Buhay Pandemya: Back to the Office!

Tomorrow I report back to the office!  After more than 6 months, we have been required to return to work, with the usual medical clearances. 

Mixed feelings. I will have to change my routine again. I am thinking of waking up 5am to do my home workout. I should be in the office by 9am. I hope to be out of the office by 5pm thereabouts.

Well, I do miss working in an office. The whole day A/C. The quiet surroundings. (No tricycles, ambulant vendors, dogs barking) I’m eager to check on my office plants, assuming these are still alive. I am able to focus on work at hand. And yeah, I miss dressing up to go to work. 

I will miss my big monitor. I have gotten used to this 42” 2nd monitor at home. I only have a 21” 2nd monitor in the office. 

I will miss multitasking - fixing home stuff, cleaning up even as I listen in on meetings.

I will miss the flexibility to do work while on the bed, couch, roofdeck.

I will miss hot, newly cooked lunch as I willl go back to eating my baon, usually served cold as I am lazy when it comes to reheating at the pantry.

I am not without apprehensions. I don’t know if I could be ‘safe’ enough when out there. I actually am still figuring out my own protocols - mask+shield all throughout? Not entertaining people within my office? Disinfecting before and after? Etc etc I don’t want to overwhelm myself. Let’s just see how it goes tomorrow.

It was good while it lasted. Working from home experience finally answered a lot of previous what-ifs. I remember my previous boss not wanting to consider the idea AT ALL, even for a day in a week. 

I remained productive.  I was still motivated to work the whole 8 hours, sometimes even more. 

But it was also very stressful. Meetings one after the other. Or sometimes double booking meetings. That is on top of emails, SMS, Viber, that everyone seems to assume that you would answer immediately. Now na. As in.

For me, well, work belongs in the office (at least my kind of work) and relaxing and chilling belongs outside the office. The geographic delineation allows for easy mental and emotional separation. And we need that moreso now.

If I had a choice, it would be a 4-day workweek. A 3-day weekend would be divine.

Buhay Pandemya: Thanks for the add

It must be this quarantine/lockdown. In a span of month, I have had 3 friend requests from strangers. And after the ‘thanks for the add’ pleasantries, it’s straight to “are you single?” Whoa. It didn’t even bother to establish some kind of ‘friendship’. The first one abruptly ended the convo after I told him that I did, and the FB friendship, when I said I was in a relationship. 2nd one hasn’t messaged me since. 3rd one is still maintaining some contact.

I’ve been on FB for more than 10 years; And only now am I getting this strange, extremely direct messages. Have they grown tired of Grindr or Tinder? They didn’t even bother to with the FB dating app (whatever happened to that?). Might as well do this right on FB.

Ok. Ok. I am quite flattered. But should I be? Or is this just desperation thinking that COVID might strike them down? Or a quarantine jowa is a thing now? 

I would have wanted to flirt, honestly. But I guess they’re not going to have any of that. Oh well.

Alcohol and me 2

Boracay’s Juice Bar

Boracay was another excuse to get drunk (and hopefully, get laid). And that old Juice Bar was THE best place. It felt like a community bar, small yet brimming with people on weekends. The bartenders were fun and engaging. Two memories stand out.

During that swinging single phase of my life, I was in Boracay part work, part leisure. Friday night, I was at Juice Bar, chatting with different people at the bar. I was so drunk I had to lie down on the beach not far from Juice bar. 

I was dozing off when this guy, one of those I had pleasant chats with, came to my ‘rescue’. He woke me up and told me he was going to accompany me back to my room. He said he couldn’t leave me there when he saw me, as he saw my cellphone and wallet just lying beside me.

He helped me to my room. And at that point, I was sort of expecting something to happen. But he didn’t make any moves. We ended up talking a bit and realizing that he was the person I was going to meet up with the following day for work. Thank Heavens nothing happened. It would have been so awkward. 

And maybe, I just wasn’t his type. He was just a good Samaritan. Hehe

The other memory involved c3, at the time we were still dating. That night was sooo much fun as we were drinking, no holds barred. I was so drunk I kept on tripping and falling going back to the room. And that was a looonng walk. c3 claimed I was taking off my clothes, too. I honestly could not remember. C3 never fails to remind me of how drunk I have gotten.  

Ang hirap talaga pag sinasaniban ng espiritu ng alak.