tinnitus. Paz Latorena. PAZ. L A T O R E N A. I KNOW THIS NAME. I’ve seen it somewhere before, and not from my Literary History class and MFA comprehensive exams. But I just couldn’t remember, so I had to let it go.

A week ago, I went through Lolo Melanio's autobiography again for an unrelated reason. I opened This is My Life, went back to “The Writer” chapter, and found this at the end:

There she is! Paz M. Latorena, “one of the notable writers of the first generation of Filipino English writers,” was sitting on the chair right beside my grandfather, who’s standing at extreme left. The UST’s official school publication The Varsitarian called her a literary doyenne, while Rappler described her as:

…a distinguished figure in Philippine literature in English. Latorena was a professor of English and literature at UST’s former Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, where she influenced a generation of literary figures, including National Artist F. Sionil José, Eugenia Duran Apostol, Genoveva Edroza Matute, Zenaida Amador, Ophelia Alcantara Dimalanta, and Alice Colet-Villadolid.

But wait, there’s more! This photo and the short accompanying writeup announced the formation of the Philippine Writers’ Association (PWA). It aimed to gather the country's best literary writers and ‘professionalize’ their production and other endeavors. Membership was based partly on their personal and professional ties; Lolo knew many of them from his former jobs, past residences, and existing friendships.

Given the scant info available today about the PWA—there’s a brief mention of it on the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) website thanks to poet Ricardo de Ungria, but not much else—it’s obvious that this effort didn’t last. But its extreme short-livedness is just fucking hilarious to me:

We were so grandiose in our objectives that the whole thing amounted to an improbability, i.e.:

• To upgrade the technique of writing by going into Grammar school again;

• To conduct seminars on good stories, starting from the idea of the “plot”, the “development” and the “denouement”;

• To establish a Board of Censors among ourselves;

• To make our efforts felt by all publishers, etc., etc., etc.

Thirty two individuals of independent minds, naturally, could not possibly agree on anything. The matter of the “Grammar School” and “Censorship” hurt the feelings of many. The “Seminars” were taboo because no one wanted to reveal a trade secret. All realized that we were simply at the mercy of the Editors who usually did not even read the whole “story” and so our dreams went pffft… We did not even reach the election stage!

Yep. Massive egos and secrets. That tracks. 🤷🏽

For those curious about the other names in the January 1927 Philippines Free Press article, some of whom later became trailblazers in Philippine letters, law, medicine, etc.:

Mario Bengson, Alfredo Densico, Domingo H. Soriano, Oscar Juco, Jose Villa (could be José García Villa), J. Villa Panganiban, Pablo T. Anido, Isidro Retizos, Vicente Perez, Jose Albornoz, Rosendo A. Medina, Ciriaco Buen, B. Chavarria, Pablo Menez, Dominador Manas, Rafael Ituralde, Antonio Senatin, Mercedes L. Grau, Salud Chavarria, Rosa Franco, Loreto Paras, Salvador Pena, Rizal G. Adorable, José V. Clariño, Rizal G. de Peralta, Tomas O. Magno, Jose M. Hernandez, Augusto Catanghal, A.B. Rotor, Aurelio Zurbano.

Then and now

The more, the manyer

From a big-picture point of view, the PWA is a blip in Lolo’s and his peers’ lifetimes and long careers. Many more writers’ groups have formed in the decades since—with either definitive intentions and wide coverage (like Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas or UMPIL) or smaller, genre-based, and/or regional memberships—and have varying degrees of success and longevity. The same goes for publications, workshops, grants and fellowships, etc. here in the Philippines and for Filipinos abroad.

I don’t have sufficient space or knowledge to get deep into Philippine literary history here, especially since I focused on creative nonfiction in grad school and Lolo was into short fiction, so we’re on two very different sides of a very long story. But I can say that modern Philippine creative writing is thriving (despite, well, everything) and gives its people—veterans and newcomers, traditionalists and independents, hobbyists and careerists—plenty of options. Our writers write in multiple languages, not just English, nor does English remain the sole arbiter of ‘quality’. And Lolo would probably be astounded at the publishing and distribution options and technologies we have today that he never did or even thought possible. From zines to worldwide bestsellers, there are multiple routes to publishing now and you can choose which is best for you.

The commercial side of writing has learned to band together, too. I was a member of the Freelance Writers’ Guild of the Philippines (FWGP) in its first version in the early ‘10s. I’ve yet to rejoin the current version, but it has a healthy membership and projects in the pipeline. Bills are also being made to protect us, but there’s nothing concrete yet. Again, that’s better than having nothing.

…But it’s still complicated

Some aspects remain unchanged from 1927 onward, though. A sample:

• Literary preservation has been spotty at best and frustrating at all times. Even my own grandfather didn’t keep all of his papers or clippings! Nor does he have a literary estate.2

• Writers still refer to short-term assignments as ‘raket’, and it truly grinds my gears. Sometimes, the disrespect for writing as a profession comes from our own ranks.

• The public depends on writers for information and entertainment, but they utterly refuse to pay us for our work, much less provide a decent wage or regularization or give the smallest bit of respect. Worse, they insist that we’re ‘just’ writers and that anyone can write—or they replace us completely with AI! 🤬

• Another money bugbear: We can’t support ourselves solely through writing. To make it month to month, we need a main job + multiple side jobs + a partner, spouse, or parent with a much higher monthly income + connections to the padrinos and ‘gatekeepers’ who absolutely hate being called gatekeepers even if they 100% are. Subtle ring-kissing and ‘gratefulness’ are musts here in the Philippines, and I’ve always hated it.

• Both literary and commercial writing function on hierarchy, control, and secrecy. Some old-school writers still consider a long list of publications, national writing workshops, grants, research, etc. the only acceptable marks of a writer’s legitimacy. Our writers seldom talk about crossing trade lines (no matter how common it is) because it’s considered shameful for artists to need money, or audacious for those with (some) money to even dream of making art. Or we still can’t teach other writers where and how to look for work and how much to charge and pay in taxes because they could poach our clients at any time. So Filipino writers stick to our cliquish literary and freelancer barkadas, and maybe keep some vital information to ourselves at writing and publishing workshops so we still have the perceived upper hand. And the traditional publishing folks also still look at independent writers with unmistakable disdain. (Don’t lie; we know you do. There’s a recent pivot to celebrating self-publishers and including them in the 2025 Frankfurt Book Fair contingent, but I still remember what you really thought of them before their books started outselling yours.)

• As for the other PWA conditions? No to censorship, especially after Martial Law. Still no to Grammar school; oh, the older and/or more experienced writers will surely say “How dare you!” 💀 And “Our efforts felt by all publishers”? That depends on their bosses, budgets, and received backlash. And that’s another long conversation 😣

Bylines and career paths, decades apart

I used to be so annoyed whenever my paternal relatives learned I write because they always had this standard response: “Lolo was a writer, too! You should read his book!” They seemingly told me that he already did everything worth doing, and I was just following in his footsteps and wasn’t good for much else.

Now that I’ve actually read parts of it… OK, fine, I should’ve read it earlier 🙃 And I was walking the same path as him, somewhat. He and I wrote for the same publication 87 years apart! I too wrote for the Philippines Graphic,3 and was in talks for a marketing project with the Philippines Free Press until it suddenly shut down in 2011.

(Re)learning that my grandfather was part of the PWA in 1927 is big for me for another reason. I’m the only one in my father’s side of the family who still/sometimes writes for a living, and I don’t know anyone from my mother’s side who’s ever done it. Some write as a hobby, some worked as writers before but have moved on to other industries, and at least one niece wanted to take it up (and had asked me for advice). Knowing there was one person who did it before me, no matter how inconsistent or occasional, and did it the hard way reminds me that I haven’t quite lost my marbles.

It’s also amazing to me that Lolo Melanio rolled with people who would become Philippine literature heavyweights. If he kept writing his short stories or was consistent with his output, I truly think he could’ve made a name for himself, too. I have to finish reading This is My Life to find out why his writing career went hot and cold throughout his lifetime, but at least I now know na may pinagmanahan talaga ako 🤭

He died when I was still quite young, and I don’t remember him at all. There are pictures to prove we’ve met but I have no personal stories of him to tell, unlike my older siblings who knew him better. So This is My Life provides plenty of answers, but writing career-wise, I have more questions to ask if he were still here, like:

• Why was your creative output on and off? I know you lived through two world wars (and several foreign invasions), upheavals of all kinds, creating and raising 14 children (and burying some of them), Martial Law, etc. I know you were busy living your life, man. But… why?

• How did you deal with your peers’ success post-1927? We all know we shouldn’t compare or list achievements, but we all do it in private. How’d you handle internal pressure, envy, and maybe not having the same options and security (financial, housing, employment, familial, etc.) as they did?

• What other stories did you want to write, but never got the chance to?

• Is there anyone among your children who could’ve taken up writing as a profession, too?

The dream could stay just that, and that's alright

Looking back at “The Writer” also made me reassess my own future as a creative and commercial writer.

I used to dream of helming a print publication, and then an online publication. Then both industries went bust. I used to have a solid client list and plenty of time and energy to write for work plus myself. Then disability and depression and displacement and COVID-19 and everything else came at me hard. I’m looking at the industries I work(ed) in and I’m trying to find ways back. But the landscapes have changed so much or have been massively walloped by AI that it’s like I’m starting all over again—and left holding way more cards than everyone else. We’re always told to strive for success and greatness, to write every day and do all sorts of things to attract and keep a readership. But what’s success for me now aside from being debt-free and not in a coffin? I’m trying to write my stories and mind my own business and get to the First Draft stage. But there are too many writers and critics and randoms demanding fair play but also throw out ‘rich kid’ and ‘Imperial Manila’ and ‘Oppression Olympics’ at people and stories they don’t like or aren’t even about them or remotely connected to them in any way. Oh, and no one’s getting paid fairly, and platforms like Substack and gateways like Stripe still think Global South writers can stay unpaid because the poors can’t ever have money 🖕🏽

So… what now?

Maybe following my grandfather's example—taking his damn sweet time and limiting access to his final work only to those he loved—is just fine. Maybe it’s time to learn new skills and move to other industries. Life’s short; cut your losses and move on, right? There’s no shame in tapping out of the dream when you’ve outgrown it or it has outgrown you; or in pursuing other, more attainable dreams.

Or maybe I can still chip away at both sides whenever I can. It took Lolo Melanio until his 70s and retirement to get to a finished manuscript. One and done is fine, too.

Yeah, I’ll get back to you.

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Semi-Online is also listed on three Substack directories: Stack Natin, Periphery (formerly Asian Writers’ Collective), and SmallStack. Check them out and discover excellent longform writing from creators based in the Philippines, the Filipino diaspora, and Asians worldwide + Substacks with fewer than 1,000 subscribers!

If you have any feedback, suggestions, and/or complaints about this newsletter, please comment below, email me, or talk to me on Mastodon.

Bonġu (“Hello” in Maltese) and welcome to Semi-Online #24, a.k.a. ‘Headlines and Headlights’ #5, or my latest list of read/watched/heard media consumed between my (already sparse) Substack posts, extended SSCD episodes, and other life matters that I want to show and/or recommend to you simply because I like dragging people into rabbit holes with me, pleasant or otherwise.

That long-ass intro also reflects how my brain’s been these past months: rambling, morbid, and strung out. To be fair, a lot’s been happening lately—to everyone, everywhere, and in every sense. So I took another long break, then wiped out the drafts sitting on my Dashboard since March. If only things are that easy for everything, no? 😄

Enjoy, and gimme your recommendations too 💗

Random thoughts

One of the few things I miss about my MFA years is the constant creative production. From 2016-2019, I churned out essays, short stories, and poems plus several one-act plays, a full-length screenplay (that I still hope to convert to a novel someday), and passable critiques and research. They could come back to life if/when I find the time and energy to rework them. But I was consistent with my writing back then because I was held accountable every weekend: not only to pass the courses I’d paid for, but also to pull my weight in reading and workshopping.

So I’m wondering if anyone’s interested in forming an informal writers’ group. Nothing too academic or hoity-toity, and no strict deadlines; just constructive feedback and different POVs for our works-in-progress and accountability for all. Let me know in the comments section!

Also: Laki Mata, one of my favorite artists, currently has a solo exhibit at Space Encounters Gallery in Pasig City! The Flower Eaters runs until May 31.

From Celine Policarpio’s Facebook page:

“The Flower Eaters” exhibit is an exploration of a dystopian island where society revolves around the worship of Liwayway, a goddess who provides flowers as sustenance. Once consumed, they cause the people to forget their dreams, their beliefs, and ultimately, themselves.

On this island, the women carry the heaviest burden. They are molded into ideals: well-behaved, quiet, obedient. Their voices are hushed, their needs suppressed, and their ambitions confined within the bounds of tradition. The flowers they eat represent the expectations they are forced to swallow, erasing their authentic selves in exchange for acceptance.

This exhibit confronts the cost and the mental toll of repressing one’s true self in order to fit societal norms. It is a reflection on how femininity is shaped, silenced, and sometimes reclaimed. The Flower Eaters invites viewers to witness the quiet rebellion of women who begin to remember, to feel, and to awaken.

Check out the catalog here; and contact Space Encounters for inquiries and reservations via Facebook, Instagram, or email.

Read

The COVID-19 lockdowns, five years on, courtesy of Foreign Policy, Business Mirror, The Guardian, BBC, and The New York Times. Honestly, I think I need a decade of therapy just for this worldwide event, and then its impacts on multiple parts of my life and mind.

ICYMI! Important for people like me who work online and rely on online access for everything: digital VAT kicks in on June 1, 2025. It affects streaming, software, and cloud services + online ads, gaming platforms, and mobile app purchases in the Philippines. Audit all your subscriptions and DON’T vote for the authors of this law in the next elections because we know damn well we won’t reap any benefits from this added taxation bullshit.

Speaking of elections (and that BIG Duterte arrest for the International Criminal Court last March that impacted our May 2025 polls), here’s a Reuters Institute article on Cristina Chi. She’s the reporter who told the world about the disinformation networks working hard during and after the arrest. This is how it’s done, folks.

We live in a world where stand-up comedians are assassinated while they’re on stage. Rest in peace, Gold Dagal.

We also live in a world where important documentaries like Baby Ruth Villarama’s Food Delivery: Fresh from the West Philippine Sea are pulled out of festival screenings two days before its premiere. Here’s some good news, though: it’ll finally debut in June… in New Zealand.

This is from February 2025 but still worth reading today, especially if this summer’s electric bills gave you sticker shock. The Huffington Post put out a two-parter on nuclear energy in Asia, with the Philippines front and center in the first installment. (China’s the focus for the second part.)

Another February 2025 thing: I noticed that my Substack was getting traffic from ChatGPT, which had apparently begun serving real-time search results. We’re just now getting actual numbers for generative AI search results’ impact on Google’s business model, and…

And another generative AI thing: I’m still leery of using it for work except for basic spellchecks and proofreading. But journalist Jaemark Tordecilla used it to convert a recent longform story into a video essay. I find his process interesting, though I’ll still hold off for as long as I can.

I also don’t know what to feel about using animal organs for human transplants. I do think my late mother, who needed a kidney transplant in 1992 and died without one, would’ve laughed then recoiled at the thought of having a genetically engineered kidney most likely sourced from a pig placed inside her body. Then again, most wouldn’t care about its provenance if it means they could live a bit longer.

If you have old/used or expired makeup, Heaven’s Palette is accepting donations. Your donated makeup would then be used for mortuary cosmetics. Our loved ones need to look good before we send them off! More info on this Rappler profile and this ABS-CBN feature.

Also about death: if given the choice and funding, I would love to die with dignity in a peaceful environment instead of in a hospital with chaos everywhere, or worse. The Guardian covers a palliative care unit in Denmark whose approach I wish would be the global standard.

Channel News Asia loves talking dirty to me via “Talking Point”. Specifically: how dirty our bath towels can get, and how often to wash them. Another favorite of mine from the same program: proper water bottle hygiene. Wash that expensive tumbler, for fuck’s sake!

Here’s the story of the ILOVEYOU computer worm, not-proudly made in Manila, 25 years later.

I am a lifelong atheist, but also a baptized and confirmed Catholic because those were mandatory for Catholic school students 🙃 I was curious about Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle’s sudden elevation to papal candidacy, and I even tuned in to the conclave livestream to see who popped that white smoke. Too bad I saw this VERA Files opinion column too late; it’s about Tagle’s silence during Rodrigo Duterte’s murderous presidency.

Remember that headline barrage about millions of Filipino HS graduates being ‘functionally illiterate’ (like this one, and this)? Here’s the actual 2024 FLEMMS report, and a May 19 clarification from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). Just for exactness’ sake. But yes, we need to up our educational access and standards ASAP!

I have friends who suffered massive strokes and lived, and much more who didn’t. Survivors will tell you recovery doesn’t end at hospital discharge, and that you’ll rarely if ever have the same baselines for daily living. So this long piece on US senator John Fetterman’s pre- and post-stroke years is a tough read, more so because he holds public office and his actions and impact go beyond his immediate circles.

Apparently, Volkswagen sells more sausages than automobiles these days. Well.. it ain’t the wurst. Eyyyyyy. 🌭🌭🌭

Hobbies are pricier now, too. I see this in fountain pens, inks, and accessories as well as books and online streaming; but you’ll see it in your own hobbies, whatever they may be. And while this piece from The Atlantic focuses on Americans and their hobbies, I think the effect’s obvious worldwide. Higher costs = lost opportunities for building social ties and strong communities in dedicated places.

Related to fountain pens: a fun feature on how Filipino enthusiasts got started on the hobby. I know their names because I see them on the local Facebook and Marketplace group all the time. I’ve since muted both on my feed to curb spending, and it’s been going good so far. 🤭

The only media coverage I cared about in relation to that faux-feminist Blue Origin flight: those on Amanda Nguyen and Aisha Bowe. 💗

Lastly, from yesterday: massive changes in Philippine broadsheets are incoming (printing op cuts for Manila Bulletin, and layoffs and printing op shifts for The Philippine Daily Inquirer). This gives me depressing flashbacks of the death of tech print magazines in the ‘10s, including the Singapore franchise I used to write for. Call me naïve, but I never thought it’d happen to the major papers.

Watch

Let’s go back to the early months of COVID-19 in 2020. I was newly unemployed, stuck in the last place I ever wanted to be in with maybe the last person I ever want to be stuck anywhere with, and caught in a downward spiral of alcoholism and what I learned months later was SSCD. Martha Wells’ The Murderbot Diaries novella series helped bring back some joy in my life, and I’ll always be thankful that I read it when I did.

Fast forward to 2025—the series now has five novellas and two novels, and an Apple TV+ adaptation starring Alexander Skarsgård. I haven’t read the newer titles and had my doubts about the streaming series (especially with yet another White man in the lead role, even if he’s Alexander freakin’ Skarsgård). But the reviews have been positive so far. Could be worth renewing my subscription once all the episodes are out.

I also read The Eternaut back in 2017, and liked it except for the bad female character writing. I wish I knew more about Argentinian history and politics before reading, though. I missed some of the political subtext, and I didn’t know the author Héctor Germán Oesterheld and his four daughters and their husbands were disappeared in the 1970s and are long presumed dead.

I’ve seen the first two episodes of the Netflix adaptation, but I’m holding off judgment until I finish all six.

Love, Death & Robots, Black Mirror, and The Last of Us are back, too! Also thinking if I should get on the Andor train now that it’s done at two seasons.

I watched The God of Ramen last month on JFF Theater, and for free! Its lineup changed this month; The Genealogy of Sake and A Handful of Salt look interesting to me. I recommend signing up, although casting to your TV can get tricky since it’s just browser-based.

YouTube’s algo serves up fun recommendations for me sometimes. Here’s one, from Max Miller of Tasting History:

Listen

Still in love with this rendition of “Otomo” by Bonobo and Anna Lapwood at the Royal Albert Hall!

I’m also pissed that the reunited The Prodigy got a lukewarm reception at Coachella this year. So I’ve been giving them the respect they deserve: playback at top volume with the scant level of dancing my disability allows.

Finally, some toe to calm down afterward:

It’s been fun. Until the next update! Take care out there 💗

This newsletter runs longer than my usual send-outs, so your email service might clip it. Click on the ‘View entire message’ link if you’re reading it on GMail, or similar links on other email providers.

Kia ora (‘Hello’ in Maori) and welcome to Semi-Online #23, a.k.a. my first non-rundown newsletter in a long while.

In my newer posts, I said writer’s block and SSCD have kept me from writing anything. That’s true then and, unfortunately, even now. But there’s one positive development to report: since December 2024, I’ve been writing whenever I could… just not here.

Instead, I’ve revived my on-and-off journaling habit (or, as older generations call it, diary-writing), and I’ve been spending more time writing with budget/mid-range fountain pens and inks onto paper journals. I’ve found immense comfort and solace in it, and I did say I’d occasionally write about my low- and no-tech hobbies, so here we are.

No, I’m not showing you any of my handwritten pages. I will share this old ad, though. 😏

The digital dream is now dust

In a Substack note/comment exchange with back in December 2024, I said I’d lost plenty of my digital data (mainly journals and photos from my college to rookie writer/journalist years) to corrupted hard drives and defunct online platforms. I thought then that digital data would somehow live forever (idiota, no? 😂). So I never backed anything up—and promptly lost my old blogs and accounts on Geocities, Friendster, and Multiply, as well as several .doc and .txt files serving as ‘journals’ up to 2009. What did survive made me cringe.

Around eight to ten jampacked years are missing from my so-called personal archive, including those years when I didn’t write anything down because life kept happening, and whatever I wrote down was either thrown away or lost. So entire milestones, experiences, and memories of mine are gone forever. This doesn’t matter much when you’re young and in the moment. But to middle-aged and brain-fogged Me who’s struggling to make sense of my pasts and present, it’s critical and heartbreaking.

I also told Niko I “would’ve fared better if I stuck with paper/analog.” Unlike my digital archive, I still have my old physical photo albums, diaries, and keepsakes. Look, I didn’t even try to preserve those, alright? They’re just here, still, somehow. 😆 Some are a bit worse for wear, but they’re fine despite several home moves and the occasional big decluttering/cleanups. I bet all of these hard copies will outlive me.

I’m not going to be annoying and ask, “Ako lang ba?”. I know everyone else is also tired of the online grind. Analog technology is in vogue again, and partly in response to widespread online overwhelm: from print books and magazines and newsletters to zines, vinyl records, flip phones or dumb phones, to CD players and Apple iPods and anything and everything else not needing a continuous internet connection. We have guides to ‘downgrading’ your smartphone; and the sales pitch for newer phone-makers like Light Phone, Punkt, and Mudita focuses entirely on minimalism and being ‘offline’.

We could look at journaling as a tiny part of a massive trend, the introvert’s equivalent of touching grass. But I’d also say it’s a natural consequence of leaving too many aspects of human life to the 0s and 1s. We’re realizing too late that we gave up too much in the name of convenience; and we want our time, sanity, and ownership1 back.

Why I write before I type

We are now in Season 2025, episode 2.19 of The World, our long-running, user-generated, wild-ass documentary, drama, satire, war saga, or [INSERT YOUR GENRE OF CHOICE HERE] series. It’s a continuous barrage of bad news, bad people with bad motives, bad events, and bad consequences—all leading to worse versions of everything down the line.

I rely on escapism in times like these, like an ostrich burying its head in the sand or a child covering their ears when so-called adults lose their shit. Of course, too much escapism is just as bad. But, in adequate doses, I’m rediscovering the benefits of switching back to pen and paper.

First, there’s a real joy in writing something only for yourself—and not having that appropriated or misunderstood by others. Anything you write, especially under your actual name and more so if it’s nonfiction, stops being 100% yours once it’s out in the wild. It’ll be taken out of context and chopped up and reconstituted for others’ selfish aims. My journals contain words, thoughts, and sentiments that are fully mine; and only for my own eyes. In this era of constant oversharing, overanalyzing, and overreacting, it feels nice to have something left completely private that’s as simple or complex as I wish.2

I also reread a few old journals and smaller travel notebooks from my solo backpacking trips back in the 2010s. Apparently, I used those as a testing ground; many of my main ideas and arguments throughout my writing career have their roots in my diaries. All my raw-as-hell darlings are there: handwritten in various ink colors, unkilled by overzealous editors, and unmutilated by online trolls. I had fun reading older pages and tracing on which article, opinion column, or blog my old words landed unplanned.

Then again, and as I’m finding out with age (and hopefully, wisdom), not everything must be publicly answered or reacted to ASAP. Sometimes, it’s best to stop, back up, and write it down first. Journal-writing helps me release pent-up stress and overthinking/overwhelm so I have the bandwidth for other and more pressing concerns. Pausing also gives me time to organize my jumbled words and feelings into coherence, and respond appropriately. That’s if I even need to respond at all. Usually, I don’t.

That caution is necessary today. Those aforementioned raw thoughts and reactions can quickly turn into icky word vomit, hard regrets, and hasty Canva-made apologies if you’re not careful or considerate of others.3 This isn’t about political correctness, being ‘plastik,’ or self-censorship. My journals shield you from my unregulated emotions and impulses, the kind that can hurt your precious ‘Main Character’ feelings and lead to permanently broken ties and lifelong hatred. People say they love authenticity until it gets too authentic for them. So even for those who claim to love and accept me exactly as I am, some things might need light editing.

Lastly, I’ve learned that some of my memories don’t match my canon; what I wrote in my old journals and what I remember now could be wildly different. That’s also why I’m still pissed over my years’ worth of data loss. I know the contents of my brain don’t always match hard reality over time, and my perfectionist self needs to confirm what those exact mismatches are. It sucks, but I’ll have to live with not knowing.

🥊 Old-school habits vs. new-school economics 🥊

Diary-writing used to be a solitary activity, typically done in secrecy and costing very little. Any notebook and ballpoint pen would do; you didn’t have to be precious about it. Plus, I grew up in the decades before personal computers, so writing in longhand with whatever’s at hand came naturally.4

I started dipping into the ‘fancy’ side of journaling in my twenties, beginning with a blank Moleskine journal marketed as used by famous writers. That was my first lesson in modern journal writing: sooner or later, you’ll be roped in by branding and consumerism.

In 2014, I thought I should use just one pen and one ink for everything. That led to my first (expensive for me!) fountain pen, a TWSBI Diamond Mini Classic whose grip/section cracked and which I lost during my last house move + a 3-ounce bottle of Noodler’s Ink Burgundy. My options were limited then: Scribe Writing Essentials was the only Philippine retailer I knew of, and you could buy rare and discontinued pens only via eBay and Amazon. As for communities, Fountain Pen Network-Philippines (FPN-PH) was still a baby and still using Yahoo Groups. 😆

Things improved over time, even as I was inconsistent with my own writing. More overseas products were imported to local markets; I still have the handwritten letter and Traveler’s Notebook refills that gave me years ago. 💗 Enthusiasts and crafters also started making their own products, such as Alunsina Handbound Books for journals and Kasama for high-end fountain pens. FPN-PH moved to Facebook Groups. I began seeing more fountain pens and ink-friendly notebooks/papers in local bookstore chains. Brands like Lamy and Parker got full sales booths, and my non-enthusiast older brother found me a budget Inoxcrom 2022 at National Book Store, of all places.

In 2025, FPN-PH has close to 15,000 members; and its connected Palengke buy-and-sell group, 20,000 members. We’re less than a month away from the fifth Manila Pen Show. There are more Filipino journal, fountain pen, ink, and accessories makers producing stuff I’d gladly pay full price for. Aside from having more commercial retailers, we now have Shopee, Lazada, Temu, and AliExpress for original and knockoff products, spare parts, and accessories. Even beginners on tight budgets can now get into vintage pen trading. We also have nibmeisters; I currently have three pens out for repair with one of just three active nibmeisters in Metro Manila.

Going beyond the Philippines, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok are full of journaling content creators making well-lit videos showing off their troves of ephemera and the usual ✨ aEsThETiCs ✨. And Subreddits like r/fountainpens and r/journaling and Substacks such as show how others worldwide enjoy the hobby, document their own lives, and hone their skills.

I’m not immune to the call of consumerism. I now have 26 fountain pens, 17 ink bottles, and six blank notebooks plus other materials. They’re enough to get me through several years, and I should be slowing down again soon.5

But I also offer a few words of advice, particularly for those just getting into longhand writing:

1. It’s too easy to get caught up in the buying and collecting. You will see too many pretty and shiny things that too many people rave about, and you’ll feel you have to have them now. Try to resist the peer pressure. You don’t need most of these things.

2. Not all foreign-made and branded things are automatically the best.

3. Similarly, not all well-reviewed pens/journals/inks are the right ones for you.

4. Always keep your budget in mind. Otherwise, your funds are fucked.

5. Forget about aesthetics, ephemera, and trends. Remember why you’re writing and collecting in the first place! Mine has always been to document my life with affordable products. But it could be other things to others: penmanship and calligraphy practice, improving creative writing skills, appreciating antiques and vintages, or keeping notes and commonplace books.

On borrowed time

It's not like we’ve actually ever owned and dominated time, but anyway 🤷🏻‍♀️

I’m seeing an oddity in this offline hobby: while our present longhand writing communities are growing, it’s also stagnating or shrinking in other places. How many people still write pages’ worth of personal letters? Or trade notebooks? Or write in script? These have become so rare that discoveries such as an old letter from Jose Rizal make the headlines.6 I feel sad about this because there’s a certain romance in these texts that you won’t find now: every word was intended for the recipient, written with effort and honest thoughts and feelings behind them. They had meaning, and they were tangible.

A sadder thought: few people in America can read cursive writing or are even taught to write this way.7

And I’m not sure for how long I can keep journaling. I have nystagmus, a side effect of SSCD that makes my eyes move/roll to my right side rapidly and uncontrollably. It’s normally triggered by fast movements—in this case, the movement of my fountain pen nibs as I write. It makes long writing sessions uncomfortable, and it could start longer vertigo episodes if I’m not careful.

I’ve also been having this weird problem with my hands since 2021. I think it’s trigger finger, but it could also be arthritis. Whatever it is, my knuckles and joints would swell up one finger at a time, and lock up whenever I used that affected finger. Simple actions such as picking up objects and writing short notes become complicated and painful for me. The most recent case (in the pointer finger on my dominant hand) finally subsided around December 2024, after close to a year of constant mobility hell. I don’t know if it’ll happen again or on which finger.

As I don’t have the money, time, or support for invasive cranial surgery and long-term recovery, I’m slowly accepting the possibility of selling all my pens, notebooks, and inks in the future; and switching to digital journal apps. (Still a big fan of Anytype!) I hate it and journaling that way won’t be the same, not by a long shot. But I’ll enjoy this offline/analog way while I still can.

Sawatdee (สวัสดี; Hello in Thai)! Welcome to Semi-Online #22—and my first content rundown of 2025.

Writer’s block + consecutive SSCD-related nystagmus and vertigo episodes have wiped me out for weeks to months now, hence the lack of longform writing here other than these occasional lists. Honestly, I’m still struggling with the spinny spins, and the persistent brain fog means I can struggle to find the appropriate words—a curse for someone who edits and writes for a living. But I need to get back up (🐢 slowly 🐢). As much as the ableists and ignorants insist that we can simply ‘get over’ or ‘overcome’ disability and be back to ‘normal’, my invisible and rare variant currently runs me and there’s no such thing as normal.

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. Never take your mobility for granted! 😵

While those are running their course, I give you my picks off the global digital cesspool from November 2024 to this morning. Also: I’ve replaced this digest’s generic title with a slightly less generic one. Hahaha, I need help with this, thanks.

Read

I finished the short-story collection The Sad Part Was by Prabda Yoon back in November, and I’m currently reading the novel Cigarette Girl by Ratih Kumala. Both are great reads, and fiction readers looking for Southeast Asian stories can start with these two. Thai literature is seldom translated into English (but that’s now changing) and I haven’t read Indonesian fiction before, or even seen a foreign novel republished by a Filipino publisher.

These books should also clue you in on what’s coming in The Reading Spree. It’s also why I have ‘headlights’ in the title: some of the links I’ll put in here are glimpses of future updates. 😊

BTW, is anyone here using StoryGraph? Add me!

Let’s go back a few decades. I was in college, and a crush lent me American Gods by Neil Gaiman. He wouldn’t shut up about the book, but I heard of this author back in high school and was already curious about his work.

So I read the novel. I liked it. The same went for his other books, and it took me almost a decade to collect all the Sandman volumes on a student’s meager allowance and publishing underling’s salary. I wasn’t a big enough fan to go to his signing and publishing events here in Metro Manila; I’ve always hated loud crowds and ‘posers’ 😂 But I was super into everything he wrote.

My enthusiasm waned over the years. He was selling the adaptation rights to his catalog to everyone, and my tastes in reading material became broader and less Global North-oriented. I wasn’t into his shared publicity-seeking persona with his wife at the time, too. His books were still prized possessions of mine, though.

Until last year, when rape and sexual assault allegations against him surfaced via Tortoise Media. This should be in the ‘Listen’ section, but for context, it’ll be in here instead.

I was appalled by the news, and I donated most of my Gaiman books a few months later. But I kept an unread essay collection, my copy of Marvel 1602, and my entire Sandman collection. I thought I could somehow separate the fictional works from the real-life monster.

That delusion ended two days ago. Vulture published a damning investigation on Gaiman and talked to several of his (alleged) rape/coercion survivors. (⚠️ Read with extreme caution. ⚠️) And then US author Matthew Boroson alleged on Facebook just this morning that the entire The Sandman series was plagiarized from the late author Tanith Lee’s Tales from the Flat Earth series.

An old friend from my magazine-publishing years has already called dibs on my Sandman volumes should I decide to sell them. I can still sell or donate the books of his I have left; in this part of the world, economics outrank news headlines and personal feelings. But I’m so done with this disgusting rapist and plagiarist.

So much for having any literary heroes.

Some Substackia for ‘ya:

has put into words exactly what/how I feel about Substack shutting out Philippine and other Global South writers from paid newsletter subscriptions. And she did it so eloquently and calmly, without any (rightful) anger or cursing, etc. I struggled with my own past notes and comments about the topic and sanitized what I wrote in case our Substack overlords didn’t like it and retaliated.

Click on Lalipa’s note below to read the full text. And if this is how she writes, I can’t wait to read her first newsletter!

Damn Whi… right. 😈

For the other headlines: first up, some Philippines-centric articles:

• The New Zealand Herald (via The Washington Post) talks about the Southern Philippines’ ‘rebrand’ as a tourist destination. I still remember the years when all we Manileños heard about Southern Mindanao were kidnappings and hostage-takings, terrorism, deadly gunfights between religious militants and the military, and murders. I’m all for this shift, but I also think that potential tourists need to learn how to conduct themselves in a Muslim-majority part of the country run by differing laws and social customs. Foreigners can’t just go to Mindanao (or anywhere else in this world, really) and expect the entire place to bend to their wills and whims.

• From November 2024: a primer on the Marcos vs. Duterte narratives for public support—and Rolling Stone Philippines’ unofficial hanging of its ‘Open for Business’ shingle.

• “On the Run, a Hit Man Gives One Last Confession”—Former Rodrigo Duterte hitman Edgar Matobato has finally received protection from the International Criminal Court (ICC), and does this final interview before leaving the country. I hate the man for all of his crimes, but I can’t wait for justice to be served to the Dutertes and their collaborators.

• The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) continues its coverage of the gig economy with this first-parter on app gamification.

The Atlantic serves up two great reads.

• “The Hawaiians Who Want Their Nation Back”—I saw this while writing my review of Silk, Silver, Spices, Slaves and wondering about what other countries Murica has taken by force aside from my Philippines. Unlike us, Hawaii didn’t get the so-called dignity of a colonizer-to-colonizer purchase formalized in another colonizer country; their islands were straight-up invaded and their ruler was overthrown by White opportunists from the ‘mainland’.

• “The Anti-Social Century”—Great cover story on how intentional solitude has become the norm in an individualist American society. It also offers peeks into how it can happen in conservative and community-first cultures; I agree with too many things here. 🫢

Next, two articles on creative writing as—and related to—professional writing.

• “What the MFA Does and Does Not Do for Aspiring Novelists”—Again, this is US-centric. But it also makes me think about my big wish for Philippine MFA programs (especially after being in one for six years before going AWOL): mix its craft and industry aspects. Teach our writers how to manage their finances; file their taxes as independent workers; negotiate fair contracts, royalties, and (re)publishing rights across media; find translation and adaptation opportunities without needing institutional backers, etc.! Universities must integrate those topics into their MFA programs or work with undergraduate/graduate business departments and faculties. Hindi puro craft at workshop, tapos barkadahan/gatekeeping galore ang mga propesor at estudyante kapag nakaangat na.

• “Qwertyman No. 122: On Writing as a Profession”—Butch Dalisay, renowned author and journalist whose The Best of Barfly and The Knowing is in the Writing: Notes on the Practice of Fiction gave me some of the best (and non-patronizing!) writing advice I’ve seen for Philippine writers, talks in his newspaper column about the push and pull of writing for art vs. writing for money:

The fact is, both are two sides of the same coin, which is the currency of public persuasion through words and language. One is an artist, the master of design; the other is the artisan or craftsman, the master of execution. Both can reside in the same person, unless you’re foolish enough to disdain one or the other. You can produce great art, if you have the talent, the discipline, and the hubris for it; but you can also live off your artistic skills, if you have the talent, the discipline, and the humility for it.

The New York Times gave me two more bookmarks:

• “How an Old Laptop Is Transformed Into 9-Karat Gold Earrings”—An interesting look at how the British Royal Mint is entering the jewelry business.

• “Why Friendship Breakups Hurt So Much”—This reminds me of my June 2023 newsletter, and it’s handy for those undergoing their own cord-cutting.

The New Yorker chimes in with why Spotify Wrapped 2024 was boring AF.

From ProPublica: a freelance vigilante got into the US right-wing militia Oath Keepers, and sent all the data he acquired to a journalist. Then he went into hiding. With just days to go before that racist orange troll returns to the White House, this is a must-read.

Something that should be added to my previous content rundown: human composting. That’s it. That’s the hook.

I loved this The Economist feature on Tokyo’s Toyosu fish market, which replaced the legendary Tsukiji market.

Three more ‘headlights’:

• Asian children are going No Contact or Very Low Contact with their parents, too. Channel News Asia interviews a few Singaporeans who’ve had enough.

• I’ve always complained about the noise levels in Metro Manila and other urban areas. But my SSCD-addled self isn’t imagining it; the world truly has become 📣 FUCKING LOUD 📣. National Geographic talks about noise pollution and “how silence became the newest luxury lifestyle.”

• My mother died back in the 1990s. I don’t want any version of her to come back to life via AI. But this is exactly what others are choosing to do with their loved ones. The Conversation discusses how AI gives the dead new kinds of tech-driven afterlife.

Watch

I didn’t like the third and final season of Marvel’s What If? as much as its first, and I think the series should go on for a few more years. But I watched it through the long Christmas holiday, anyway. It had nice alternate versions, but also so much wasted potential.

I’m also starting Creature Commandos, the first official release from the James Gunn/Peter Safran era of DC Studios:

As always, Midnight Diner (the regular series + Tokyo Stories) was such a salve for extra-tough days. There’s just something incredibly soothing about watching a bunch of fictional characters troop into a homey place for food and comfort.

And just for fun, here’s Nick Offerman drinking whisky for 10 hours. 😆🥃 That looks like a Lagavulin 18. Nice.

Listen

As I mentioned above, Spotify’s 2024 Wrapped came out and was considered lackluster. But I also thought mine was more accurate than the previous years’ lists. So I’ve been listening to mine along with the ever-changing Daylists.

No, I’m not linking to my Top Songs 2024 playlist. Some things should be kept private. 🫠

I’m linking to these albums/earworms, though:

Finally, I had no idea Muji makes playlists for their stores’ background music. Manila playlist, when???

That’s it for now. Thank you for reading, and see you next month!

Dia dhuit (hello in Gaelic), and welcome to Semi-Online #21.

Writer’s block has been hitting me extra hard the past few years, and I’ve been finding it tough to make the next newsletters. When I’m not into something, I’m really not into it and little will make me move.

But I’m great at finding distractions. Then again, aren’t we all? 😉 So here are some of the things that distracted me this past month or so - with some bringing me that much-needed joy.

Read

First up: my book blog is already 14 years old. (I have a teenager!) I often forget I have it and I haven’t updated it in ages. Yes, I’ve been reading books again, and I should write in said blog again. No, I don’t know when that’ll happen.

Then again, it’s nice to do something because I want to, not for… Oh no, it’s the C-word again!

*deep breath*

Content.

For now, I’ll say that I enjoyed Lio Mangubat’s Silk, Silver, Spices, Slaves: Lost Tales from the Philippine Colonial Period. I highly recommend it, especially if you’re a Philippine history buff and obscure trivia nerd. I went through the Kindle Edition in a day and a half.

You can get more unknown or forgotten history bits via Lio’s podcast The Colonial Dept.

I said before that we need a Philippine and/or Southeast Asian equivalent of ProPublica. suggested Vera Files, which I admittedly forgot about and haven’t checked in years.

(Worth your bookmark: “FACT SHEET: Who among the 2025 senatorial aspirants have been sources of disinformation?”. Vera Files also has a newsletter.)

Then I remembered another institution: the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ). Where’d my brain go? 🤦‍♀️

Among its notable stories from the past years:

• Its two-parter on Philippine political dynasties + the particularly ‘obese’ dynasties

• Widely shared on social media: PCIJ’s investigation on Grab’s surge pricing system, and a behind-the-scenes look at PCIJ’s reportage

• Why Filipinos pay more for electricity compared to other ASEAN consumers

• The multipart investigation (1, 2, 3, 4) on the death of the Marilao River via the poultry processing industry and institutional failures (I see you, 👏).

As always, please let me know of other longform journalism organizations focusing on our part of the world!

Two more Philippines-centric headlines, with one from several months back:

• From the super-underrated publication Rest of World: How GCash is fueling online gambling addictions. Thank goodness I never got into gambling. Not that I have a lot to gamble with, anyway…

• From Rappler: “In Manila, how China set up an influence, espionage network”. UGH.

Remember that September 2023 ‘hit job’ on comedian Hasan Minhaj by The New Yorker just as he became the top option as long-term host of The Daily Show? Well, he has finally responded via an Esquire profile and a new stand-up special (which I’ll link to in the “Watch” section, and which I’ve yet to, um, watch).

I guess when we’re being lied to everywhere we turn, we end up looking to comedians for truth. Which then underscores how absolutely fucked our world has become.

Back in 2021, I wrote an extended essay on death and memorialization for my MFA thesis/book manuscript, which also serves as my informal last will and testament. Part of the essay talked about how I want my ashes to be disposed of.

(FYI: It’s illegal to scatter human ashes in the Philippines. The current laws dictate interment in a grave, crypt, or mausoleum, although the Vatican eased up on this policy in 2023. Because of course the Catholic Church dictates what we all can and can’t do - even for me, a lifelong atheist 🙄)

We’re coming up fast on 2025, and I must update that essay. Among the headlines I saw recently that piqued my interest:

• Three stories on assisted dying/suicide:1 one in Switzerland, one in upstate New York, and one in the UK.

• The best way to send off a weather scientist: drop his ashes into Hurricane Milton. So apt!

• Digital cloning? Ummm… No. Maybe? Sounds like a horror story in the making…

Some great longreads from the usual (foreign) suspects:

• The New York Times talks about FTX’s imprisoned executives’ parents, and how American cheerleading turned into a monopoly and deadly (and unrecognized) sport.

• The Economist looks into various countries’ land-grabbing in the Antarctic, and why people now want to be social media influencers.

• The Atlantic documents the final days of The Racist and Sexist Orange Criminal Troll’s presidential campaign.

• The New Yorker reports on a Texan doctor’s memories of the disappeared Saudi Arabian princesses he treated, a man living on after his wife killed their children during a mental health crisis, and making and losing friends at different life stages (which should be added to my previous newsletter on modern friendships). Also republished: a 2000 classic on a man who won the New York state lottery.

• Slate recaps the whole WordPress vs. WP Engine drama. It’s interesting to me because I run two websites on WordPress. I haven’t kept tabs on this story though; there may be a new explainer somewhere.

• ProPublica tells the story of Maylia and Jack: one teen sold an illegal drug that killed the other. In this case, justice doesn’t look or seem like justice.

Finally, a bit of Philippine and POC Substackia.

This note from 15th Century Feminist should always be quoted whenever Hamish McKenzie and the other Substack staff run their mouths on Notes, but pretend to be deaf or completely ignore us whenever we bring up payments and subscriptions for ALL Substack writers:

…I think what is missing from the conversation is that within this post a founder of substack is encouraging folks to utilize his app to cultivate deeper human connections and make space to hold the nuances of each other’s lived realities. But what about all of the substack writers (mostly writers of color) that are posting in countries that are unable to monetize their writing? They’re encouraged to use the app, encouraged to write and engage on the app, encouraged to add their lived realities to the conversation to grow our paradigms, but only their (mostly) white peers can financially profit off of the app?

Related: an instant gem. Restack for all eternity!

Ad Hoc

Am I writing like a white woman?

In 2020, when I was 17, I posted a video essay on YouTube called “Why Am I Obsessed With Skinny White Women?” I had spent the previous year in Hong Kong, where all my classmates were also Asian and for the first time in my life, I was called pretty in a way that didn’t feel disingenuous. When I returned to New York and my very white prep school, I start…

Read more

2 years ago · 1837 likes · 147 comments · Arden Yum

Also, following the example of , has created specifically for Philippine writers on Substack.

Stack Natin

Introducing Stack Natin: spotlighting Filipino writers and creatives on Substack

Welcome to Stack Natin, a Substack publication putting the spotlight on Filipino stories, writers and creatives across this platform and beyond. Whether they are in the Philippines or elsewhere around the world, we believe that our stories and experiences can help everyone see the world a little differently, and hopefully, appreciate what makes us diffe…

Read more

a year ago · 30 likes · 18 comments · Niko Batallones

Subscribe + join the directory!

Watch

I have a relatively short list of TV shows and movies that I’ll watch on repeat. Today I’m adding something ‘new’ to it: the vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows (on Disney+ in the Philippines).

Whoever came up with Colin the Energy Vampire and Evie the Emotional Vampire is a genius, and should be rewarded with TV writing jobs for the rest of their life. 👏

I’ve also finished Agatha All Along (also on Disney+) over the Undas long weekend. From loud (and mostly male) online cries of “We didn’t ask for this”, now all I see and hear are variations of “That’s the best Marvel show yet!” It has an excellent story planned out well across nine episodes, so many Easter eggs and subtexts and big reveals, and unforced doses of queerness. Well done overall, and worth several rewatches.

Related to Undas: life is expensive. These days, so is death.

Attention, HBO Go subscribers in Southeast Asia: we’re finally getting Max! Along with all that content (🤮there we go again🤮), I’m finally getting Deadliest Catch back. I re-welcome seasons 1-10 only; the rest can just sink into digital hell.

Seems I should update this newsletter, too. A LOT has happened in the streaming world in just three years.

As mentioned earlier: behold, Hasan Minhaj’s newest standup special, Off with His Head.

And these have been added to my ever-growing queue: The Diplomat (been hearing good reviews from friends), How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, Godzilla Minus One, Trap, Caddo Lake, The Franchise, and Silo.

Listen

TBH, I haven’t listened to anything new. But I’ve played SOHN’s 2014 album Tremors and Up Dharma Down’s 2012 slowdown album Capacities on repeat.

I’ve also played these NPR Tiny Desk Concerts over and over. Programming on this series has always been top-notch, but it went up several more levels in the past year or two. And I’m sure my selections will tell you how old I am. 💗

That’s all for now. Thank you for reading, and see you next time.

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Lí-hó (‘hello’ in Taiwanese), and welcome to Semi-Online #20.

I haven’t done a content rundown since this one way back in 2022 (an eon in online years!). So I figured I should share what I’m into these days.

Enjoy reading/watching/listening!

Read

Another September 21 has come and gone. For most, it’s just an Earth, Wind & Fire thing. For Filipinos, it marked the 52nd anniversary of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s declaration of Martial Law - and another day of being ruled over by his Junior and his greedy minions.

The Philippine Star’s “31 Years of Amnesia: Stories on the Myths that Made Marcos” collection should be made required reading every year alongside all the fact-checked literature on Martial Law and the bloody Marcos regime. And as mentioned in my previous list, you can always check out the Martial Law Museum and the Martial Law Library.

On a lighter note, I remember this excellent Esquire Philippines story every September 21 too. It’s about Gemma Nemenzo and Irwin Ver, two Filipinos on opposing sides of the Marcos Sr.-era political divide, and how they became life partners in the US post-exile/migration.

Over the past few months, I’ve kept an eye on Filipino authors who publish their books for free or sell their digital work at reasonable prices:

• Marguerite de Leon - the author of People in Panic - has made her second short-story collection, Lies All Lies, free for download. Get it here. I loved it, and finished reading it in one weekend.

• Danton Remoto is selling two of his ebooks:

  • How to Read and Write Better (writing creative nonfiction and generating content), ₱399 for Filipino readers and US$10 for overseas readers

  • Write the Story that Only You Can Write (writing short stories and novels for the global marketplace, ₱499 for Philippine readers and US$20 for overseas readers

• Siege Malvar has also put up his Writing Under Siege primer module on Gumroad for free.

If you know of more Filipino writers making their work free to read, selling their ebooks, and/or making creative writing guides, please let me know! 💗

In this vv rare edition of KC’s Freelancing Stories:

I wrote freelance for a company named Megateam in the early ‘10s, partly because some of my friends and fellow ex-technology journalists worked there full-time. Whenever one working writer takes an editorial job somewhere, our networks go with us. 😉

Megateam ran a blog network that included Megagogo, a blog for Western or Global North males in their 20s to 40s. My editors here were super easy to work with and were good at keeping content from becoming problematic and misogynistic (given our audience). More importantly, Megateam consistently paid me in full and on time - and deposited my cheques directly to my bank account, rare in Philippine freelancing.1

Megateam suddenly shut down in early 2012. My friends/colleagues were instantly unemployed, and I lost a client. The global headlines were all about Kim Dotcom and his cohorts’ arrests in New Zealand in connection with the Megaupload case, but little attention was paid to the little-known Philippine office dragged down with it. Only one blogger talked about it, or at least I can find only one (semi-accurate) article about it in 2024: Abe Olandres of YugaTech.

All this backstory is for me to say that Dotcom is finally being extradited to the US to stand trial. I hate that many good people lost their jobs here because of others’ actions elsewhere, so I’ll watch this case closely. It’s 12 years late, but it’s justice nonetheless.

And it’s funny and appalling to me today that I, a former journalist, never made the (indirect) connection between Megateam and Megaupload until the day of the New Zealand raid…

I’m a longtime lurker in the Grilled Cheese subreddit, and I was there for all of the 365 days Pavel Konko (u/pkonko37) showed us his delicious sandwiches. The whole thing got so big, The Washington Post wrote about it on Pavel’s last day.

The joy we get from two toasted pieces of bread with melted cheese in between is clear and crosses human-made borders. Sometimes it’s as simple as that, and we don’t always need tomato soup.

For those clueless about budots or why Gen Z influencers on socials suddenly began dancing to it in the most low-energy and Whitewash-y way possible, read the following articles:

• SPOT.ph’s brief budots explainer from last month. That TikTok embed of Hank Green trying to do it is hilarious to me

• A more thorough 2023 NME profile on budots’ roots in Davao’s slums, its image rehab via DJ Love, and its rise in the global music scene

• More features on CNN, NBC News, and Bandwagon.

There’s a documentary too; I somehow missed it when it was still being shown. And since NME mentioned Manila Community Radio and Boiler Room’s budots showcase, here it is:

I never thought that the annoying sound blared out from public transport and parties would become a global hit. But stranger stuff has happened in this world 🤷

Back to long reads.

This excellent report from July 2024 went way under the radar, so I’m reposting it here: “A deadly dream: How the Philippines fails its migrant fishers” on The Philippine Star’s NewsX platform.

The unspoken agreement between Filipino workers and their government promises that in return for the Philippines' citizens funneling money back into the national economy through work abroad, the government will ensure Filipinos laboring overseas are working under safe conditions compliant with Philippine labor law. The Philippines’ Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) is supposed to oversee this labor system, acting as a check on what academic experts and advocates say can be a complex and hazy business. But the government’s side of that promise is often lacking, allowing for an industry that thrives on bureaucratic entanglement and leaves workers in danger of falling through the cracks, subject to grave labor rights abuses—and where the DMW has repeatedly missed warning signs.

TL;DR: We send our sailors out to work and leave them to their own devices on the high seas until they die from willful neglect. “Ang mamatay ng dahil sa’yo,” indeed. 🤬

Considering that the DMW recently held a job fair for seafarers while promising ‘safety’ from illegal recruitment and human trafficking + President Marcos Jr. (🤮) signed the Magna Carta of Filipino Seafarers just hours ago, this NewsX article is a strong reminder of the consequences of empty words and ceremonial bullshit.

And we haven’t even gotten to the whole West Philippine Sea dumbfuckery yet…

ProPublica is always reliable for US-centric investigative journalism. Among its recent (or re-amplified) articles that stayed on my mind long after publication:

• “I Don’t Want to Die”: Needing Mental Health Care, He Got Trapped in His Insurer’s Ghost Network - The story of Ravi Coutinho and how US insurance providers could care less about its clients

• “How 3M Executives Convinced a Scientist the Forever Chemicals She Found in Human Blood Were Safe” - Yep, we’re all made of stardust and 3M-created chemicals

• From 2015, but still highly relevant because people worldwide still love doubting and blaming rape survivors: “An Unbelievable Story of Rape”

• “Armed and Underground: Inside the Turbulent, Secret World of an American Militia” - a.k.a. Why I have zero plans of going back to the United States any time soon, or for the rest of my life.

I hope the Philippines (and/or Southeast Asian news outlets) makes its version of ProPublica. But the time, logistics, and financials of having journalists from multiple dwindling newsrooms collaborating on big stories are staggering, for sure. Not to mention the inevitable attempts on journalists’ lives…

This WIRED profile of Josh Johnson (stand-up comedian and The Daily Show correspondent and scribe) is a good read for fans old and new. And this should be in the ‘Watch’ section, but I’ll put it here instead - he releases entire stand-up routines every week on his YouTube channel (with no repeating or stolen jokes or skits!) and is currently on tour in the US while still working for The Daily Show.

Talk about making a hard-earned living.

From July 2024: “How Kamala Harris Took Command of the Democratic Party in 48 Hours” on The New York Times. Jesus Christ. The efficiency. 👏👏👏

Also, from The New York Times Magazine, June 2024: “He Memorized the World With Google Maps. Now He’s Exploring It.” Possible alternate title: A guy too familiar with the digital world goes offline to see the real thing(s).

Enjoy reality, bud. Nothing compares to it. 💗

If you’re like me and feel bombarded by shock and countless headlines about the ongoing mass-rape trial in France, here’s a good explainer from Vox. ABC News Australia also chimes in.

P.S.: I want the names and faces of all of Gisele Pelicot’s 51 rapists to be made public. All of them. Not just the husband/main rapist. Everyone.

Watch

Netflix

I binge-watched 3 Body Problem a few weeks after Netflix released its first season. I loved it, although there were some deviations from the original book series (which I’ve heard is also problematic in many ways, so I’m not even sure if I should read it). And that scene in the fifth episode is pure nightmare fuel. If you haven’t seen this series, now’s the time to do so.

I’ve also started watching Terminator Zero. I’m midway through, and I like it. About time we got out of the Connors’ POV and into another story in another part of the world.

I’ve also said before that the stories post-Judgment Day (particularly Genisys and Dark Fate) were bad. But now I think all the Terminator movies had great concepts and plotlines, but were executed badly.

Disney+

Agatha All Along is the MCU show we never asked for, but it’s doing surprisingly well so far. I’m hoping the succeeding episodes don’t succumb to the standard Marvel third-act CGI fights and last-minute expositions 🤞

I’m also lining up Child Star on my queue, though I’m not yet ready for the horror stories from my youth’s Disney stars.

The other titles I’m playing catch-up on: No One Will Save You, We Feed People (especially if you’re curious about what Jose Andres and World Central Kitchen are doing in Gaza and elsewhere), and The Bear.

HBO Go

The Penguin just premiered! Though I think I need to see The Batman first…

I’m also about to see earlier hits: The Sympathizer (TV series), Atsuko Okatsuka: The Intruder (stand-up comedy special), and Renfield (film).

Listen

I think of Spotify’s Daylist as the hyperspeed version of its Discover Weekly and automated stations and mixes. It changes thrice daily and lines up 50 songs based on your listening history (a.k.a. ‘vibes’). But unlike Discover Weekly, I can’t automatically archive my Daylists via IFTTT for later listening. Once it changes, that prior playlist’s gone. It’s fun and infuriating.

I’m getting a kick out of the AI-generated Daylist titles, though. It’s like reading a Lazada or Shopee listing 🤦‍♀️ Today, mine reads “dreamy indie afternoon”, a fairly decent label. But there are more unhinged titles out there. “Coastal grandmother cocktail hour night,” anyone? Or “Divorced dad rock saturday?”

Here’s the only Daylist I liked from beginning to end - and the only one I managed to share on my socials, so Spotify archived it for me:

I’ve also been listening to older albums like Radiohead’s In Rainbows, and Banks’ 2014 debut album Goddess.

Lastly: For big fans of ‘90s boybands and American pop music, I just found out Lance Bass (of *NSYNC) has a podcast aptly called Frosted Tips.

Any content recommendations? Let me know what you like! I’m starting to see the same things on my feeds; I want variety from real human beings, not overeager algorithms. 😊

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That’s it for now. Take care of yourselves, and until next time. 💗

Mabuhay. Welcome to Semi-Online #19. Wow, it’s been a while, no? Hi 👋 I didn’t die and resurrect, or live under a rock. But there were times in the past several months when I wanted to go full (Southeast Asian) Luddite, just for kicks.

This is what happened. An ongoing invisible disability, long-term depression, sheer overwhelm and exhaustion from everything and everyone, the death of a close friend and a few more folks in my networks, and big changes in my friendships and relationships drove me “offline” for months.

I use quotation marks because, like most people, I rely heavily on internet access for my daily needs and wants. Say, the books, TV shows, movies, music, and newsletters I love; Lazada/Shopee and home and nesting purchases; or the apps that keep me relatively functional. Then add bill payments, medical appointments, tax filings, and other mundane stuff to that.

So obviously, offline for me doesn’t mean completely OFFLINE. What I mean is I mostly went anti-social:

• I stopped seeing people in person and talking to most contacts on social media

• I stopped all creative/writing projects that may or may not require me to reach outward, including my nonfiction manuscript and even this Semi-Online newsletter.

In short, I silenced and isolated myself for a while, with a few exceptions. But I guess I was too good at it, so now I’m slowly getting back online.

Being willfully off and on the grid again is always a weird experience. On some days, I struggle with a mental atrophy I’ve had since the early COVID-19 years. I feel like I’ve forgotten how to think, talk, enjoy old interests and hobbies, or even be in others’ company. Apparently, there is such a thing as too much introversion 🤭 Then again, it’s good not to be too deep in my brain or drown myself in self-pity. “Everything in moderation” is easy to say, but difficult to practice.

My longish break from socials also reminded me of this article I wrote for 2nd Opinion almost 10 years (!) ago. I shouldn’t be shocked, but I am: in 2024, everyone on social media still acts like they’re Main Characters and thinks their smallest thoughts have life-changing and global value, and you must know all of it against your will. Empathy’s pretty much gone, too.

However, there are a few alarming changes from that 2015 column that made me think I should step back and shut up for a bit, as well as enforce new social media habits.

Too many platforms—and too much splintering

And this is coming from a social media-addicted Millennial who had named this very newsletter Very Online.

Social media has kept us in touch with people we know and love, to the point where most wouldn’t know it’s my birthday unless Facebook tells them it is. It has also reconnected me with folks I haven’t seen in a long time. And it has given me access to communities and groups I may otherwise not have. I have specific Reddit subs to thank (like Raised by Narcissists) for helping me survive an abusive and vengeful narcissist and his enablers, and sort out some lingering anger issues. Social media was also a lifesaver during COVID-19 (e.g., community pantries).

As I write this, these are the most popular/used platforms: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly known as Twitter), Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit, and Substack.

If you’re looking for good content on Substack by Filipino writers, here are a few made by my friends and/or other writers. Not all update regularly, though:

• A Writer from Manila

• Buhay Copywriter

• FireQuinito

• A Foster Home for Old Stories

• Manolo Quezon is #TheExplainer

• Philippines: Human Rights News

• Small Town, Queer Life

• Twisted by Jessica Zafra

Tell me about other Filipino Substacks in the comments, and I’ll check them out 💗

When we say social media now, it also includes platforms we don’t normally consider. For messaging, we have Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram, and Discord. If you’re a true online veteran (a.k.a. online since the boom of dial-up internet and multi-paragraph confessionals) and you still blog, use WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, or Ghost (which is a newsletter platform, but today blogging and newslettering are essentially the same). And wait, does anyone still go to Pinterest or Snapchat?

That’s a lot of platforms to use and abuse, which leads us to the downsides. In most, we’re inundated by ads, sponsored content, and influencer bullshit—especially if we get free access in exchange for our personal data being sold and traded to third parties. For those wanting to monetize their data and content, you must meet a mountain of country or corporate conditions. For example, Substack still doesn’t allow newsletter writers from countries unsupported by Stripe (like the Philippines) to earn from our writing.

And then there’s the people on socials—the reason why it’s called “social media” in the first place.

Instead of the old model where we go to one platform for everything (think Facebook or the long-dead Multiply), the new model is all about specialization and generational/audience targeting. The most glaring result is we now stay in our preferred bubbles and gorge on their respective poisons.

Think about it. Facebook is where all the fake news-spreading Boomers and Gen X are. The millennials are on Instagram. Gen Z and Alpha + trendjackers of any age? TikTok. Want Global North-centric content? Threads, Bluesky, and Substack are for you—it’s all America/Europe all the time over in these places; POCs from the Global South are fucking rare. Reddit’s also America-first, but it’s also great for anonymously letting out your 😈 inner demons 😈 and indulging in odd-as-hell fandoms. Certified nerd/geek who loves decentralization? Mastodon. How about slowly and painfully killing your soul via business-focused lying and humblebragging? LinkedIn’s your jam.

Along with these divisions come the barrage of, well, everything. Reliable and fact-checked information is drowned out by everyone talking at the same time with their spins about too many things; and we’re all grouped into personal, professional, regional/national, socioeconomic, political, and cultural lines that’ll seldom be crossed. So it’s either we find our so-called tribe (or algorithms pick them for you) and stay in our echo chambers, or (in my case) feel alienated and get sick of folks fighting and bickering about whatever they feel like.

Speaking of fighting and bickering…

Everyone’s mad AF 🤬 (or going clinically mad 🫨)

This is the ideal human behavior, online and offline: if you don’t like what was said or posted/reposted, you either have calm discussions about it or combat it with posts/reposts you like and agree with. Tit for tat, all that. Or you ignore it because, as I said way back in my 2015 column—and as the great Senator Risa Hontiveros said just days ago:

I remember some of my posts on social media (particularly Facebook) from up to two years back. My friends from different stages of my life who’ve never met each other would make respectful and reasonable arguments for or against something I posted. They’d also stick to the topic and rarely bring their biases into it. There was no petty name-calling, cancel culture, ad hominem attacks, or tag-teaming or unrelated commentary from bystanders. My comments section was civil as fuck, and I stepped in only once in all those years when someone flippantly said “Whatevs” to someone else 😆 Any attempts to lure me and others into dumb arguments through traps like “Please explain this to me like I’m a child” or “Let’s agree to disagree, but…” were quickly squashed—and sometimes, by friends who seldom (if ever) commented or came to anyone’s defense. And if you weren’t comfortable enough to comment publicly, you could message me and we’d go from there. Calmly and civilly, of course.

But now, most people say “Delete this”, or worse. The other camp’s ripe for verbal attacks because you’re always right and your opponent isn’t human, so they shouldn’t be treated like one. And once you’re deemed fair game, it becomes a free-for-all (a.k.a. bashing or kuyog in Filipino slang). The rest can pile on and even dig up your old posts/comments to humiliate you until you’ve been thoroughly stomped on and have zero remaining online dignity.

I understand objecting to hateful/criminal/outrageous/hurtful things and behaviors. Countless online posts must be scrubbed from existence, and I’m all for calling out bad actors and actions. Some very recent local instances: every post defending toxic Filipino parenting, those who shit on the concept of consent (especially within marriage!), and a brazen attempt at a ₱10 million theft from the national purse by a tantrum-throwing political Nepo Baby.

But if you’re just nursing mildly hurt feelings and can’t accept that others can have differing opinions and can say those to your face, I’ll tell you to go fuck yourself and/or I’ll shut you out. And I’ve cut ties with friends when I felt they took it too far, were imposing their opinions on me, and were grasping at straws with their arguments—even longtime/close ones whom I loved dearly. I won’t ever take kindly to being policed and preyed on online or offline. Bye! 👋

This same cutthroat conduct has also made it to my friends and Friends lists. I see my same civil and calm friends behave in ways we made immense efforts not to just a few years back. Now, there are a lot of quick assumptions, name-calling, cryptic or ‘parinig’ posts, ad hominem crap, and other toxic and petty stuff.

To think these are just the tame variants. In more extreme cases, we see prolonged harassment, hacking and doxing, and suicide due to online aggression and crimes. It all makes me sad and wary of every online interaction, but that’s where we’re headed as a civilization today (LOL, civil) and I didn’t sign up for this hellhole.

The older we get, the more we turn inward and get left behind

I think I can also blame my anti-socials on good ol’ aging. We’re all not as young as we once were. Our offline responsibilities pile up, our focus and priorities change, and goddammit why do our backs hurt?

Much like how/why we stop listening to new music as we age, our online presence takes a back seat through the years. We’ll always want to connect and to belong, but maybe now we’re also OK with who we are and how we’ve lived, and don’t have the need or urgency to put ourselves out there as much.

Aging out of being absurdly active online also means we’re not driving the discourse anymore. Gen Z and Alpha are in charge now; not only do I not understand more than half of what they’re saying, but these smartass punks also make fun of me and my generation (and older) for not understanding them right away. Worse, when we do try, they think we try too hard—and are therefore 100% uncool.

Many choose to engage in the “my generation is better than yours” meme wars. Some will use it as influencer content 🤮 or (as a friend and former colleague does) a hilarious way to troll their kids. Like me, some will learn a few words, make fun of the whole deal (and their love of PowerPoint parties), and move on with their lives.

Unfortunately, that also means being limited to our existing online groups and being OK with never being in the know (and reposting others’ content and letting that speak for us). It’s tough for a generation that was as outspoken and mocking of Gen X and Boomers. But it won’t always be our turn, and we have other things to do offline 🤷🏽

Yes, I know 🙄

You can argue that not everyone can go silent or self-edit, or should. Some must stay online 24/7—like those working in social media, PR, marketing, advertising, e-commerce, journalism, government, activism, lobbying, etc.—and many worldwide don’t have the rights and freedoms we take for granted, including for speech, privacy, and choice. Check your privilege, and so on.

But I can step away whenever I wish. I fully understand the significance of my privilege. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again whenever I need to. And I have no problem telling you to do the same if and when and to the extent you can. Try it; going offline for a while and being mindful online are good for your health.

A few new tricks

As I’ve said here, I limit my social media hours and use multifunctional apps to manage the daily info overload. But I’m also trying these tactics:

• Limiting how often others’ content shows up on my feeds. If I don’t like you, you’ve been an asshole, I don’t know you well, and/or your content pops up too often, I’ll Mute, Unfollow, Unfriend, or Restrict you.

• Blocking specific words, phrases, creators, and tags.

• Practicing restraint. Not everything must be commented on or reacted to!

• Being more conscious of/intentional with what I say, and absolutely no appropriating therapy-speak or telling people to ‘educate’ themselves. Look, just being online is already stressful. Take the condescension and self-righteousness elsewhere.

So much for socials. 🤭

Marhaba (مرحبا), and thanks for reading Semi-Online #18.

Also… yes. the newsletter is now on Substack. So after my first issue in 2021 and a ‘rebrand’ in 2023, I guess this platform move merits another update. 😆

Ugh

I had been thinking about moving newsletter platforms since last year, and I finally decided to do it last February. So I’ve now moved it around from the (since-shuttered) Revue to Ghost to self-hosted WordPress with plugins The Newsletter Plugin, Newsletter Glue, and MailPoet handling the backend and forwarders SendLayer, Sendinblue (now called Brevo) and Mailchimp doing the actual sending to inboxes, to Substack.

That mess is the biggest reason why I moved here. I love WordPress, it still runs my two other websites, and I’ll always be fond of it despite regularly fighting off brute-force hacking attempts. WordPress and its vast plugin ecosystem also taught me plenty about setting up email campaign systems from the ground up. That’ll come in handy if I ever work in email marketing. And in the end, I met my original goal of upskilling.

But running an email newsletter on WordPress was hell for me. Formatting and exports were equally crappy across all the plugins I mentioned, and upgrading workflows requires a fortune in Filipino freelancer terms. Plus after every move, I spent too much time getting the settings and preferences exactly how I liked it. No provider ever makes it easy to just up and go; if you don’t choose their product, they will make you suffer somehow.

The last straw for me was MailPoet giving me the most basic reader stats after I put out this newsletter - and telling me I needed to pay for everything else. MailPoet costs up to ₱6,700 annually, BTW.

Haha, no, bye.

Substack isn’t quite it, either

I’ve avoided publishing on Substack for the longest time, and for several valid reasons:

1. I wanted to avoid digital sharecropping and control the whole process. Whatever I write and where I write, I want to own 100%.

2. That thing I said back in September 2023 about newsletters not being a viable business model (yet?) in the Philippines remains true today. I’m still not willing to play this particular game:

…many Filipino writers have Substacks. However, blogs continue to reign for written content; and the only way to succeed at that is to do ads, offer advertorial packages, and play nice with PR and marketing firms for gatekeeping and free crap. That means it’s all about product placement and reviews; there’s little to no investigative journalism or bias-free industry analyses. And few of our writers have stuck with their free/indie newsletters long enough to monetize them.

…I also wish Filipino readers actually start paying for great online content and respecting professional writers and their work instead of thinking that writing is easy and that all online content should always be free.

3. Filipino newsletter writers still can’t make money off our Substacks (unlike countless writers from the Global North). As I said in that same newsletter, Stripe is the only payment option on Substack. No PayPal, no Wise, no *insert preferred payment gateway here*. Substack has zero problems accepting payments from the Philippines for custom domains, but somehow it has all the problems paying out to Filipino writers via gateways we can access in our currency. 🤔

4. Substack has (had?) a big N@zi newsletter problem. Gross.

Some things can change

Ultimately, I wanted something simple (and free!) where I show up, write something, publish it, and mostly live my life in peace. As hard as I tried to sidestep Substack for newslettering, it meets my current simple needs and it’ll do so until a worthy, free/affordable, Global South-friendly competitor steps up.

The new plan? Forget monetizing and backends for now. This newsletter must be as painless for me as possible, and I’ll address the other things only as they come in. In short, make writing fun (and more personal) again!

That digital sharecropping concern is also quelled (as of now) with Substack’s promise of writers’ full ownership of their content. Let’s see if that holds up over time. As we all know by now: if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.

Re: that N@zi problem, I guess we’ll see if and when it’ll hit Substack where it hurts: its bottom line and reputation.

What about Filipino readers willingly paying for content? Ummm…

I guess I’ll have to let that go, huh? 🙃

For now, I’ll leave you with a short list of what I like and have lined up for the long Holy Week break, a.k.a. the only imposed Catholic holiday that I like because everyone’s out of town and it’s all quiet and traffic-free here in Metro Manila. LOL

1. I’ve been listening to a lot of Phantogram lately. Good stuff.

2. Netflix’s long-awaited adaptation of Cixin Liu’s epic The Three-Body Problem is here! The final trailer sealed the deal for me:

3. I’ve been trying to rewatch X-Men: The Animated Series on Disney+ before I go on to X-Men ‘97. It’s taking me a while though because the original show has five full seasons. 😂 But damn, does the new show capture the original’s look and spirit!

4. I’m not yet done with this autopathography, either. But I did say I’ll take it slow. Like the SSCD disability I share(d) with this author, reading this book requires both time and kindness to self.

I guess that’s all for now. Take care of yourself, and see you next time. 😘

Hej, and welcome to Semi-Online, issue #17. (Yeah. I’m an IKEA fan. )

I still remember my sheer joy in the late ’90s when I got (prepaid dial-up) internet access. Now I could talk to anyone anywhere in the world – and learn about anything I wanted, whenever I wanted! I wasn’t limited to my classes and textbooks, the school library, or the encyclopedias and magazines at home. The entire world opened up to little Third-Worlder me with a simple twist of an imaginary key – and this unmistakable sound.

Fast forward to 2023, and… fuck. Everyone‘s online and talking at everyone else at top volume. I see too much information – and spend too many hours on social media – daily. The content I see is either useful and memorable, heartbreaking, utterly pointless, insensitive, self-serving, and/or outright false. Plus I’m also in the content business, so my sentiments about this constant chatter are most likely shared by others about mine.

Basically, ‘information overload’ doesn’t quite capture this sheer 24/7 noise barrage that’s bad for my mental health (yours, too). I needed to handle it ASAP.

The plan

📥️ Step 1: Where am I getting all of this from???

Like most people with internet access, noise is coming at me from multiple directions:

• Individual social media apps’ feeds, where legitimate news links mix with friends’ random posts and contacts’ memes, links, and videos (original and reposted)

• Feedly for websites’ and blogs’ RSS feeds (yes, they still exist! 🙃️)

• Stoop for my newsletter subscriptions

• Pocket for my bookmarked articles (that I’ll supposedly ‘read later’ but rarely do) from Google, social media feeds, and random websites

• Joplin for all my notes, research, and outlines for personal writing projects

• Airtable for content calendars and my work CRM.

⏲️ Step 2: Call time

I also had to know how much time I spend on these apps and how dependent I’ve become on them.

Facebook and Instagram’s mobile apps tell you exactly how active you are on them daily and weekly. As far as I know, they’re the only social platforms with this feature built-in. But there’s a workaround – and it’s already on your smartphone.

My phone (a OnePlus Nord CE 2 unit running Android 13) has a Digital Wellbeing and Parental Controls tab. It lists the times I spend on specific apps, and these numbers could be a sufficient wake-up call for most. It also offers two modes to lower phone usage (Bedtime and Focus) and two ways to disconnect (Do Not Disturb or turn all app notifications off).

This is what I have for the midday of October 26, 2023:

In my defense, I don’t have cable TV, so I use YouTube for live news channels and white noise. Reddit’s just fun 🤭️ And I’ve yet to quit my longstanding Twitter – oh, sorry, X 🤮️ – and Instagram-scrolling habit during breakfast and coffee. I also needed to talk to some people via Viber that day about home maintenance and repair concerns.

I know, I know. Excuses, excuses. 🙇‍♀️️

📵️ Step 3: Clean up and limit online hours

With apps and usage times covered, I can then:

1. Delete my unused/inactive apps and close dormant accounts. I’ve already talked about these tasks in this newsletter, so check that out for great digital decluttering tips.

2. Schedule when I’ll be online for conversations or resharing/reposting, etc. I’ve been limiting my chatting, reading, and doomscrolling in the mornings and mid to late evenings. So far, it’s working out well.

📤️ Step 4: Bottleneck and filter all online sources

Rather than think of my daily info or content barrage as something that simply happens to helpless ol’ me, I can restrict it to just a few free apps that do several jobs for me. I have too many apps for the same damn things, and it’s high time I bottleneck and consolidate that chaos.

TL;DR: Instead of feeling attacked, I can do some digital crowd control. Like this:

Last month, I found three apps that limit and manage the content I read and generate. More importantly, I spent more hours in October offline compared to prior months. Or, at the very least, I wasn’t tapping or scrolling on my gadgets from wake-up to sleep time. I think that’s an excellent start!

Try them out, and let me know what you think. 💗️

Rambox

Website: https://rambox.app

Pricing: Free with paid tiers

I first heard of Rambox back in 2019.

During a weekly meeting, I mentioned feeling stressed over the number of communication apps we used at the content marketing agency I worked for then. We were on email, Google Workspace, Twist, Flock, WhatsApp, Slack, Zoom, and Hubspot. I would flinch whenever any of these apps pinged, which was all the time. And even if my ex-boss kept saying we didn’t have to respond immediately, asynchronous comms works only for our team. Our clients expected us to be on call 24/7, even during holidays and declared time off.

The ex-boss suggested I try Rambox, describing it as something similar to Yahoo! Messenger or Trillian. (Very ‘older millennial’ of us. I’m painfully aware of this. 🤦‍♀️️) So I installed the now-defunct Community Edition and used it for a while. Then I uninstalled it when I left that job at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I reinstalled Rambox a couple of months ago, and the app is now closed-source. But it still pulls together probably the widest selection of online consumer and enterprise services into one app. I use it these days mainly to wrangle my personal and work social media accounts.

The pros

Rambox functions as a megabrowser for all of your apps and accounts. Right off the bat, it lessened the number of browser tabs and windows I had open. Sweet!

I can also enable or disable individual notifications or activate Focus Mode while using the app. Having just one app open and not hearing or seeing any pings helps me avoid those deep pits of distractions and doomscrolling.

Another Rambox feature that I like is the ability to add ‘custom apps’ to my dashboard. If you’re using an under-the-radar or niche app that doesn’t have native support, just input the app’s URL and Rambox will add them to your dashboard as if you’re logged on via a web browser.

I also love that Rambox supports Linux operating systems natively. There are four available formats: Snap (default), AppImage (my preferred format these days), DEB, and RPM.

The cons

Rambox offers a 30-day trial period where you’ll have access to all of its features. After those 30 days, you can use only its basic functions. Those are good enough for most people and use cases. But I also miss the ability to organize my apps into custom workspaces or tiles, as well as install extensions like Grammarly or Dark Mode.

I’ll also describe this app as the naggy/pushy type. It keeps bugging me to update it, and switches to Snap-related warnings by default instead of sticking to my AppImage install. The ‘best’ part? If you don’t update it within the deadline, you can’t use the app anymore until you give in and update the damn thing. I get that this is for security reasons, but no one loves forced updates, Rambox.

Anytype

Website: https://anytype.io/

Pricing: Free (for now)

There was another team-wide discussion at that aforementioned job, this time about indispensable work tools. A colleague said she relied on Notion for her notes, drafts, brain dumps, etc. Of course, the rest of the team jumped on the Notion bandwagon.

But I didn’t stick around for too long. Its aesthetics and customization options were 👌️😘️ But not Notion’s employees’ access to my content, or that user data on Notion isn’t protected by end-to-end (E2E) encryption. I don’t care if other apps already force this onto us, or if Notion needs my explicit consent to access my account for whatever reason. Privacy and encryption are non-negotiable, so I shut my Notion account down.

I used Joplin instead, and that worked for me for a few years. Joplin is utilitarian and easy to get the hang of. It’s open-source and lets me choose which cloud service to use for syncing and storage. All my data is encrypted and no one at Joplin has or will ever have access to that data. Plus the app’s maker and developers foster an active and dedicated online community. So whenever I encountered problems with Joplin, I could simply post a thread and anyone could respond and help me solve it in a few hours.

But Joplin’s simplicity and regular syncing issues eventually made me ditch it. I wanted a ‘personal knowledge base’ with Notion’s snazzy customizations and Obsidian’s graph view, but also with Joplin’s emphasis on security/privacy and offline access. I also wanted Airtable’s relational databases for my content calendar and freelance-work CRM.

Then I saw a YouTube video by Nick of The Linux Experiment about open-source productivity apps. He mentioned Anytype as a Notion alternative, so I gave it a go.

What I love about it

I’ve been using Anytype for the past month, and I’m into it so far. (I outlined and drafted this newsletter on Anytype!) It readily meets all my conditions above. Plus, take it from someone coming from stick-to-basics Joplin: this app is gorgeous.

Its blocks also remind me of Ghost’s beautiful UI and WordPress‘ fast-evolving Gutenberg blocks. I write a lot faster on Anytype now because I can just press forward slash (‘/’ on the keyboard) to bring up app commands and elements. No more looking up menu options or forgetting complex keyboard shortcuts!

Anytype’s use of P2P syncing means it’s fast at sorting out my data across my devices. As much as I appreciate this feature, there is something I don’t quite like about it, which you’ll see in a few paragraphs below.

Any app with native Linux support out of the gate deserves a callout, and Anytype gets it from me 💗️💗️💗️ Its Debian app works perfectly on my Ubuntu laptop. This super-simple thing made me choose it within five seconds over AppFlowy, which was installed but would never launch. 🙄️

The Graph view shows me exactly where and how my every document, page, note, or file connects to other elements – and in literally how many ways. I love looking at it!

Anytype also requires users to sign up for access, but it doesn’t ask for user emails or passwords for security. Instead, it uses a seed phrase or recovery phrase. I’ve never encountered this before, and I find it unique and intriguing. Here’s the detailed process if you’re interested.

Lastly, the Anytype community looks as active and helpful as Joplin’s. I’m not sure if this is standard for any app with a small user base, but it’s comforting to know I’ll get help here too if/when I need it. (Unlike Ubuntu Forums, which won’t even let me change my goddamn username…)

…and what I don’t love about it

First, people could balk at user signup being required. I never had to sign up for Joplin, and Obsidian doesn’t require that either. I learned about signups being a deal-breaker for some because one Obsidian user commented on my Mastodon post about Anytype, and we had a brief friendly exchange about it.

The next downside would be its lack of other notable features or even service extensions and integrations. Anytype’s still a baby (in Beta mode after three years on Alpha/testing status), so I get it. But I’m looking forward to having these on hand, if there are actual plans to implement them:

• Calendars. This thing needs calendars or something that can sync to services such as Google Calendar or Nextcloud.

• Sharing of specific pages/notes/documents for collaboration.

• Saving and syncing my data on my own cloud storage service. Anytype gives users 1.07GB of free storage, but I want to be able to choose where to store my data – and without paying extra for it.

• One-click data export to and restoration in other services. I had to copy-and-paste my notes one by one from Joplin, then manually recreate my preferred structure and folders because Anytype allows only per-document export! The fuck.

So if you’re reliant on these functions or you’re on the Second Brain bandwagon/trend, maybe wait a while until Anytype has sorted these out.

Also worth noting: Anytype has a steep learning curve, and it could be steeper than expected for some. It took me days to get the hang of it, even with Anytype’s docs and guides + YouTube tutorials, because I was so used to Joplin’s utter simplicity and intuitiveness. Take your time, from the terms Anytype uses to how everything clicks together.

One more thing, and I obviously can’t stress this enough: DO NOT FORGET OR LOSE YOUR SEED PHRASE. If that happens, you won’t be able to access your account ever again. There’s no ‘Forgot your password?’ function to get around this. And remember, Anytype can’t access your account, so it won’t be able to do anything for you either.

Omnivore

Website: https://omnivore.app/

Pricing: Free (for now), and taking donations via Open Collective.

I forget how I learned about Omnivore, but I’m glad I did.

Yay!

Omnivore got my attention with three main points. It’s open-source, it claims to be ‘distraction-free’ (i.e., no ads or flashy designs or UIs), and it supports multiple types of online content.

That last bit is crucial in my longtime quest for FREE app consolidation. Here’s how Omnivore got me to close three content-feed accounts and move them here instead:

• I can save articles to it via browser extensions (bye, Pocket)

• I can add RSS or Atom feeds to get website and blog updates sent straight to me (bye, Feedly)

• I can use a custom Omnivore email address for newsletter subscriptions (bye, Stoop).

Then it adds more features into the mix:

• Users can highlight and annotate content on the app

• Those with visual difficulties can use Omnivore’s text-to-speech feature to go through their saved articles

• Obsidian and Logseq users can connect their account to Omnivore for more Second Brain stuff

• Omnivore has native support for Pocket and Readwise, and I can connect my other apps and services via APIs and webhooks.

I’ve been using Omnivore for a few weeks. I see myself using this app for a long time – preferably as long as I’ve used Pocket (more than 10 years!!!), Feedly (10 years, after Google Reader was shut down), and Stoop (around two years, I think).

Nay!

Something this new (it’s just two years old!) will also have more than a few kinks to it.

First, you must be cutthroat in deciding which of your RSS and email newsletter subscriptions to keep or ditch. I kept only a fourth from Feedly and Stoop, yet I still got a massive content bomb on my first go with Omnivore! As much as I complain about information overload, I’m part of the problem, too. Digital hoarding is truly insidious 😆️

So I wiped all that out and started anew. Omnivore’s Bulk Tool came in clutch here. With it, I deleted my entire feed in one click. 🧹️🧹️🧹️ The app stored the last 30 emails I got though, so I didn’t quite miss out on that horde of content.

Second, Omnivore can do much better in content sorting. Users can click on their subscriptions on the left-hand panel to read content by publisher, sort it out via delivery method (RSS or email newsletter), or sort by custom labels. Despite these, I miss my custom folders and subfolders over on Feedly. That method was much more orderly and itemized than what Omnivore has as of now.

And even if you label articles coming from your feeds, Omnivore doesn’t automatically label the content from these same sources afterward. Hey, Omnivore. Do autolabeling or automatic organization, please and thank you.

TBH, I want Omnivore to give me the following as well:

• A Restore function for any accidentally erased content or links

• The ability to add links manually on the Android app (it’s already enabled on iOS), and

• The option to rename email newsletter subscriptions, or consolidate emails from newsletters with multiple users/team members.

Some critical fixes are also needed on Omnivore’s backend. For example, some newsletter confirmation emails were sent to my actual email address instead of my Omnivore feed.

I see that as a potential privacy issue. I don’t like being forced to confirm a newsletter subscription with an email address I specifically wanted hidden. That is not a good look for any online reading service.

Note that this confirmation snafu involves a big newsletter running Mailchimp. This is important because this little newsletter of mine used Mailchimp, too. And I’ve had trouble adding my very own newsletter to Omnivore, as well as another one I read often that’s sent via MailerLite. Meanwhile, I get Substack newsletters without any problems, as well as emails from other providers.

Whether this is an internal or external problem, Omnivore must fix this as soon as it can.

Xin chào! Welcome to Semi-Online #16 – or a retrospective on my prior newsletters.

That’s right — I’ve released that many in almost two years despite my erratic newsletter writing. Never mind that four are outright fillers; the total’s impressive given my circumstances (and everyone’s super-short attention spans).

So I’m reviewing these past issues and seeing what has changed, what hasn’t, and what should. Two years is a blip offline and an eternity online, so I know there’s lots to point out and clarify now (and maybe set aside for future updates).

Thank you very much for staying and reading, and I hope you keep doing those as I try to write more and grow this weird thing. If you have any suggestions on my next topics, please let me know!

Straying from my roots

I remember this first newsletter in 2021 the same way I remember my old articles and diaries: with a fair amount of cringing and laughter 🤣️

At the time, some friends were starting their own newsletters (on Substack) and treating them like blogs. I wanted to do the same thing, but on a website I own and run. I didn’t want to fall victim to digital sharecropping and censorship, and I could also use this newsletter to upskill. Plus I was so tired of ‘social’ media and needed a break. Let me speak and be heard for once, you know, all that angst.

Some of what I wrote in 2021 has stayed as is. This newsletter is still free to access, and I still decide what goes live. But as I explained in newsletter #13, I’ve renamed it Semi-Online to reflect the reality of this older millennial.

Streaming on

Newsletter #2 covered online streaming and what the situation is in the Philippines. Out of everything in this retrospective, I think this has the most postscripts.

One out, one in

My beloved Discovery+ shut down its Philippines operations in April 2023. (Farewell, Deadliest Catch, Guy Fieri, and all the ‘guilty pleasure’ cooking and aliens-are-here shows!) I can access Discovery shows via Amazon Prime Video, but I have to pay more per show (in US$) aside from the monthly Prime Video subscription fee.

As Discovery+ closed (most likely due to the US HQ’s merger-related restructuring, layoffs, and tax write-offs), a major player arrived in October 2022: Disney+. The higher-ups want more money, and they can’t afford to ignore us ‘lowly’ peso spenders anymore.

Oooooh boy, does it have plenty of content from multiple subsidiaries and partners (a.k.a. those who sold their souls to the House of Mouse)! This Marvel Studios, Pixar, and National Geographic fan is quite happy right now.

But we still don’t get full archives or everything the Western markets do. See, this is exactly why people use VPNs… or just 🏴‍☠️️pirate🏴‍☠️️ popular media. Offer everything, greedy media overlords!

Fees are up and down

Last February 2023, Netflix cut its monthly Basic and Standard fees in the Philippines. That got my attention because the global trend is for streamers to raise prices.

I didn’t notice Amazon doing the same thing and slashing its fees to ₱149/month. But there’s a catch: this rate is valid only up to December 2023.

Spotify and YouTube are also bucking the price-hike trend for now. But I dread the day they stop doing that. I use these two streamers every day, and I think they’re worth paying for. (Then again, they’re also the most obnoxious when it comes to ad bombardment for free accounts.)

Meanwhile, Apple jacked up its prices for TV+, One, and Music — which made me cancel ASAP 🖕️

The biggies and smalls are streaming now

Two years ago, I was so happy to see Trese representing us to an international audience.

In 2023, I’m equally happy to see more of us, as in Filipinos in the Philippines (not just the Filipinxs and Pinxys), shown online. That’s because more Filipino production/entertainment companies got into streaming for both profit and survival.

ABS-CBN charged online after losing its national broadcast franchise, to our delight and the Duterte administration’s anger. For streaming, viewers now go to its YouTube channel as well as partners like Netflix to watch new local series like Maria Clara at Ibarra.

Legacy producers like Regal Entertainment and VIVA Films plus TV channels such as Cinema One also put up many of their recent and classic films on their official YouTube channels. A sample: Regal posted eight of the late Cherie Gil’s best movies online. If you’re a Cherie Gil fan, you’re welcome.

Some of the new streaming entrants carved out their own niches (for better or worse). For example: do you want racy films bordering on soft porn that aren’t shown in Filipino cinemas? Go to Vivamax. I’m not sure if you’ll thank me later.

YouTube also became a must for smaller/indie players. Even at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, TBA Studios was publishing its full-length features on its channel. Gems such as Women of the Weeping River, Heneral Luna, and Smaller and Smaller Circles remain free to watch today.

Occasionally, the filmmakers themselves break their creations out to us. Good examples include Kip Oebanda (who made his film Liway watchable on YouTube for free) and the legendary Mike de Leon (who screens his and others’ films on Vimeo).

Global goes local

As our filmmakers reach a worldwide audience, the worldwide bigwigs are coming right to us.

Top streamers like Netflix and Amazon are stocking up on Filipino-made content — and content made outside the United States and Europe. Well, most of the focus now is on Korean entertainment, but I think this is a good start 🙃️

These articles from The Hollywood Reporter say that Hollywood shifted our way because it needs to expand elsewhere and boost subscriber rates; and that the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes are also putting pressure on it to source more content.

Hey, if it gives the Global South more opportunities and makes more Western audiences read subtitles, I’m all for it.

Newsletters and the newslettering business

Newsletters #3 and #9 are about reading, writing, and publishing newsletters in the Philippines. A few things have changed since I wrote them.

Reading them

I used to get my daily news from social media. Now, I read more newsletters. That’s great for my brain, but bad for my inbox 😳️

So I shifted all my email subscriptions to Stoop. Combined with Feedly for RSS feeds (yassss I’m a dinosaur), I’ve corraled all my preferred content into just two free services.

And I highly recommend these ‘new’ newsletters (new to me, anyway) 🥇️

• The Unpublishable. Great writing about the US beauty industry and global beauty hypocrisies from beauty journalist Jessica DeFino.

• Friendly Atheist. A long-running blog-turned-newsletter on atheism, organized religion, and US politics.

• Exploding Giraffe. Brian K. Vaughan’s Substack contains updates on his book and TV projects, as well as new issues of his current graphic series Spectators.

Here are a few more authors with popular newsletters: Margaret Atwood, Etgar Keret, Chuck Palahniuk, Maria Popova, and Ann Friedman.

• SatPost. Trung Phan’s newsletters are always informative, concise, and factual.

• Rest of World. Your first stop for journalism that isn’t Global North-centric.

• Sari Botton’s newsletters Oldster Magazine and Memoir Land give me essays on growing older/wiser and others’ interesting narratives.

Publishing them

I’m running Semi-Online a bit differently as well. I now use Newsletter Glue + Mailchimp to send out my issues, including this one you’re hopefully still reading.

However, I’m looking for a more affordable alternative to Newsletter Glue. I super love its tight WordPress integration. But it’s too expensive, especially during a worldwide recession and our ‘Grand Theft Marcos’ times.

And I’ve changed my web hosting service! I used HostGator for more than a decade. But it kept raising prices and became too expensive + my websites were conking out more often. So I switched to Hostinger, and everything’s good so far for both my uptime and my wallet.

Earning from them?

Semi-Online remains free to read. However, I’ve been thinking of ways to monetize it and grow my subscriber list with my limited resources. I do know I gotta be aggressive with self-promotion first because I gloriously suck at it.

Timing and target market could also be tricky for me. In the US, the free and paid newsletter bubble seems to have burst. But it hasn’t even become a ‘thing’ here yet.

Sure, many Filipino writers have Substacks. However, blogs continue to reign for written content; and the only way to succeed at that is to do ads, offer advertorial packages, and play nice with PR and marketing firms for gatekeeping and free crap. That means it’s all about product placement and reviews; there’s little to no investigative journalism or bias-free industry analyses. And few of our writers have stuck with their free/indie newsletters long enough to monetize them.

Oh, and Substack and other platforms don’t support PayPal or Wise until now. Why am I specifically asking for these two payment platforms? Because we can’t monetize through Stripe because Stripe keeps ignoring the Philippines.

My newsletter wishlist remains mostly the same. Aside from more payment options, I want custom pricing, better newsletter importing and exporting tools, and improved UIs.

I also wish Filipino readers actually start paying for great online content and respecting professional writers and their work instead of thinking that writing is easy and that all online content should always be free.

I ain’t movin’

Newsletter #4 is about me getting back on a (literal) treadmill while battling Superior Semicircular Canal Dehiscence (SSCD), an invisible hearing and balance disability.

I didn’t last long.

My SSCD symptoms have become more frequent, intense, and debilitating over the past year. So I stopped using my folding treadmill; as I type this, it’s stowed under my bed like a forgotten childhood monster 🙃️ But I keep wearing my smartwatch to monitor my heartbeat and sleeping patterns.

The modern fitness industry remains how I ‘left’ it: heavily dependent on technology and social media trends. People want to quantify everything, ‘influencers’ want to ‘influence’ in the worst ways, and brands want to take over our souls.

Although I’m surprised that folding treadmills and walking pads are now a big thing on TikTok. I’m not selling mine because I want to resume walking soon. But I find it funny that I was ahead of this particular curve:

Good reads:

– “Behold the Rise of the Walking Pad”, Slate
– “The Cosy Cardio Club: The TikTok Trend That’s Making Working Out Fun Again”, Refinery29

And I can’t believe I’ve bought into the overpriced water bottle craze. But if it helps me drink more water daily, so be it. (I’m a Stanley girl, BTW.)1

Party of one

I talked about moving out in newsletter #7. A year+ later, I’ve settled in, although I also know I won’t stay where I am forever.

Here are three of my biggest takeaways:

1. Living in an old building means constant repairs + damages and complaints stemming from the other apartments (and inconsiderate/delinquent neighbors). My ongoing sagas involving my upstairs and next-door neighbors require a separate newsletter. 🤦‍♀️️

2. Somehow, living alone is more expensive. I’ve seen this before in budget travel/backpacking, where prices are always for two or more people (and solo travelers always pay a premium, which defeats the purpose of backpacking). But the high costs of living in the Philippines today occasionally make me wish I had someone to defray them with.

3. Independence is expensive and exhausting – especially if you’re physically leaving an abusive family and environment. Having the moral high ground feels great. But keeping yourself fed, clothed, debt-free, and healthy can be separate wars you could lose sometimes.

Doc’s staying online

Newsletter #10 is all about Philippine telemedicine. Like everything in this retrospective, I have some updates on that.

I received my third COVID-19 vaccine booster (and fifth shot overall) several months ago. Apparently, we need our 5G updates once a year 🙄️ But the vaccine supply in the Philippines is dwindling (or being utterly wasted), and the current government doesn’t seem to be upping vaccination or booster drives.

I guess Top 1 and 2 are too busy squandering the people’s money on F1 races and confidential funds (among other things). 🤦‍♀️️

The industry landscape has shifted, too:

• Three telemedicine providers – KonsultaMD, AIDE, and HealthNow – were merged into KonsultaMD.

• More new players came in, including mWell (owned by Metro Pacific; it currently has a partnership with sister company PLDT).

• More telemedicine providers are now targeting both the general population and corporates (that’s for a future newsletter!).

Filipino doctors have kept their bad habits, though. For example, my cardiologist is sticking to online consultations; his hospital clinics remain closed. Either way, he keeps being late for his appointments. And my ENT remains tactless and sarcastic, which means she’s now my ex-ENT.

Lastly, on a recent visit to my city hospital, I saw more people waiting outside the clinics. Which makes me wonder if this is why more telemedicine providers are offering more discounted or free in-app services… 🤔️

Work: Retrospective and prospective

I said in newsletter #12 that I was returning to the workforce. But the search has been tough going.

Recurring SSCD episodes mean I’m not as work-ready as I want and need to be. This also limits the number and type of opportunities I can go after.

In the Philippines, white-collar work (and all of its associated problems) is back to pre-COVID levels. People are in the office again, reporting to micromanagers who loathed not having total control over their employees during the lockdowns and work-from-home orders 😝 This mass return to offices also explains why Metro Manila traffic is back to its hellish ways, only with much higher rent and gasoline prices + way more undisciplined drivers and riders.2

As for freelance work, job-related online scams are on the rise. These scams can range from online fraud/theft to human trafficking.

And despite the recent nationwide SIM registration directive, nameless fraudsters continue to have access to our numbers and private information, and use chat apps like WhatsApp to spam and scam us. It’s fairly easy to spot them if you’ve been in the freelance industry long enough and practice due diligence. But there were instances when I almost ignored actual inquiries from honest people/companies because they came off as scammers.

Here’s a small sample of the scammy WhatsApp messages I’ve received since April 2023:

Overall, finding legitimate part-time jobs with fair pay, fair terms, and basic accommodations for disabilities has been trickier than ever. Rising living costs, small local salaries, increasing competition, and scammers and traffickers preying on newcomers can all be as daunting as the job search itself.

Again, all that’s for another newsletter. 😥️

Friends no more?

In my 14th newsletter, I went into friendships — and, using a retrospective view here too, knowing when to leave bad friends behind.

I wrote it fairly recently and I’m not yet done ditching bad people, so little has changed as of now. But more of my friends also did their own ‘culling’, offline and online. Those who haven’t yet are considering it. And one person actually unsubscribed from Semi-Online after reading what I wrote (twice) 😆️ I’m not mad, and we remain friends IRL.

I also learned that a fellow writer and close friend who died several months ago kept some big secrets. One of those was that the name we knew him by wasn’t his real name. We could call it a pen name or literary name, but this alias was also why our other friends couldn’t find any obituaries for him.

In yet another possible future newsletter, this makes me think about the following:

1. How well do I really know my remaining friends?

2. Re: my late friend – I told our writer friends that I didn’t care what his birth name was. But if your own friends went by false names (and weren’t harming anyone by that), would you be comfortable with it – and all their potential falsehoods you might never know about?

In retrospect, some people are just horrible

I said in my 15th newsletter that I began talk therapy to help me process several long-term life issues.

I’ve learned since then that therapy is indeed a long game. But it also hinges on these factors:

1. Finding an experienced, mindful, and kind therapist who’s well-suited for me and open to my input too,

2. Advocating for myself whenever necessary,

3. Recognizing when the therapist and safe space I paid for are no longer helpful and/or safe, and

4. Having the strength and money to start over with someone else.

I was trying to be upbeat in that newsletter. And in the beginning, therapy was going great. But over time and after much thought, I realized my (now ex-)therapist and I weren’t a good fit. I was already telling her what I wanted and needed, but she had other ideas and strategies she kept forcing on me. And because I called her out on that, she became passive-aggressive (and outright hostile at times) in our last session and used tactics I first saw in my own abusers.

So I fired her – and escalated the matter to her superiors.

A director at the Ateneo Bulatao Center told me that he’d conduct an investigation, and I made my own session notes available to him. But I highly doubt anything good will come out of this. They will always protect their own.

What I do know is that my ex-therapist shouldn’t have a license to practice in the first place. And if you’re like me (suffering from decades of verbal and emotional abuse, and needing tailored solutions), do not seek help from a university-affiliated organization that primarily trains inexperienced therapists through textbook strategies! You’re just asking for trouble, my guinea-pig friend.

I do plan to return to talk therapy in the future. But it must be with more knowledgeable and credible professionals who can quickly adjust to what I want and need. Hiring anyone who falls short of those criteria would be a severe disservice to myself.

Ola! Welcome to Semi-Online, issue #15.

Let’s go back to July 2022. I was scrolling through my Facebook feed when an ad for KonsultaMD’s mental health consultation services popped up.

I thought Facebook’s algorithm was at work again because I’d recently done a related search, and friends have posted about mental health before. But this may also be the first time I liked an ad. Mental health — and access to adequate services — is now a big conversation in the Philippines, one that’s long overdue.

However, I should’ve taken screenshots of the discouraging reactions and comments. There were plenty of Laugh emoji reactions and comments saying mental health issues were only for the rich, privileged, and self-centered in the Philippines. I’ve heard those sentiments and experienced that swift dismissiveness all my life, and from so-called well-meaning and well-educated adults. It pissed me off then, and on that particular day.

I was still curious and angry the next day, so I made a KonsultaMD account and went straight to the Mental Health Support section. At the time, KonsultaMD offered chat consults with a partner psychologist for a ₱70 promo price per session (the regular price is ₱399), and video consults for ₱600 per session. The prices alone made me wanna go for it.

But the words ‘24/7 consultation’ and ‘no appointment needed’ stayed in my head long after that day. These are the biggest complaints Filipinos have about our available mental health services. 

As I said before, we don’t have enough healthcare professionals here (because we ship our nurses, doctors, and caregivers out to work in other countries!). Most of our remaining medical professionals are based in the National Capital Region too, which means those outside it have fewer options. And the Philippine healthcare system involves a lot of ‘hurry up and wait’, but mental health issues don’t follow regular business hours. Sometimes, you need help right now.

Culture crap 

Yet few of us seek help because our own people tell us not to.

Filipinos are obsessed with public image and reputation. The mere act of going to a hospital and asking for mental health assistance is scary for a lot of people, so scary at times that they won’t even bother. Many fear they’d be outed at work and home as ‘having problems’.

Similarly, some are afraid of people discovering that immediate or secondary family members are in treatment or seeking it. That worry is legit; Mariteses will whisper about it, or others will use it as an insult during pivotal moments in arguments. 🙄

Some also truly believe that because they’re suffering in their own lives, everyone else should. Keep quiet, and keep the peace. It’s crab mentality mixed with harmful Filipino ‘traditions’ that we teach our young and take to our graves.

I’m sure you’ve heard all this shit before, or even said them to others. I know I have back when I didn’t know any better:

• “Lahat tayo may pinagdadaanan. Bakit special ka?”

• “Sus, everyone has some mental health issue these days.”

• “Doctors are just drugging patients to make money. There’s nothing wrong with them!”

• “You need to be in a psych ward. Sira-ulo ka.”

• “Ikulong na sa mental ‘yan! May sayad!”

• “Depressed yarn?”

• “Buti ka pa, pwedeng mag-inarte lang. Rich kid ka kasi.”

• “Eto ba yung may kamag-anak na psycho?”

• “Ano naman problema nito? Ang ganda kaya ng buhay niya!”

• “Wow, alam kaya ng magulang/asawa/anak niya ‘to?”

• “Mag-trabaho ka nalang. Keep busy. Or pray to God. Mawawala din ‘yan.”

There is only one simple outcome. Those with mental health problems don’t get the long-term help and support they need. Then they pay the price and carry others’ harsh (and frankly, irrelevant) judgment for life.

A legitimate national crisis

These ignoramuses (ignoramii? LOL) have no idea how seriously mental health should be taken, and how that should’ve been done in the last decade or so.

This April 2023 editorial in the Philippine Daily Inquirer provides some (slightly outdated, but still important) numbers on mental health in the Philippines, as well as additional reasons for the low uptake in mental health services:

• “…3.6 million Filipinos, based on 2020 data from the Department of Health, suffer from mental illness and this number is most likely to have increased in the past three years…”

• Especially in marginalized communities, mental health pales compared to the constant challenges of daily survival (e.g., food, water, work, shelter) 

• There was a ₱2.15 billion budget in 2022 for mental health resources, but that’s still low compared to the Philippine government’s other priorities

  • That means first-response and satellite hospitals have few available beds and staff, and local government units (LGUs) carry the bulk of the community work with little resources

  • The result is that people get “inadequate, inaccessible, ineffective mental health services.”

A 2022 Inquirer article also notes that the 3.6 million Filipinos with mental illness “suffer from one kind of mental, neurological, and substance abuse disorder.” And while the reported numbers for patients with depressive disorder (1,145,871), bipolar disorder (520,614), and schizophrenia (213,422) are already alarming, the DOH National Mental Health Program head Frances Prescilla Cuevas also called these figures an “understatement” because so many other conditions haven’t been accounted for yet.

What we have so far

I know I talk shit about younger millennials and Gen-Z kids all the time. But one of the biggest societal shifts they can take credit for is creating, and then amplifying and sustaining, attention on mental health. Because of that, we’re less shy about bringing it up ourselves — and creating tech-driven solutions for anyone who needs them. 

Aside from KonsultaMD, we now have more apps for mental health services, paperwork, and prescriptions:

• eZHealth

• NowServing

• Recovery Hub

• mWell.

The Ateneo Bulatao Center and the Philippine General Hospital have both online and offline options. However, they also warn potential clients that they could wait for weeks for an intake appointment. 

Angat Buhay’s Bayanihan eKonsulta service and Ateneo RFT-CEFAM’s faith-based/pastoral counseling are free for cash-strapped individuals.

The Philippine Star also lists the National Center for Mental Health (NCMH) and private initiatives such as Mental Health First Response and Gray Matters Psychological and Consultancy Inc. among the viable choices for mental health care, psychiatric services, and counseling.

All these are great for Filipinos (with both internet access and financial stability) who want to address their concerns in private and/or in their own homes. But keep in mind that they don’t fully cover national numbers and needs, or even the barest of services for those without internet access and financial stability.

The mental health business is booming

Especially in the early years of COVID-19, more mental health-centered startups targeting both individual clients and companies went live in Southeast Asia — and made ‘mental health’ a hot new buzzword in a region that traditionally didn’t give a shit about it. The Philippines-based InfinitCare and MindYou + SEA players like Intellect, MindFi, ThoughtFull, and Riliv got all the regional media and VC attention for their fundraising and service expansions.

DISCLAIMER

I don’t know anyone who sought help through these startups, but I do know a few people who worked for some of them. So I can’t tell you if these startups deliver on their promises at both the individual and corporate levels. It’s best to ask those who have used (or are using) them for their feedback.

While I’m all for the private sector stepping in during a global health crisis, this rapid industry growth also makes me super worried (and afraid for those who don’t know any better).

First, entrepreneurs and startups are in the mental health sphere for profit. I mean, nice origin story, bro. But the truth is that business is about meeting market demands and getting paid for it. Here, no one is 100% altruistic, and nobody cares about your feelings. If people want private mental health services, we’re all free to create a company, hire licensed and experienced professionals to provide those services at specific prices, then cover up our collective greed through Corporatese (a.k.a. marketing) so no one feels guilty about it. 🙃

And even non-profit mental health services ask for something non-monetary in return. For example, the Ateneo Bulatao Center is clear about its research and training activities. Anonymized parts of client session records might be shared with other Center psychologists and trainees for very specific problems, and under special circumstances. Trainees may also sit in and observe physical or online sessions. These sessions may be recorded and/or used in research studies.

Those who avail of the Center’s paid psychotherapy sessions must consent to these conditions, and they may be asked to sign additional consent forms. Clients can also withdraw their consent at any time.

Second, just because they work in the mental health industry doesn’t mean they’re truly all about it. I’ve worked around and in startups for most of my writing and editing career, and startups can be toxic as fuck. And mental health startups are no different from other startups. They can be as damaging to your mental health as any other workplace. Behind the screen, they’re still workplaces run by people not necessarily as trained on or aware of mental health triggers, conditions, and interventions as the actual healthcare professionals. 

And toxic startup folks usually stay within the same work circles and networks. They can also be either oblivious to their bullshit or have an astounding level of audacity. When I learned that an ex-client/boss — one with whom I’m definitely not friendly today, and who caused me considerable career trauma — worked for one of these mental health companies, this was my reaction:

⚠️⚠️⚠️ WARNING ⚠️⚠️⚠️

The same people telling you to seek professional help (and preferably with the startup they work in/for) could very well be the same professional gaslighting, insensitive, and toxic assholes who made you need that help in the first place!

Third, even if these startups help make mental health care much less of a taboo, they’re (and we’re) still impacted by a worldwide shortage of healthcare professionals. And those we do have are underpaid and overworked to the point of burnout and loud quitting, or participating in labor strikes. 

The Ken’s Southeast Asia edition highlighted this exact staffing problem faced by InfinitCare in 2021. And I’ve seen multiple psychiatrists and psychologists on multiple telemedicine apps who also keep regular schedules at hospitals and clinics. This should make us think hard about how few healthcare workers we have left, and how often they set their own health/care aside to tend to ours.

Fourth point: If more startups are setting up shop, that also means we now have more grifters and fraudsters. Again, I’ll use Facebook (and its insidious algorithm) as an example.

On July 21, I was served three consecutive ads on my feed from three smaller ‘mental health’ companies of dubious origins. Two didn’t have official websites, and one used a free Wix account. There was no info on who was running these companies or who their healthcare professionals were, or everyone’s credentials and associations. Their service pages had vague language with the usual mental health buzzwords, and they weren’t on any of the legit-resource links I put up earlier in this newsletter. 

In the style of a popular meme format in the Philippines: 

🚩 RED 🤸 FLAG 🤸 YAN 🤸 BESHIE 🤸 KO ! 🚩

For my mental health

Here’s where I am right now. I’m dealing with several heavy life issues at once. I’ve had growing and persistent feelings of overwhelm and frustration over several decades. And I’m from the “Therapy? LOL WTF NO” generation, so you bet I’ve always muscled through tough times and known/done nothing else.

I’ve finally had enough of all that. So I asked for help.

I chose to do online psychotherapy sessions with the Ateneo Bulatao Center, mainly for its established track record and good feedback from its previous and current clients. (This also tells you why I know about its policies on informed consent and use of client records: I had to read and sign their forms.) And because I’m already taking prescribed medication for a prior condition, I didn’t want to load up on strong pharmaceuticals and experience a host of side effects. So, talk therapy it is.

It’s still early days. But I feel good about it so far, and I like my psychologist/counselor. And I also like having the freedom to talk and feel and explore as much as I want. I’m also in control of the pace and depth of our discussions. Those things are new for me, and surely for other counseling clients battling the same demons I am.

The downside is I’m impatient and always have been. I fight the urge to ask for immediate and actionable feedback or simple solutions, or wonder why I’m not seeing results yet. Therapy is a long game, and small goals and actions (even the not-so-obvious ones) add up. I just need to be reminded of this regularly. 😆

Then again, sometimes you’ll just know if a mental health professional or service is right for you or not. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you need, try other options, or switch professionals altogether. It doesn’t always work out on the first try, and you can always make other positive choices for your well-being.

Whatever happens, don’t forget this: if I, a stubborn middle-aged older millennial, can ask for help, you can too. Take care of yourself, and start talking. 💗

Some questions to ask yourself

My advice is to decide on these matters before seeking therapy:

• How urgently do you need help? Has your situation escalated to ‘life or death’? Or can you still wait for help to come to you?

• Do you want a psychologist or psychiatrist? And how would you like them to talk to you — gently and carefully, kindly but also matter-of-factly, or directly/bluntly? Communication is about the intent, content, and method/manner.

• Do you want to do talk therapy/counseling? Or do you think you need clinical intervention (a.k.a. treatment by medication)?

• Do you want physical or in-person sessions, or online sessions via video calls or SMS chats?

  • Do you live alone, or in a full house? Online sessions are great for those living outside Metro Manila or consulting with professionals outside Metro Manila, as well as those who live alone.

  • But in-person sessions could be better for those surrounded by people all the time, or don’t have much privacy at home. Moreso for those whose problems are rooted mainly within the home.

• What’s your budget? Free is always great and I’ll always prefer that 🤣 But if you’re paying, how much can you afford per week/month?

  • Do you have a Person with Disability (PWD) ID? This can help with your recurring expenses and medications. And depending on your mental health care professional and diagnosis, you could apply for a PWD ID as you continue therapy/counseling.

• What are your short-term and long-term goals? How would you like to feel and be now and in the future?

  • This helps you and your mental health care professional set paths to explore in future sessions.

• What are your ‘go’ topics and ‘no-go’ topics? Some things are easy to talk about and process. Some, not so much, and maybe not right now.

Please call the following FREE 24/7 hotlines if you are in crisis!

NCMH

• Hotline: 1553

• SMART/Sun/TNT: +63 908-639-2672

• Globe/TM:

  • +63 966-351-4518

  • +63 917-899-8727 (USAP)

• https://www.ncmhusaptayo.com

In Touch

• +63 2 8893-7603

• +63 919-056-0709

• +63 917-800-1123

• +63 922-893-8944

• https://www.in-touch.org/

Natasha Goulbourn Foundation/Hopeline

• +63 917-558-4673

• +63 918-873-4673

• +63 2 8804-4673

• https://www.facebook.com/NGFMindstrong/

• https://www.facebook.com/HopelinePH

Konnichi wa (or Konban wa), friend. Welcome to Semi-Online, issue #14.

Anyway. I read a really good article a week ago. Well, it’s a transcript of a podcast episode, but same same. And it’s quite apt for me because it’s about friendships. Specifically:

• What our friends deserve from us

• Dealing with flagrant flakers and last-minute cancelers

• Setting mutual expectations, and

• Connecting and communicating vs. shutting down and feeling like a burden to others.

Here’s the transcript from The Atlantic for avid readers like me. And here’s the actual podcast if you’re the listening type:

I had two initial thoughts while reading the transcript:

1. Shit, that explains a lot about my remaining friendships.

2. Wait, how many friends do I have left?

From many to few

Yep, I’ve been doing some personal ‘auditing’ lately. Friendships are included here, and the actual number’s gone way down. Acquaintances and casual friends I rarely see are in the double to triple digits. Close friends whom I would make a real effort to leave my cozy apartment for? Single digits.

Many would start pitying me at this point or say something’s wrong with me, in the typical judgmental manner of those who think they’re just perfect and everyone loves them. (Short answer: Nope.) But I don’t think of it as a bad thing. Not all the time, anyway. I view it as a natural development, just a part of how I evolve through years and decades.

There is one important difference, though. Back then, people didn’t want to be my friend because I was a terrible person with underdeveloped social skills. Today, I’m the one wielding the ax. 🤣️

Why am I cutting or downgrading my friendships now? I have several good reasons.

People’s priorities, circumstances, and common threads change through the years.

We don’t hit life milestones at the same time, and we define ‘life milestones’ differently. Maybe marriage and/or children aren’t on the horizon for all of us (and that’s always OK!). We can be in contrasting situations with our biological or built families. We could be on varying work and career trajectories. Maybe we just don’t have that much free time as adults.

Physical locations can also impact friendships. Filipinos move around a lot now and seldom stay in the same place (or within the same social groups) until old age. Long-distance friendships can be tough to keep going too, especially when someone’s commitment to it and you flags.

And our past shared personal interests don’t always keep us linked today. These change over time, too. If you’ve managed to keep that friend from way back whom you met through a common friend, or that friend with the same hobbies and pop-culture tastes, that’s great. But most of us aren’t as lucky.

People have exited my life gradually because of these factors. I don’t harbor any hard feelings, and I can get quite sentimental when I think of them. I can only hope they think of me in the same way.

Their identities and behavior change as they do.

I’m all for personal development. But sometimes, friends’ new selves don’t jive with who I am, how I behave and treat people, and how I want to be treated.

In one recent case, a close friend of almost two decades was taking me and another close friend for granted. She’d ask to meet up with us, saying we hadn’t seen each other in a while and we must catch up. Since these catch-up sessions last several hours and the pandemic kept us cooped up, we’d set aside half a day or night of our time for this + countless hours on our group chat.

Then, on the day and time we’d set, close friend #1 would suddenly stop responding to messages and calls. Close friend #2, her husband, and I met up without her, anyway. But of course, our feelings were hurt.

Hours to days later, we’d get a halfhearted apology from #1. She’d say she fell asleep and woke up well after she meant to, or work kept her glued to her desk. We get it – shit happens, we’re all dealing with something, and we have to give everyone more leeway and patience than usual. 🤷‍♀️️

We were fine the first time she did it. It was annoying the second time around. But I just fucking lost it after the third time.

Her trying to laugh it off with me – and then making a big and public effort to see her other friends – is really shitty behavior, and something I’m 100% sure she never wants to be on the receiving end of. And her being showy with her love and affection for those friends while saying nothing about us is extremely insulting.

#InfluencerLife, am I right? 🙄️🙄️🙄️

I told her to get back in touch when she’s relearned to respect us and our time/effort again, and take full accountability for flaking out and being rude. She hasn’t responded or even tried to re-initiate contact since, so that shows me how much we mean to her: very little, if at all. I’m done for now.

Politics, baby. 🌷️🌷️🌷️

(I wanted to use an emoji of a pink rose, but it seems there isn’t one. Luckily, I love tulips. 💗️)

I ‘culled’ my friend list after the 2022 national elections, like countless other Filipinos. In taking my own advice – dropping many longtime friends who supported the Red and Green side – I lost friendships going back to my high school and college years, as well as some work connections.

I don’t regret it, though. I thought I could get along with everyone regardless of our political leanings. But now, I want my friends to share my values, morals, and loyalties.

More importantly, I must feel safe with them. Otherwise… 👋️ Dictatorships and authoritarian regimes rely on collaborators and informants. This was true during Marcos Sr.’s dictatorship; it remained true during the Duterte regime – and now, the Marcos Jr. ‘presidency’.

Even so, I have a ranking of sorts for these people. The Unfriend/Unfollow button is reserved for ex-friends who spread fake news and attack my side of the political divide. The people who remain on my ‘Friends’ list now have minimal access to my online posts, which is as close to banished as one can be these days.

They didn’t grow out of their old bad habits.

I’ve had this group of friends since my grade school and high school years. Their families know me quite well, and there were many times when I felt more loved by them than by my own family.

After high-school graduation, some of us moved away from our ‘hometown.’ However, many stayed there even as they started working and/or building their own families.

There’s nothing wrong with keeping to your roots. But what I think happened here is they formed a variation of small-town syndrome. They rarely ventured out of our ‘small town’ and thought there was no point in it because it already had everything they needed. I was always the one visiting them, going to places in town they wanted to go to, and driving >40km round trip every weekend. Whenever they visited me, they made such a big deal out of it – never mind that they do this only once or twice a year!

I’ve told them all of this several times using these same words, and they simply ignored my displeasure. And they didn’t notice or care when I finally stopped making plans with them and became so exhausted by their self-absorption.

They’re still in my social circles, and I’ll always be fond of and grateful to them for saving me from loneliness and pariahdom when we were kids. And they’re good people deep down, then and now. But I’m not seeing them anytime soon, nor will I ever exert any effort to set anything up for the whole group. Bahala kayo d’yan. 🙃️

They’re physically gone now.

No one wants to deal with death, and we are never truly ready for it – whether it’s ours, or someone else’s.

I’ve said permanent goodbyes to a few friends over the years, with the most recent one occurring just a few weeks ago. Illness is the usual culprit here, and their passing (from natural causes) was always sudden and unexpected.

So while there’s absolutely nothing anyone can do here, I also say treasure the time you do have with your friends and tell them you love them while you still can. And I believe that no one completely dies if you still remember them and talk about them. 😭️

Scott Platt Salcedo was a fictionist based in Boracay, Philippines. He was a damn good writer (and one of my national writing workshop co-fellows) who was nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. But he was an even better friend.

He was working on his first novel before he died in June 2023.

Read his published short stories:

– “Where Fish Grow the Fattest”, Salt Hill Journal #43/44
– The Best Asian Short Stories: “Hunting Season” (2019) and “Mud Bound Country” (2020)
– “Leaving Catabuan”, SAND Journal #17
– “Sins of the Father”, GNU Journal
– “A Happy Ending”, Philippines Graphic
– “Yield”, Bull and Cross
– “The Edge of the Fields”, Kitaab.org
– “Outside the Rooms of Love”, The Chaffin Journal (2019 issue)

‘Strictly online’ friendships?

My prospects for offline friendships are bad ATM. What about making and maintaining them online?

The concept isn’t exactly foreign to me. I made two friends online when I was still in my teens: both Filipino by lineage but US-based, and both readers of my anonymous Geocities blog I thought no one ever read. 🤣️ I kept in touch with them across email addresses and free blogging accounts, but our conversations stopped after some time.

Gotta admit though, it was fun talking to two strangers who told me they liked what I wrote, and they meant it. I also realize I was extremely lucky that they were friendly, caring, and sane. I mean, we’re talking about the Internet here. We can always fare much worse, especially these days (and most especially if you’re a woman).

Now, in the 2020s, the dynamics of online friendships have changed. At least in my social circles, I never hear any more of people I know intentionally making friends online. What’s happening today, and particularly at the height of COVID-19, is that people maintain real-life friendships solely online via social media.

Again, it could be due to life priorities, physical distance, or conflicting schedules, etc. But it can also be due to medical and/or mental health issues, and putting self-care ahead of socialization.

I was in a group chat a week or so ago with my and Scott’s two other writing co-fellows. Another friend of Scott’s from another national writing workshop was asking if we wanted to meet up with their group and hold a memorial for him.

It sounds like a great idea – and I still want it to happen. However, my current hearing and balance disability + my anxiety in social situations with strangers are holding me back.

So I said I’d go, but only if it’s in a place where we can actually hear each other talk, and with a manageable number of people. My co-fellows have their own personal reservations, and both didn’t want to stay out all night and drink/party.

In a post-pandemic environment where large and loud – and sometimes drunk – social groups are the norm (and unregulated daily noise can actually take years off your life span!), the three of us were like “We love him and we want to say goodbye properly, but maybe we’ll pass on this for now…”

Circling back

Let’s return to the podcast I linked to at the beginning of this newsletter. I understand the need to protect myself in social situations and put my health needs ahead of everyone else’s. This is what I and my co-fellows are doing, and what most of us do every day. Self-care is real, folks.

But people can go overboard sometimes; and I wonder if I have here, too.

I think we’re a little too quick to be like, If I am not in optimal, tip-top shape to show up, then I won’t show up. Or that we have to be completely at ease, completely comfortable, completely full of vim and vigor to totally hang out with our friends.

And I’m not upset if you lose your childcare and you have to back out, or if you get sick. Things happen. Life happens. I think we can all be understanding. What bugs me is that it feels just completely fine in a lot of social circles to just cancel with no explanation or the reason is just I’m not feeling up to it today or I’m really tired from work.

I think it’s kind of part and parcel with a big premium that we put on protecting our energy as like the greatest good. But I don’t know if we should protect our energy at the cost of our relationships.

Julie Beck, host, How to Talk to People podcast

Or do they? Because, as the podcast hosts emphasize, real-life, in-person friendships aren’t just a definite choice you make every day. Keeping friendships alive (and being a good friend) requires hard work (emotional labor, not outright labor) and matching expectations and efforts. You earn the title of ‘friend’; and it means you give and take and make sacrifices for them sometimes, but never see the whole thing as a burden.

A wonderful distinction was also made in the same podcast:

Good company: I like you as a person. We enjoy our time together. We have good conversations. Good friendship: A friend is someone you invest in. It is a commitment. It is: I’m showing up in your times of need. It is: I’m doing things that sometimes might inconvenience me, because I’m thinking about how much they’ll mean to you. It is: I’m going to celebrate your successes. It’s: I’m going to follow through with what I say that I will do to the extent possible. It’s, basically: I’m considering you, and I’m considering your needs. In a lot of our culture, we’re stuck on “good company” and we haven’t gotten to “good friendship.”

Marisa Franco, psychologist and author of Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make – and Keep – Friends

So sure, we can have online friendships, if that’s what we want to call it. And maybe we can be selective about social connections and friends-of-friends, or at least postpone planned socials with them. But in terms of the people I love dearly and I’ll call for help if I find myself in deep shit… Offline or in-person is, and always will be, the way to go.

And can I just say it can be super fucking weird when we finally meet up with these people in real life after years of talking strictly online. We’ve all gotten so used to being behind screens that I find it odd and awkward to actually see them in human form. I know that was the case last month, when I finally met the guy I’ve been buying books from (and now coffee) since 2010. 😄️

Next steps?

Now that the basic ‘rules’ of friendships have been set, I have a few more questions connected to my situation:

1. How can I make new friends? Specifically, how can I do this as a middle-aged person with a disability that’s so unfriendly toward most face-to-face social activities?

2. Related to age – How can I (and other middle-aged folks) make friends when we are already so set in our ways and averse to compromise?

Another thing to remember here is that there’s plenty of advice on how to create friendships and keep them going, but these people’s experiences won’t mean mine or yours would be the same; or even that there’s actually a perfect, foolproof, fail-safe manual for modern friendships. And we can do everything right and still say goodbye to beloved friends. Hey, that happens, too.

Nor are friendships always like what we see on TV or social media. We need to have realistic expectations of ourselves and other people, and the content we consume seldom helps.

To be honest, I’m not quite sure what my next steps are. But I also believe that by whittling down my close friendships and social circles, I’ve made big strides in specifying how I want to be treated and valued, and how I could be a better friend to people who call me that without question or reservation too. That’s as good of a foundation as any.

Also, can I just say: If you aggressively subject your friends to multi-level marketing, you’re a dick that I never want to have anything to do with. Byeeee.

Guten tag! Welcome to Semi-Online, issue #13.

Your eyes are working just fine. After six months of neglect, yesterday I decided to make some major changes to this newsletter. They mainly involve the name and logo (or what passes as a logo with my limited Canva skills 🤣️). However, issue numbering will stay the same as I don’t want to delete what’s already here.

In case you’re curious, I have a few reasons for implementing these changes.

New name, hu dis?

As I said here, I’m obviously not as ‘online’ as I was in years past.

Being ‘very online’ isn’t just about staying updated with the headlines and hot gossip. It also means devoting much of my personal life and time to little things on the internet that shouldn’t matter to me; or reacting to and chiming in on various topics in real time as a form of participation, protest, public record, and performance. I’m not into all that anymore, nor do I have the speed and patience for it.

And as hard as I try to catch up, I still don’t understand the latest memes, jokes, and references; know the people I need to know; or get worked up over idiotic issues. My nieces and nephews have also called me ‘old’ and laughed at me whenever I tried to have them explain certain Gen-Z things. At this rate, I don’t think I ever will catch up. Some things should be left to the young who haven’t been eaten alive yet. 😜️

Given those things, Very Online sounded like a lie, no? I hated that. So I did something about it.

The other side

Using a name that doesn’t fit anymore also meant I was looking too much at the ‘online’ aspect – and not much at the ‘offline’ part.

Sure, we’re digitizing more and more of our lives today, and we’re becoming more dependent on the internet for everything. Yes, the Philippines and Southeast Asia have always been overlooked and under-served tech-wise compared to countries in the Global North. And the ways we go online (and why) in this part of the world are different from everyone else’s. All of these deserve attention.

But I also think the opposite side’s equally interesting. If I’m turning over more of my life to the digital suck – for example, work, business administration and taxes, friendships, finances, entertainment, healthcare, relocation, and fitness – what would be left for me (and just me!) when the WiFi and data access are off? What do I like to do and see and spend my time on when I’m not online and not judged by people hiding behind screens? What’s my analog identity?

If you’re having as hard of a time answering those questions as I did…

This is the perfect cue to take a literal Millennial pause, and make changes here too. Instead of focusing only on the internet’s creep over everything, I should start reclaiming and doing more ‘analog’ detours, or at least do more low-tech or no-tech stuff to balance it out. Touch grass, all that. But still with a mask on because COVID-19 is now endemic because humanity is shit, and that will never change. 😷️

I wouldn’t say this is an existential crisis; it’s more of a life assessment. But it could very well be a crisis of some sort. I don’t know anymore. 🤷‍♀️️

TL;DR

I made big changes to the newsletter’s name and logo, plus I tweaked its topic/focus a bit.

There’s nothing to worry about on your end, and I’ve been as thorough as I could be with the tedious digital housekeeping. (This isn’t my first self-hosted WordPress rodeo, LOL). But if you see any broken links, missing images, or other errors, please let me know and I’ll get to it ASAP! 💗️

Also, yes, six months is too long for zero updates. But life happens, and one of the things I’m relearning as well is to stop apologizing for that. 👍️

Still, thank you for sticking around, and I’ll do my best to write in here more often! If you have any comments or suggestions for topics I should cover here, or other changes I should make, please let me know.

Before I go…

Here are some of the reads, tunes, and videos that I’m loving these days – and maybe you would, too!

Yeah yeah yeah, they’re all online. I know. Give me time, OK? 🙃️

A friend from my MFA Creative Writing days loves to send me social media content he thinks I’ll be interested in. Basically, he does what I’m doing to you now, only in private chats.

A couple of days ago, our conversation turned to pathography and autopathography, or medical patients writing about their illnesses and their life experiences with them. Aside from my intense envy that today’s MFA students now have pathography as an actual elective, it reminded me of this The Millions article from April 2023. I’m currently writing about my own experience with SSCD, so this writer’s book would likely be a great resource for me.

The downside of having digital nomads take over your town: you’ll be priced right out of it. As if we didn’t have enough life problems already. 🙄️

BTW, I highly recommend Rest of World! Its longreads are always 👌️😘️ And as its name suggests, its stories focus on the parts of the world that get little to no attention.

I am so offended on behalf of my friends, former colleagues, and former grad-school classmates who love (and/or need to) publish in peer-reviewed journals. Pay to play? Fuck right off this planet.

This is not a drill. After a 24-year break, Everything But The Girl is back! 💗️

Honestly, the only complaint I have is that this comeback album is just 35 minutes long.

I swear, the entire There I Ruined It YouTube channel must be treated as an international treasure.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Social media ‘poetry’ is just a bunch of sentences cut up to look like art. Or as the pretentious would say, ahrt.

But sure, let’s call it ‘bad poetry’.

Lastly, I can’t get over the fact that Karen Gillan was just filming freely on set and they all let her. I suppose Marvel Studio’s infamous secrecy isn’t as strict anymore But I’m quite happy with this behind-the-scenes look at the last Guardians of the Galaxy movie!

Hello! Welcome to Very Online, issue #12.

First of all: Happy new year! 🎉️ This was me when 2022 became 2023:

Like the rest of the world, I have a long list of resolutions and goals for this year. One hefty section of that list concerns work. See, I’ve been on what LinkedIn calls a health and well-being break since May 2020. Besides a few short-term jobs, I haven’t worked for almost three years. 

Most would call this situation fun; hence, the term ‘funemployed’. But it isn’t. A pandemic is still killing people and still perpetuating vaccine inequity. Then governments gave up on reporting and containment measures because the ~ E C O N O M Y ~  🙌️ 🙌️ 🙌️ 

Nor have my physical/mental health and well-being improved. I’d say those actually worsened. I don’t recommend being jobless and battling depression, anxiety, long-term family and health issues, and SSCD all at once. It’s exhausting.

But we are in a capitalist society, I live on my own now, the costs of living keep rising, and my meager savings can’t keep taking hits. So even if I am neither completely ready nor able, I must return to work.

About that… Wow, ‘work’ got all messed up, no? 😂️

Turns out 60% of Filipino employees are quiet quitting, and companies worldwide are spinning their own crises into quiet thriving and quiet hiring. Then we have the gender gap; diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); hybrid work; and the ‘future’ of work. We’re also concerned with mental health in the workplace, and extra employee support and benefits, among other things. If you ask me, work as a whole is much more of a hot mess now than it was pre-pandemic. And Filipinos are still about that toxic positivity, y’all.

How about freelancing and remote work? My, oh, my. This industry has always been fluid and unpredictable. But freelancing just went mad in some ways and remained stagnant in others. Returning to it at this time feels more like a back-to-square-one-thing than anything else.

Join me as I get my bearings — and maybe take another (much shorter?) pause before diving in again.

When I say ‘freelancing’ and ‘remote work’, I mean jobs you can apply for on online job boards and job-vacancy posts, and where deliverables are accomplished via computers. In short, white-collar work.

There are other types of freelance labor, such as in the performing arts or for on-demand services like ride-hailing, couriers, and food/cargo deliveries. Also, in the Philippines, ‘freelancing’ can sometimes be used to refer to the whole ‘gig economy’.

There are more of us.

A LOT MORE. To be specific: Filipinos are 1.5 million strong on online freelancing platforms as of 2021. If we want to, we could build our own country. 

Well… Unity nga daw, diba???

This isn’t always by choice.

The usual reasons from the pre-COVID times are still valid. People will always want to have flexible schedules and more independence, a reliable local and/or international client list, and the ability to work from anywhere. Climbing corporate ladders, obeying silly orders, and kissing C-suite asses aren’t cool anymore. What matters now is having the power to choose when, where, and how to work; and for how much we’ll trade our time and labor.1

But the pandemic also brought many to my line of work by force. There were massive layoffs and company/contract closures worldwide starting in March 2020, and the Philippine unemployment rate spiked to record levels:

Lists and databases of people looking for work popped up everywhere (like the Filipinomads Creative Network list, which I signed up for). Everyone joined online freelancing platforms for primary or supplementary income. Many of my friends and contacts also began their own food, content creation, health and wellness, and handcrafted goods businesses to make ends meet — and to ease the impact of shit-poor corporate and government ‘support’. All these made the industry much more crowded than it had ever been.

Basically, everyone was just scrambling to keep their heads above the figurative water. To be honest, many are still in this situation in 2023.

“Mindset ba, mindset???”

The world adapted out of necessity, but mindsets also changed. 

For so many years, I got so much crap for working freelance or remotely. My family and peers said it’s not a legitimate career path; it’s all just a bunch of ‘rakets’ (I so hate this word!); or that I’m just lounging around at home and not really doing anything, so I should be available and willing to do whatever they ask of me during normal business hours. I developed an inferiority complex (a.k.a. the ‘Freelancer Lang’ mentality) that has taken me years to shed, and I’m still working on it.

But when they were forced to do it…

They found out firsthand that it was not easy juggling work responsibilities, chores, and other familial obligations, and the isolation and burnout that WFH can bring, COVID or no COVID. Did you get any apologies? I certainly didn’t.

Then came the deluge of content penned by WFH n00bs and ‘advice from experience’ thrown at me by the same condescending family and peers about work-life balance, setting schedules and priorities and non-negotiables, proper WFH conduct and remote-business practices, the difficulties of this line of work…

Basically, we longtime freelancers drowned in lessons that we’ve screamed at the skies long, long ago — and they’ve appropriated while pretending we haven’t done this at all.

📣️ Louder for the chumps at the back: 📣️ Work is work, whether online or offline, short-term or long-term. We are as legit as the everyday office worker, no matter how many boomers or salarymen (salarypeople? salaryfolk?) say otherwise. And we are running actual businesses, not doing charity for your friend’s mother’s cousin’s best friend’s boss or whoever.

Now that the workforce is returning to on-site arrangements, I hope people keep their ‘newfound’ respect for Filipino freelancers and remote/gig workers. Even if my pessimistic self says otherwise.

We see more jobs for us — and we’ve got higher standards.

When I started out, there were only three main ways to get contracts: freelance marketplaces or platforms, your existing professional network, and sheer word of mouth. Today, these three methods are still the go-tos, but we’re not stuck with just these anymore. 

Upwork and Freelancer.com remain huge here; but Payoneer and GCash’s Philippines Freelance Market 2022 Report mentions other marketplaces like SimplyHired, FlexJobs, Guru, and Toptal. I see so many Facebook groups for freelance and remote work, and open to both Filipinos and international workers. Dedicated websites, agencies, and job boards such as Write Jobs, No Desk, and Remote.co offer a wide range of part-time and full-time, international, and remote listings. LinkedIn and JobStreet even expanded their listings to remote vacancies.

There are also vast improvements in the type or range of contracts posted. When I was new, all I could see were data entry, copywriting/content spinning, virtual assistance (VA), graphic design, and IT/programming jobs. In 2023, we can be a lone wolf on lucrative projects across industries or work within a full remote-only company or team, and in managerial positions. We’re not limited anymore to poor-paying, poor-quality outsourced jobs from dubious folks and scammers. 

And if we don’t see a job we like, we can make our own! Much has been said about content creators and social media 🤮️influencers🤮️; at least within my age range, they’re mostly negative. But for the younger millennials and Generation Z with talent, business acumen, and practicality (plus the seniors and middle-aged folks who follow their lead), they are viable and lucrative career moves. Yes, if we’re gonna be technical about it, they are considered freelancers too.

Our personal standards went up with our options. Every contract I’ve taken has taught me new things, good and bad. So my non-negotiables today are:

• No deposit, no work. No exceptions.

• Pay me like you would any other freelancer from the ‘First World’. My being a Filipino doesn’t mean you can pay me at ultra-low, sweatshop, Third-World rates. (More on this below.)

• I work Monday to Friday, during normal business hours in the Philippines (9 a.m. to 6 p.m. PHT). I do not work on call.

• Absolutely no time tracking and screenshots every 10 minutes! Bossware or employee monitoring software are invasive AF. If you can’t trust me and my own data-driven reports (I use non-invasive solutions like Toggl), work with someone else.

• Because I have SSCD and currently cannot travel, I am not taking or even considering any contracts or jobs requiring travel, or long-term commitments with inflexible milestones or deadlines. My disability is debilitating, and my condition and availability can change really quickly. I do not make promises I know I cannot keep.

• I do not tolerate any finger-pointing, blaming, politicking, and public shaming; gaslighting; moving goalposts or milestones without prior notice and mutual agreement; and any form of retaliation. Period. 😤️

We have better tech and better services!

Out of all the changes in my industry, I love this one the most.

I remember cringing every time a potential client asked for a video call because that meant I had to use Skype with a subpar built-in webcam. Then we’d send files back and forth via FTP or email. If I wanted to work somewhere else, I’d sit in a coffee shop for hours alongside noisy customers and noisier coffee machines. And then receiving payments would be such a headache because PayPal ALWAYS takes a big bite of incoming payments, and it was the only major player in the international payments game at the time. The clincher? Bad FX rates and limited Philippine bank interconnectivity made sure we were stuck with bad conversions and worse banking choices.

The present day is much brighter. I prefer using Zoom and Google Meet for one-on-one or team calls. Then we chat over Slack, Asana, Monday, Twist, or Flock, rarely via email. When I use email, it’s only to talk to Philippine companies and service providers that still do things old-school 🙄️, or new contacts. For international clients and services that need documents from me, cloud storage (Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, Nextcloud) is the way. 

I now accept payments via Wise and PayMongo aside from PayPal, with the third one as my very last option. I can also use digital banks like Maya Bank, Komo, Tonik, or Unionbank instead of traditional banks — gotta love the higher interest rates, instant paperwork, and zero lines!

We are also faring better for office equipment and services. I now have a prepaid wifi modem for backup because our internet is notoriously expensive, slow, and unreliable. Standing and portable desks, gadget holders, and ergonomic chairs are gaining popularity; and video calls can be improved with small ring lights and external webcams. And whenever I have cabin fever, I can book a seat or meeting room at a co-working facility, or use the available hours offered by my virtual-office provider. Here, I’m guaranteed a quiet space for long stretches of focused work. 

Just as entire companies can go 100% remote, so have I with my one-person operation. I use a virtual office for privacy reasons. I file my tax forms and pay government contributions online, too. The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) has a comprehensive (if confusing) eServices range and an eAppointment System for all of its offices. The Social Security System (SSS), Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth), and the Home Development Mutual Fund (HDMF, better known as the Pag-IBIG Fund) have online hubs as well.

Not into using these aging government portals? Third parties such as Taxumo, JuanTax, Moneygment, or MyOffice can help you with the legwork and online transactions.

I also see more communities for freelancers and remote workers joining originals like the Freelance Writers’ Guild of the Philippines or FWGP, among them Filipinomads, Buhay Digital on Reddit, and Filipino Editors and Writers. This is a far cry from when I was a rookie and figuring it all out on my own!

Big Brother is closely watching us.

The bigger freelancing and remote work become in the Philippines (and the more advocates and allies we have), the more The Man pays attention.

In 2020, Congressman Christopher “Toff” de Venecia — a former TV, film, and theater actor — delivered a privilege speech about how hard COVID-19 has hit the Philippine arts industry. Senate Bill 136 and House Bill 3738 have also made headlines in the past couple of years as these seek to improve gig workers’ rights, working conditions, and government benefits. But these have not progressed since filing, and I hope they move forward this year.

When the Tax Man cometh, the Freelancers go legal. The BIR saw 26.8 million registered individual taxpayers in 2021. I’m not sure if this is a result of the agency threatening already-struggling home business owners in the middle of a goddamn pandemic, but I think being registered is a good thing overall for us. I also see a rise in the number of online guides for freelancers DIY-ing the business registration process, so there are obviously more of us wanting to do this the right way. 

And the more people register with the Tax Man, the more valuable information we get about our industry. Taxumo’s ongoing State of Online Taxation series offers an interesting view of its customer base. For example:

• Taxumo is used mainly by millennials to file their tax forms

• ‘Poor’ taxpayers (those earning less than ₱9,250) made up 32.6% of payments in 2021

• Self-employment tax forms are the top 2 most filed on the platform 

• 62.5% of Taxumo taxpayers are women

• Men make 11.5% higher tax payments than women, and 

• Non-binary taxpayers are seeing a 2,200% rise in income.

These things are still shit, though.

First off: even with the recent emphasis on remote teams, in truth, we still work alone. If you’re getting into this industry, brace yourself for the (often long) bouts of physical isolation and loneliness.

One way to address this problem is to reach out and build your own communities and support groups. But I’ve also seen so many of these groups fizzle out once their members get contracts again, regain their financial footing, or turn overly competitive. I know it’s hard to keep these going, so if any of you have suggestions on how to do this, please tell me 😃️

Speaking of money… Despite the rise in global hourly and per-project rates, Filipinos still have a bad reputation as lowballers or undercutters when bidding for online jobs, and for accepting cheap hourly rates. In these tough times, need trumps ego. People will take whatever they can get whenever they can.

Given everything going on right now, I (and you) can’t and shouldn’t blame my fellow freelancers for thinking this is okay. Many of us truly don’t know any better or realize that they can charge higher, or see their work and effort as deserving of higher monetary value.

Employers and entrepreneurs from more affluent countries (a.k.a. the Global North) take advantage of Filipinos because of this low self-worth. In 2021 alone, I’ve had like seven to eight White startup guys message me on LinkedIn and my website, and send me great JDs and pitches. Then they asked for my rates, then balked because they didn’t like my answer.

Normally, I’d chalk this up to a simple difference in budgets and opinions. But one told me straight up that he hires only Filipinos because we “work harder than others, seldom complain or negotiate, and [our] rates are super great for [him].”

Read between the lines, people. These White dudes hire Filipinos because they think we’re cheap labor. 🙄️🙄️🙄️ And unfortunately, colonial mentality is still going strong in these parts.

Our country of origin hampers us in other ways. Last year, I was thinking about writing and monetizing content on Medium, Substack, or Ghost. But these platforms pay out only via Stripe, which doesn’t support payments to and from the Philippines in Philippine pesos. Of course, there are workarounds for this, but I don’t want to jump through several hoops just because a Western payments company does not want to accommodate us. 

I’ve also noticed that the nonprofit, NGO, and multinational sectors’ job postings run along race lines. Consultants or contractors are either ‘international’ (expatriates or AFAM, with higher pay and prestige) or ‘national’ (Filipino citizens, locally based, lower pay). As one example shows us, because we locals or ‘minorities’ are viewed as less to begin with, we also deal with office microaggressions (or downright hostility) to honest and well-meaning input, and institutional methods of racist silencing.

And people ask why I will never ever return to on-site office work. I mean, freelancing is as tough now as it was then, and I wonder how my n^th return will unfold. But corporate slavery will forever be a no-go. 😒️

Yoohoo. Welcome to Very Online, issue #11 — and the very first edition of my content and media list, a.k.a. the things that I’ve read, listened to, and enjoyed since my last newsletter issue. So yes I’ve been online, just not updating. 😊

I did something similar on my book blog The Reading Spree way back in 2012-2013. I called it “Snippets”: digests of all the articles I came across and loved on Facebook and Twitter. The links I posted were mostly about books and publishing, but some unrelated stuff would always make it on there. “Snippets” lasted nine updates until I gave up. Even then, there was just too much online content to go through and vet.

Some newsletter writers are great at making their link digests short and sweet. I don’t have that talent, so I’m keeping mine separate from my main updates. I have no idea how long this version will last, but I hope you discover new things with it. And maybe let me know what you’ve been digging online, too!

Read

Last month, the Philippines marked the 50^th anniversary of the declaration of Martial Law. The Filipinos in the Philippines are starting to forget. Those outside still remember.

Help my people remember — and pursue lasting accountability and repentance.

Read the article above, then go through everything uploaded onto the Martial Law Museum (under the Ateneo de Manila University [ADMU]) and The Martial Law Library (private-citizen initiative; available for free on Google Drive).

Never forgive, never forget, never again.

From revered to troubled in, um, a Flash: Hollywood bible Vanity Fair delves into Ezra Miller’s ‘dark spiral’.

He should be truly getting the help he needs, and not be put in detention for PR’s sake.

As a big fan of Deadliest Catch, this particular bit of news floored me. 

Josh Harris, who had been on the docuseries-turned-reality TV show since Season 2 as a deckhand on the fishing vessel Cornelia Marie (and later, its ‘co-captain’ and co-owner), was fired by Warner Bros. Discovery in September 2022. This firing occurred after it became public knowledge that he was tried as a juvenile — and pled guilty to “lesser charges” — in 1999 for “the digital, vaginal, and oral rape of a four-year-old girl.”

The case is long closed, and he served his time. But some things in this world are simply unforgivable, and he should never have been on TV in the first place nor tried as a juvenile.

This situation also rehashes his crime for the survivor and her family. They already had to see Josh on American/international TV and at public events, cashing in on the Deadliest Catch name and his late father Phil’s popularity, for more than a decade. I think that part makes me much angrier than Josh being outed as a child rapist.

Scams have always been ugly in both their tactics and results. Somehow, it has gotten much uglier. 

ProPublica investigates the rise in human trafficking cases in Southeast Asia related to cyberscamming. It’s a super-long read, but it’s well worth your time.

And for online workers like me, this serves as a solid warning to stay vigilant when on the job/contract hunt.

Two recent features on Justin Lin and Constance Wu show how the world has a long way to go in recognizing Asians properly for our talents, and truly hearing our voices.

You’ve surely seen and heard about Hunter Biden (and his laptop) on international news for the past few years. Here’s exactly how this so-called laptop went from private property to the hands of the Republicans.

This is certainly true when it comes to the younger Biden:

…the implications of what happened to Hunter Biden go far beyond politics. Whether or not he turns out to be the perpetrator of a crime, he is certainly the victim of a violation — an invasion of privacy that is staggering in its totality.

Andrew Rice and Olivia Nuzzi, “The Sordid Saga of Hunter Biden’s Laptop”, Intelligencer

Also: the Feds are coming for him soon with tax- and gun-related charges.

My semi-alcoholic self is both relieved and alarmed when Vice talks about how alcohol lost its cool.

I’m quite happy the next generation won’t be soused. But I’m alarmed that I (and countless others in my generation) still am.

My feelings about the long reign and quick death of Queen Elizabeth II aren’t as strong as others’. But, coming from a country colonized by Spain and the United States, conquered by Japan and (again) the US during wartime, and (maybe?) about to be colonized by China, I truly felt it in my bones when Indi Samarajiva said he was glad the Queen is dead.

This story about an entire family making insurance fraud their business (and snagging US$6 million over several years until they were found out and arrested) screams “future hit Hollywood movie” to me.

You may have ‘revenge travel’ in mind, but Asians have another hurdle to get over before even packing our bags. The Economist covers the long delays in visa processing and approval at Western consulates. 

This piece also reminds me of what newsletter writer Indi Samarajiva calls “The Unbearable Whiteness of Tourism”, a.k.a. embedded racism in modern travel. They’re still racist, y’all. Don’t be fooled!!!

Here’s an older piece from March 2022. Pola del Monte asks: “…why are places of power still dominated by men?” Then she answers her question with mini-profiles of Filipina leaders and ties in with the feminism practiced here.

I was a fan of comedian Jo Koy when he first became popular. Not anymore, though.

A CNN Philippines article has him front and center, but also connects to the ongoing ‘Filipino vs. Filipinx’ debate and how representation can mean very different things depending on where you are and the life you have.

To quote Marga Buenaventura, the writer of that article:

To represent us is one thing; to advocate for us is another.

(Also, if we’re just talking about Jo Koy, I count this Twitter thread and this ANCX longread as just two of the things that helped me change my mind about the guy. Plus, his penchant for yelling. OMG. SO. MUCH. YELLING!!! SINONG KAAWAY MO?!?!?!?)

I didn’t notice this at first, but now it’s hard to miss. Vox says Hollywood has a hot new trend going on: parents who say they’re sorry.

I truly am all for this fantasy to become reality.

I’ve always been envious of Serena Williams’ dominance and strength in tennis and outside of it. But Venus Williams will always have my admiration for paving the way for her in the first place. 

The New Yorker is right: without Venus, there is no Serena.

Audio. Erotica. Oooohhhh, I should check that out. Bust discusses why audio erotica is giving women an aural fixation.

The Salty newsletter has two new essays on it that I love: the experience of being ‘the fat friend’ that I now know too well, and the utter fuckery of the ‘Copy-and-Paste People‘:

Beware of the Copy-and-Paste People. They’re like betrayals in disguise. The neoliberal nightmare no one warned you about, lurking in every friend group and self-care hashtag. They take up space to steal ideas, lingering to decide which identity to cosplay or movement to co-opt. They are hard to spot. Well-intentioned and informed, decked out in degrees to find the language for things they have no desire to process. They ingest and weaponize the words, turning boundaries into arguments against the very groups they claim to protect.

Mare Leon, “Copy-and-Paste People Have Ruined Online Safety”, Salty

The early ‘00s band Vertical Horizon formed much of my college-years soundtrack. Stereogum‘s Tom Breihan shits on them HARD in this beautiful article on Vertical Horizon’s hit single “Everything You Want” and the alternative-rock genre.

I feel so, so attacked.

Watch

In keeping with my Deadliest Catch life phase, here’s a recent find on YouTube: full uploads of all three episodes of America’s Deadliest Season.

This three-parter served as the pilot series for Discovery Channel to make another ‘official’ pilot episode, then pick up Deadliest Catch for production. The boats, captains, and crews here are different; and it’s a pure documentary series that showed the fishermen’s lives and work exactly as they were, and nothing more. That’s so unlike today’s Deadliest Catch, which bit the ‘reality TV’ bait and has now become what I like to call the Real Boathusbands of Dutch Harbor. 😉

Also, these uploads certainly don’t look like they’re sanctioned by Warner Bros. Discovery. So don’t be surprised if it’s suddenly gone from YouTube.

On my Netflix watchlist:

• The Sandman. But of course!

• Midnight Diner and Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories. Yes, I keep watching them, especially when I’m feeling really down.

• While waiting for the Wednesday series to premiere, I rewatched The Addams Family and Addams Family Values. Such classics, and the second movie is a rare example of the sequel being better than the original!

• The Principles of Pleasure puts women’s pleasure front and center, but three episodes aren’t enough for me. Make more, please!

• For tonight: Hasan Minhaj: The King’s Jester. I missed this guy, and Patriot Act should never have been canceled!

And then there’s YouTube…

• The ScreenCrush channel. YouTube channels run by talkative male nerds are easy to find these days (and much easier to ignore). Ryan Arey and the ScreenCrush writers have done good work so far that I’ve actually been paying attention for months now, but their recent episode breakdowns for Marvel’s She-Hulk is fucking outstanding. Not only do they get the little details and fan-service Easter eggs every time, but they also get — and discuss at length — how and why female viewers will recognize, identify with, and enjoy/dread some parts of the show more than others, and in an empathetic and supportive manner that other YouTube recap channels can’t and won’t. As more online nerds expose their previously hidden misogyny and chauvinism (see: every Amber Heard commentary out there), Arey and the writing staff’s direct allyship is great to see in every video breakdown.

• The second Black Panther: Wakanda Forever trailer. Why am I crying over a damn movie trailer???

• VICE Asia’s “Deadly Beauty”, “Informer” and “Open Secrets” series of video essays. And the “Philippines” playlist is a good look at how foreigners view us and our motherland. Rewatch this video and know that the conflicting land claims at the Masungi Georeserve kicked up again last month:

Listen

• I’m quite late to discovering Lofi Girl on YouTube — I only learned about this channel/record label when one of its continuous live feeds was cut off due to a false copyright claim. Apparently, she is everywhere, and I’m noticing only now. The animated young lady with a cat is also on Spotify, Apple Music, and even Discord and Reddit. Now, this Spotify playlist is on whenever I’m doing mundane home stuff (cooking and cleaning, mostly).

• Also new to Maggie Rogers’ music. Enjoy!

• For the people in my age group, here you go: a classic NU playlist!

Bonjour, and welcome to Very Online, issue #10.

It’s been two weeks since I received my second COVID-19 vaccine booster shot. I registered online, waited two days for confirmation and other details via SMS, then drove to the SIVC/NPF Mega Vaccination Center in Parañaque City the next day. There, I waited for an hour to enter the vax center premises, but the time from entry and QR code check to jab and waiting period was less than 30 minutes. I was in my car the whole time and got my shot while sitting in the driver’s seat, much like how you’d go for McDonald’s drive-thru.

The only adverse effects I experienced with this (Moderna) booster were a sore injection site – consistent across four vaccine shots – and a large and painful lump in my left armpit (well, that’s a first), plus some fatigue. I’m thankful these three were it for me; I’ve heard of others who had it worse.

And I’m doubly thankful I still haven’t contracted COVID-19. But with all the subvariants and mutations popping up worldwide, my luck will run out soon and I’ll need all the protection I can get. I belong to the A3 priority category of the Philippine population – the group that lives with existing comorbidities. I run the huge risk of having a severe case if/when I do get COVID-19.

Obviously, I’m not gonna play stupid games to win stupid prizes.

BTW, the SIVC/NPF drive-thru site will be open only until July 31. If you’re A3 like me and super tired of waiting for the Department of Health to give us clearance for second boosters, register and go there now!

I’ve also been told that SIVC/NPF has a history of offering primary and booster shots to at-risk groups with or without DOH clearance, and ramping up their approvals during case surges, so…

Pre-game

Before getting my second booster shot, I used SIVC/NPF’s healthcare partner Zuellig Pharma‘s services – via its eZConsult app – to consult with a doctor. I was concerned about whether it was a good idea to mix Sinovac (primary), Pfizer (first booster), and Moderna (second booster) vaccines; and what the overall effect would be given the medications I’m taking now (for hypertension and SSCD-related vertigo). Then I did another telemedicine consult via the AIDE app for a second opinion.

The two doctors I consulted with (an internist, and a general physician) said that if I already had the option to take a second booster, I’d do well to take it. My drug interactions are at an acceptable level, but the Philippines’ COVID-19 infection and vaccination situations are becoming more unwieldy by the day. Government and private vaccination sites nationwide are closing, only 15.7 million of the 71.4 million fully vaccinated Filipinos received booster shots, we as a nation are so brand-conscious that it’s ridiculous at times (give me Pfizer or Moderna or give me nothing!), testing is going down, cases here are going up, and no one does social distancing and proper masking anymore. Things will get worse before they get better, and everyone’s already tired.

And thanks to my chatty internist, I now have a better idea of what’s going on where he is (Pampanga, in Central Luzon). While we down south in Metro Manila are fretting about second boosters, most Filipinos are still on their first boosters with not much takeup. That, and it’s a struggle to get people to take even the primary vaccine shots – the Dengvaxia controversy is still pretty fresh on people’s minds, and they now think all vaccines are bad.

More than that broader situational view, my audio-only consult with the internist ran an hour long instead of the usual 15-30 minutes. That was because we got along fairly well, but also because he did his due diligence. He noted my cardiovascular and hearing/balance history, all my current medications, and the lab tests I should do once the COVID cases ease up again. He listened to everything I said, and did not wave away or dismiss my concerns and opinions like older (male) doctors would. After our call, I had updated prescriptions and lab-test orders, and a tailored game plan for both my second booster shot and afterward.

That’s in stark contrast to my second-opinion consult, done via in-app text chat. We were done in 15 minutes because the general physician took only a brief medical history, and supplied only short answers to my questions.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not blaming the physician in any way. I might have had better results if I had a video or audio call with her instead of just text chat. Or maybe not.

Either way, we really roll the dice with telemedicine.

Pros and cons

“Well,” you may ask, “why didn’t you see your actual cardiologist and ENT for clearance?”

“Because that will take more time than I have, and I have to make a decision now,” I’d say.

For me, that’s the biggest advantage of telemedicine: it goes much faster, and I’m waiting in the comfort of my own home. Pre-pandemic, I would have to call or text my doctors’ secretaries to set up an appointment a few days or a week down the line. Then I’d arrive on time but end up waiting for hours for my turn, only to be rushed because more people were coming in after me.

(My longest waiting time was five hours, for my OB-GYN. FIVE HOURS. Imagine what you can do in five hours.)

Compare that to telemedicine, where I can schedule an appointment on an app for the same day, then wait for only a few hours for my turn. That’s impressive – and I say this as an eternally impatient person.

And then there are the problems related to choice.

I first used AIDE in mid-2020 to consult with a neurologist to rule out a stroke after a particularly nasty bout of vertigo, vomiting, and cranial and inner-ear pressure. Then I learned of other platforms like NowServing (which my cardiologist uses), the aforementioned eZConsult, KonsultaMD, Lifeline, Medgate, Zennya, and other DOH-approved third-party providers.

Government programs like Bayanihan e-Konsulta (then with the Office of the Vice President under Leni Robredo from April 2021-May 2022; now with her Angat Buhay Foundation) went with Facebook and Messenger to accept messages and assistance requests, then these cases were diagnosed and given prescriptions online. COVID-19 Care Package Kits were also sent out to COVID-positive patients, and volunteers monitored their cases all the way to recovery.

By the end of Robredo’s term as Vice President:

…a total of 2,741 volunteers were engaged in the program, processing over 56,262 requests from all over the Philippines.

p. 115, “End of Term Report of the Office of the Vice President, 2016-2022“

(FYI: Bayanihan e-Konsulta’s back on, folks. 1,100 volunteers “in less than 20 minutes“? Sweet.)

For its part, the Philippine Department of Health had >100,000 patients consult with it in Q1 2021 via Cisco Webex. Cisco Philippines also noted that the government agency had “17,400 sessions over Webex in 2020, equivalent to more than 2.3 million minutes of meetings and teleconsultations.”

Major Metro Manila hospitals also adapted by quickly cobbling their own systems. Makati Medical Center, St. Luke’s Medical Center (Quezon City and Bonifacio Global City), The Medical City, Asian Hospital, Cardinal Santos Medical Center, and the Ospital ng Makati all went for a mix of online landing pages + landline calls + consults via Zoom or Microsoft Teams + payments via virtual wallets. These systems aren’t as cohesive as the healthcare apps above, which cover booking and prescriptions and fill-outs all the way down to payments. But they’re better than having nothing.

In a free market, everyone can make and maintain their own telemedicine apps and systems, with medical services paid for or not. That means both healthcare professionals and their patients have plenty of choices – but also plenty of UIs and procedures to learn, and quirks to put up with.

For example, some apps would close while I’m using them. I would have to reopen then and sometimes, do everything all over again. And for some apps, I would try to download a prescription or lab-test request, but my phone won’t tell me where it saved them.

Some doctors and clinics also – unwittingly or intentionally – brought their bad habits to telemedicine. The older/senior-citizen doctors have no time or patience anymore to learn new technologies, so they insist on communicating only via Viber. I heard of a few who simply gave up and retired, closing their clinics when patients (and their staff) needed them the most.

Before the pandemic, my cardiologist’s waiting times were so bad, his secretary had to hand out those buzzer devices used in restaurants’ queuing systems.

Of course, my friends immediately asked if I got free coffee or bread for my three-hour wait. 😉

It took me months to get ahold of him mid-pandemic, which meant I was ‘consulting’ with my father’s cardiologist for an emergency case (again, via Viber) in the meantime – without him ever having even met me. Then I couldn’t just straight up ask my actual doctor for a telemedicine consult. I had to go through his new secretary, who insists on using goddamn Viber for appointment-setting on NowServing.

The kicker was I showed up on time online – and my doctor talked to me two full hours later, and that was after I told his secretary to just cancel my appointment because I was ailing and now fucking mad. And then I paid my hefty ₱1,000 consult bill through bank transfer.

Clearly, telemedicine favors younger and relatively optimistic doctors (and their patients). They thankfully haven’t acquired these bad behaviors yet, and they are digital natives who can easily and quickly learn new platforms/UIs and skills.

I referred my aforementioned neurologist to a close friend, and she said the doctor did good work on her too, and was pleasant and meticulous all throughout. The Pampanga internist charged only ₱300 for our audio chat, showed up on time, and had a great bedside manner. And while both the neurologist and internist do hospital rounds and have their own clinics, they do telemedicine from home (including the digital paperwork) – which brings down their costs, which then means there’s less of that passed down to me.

Compare that to them keeping hospital hours + clinic rental, maintenance, and utility fees + specialty equipment + secretaries’ salaries, and telemedicine obviously wins. For patients like me, the old method would have me pay ₱500 to ₱1,500 per in-clinic consult, depending on the doctor’s years of experience and place in the hospital hierarchy. Then tack on a few thousand more for medications and tests and follow-up tests, and two to three more digits for parking fees.

If telemedicine wins in efficiency, costs, and access to doctors outside my city of residence, what’s the verdict for the actual practice of medicine (expert examination, diagnosis and follow-ups backed by decades of study and clinical practice)?

As uncomfortable as it can be, nothing compares to physically being in a doctor’s office and consulting face-to-face. It feels more personal, more involved, and more informed. The doctor is right there, you can describe and/or show them what’s bothering you and they’ll see what you see, and there is little room for misunderstandings. It’s also easier to proceed to lab tests and other procedures straight from your doctor’s clinic.

The telemedicine boom in the Philippines happened mainly because the pandemic ensured we didn’t have any other option. Our hospitals were overrun with COVID-19 cases; and the healthcare professionals who bravely stayed in the country were truly at high risk, overworked, and underpaid. ‘Back then’, everything was a risk.

So for those like me whose conditions were not related to COVID-19, all in-hospital checkups, tests, and procedures were postponed indefinitely. If you can’t postpone it, you’re stuck with telemedicine, such that on KonsultaMD, online consults with doctors went up a whopping 450% by July 2020.

And if you really had to go to a hospital designated as a pandemic hub (as I had to do eventually, for CAT scans, MRIs, and hearing/coordination tests), you had to fill out clearance forms in advance every time – and you must accept that you may contract COVID while you’re there. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Other concerns

Once again, I am aware that I am speaking of telemedicine in the Philippines as a person of privilege. But I also know that the demographic and sector telemedicine is supposed to help first – those in rural areas, the marginalized, and the underemployed – urgently need improved access and tailored tools for it.

This March 2022 story on BusinessWorld scratches the surface of telemedicine and its shortcomings. It raises SMS telemedicine and 24/7 voice-call hotlines as equally viable options for access, especially for Filipinos who rely on Facebook’s Free Basics. In a country like ours with shitty and expensive internet, text and landline calls would always be more reliable and cost-effective.

The questions of gadget access and digital literacy were also raised in that article and in this November 2021 article in the Frontiers in Pharmacology journal. Think about it: how can the underprivileged do telemedicine if they don’t have a cellphone to begin with, or the needed knowledge and adaptability for new tech?

The Philippines is also highly dependent on exporting people to survive, and has been for decades. That includes healthcare workers: doctors, nurses, therapists, and caregivers. Remember when the government banned these workers from leaving the country in April 2020? Yeah, that happened. Basically, we have too many patients needing healthcare that few professionals can provide, or are willing to stay to do so:

…the shortage of doctors is also a problem, according to Jay Fajardo, chief executive officer and co-founder of telehealth platform provider Medifi.

The capital region has 10 doctors for 10,000 patients, but in the countryside, the ratio is down to fewer than three doctors, he told an online forum last year. “That needs to be addressed.”

Arjay L. Balinbin, “Telehealth offers Filipinos a lifeline amid pandemic”, BusinessWorld, March 3, 2022

Frontiers in Pharmacology also named the Philippines’ lack of legal frameworks for telemedicine (with app-makers and third parties taking the initiative instead) as a barrier, and the need for telemedicine to be included in medical programs and residencies. Both will take a long while to sort out and have them bear fruit. But it looks like telemedicine is here to stay, even after COVID-19 ends… Assuming COVID-19 ends.

Punyeta, this pandemic better end. With me (and you) still alive. Until then, take care, and maybe have a video call with your doctor(s) to keep your records and status updated. And always ask them how they’re doing. The situation’s been pretty fucked up for them, too.

Yo. Welcome to Very Online, issue #8. Yes, I sent out #9 before #8. My bad.

And yes, the newsletter looks… different. It’s not you. It’s me.

The short version of the story is I thought I was done moving homes. But no: turns out I had to do it to my little newsletter as well.

For those interested in moving their newsletters to their own domain and web hosting without going through the wringer, here’s the long version.

Sign up, pack up

Very Online started out on Revue six months ago. I first learned of the (then Twitter-owned)1 free newsletter service from feminist author and journalist Caroline Criado Perez – she used it for her Invisible Women newsletter. (Really good read, BTW.) And I went with Revue because everyone was on Substack; I signed up there to read my friends’ newsletters, but I wanted to use something else for my own publication. Pangontra lang, LOL. 

I liked how easy and complicated Revue’s UI is. If all you wanted is a simple publication with an equally simple interface, this one was it. You got only the basics. There was no bloat, no complex options, absolutely nothing that would distract you from writing.

Then the kinks began to show. Revue redirected my newsletter to my own custom domain for free, a feature I have to pay for on Substack and other platforms. However, I couldn’t force HTTPS on it (that padlock icon you see on your browser) as I was on a free account. Basically, that redirected domain wasn’t secure.

Integrating my newsletter with my Twitter and Medium accounts was seamless too, as expected. How about integration with other services? That part wasn’t as easy. I take that back: the answer was no bueno unless I use automation services like Zapier.

Revue also sucked at embedding content like GIFs. I had to download them before embedding them, which isn’t how the world does GIFs these days.

As bearable as those kinks were at first, I began wanting even more out of Revue after a newsletter issue or two. There were only two templates available on the free plan, and the only customizations you could do were to add your own logo and change brand colors.

And while Revue took only a 5% cut from paid-newsletter subscription fees, it forced users to set up Stripe, a payments platform that’s currently unavailable in the Philippines. There are workarounds to this, but I don’t want to go through that particular hassle.

Round 2

So off I went to Ghost, a snazzier and more flexible newsletter platform highly recommended by people who do paid newsletters.

Man, if I thought Revue was alright, Ghost 5.0 was something else. It prides itself on making your newsletter issues SEO-friendly, so it presents each issue like a blog post with editable URLs and tags.

It also has Markdown support and the drag-and-drop UI I was already used to through WordPress‘ Gutenberg editor. But Ghost’s UI also gives a wealth of options for design, formatting, and embedding content. It feels more intuitive, too – I never struggled with searching for and adding rich media, switching elements around, or making Very Online look super-professional. 

I swear, Ghost 5.0 is fucking beautiful.

It’s so beautiful, it almost made me forget that I had to pay US$11/month for it (or US$108/year on the Starter plan, which brings the monthly fee down to US$9). That translates to ₱620/month or ₱6,100/year at the current exchange rate of ₱56/US$1 – the lowest our humble currency has ever gone against the almighty colonizer dollar.

And again, Stripe is the only option if you want to turn your free newsletter into a paid one. Yeah, no.

As in love as I was with Ghost’s UI, I knew I had to go somewhere else. That beauty literally has a price I can’t pay for or maximize long-term.

Thank you, next

I have used (self-hosted) WordPress for more than a decade, and that free CMS has always been the backbone of my portfolio and book blog. I’ve tried other platforms (Blogspot, Tumblr, Wix, WordPress.com), but I always went back to WordPress.

I mean, it’s pretty hard to go wrong with a CMS that runs 43.3% of all websites and has a flourishing plugin ecosystem that’s now 55,000+ strong. If you want to turn your website into a newsletter, you can probably find a plugin for that.

…Which is exactly what happened in my case.

I found several newsletter plugins made primarily for WordPress, but The Newsletter Plugin (TNP) was the most sensible option for me. It has almost all of the features I need (and would want to use in the future) and I can access those features via plugins and a drag-and-drop UI. I don’t have to install every feature and plugin either, which helps with CMS bloat.

TNP was also running a heavy discount on the day I finally paid for premium features. From US$96, it dropped to US$69, then to US$48 for one day (around ₱2,700). That’s a huge markdown compared to Ghost’s total monthly/annual fees, so the decision was quite easy to make.

(I wonder how it’ll be next year when my annual license expires.)

Missing these guys, though

Gotta admit it, I was spoiled by Revue and Ghost in massive ways. And those ways highlight how WordPress (and TNP) is being and has been left behind.

WordPress’ Gutenberg editor is one good example. For the longest time, WordPress users were saddled by the old Classic Editor, which was getting rusty and complicated compared to other online services that offered simpler and more intuitive UIs. It’s like you still using the ‘80s-era Lotus word processor when everyone’s already on Google Docs. Or, for a newer reference, it’s like you’re still on Snapchat when everyone’s already on TikTok.

Gutenberg is WordPress’ way of catching up with the pack and it has gone through significant improvements since its launch. But it still has some ways to go – and it is showing signs of becoming as cluttered as the Classic Editor, this time via third-party content blocks.

Since TNP relies on WordPress for design and functionality, its editor is stuck in an awkward state too, like it can’t leave puberty behind. You can build your newsletter issues via drag-and-drop, but TNP has none of Ghost’s flair or forward-thinking. That means no Markdown support, no content excerpts, no callout text, no subscriber-only content, no toggled or collapsible content, and no downloadable files and product recommendations.

And for all their dependence on Stripe to process subscriber payments for paid newsletters, Revue and Ghost make it easy for those in Stripe’s supported countries to do it. TNP does have Locked Content, but it’s only for blog content. There is no way to make subscriber-only newsletter issues. WordPress is still primarily a blogging CMS so blogging will always be the priority here, not newsletters. Or at least until the general public decides blogging should go the way of the dinosaurs.

But… Why put up with all this from TNP and WordPress?

Because I want to avoid digital sharecropping.

I first learned about this term and concept in the early ‘00s from Copyblogger founder Brian Clark and his team. They have always encouraged web copywriters and content marketers to own the websites and blogs they publish on, and never to rely on services (free or paid) that promise convenience in exchange for site/content ownership and control.

…anyone can create content on sites like Facebook, but that content effectively belongs to Facebook. The more content we create for free, the more valuable Facebook becomes. We do the work, they reap the profit.

The term sharecropping refers to the farming practices common after the U.S. Civil War, but it’s essentially the same thing as feudalism. A big landholder allows individual farmers to work their land and takes most of the profits generated from the crops.

The landlord has all the control. If he decides to get rid of you, you lose your livelihood. If he decides to raise his fees, you go a little hungrier. You do all the work and the landlord gets most of the profit, leaving you a pittance to eke out a living on.

Sonia Simone, “Digital Sharecropping: The Most Dangerous Threat to Your Content Marketing Strategy”, Copyblogger

A decade later, I see this could have been part of their long-term efforts to get people to buy into Copyblogger’s other services. After all, it used to own StudioPress, which sells WordPress themes and the Genesis framework; and it offers online marketing services through agencies Rainmaker Digital and Digital Commerce.

But I still find its logic sound. Different online services and platforms enforce their rules differently, and their small changes could mean heavy losses on my part. If I’m writing something under my own name and in my free time, it better damn well be published on a platform I own and control.

My wishlist

After six months of newsletter service-hopping, I want to see the following features in one service or platform for a good price.

Comprehensive payment platform support

I do not care about Stripe, and it is taking too long to notice us Filipinos and other Third-World countries because our colonized-people money isn’t good enough for it.

Put PayPal and Wise in the mix. (Given all the complaints against PayPal, I say prioritize Wise – my experience with it has been excellent so far.) If you’re localizing, look into GCash, Maya, PayMongo, and DragonPay. Hell, use even Bayad and AliPay and WeChat Pay if you want!

My point is that Stripe doesn’t cater to everyone and odds are it never will, so don’t hold your breath. If you’re in the newsletter-platform business, you better make it easy for people in countries like mine to monetize, too. Do not exclude us.

Custom pricing

Honestly, everything is expensive these days. And costs of living run differently per country/region. Sometimes, no matter how industrious and foresighted you are, you really are stuck within the bounds of the land you live in and/or were born in.

Things are getting real dicey over here in Asia, people. We’ve got corruption and massive inflation and dictator-families back in power and assassinations and overthrows and territorial disputes/land-grabbing, etcetera etcetera, ad infinitum. Help us out and offer better prices for us. We cannot afford Western pricing anymore.

Newsletter issues import and export

I write and save my newsletter issues somewhere else and just copy + paste them into my UI of choice. So it was easy for me to recreate my archive when I was moving between platforms.

But I still ran into a few problems, even with just seven prior issues to import. Having a built-in import/export function (similar to subscriber imports/exports) that requires minimal editing and formatting afterward would be so damn nice.

Better UIs and more features

Give me something that combines Revue’s uncluttered layout, Ghost’s forward-thinking and love for rich media, and TNP’s features-as-plugins. Throw in subscriber-only newsletter issues, simple but thorough analytics, and built-in SMTP services plus everything mentioned above, and you’ll have me as a customer for life.

Other thoughts

All this also makes me wonder about the true prospects of newsletter writing here in the Philippines as a creative – and financial – venture, not just as a marketing tool for something else.

I write my Very Online issues along the theme of a life being lived online. It’s a personal newsletter and I do it for fun, but I may monetize it in the future. Some friends use their newsletters as personal blogs or offshoots of existing blogs. I also see newsletters from Philippine authors and journalists that skate the thin lines between context provider, blog, and marketing vehicle.

Whatever the form our newsletters take on, there will always be the question of whether Filipino audiences will actually pay for our content. Part of the reason why one of the industries I worked in – tech-magazine publishing – died here is that free blogs utterly decimated it. People get their content for free now, and tech blogs are faster at putting out that free content online than the monthly print mags priced then at ₱150 (US$3) upward. Then the publishers still had to pay annual franchising fees and monthly outlays for distributors and printing presses. Whatever was earned from reader subscriptions, corporate ads, and event and raffle sponsorships dried up real quick until everyone just closed shop and fired all their staff.

Not only are Filipino readers notoriously thrifty, but they’re also condescending and demanding. They will rarely pay for good content, but they want it right now – and how dare you charge money for your writing because writing is easy and anyone can do it! For all the time we spend on arts and entertainment, there is very little respect here for their practitioners and their efforts.

This also partly explains why book piracy is booming here and Filipino-authored books have to stay at certain price ranges to sell locally… But these are for another time and newsletter issue.

I guess I’m just really envious of these Western newsletter writers who can churn out both free and paid issues, and can live off their work to some degree. Maybe that’s the biggest lesson I learned in newslettering: it may be a booming industry abroad, but it looks like we are not there yet. Far from it. Could we get there, though?

Howdy, and welcome to Very Online, issue #9.

Today, June 30, 2022, is a sad day for my motherland, the Philippines.

At 12:00 PM PHT, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Romualdez Marcos was sworn into office. He, the son of the late dictator Ferdinand Edralin Marcos and convicted grafter Imelda Romualdez Marcos, is now the 17th President of the Fifth Republic of the Philippines.

His Vice President is Sara Duterte Carpio, the daughter of Rodrigo Roa Duterte, the 16th President of the Fifth Republic of the Philippines best known for his raging misogyny, his literally bloody ‘war on drugs’ that targets the poor, and for his unwillingness to enforce our sovereignty through our 2016 international-court victory over China and its fabricated ‘nine-dash line.’ She was sworn in several days earlier, while Leni Gerona Robredo, the Vice President and Marcos’ main rival for the presidency, was still holding office.

So… Yep. Darkest Timeline.

Assuming that the number of people who voted for them is made up of real, living, breathing human beings and not padded with false election returns, Marcos and Duterte were given their mandates by millions of Filipinos in the Philippines and abroad. Marcos is said to have garnered 31.6 million votes, translating to “58.77% of ballots cast, with an 82% turnout.”

(The International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines or ICHRP found “massive fraud” during these national elections, BTW. In Tagalog: Putangina, luto.)

He is also the first candidate to win without a solid campaign platform other than ‘Unity’; the first president to belong to a family that plundered (a conservative estimate of) US$5-10 billion from the country’s coffers; and the first president to be in control of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), a government agency tasked solely with investigating his family’s ill-gotten wealth. Among many other massive red flags – thinking about writing about all of them is making me tired and my blood boil.

For a wider picture, the Marcos and Duterte families have robbed the country blind, killed thousands (and had more killed in their name), and remain completely unrepentant for their decades-long crimes. And they and their cronies run the land now. (Not that they ever stopped. Philippine politics, y’all.)

I don’t move on easily. I am still processing Robredo’s election ‘loss’ – and how 31 million people fell for propaganda via troll farms and wasted their right to vote. I am still processing my rage at the many ways governance in this country keeps getting worse, how politicians are becoming more brazen in their crimes, and how the silencing of media outlets and individuals began before Inauguration Day. And I am still processing my fear that this hellhole will not end after six years. I mean, baby dictators gotta dictate like dear ol’ daddy.

All that processing means I don’t have the words, patience, or bandwidth to express what so many of us already have, online and offline. What I can tell you right now are:

• Read up on what the Marcoses have done in their previous 21 years in power. Printed, factual history is now being revised, and they will use modernized tactics for the same goals of plunder and power.

  • I recommend this super-loaded Google Drive by Joshua Koo for online resources, and these titles too.

• Watch everything you can. I mean everything. Make all those streaming accounts worth the fees.

  • Imelda by Ramona Diaz and The Kingmaker by Lauren Greenfield are must-sees.

  • Diaz’s A Thousand Cuts as well, for how Duterte goes after journalists (Maria Ressa and Rappler, in particular) and the rise of fake news here.

• Explore your available migration/relocation options.

  • I really like Iceland and New Zealand, although racism and anti-Asian attacks are on the rise there, too.

• Become much more selective in the people, businesses, and groups you support, financially or otherwise. If you cannot change people’s minds or engage them in healthy and respectful debates, and are being attacked by staunch Marcos and Duterte supporters, starve them of their supply.

  • Right after the elections, many in my social circles have vowed to restrict their philanthropic efforts to Robredo’s Angat Buhay NGO (which is officially launching tomorrow!), patronize businesses that were vocal about their support for Robredo and her sterling track record in governance and public service, and their contacts who also supported Robredo and candidates other than Marcos and Duterte and their slate. They have also swiftly unfriended pro-BBM and pro-DDS contacts from their social media accounts and in their offline lives.

  • I plan to do the same, and I am in the middle of the unfriending process as well. They cannot have access to me and my meager resources if we do not have the same morals and respect for human life and freedoms.

  • And if they can compromise their belief systems and morals, they can compromise my life and safety. Dictators love using informants to maintain their power, FYI.

• Vet your sources, and stick to legitimate journalism publications for your news updates. Online misinformation has long taken hold of the Philippines – we were the testing ground for how Facebook can be weaponized for election campaigns.

• Enjoy your freedoms (and internet access) while you still have them. The silencing starts with journalists and activists, then extends to private citizens. I dread the day I will come under attack for this newsletter and my book blog and my politics and mere existence, even if I am not as militant as other folks. The question isn’t IF; it’s WHEN. And Filipinos have died for much less.

Today is Day 1. Take a deep breath, and maybe a few more. We’re in it now. I love you, friends.

And for friends reading this who are outside the Philippines – I love you too, but please don’t come back here. Not until someone else who isn’t a relative or crony is in Malacañang.