Looking back, when this month was just beginning...

I was in a hotel somewhere down south of the country, about to begin fieldwork for a project that I am currently eyeball-deep in and trying to craft a report for.

N Hotel, Kauswagan, Cagayan de Oro City, Philippines

Even then I was already a bit behind with organizing my data. What with my disk drive dying on me and respondents suddenly deciding to be difficult.

Yesterday, in an almost desperate effort to improve the pace of my work I tried out something new. I tried using Scrivener, an app that I use for writing my books, to write my report and to organize my data.

And guess what, it seems to be working! Nothing as dramatic as getting the report done by end of the week but at the very least I can hope for a finished rough draft that I can polish next week (simultaneous with the start of fieldwork for another project). I will write a full separate post on the wonders of Scrivener after it has taken me through the Finish Line for both projects (that would mean a bit of a wait though, like, around July).

Meanwhile I bear the pain of not being able to read the books I got on sale from Cagayan de Oro City -- Less than Php500 for all of these:

 
Doctor Who keeps me company on the very late nights that I force myself to stay up. But it gets more difficult each day, trying to trick myself to do the same amount of crazy work I used to do when I was in my early twenties. There are more important things for me to do now than work. My body knows it. My heart knows it. My spirit knows it. They have all gotten wiser to the tricks I make to make them work too hard or too long.

I bear it all for a chance to be in London.

travel story : hong kong, day 1

My sister and I went to Hong Kong on the 24th of October for a 3-night stay. It was a last-minute decision aided by unexpected help.

Flight to Hong Kong was around 5:45am so I hardly slept cramming my packing. Very bleary-eyed on the way to the airport and could barely keep myself awake through check-in.

At the Eaton Smart Hotel before 9am but we had to wait for our room to become available. The wait was worth it and we caught up on some sleep until noon.

When we were more sober then we had a better look around the room. A printed guide advised us about the earth-friendly effort of Hong Kong to reduce plastic usage so bringing one's own shopping bags would be the best way to go. The stores will provide shopping bags but for a small fee. Fortunately I have already made it a habit to bring my own bags so there was no problem. The hotel itself also had earth-friendly practices in place.

We had a good view of Nathan Road from our window. I had a cup of free tea as I slowly absorbed being in Hong Kong.

A 7-eleven was right across the hotel so we stocked up on breakfast and snack foods to save on money.

There were a few treats from the hotel but we don't drink and the other offers could only be claimed by a purchase which we could barely afford so we passed on those.

In the evening we went to the Temple Night Market which was just two streets away. I had a roasted chicken and duck rice topping. Then we scanned the goods for sale and indulged in a bracelet each (costing HK$15 apiece).

We were still not fully recovered from the previous night so we also decided to rest early and plan the next day.