Early morning blues

It's 5 a.m. and I'm feeling a little down with cough and colds. These days it's easy to catch something if you're not careful and forgot your umbrella just when a heavy rain catches you somewhere without even a jacket. So, the rain caught me off guard, I catch a cold, now, I'm trying to catch some upvotes with this blog post. So, corny. 😆

Anyways, I'm trying to up my mobile blogging game with another all-mobile blog. Hoping that this turns out well enough to get appreciated by the readers.

Breaking the fast with a feast

_{*Typical Filipino meal, pairing instant noodles with fried rice and eggs. We ran out of eggs so I used the veggie sausages, which was great with hot sauce.}

We had some leftovers from last night and cooking makes me feel good so I prepared a shiitake mushroom and green peas fried rice that was surprisingly good. Heated up some veggie sausage (they are already cooked and is ready to be eaten out of the freezer), cooked instant noodles but added some of my own sauce blend. We had some fresh cucumber that I sliced and also prepared some of my vinegar spice mix. Finally, brewed coffee to complete my Wednesday morning blues breakfast. Blues, mainly because I was playing some blues licks on the guitar, which I think really helped with the flavors, just because of the vibes. Playing the blues made me happy even if I'm not playing any song in particular and I just play blues licks; the melodic lines are really calming to me. It's ironic that playing the blues makes me happy. Blues as a genre is melancholic and was borne out of themes related to segregation and slavery suffered by the African-Americans.

News around the world

Saw some stuff on social media that was lingering in my mind. The Ukraine-Russian War is turning out to be a "show". What I mean by this is, like a movie, there are many twists and turns along the way before we reach the end. The recent Ukrainian incursion into the Russian territory is a plot twist that caught most of the world off guard. The Ukrainians showed grit and determination with this move. They've shown once again that they can outwit the opponent with an unpredictable move. Maybe Russia thought that this would never happen because it is such an outrageous move for the other side, and no one thought they'd have the audacity to go back into Russian territory. I don't know, overconfidence? If it is, then they may have made a big mistake to take Ukraine lightly. Of course it's another matter altogether if Ukrainian forces can hold the territory for a long time given the manpower and logistical needs of doing so. We will see in the next few days or weeks how this plays out as experts interviewed by news media outlets are saying that this won't last months.

Moving on to another topic, I guess the social media adspend for the US elections are ramping up. My feeds are being bombarded with posts related to the elections and it's just overwhelming.

I recently started reading How to Stand Up to a Dictator, which I've had for the longest time but have not had the time and a quiet place to get me started to read it. This is now my umpteenth restart and I'm hoping that I get past Amal Clooney's Foreword this time. LOL.

Going back to the US elections, I watched a few of the news feeds coming in from both sides and from right and left biased media outlets and there seems to be agreement between both sides that the Harris-Walz campaign has the upper hand. I've watched both presidential candidates' speeches and what stood out was former president Trump's insults, name calling, and racist remarks. VP Harris was the opposite and was painting a really strong definition of herself and the vision she had for the country; it was night and day. Going back to the book, I thought about adding it here because Maria Ressa, the author of the book I was talking about, often said that lies, misinformation and hate spread faster on social media. This was what I was getting from the Trump campaign. That the strategy is to use negative language and themes to influence the voters. On the other hand, the Harris campaign had surged ahead in the polls, some say because of the "honeymoon" phase, but this will go back down soon. I do believe in a honeymoon phase, but having overwhelming support and attention so strong this near elections that they might actually sustain the momentum and even get stronger if they do the right things at the right time. And I'm not yet even talking about the policies and platform of government that both sides are espousing. US politics and elections is a rabbithole on the internet that's getting prioritized because of the big spending budgets. We should be getting more of this in the coming weeks so be ready to skip if this isn't your schtick.

And that's it for today. I'd like to end my morning rambling by greeting you all a happy Wednesday. May your day be bright and your nights be peaceful.

@juanvegetarian 😎

_{*I own all the photos and text used in this blog post.}