Even Better Motherfucking Website
That’s it, that’s the blog post.
No, seriously, I know I talk so much about how I miss the old Internet, but you really CAN just build a website like these and fill it whatever you want, and you don’t have to make it look and work like every other site nowadays. As long as it works and presents clearly what it needs to present. These three are battling for website of the year in my books.
On December 5, 2025, my sister, my boyfriend, and I went on a private tour to see the Pinatubo crater lake. “There would be a hike before we make it up to the lake.” Okay, sure, we’ve all hiked before. “It would be a 3.5 to a 7 km hike, depending on the day’s and the path’s condition.” Yeah, sure no problem. “The trail is mild with little elevation and some stairs.” Sounds great.
Reader, that was one of the most hilarious mistakes I’ve ever made in my life.
We’ve made some hiking-related missteps before, like when a hike in Sagada ended up involving some scrambling over boulders, or when we visited Masungi Georeserve and were stunned when we saw that we had to climb down ropes a few times. This Pinatubo hike was an extraordinary experience, because while 7 km didn’t sound daunting, the trail was rough, and there were so many river crossings.
But the crater lake itself was beautiful, and it was a very cool, sunny day. We spent an hour up there admiring the view, winding down from the hike up, and psyching ourselves for the hike down.
We were the slowest among all the groups that visited that day; we were expecting to catch up to a group or two resting at some point, but it appears that they were all superhumanly fast. We still can’t figure out how everyone else appears to have completed the hike so swiftly; my only guess is that the volcano hated us and did its best to inconvenience us, although if it did hate us, then wouldn’t it have wanted us gone as soon as possible?
The return trip to where our 4 × 4 vehicle was waiting was pretty hellish; we could see the vehicle from afar but even after a half-hour of walking, it didn’t seem like we were getting any closer. There was also the panic-inducing fact that the rivers were rising and flowing more powerfully than they did in the morning and that the sky went dark a few times that I was honestly worried about getting caught in a possible downpour and dying by flash flood.
My takeaways from the trip:
I’ll be posting a video of the trip. I’ll even make it look like the most amazing time I’ve ever had. But holy shit, that hike was TOUGH and, if I can be honest, seeing the place once is enough.
I’m using a photo Bom posted on her Substack because I don’t want to share her photo here without her permission, plus I’m writing this post without her knowledge.
Before the 2020s, I was on Tumblr a lot, and that’s where I made friends with Bom. we only met once, at the BGC Art Mart where I was selling stickers and notebooks featuring my illustrations, and we chat from time to time. I’m a big fan of how she lives her life, how she makes time to explore the city, and how she’s very into improving herself. She has a Substack, Pangarap Kong Maging Hot and Other Stories, and I always make sure to read whenever she posts something. Her writing feels raw, honest, and refreshing. One of my dreams is to see this become a book someday—the title is so catchy—and be its editor. I feel like she has a lot to say that people generally don’t say out loud or don’t realize that they’re also thinking and experiencing, plus her writing is deeper than the usual “single lady in the city” fare.
The year is almost over and some of the creative projects I wanted to get off the ground this year have…not gotten off the ground at all 😀 I’ll get to them, I promise, which is the same thing I said last year, really, but I WILL take them all a step at a time and do something— however small—every day for each of them just so they’re moving forward.
The last quarter of 2025 was when I was supposed to take them seriously, but I got sick for a few weeks and then got sick again for another week, plus I consciously decided to expend most of my energy on my jobs, so here’s where I currently am in terms of those creative projects. But instead of beating myself up over not having completed any of them, I’m being a little kinder to myself and just giggling and saying, “Oops! Silly lil me.”
So yeah, it’s looking like those projects will still be ongoing in 2026. Kind of impressive that I had 365 days to do them and I did none of them. Reminds me of that tweet about a vampire who’s been alive for hundreds of years and still hadn’t gotten around to learning a new language, because that is exactly what I would be like as a vampire.
Yesterday was the Philippine book launch for Yasmin Ortiga‘s book Stuck at Home: Pandemic Immobilities in a Nation of Emigration, published internationally by Stanford University Press and locally by the De La Salle University Publishing House. I’m very honored to have been a part of this project as the copyeditor and book indexer. I also love that the creation of this book was helped along by Facebook; Yasmin and her research collaborated over Facebook, she conducted interviews with her respondents over Facebook Messenger, and she found me through a friend over—you guessed it—Facebook.
The book is a snapshot in time, talking about the challenges faced by overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) during the pandemic. The lockdowns forced aspiring OFWs to abandon their plans to work abroad, stopped current OFWs on vacation here from leaving the Philippines because they were not allowed to return to their jobs and lives abroad, and led OFWs back home after being let go from their jobs during the pandemic and subsequently forced to figure out how they fit in the Philippine job market. One could say it’s a pretty dry topic, but Yasmin tells the stories of the OFWs she interviewed with heart and sympathy while providing in-depth research and commentary on the situation. It’s just a really good read and I hope more people get their hands on the book.
Congratulations and thank you, Yasmin!