Hi!

So it’s been almost 7 months since I last updated. Life had been so crazy that I didn’t even have time to create anything… well, I did do a little self-portrait but even with that I got so frustrated that I haphazardly finished it and now there are tears in the edges of the paper where I placed a tape to make a white borders.

Anyway.

I know nobody would care about this but I just wanted to do this for the sake of posting it. I mean I had just published a short story (check it out if you’d like or not because it’s a little bit of romance and might be cringy for you) a few moments ago but I feel like doing another one that is a little bit about my life lately.

Right. So the last time I said anything about me was in March last year where I said I’m currently based in the UK for work. Well, a few weeks after that post, I went home to the Philippines for a much needed month-long vacation.. well, it’s more of a 3-and-a-half-week-long vacation. The sheer difference between the temperatures. I was wearing a jacket boarding the flight and next thing I knew, I had to take it off because of the sweltering heat. Not gonna lie, I didn’t really miss it (the coldness of the UK is not any better to be honest), but at least we had an air-conditioning unit at home.

During that period of time, we visited Siargao for 4 days, which was so refreshing because I missed the beaches. We went for a litle bit of kayaking as well, and I might have jumped off into the water from a 10-feet-high platform for funsies (although I got bad bruising on the back of my thighs because the way I jumped wasn’t good). We also went to a part where there was just jellyfish everywhere. Initially, my sisters and I thought it would be fun but as soon as we hit the waters, we were just clinging on to the boats, not wanting to get touched (they were harmless by the way). We were so uncomfortable that we just started laughing (crazies) and just tried to avoid as much jellyfish as we could. We went to a few caves, did a boodle fight (which we didn’t finish sadly), and roaming around the place at night.

That was the highlight of our vacation. We spent most of the time travelling between home and the city proper. We had to process some papers and also surprised our old colleagues at our previous workplace as well.

A month after, I spent a weekend-long brithday celebration. My sister and I went to see To Kill A Mockingbird at West End on Friday, then we visited Windsor with our housemates the next day. We did the long walk on The Long Walk, which, in my opinion, was therapeutic for me because I liked walking and I was listening to some music, which is my go to activity when I don’t feel tired. Sunday was my birthday and I spent some time mowing our backyard and I ordered Domino’s for dinner.

Nothing much really happened until August, when my housemates, sister, a couple of other old colleagues and I went to Scotland for a week. And let me tell you, it’s the most beautiful place I’ve been to so far. We got to visit a lot of places in Edinburgh (4 days, 3 nights) and Inverness (2 days, 2 nights). We haven’t really roamed around Glasgow because we only got one full day there but hopefully when we go back, we’d be able to discover more of the city.

We celebrated christmas at one of our housemates’ aunt’s flat. We didn’t have anything else to do and when her aunt invited us, we immediately accepted. Some of their other relatives were there but they didn’t really stay longer. We spent our christmas eve there playing Cards Against Humanity while watching a tv game show and went home at some point on christmas day.

During January and February, my sister and I processed our tourist visas for the Netherlands, which was difficult to get an appointment for but in the end, we got them with a 1-year validity, which is good enough for us. We had yet to visit the country, and I couldn’t wait for my vacation to come.

My other sister visited us for a week during April on her birthday week and we (my 2 sisters, and housemates) spent a lot of time in Brighton (especially on the pier and just sitting by the sea) and London (where my phone got stolen). We also visited Arundel and had a spontaneous sleepover after with an old colleague and my sister’s boyfriend coming over. We cooked Filipino dishes, had karaoke and watched half a movie before we all declared exhaustion and could not stay awake any longer.

Between March 2023 and today, we had been to a lot of shows. Just last week, we watched the theatre version of Spirited Away in London on its opening night and boy, was it so good. I hope we’ve got more of these coming for us because we need this.

Well, that’s it. If you reached this part of the post, thank you so much for being patient with me rambling.

I hope I’ll be motivated again to write something soon.

Toodles!