Field Notes: Week 47

November 16-22, 2025

Welcome to my field notes! Mostly about what I read while on my commute home, observations I have in that liminal state, and the occasional random bits-and-bobs that I come across even outside my commute hour.

• I get a medical journal emailed to me now through my workplace’s Google group. Skimmed one research article out of curiosity: Impact on Transmissibility and Case Fatality Rate of COVID-19 of the Mandatory Face Shield Use in Addition to Mask during the Pandemic: The Philippine Experience. Results showed that although the mandatory face shield use actually INCREASED susceptibility to COVID-19, it also decreased case fatality rate. One factor was how the general Filipino populace used (and reused) face shields for extended periods of time as compared to the less stringent use of face shields in the healthcare setting (for hygiene and infection control reasons, OBVIOUSLY). This extended use of the face shield combined with the plastic water-repellent material of the face shield—a material where viruses can get stuck on and remain alive for multiple days equals a breeding ground where you get exposed to the virus for a longer period of time. This extended stay of the virus on the plastic face shield DID also mean its viral load degrades over time, making it less virulent. Hence, increased susceptibility but less case fatality rate.

• Flooded Tombs of the Nile [National Geographic - YT]

  • I’ve always loved ancient Egypt. My elementary school summers were spent reading history books, rewatching The Mummy with my mom who loved that movie to pieces, and reading my dad’s action adventure pocketbooks (I was 8 years old and reading that, yeah). I also remember when House of Anubis was showing on Nickelodeon, and after rushing through my homework for the day, I would sit on the wooden floor in my silly kid pajamas watching on our old TV, the kind that was chunky and clunky in all the most nostalgic of ways. I would intermittently get up to slap the back of the TV, palm hitting plastic and heat to get rid of the staticky lines that interrupted my daily viewing.

  • It’s exciting that I can get back into some childhood hobbies, in a way. Anyways, the documentary was about the excavation of the tomb of Nastasen in present-day Sudan. Imagine being in the middle of a desert, and having to go gear up in diving gear because his tomb was flooded and entirely submerged. Three chambers, untouched for millenia. They would dive into what was basically zero visibility into the third chamber (where the tomb is said to be) and bring buckets of mud to the surface, to be painstakingly sifted through. Here they found pieces of bone and actual pieces of paper-thin gold foil, which used to cover the surfaces of the shabti (funerary figurines) that they also found there.

  • This also reminds me of Dr. Kathleen Martinez and her search for Cleopatra’s Tomb—ANOTHER INSANE THING I MUST DISCUSS WHEN I LEARN MORE.

• LRT. 5:26PM - Nov 18. I’m standing in the last car of a packed train. As I was shoulder-to-shoulder with people whose lives I’ll never know, what I did find out was that the sunset aligned perfectly within the arch of the Binondo-Intramuros bridge. No, I wasn’t able to get a snapshot. I had to soak up the 5 seconds that I would see that view before the train fully passed the bridge and the old Manila buildings hid them from view. The sun was diluted behind oranges mixing intimately with pinks, filtered through the smoggy blues of Manila.

• Getting back into writing like I am slowly learning how to walk after running for so long. How do I find my voice again when I’ve been through months where I was screaming so much, I got too tired to even talk?

• During my pomodoro work block break, I watched the ARTMS Icarus (Cinematic Ver.) MV for the first time even though it was released way back in June.

  • Being reborn like a phoenix after being shot down.

  • False hopes and a graveyard of dreams.

• I subscribed to Poem-a-Day by Poets.org and doing so made me realize how much I’ve forgotten to just let myself enjoy things, and observe around me. A poem a day helps keep tedious life at bay...

  Nov. 19: Lodestone by Annie Wenstrup.

Is this how god would judge me: counting

to see how long it takes my atoms to diverge

then align with his magnetic field?

[...] I don’t need

to be seen, but I need the

whale, the waves, the certainty

that we exist.

• Judge me down to my bones and how well my body works. What is there more to me than my constantly dividing and dying and trying, trying, trying, to keep everything in check?

• Walking through my old campus, and serendipitously meeting some old friends along the way. I hope my face lit up as brightly as theirs did.

• I keep accidentally pressing the Alt button on my personal laptop because I got used to pressing the Command button on my work Macbook … What my first week of an office job did to me…

• Behind the wind-slapped strands of my hair, I looked out the jeepney to see the one lone store open at 7AM, nestled between metal slats. A grime-stained sign promising of 35 peso bāo zi was propped up against their front. Hanged up on the small portion of the bright blue wall that I was able to see, was a line of medals, visibly tarnished and grimy from a distance; still

• Birds flitting across the surface of the murky river Pasig

• One hour overtime: worth it for having fun talking with my last remaining co-worker in the office. I realize I really do have so many stories I can tell, and I forget how much I like to listen and to share crazy anecdotes.

• I will never have a working lunch ever again. Ruined my entire day, on top of feverish stress of what seemed to be an impossible task. I got it sorted out with a few clicks (anticlimactic much?) after I was able to get out and clear my head a bit.

• Resurrected cucumbers that I pickled (and forgotten about) from last week. They were a bit salty and there was a fruity aftertaste from the flavored soju I had leftover and added into the mix. An 8/10, would do it again.

• .. arent they the same? love and attention?

• I am the lab rat and the experiment. the dependent and independent variables, manipulated and changing. the methods to my conclusions, the results to be analysed.

• I’m reading poetry on the jeep, about winters and waiting, hummingbirds singing—on this 28°C morning, vehicles screeching their songs, and waiting, and lives that go on.