All the meds I’m taking this flu season

I’ve been terribly sick the past few days and now is the only time I’m able to look at my computer for more than 30 minutes without getting a headache, so here’s an update!

I’m not completely well. Thursday evening I started to feel like I’m about to get sick. I predicted that in my previous post. I thought blogging about it would jinx it lol but now I learned it doesn’t work that way HAHA. My blog isn’t that strong to jinx any upcoming sickness. Oh maybe because I didn’t plan for it haha.

Anyway. Since Thursday night I’ve had fevers, dry cough, headaches, colds, and now sore throat. My sore throat was worst yesterday, glad to say I’m starting to feel better but still watching for my fever.

I’ve been on Tuseran Forte for the most part, taking it every 6 hours. Then when the dry cough transitioned to regular cough after 3 days, I switched to bioflu. It sucks. It really sucks being sick. I’m lying on the bed shivering, praying for sleep to come. I didn’t have a lot of fighting spirit in me, not that I want to die, I just want to be able to sleep peacefully and wake up fine. But most nights I wake up feeling more sick. It was dreadful. My headache lasted for days aaargh.

Anyway, today is a good day. I feel much better, though my throat is still a bit dry and cough is still there, I haven’t had any fevers today so that’s a clear good sign.

I was able to clock in at work though I have to cancel an early meeting because I just couldn’t make it too early. Then my manager asked me if I could talk about our automation updates in our team meeting tonight. I said of course I could. So I checked the slide she has for me and made a script for all the items in there. Unfortunately halfway through the meeting we had to reschedule because of a possible P1 incident that everyone on the team needs to look into. So yey for the delay? I don’t know, I kinda want to get over it already haha #stress.

On the plus side I won 2nd place in the ice breaker we had earlier! Trivia questions are fun, I also learned a lot! 😀

Back to the title!

Here are all the meds I took that helped in my recovery. I didn’t need to go to the ER because my sore throat subsided in a day.

• Tuseran Forte – every 6 hours for fever and dry cough
• Immunpro Ascorbic Acid – I double dosed these days but still got sick. Maybe I was too late?
• Betadine nasal spray – as needed when nose is very clogged
• Kamillosan – when my sore throat kicked in
• Bactidol mouthwash – gargle twice a day (10ml) for 30 seconds, in 10 second intervals
• Bioflu – when the dry cough is over
• Nasatapp tabs – for the ocassional allergic rhinitis attack

I also make myself hot ginger tea with honey because it’s the best thing for the throat and tastes really good. Whenever I’m sick like this I couldn’t drink coffee because it tastes different and glides weirdly on my tongue. Like the texture feels different when I’m sick, I just couldn’t drink it, it makes my mouth dry. So I avoid that and drink tea instead.

I didn’t have a lot of appetite these days and find myself eating only once a day and when I do I almost always want to eat rice and soup. I had Manam’s sinigang twice and something from North Park so we could order soup. I also found myself craving for my mom’s lugaw but I forgot to tell her how sick I was so that’s sad. I could’ve had my sister deliver it to me on the weekend. I would really love to eat her lugaw with fried fish. Hay.

Oh well, hope to recover fully soon! My husband has just been sick so there’s really something going around these days.

Take care!

Urghh

Internet has just been restored after being gone for almost 3 days. Thankfully we were able to manage working on a hotspot. But it was hella spotty. Specially in this rain. Converge did a new thing where they proactively tell you they’re aware of the outage along with a ticket number, but all it really did is minimize the tickets they get. As for the impact and criticality, I doubt they’re aware. I would much rather flood them with tickets so they get a sense of urgency at least.

That proactive thing they did, as much as I tried to appreciate it, might work better if they actually gave real meaningful updates, like what caused the issue and if they’ve already dispatched someone to fix it. But nope, every time one of our neighbors would call them, they were given a spiel that only sounds like they’re aware of the issue and is working on it. No timeline, no other status. Sucks right? When your customers are agitated the least you can do is reassure them properly. But nah. I guess they don’t pay their CSR enough to get that kind of training.

Anyway. I’m just glad the internet is back.

I feel I’m about to get sick. I just downed two doses of Vitamin C to hopefully counter it is but I’m starting to feel the weakness crawling in. Maybe because I got tired from rehab earlier. I was sick two days ago, I was down with allergies and colds but thankfully I was able to recover the next day. My husband, though, has been sick for 3 days now. Hope he recovers soon. It’s difficult taking care of the sick when you’re feeling sick yourself.

I have a boatload of things to do at work but I’m too tired and sleepy and quite frankly I just want to rest tonight. The weather has been really bad the past few days. Lots of areas flooded. My parents’ basement got flooded too, so they were very busy cleaning things up.

Praying for the storm to pass and to start feeling better.

An unexpected enjoyment

Walking around BGC when it just rained hits different. I’ve never walked in BGC after a rain. Generally, I hate walking outside when it just rained. It’s humid, it’s slippery, it could rain again, air gets filled with sweat, it stinks, etc. There are so many things I hate about the prospect so I just avoid it entirely.

But Monday afternoon I was forced to. I had to walk back to the office after an event from another site. The rain had stopped but it was still drizzling in some areas. But instead of rushing to my destination I decided to savor it. After all I couldn’t afford to rush. I could slip and die.

I didn’t want to sweat so I just walked slowly. Taking videos like I used to. Admiring the sheen on the pavement, the vibrance of the trees, the refreshing smell of the earth – petrichor it’s called. All of a sudden, BGC didn’t seem so urban to me. For a while it looked like it had a soul. Not that it didn’t have one, I’m sure its bottomless pit is filled with the souls of the untiring working class. But that day, when it just rained, it feels like nature had touched it. Like the city was being pet by mother nature, reminding the all-consuming slave driving city that it is to take a break and let its beauty show.

Oh well, I’m just here romanticizing the novelty of my experience. I know I won’t take a step out next time when it just rained.

Hey Monday

Another Monday, another RTO day!

Went to the office earlier than usual to attend an onsite event.

Thankful to get a parking slot in the building.

Curious about what’s gonna happen by August when a lot of people are gonna come back to the office. As I’ve heard, those who were given conditional WFH arrangements are now being forced back to do weekly RTO’s unless they live at least 50km away from the metro. And those who live farther than 50km are given until next year to comply. Shocking! And I thought the WFH setup is here to stay.

It doesn’t really affect me because I’ve been doing weekly RTO’s anyway. But then by the time more people come in to work I’d be competing for parking and desk space argh.

Currently getting frustrated about the internet speed in the office. It’s so fucking slow, at least for the UAT environment. I don’t understand why it’s not working.

Okay I just talked to Service Desk, guy did a gpupdate /force, then I restarted afterwards. It worked! Is this the new “have you tried turning it on and off again?” haha

Have a great week ahead!

My brain is fried

Oh man I’ve been working the entire day. I thought it would be easy to do prod testing and UAT on two different projects in one day but I forgot how deathly exhausting TESTING can be. I thought I’d be able to turn over all of my projects back to my clients for testing but I was damn wrong.

I overly underestimated my schedule. I tried to do so much in one day but oh well! Not everything is a happy path. But at least I’ve reported all the issues and created tickets for everything that needs to be requested, so that should roll on their own. Hopefully by Monday I get to do a lot of focused work despite having to come in early for an onsite event urgh.

I’m tired but it’s a really productive day for me. I don’t really work an entire 8 hours a day. Mondays and Fridays are my most productive because they have the least meetings. Mondays I’m in the office so I can focus better because there’s literally nothing better to do. And on Fridays, my husband is in the office so uhm, there’s also nothing better to do lol.

Happy weekend!

Today

I’ve had 3 coffees at this point. Brewed coffee from last night that I added milk to in the morning, hot brewed coffee earlier at dinner, and iced brewed coffee with milk right after dinner to go with my chocolates for dessert.

I was excited to come to the office today. I had plans of being productive. Of finally writing test cases for one of my projects and turning it over to the users for testing.

I was also looking forward to take the car with me. Oh, I love driving our new car. It’s so comfortable. The steering wheel is so light, the turns feel easy, the interior space is amazing.

It’s not without flaws though. So far my biggest gripe is Apple Carplay not connecting properly. If only the head unit has a ledge and was a bit tilted I could just put my phone on it like I used to with our Vios and I wouldn’t have to bother with carplay. But because there’s no place for me to put my phone I had to make sure it’s being mirrored on carplay and that is no easy feat. Car is confused which iphone to pick up and we don’t know how to switch. Still figuring it out as of writing. But oh well.

Besides carplay I find the cupholder placement hard to get used to. It’s right between seats. I mean it’s fine but because it’s mostly out of sight for me, I’ve been forgetting I have coffee with me which sucks because I like to drink hot coffee while sitting in traffic.

I really just want an accessible spot for my phone without having to install phone holders that block the AC vents. I want something sleek, tbh I just want to put it right over the head unit lol.

Oh well.

Getting our new car: a timeline

May 6 – Got in touch with a Toyota BGC agent; applied for auto loans online (BPI, Metrobank, Security Bank)

May 7 – Applied personally at BPI

May 9 – Approved with BPI for 31.01%. Pretty high.

May 9 – Applied online at BDO and RCBC

May 14 – Got in touch with RCBC, was offered 26.80% for regular auto loan and 25.82% for AutoLoan Plus w/ free 1st year insurance, but with a 5yr lock with Malayan. I also need to apply as a Hexagon member to qualify for those preferred rates. I sent this to BPI.

May 16 – After going back and forth with the requirements, Metrobank approved with a rate of 25.81%, 10k discount on CMF, free 1st year insurance but with a 5yr lock with AXA.

May 20 – BDO approved with a promo rate of 24.34% for hybrid and electric vehicles, with option to get insurance separately or from them (free 1st year, but locked with Standard). Unfortunately they tagged me to a branch that was far from our place and there was an issue with having to re-tag it to a nearer branch. For document signing they would just send the papers over which would cause delay so we were kindof iffy with this option even though the rate is really good.

May 21 – BPI was able to price-match RCBC’s 26.80%, with no free insurance and chattel mortgage fee. But I already have a lower offer with BDO, so I sent the info to them.

May 22 – Paid reservation fee of 10k to Toyota BGC so they can order the unit already

May 24 – BPI responded with 24.86% OMA rate with free 1st year insurance in response to BDO. It’s 0.52% shy of BDO’s offer but I really appreciate the effort in price-matching and quite honestly I really prefer banking with this particular branch because it’s very convenient for us. And so we decided to push through with them.

May 29 – Signed with BPI

June 4 – BPI followed up with additional papers to sign. Turns out the free 1st year insurance comes locked with BPI/MS. We felt deceived. There was no mention of this in the quote, but it feels too late. We decided to just get our 1st year insurance separately. This was very disappointing for us, because 1st year insurance cost is the most expensive and for our unit it’s 40k+ for year 1. Just factoring this in the overall cost of this deal with BPI and they have the most upfront cost among all the other banks we inquired. Hay.

So now it’s the waiting game…

June 22 – Followed up with my Toyota agent, he said he’ll get back to me next week

June 24 – My agent told us to stand by as the unit may arrive anytime this week. Exciting!

June 26 – Unit has arrived! Unit details have been forwarded to BPI and the bank has responded with the ATD (Authority to Deliver) and PO (Purchase Order). I was advised to settle the downpayment immediately so we can process for release so I did that. Was supposed to transfer 685k online but the daily transaction limit won’t let me. So I just sent a check to Toyota BGC via GrabExpress. It was deposited within the day. So efficient, I love it!

The bank spelled our street address wrong so it was reflected wrongly on the ATD and PO. I had them correct it because the dealership was particular about it. I made to sure to get the corrected documents within the day.

Since we opted to get our own insurance I also needed to get a policy asap so the unit could be released. I’ve already inquired seperately from Mercantile (34k), Standard (48k), FPG (41k), and Malayan (40k) weeks back, but I still thought to inquire with iChoose since we’ve been getting our insurance from them for the past years soI know they’re very easy to deal with.

12:58pm I emailed a quotation request to the agent who assisted us before

1:07pm I got three quotes from FPG (33k), Cocogen (33k), and Standard (42k). I was impressed at the quick turnaround, much more with the cheaper quotes. And to think I requested for the exact same details directly from the the insurance companies. I wonder why it’s cheaper to get from brokers?

Anyway!

I love it! Renelyn, my agent from iChoose, was online so we just talked on messenger. I paid in full, supplied the required PO and Certificate of Unit Details from the dealership, and she placed me request under rush so I could hopefully get it today.

4:30pm I received the policy and billing details in my email. But the address was wrong! I mean it was correct but they had it in the wrong format or order which BPI is particular with so I had it corrected and made sure they followed what’s written on the Unit Details.

5:13pm The policy was corrected so I sent it over to my Toyota agent. But he says he needs the original copy to forward to the bank so I asked Renelyn if we could deliver a copy to Toyota BGC today. She was so quick with it! She asked the nearest hub to send a copy to BGC.

6:21pm The policy was delivered to BGC and my sales agent has received it.

What a day right?? I feel so lucky I got to catch Renelyn online that afternoon because it was so cruicial I get a policy asap. By the way, wew got FPG as our first year insurance provider. It’s not our first time with them and I know they’re accredited with my dealership and also a nearby repair shop. So now that everything is in place, we’re looking at finally getting the unit out within the week.

Fingers crossed!

June 29 – It’s finally here and it’s beautiful! ♥

So all in all from looking for a bank and talking to the dealership and waiting for the car, it took 2 months. I’m sure it will take shorter if we looked for a dealership with on-hand stock but yeah, we just prefer to get it from Toyota Global City hehe.

So worth it!!!

July 12 – Got a copy of our OR (Official Receipt). It was emailed by LTO but it hasn’t reflected in the portal yet.