Dumaguete

The boulevard at past-five or so
is a movie freed out of reels and frames:

A kalesa lithely trundles by
backlit and muscular, piercing through
the sunset that now yolks
the whole stretch of the scene, and seasons
your tapa.

You chug a beer, and chew, swallow, spit
chains of smoke and stories and tapa;

The English you hear is hardened with Bisaya,
coming in as patient subtitles
(with occasional pauses for translation,
transliteration, and grammatical confusion)
marrying German and Dutch with locals –

flirtation and proposals flutter
from bench to bench, bench to bar, table to table;
table to ear, lips to ear, lips to face
face to tongue, tongue to ear, ear to tongue.

Tongue to nape, nape to breath, breath to leg
nape to leg and toe and finger
finger to chest to hair to knee to waist and
hips

Until the unlit night wildly entangles the sequence
and the credits roll.

Jog and Smog

I haven’t jogged in a long time. I used to jog in a gated community on weekends near the dorm I stayed in. But there has been politically driven threats lately (how else would threats be driven?) that it was a bit dangerous to run around there, though it was heavily guarded. Too bad for the senior citizens who used to gather in the community’s little circle to do aerobics.

I also just moved in to a new place along a super highway that spares no lane for walking or smelling the flowers. Crazy motorists abound, and looking up, there is more smog than cloud. Sometimes, even when up in our cozy little unit turned away from the highway, my used astringent-soaked cotton ball would still remind me of the dark cloud that literally hangs above our heads. My cotton ball, an excellent mirroring of the freak of nature that is the metro smog.

The Unofficial Food Code

Some food have to be eaten a certain way.

The protocol on eating animal cookies is to chomp the head off first before the body.

You do Kitkat by letting your thumbnail run through the foil, then snap the candy bar off in the slit you made, and have a break.

Oreo cookies have to come with milk, otherwise you couldn’t do the twist, lick, dunk ritual.

You don’t just bite into the top of a grilled cheese sandwich and then work your way down. You bite from all sides and work towards the middle part. The best a half-eaten grilled cheese sandwich could look like is to have jagged sides as if it were attacked by a mouse.

Pizza is eaten with the fingers so spare the utensils—the spoon and fork is for the pasta, and the knife is for the veal.

The salt before your tequila has to be on that little flat stage you produce between the base of your pointer and your thumb when you clench your fist, with your thumb parallel your chest. Chugas ya.

Pan de sal fails to jumpstart breakfast if there’s no coffee (or milk or Milo) to dip it in.

I remember my brother once saying that when you’ve finished eating one side of a fish, you don’t flip fish over to the other fleshy side, but twist the bone and take it off.

Have a throaty “aaaahh” after gulping down Coke.

When eating pili nuts, don’t toss them in your mouth in batches like you would peanuts. As it takes a hundred years for pili nut trees to bear the nuts, it’s best to nibble into the pili experience, nut by nut.

What else could I think of? I’ll grow this list bebe.

List

It’s downtime. Let me put it to good use by listing things I wish to do. Hopefully, at least five of these would come true before 2011. The trick might work again, who knows. So here I am releasing my control over things, acknowledging that I am nothing, but that I am something in my nothingness, because I’m letting The Force take charge!

My short-term wishlist, dear Lord:

Discover. sing with Sagada natives, live in caves with tagbanuas in Palawan, and / or hang out with T’boli folk in Lake Sebu (and look for that old T’boli woman I met in Grade six). And when I come back to the cultural irreverence of the city, I wish to write them letters.

Revitalize. perfect my prayer-walking, and my meditation.

Sharpen. Re-learn Spanish and French where there are native speakers. French Guiana? Senegal? Togo? Sure, I’d love to go. (I’m nearly fluent in Bisaya already, thanks to Chong Hua and Cebu Doctors and Siomai sa Tisa)

Indulge. Draw, and paint, and walk, and eat pork everyday in Bali.

Earn. Sell recycled whatever with Vietnamese friends in a town two hours away from Ho Chi Min.

Bow down. Go to Brazil and see Christ the King and go to Ciudad de Dieux.

Aspire. Study Masters in Community Development, Social/Intercultu Communications, or Dressmaking.

Warm up. Buy a sandwich maker. (It has to be on the list because I don’t want useless spending otherwise they’d be trash).

Magnify. Contribute something significant at work, something that would help make us reach more people, more communities.

Conquer. Be a licensed Muro Ami. Or ok, for safety, a licensed SCUBA diver.

Invest. Acquire property by the beach (so, property could be a coconut tree, a chip off a rockscape, a rest house).

Love. Treat my mom to lotsa travel and pilgrimages and books and sugar-free chocolate.

Catch up. Find a copy of “Bienvenue Chez le Ch’tis” and all the Just for Laughs and Pinoy Meets World episodes (especially those with comedian hosts), and Travel and Living’s No Reservations, My Greek Kitchen, and Nigella Feasts episodes I missed.

Nurture. Learn how to farm vegetables. Tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, turnips, sigarilyas, sitaw, bataw, patani.

Simplify.Learn to document travels, Saturday walks, and things without a camera, only with writing.

Develop. Find a way to suggest a plan, or make known my vision for my beloved Bacolod City—that is, if my fellow Bacoleños agree with it, too.

Broaden. Search for hole-in-the-walls. Eating places, shops and such. I found the Solidaridad bookshop in Ermita. I found a Halal cafeteria by the Mosque in Quiapo.

Try. Okay, please afford me a little luxury from time to time, but strike lightning upon me if it already gets scandalous: Feast on a buffet of international cuisine at Sofitel’s Spiral. Or on chocolate buffet at the Shangri-La. Of course, not alone, but with my Mom, a brother, a sister-in-law, a niece, a cousin, or a Bacolod friend.

Befriend. Can I be an Erasmus student of communications or sociology?? Pretty pleeeaaase?
Please, whatever is meant for me at the right time, bring it on! My deepest, deepest Thank You.

Chinese foot spa

Do you fancy trying the Chinese foot spa?

In most of Manila’s little beauty parlors (it has an overabundance of them, even the barangays deemed most in need of rice has at least three), the Chinese foot spa is one of the newest offerings heavily advertised on their shop windows. Swedish hot baths, Thai massages and French manicures are classic hits in the parlor scene; thinking that anything foreign defining a service is always going to pick up good, gay parlor owners have introduced the Chinese foot spa.

I don’t know what makes the Chinese foot spa different, and I don’t intend to try. To me, the “Chinese” in the foot spa makes it a little bit icky, even scary. Will they rub my feet with salt and tausi sauce? Will they crush star anise against my soles and soak them in Lee Kum Kee? Horrors, will they further kill the skin that make up my bullions and corns with formalin? Or worse, will they bind my size-ten feet in metal?

Pandolino committed the same mistake. To name its packed pieces of sweet bread, Pandolino just changed the first letter of a school-shoe brand and plastered the new, inventive mark on its food product. Do many buy Pandolino? Certainly not, because even when customers haven’t tried these yet they are sure that the breads would taste like boots.

How to Spot Pinoys in International Airports

I believe nothing can be more interesting than taking the flight back home to Manila. It’s not so hard to identify a Filipino among passengers weaving through Zaventem, Schipol, Heathrow or any other airport abroad. If a Pinoy sees somebody who looks Southeast Asian, he’d flash the latter a smile. If the latter smiles back, the Pinoy would ask, “Pare, saan ka?” Pinoys always find home in other Pinoys.

At the terminals assigned to flights bound to Paris, London, Brussels, Frankfurt, etc., it was usually quiet. Waiting passengers usually read, e-mailed on their mobile phones or laptops, or just sat still. When I reached the terminal for the flight bound to Manila, I felt that there was only sun and dust outside and no snow. Was I home already? (click on link to my travel blog to read more)

http://hapit-trip.blogspot.com/

Camote and the Rice Crisis

I bring packed lunch of sandwiches to work but with the rice crisis, I decided to put the wheat bread on hold. I may not be a heavy rice eater but I’m trying to include rice in all my meals now. At least, when the time comes that rice will already be boxed like breakfast cereals, and no longer a staple but a luxury, I can say, it’s okay, I’m past my rice phase. Marami na akong kinaing (nakaing?) bigas.

Boxed Rice like Kellogs
But really, should boxed rice happen, even the soggiest rice gruel could be at the mercy of a Michelin-rated chef and fed only to the richest of foodies. During this time, while the rich nibble the grains out of the rice husks (milling would also be very expensive), what then would our—the common tao’s—staple be?

Camote on Kalalaw?!!!
It would be very sad to stock the kitchen with camote. The kalalaw would have no use anymore but as a tray for more camote. I’m not quite ready yet to eat camote three times a day. Beyond starch, it doesn’t have a wee bit of a resemblance with rice! Not in its shape, size, taste, color, texture, or personality. Rice can be valenciana, paella, pilaf, morisquetta, risotto, jambalaya, yang chao. Even burnt rice tastes good. But camote? The best that camote can be is boiled and then buttered! Not even the camote cue is fun enough to eat. Street food vendors are just too kind, sympathetic and innovative to slice up the sugared bulky root crop julienne so that they’d look daintier, sweeter, more inviting. But please, camote is nothing more but something you go home to for planting when you don’t make any sense!

the world-class piaya is home

Walking around masa Manila, I have never found sugar-coated peanuts anywhere. I asked friends if these are available and peddled in the streets here, too. As far as I have asked, no one has seen anything like these. So only Bacolod has sugar-coated peanuts?

Oh how can I forget? Everything in Bacolod has sugar. Even the chicken inasal has at least a spoonful. =)

Five slurps better
But the best thing that has happened in Bacolod street food is piaya made on the spot along La Salle Avenue. It was clever of this Manong to reintroduce the piaya as a habit after classes, a culture on its own, and not just as ready pasalubong a Bacoleño mindlessly grabs off the shelves. Manong’s piayas too, taste five slurps better than those packed. They are always worth the wait.


The wait, even, is an experience on its own, as it shows you how this Bacoleño delicacy is made: Manong molds the dough mixture into small thick round mounds the size of the Eng Bee Tin hopia. On top of each mound he plops a generous scoop of haleyang ube (candied purple yam paste—churvah!). Then Manong gathers the edges together to enclose the ube, and he’d knead it into a flat disc which he would steam with a little oil.

crepes+pita+creme brulee
The result is a hot treat that marries worlds of mouth-watering epicurean elements. The piaya is thin and round like crepes; it is white and slightly charred light brown on the edges like pita; on its surface are irregular eruptions of craters as in the crème brulee; and biting into a piece, it is flaky and light as croissants. The ube filling, then, is the sweet, slightly chunky paste that drives you back home to sugarcane fields and sing-song tête-à-têtes.

Before, the piaya wasn’t something we, Bacoleños snacked on as much as we sent it to Manila and elsewhere. Thanks to Manong along La Salle Avenue, the piaya is home once more.

the maynila street food philosophy

Fry anything, everybody’s eating it. This is the philosophy behind street food that has been successful since post World War Manila. If they don’t, they perish and evaporate into merely just a memory. Sadly, the tongue has no initiative to recall flavors unaided.

Balut is said to be the King of Pinoy street food. But if you look around, a lot of streets have other snackables enthroned and not the balut. Penoy is arguably the new King of Pinoy street food. It has transformed from being a poor, bland second to an orange ball of deep-fried goodness called “Kwek-kwek.”

Following the success of the Penoy’s new image, every forgettable thing has been dressed and dunked in batter, and deep-fried. Quail’s eggs which used to be packed in tubes of ice candy wrappers are now shelled and made into baby kwek-kweks.

Grilled isaw is passé as these skewered chicken intestines are now also coated in batter and browned in vats of hot, frying oil. Classic pulutan favorites like chicken skin and calamares, too, have invaded the realm outside bars and beer places, this time, cheaper to survive the street food cartel. They are served in plastic cups with vinegar.

There is character in street food that dot pedestrian Manila despite the hazards that deep-frying poses to health. But oh well, who says you’re eating it everyday? If you want these street food to stay, have them fried and they’ll sell like hotcak--no--kwek kweks.

one day in the office at five o' clock, i was planning to finish required reading so i would have lesser to work on the next day.

my boss said, "are you sure you're bringing work at home?"

caught between making an impression as a new employee and risking misinterpretation if i would answer in the negative, i said, "uhhhh..."

discouraging me, my boss then went on telling about her friend. once at their office, the boss of this friend asked to finish her work at home, to which came the friend's winning rebuttal:

"Do you expect me to bring my laundry here?"

The Pope's red shoes

When the dailies flashed on front page the photo of Pope Benedict XVI's US visit this week, the first I noticed were the reddish-brown papal shoes. These gave a stark contrast to his white/cream habit. It also looked like he was wearing cream thermals instead of pants, so you wouldn't miss the shoes. They were that conspicuous. Seeing the photo that morning made my day at seven thirty a.m. at that.

The Papal Cobbler's business picking up

This morning, I passed by the newsstand and found on page one a closeup of the red papal shoes! It's amusing to hear that there's talk going around about it (well it somehow deserves to , unlike Hillary Clinton's cleavage a year ago, which was nothing much really). Some even speculated that the shoes were a Prada, but they were after all a tradition brought back, custom-made by the Pope's cobbler.

The cobbler, who knows, these days, this cobbler may no longer be an anonymous chap cutting leather. The shoes look like the stuff that frequents GQ recommends, and worn only by the most illustrious businessmen yachting in Monaco. This papal cobbler must be Italian, no doubt.

The shoes redefining the Pope

Donned by the Pope, I thought this was quite a secular sign which is more interesting than eyebrow-raising.

Especially in the early stages of his papacy, Pope Benedict has been regarded with skeptical eyes, being known as a stern cardinal, a German with the hostility of a Nazi threaded into his personal history. Inevitable, too, are the comparisons with his successor Pope John Paul II, amiable, sanguine as he was a thespian, and well-loved in the world over with his humor.

But for the first time, I see Pope Benedict as an endearing old grandpere, arms outstretched to scoop you in, and feet walking towards you excitedly in glistening red shoes.

I have limited resources and even fewer encounters with Pope Benedict's writings, but I am always as interested to read them. My reasons may be far from religious, but I have admiration for the intelligence of this man. From reading his teachings, I find him meek and submitting, as he is stern, and with a mind that's open and embracing, as he is rigidly Catholic.

Religious tradition or a possibly infallible addition to today's wardrobe, the red papal shoes may be a signal that we are on the cusp of redefining, and little by little, accepting Papa Ben.

payatas today

today i went to payatas. it was very surprising to see how even the kids' eyes glimmer at the sight of trash.

they don't look so austere, mind you. low-income, that's all. i'm sorry if i can't be politically correct, but... scavenging seems to be an inseparable part of their system. the very thing that killed their kin a few years back is the same thing that allows them what they could afford of a decent life.

fourth day at work

i work with really interesting people in my new job. my direct superior used to work for a senator as part of his legislative staff, and prior to that she was a reporter on tv. when i first saw her she sure has the looks of one but she is sooo down-to-earth and smart, i could just shrink!

the boss in our unit is also one interesting character: she's a thespian and the director of one critically acclaimed indie film that was heavily accepted in the mainstream movie scene a few years back is her bestfriend (haha, isn't it so filipino? i still managed to ram myself into the six-degrees-of-separation genealogy tree, that hey, my friend [boss, actually], is the bestfriend of my this Direk!). so funny, we had a meeting today which she presided, and i felt like I was at the Gallaga Theatre.

this is really a gift of a job. busy and so many exciting assignments, and i think i'd only be able to blog on weekends or on slow days.

throw in a dirty couch and a clutter of scratch paper, pencil shavings and loose staples, and it would be a surreal Spectrum life all over again, only better!

keeping house and doing the grocery

Living alone has introduced me to some major responsibilities I used to just overlook and not meddle with: keeping house and doing the grocery. From Cebu to Manila, I have had a chockfull of insights, a rather thick collection of realizations to sweep into my undomesticated self.

You see, in terms of practical skills in the kitchen, or even basic knowledge on what needs to be stocked in the medicine cabinet, I am as empty as my grocery cart.

I now live without a refrigetrator and i realize that this is not just a vain appliance, an updated version of the Post-Spanish status symbol that is the dripping nievera, that makes water and everything cold. God, how expensive it can get to not have a fridge! its absence force-feeds me to Jollibee, McDonalds, Chowking, canned food and fake food that guarantee me real fat. its absence has made me forget how vegetables taste like, and makes me buy fruit and milk in quantities good only for a day. Imagine how much money i waste because of my refrigerator-less existence.

the grocery is another playground so confusing for the non-housewife.

just like free brainstorming, it's always fun to come up with a grocery list. i always start with the long, delicious list of a Stepford wife, but as the ghosts of rent, fare, utilities, and taxes (ooh taxes!) come haunting, the list becomes a sad, short stanza, even a couplet, on a post-it.

now which should go into the grocery cart?

as i didn't have a can opener yet (i benchmarked on the one we have had back home for as long as i can remember-- a knobless lever made at the sugar mill), i looked for easy-open cans. i was happy to see sausages in EOCs, and they come in exciting flavors, too. for a few weeks, that's what i stocked my psuedo pantry with, but for a time, no matter how they came in dollops of honey mustard or chicken stock, they tasted like pity. i started to curse every tinned food that relied on the teet of the dashing can opener that when at a distance i saw a row of gold EOCs on the grocery floor, a new brand i hadn't discoveredyet, and finally a new alternative to my sausages, i was ready to kneel in thanksgiving until i realized it was Alpo.

so i delayed the purchase of a can opener no further. i grabbed the first that i found not anymore considering my standards of an ideal can opener.

then i was welcomed to the aisle of canned everything. tuna, meat loaf, corned beef, sardines, even squid, each of them coming in an army of brands. Which do i choose? the safest of course would be those brands which my Mom buys. hmm. moms are such strong influencers and opinion leaders that no matter how defiant kids grow up to be, when they start living away from home and drive grocery carts on their own, all choices would be those brands their moms crammed the cupboards with.

but what brands does my Mom buy? the only thing i remember is that for meat loaf, she buys Victorias. :S

Dizzied by these tin soldiers on an overwhelming stand of shelves and not at all excited with opening cans with my new can opener, i dropped the simple machine, grabbed a pound of cheese, a loaf of wheat bread and went home.

very raw thoughts on quitting my job

How would you know if it's time to quit your job?

I quit mine two weeks ago because there were days when I felt guilty snatching work hours to go to Makati for job interviews. it may have been a lame reason, so impractical even, to resign when I had seen no light of a new job accepting me yet. But rather than shortchanging the company, i went penniless but fair.

For a time I had projected an image if affluence like how the company expects of its employees. i had saved much in fact, as galant dinner discussions with clients were all on the company. for this generosity we lovingly personify the company as "Papa G." It was never easy to let go of a piece of the wealth that Papa G *imposed on our lifestyles. who wouldn't want to be rich?

but i wasn't happy. i just din't have any significant fiber in me that would weave nicely and effectively into the world and culture of sales. for five months of being a "field worker" in legal parlance, i was so alone that to cope up with this loneliness, i detached cmpletely from myself and talked their talk. but ever so stubborn, my usual self would slip out and i would be misunderstood and unappreciated. so most of the time i resorted to shushing myself so as to be safe; i ended up being a loner, silently fornicating about my aspirations that were far from what sales offered me.

before the awful fornication continued, i decided to quit, they say, the training i went through to get in this multinational was a month and a half of going through the eye of a needle and it's crazy to let go of what you worked hard for, just like that. well i enjoyed training, but i found out didn't like the job; before i becme a liability to the company due to a lack of passion and drive for work, i left.

however my leaving was one thats thankful to GSK and my amazing boss for an experience full of insight, impressed with the company's highly ethical work culture and (blush, blush) very good looking colleagues.

after my last GSK day, i've been throwing all my cares to the wind, living by faith. that week, i had been going through interviews with a corporate NGO, which was the first i ever applied to after coming back from a project abroad in June last year.

the NGO had already sent me to medical and psychological exams, but i wasn't sure if I would be hired. I was only 75% sure, but the 25% could still have been a significant force of rejection. but hey, my faith in God was, and is, 100%.

i still don't know if my decision of leaving GSK was the right path to follow; not until after three years. but i'm just all praises to a miracle-working Force because after two weeks of calm recollection, rest and reading, I'll be working again. On Monday, I will start doing communications work for this corporate-led NGO...work i've always known, work that i love. :)

Hi Miss Hazel,

How are you?

Guess what, I'm reading Jude the Obscure again. I recently and finally got a copy of it and Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

I'm just a bit past the pig slaughtering part but God, i realized how stupid I was in High school when you lent the book to me. haha i hadn't enjoyed it the way i do now. Thomas Hardy was way ahead of his time, and I have yet to find a writer at present who can equal him in terms of wit, imagery, imagination, etc. Can you? I had been reading another book before this, but I dropped it unfinished; Jude the Obscure is a scenestealer.haha. If you're reading something interesting now, please please share with me.

I don't know if this is the right reaction, but I find it so funny how Thomas Hardy describes Jude's naivite, etc. I kept chuckling during the slaughter scene, "Upon my soul I would sooner have gone without the pig than have this to do! A creature I have fed with my own hands." well i laugh only to realize later that i am guilty because my mind has not been spared from also subscribing to the machismo that's demanded of men, despite my abhorring it outwardly.

On Arabella and a girl friend meeting years after the wedding:

As usual, they laughed before talking; the world seemed funny to them without saying it.

--so funny and true and timeless; Hmm... Arabella has a multitude of great great granddaughters, many of whom are keeping skin whitener sales shooting up.

Among others, i found this particularly striking, recalling the time Arabella threw the pig's penis at Jude while he was engrossed with his Christminster dream:

It had been no vestal who chose that missile for opening an attack on him. He saw this with his intellectual eye, just for a short fleeting while, as by the light of a falling lamp, one might momentarily see an inscription in a wall before being enshrouded in darkness. And then this passive discriminate power was withdrawn, Jude was lost to all conditions...of a fresh and wild pleasure...

Gosh, Hardy is one of those who makes me feel so unworthy of writing with a byline! I wouldn't have thought of such a metaphor for lust disabling ones restraint and intelligence.

All this time, I haven't seen Bare yet, and I'm happy i haven't. I admit, i read and reread many pages, this Hardy loves to play riddles with his readers huh. it's like a proverbial tug-of-war between hardy and the reader, like...ops ops ops, sigurado ka nga na intiendihan mo to? balik, balik, balik! hahaha! I'm not even halfway through, but I adoooore Thomas Hardy!

Hay ambot, damu pa gid tani. I miss you, I miss reading you! Musta na? Abe, chikahi ko! hahaha

Thanks, Miss Hazel, for introducing Thomas Hardy to me. I'm glad I'm reading it the second time. mwah!

Kimee

blue monday on leave

written on february 4, 2008

I'm absent from work today. I woke up late for jogging, it was already too hot outside at 8 am. Last night I was already feeling feverish, but i went on my weekend/on-call job anyway. I texted my mom that I wasn't working today and she approved of it. Well, since she's my boss, it was a liberating act of clemency! :) i just hope my boss in the company doesn't come across this blog.

i'm not only sick physically but i'm sick to my soul. i drag myself to work everyday because I can clearly see that the opportunities it promises me are far from what i want to happen in my life. the career path it offers is indeed varied but in the end it's still all about sales. and all that my colleagues talk about are how they got their cars pimped.

I got excited filing a leave-without-pay. It's quite a treat getting sick, I have this day all to myself. I just wish I were home. :(

one night stand

written on february 2, 2008.

i came home with a big bunch of flowers last night. the guards in my dormitory must have thought it was an early valentines bouquet from a filthy rich suitor; or that i already heated up my valentines a tad too early what with coming home at past one a.m. :o

the flowers were from a wedding reception in tagaytay which we coordinated last night. this is the on-call job that i recently got myself to fill up my weekends, when homesickness breaks my heart badly. eight inches in diameter, these flowers were used as table centerpieces quite big for one to carry. but i brought home one anyway to give my room a semblance of home. the arrangement was elaborate, as elaborate as the wedding, with crystals pierced here and there and chinese tassles dangling from its base. beautiful. hah, i slightly opened my door for fifteen minutes today (which i rarely do) so others may notice. oooh naughty haughty kimee.

well, the rose bulbs, cabbage roses and stargazers indeed played their part sucking off all the gloom in my room that I'm afraid they might die come six tonight. :(

No roomies, living alone

written on january 21, 2008

This is exactly the room I had in mind when I wrote one of my few poems, Missing Cheese, that when I moved in two weeks ago, I was sniffing in search of even just a faint whiff of Missing Cheese cheese.

There isn't any trace of the creamy, earthy stench of camembert or roquefort. The janitress who ushered me has obviously kept the room in tenantable conditions. Well, at least, she has managed to sweep off whatever debris she left after filing her fingernails while haphazardly doing the occasional cleaning.

I am not after cheese in the air. But my dorm room, the size of two queen-sizd beds put together, is a capsule of solitary confinement, it would help if another one moves in! It wouldn't matter if the hamper plays gracious host to yet another pair of smelly socks each night.

But then again these are just stupid melodramatic episodes of a fresh grad acting like a brat, wishing for things that cannot be as of the moment.And episodes as they are, they come only in flashes, when there's nothing else to think about.

My room is a pretty decent space the width of a corridor and a modest size just enough for a bed, a closet, a built-in bedside table and a working desk. It's in the third floor of a yellow building by a busy main street where cars, jeepneys, buses and pedicabls plying all routes posible pass through.

Up in my room it may be a tolerable sanctuary for four thousand pesos a month shutting out urban noise abd decay, albeit not completely.

the revving and zooms of vehicles are still audible in a murmur, reminding me that tomorrow and the days to come, I would be loading up on the grease of Jollibee and the pseudo CHinese fare of Chow King, both a spitting distance from our building.

Pan de Cebu

written on december 4, 2007

If you like bread, live in Cebu. You'll never run out of buns to dunk into your coffee, or pan de siosa to grill and smother with orange achuete oil.

Bakeries are readily available in street corners and in between, each of them looking exactly like its rivals. There goes the ubiquitous display window, directly facing the street, a full-frontal invitation to those across, as if it were the reason for pedestrians to get to the other side of the road.

Against this brightly lit window street urchins press their faces, marvelling at shelf upon shelf of breads in all shapes and colors...

Cheese breads whose license for its name are the tiny cubes of cheese plopped on their heads, rolls unabashedly dyed fluorescent pink, doughnuts liberally dusted with sugar, and crumbly breads shaped into moons and tamarinds.

This was a surprising observation, it got me curious. Everytime I walked around the city, I never would leave any bakeshop unnoticed, uncounted.

There's Tiyo Tinoy's, Providencia, Captain Jack's, some saint I forgot, Pia Mia, Park and Go, and seventy-two others.

But leading the bun race is Julie's that in a ten-minute joy ride, I found twelve. Twelve! As if one in every two blocks weren't enough!

south beach diet a scandalous option for fasting

One day at a mall, I saw this ad featuring the latest offering for the Lenten season in this particular restaurant's menu. It was something like pink salmon steamed to perfection served with some cosmopolitan organic vegetables perhaps religiously following South Beach diet guidelines. It was a Friday and I am a foodie so I was so tempted. But later after trying to justify why i should have that meal, I was appalled at how that ad actually screwed the very essence of Lenten fasting and abstinence, which is simplicity.

fasting and abstinence is not just eliminating meat from our meals; it is cleansing our selves of our darkest human desires, of hedonistic excess, of selfishness. feasting on a juicy slab of meat, a decadent pastry or choice liquor is an excess baggage that impedes us from flying off to our spiritual journey of discovering the divinity in ourselves. it may not be meat or cake or rose', but there is definitely no simplicity in the price of salmon and the special attention given to an organic head of watercress. it even is scandalous to 75% of the world, those who live on one austere meal in a day.

it's enough that only valentine's day be commercialised, and it's tolerable for christmas to be quite commercialised, too, but please not at Lent. Spare the Lenten season from being forced to a level that's all too worldly. The whole year round, people have been conceding to the chains of upping net worth, updating wardrobes and cellphones, pimping cars; the whole year round, I have been eating too much chocolate, while the helpless look on.

Starting today, I will be kinder to my soul and allow the Divine in me to make wonders in my life, before I put it off again t the next day, and the next, and yet another, and i would have amassed more chocolate and violence in my system.

"will you share your life with me for the next ten minutes?"

I want "The Next Ten Minutes" to happen in my life. Well, not soon, but in God's perfect time.

I'm happy to have come across this song again, one I had been listening to almost everyday in 2005. It's another happy homecoming for me. :)

This song, from the Broadway Musical "The Last Five Years," shows Jamie waiting for the love of his life, Cathy, on a boat at the park.


JAMIE: that one's Jerry Seinfeld
That one's John Lennon there
No, the Dakota
The San Remo is up a few blocks
Have you been inside the Museum?
We should go meet the dinosaurs

**it's so cute how Jamie practices even these corny, manufactured lines, to hopefully keep Cathy amused "for the next ten minutes, and another ten." :sheesh:

JAMIE (alone on boat):
cathy...
Will you share your life with me
For the next ten minutes?
For the next ten minutes
We can handle that
We could watch the waves
We could watch the sky
Or just sit and wait
As the time ticks by
And if we make it till then
Can I ask you again
For another ten?
And if you in turn agree
To the next ten minutes
And the next ten minutes
Till the morning comes
Then just holding youMight compel me to
Ask you for more
There are so many lives I want to share with you
I will never be complete until I do

(Cathy arrives.)

CATHERINE:
I'm not always on time
Please don't expect that from me
I will be late
But if you can just wait
I will make it eventually
Not like it's in my control
Not like I'm proud of the fact
But anything other than being exactly on time
I can do

I don't know why people run
I don't know why things fall through
I don't know how anybody survives in this life
Without someone like you
I could protect and preserve
I could say no and goodbye

But why, Jamie, why?
I want to be your wife
I want to bear your child
I want to die
Knowing IHad a long, full life
in your arms
That I can do
Forever, with you

JAMIE:
Will you share your life with me

CATHERINE:
Forever

JAMIE:
For the next ten lifetimes?

CATHERINE:
Forever, Jamie

JAMIE:
For a million summers

BOTH:
Till the world explodes
Till there's no one left
Who has ever known us apart

JAMIE:
There are so many dreamsI need to see with you...

CATHERINE:
There are so many yearsI need to be with you...

JAMIE:
I will never be complete

CATHERINE:
I will never be alive

JAMIE:
I will never change the world
Until I do

CATHERINE:
I do

JAMIE:
I do

CATHERINE:
I do

BOTH:
I do...

CATHERINE:
Is that one John Lennon?
That's the San Remo
Isn't that the Museum?
Can we go see the dinosaurs

**now, look what has kept cathy's attention. :)

do you forget easily?

my memory has gotten poor lately and this can't be. i'm only twenty-two, but when i try to recall something, it is quite a struggle to make clues land on my tongue and make it roll off as the right name, title, or place. as i retrace my memories for these lost words, i also walk back and figure out what could have caused this terrible, terrible forgetfulness.

has it been my diet? the smog that greets me everyday? my being away from university now? the austere size of my dorm room? my lack of sleep? my lack of focus on things?

perhaps i have had too much of a carefree lifestyle overly confident of my youth that i have never taken measures to prepare myself for a phase of wrinkles and crow's feet, failing eyesight, bad back and knees, and yes, forgetfulness.

especially forgetfulness!

well, i think i could tolerate wrinkles and false teeth, but it would be so tragic to fall prey to time as it snatches away thoughts, even those that normally occupy the *frontest dockets of your memory.

imagine time stealing away from your mind the melody of the song that kept you sane while you worked midnights back in college. or the name of this seatmate who was your savior in Accounting or any math class. or in one of your most memorable travels, the name of this certain specialty food item you can only crudely describe...

it would be practically stealing a portion of your life, dulling out, little by little, the sheen of its multiple facets. :(

so before my anthems slip away from memory, i vow to eat right, sleep enough, walk more, and write everything down, releasing my thoughts to the care of this blog and not just in some elusive public bulletin post or crumbly tissue paper. and since i would want to seek assistance in case of lapses in my memory, may the wonders of technology make this blog last a lifetime.

tonight i face my fears in writing

I’ve been closely following friends’ blogs lately and I just admire the free outpouring of their emotions that just by plainly looking at these persons, you wouldn’t have any inkling that these beautiful things go on in their minds. I have started my own blogs, too, only to leave them impoverished. Only a post or two inhabit these blogs, or if indeed more than a dozen does, these are the types you would post only to free up your disk space. I have never diligently maintained daily postings in my blogs, well partly because i do not always go online. But then, if i seldom go online, why hadn’t i kept a journal on old fashioned but equally romantic pen and paper after all these years?

The problem then goes way beyond the absence of the medium. I have issues about writing my own thoughts as honestly as i could, even in the extreme (well, nearly) confidentiality of the tangible journal. I know this is crazy since for years I have been a student journalist. Since grade school, I lived and breathed writing in publications. But now I am faced with these issues in writing.

I have kept myself from the therapy of expression through writing because of my fears and insecurities. I fear being read by those persons dearest to me, like my family, but i delight in getting comments on posts from friends. in blogs, i fear being labeled as a writer rather too selfish, writing passionately about herself and her travails and triumphs as if the world solely centers on her. on the other hand, on paper, i fear that one day, my mom, brothers, or closest family would discover the nook I hide my journal in, and feast their eyes on the darkest ramblings of my soul.

I come from a really good family of talent and intelligence (whoa) and i am mighty proud. most importantly, our story is far from the telenovela themes of feuding siblings and bitter relationships. so it’s not about the acidic blows on prose against family members that i fear being read, because there hardly is any.

my fear is more on reaching standards, on writing to earn their respect for my craft, and that they in turn would be proud of me, too. see, i am just too insecure and i hate it.

but more than the standards, i fear being read by my family about things that are quite sensitive, things and feelings i do not normally express freely with them. everytime i attempt to write about love, sex, affection, relationships, even my dreams in my career, there always dangles the risk of being read by family.

not that my family is too boxed in to actually have their sensibilities offended; it’s just that i’m not so ready to reveal this side of me they hardly know i have. or if they do know, how would they deal with it? For instance, if i invite a boyfriend to dinner at home, how would my mom or my brothers react? how do i open up?

perhaps these issues do not only affect my writing but many aspects of my life as well. like fears of having relationships, or taking on big risks in my career. because it always goes back to how my family would react to it. will he and my mom get along? will he be able to relate with what my brothers talk about? will they consider him at par with their standards?

before i become an emotional rut, i know i need to address these things now. i may not have a significant other yet, but it isn’t just about that really. i realize that this paralysis in writing has disabled me to talk to myself more, and has left confused about how i am now. it’s a difficult feeling to be hanging somewhere. i need hard solid ground beneath my feet now. i need to write again, as honestly as i can this time.