Zamboanga Girl

Theo and Philo will go to chocolate heaven

2011-11-08T20:43:00.000-08:00

This morning I finally got the package I have been bugging LBC for five days about.

The loot? Nine varieties of Theo and Philo chocolate bars.

Not one for delayed gratification, my co-workers at Human Nature Zamboanga and I immediately conducted a taste test. We all know the eyes always eat first. This is how they looked:

Gorgeous packaging, right? Chic and patriotic.

The nine bars made up the entire Theo and Philo line of chocolates. They had the usual (milk chocolate, dark chocolate) but I was most excited to try the unusual and very Pinoy flavors (Siling Labuyo? Ginger? Kapeng Barako? Calamansi?). Joy, Julie, and I loved opening the wrappings. Under the colorful outer covering there is a layer of silver foil secured with a round gold sticker embossed with the words Theo and Philo.

Theo and Philo Artisan Chocolates are the only truly Filipino chocolates - made here from bean to bar. The cacao is from Davao and the sugar is from Bacolod. I first heard about them from Anna Meloto-Wilk, president of Human Nature, when she visited the branch a month or two ago.

This will be sooooooo great as a gift to someone who is (1) a chocoholic, (2) a patriot, (3) a person who likes receiving unique gifts/a person who has everything -- there is always someone like this on our christmas list, right?, (4) a person who appreciates good design.

A disclaimer before I proceed to the taste test. I am not a chocolate connoisseur. Neither are Joy and Julie. Julie though has keen taste buds. And she was more adventurous than Joy. Joy did not want to try siling labuyo, ginger, and calamansi at all and only did so because i made her. :))

The chili, though mild, lingers in the mouth. The chocolate is the kind that melts in your mouth and coats your tongue. The chili with it. Very unusual. The but I have a few friends who I think will love this.

Another unexpected varient is the green mango with sea salt. Wow. I love Theo and Philo for coming up with this. Surprisingly, my daughter Jana who joined us in the taste test, chose this as her favorite. I expected her to go for the milk chocolate. The green mango chunks are undeniably there. They weren't just hints but really there. The sea salt too. I already know who I am going to give this to for Christmas. I know you know who you are. :P

This one was also nice. Candied calamansi peel, I think. The effect of eating it is exactly like eating a chocolate chunk after having squeezed calamansi over it. Nice.

This one tasted like a coffee flavored hard candy. For people who like coffee. Julie could taste a langka (jackfruit) aftertaste. She thought a langka variant would be great.

I liked the Barako better than the Toffee though. When we opened the package, you could really smell the coffee! I would say my sister Maita would love this if only I didn't know that she would love everything here.

This was Joy's favorite. It was the only one with a different packaging -- a cardboard box. This one is luxurious comfort food.

This is the 70% dark chocolate. Very valentine's day packaging, no? This would look so good tied up with a thin dark brown ribbon.

For Joy and me, this was too ginger-y. Theo and Philo used candied ginger. This is a flavor you need to get used to. Or for people who love their ginger.

This is my favorite. I am no longer sharing this. Keep your hands off it, thank you very much. There were no discernible pinipig or pili bits. It was more like everything was ground up and mixed up with heavenly results. When I was eating it, I don't know why but I thought of polvoron. Maybe because Goldilocks polvoron uses pili nuts?

Theo and Philo are a bit pricey (retail price is Php 105) for a bar sized 4.5 by 2.5 inches. But of course you know that basing the cost of a chocolate on its size is sort of...dumb. Shipping cost was a bit expensive as it was sent here with ice packs so they don't melt or anything while in transit. But they are so worth it.

A lot of my friends are getting this for Christmas. Hahaha. No more surprise for you. Sorry. With Human Nature products, of course. So my gift packs will not only make the receiver (hopefully) and the giver (that's me) happy, but the Filipino farmers who grew the ingredients as well.

a book for a long weekend

2011-03-10T19:25:00.000-08:00

i am so excited for a long weekend to come because i just got myself a new book that i would like to read uninterrupted. well, as uninterrupted as a mother with three young kids and one angst-filled teenager can realistically expect.

ateneo hosted the launch of tony enriquez's newest novel, the activist.

the book is a historical novel set in the 70s about a young zamboangueno "who dares to challenge the despot Ferdinand Marcos".

the back reads:

Antonio Enriquez transports us to the Philippine capital city of Zamboanga in the grip of a military dictatorship and assassination, where Lorenz Diaz, Jr., a rising socialist, dares to challenge the despot Ferdinand Marcos. In search for truth and freedom, he was imprisoned several timesin notorious military stockades - unsure if the sun would shine in his face or on his abandoned corpse in the "killing fields" the next day. As we follow Lorenz's struggle against the dictator Marcos, we too discover a nation in terror. as a historical novel, its peculiar gift is that it doesn't read like one but as a suspenseful mystery novel, keeping us well-entertained, our eyeballs glued to its pages, but unlike a detective novel, unscrambling the oppression and horror of Martial Law.

he signed my copy. he wrote,

"to yen, it's so nice to see you again. salud, Tony."

happiness.

antonio enriquez is from zamboanga. from the family that owned the mansions along buenavista road: the white house, the pink house. i have heard of him when i was still in college, my classmate amis buenafe, his niece, lived in the white house. amis told me then that she had an uncle who has won awards for writing books. but at that time in our lives, amis and i and our other friends had other things on our mind than uncles who wrote books, even award-winning ones.

in 2008 when tony enriquez was a writer in residence here at ateneo, i asked him to give a mini lecture on book the philippine book publishing industry to my introduction to mass communication class.

at the book launch yesterday, he said it took him four years to finish the activist. he said most of his books take that long to finish. he also said that he thinks this is the only novel about the marcos years, that there are many books about that period, but none of them were novels.

i got the book for 250 yesterday but i understand that after the launch, it'll go for 300.

i look forward to reading the book for many reasons (including my interest in anything martial law related largely because i am a martial law baby) but the most urgent one is to know why he gave the protagonist such an incongruous name.

call center chef

2011-02-06T23:30:00.000-08:00

ate mila on the phone a minute ago: "ate, ingon ni kuya tudluan daw ko nimo mag luto ug kaldereta para panihapon."

me: sa phone?

yaya mila: oo te. sa phone.

waaahhhh!!! i can't do call center chef now, ariel! it's my first day back at work after a week of being away! pwede mag take out na lang ka? or pwede ipa laga na lang na. mila can do that without over the phone instructions. :((

rainy days on wednesdays make me think of pan de sal and butter

2011-01-18T23:19:00.000-08:00

which bakery in zamboanga makes the best pan de sal?

when i ask pan de sal loving people this, they tell me it is either (a) national or (b) abc.

i love pan de sal. husband prefers slice bread., the softer, the better. i like my breads and cakes to be on the rustic side, dense and hefty. something you can really really bite.

slice bread is ok. but it's bland. and soft. so i toast mine 'til its stiff, but not charcoal-y, the way a high school friend liked hers.

once toasted, i slather the toasted bread with butter.

my husband does not understand butter. his spread has to be sweet and sour, like, say, ladies' choice sandwich spread which i think is the pits. he will only use butter if there is absolutely nothing else.

this is to me the best palaman: queensland butter.

queensland used to be widely available when i was younger. i understand from my mother that now they are already hard to find. boiled camote is excellent with queensland. the two go so well together, especially if the camote is still piping hot and the butter has not been refrigerated, and is therefore it is runny.

now i am hungry.

shoe fly, don't bother me

2011-01-05T22:43:00.000-08:00

can someone please tell me where to buy shoes in zamboanga?

i have been going to town for shoe-reconnaissance mission for three days now, all in fruitless. i am looking for a particular kind of pair. wedge sandals, actually. i am also looking for something that meets the following criteria, arranged in order of importance to me:

1. they have to be strong enough to withstand ME for at least a year
2. they must not cost more than 2k
3. they have to look clunky
4. the straps have to of leather (related to #1), and cut wide (i will tell you why)
5. the color has to be in the brown family

something that looks like any of these:

if i can find one that looks like this, i will buy two of them, i swear.

the most important criteria is also the one that is giving me the most problems. do you remember cinderella's two evil stepsisters? one had narrow feet and the other had wide feet. i have feet like the latter's. on top of that, i am a heavy walker. (i am not yet ready to accept publicly that i am heavy). in general, i do not tread softly; more truck than bike. and i like to walk A WHOLE LOT. walking is cathartic to me.

so, wide feet + stomper + frequent walker + the-other-gravity-problem-that-must-not-be-named = a need for very durable shoes.

this rules out the korean and china made ones in the 250 to 650 price range that seems to be the staple of almost all stores here selling shoes. i envy girls who can wear them without destroying them. buying those are not cost efficient in my case because they break after one or two outings. AND/OR, my feet is gets abrasions and even open wounds.

they have to look clunky to match the rest of me.

the straps have to be of leather because that's the most comfortable and most durable. and because, aside from being wide sideways, my hooves are also ample up and down. :((

the color has to be in the brown family because that is the one that will go with most of my clothes now.

What Yen Did

2010-12-27T01:55:00.000-08:00

one of the things i do extremely well is make mountains out of molehills. take the unfortunate situation of a noche buena without my mother or my kitchen diva sister for example. i could have gone the buy-this ulam, buy-that dessert route (a patented technique of one smart cousin), sat back and enjoyed the holidays. but no. that would be so un-me. so this is what i did starting at 2pm, christmas eve:

this was the plan. wait. aside from a penchant for the complicated, i am terribly, clinically optimistic. i made the ham myself. from scratch. i bought the meat fresh (slightly less than a kilo, sayang ang pera if i botch the experiment), prepared the brine, cured it, boiled it, baked it encrusted with sugar. this is how it came out:

it was tougher and stringier than hoped but i was gunning for jamon iberico. not that i have ever tasted spanish ham. but you know what i mean.

compared to the hams in the grocery freezer, it did quite well, thank you very much. not one member of the family had a stomach ace. and the total cost? 250 pesos, tops. take that, CDO.

then i had fried garlic rice, a favorite. no brainer. i have been doing this since grade school. only at that time, i didn't bother frying it. or even adding garlic. it was old and cold rice + used oil + salt and/or toyo. this is the foundation of my elevated gastronomic standards. and while all of this was cooking, jana was busy with the drinks.

she wanted to make umbrellas but even i shot that idea down.

these were what she made, frilled up glasses, all in a row. waiting for its occupants.

after baking the ham, i left the gas on in preparation for the lasagna. while that was going on, i did the sweets. two days ago i made fruit salad, upon the request of diego and gabriel. the leftover cherries (29 pesos for 100 grams at mindpro grocery) went on top of it.

got this assortment of fudge from a cousin. the plate is from big v's -- 29 pesoses only!

and this is the biggest hit of the season in my family and with a lot of my friends. faye lorenzo go's double chocolate cookies. they are the very best i have ever tasted. and not too expensive. they are 150 for a dozen but the cookies are large (and the packaging is simple but pretty) so they are really super worth it. i ordered several one dozen packs to give to friends and i got great reviews. i wish i can say YES to everyone who said "did you bake it? it was sooooo goood!". but alas, i was thinking of santa checking me out and all that.

at this point in time, the gasul went kaput. what a time to run out of gasul. and i am NOT doing uling. i am optimistic, not suicidal.

husband, who schedules these things, could not believe it either: he bought it november 7, so it should have lasted us until january 5 at the earliest. yes. my husband tracks things this closely. i let him deal with it and whiled away the time i didn't have to take a picture of our PATHETIC christmas tree.

i pity my kids for having this as part of their hallmark memories.

but i am happier with our wreath. we made it with the christmas wrapping papers i went on and on about in an earlier blog post.

while still waiting for the gasul, i made myself the guinea pig for the castrated shirley temple: a lot of sprite, a very little grenadine, a lot of ice, and the fruity swizzle stick. husband gagged at the taste. but i did it for the kids, not for him. hmmp. my target audience loved it. so, mission accomplished.

when the gasul was back, we did the white sauce (bechamel, naks!) for the lasagna. the red sauce i already did two days before so it was more of an assembly work.

and while this was baking, i made the stir fry, our token vegetable in the menu.

i just took a picture of it in the carajay. do you know how tiring it is to cook the food, deal with christmas-crazed kids, and take pictures of the food at the same time?

but the OC in me reared its ugly head....and insisted on a picture of the gulay in its presentation plate, just like all the others.

and finally, the prawns. another no brainer.

just steam the prawns.

and dump this in. works 100% of the time.

and our centerpiece was this, courtesy of jana, our very own documentor.

merry christmas, everyone!

it's a wrap!

2010-12-17T20:45:00.000-08:00

gift wrapper buying, a fast and painless procedure for most people, is a highly hazardous operation for me. i have never gone christmas wrapper shopping and not spend more money than i should have, or more time than i have. never.

this christmas i spent an hour scouting the stores (shop o rama, shopper's central, shopper's plaza). when i finally found the one with the best looking ones (bloomingdale's at mindpro -- many years has passed since it opened and i am still uncomfortable with its name) i spent an hour and a half there. thankfully, the woman in charge of the gift wrapping section was indulgent.

this is my harvest:

they are all by hallmark. if i remember right, they are php 13 each. except for the glittery green one. that one is expensive. well, expensive considering it's just paper. which you will use to wrap boxes. which other people will tear apart to get to what is in the box. i have three more expensive ones (50, 55 pesos, hehe) but i will not post them here because they don't look like much. in photos they look like cartolinas. but in real life they are so pretty i can go around just hugging them.

what i look for in my wrappers? that the paper is good, the printing is good, and the design is great. and as ever, i am hopeful that i will be able to find designs which are, if not Filipino, then at least nothing too european nor too american.

my favorite. i know it doesn't look christmas-y. but that just might be why i love it. i think i am going back to the store and get ten more of this.

i like the color of this too. acid pink, purple, and lime green. yummy!

of course, being a mother to four kids and godmomma to about a half-dozen inaanaks, i have to have wrappers for children. i bought three designs, and this is the one i like best. which doesn't mean the kid who will get a gift wrapped in this is my favorite. kids, in my experience, don't really care about the wrapper. they're only interested in abusing the wrapper.

i love this design. but of course, i am already violating my "nothing too european" "rule". :((

sorry for the bad picture but this is really a cute print. the reindeers are adorable. no reindeers in our part of the world but i couldn't resist.

and i give up. wala ba talagang pinoy themed, or at least "world" themed wrappers for kids? but still, isn't this sooooooooooo cute. santa was here! santa was here!

i had to have some traditional wrappers too. for the old fashioned people on my list. my mom for example. i will save myself the grief of having to explain to her my gift wrap choice by just giving her something expected.

this one falls under the last category also.

and this is my favorite in the traditional theme category.

i look forward to next year's pickings.

a champ takes over a clam's place in my heart

2010-12-17T20:06:00.000-08:00

i have a feeling what i am about to announce will trigger a collective sigh of relief among my family and friends.

today is the day i say goodbye to my five (six? seven?) year old nokia cell phone. good bye friend. you served me well. this is such an old model that when i searched for "old nokia flip top models", this didn't show up at all. i know of only one other person who still has this phone but i bet he's going to abandon it soon as well, seeing as he might do a paris junket next year. and we can't have parisians thinking filipinos still use phones like these, can we?

hello samsung champ. bear with me as i struggle with learning how to abuse you.

thanks to the giver. you know i only lost the last phone you gave me because of typhoon ondoy, right?

so there. friends, family, you can again invite me out to dinner with peace in your hearts, knowing you have no more need to duck your head in shame as i take out my cellphone to take calls or to send messages, etc., etc..

We love you Bruno!

2010-11-19T00:28:00.000-08:00

the silence that greeted the family this morning was sad. the member of the family that croaks "kumain ka na ba?" to whoever is the first to wake up was eerily silent.

here lies bruno, a beloved member of the family. he who generously provided entertainment to the neighborhood kids and teens just by being himself, always obliging their clamor for his one-liners. bruno could have won barangay sta. maria kagawad, he was so popular.

this is the same creature who loves letting rip a lunatic cackle at the slightest or even no provocation. his high pitched "HAHAHAHAHAHAHA" and sex maniac wolf whistle could be heard by our neighbors four, five houses away.

we came home yesterday to see you dead in your cage. the kids had called us at the office in panic but we wanted to see for ourselves.

we buried your body last night in the backyard, under the clothesline. your adoptive father needed a soft place to dig. do not begrudge him his choice of location, he was practically inconsolable last night (aside from slightly annoyed that yaya mila misplaced the shovel). the flowers are from jana, the lego cross is from both gabriel and diego. the candle is from me. jana led the prayers. may you now be in myna bird heaven.

this is our last picture of you, taken just one week ago.

now that you are gone, what will your adoptive father do when he wakes up? whose cage will he clean? who will he prepare pellets and fruits for? whose bath water will replace? who will he have a one-sided conversation with?

he could not stop talking about why you died and if it was his fault. he blames himself for giving you saging saba instead of table bananas. he thinks that is what killed you, indigestion.

good bye, bruno. we sorely miss you.

productive

2010-11-10T21:33:00.000-08:00

i am reading this book called 100 ways to motivate other people. i borrowed this gleefully from the library, thinking YES! i will now have the secret formula to make others do this, do that. haha.

but not even halfway through it, i already feel massively cheated. teaching you to motivate others is only a consequence of the primary purpose of the authors. all they really want to do is to motivate YOU to motivate others!

and so because of this book, i have been a good girl the whole morning. like doing "the worst first". that means choosing the task you don't want to do the most, and doing that first.

where is the fun in that?

in any case, to reward myself for the productivity, albeit unwillingly done, i gave myself a GLAM manicure over the lunch break.

it does not go at all with the rest of the day's outfit but it was the only color i had (maybelline express finish GLITTER (the all caps this time is maybelline's, not mine). i could have gone to the salon two doors away but that would have set me back 120 pesos and i don't think i was THAT productive.

i look at it squinting because it is really, really badly done. there's more glitter on the pads of my fingers than on my nails. but hurray for productivity!

now lunch break's over. back to work!

have to return that book back to the library before it does any more damage.

When I grow up I am going to marry...

2010-11-08T00:17:00.000-08:00

two hours ago, i didn't even know who or what cobus potgieter is.

now i want two things from him:

1. i want him to marry me.

2. i want him to become me.

shet. he is living out my rock star dream.

and he then he goes: "I am not even closely interested in Rock vs Pop politics, debating the difference between "good" and "bad" quality music is irrelevant to how much fun it might be to jam along to. LOVED jamming along to this song, when groove meets power, you have one very satisfied Cobus."

and then he goes on to play this

Lucky Children

2010-11-07T19:23:00.000-08:00

the orphanage in talon-talon is officially called the Reception and Study Center for Children. i know. the name gives you absolutely no clue on what they're all about. reception makes you think of a convention hall. "study center" makes you think of either a library or a research institute. must be social welfare jargon.

the date to visit the orphanage was made by may maravilles, kiko miranda, and me on friday but by sunday, the party of three has happily grown to eight: may's val, my ariel, kenny (ownerless), ruselle (ditto), and ruth (ditto). mister donut made a killing from the delegation that morning. we all got our pasalubongs from them. may went the extra mile and threaded crystal bracelets for little girls.

although i had no expectations, i was taken aback by what i experienced. i did not expect the place to be so clean, the staff to be so down-to-earth, the babies to smell and feel so good.

this is the toddler's room. there were around six babies in here when we came in. some sleeping, some playing, some just fooling around. there were six cribs in the other side of the room, each housing one child. the room was very bright and clean. it had an aircon but it was blackout so the windows were open. the toddlers were all dry, clean, fresh-smelling. only one child, a boy in a crib, was crying. we were told he has palsy. the spastic kind. his back was stiffly arched the whole time we were there, and he was crying. maybe from pain? exhaustion? i don't know. i took him up -- he was perspiring heavily, maybe from exertion -- and imagine this, he stopped crying. instantaneously! i have never felt so angelic in all my life!

this is that boy. it is him who got carried but it is ruth that has the bright smile on her face.

the thing about the kids in the place was that, once you carry them, no matter if the child is the 5 month old girl in the nursery, this boy with cerebral palsy in the toddler room, or an older child in the older children's room, once you carry them, they will cling to you for dear life. they are all so hungry to be touched. at that moment, all i wanted to do was grab all of them and do as buddha does.

this is kenny, kiko, and russelle with their respective toddlers. when it was time for us to leave and kenny put his child back in the pen, this little boy bawled his insides out and when that didn't work, he ran after kenny and when that didn't work either, he slammed his entire boy into the mattress. i swear, any WWF wrestler would envy his technique. in the end though, we had to leave.

that's the other thing. you go there, you hug them, but you know you will have to leave. leave with an aching heart, yes. but still you have to go. back to work, back to your "real" kids. the orphans on the other hand don't know that. each time someone comes and carries them, they will give you their heart. what to do with the heart that they entrust to us?

this is mariel from the nursery. she smelled of baby shampoo and powder. (i need to talk to them about the bad effects of baby powder hehe). when she felt me disentangling her and starting the back-to-the-crib-you-go maneuver, she stiffened her body to make things hard for me and gave a little whimper. i finally managed to distract her by filling her crib with toys.

i think my husband fell in love with this baby. "parang si gabriel", he said. when i told him the child's background, all he could do was shake his head.

each child has a story, all tragic. the most tragic of all are the blank stories. these belong to children with no provenance.

parents: UNKNOWN
hometown: UNKNOWN
birthdate: UNKNOWN
any known relatives: NONE

to me that is just a shitty thing to give to a child.

this is margot. may fell in love with her before they met. margot has pretty eyes and a sad history.

after the nursery and the toddler room, we went to the regular children's room. like in the other rooms, the kids were clean, had shiny hair and shiny skin. mukhang alagang-alaga. there were a group of orphans who spoke American accented English. apparently, they grew up in an orphanage run by americans or something like that. asked where he is from, one boy replied "sahn howsey, takhlohbahn".

like any regular kids, they wanted a second and a third donut. but i noticed that if they wanted some more, they asked nicely and not just grabbed. one of the big kids caught me by surprise though. He reached into the box with both hands, groped the sweet stuff and helped himself to three! when i looked up, i realized he was blind on both eyes. he didn't even know what it was we were giving him. he just queued for it because that was what everybody else was doing it. he brought his loot to a corner, smelled it, then put one inside his mouth, then the two others.

this is a photo of some of the girls, eating their donut. i am between kenny and tita cory motomal, one of the administrators or directors of the place. what an interesting woman. when we got to the place, she was inside her car. she came out when she saw us, saying: i was here kanina pa, but i did not want to get out of the car because the music playing was beautiful."

enjoying their munchkin.

then we went to the isolation room. this is where they put children who have special needs. the eldest child in the place, Nur, is their de facto ate. she carried the donuts with her and doled it out like santa. nur has a best friend who stays at the isolation room, marvin. nur favors marvin. she would give marvin first and the most and more frequently.

this is Nur making like Santa in the isolation room. the boy in orange is funny. he was not interested in the donut AT ALL. he is interested in everything else, it seems. for example, when we came in, he stood next to me and studied the buckle of my bag intently, fiddling with it a little. then he moved on to the camera case hanging off ruth's (i think) bag. then at someone else's belt.

this is how his face looks like when he is obsessing on something. look at that brow scrunch in concentration. i think this was the time he was studying the construction of the camera case. in his hand is his uneaten munchkin.

p.s. salamat kay kiko for these pictures. they're all from his facebook album. i bought my cam but i got so taken up with the kids i forgot to take it out of the bag. alibis, alibis.

Happy Birthday, Diego!

2010-10-22T01:24:00.000-07:00

this is our son diego, he turned six yesterday. here he is at the carnival on tetuan highway. he basically decided on his birthday night's itinerary: dinner at jollibee then the carnival.

diego is cool. cool in a fonzie! kind of way. in that sense, he is so much like his father. when his father was 21.

this is diego, sharing a peek into the viewfinder with gabriel's mr. bear. notice that the camera has no lens. diego and the bear don't care.

diego likes to take pictures as much as he likes to pose for pictures.

i asked him what he likes doing most, taking pictures of posing for pictures, he said: the same!

plagiarizing an amex card ad

2010-10-19T19:56:00.000-07:00

we have a lot of magazines at home. a lot. there are erudite ones (national geo, the new yorker), gossip mags pretending to be erudite (vanity fair), fashion mags with erudite affectations (vogue), out and out fashion mags (in style, elle, bazaar), shelter, design and home (elledecor, house beautiful, martha stewart), and too much consumer reports.

i know several people who don't like magazines because they are "just mostly ads". but to me, that IS the point. i read them for their editorial content, yes. but i also read them for the ads. sometimes, the ads are better done than the editorial content, in my opinion. call me stupid but i can stare at an ad for a very long time, drooling over the picture, the color, the text, the copy. i think i am going to prod one of my kids (jana most likely) into the advertising or graphic design world so i can live out one of my dreams vicariously through her.

on the way to work this morning, this american ad on vanity fair caught my attention. isn't it beautiful? this is a series. ken watanabe is the one featured here but m. night shyamalan has done it. tina fey. eddie vader. it inspired me to do a blog post like it, where i can pretend to be an artsy celebrity and answer the questions.

My name Yen Blanco Delgado

Childhood ambition To design houses and maybe clothes.

Fondest memory All my growing up years.

Soundtrack rock. 80s new wave and 90s alternative.

Retreat my sister's beach house in zamboanga del norte

Wildest dreams backpack all over the world with my family

Proudest moments each time our kids declare a victory. over a chore, a project.

Biggest challenge being serious.

Alarm clock my cellphone.

Perfect day hammock. beach. tree. book. ice tea. ipod.

First job teaching science in a parochial high school.

Indulgence magazines. (told you). this blog.

Last purchase professional cleaning service for a digital slr.

Favorite movie right now? pride and prejudice.

Inspiration most everything i see and hear factors in.

My life all things considered, is perfect.

My card is the lowest kind of BPI Express Credit Card.

Now, how to get a picture of myself nuzzling a horse and cuddling a dog.

2010-09-12T23:08:00.000-07:00

this is a list of ten books that i love. it is not the ultimate list. tonight i will probably wake up regretting not including one book or another. it is not listed in any particular order either. while looking over the list, i just realized i basically like books that have hollywood plots. see for yourself, there are no tuesdays with morrie or the notebook types of book here. most definitely no james joyce stream of consciousness dribble either. no focaults pendulum. no ayn rand. i've read some books like that. i don't feel like listing them in my "books i love" list. mainly because i don't believe i love them.

to kill a mockingbird
i love this book for many reasons but primarily because atticus reminds me so much of my father: the wisdom, respect for the dignity of other people, a sense of humor that is always teasing but never sarcastic, the love of the written word, the all-encompassing but never cloying love for his children, the sense of justice, the peripheral love for sports. they were both lawyers. my dad was a marksman too. my five sisters and i still battle on who gets to be scout. my copy of this book looks even worse than that on the photo.

heidi
this book has the most sentimental value. it is the first book that i read. i was grade three or four. my daughter jana has it and is suspicious of my claims to have read it so she quizzes me: what is the name of the friend of heidi who is invalid? what is invalid? where does heidi sleep in the alps? sometimes when i am feeling naughty (which is too often) i quiz her back: what is the name of the two favorite goats of peter ? what is the name of the city where clara lives? both question stumps her. the answers: swanli and barli and frankfurt.

exodus
all the girls in the family have a crush on ari ben canaan. i can't believe paul newman played him in the movie. i was hoping for someone taller, more rugged. paul is too pretty, in my opinion. this is the book that got me started on my obsession with books about jews. last saturday, after lunch at her house, mommy told me that while cleaning up the bookshelves, she discovered we had a total of three exodus books. all in embarrassing states of disrepair.

the chosen
i have read this book about seven gazillion times. it's a story about a young genius jewish boy, the son of a high ranking rabbi, who befriends a slightly less intelligent but more industrious jewish boy, the son of an esteemed hebrew professor. set in new york during the time right after world war 2, when the jewish world was divided over the creation of israel. i like stories about geniuses and i like stories about the jewish people. i guess books like this taught me that there is more to the world than the culture that i grow up with (long before i even knew what a culture was).

little women
because i am the fourth girl in the family, i have been assigned to be amy, the "maarte" one. i want to be jo, the heroine. so did all my other sisters. later on i decided i didn't want to be jo. i learned the author was jo and i didn't like that she made herself the star of her own book. i have a strong feeling my being assigned the role of amy has affected who i am today. i am after all maarte.

eats, shoots and leaves
this book on the other hand makes me laugh. this book taught me that it's okay to be anal about punctuation -- there are others worse off than me.

harry potter
i exhorted others to pirate illegal ebooks of this as i was always too impatient for the next installment to be released. while other parents campaigned to have this banned, i was up until 3am reading them so that rashdi can take over when he wakes up in the morning.

love story
you will cry. no jews here. but there are plenty of white anglo saxon protestant preppies, a demography which i also because borderline obsessed with. the concept of being born privileged was very fascinating to me.

the thirteenth tale
a fairy tale that is modern and ancient at the same time. i love fairy tales. actually i love fairies, period. you know, the kind that are little and have wings and are cute but scary. that kind. no such fairies in this book, mind you. but i love this book still. am rambling now, so moving on to the last book on the list...

island in the stream
if i were a novelist, i would want to be like ernest hemingway. if i were a man, i would want to be like ernest hemingway. if i were a human being, i would want to be like ernest hemingway (in the sense that he always seemed to live life to the fullest). he killed himself though. that i don't want to do.

et voila: ze human nature zamboanga branch!

2010-08-23T00:13:00.000-07:00

after days on end of being forced to smell of eau de varnish et pintura, the construction is now over. well, a little fixing here and there, but at least, i can go home without smelling like i took a bath in turpentine. so this is how the store/office looks like now:

never have husband and me collaborated on a project as much we did on this. well, with the exception of our best projects of course, our children. those however are works in progress, construction on-going E-V-E-R-Y single day. unlike this Human Nature Branch, which i intend to keep as is for at least a year.

we had someone draft a design but we sort of modified that in a major way starting on the second day of construction. the designer had to keep up with us, instead of the other way around. you could say i am a designer's worst nightmare. my husband wanted to strangle me around seven times during the course of the two-week construction.

my husband was the contractor, you see. the original plan was to get someone else outside the marriage to handle the construction but we figured if we did it ourselves, we'll save more.

my request was pretty simple and straightforward i want everything to be white. and of course the workers fought me every step of the way for that:

yen: todo lang white manong.
manong: este door jamb?
yen: white.
manong: este molding?
yen: white.
manong: este shelves?
yen: white.
manong (panicky): nah! white lang todo? umalin se sale ma'am!

manong eventually got what he wanted, some colors, maskin poko lang. but i made him suffer for it a little pa, bad me. when everything was painted immaculate white, i asked for a light blue ceiling. the paint center delivered the very wrong color -- do you know there are seven hundred kinds of sky blue? -- so pintors and husband conspired to bring me to the paint center to supervise the custom mixing. they figured that way, i can only blame myself if the color was "umalin".

the room behind that wall is the mini office. behind the mini office is the mini conference room. most everything is mini because this is just a 40 square meter space. beside the conference room is the storage room.

they were so happy to show me this cubby in the mini-office. my instruction was one large shelf to serve as my desk and one narrower one above it to serve as a, well, shelf. then they thought, why don't we give our &^%$ task mistress more than what she asked for? let's give her a cubby with lots of cubbies!!!

i didn't have the heart to tell them i didn't like it. sigh. i need to sell a lot of stuff to justify a new desk.

then i requested them to threw in a little green here and there, the exact same green of the leaf on the wall accent above. that's a bulletin board actually but why settle for cork board of rubber matting when you can just wrap styropore in great but cheap cloth, di ba?

this is the conference cum meeting room. i love the table. it folds down the middle so you can tow it around.

this is the shelves in the storage room. this is not how it looks like now, thank heavens. our first major inventory is coming in this weekend.

and this is the working table in the storage room, where we can prepare orders: get them from the shelves, package them. this is how i wanted the mini-office to look like. sigh. blue and yellow is always good, no?

Noy and Yen: The Secret Pact

2010-06-30T00:05:00.000-07:00

i have a very selfish reason for wanting noynoy's presidency to work: if noynoy delivers, then i don't have to go work as a nurse in the states.

i am a registered nurse both here and in the state of connecticut, that great bastion of american WASP-hood. my family's immigration application is on hold, allegedly because of retrogression. i don't know exactly what retrogression is. all i know is that every important decision ariel and i have made for the family since 2004 has been greatly informed by this phenomenon called retrogression: should ariel apply for work abroad or not? maybe not because what if the immigration papers arrive? should i get my masters or not? maybe not because what if the immigration papers arrive? and so on and so forth.

ariel and i offered our family to the american government for consideration, but they didn't want us. not in 2004. not in 2008. not in 2010.

i don't want to go to the states. others do want to go, and others do get to go but i don't. not when i was 16 and enrolling myself into adzu's bsn program. not now when i am 38 and teaching 16 year old freshmen for a living.

if i sound like i am sour graping, take it from me. i am not. and i have a feeling i sound callous and ungrateful to all the people who helped me with the immigration application, my sis girlie in particular. but i hope you understand what i am trying to say sister dear.

nor do i begrudge my mom for making me take up nursing. at that time, she thought that it was for the best. the cost of bsn is very high and i appreciate my mother for caring for me and my future so much.

i love that i have a sister there who sends us packages. but it would be perfectly fine too if she were just here and not sending me packages. girlie, this is not a signal for you to stop sending the bboxes.

i love that i have classmates based abroad who treat us to sumptuous lunches and dinners when they come home to zamboanga.

but me, i just want to stay here in zamboanga. and not work as a nurse. i don't like to work as a nurse in the same way that i don't want to work as an airline pilot or as a bank manager or as a mayor of a city. it's nothing personal against those practicing these professions. it's just a personal preference. i understand that others would also rather die than teach or write.

and at this point, i want to go back to the topic of noynoy's presidency. if he delivers on his promises, then the philippines will be better and all the reasons that we held on to as we prepared our immigration papers won't be there anymore.

why go to the states when we can earn a decent living here? a living that will allow us to shelter ourselves, feed ourselves good food, send our children to good schools?

i would love to visit the states, that's for sure. but i would love to visit europe more. but this is non sequitur, as my dad would say.

noy, i loved your inaugural speech. i want you to be better than both your father and mother. i want you to make the country better so my family does not have to go to the states. because i really don't want to work as a nurse. i'd much rather teach and write for a living. and sell stuff. para mo nang awa, wag mo akong piliting mag nurse sa states.

this is the reason why in the 2010 election i opted to support a candidate. ever since i could vote, my involvement with the election has always been non-partisan. eight years ago, i helped put together the Movement for a Better Zamboanga's voters' ed pamphlet called "choosing wisely" (about which my wiseass friends would say, sino si wisely, yen, at bakit sya karapatdapat iboto) and in the last national election, coordinating the news bureau of the local namfrel.

noy, you have my support. i have my own agenda for supporting you but you will not begrudge me it, will you? i swear, they are not the only reasons. i am thinking of our four kids too. i will grow old more gracefully knowing my kids are going to live in a better Philippines. don't give me wrinkles!

bloody week

2010-05-05T17:29:00.000-07:00

jana was sick to the core yesterday at the prospect of having a pin prick her for complete blood count that she could not muster enough resources to produce a few ml for the urinalysis we were also required to do.

we spent 30 minutes in the hot, humid and crowded sia laboratory behind oro wonder drug near puericulture waiting for our turn as well as waiting for jana's bladder to cooperate. she used the time futilely, explaining to us how she wasn't sick any more, how she will never have a major allergic attack again because she will never ever eat tuna fish, egg, hotdog, chocolate, how her temperature at the neck is "cold" already, and so is the forehead, just please, let us not have blood test.

but her parents' hearts, they are not gold but diamond: cold and unpenetrable.

blood extraction she must have.

and it wasn't as if they needed to get a test-tube full (like what they did in WMMC lab before). they just needed enough to smear four slides and fill up a capillary tube. the CBC required only three slides and you can blame me for the fourth. i added blood typing to the list of tests at the last minute. i figured, best to do it now than have to convene congress again to pass a law requiring her to return to the lab in the future for yet another extraction.

when we returned an hour later to get the result, she was in a better mood.

jana: what's my blood type, mama?

mama: "O".

jana: ha? di ba last time it was "R"?

two weekends ago when she asked, i did tell her her blood type was "R". for Red. i had to shush her to make sure the lab tech didn't catch that but by the time that i did, she was already looking at us funny.

kath, sophie, jen, and yen

2010-05-04T21:52:00.000-07:00

a couple of days ago, i got an unexpected but very welcome visit at the office from a college friend, kathy go. when she came in the door, her.......prettiness just blew me away. jeez. she was even more smashing now than she was in college and that is saying a lot as she was ms national sara lee poster girl.

of course we talked our heads off. about this and that and everything else under the sun. she's a stewardess with cathay pacific (see what i mean?) and when i asked her what she loved best about her job, her answer was simple: "everything".

and of course we took photos. since kathy is insisting on looking ravishing, i will insist on doing the same too:

that's kathy in black with me as sophie marceau and then me as jennifer connelly. don't we look equally exquisite?

kathy and i, between the two of us, held an election for our college class' officers. she nominated me muse and i nominated her president. we voted unanimously for both positions and we swore ourselves in. that made us both so very happy.

here's to you, kath! thanks so much for dropping by and i look forward to the next. maybe in that next one, we can do lunch already. :)

what is better than coppertone spf 50?

2010-04-06T18:42:00.000-07:00

this is going to be a post of few text. my arthritic right hand is acting up, the network of nerves and flesh and cartilage from my wrist up to the tip of my thumb swelling up, aching, generally going haywire.

typing is an arduous process because i can't strike the spacebar without feeling electrocuted in that aforementioned part of my anatomy. and do you know how often you have to strike the spacebar while blogging? do you? after EVERY word. yes, after E-V-E-R-Y damned word. unless the word is at the end of the sentence. BUT THEN, you have to hit the spacebar again after the period or other terminal marks. unless you are one of those who like to annoy their readers by making the next sentence appear like it is part of the preceding sentence.like this.yes, just like this.do you see what i mean?

frankly, i am not very sure it's arthritis. but from what i learned during the time that i crammed for my cgfns and nclex, this is what arthritis should feel and look like. so i am going by that.

now, before i renege on my promise to keep this post as text-free as possible (hahaha. a girl can dream, right?), let me get on with the task at hand. that task being a compliance with the request of my sister girlie and my brother monching to post pictures of the holy week we spent at the beach in liloy, zamboanga del norte. they are not eager to see sports illustrated-like photos of me in my swimsuit -- there aren't any, in any case. they just want to see photos of the beach house, the beach, and the kids at the beach.

my nephew carlo was born on an easter sunday. during those years that april 20 does not fall on an easter sunday, he has two birthday parties. maita brought that cake from a factory, that white bougainvillea came from the garden, those little plastic toys (an orange motorbike, a green yoyo and something unidentifiable) came free with some junk food the kids bought from the sari-sari store earlier, and the name carlo was written with an ube-flavored chewy candy cut into long pieces, rolled and bent into shape, and et voila, a birthday cake!

the party people, from left to right: kimi, juliana, jana, mikka, carlo looking so happy, and diego. kimi and mikka are my JVP partner lara's sons. they are here on loan from their mom and pop in manila. the mendoza boys arrived thirty degrees fairer than they look here. three days of chasing hermit crabs brought about the exotic coloration. coppertone spf 50 can only do so much.

do you see the martha stewart worthy tin watering can to the right of the cake? so pretty, right? crazy baby gabriel urinated into that an hour before the party. he is his lola's grandchild, our gabriel. for the queasy ones amongst you, worry not, i washed and soaped it already.

the party people with the party sponsors, carlo's papa july and mama maita.

boys of summer...

boys of summer with a chick...

and the girls of summer with a boylet...

mikka mendoza is 7 and his brother kimi is 4. mikka is in grade 1 and he said that in this picture, he is wearing the uniform his team wore when they went to singapore to play in a football tournament. he said they won second place only on account of a stupid move by a team mate. he didn't use the word stupid. i did. mikka used the kinder word "fumble" to refer to his team mate's stupid move. mikka has encyclopedic knowledge about Formula 1. husband has found someone at the house who is willing to sit with him to watch abnormal cars race each other on abnormal roads.

kimi on the other hand does not seem to be very interested in anything sporty. he stayed inside the beach house the most. if allowed, he will have koko crunch and milk for breakfast, snacks, lunch, snacks, dinner, and snacks. like me, he does not like the morning sun. but unlike me, he breaks out in hives, especially on the face, when he gets exposed to the sun too much. i just turn orange all over.

taken near dusk at low tide. those rocks behind us would get completely covered by the sea at high tide, usually highest at this time of the year at around noon. when the water recedes late in the day, the rocks get exposed, along with the gazillions of weird sea creatures living in between and under them. a would-be marine biologist's dream land. or dream sea.

can't resist including this. not taken at the beach at all but during carlo's recognition day. ms. liloy 2022.

talking of carlo's recognition day, he was part of a production number at the program. here he is in costume, as a doctor! for those who have known carlo since toddlerhood, this is a phenomenon! all carlo ever wanted to be was a bus conductor. never mind his doctor mom or his accountant dad. nothing captured his imagination more than collecting fares from passengers of speeding air con rural transit buses. but then this happened to his mama and sort of deflated his will to become the best bus conductor the world has ever seen. this, my friends, is called tragedy.

belated happy easter eveyone!

p.s. 1/3 of the way in, i learned that i can bang the spacebar with my left thumb. i figured that out all by myself, would you believe?

husband's religion

2010-03-17T17:23:00.000-07:00

my husband has two religions: the roman catholic church and the manny pacquiao church.

my late great dad, ramon p. blanco, was a boxing fanatic. one of my fondest memories would be of him and my tito bong, watching heavy weight boxing on the latter's black and white tv, the kind of tv encased in a large, coffin-like wooden cabinet. the one with real push buttons that you push to go to another channel and real dials that you really have to dial to adjust the volume. with your thumb and forefinger. at that time, people only needed six channels to live a fulfilling life and buttons 8 and 9 were really just superflous.

daddy and tito bong would watch the fight, sitting on their haunches on the arm chairs, head and shoulders jutting forward, their entire body weaving from side to side, ducking, careening, mouthing fighting sounds, their every movement shadowing the actions of their boxer of choice. fighting vicariously, if you will. us kids, we derived our fun from watching our fathers watching the fight. we thought it hilarious that our normally sober dads could turn into these comical creatures.

i have no love for boxing. it's a stupid game, if you ask me. husband knows this so he NEVER asks me. but it's not just boxing husband loves, it's manny pacquiao in particular. he says things like "i am so lucky i live at the same time that manny lives." i roll my eyes 'til my pupils make contact with the back part of my eye socket but he basically ignores the feat and goes on to say "i live at the same time he lives. ang swerte ko."

how pathetic is that?

i find no equivalent feeling in me for anyone or anything. i try to say "i am so lucky i live at the same time as miuccia prada lives" and "i am so lucky i live at the same time as sting lives" and "i am so lucky i live at the same time as jk rowling lives" and all three just ring false.

then this morning, my sister anna emails me an article on GQ about pacquiao. great article, articulate and insightful and all.

but, really?

ode to george and bruno

2010-03-11T18:27:00.000-08:00

because bringing up four children isn't enough, we went and got ourselves two more crazy babies.

this is george. he turned 1 year old last month. he looks like a white wolf that is why neighbors prefer calling him "lobo" rather than george.

he used to scare 3/4th of the neighborhood kids. but not anymore. he has never hurt anyone on purpose. and i can only remember one instance of him hurting someone accidentally -- in january he scratched diego on the cheeks. but that was while giving diego the routine "you are coming back into the house after biking for several hours under the midday sun, you stink but because you are my master's brother, i welcome you with a lick" and his nails hadn't been cut when they should have already been cut.

so now we have a big wolf-like dog who scares no one. not even the cat that poops thrice a week on our postage-sized yard.

his master is rashdi. george is the reason rashdi wakes up more or less without complaint at 6:30 in the morning. george has to be brought out at that time for his morning ablutions.

my brother monching named george after george bush. his brother barack is named after the american president. i heard they have a sister in manila named gloria. i bet that girl will have issues on account of her name.

george is going with us to liloy this holy week. he likes bathing in sea water.

and this here is bruno, the myna bird. bruno is loco. he knows how to wolf whistle - loudly. our neighbors probably think we have a sex maniac in our household. someone who wolf whistles at all hours, even at 6am.

you never know what he is going to say next. he graciously asks you if you have eaten, or if you are already leaving the house. he will suddenly break out into hysterical laughter. all of these will be unprovoked by anything discernible to us. as i said, bruno is crazy, just like george.

which sort of makes them fit right in with the family they adopted.

zamboanga gives big love to noy!

2010-03-10T17:45:00.000-08:00

zamboanga city gave noynoy an unbelievably warm welcome yesterday. i say unbelievably because zamboangueños in general aren’t really big on......street parliamentarism.

my mom, her trusty sidekick nang ligaya, and i got to the grandstand at almost four. the streets were teeming with people with vehicles parked on both sides of the street. but the scene inside was even more shocking.

the grandstand was full to the gills, end to end, row upon row, a sea of people, people, people and even more people. we managed to find seats, people accommodating us by squeezing even more into the others seated beside them.

and it wazzzzzzzzz hotttttttttt! a kind of hot that makes you instinctively stay very still so that you do not make the environment around you any hotter with the energy expended by moving. i could feel the sweat gathering at my back and stomach and mommy had a fan but i refused to give in to the urge to fan myself and intoned a keep calm mantra. i put on my dark glasses to shut out a bit of the bright day light.

when we got in, organizers were still fixing the stage, a giant v-shaped yellow platform in the oval. but the program started soon after we arrived. what luck. many had been there since 1pm. i left my mom and ligaya (did i tell you already i have mild adhd?) to investigate the phenomena at hand. i wanted to see what kind of people came out and braved the sweltering heat to see noy and party.

there were all sorts of people.

there were lolas with their grandkids...

and a lolo with his grandkid...

there were little boys...

and little girls...

there were barkadas...

and there were bffs...

there were associations...

and nuclear families with sleeping babies...

and there was me. haha. i couldn't resist a souvenir photo. you will see that i wore orange. i am stupid that way. i did wear a yellow rubber band on my wrist. but then again, that band was neutralized by the humongous orange justice league ring i wore.

but here is a picture of my mom. or at least my mom's back (and a bad photo at that). she is wearing purple, for heaven's sake. so if you judge people by their covers, and i hope you don't, i am for villar and she is for loren, a little. because we all know loren is....pink.

at this point, i would like to add that i was by the way using a very yellow tote bag. and my mom wore a necklace with a very nice laquered metal yellow ribbon pendant. i say nice because i made that for her. haha. email me if you want one. but i have run out of the rubber wrist bands. will let you know if i get hold of some more of those.

anyways, i asked another photographer - a stranger - to take my photo. he was kind enough to oblige and even asked me if i just wanted that one shot. i actually wanted a security shot but medyo nahiya na ako. or deluded into thinking the seven million people in the bleachers were looking at me. my pants are embarrassing, no? the wash is so dated.

couldn't resist taking a picture of this. this shirt, well, vest, is an exception to the norm.

almost everyone (except me and my mom, but you know that already) wore yellow. but the yellow they were wearing were things they already had in their cabinets. someone was wearing a yellow shirt that said 35th Founding Anniversary of a school in Basilan. There were a lot among the younger ones sporting noynoy shirts but the pricey kind that you have to BUY. what i am saying is there was a conspicuous absence of people wearing mass produced noynoy shirts. no one was giving out shirts like that for rallyists to wear. actually, now that i think about it, no one was giving ANY rally paraphernalia AT ALL. no one handing out yellow ribbons but there were yellow ribbons. no one handing out placards, but there were placards. no one handing out noy fans, noy calendars, noy anything. people brought their own signals, mainly by coming in yellow shirts.

and i think that is indicative of the kind of people who were there at the rally. they were people who went of their own initiative. i am sure there were a number of people who went there to take a chance on seeing a celebrity, and they weren't disappointed. in order of appearance: dennis padilla, josh sta. ana (a young teenager with a soothing voice who said his mom is from zamboanga and who elicited screams from the crowds each of the three times he came on stage. i don't know him but you can blame that on my age), ryan cayabyab and his singers (the audience enthusiastically greeted the maestro. i could not help but laugh at the sight of him on the keyboards with a messenger bag slung around his torso), james yap (audience had fun with his repeated exclamation of "grabe!" but i like to think that like the rest of noy's entourage, the turnout really did overwhelm them), and of course, there was kris aquino. i normally have no patience for her and even take the side of ruffa in the recent tussle, but man, she sure knows how to play the crowds. you have to give her that. when she came out, there was mass pandemonium. people in the bleachers rising to their feet shouting, people on the ground running to get closer to the stage.

how was kris like? she was dressed in black jeans and polo shirt with her hair tied into a half pony tail. you could tell she was very fair. and her voice need not be described. its ubiquitous on tv.

kris introduced noy. by the time that she did that, it was already approaching 8pm.

when noy came on, people were shouting and flashing the laban sign. he was taller than I thought. how to describe him? karay lungkoy. that chavacano term is the best i can think of. said very affectionately. the way i would use it on my brothers ryan "kuray" blanco and ramon "labs" blanco.

and i noticed too that when noy started speaking, many young ones started leaving. i guess those were the people who came to see kris and perhaps dingdong dantes. sad. but the ones in yellow stayed. and cheered noynoy on.

noy presented himself, his "senatoriables", the mnemonic they devised for themselves is SLAMAT LORRRD which i find hilarious but which i am sure will work to their advantage. It stands for (SLAMAT) Sonia roco, Lao yasmin busran, Alex lacson, Martin bautista, Acosta neric, Tg guingona, (LORRRD) danny Lim, serge Osmeña, Ruffy biazon, Ralph recto, Risa hontiveros-baraquel, franklin Drilon.

then he also ardently promoted his vice president mar roxas.

you could tell that unlike his sister, noy was not comfortable talking about himself.

the evening ended with fireworks which delighted people. i set aside my hunger for a while to watch it til the end. then as people filed out, the emcee announced that the band calla lily was performing and that had the young ones screaming and rushing back in. but as for my party of three, we were ready to hike home.

we managed to get a tricy tho. a tricy driver and his wife going home from the rally just like us.

salivating over tawasils

2010-03-02T17:39:00.001-08:00

i visited the gallery yesterday to view the Tawasil Retrospective. I am going there again today because i wasn't able to see things very well yesterday.

i can't afford tawasil anymore. there was a time, maybe around five years ago, when i still could. but not anymore. sigh.

as it was mainly a retrospective, he did not have a lot of new works for sale. on display were privately owned works like a portrait of the lola of a friend from high school, some of his architectural drafts, some early pen and inks, his first watercolor, his first oil. going around the gallery, you get a better idea of how he evolved his distinct technique, the wave-like thingies. and you could see that he really likes using muslim motifs in his paintings and even in the houses he designs. actually, he likes drawing muslims, period.

mae and trish of the gallery sent me yesterday pictures, dimensions, and prices of the five paintings being sold.

the first three is the Mora series.

this here is Mora 1.

and this is Mora 2

and this is Mora 3.

Mora 1, 2, and 3 are all so achingly beautiful. if i have to choose, i will stand firm and not. haha. purple-orange hair? orange-pink hair? brown-torquiose hair? and you probably do get tints like that when you are a mora who has to constantly stay under the sun, such as when you live on a boat. but aren't the paintings simply beautiful. i so think so.

they are all 18.5" by 23". framed. circa 2009. 35k each.

and this one here is of a mora too but the focus is on the fishes in the basket on her head. same size as the mora series. same price too. but is that green sphere on her basket a grenade? or a pouch for her money? and are the fishes actually bulad? it would seem so because you can see the bones.

and here is the classic holy family theme:

this last one is the most covetable of them all, in my opinion. it's huge, compared to the others (31" x 41.5") and pricier (70k). looking at this, one of the first thing i realize that the fishes in the vendor's basket in the earlier painting are fresh fishes in fact, and not bulad. because in this painting, you see a similar looking fish above the father. the fish is swimming in the water, ergo, it is fresh, even alive. unless the tribe of the family pictured here are into tying their dried salted fishes into the outriggers of their boats. to soften it perhaps?

our kids are comedy skit writers

2010-02-14T17:16:00.000-08:00

my sister maita scolded her daughter juliana for playing with the cell phone. when the sermon stopped, here is what the three-year old said in her own defense herself:

"hing text man gud akong bana..."

this doesn't translate well into english so i won't.

=========================================

another slap in the face to another lecturer. this one took place just last night between my fourteen year old who knows it ALL, and his younger sister Jana who is convinced his kuya knows it ALL.

jana: why do the chinese and japanese have chinky eyes?

rashdi: asians evolved those eyes over time to adapt to the environment.

jana: what?! asians evolve?! like pokemons?!

=========================================

on our way to sunday lunch at mommy's, i interrogated my fat three-year-old.

me: where are you going?

gabriel: adto ko sa house ni lola

stupid me: mag unsa ka didto?

gabriel: mag talk mi ni lola.

oh-kay.

i have a feeling i've written about this before but i will write it again anyway

2010-02-08T20:55:00.000-08:00

for the longest time, this was my smut:

The above gothic looking picture above is of the Trinity Library in Dublin. This one below is of the Biblioteca Real in Madrid.

and this very grand looking one is of the Strahovska Knihovna in Praha (i am guessing from all the skas and has that this is in prague, Czechoslovakia).

if you look at the above three pictures with your eyes squinted a little and if you are, like me, a little delusional, then you can sort of imagine having them as intimate rooms in your own imaginary -- and palatial -- house. but the one below? well, it sort of looks too much like a public space, too....institutional. so i don't really drool over it as much as i do the three above.

these are all photos from a book titled "library lust". yes you heard right.

i also drool over -- slightly -- more realistic ones. this membership only library in italy for example:

"My perfect library would be a wing of a country house, with very high ceilings and a gallery; below it French windows opening on to a meadow with trees in the distance. Shelves would cover all the walls, with an oak staircase on wheels to get at the higher reaches, and a spiral staircase to the gallery, also full of books. A door would lead to an inner room, my study, with French windows leading on to an orchard. A spiral staircase within this room would ascend to a small bedroom above, with a tiny bathroom and rudimentary kitchen. So I could, at need, live a self-contained existence within my library-stronghold. In the main room would be a large mahogany table with racks containing portfol-ios of drawings and watercolours by its sides. No pictures on the walls — just books — and no nonsense of terrestrial and celestial globes." Paul Johnson at The Spectator.

My ideal library on the other hand would be something that will take up the entire half of the house. every other room will have to share the other half. i can do without a living room. if i have guests, i can bring them to the library, show them to a seat and we can each burrow our heads in our own books. i will make ice tea for the two of us even.

but lately, i have been downgrading because instead of libraries, i find myself trawling the web for pictures such as these:

these are photos of the studios or work rooms of crafts people. i am drooling over their storage "systems" in particular. yes. these days, drawers aren't content being simply called drawers. they now snootily refer to themselves as "storage systems".

this room below is very nice, except for the blue bubble valance over the shuttered window. i hate the valance and the fact that the window is shut. the black thing on the right wall looks like a storage "system" for ribbons, can you imagine that. i want five of those.

if you notice that the pictures all contain a particular kind of "storage system", its because all these are all photos from a competition for best work studio sponsored by the makers of that "system", the www.bestscrapbookshelf.com.

these ones here below are used to store beads. oh how this will make my life easier. maybe i can have a local carpenter make one like it?

its telling too that lately, i have been crafting more than reading.

the next disney hit will be from zamboanga

2010-01-21T17:09:00.000-08:00

i was lucky to have eavesdropped on a most interesting conversation earlier this week.

it took place on facebook. it was between a co-teacher and his friends. it made me think about the process of creating something from absolutely nothing but the participants' imaginations. brilliant! brilliant! brilliant!

Kiko Miranda, the aforementioned co-teacher, starts the convo off with this gem of a status update:

The rampant spread of homosexuality among the youth in Nature's natural way of controlling the rise of the world's population.

the radical but plausible theory immediately captured the attention of many of his facebook friends who were online at that time. i asked kiko for permission to post the conversation here but not his friends as i don't many of them. his friends will go by by their initials here.

here is the conversation:

=====================================================================

Kiko Miranda: The rampant spread of homosexuality among the youth in Nature's natural way of controlling the rise of the world's population.

WZP: haha. plausible argument. main contention ba se de neoliberated sexonomics?

JBS: hahaha

Kiko Miranda: @ windel - nosebleed! but i like the jargon ha! NEOLIBERATED SEXONOMICS hehehehe!

TG: hurray to genetic deadend

DEA: Oo, in the future may sex pa rin pero hindi na for reproduction. Asexual na ang reproduction in the future -- pwedeng by budding, marcotting, or grafting. O pwede ring basta splitting into two.

TG: or pwede ding aksidenteng matapopn ang semilya kung saan. parang ulan.

Kiko Miranda: true ka dyan ezra! sa future, sex will not be mainly for procreating. the world cannot handle an additional baby per second! may season nalang na pwedeng mag procreate tapos draw lots lang ang sinong pwedeng mabuntis! OMG so sci fi! ganda gawing pelikula! move over avatar! WE ARE THE NEXT AVATAR! hahahaha!

DEA: Oo, tapos may tutubo doon sa lugar kung saan ito natapon. Para lamang itong mushroom sa simula, pero magmumukang tao din pagkalipas ng isang linggo.

DEA: Hahaha. Tama! Gawin natin itong pelikula. Hahaha

DEA: At hindi na masyadong problema ang population growth kung sakaling tumubo ang mga taong kabute, a little fungicide will do. Trosyd, anyone?

WZP: sa other end naman ng spectrum, biblical/ conservative sexonomics. lol

TG: It should be as grungy as children of men, as scifi as Avatar, but hilarious as Family Guy

Kiko Miranda: @ ezra - gusto ko yung kabute angle! beautiful! pero etong mga kabuteng tao sila ung mga nasa pinakababa ng social caste system ng mga panahong iyon. mga illegitimate human beings. Mga nasa ittas ng caste system ay yung pinayagan/sinuwerte na magtalik para magkaanak.

@ travis - magandang evolution of man yan! I SO LAVET!

@ everyone - ang creative natin nuh? LAVET!

DEA: I feel this will become a big hit! Let's ask Disney to do our movie!

Kiko Miranda: actually i feel the same too. especialy those human fungicides i think that's a genius! tutal uso naman ngayon ang mga futuristic sci fi movies. i bet eto na ang road to fame natin ezra! and we will entitle our movie, "CATALAN". LAVET!

TG: Aylabyu all hahaha

TG: Catalan amputa, bohahaha!

DEA: Yey! Kinikilig na ako just thinking about it! Naririnig ko na ang: And the Oscar goes to... CATALAN.

Kiko Miranda: Nakadubi ata tayong mga tol! lavet! sarap lang gn tama! hahha!

Kiko Miranda: omg! ganda ezra! The Oscars is the shit!

DA: wow kiko, this thread was so entertaining. i like!! (:

MRA: LOL! I love this logic! It actually makes sense. :-)

YBD: kiko, such a very interesting, very funny, very creative conversation. i feel like such a peeping tom "listening" to you all. a peeping tom listening. parang mali yata yun. :)

TG: teka, bago ang lahat, dapat r-18 to ha. hindi ako makakapayag kapag hindi to rater R. haha. na medyo silent movie. artsy. haha

TQL: Maybe it's not "spreading." It could also be that young gays today feel that they are accepted, so they feel more at ease to be themselves. :)

DEA: I agree. R-18. may frontal nudity dito e.

TG: sige. 60 minutes frontal, 25 minutes decent.

Kiko Miranda: @ ezra and travis - no! ayokong R18 ito! pg 13 lang! tipong parang CORALINE ang pag gawa! or ALICE!

or

pwede ngang may frontal nudity sa mga UNTOUCHABLES. mga taong kabute. once they grow and mature, wla silang clothes. lavet parang schindler's list nung tinipon lahat ng mga Jews! ganun!

CMD: NAKAKA-LOKKKKAAHHH. :))

Kiko Miranda: hahahaha naloka ka calai? hahahaha!

TG: teka sinong artista dito?

FAR: I LOL'd :)

OF: tama!

========================================================================

if this movie ever gets made (when disney decides its okay for them to make full frontal nudity movies), let it be said that the first (publicity) shot was fired from this blog.

kiko, thanks for letting me share this. i even included here my favorite picture of you. :)

one cold night

2010-01-17T18:39:00.000-08:00

last weekend, my sister maita and her husband were supposed to take their three kids to the theme park in Dapitan. she decided instead to come to zamboanga to retrieve her new dentures from her new dentist.

we saw each other at mommy's house in san roque late saturday afternoon. she was showing off her new dentures while eating her ma-chang. whenever she visits zamboanga, she finds a way to buy ma-chang from that chinese store on nuñez street, the one fronting the lobregat house.

she, a cousin, and i chatted in my mom's lanai, whiling away time before she had to take th

Publish Post

e bus home to liloy. i don't remember anymore why but we talked about death. specifically, we talked about being ready to die or not. i said i was (in one of my frequent moments of delusions), and so did ate othel, my cousin. maita sheepishly but quite firmly said she wasn't, that the kids are too little.

She chose to board the aircon Rural Transit bus #921 instead of the non-aircon one. The bus left the terminal at around 7pm. My sister said that she could already see the rotunda welcoming people to the province of Zamboanga Sibugay when she heard what she thought was firecrackers. then she and the others in the bus realized it was gun fire. then when she felt the bus slowing down, she shouted to the driver to keep on driving, to bring the bus away from the gunfire. but the driver slowed down, and soon my sister and the other passengers found themselves on the floor, and my sister shouting for the lights to be turned off, which someone eventually did.

my sister recounted this to me hours later, while she was strapped to the gurney in the ambulance. for a seriously wounded patient, she was very talkative.

while they were on the floor, and there was no more gun fire, someone at the back of the bus noticed round six flash lights moving down the hillside to their left. apparently the ambush party coming down. my sister said she thought to herself that she'd rather be shot at the back while running rather than be a sitting duck inside the bus. so they ran out the bus towards a lighted house a few meters downhill. i think that it was only at around this time that she realized she was hit.

hit and bleeding, flashlight-wielding men coming down the hill towards them, my sister disembarked the bus along with the 35 other passengers, lugging her tote bag AND laptop bag, and ran away from the bus on the worst pair of shoes EVER. a made in korea pair with plastic straps, plastic soles, and plastic beads. it was my mom's and cobbled together for the sake of pretty, not for running away to save your life. i've worn this pair, in certainly less dire situations, and i wanted to chop it to pieces and walk barefoot.

but my sister, she ran, ran, ran downhill on it. and while wearing it, she managed to grab the rails of a passing truck, with it she somehow found a way to step on the truck's stepping board, to hammer on the truck's door, begging for help. TABANG. but the truck driver, he wouldn't listen. he sped on. my sister, stupid shoes, laptop, tote bag, wounds, fear and all, fell to the highway and almost got herself ran over for her efforts.

the running passengers slowed down the highway's late night traffic of big buses and big delivery trucks. she said at least three trucks passed, and some Rural Transit buses. Only one stopped to pick up two of her companions on #921. the others sped on, ignoring them.

my sister is thankful to the couple who sheltered them, as my sister anna said in her facebook, at great personal risk. the couple was a tausug husband and a bisaya wife. my sister and a number of others stayed there until the police/military/ambulance took them away.

oh the people we roused from sleep that night. the strafing took place at around 9.20pm. a few minutes after that, while i was just turning on the washing machine (and thinking what a horrible saturday night it was turning out to be, washing two heavy bed quilts. hah! little did i know how even more horrible it will become), my phone rang. i missed the first because of the noise of the washing machine and the noise of cartoon network characters. but i did not miss the second. the missed call was my manila-based sister anna and the second was my manila-based brother monching calling to tell me that something VERY BAD is happening to maita. then anna called to explain further.

after that it was just one phone call after another. when you know your sister is very badly hurt and is still in the situation that caused the hurt, you sort of go on auto pilot. and the cellphone becomes your remote control, a tool to help manage the situation taking place 90 kilometers away.

i called up sheila covarrubias, mayor lobregat's media officer, because (1) she thinks straight, (2) she has direct line to people who can help my sister.

she informed col baluyot of task force zamboanga and the mayor. task force zamboanga wasn't aware of the shooting incident until sheila called. they have an outpost there, apparently, but they did not get any reports about it yet. col baluyot asked for my sister's number thru sheila and my sister said later that she did get a call from him.

husband and i, cousin edoy and his othel wife were getting ready to go as close as we could to licomo, wherever, to try to retrieve maita. i get a frantic call from my brother that maita was already in pain, that she was crying, that she gave instructions that she should be brought to a zamboanga hospital and not to ipil.

so i called silvie, rep beng climaco's staff and my co-teacher, trying to find a way to get to the barangay captain licomo, to mobilize the barangay health workers there to attend to my sister's wounds. silvie explained later that she didn't answer because she was at that time putting her child to sleep. i did get to derick evangelista.

i got a phone call from rep beng and she patiently listened to my whining. God how i must have been very passive aggressive, whiny and demanding.

then i got a phone call from mayor lobregat from sheila's phone, telling me that he was going to licomo himself.

then my sister called to say that general jalandoni already mobilized the military to that area.

all this time, i have not talked directly to maita. fortunately, mike saavedra, who was most helpful that night, had given me the number of the mayor of tungawan, the first sibugay town after licomo. (actually, i think mike gave me the number of the entire elected government of zam sibugay, hehe. thanks so much mike. one of these days, makiki text mate ako kay gov ann hofer). i called the mayor, randy climaco, and lo and behold, he was at the time of my call, sitting beside maita! yoohoo! so i got to talk to maita, who was quite lucid. i did not waste time giving climaco's number to maita's husband either. so that entire night, we had a mayor as call center agent.

the day after the incident, i got a text from him asking how maita is. i don't know him but i was touched by that.

maita said that when the police/military/civilian authorities/media arrived in the area, they invariably looked for her by name "who is maita blanco here", "is there a dr ladeza here". my sister the celebrity.

we waited in curuan, right in front of the check point. there was a crazy policeman there who would suddenly sing at the top of his voice (de-sintunado pa). he said it was his way of keeping sleep at bay.

we decided to wait at curuan when a task force zamboanga vehicle zoomed past us. the night was dark, there are no streetlights there, and we four were by our lonesome in a solitary pick up capable of inflicting tetanus but not deflecting bullets. soon after the TF zambo passed us, the convoy of mayor lobregat passed, and then a few minutes more, an ambulance.

half an hour later, the ambulance came back, slowed down. one man alighted and said "sister ni dr. maita blanco?". that was my cue to get off the pick up and into the ambulance. my cousin othel followed.

and there was sister dear, strapped to the gurney. her first complaint? there goes my favorite pair of jeans....

she did an instant tailoring on left leg, cutting it off right above the knee. her knees by then were bandaged, but the blood was still seeping through, pooling under her legs. her nice gray blouse had holes on the left sleeve, and i could see bandages under that sleeve.

she was pale, but as i said, talkative.

she recounted everything. my cousin and i could barely talk. we were so cold and shocked to see her like that.

we stopped by the paragas hospital where dr agbulos got in to check on maita. they talked a few minutes and then we were on our way to doctor's hospital.

at doctor's hospital, we were joined again by mayor lobregat, who checked on maita. waiting for us there were maita's med school classmates. eventually, they decided to bring her to the OR for wound exploration. it was already past two at that time. who worked on her at the OR? an ortho, a surgeon, a general practicioner, and a pediatrician. they were joking around. they bugged the ortho, asking him why he came when he knew he was going to be useless, seeing as both hands were thickly bandaged, recovering from a carpal tunnel surgery. he said something about not wanting an opportunity to install urinary catheter on a classmate.

just today, my sister said that the surgeon said bullets and shrapnel were imbedded on maita's knee, thigh, and shoulder. only a few inches away from bones and nerves.

my shelfari profile

2010-01-14T20:41:00.001-08:00

i started reading as soon as i learned how to. i cannot remember a time when i was not reading. i wake up reading and i go to sleep reading. i have gone to sleep reading a cellular phone manual.

my parents did not encourage us to read. on the contrary. the image of kids reading under their blankets with a flashlight was not cliche for our family. we quarreled over books, mainly who gets to read what first. we were precocious readers. a month into class and all of us would have read all our language class books. then we read each others'. despite this, no one was an honor student. we did not read the math books, the social studies book.

i read while in transit. i read while still. i read, therefore i am.

we are seven siblings in the family and everyone, except the youngest who prefers the TV, reads. the love of reading was transferred to us by osmosis from our father. mommy reads only a certain type, mostly biographical. my son, 12, has started reading books from MY shelf, not anymore content with the books in the kids' room.

my first book was Heidi by Johanna Spyri. My current book is Bergdorf at the Plaza.

other than books, i love vogue, the internet, my work, the coldest, coldest coke, reunions with my family, the beach, road trips, my mp3 library, movies, my house, watching 24 with my husband, my new charcoal gray slacks, condensed milk, creamO cookies, dire straits, elle home decor, toasted bread with good butter, the flea market, playing "airplane" with my kids.

i saw the sign, yet again

2010-01-04T16:26:00.000-08:00

on the last day of last year, which, as usual, was a december 31, i found the inspiration for the blog post that will put an end to my 27-day zamboanga girl hiatus. on the bumper of a truck we met on the way to one of those last-minute errands that always, always crops up on new year's eve, was this treasure:

"PSST...bokas ang seper mo!"

haphazardly hand written in runny, drippy white paint, about 10 inches high.

it took me about a minute and a half to process what i just saw before i started giggling on the passenger seat. husband, being used to my abnormal ways, just said: "hmmm..." not really interested to know what it was i saw this time.

well, it just made me want to blog again. and isn't that great?

it made me remember two other lines i saw over the holidays, both names of local businesses.

the first one was of a glass and aluminum enterprise on magay. the spanking new signage read JAGGED EDGE Glass and Aluminum.

oh - kay.

i really wonder what the process was for coming up with that one.

and then a couple of days later i saw this delivery truck of what was apparently a distributorship. on the side, in what i remember as either blue or green paint, in thick block letters, the business name Dense Marketing.

Owh-khay.

so very long time no see!

2009-12-09T16:36:00.001-08:00

blog! oh my god, so very long time to no see!

how are you? you look well. well, a bit un-updated but in general, you look FINE.

well, i've been busy doing this and that. that and this. i decided to undertake some things three months ago and now i am just on auto-pilot, trying to be accountable for my decisions. but so far, it has been worth it.

but let's talk about YOU, instead of me. are you gonna change your look soon? are you going to get a new posting sooner? what happened to the interview with the mayor? i hope it gets transcribed soon. i notice that the things that should have gone here are cropping up as facebook status updates, in an understandably but frustratingly truncated version.

weren't you supposed to have two guest postings lined up? you should move on that before it gets any more stale.

well, it's been nice visiting with you. can't stay long though. i have three million bullet points on my to do list. by the way, i started using a new to do notebook last night. it's so pretty. and the paper is so nice. i'll show it to you one of these days. bye!

zamboanga food in today's Philippine Daily Inquirer

2009-11-18T18:19:00.000-08:00

my friend marsha and i were on the phone about 30 minutes ago when she gave a sudden shriek and babbled that someone just told her her mom's diner was featured in today's philippine daily inquirer. we bade each other a hasty goodbye and ran to get a copy: me to the library downstairs and she to......... whererever she normally gets her paper.

nikko ballovar at the periodical section gamely allowed me to take the paper out of the library for 15 minutes (the library staff here are used to my weird requests) so i could scan it. and here it is:

it's all askew, sorry. it was hastily done. i can only do so much in 15 minutes, no?

if you click on the picture, i guess you could read it. if not, the whole article is here.

it's an article by food columnist mickey fenix. it's about the food she ate and the recipes she gathered while visiting zamboanga.

i am so proud of my friend marsha and her mom because their restaurant, busy bee, is the first paragraph feature! i already talked about how i love eating there and having the hole in the wall featured in a national broadsheet makes me feel so good for the montano family, mamu edna especially.

fenix also mentioned country chicken restaurant where we took the kids to dinner last night in celebration of a successful family effort. she made special mention of exactly what we had last night: the mano-mano bilao. we had the giant platter which for Php 520 was very value for money. it fed three hungry kids and two hungry adults and two hungry teenagers. the only thing we had other than that platter was an order of lechon kawali. and the great thing was that they serve 1.5 liter softdrinks instead of just the small 8 oz or 12 oz bottles. a great, great treat for parents of little kids addicted to the drink because it was "just" Php 85, instead of the Php 25 x 7 we would have needed to get.

the kids loved their playground. i loved their garden. it's simplicity and unpretentious-ness makes it great, i think. you almost feel like you were dining in your own backyard. IF you had a spacious and pretty backyard.

do find time to read the article. it's great. if you're not here, it will help you remember. if you are here, it will help to remind you of places you can go to and things you can try out -- again or for the first time.

the article also mentions other iconic zamboanga food places: myrna's, jimmy's satti. and iconic food as well. fenix likes something i've always found weird: our noodle filled tamal. why fill a carbo casing with carbo filling? i actually love eating tamal. i just find the concept weird. just like juani in coconut milk and sugar. and the crab named after cockroaches. i guess that would describe a lot of zamboanga food: weird but very, very, very good.

isang maarteng raket

2009-11-16T21:37:00.000-08:00

this was my table at the mother butler holiday bazaar last weekend. my second time to join a bazaar. it went quite well. well, except for the fact that i could not feel my feet anymore from 3 to 5 pm and starting at 5:01pm, i could feel my feet TOO much. tiny pin pricks exploded all over my feet and calves, and around the bony protrusions (i have a lot of those) were swellings that made themselves known without shame. both nights of the bazaar, i had to ask our long suffering yaya jennilyn to boil water so that i could soak my poor, poor, poor feet.

but what did i expect, really? having been up basically on them for 14 hours straight?

all things considered, better to have been up all those hours, than sitting down, because that would have meant very bad business indeed.

i met so many people, old friends. new acquaintances.

my favorite people included two very pretty ladies, cousins, who came back a total of eleven million times to peruse the wares. sometimes they bought, sometimes they just looked. i liked having them look and answering their questions about how i made this and that. the elder one, pia, is 3rd year high school at ateneo and the younger one, monique, is a grade schooler. their lola had a booth. once, their lola came barelling down the aisle (in a very regal manner) towards my table while they were trying on necklaces. they both ran back to their booths even before the lola could say anything. apparently, it was their turn to man their store.

pia and monique would come an hour after visiting and ask if i had more stocks, like i were some kind of superwoman, crafting beads in between talking to customers, computing, bagging, and giving change. finally, i just let them into my white tupperware. just to reassure them that they've seen everything. they called my bluff. they showed me a necklace that wasn't on display. they bought it. the thing is, i sort of like that one. and wanted it for myself.....

another pair that i got to know well was a mother-daughter team named lissa. because they are both named lissa. really. they both had great skin, that was the first thing i noticed about them. the mom really knew which items to go for. she went right away for this giant green organically-shaped resin bead bracelet which i was sort of....keeping for myself. mother dearest bought that bead in the states. there are only three of them. now i know that i definitely will keep the other one. the other lissa, the daughter, was more interested in the business side of things, than on the wares at hand. she said she had an online store and two parlors, knows a friend who also owns another parlor, and that they'd like me to display my stuff with them during the not-christmas season. this was after i told lissa-lissa (and the cult jam, remember that 80s group? i digress. as usual) that i only have stores during the holidays. told them i will think about it.

another customer i will not forget is this woman, 60ish, who would ask for the STEEPEST discount. like she would ask if a 95 earring could be sold to her for 45, or a 305 necklace for 125. so funny. i know it was a game for her but i found it so funny playing along. in the end, i did give her good discounts (but not what she was asking for!) because she bought so much! she made her first purchase in the morning of the second day. in the afternoon, she came back to ask, like pia and monique, if i had new stocks. haha. i don't know why they ask me this. maybe they don't really believe that i made my own wares myself. she asked me if i will be at the tzu chi bazaar and i said i will. she gave me her name and told me to reserve the good ones for her.

hmm. now what will i make of that request?

this is a photo of the earring stands i made the night before the bazaar. the most frequent inquiries were about these! rashdi, ariel and i had to keep telling people that the price refers to the earrings, not the stands. ariel said maybe we should make a lot of these to sell in the next fair. where to find clay pots these small? challenge, challenge....

this is a photo of the two full time sales staff: rashdi and me. we look so tan here. as if we spent the past few weeks lounging by the sea, drinking ice tea and reading instead of cutting paper, stringing, bending, pricing, everythinging...

the name of my store is the chic chick. a mouthful. that's me. always going for the complicated. if you will look closely, the drawing of the three fowls atop the name chic chick is all wrong. they re roosters. not chicks. only two persons noticed: my husband, because he loves criticizing and critiquing even more than me. he is september-born too, see. and us september-borns, we LUHRVE to criticize, asegun. the other person was a customer. rochelle from the city assessor's office. so she does have an assessing eye...

i saw the sign and it opened up my eyes

2009-11-11T13:25:00.000-08:00

i have been going round and round the city on various errands the past few days in preparation for a christmas bazaar i am participating in this weekend.

navigating zamboanga city proper on foot is always a challenge. on the sidewalk, you have to take evasive action against the gazillion of spit underfoot, in various stages of....decay. on the street, the evasive action is against tricycle drivers who each drive on the absolutely deluded belief that God custom built the road for him.

for those who went out for even the littlest fraction of a second at noon yesterday and today (it is still noon as i write this), i do not need to tell you how HOT the weather is.

the only thing that kept my spirits up are the signages i encountered. looking for signages to snicker at is one of my favorite and more malicious preoccupations. i have other favorite and malicious preoccupations but laughing at signages takes pride of place.

yesterday the signages took the form of a streamer, a tarp for boutique, and two t-shirts.

i saw the streamer this morning at the corner of alvarez and nunez extension:

DRIVING SCHOOL
WE SPECIALIZE IN NERVOUS STUDENT DRIVERS.

ohkayyyy. i should not laugh because i think i am a part of their other target audience. and when you really come to think about it, it's a great, great tag line. most people who enroll in driving schools are nininerbyos about the prospect of driving. otherwise, they will just convince whoever is at home to enumerate the rudiments then have a go at the wheel. this tag line will make such would be drivers (aka almost ALL would be drivers) seriously considering enrolling here?

the next is just plain nakakainis:

THE YOUTH IS THE HOPE OF THE FUTURE STYLES. RUSTY LOPEZ.

yuck. anyone who browses too much fashion magazine would know this is a very bad imitation of the kenneth cole ads. the ones where they fill a double-page spread with an edgy black and white photo and caption it in relatively small print with a catchy cool saying, like "52% of americans think same-sex marriage don't deserve a good reception. are you putting us on? - kenneth cole"

but the youth is the hope of future styles? oh come on!

the next signage was on a shirt i saw on my way to zamboanga home products (talking of which, i'd like to take this opportunity to warn you against going there at 12 nn to 1:30pm. they're closed. don't ask. i don't know. i only hate). the tshirt,worn by a girl, twentyish, said:

YOUR BOYFRIEND IS LOOKING AT ME

yes, because you have the skankiest taste in t-shirts, that is why.

she did not even have the right attitude to go with the shirt. i mean, paris hilton could probably get away with that shirt. and the saying on the shirt would probably be true, with paris in it.

the fourth was also a shirt. it caught my attention, out all all the many shirts in shop o rama 2nd floor, because it could be the earlier shirt's twin. it read:

DON'T YOU WISH YOUR BOYFRIEND WAS HOT LIKE ME

yes. it was so very very confusing that my brain almost exploded from trying to make sense of it. i got distracted from my task at hand (buy a pack of dried moss) that i got to the 3rd floor not knowing why i was there.

it was in the ladies section so i am wondering what girl would want to compare her hotness to a male's? so maybe the shirt was designed for transgenders? but transgenders want to be girls, and they would be the last persons to want themselves compared to hot males.

as i said, so very confusing.

my confusion probably transferred by osmosis to the saleslady at the synthetic flowers section that she could not find the last pack of moss. i told her i was so tired, i have been searching for it practically the whole morning, and that i needed it soooooooooooo desperately that if she manages to find it, i will pay double the price. i said this only AFTER ascertaining that the pack cost 10.75. i am crazy but not that crazy.

hugging my blog

2009-11-06T16:13:00.000-08:00

this is my 100th zamboangagirl post.

this blog has given me more joy than i ever imagined. i love that it allows me to say things i normally wouldn't say for fear of offending or boring people. i write my posts mainly for myself, a step up from my pen and paper journals because here i can add audio and visuals. but unlike the old journals which were basically enjoyed only by me and myself, this blog is helping me connect with other people in a manner both convenient and meaningful.

i love you, blog!

i LOVE you, stephan!

2009-10-28T21:25:00.001-07:00

when i grow up i am going to marry stephan jenkins of third eye blind.

i know, i know. husband and i celebrated our ninth just this week and everything.... but just look at and listen to this guy. just look and listen.

"i don't wanna crush you but i feel like crushing you..."

well, you know what, stephan, i am crushing ON you in a MAJOR, MAJOR way because you are so cute and your songs are so, so, so very cute. never mind that your lyrics are sometimes incomprehensible, maybe that is just because you operate on a higher intellectual plane than i or something. oh my goshness. you make me dizzy with crush.

this guy, singing barefoot in rolled up jeans and a t-shirt, received an english lit degree from usc berkeley....as class valedictorian. no shit. and he grew up dyslexic. to my mind, he is proof incarnate that the world is NOT fair.

this last picture is of the current object of my malice (say stee-vin, not stef-on) with seal. seal is another guy i will marry once i grow up and, i guess, once he gets tired of heidi klum.
and here is the requisite cheesy shot, the consequence of being named one of people magazine's 50 most beautiful. i hope the tight silver lame pants wasn't his decision.

these last two photos are of him looking responsible. i prefer him looking as if hygiene isn't a priority. i bet he stinks. good thing odor can't be uploaded yet.

husband loves third eye blind. he will eat the entire first album if his stomach were made of sterner stuff (it isn't). so i bet he won't mind if i ask permission to marry stephan. maybe i'll do it tonight.

unforgivably forgetful

2009-10-28T00:12:00.001-07:00

ugh. caught flatfooted again.

i was, until a few moments ago, checking final exam papers (well, virtual papers) at the office when in comes husband with a bag of brownies and a bottle of ice tea with the preamble "gusto kitang bilhan ng flowers pero puro lanta ang binibenta ng mga flower shops. baka naubos para sa sementeryo."

ha?

"anniversary natin, inday yenyen."

that is my husband's brand of romance: brusque, practical, sweet.

he told me how much the brownies cost and that i should leave some for the kids.

i let the whole world know i forgot all about our anniversary last year. then i went and forgot about this year's. next year will be our tenth. thinking about it -- more specifically, that i will forget about it -- is making me anxious.

happy anniversary, husband. i left six brownies in the bag: one for each child plus one each for yaya jennilyn and yaya bingbing. but i finished the iced tea, is that okay? haha.

i want to eat google chrome themes

2009-10-22T22:19:00.000-07:00

i downloaded google chrome the other day. i already forget how i came across this new web browser. everything interesting i find in the internet, it seems, i just stumble upon, unlooked. stumbling upon interesting websites was the big idea behind my first attempt at blogging, in 2005, i think. i called it princess of serendip or some nonsense like that.

when i announced on facebook that i WILL replace my beloved mozilla firefox with google chrome, the first comment came from fr. denny, an IT jedi master. he gave a big tsk, tsk to my plan. he said i should not discard firefox completely because some programs do not work so well off chrome.

but, fr. denny, chrome's themes are soooooo prettyyyyy.....

for the others who have not already done so, go see for yourselves how VEDDY PWEETTY they are.

there are two theme categories: commissioned artists and google's own.

there are 45 choices in the commissioned artists' category. except for three or four designs that i do not appreciate, i'd gladly download them all. but i tried to be a good girl and narrowed the list down to five must-haves. they may be free but i am not allowing myself to be greedy.

in no particular order:

this is by oscar dela renta. this is what i chose first. using it now. it looks like the shavings left by someone who went crazy sharpening dozens of pink, red, and gray crayola. beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. google just gave me the chance of own a dela renta. indebted forever.

this one's as color saturaated as the dela renta. by Ocean Pacific, makers of board shorts and other surf wear. i love the colors.

it was a choice between this and one by fashion designer anna sui. i wanted both but i had to make a choice between the two otherwise people might think i love mariah carey. the anna sui also had butterflies but on a field of violet.

talking of mariah, there actually is a designer theme for her (or by her?). with her picture. that one made it to my list of "three of four designs i do not understand".

this makes me smile, smile, smile. this could have been done by daughter.

and this one, red flowers on spindly black branches, very japanese, don't you think? this one is by an australian fashion designer with a japanese-sounding name, akira isogawa.

majority of the themes were done by fashion designers but there were also very beautiful ones by illustrators, artists, anime, car manufacturers (porsche), and even the cartoon pocoyo. it makes me so sad to exclude the pocoyo theme from my shortlist of five because i love him so much, but the pocoyo theme didn't look so good. it didn't do my pocoyo justice. could you please make another one, pocoyo people?

you might want to ask how chrome is performing, because, after all, a browser isn't all about pretty themes. well, my answer to that is another question: is it possible for google to create anything ugly?

but then again, you shouldn't trust my opinion on this. i only know what my eyes like.

do we really deserve our children?

2009-10-19T20:53:00.000-07:00

found this while organizing my wallet this morning:

got this about five weeks ago.

is there a competition for the most distraught birthday greeting ever written? because if there is, i think i have a winner here:

a decoding of the hieroglyphics:

Sorry I cannot give you the drawing because i lost it pls forgive me pls make sandwiches for me i cant stop thinking about it i made a small picture e down there

(then a drawing of a woman and a little girl raising their arms up in worship under a cotton candy tree as a rabbit looks on)

What would you like as a gift a message, TV, story or what please make a decision.

she apparently made this note in a frenzy while dressing up for school, panicked that she lost the drawing she made the night before; the drawing with which she intended to surprise me as i woke up to my 37th birthday.

if, in the future, time magazine will interview me for a profile on jana and they ask me what jana was like as a child, i will simply show them this. this letter is everything jana is: loving, crazy, sensitive, emotional, thoughtful, demanding ("please make a decision"), distracted ("please make me a sandwich"), generous, courteous, creative. this is also evidence of how easily she goes into a frenzied panic (like losing the painting she made the night before to give to me as present), her cavalier attitude to spelling (by "message" she meant a back rub), and how disdainful she is of the god of punctuation marks, the period.

vain rin daw ako

2009-10-18T20:43:00.000-07:00

someone called me vain two days ago: "the only problem with you yen is that you are vain." well, yezzzzzzz. i AM vain. but i beg to disagree with that person on two counts. first, vanity is far from being my only character flaw. i discussed in great detail what i consider my primary personality flaw here. second, i don't consider my vanity a problem AT ALL.

answers.com on vanity:
n., pl., -ties.

The quality or condition of being vain.
Excessive pride in one's appearance or accomplishments; conceit. See synonims at conceit.
Lack of usefulness, worth, or effect; worthlessness.
1. Something that is vain, futile, or worthless.
2. Something about which one is vain or conceited.
A vanity case.
See dressing table.
A bathroom cabinet that encloses a basin and its water lines and drain, usually furnished with shelves and drawers underneath for storage of toiletries.

one by one now. definition #1 we will discard.

my problem with #2 is the word "excessive". i cannot for the life of me recall what i did during that meeting where the comment was made that indicated justification of the use of the word "excessive" regarding my vanity. i was dressed in saturday-friendly denim skirt, A-line and below the knee, an ugly (but with which i am inexplicably in love) flat leather shoes, a fitted blue and white striped polo shirt and a necklace. was it the necklace that triggered the comment? it could not have been the polo shirt because it had a very obvious chocolate smear over my bilbil. it could not have been my hair style either, a regulation, more pedestrian than pedestrian ponytail, a hairdo i have been wearing since....toddlerhood or whenever it was that enough of my hair could be gathered into a rubber band.

i wasn't wearing ANY makeup either, so it could not have been that.

sigh. the thing that bothers me really is what it was that provoked the comment. one part of me is saying to just let it go. and i really want to let go. but the other, more stubborn part of me, is holding on to the issue for dear life.

maybe that person was just feeling a bit down herself and needed someone to lash out at? well, of all the many things she could have said and done to lash out at me, why did she pick "vain"?

granted i take pride in my apprearance. i like going out of the house liking how i look. i like looking at things that look nice, and i would like to think that i look nice too, somehow. but vanity has never be something desctructive in my life. i don't spend too much money on it even. can someone who has not had a facial EVER be justifiably called vain? and i have not had a mani-pedi in a parlor since i was in my first trimester with the cute monster that is gabriel who is now almost three years old. and the last haircut i got was something i gave myself about two months ago in front of the bathroom mirror: lopped off about four inches with my paper scissor.

(i am not calling a haircut mini bangs gabriel gifted me with six weekends ago. i woke up from my siesta to see a clump of considerably long hair lying on the floor next to my house slippers and a clump of very short hair standing in a spike dead center on my hairline).

do i take pride in my accomplishments? i don't know. i don't think so.

definition #3 and 4, lack of usefulness, worth or effect; worthlessness. i never knew vanity could also mean this. in any case, i am not useless. now if i say i am not worthless, will that make me vain?

definitions #5, 6 and 7: i am not a piece of furniture nor a bathroom fixture, that's for sure.

the only reason i can think of why i might be thought of vain is because of how i dress. and i am not inclined to make any changes on the way i dress on account of someone thinking me vain.

haha. vain. the word makes me think of a friend's email address: vaindawako. maybe i should chain my email addy to vainrindawako. my friend is now a hotshot photographer, so i will be in good company.

Congratulations, NUTCASE people!

2009-10-14T17:16:00.001-07:00

congratulation to the advanced journalism students for the successful launching of their double-issue magazine, NUTCASE, on Tuesday, October 13.

(announcing the new publication to catwalk traffic)

(a very few minutes before the launch, trying to fold and staple all one thousand copies,
still managing to smile for the camera. standing from left to right: wally, almera, jeff, ryan, marj,
johnars, nash, arvin, lara, vien, and jade. seated are anna, mariz, and earl.)

the road to that day has been less than smooth. glitches marred the process. some of them could be blamed on gloria macapagal arroyo (7 holidays this sem!), some could be blamed on the more benevolent but seemingly equally harsh mother nature (while torrential rains blessed the distribution, it also caused many students to be late or absent for important class activities), and some could be blamed on no one else but the members of the class itself.

but, what is important is that the magazine did get launched, favorable comments were elicited, and HOPEFULLY, lessons were learned. congratulations to everybody for managing to plan, research, write, and re-write, and re-write, and re-write a feature article.

some of you admitted right from the start that you are insecure about your writing abilities, some of you even admitted outright that you hated any form of writing (see you in radio and tv journ! :)) but look at you now, you are now PUBLISHED. at least 1000 ateneo de zamboanga university students have read your article. exciting! but scary too, i know.

that's journ for you.

anna and lara, how generous of you to accept the major responsibility of being your group's coordinator. i know it couldn't have been easy but i think you did a marvelous job.

jill and marj, what talented writers you are. speechless.

jade and nhordz, you struggled to gather the money to make this happen. i hope everything is in so that we can all breath easy.

jeff and anna, great layout, especially considering the short amount of time you had.

ryan, excellent publicity campaign. very bold. fun and fearless.

special mention to wally and daphne, you were not part of the advanced journalism class, and yet you had hearts big enough to lend a much-needed helping hand.

and to everyone who was at the assembly line seven million nanoseconds to the time you wanted to distribute NUTCASE to the public, great job on the folding and the stapling.

this is the time to be happy with yourself for having published NUTCASE. congratulations!

(collation section of the assembly line: lara, nash, marj, arvin)

(collation section two: vien and jade. earl at the end of the line is one half of the folding section)

(rightmost is ryan, distributing their Happy Peanuts pakulo at the back canteen)

(Lara and Ryan and a bevy of boys holding up their NUTCASE peanuts)

(intruding at the front canteen)

(and at the kiosks)

(anna and wally with copies that are good to go)

(jeff with so much to staple, so little time)

(johnars transporting assembled mags to their next to final destination)

history of mankind

2009-10-07T20:54:00.000-07:00

have you ever had a day when you felt so beautiful and powerful, and so you walked tall; and you felt so fresh and light and pretty and clean and capable, and so you smile and wave at every one you meet? and then you go to the bathroom and look at yourself in the mirror and see...how ugly you actually look? how puffy your eyes and cheeks are, how blotchy your skin is, how sad your outfit is, and that you have an insane bird's nest for hair?

that just happened to me moments ago. but the great thing is, my elevated mood is BULLETPROOF. never mind how i look, watch out instead for how i feel because, ladies and gentlemen, today i am going to go through my to do list like no one has ever gone through their to do list in the history of mankind.

remembering bright days in this gloomy weather

2009-10-06T20:25:00.000-07:00

this is my favorite among the latest family pictures. a picture of our backs -- except one sister's, maita in the upper right hand corner. but then she is sort of semi-crouching, not looking directly at the cam. i have no idea who took this picture, maybe one of the spouses. but this was definitely taken from the tree house above us.

that group there is the biggest latest gathering to date of my brothers and sisters. yep. all the siblings present except one, anna, who was in manila at the time. this was taken may 2009, in a beach in labason. that little girl in pajamas in the picture is not my sister, that is my niece bea. she is there because her father, ryan, our youngest, is there. bea only ever does one of two things: run away from his father, or run towards his father. in this photo, she is running TO ryan.

what are we doing here? well, aside from showcasing our huge backs, we are plotting how sister girlie should develop her little beach side property. that property is, by the way, not the the property we were currently enjoying at that time. we are a beach-going family: we go to a beach to plan how to develop another beach.

clockwise, from top left: blanca in floral shorts, maita the crouching doctor, sporty girlie in bullcap and crossback suit, monching looking like a frog, ryan with his bea, and me with my ehrm...huge back. i love my swimsuit here. got it from ukay-ukay for 50 pesos. dunno whose shorts i am wearing. during reunions, our wardrobes tend to get mixed up. understatement.

looking forward to another family meeting like this. we just had a good lunch. there was so much food but i can remember there was cassava boiled in coconut milk and sugar. the music playing then was good. of course i would say that. that was my ipod on. the san mig light was icy cold. the kids were blissfully charring themselves black under the sun, with constant basting in seawater and sun block. the spouses were elsewhere, glad to be rid, even for a brief moment only, of the crazy blancos and their spawn.

this is another picture from the may 2009 reunion, in my sister maita's house in liloy. that there is my son gabriel and my niece juliana. a mattress underneath, a mattress overhead, and another mattress rolled up and ready to tow, their noah's ark is good to go.

when i grow up i am going to marry viggo mortensen

2009-10-05T22:49:00.000-07:00

when i grow up i will marry viggo mortensen not just because he played strider/aragorn in lord of the the rings but simply because he is so demd pretty.

he is 50 (and i am 37!), is half danish, grew up all over latin america (that means i can abuse him with my bastard spanish), the usa, and denmark where he worked as truck driver (gasp!). legend has it that when he graduated from university, he refused to wear an academic gown because it was made in a sweatshop.

exactly my kind of graduation candidate.

celebrating eid ul-fitr in ateneo

2009-09-21T20:27:00.000-07:00

the muslim students association (msa) of the university sent out a general invite to their grand pagbuka held Friday last week.

i went together with a co-teacher and the husband and i am so glad i did because it was such a beautiful and eye-opening experience for me.

as far as i understood it, a pagbuka is simply the breaking of the daily fast during the month of Ramadan. the grand pagbuka was called thus because it was the breaking of the fast before the most important day of the holy month, the last day, the hariraya.

it was explained during program that the hariraya is expected to be around september 21 yet but since there were no classes on that day or on the eve of that day, i guess the msa decided to celebrate with other members of the university community on a school day, the Friday before Sept. 21.

it was held at the LRC quadrangle and it was full of people: students, teachers, university staff. there was a short program of prayers - one was chanted by a male student - and short talks. as this was happening, male students went around the filling up the tables with food. the last speaker intentionally extended his talk for exactly five minutes because he was timing his speech to end at precisely the time when the fast should be broken. i am not sure if that time was 6pm. as he looked at his watch for the final time at the podium, he broke into a smile and said "now we can break the fast", opened the mineral water bottle he was holding and took a long, long drink.

at that point people started digging into the feast before them. msa very nicely provided the guests with water stations where they can wash their hands, saying that the washing of the hands would normally be done BEFORE the prayer and eating but i guess they made concessions for us who were not of their faith.

i excitedly took pictures of the food. i was testing the cam in my new cellphone (a birthday gift from husband. pwede na. haha). there was kulma (very spicy beef stew in gata), tyula itum (very spicy beef cooked in broth flavored with burned coconut meat -- i swear, this tastes way better than it sounds), a beef steak (sweetish), fried chicken, and pansit. it was all very good but what i still think about to this day is the rice that went with all those food. it was a yellowish rice, wrapped with banana leaves and formed into pyramids. the teachers seated on my table went into an involved discussion into what it could be. i forgot if it was sir bong or ma'am peña of the social sciences department and the accounting department respectively who gave the most authoritative answer: rice cooked in gata flavored and colored with turmeric and other spices. it was very good.

(i still can't figure out how to download photos from the cellphone camera)

but aside from the good food and the good company, i will remember most that part of the program where everybody hushed up to offer their personal petitions. the speaker said that there are three important prayer periods during the day. i don't remember the times exactly but roughly, they are the time before the sun rises, the time late in the afternoon before the breaking of the fast, and the time after the sun sets. the gathering at the lrc garden was during the second one. during the second one, the speaker said, anything that you pray for, ANYTHING AT ALL, will be granted. he then enjoined EVERBODY to take a moment to pray, and that whatever it was we prayed for, he said with conviction, it will be answered.

i don't think a multi-faith gathering in the university has ever had a more solemn, more quiet 30 seconds than what was happening at that point. it was so quiet. a peaceful, gentle kind of quiet.

walking in public in my underwear

2009-09-20T21:05:00.001-07:00

almost nine days has passed since i walked the streets of zamboanga in my underwear.

time enough to allow me take a more pragmatic view on things. and forgive myself my trespasses - yet again.

the problem started september 7 when my boss told me that the kids are inviting the teachers to their acquaintance party, a pajama party which they are calling "one night stand".

i could see that the party meant a lot to the students and i wanted to go wearing what they wanted me to wear. ON THE OTHER HAND, my costume had to be something that will not result in students choking to death from laughter or hurtling themselves off the third floor ledge in embarassment.

so the style goal: sleepwear that is not funny nor lewd so that i can continue facilitating learning with a more or less straight face.

the magnificent solution: a black with while lace camisole and a gauzy half-slip.

the first thing the hosts did (after the usual prelims) was call to the front all those who did not bother to come in costume. and, bizaarely, unbelievably, incredibly, they called me!!!

but as i said, nine days has passed. enough for me to gather perspective. in other words, make alibis for them.

first, i wore tons of makeup. second, i wore multiple long pearl necklaces ala Madonna. third, i wore three-inch strappy silver high heels.

that is me at rightmost (because i am the most righteous, haha. can't help the pun) with the juniors. obvious na hindi nila pinaghandaan ang costumes nila. they are the main organizers (way to go, girls!). the guy in pink is clint sanchez. he teaches digital audio and video recording. if i may add, he was not in costume. (but he did bring the drinks, so they conveniently forgave him).

in the photo are, left to right, liza (nice hairdo), francel (seemingly the only one who remembered all the steps of their dance production), kamille (i LOOOVE the ad libbed choreography!), clint, rianne (her journalistic skills is NOTHING compared to her chair dancing), jobee (a presidency two years in the making), josh (her tasks that night is worth another blog entry), maila (the funny dictator in the paint me a picture game), jenica (the wind beneath my wings), and hazel (wow. how come nobody got you to host before?). not in the photo is christine. she was at the that time hunched on the floor cutting, cutting, and cutting some more paper. making confetti or something. unable to attend the party is their batchmate karen.

now let's get back to the rationale behind my costume. my reason for wearing the three accessories above were - and it sounds to reason that I think these are perfectly SOUND reasons - i needed to wear something that would neutralize the FACT that i am going to a party with my students and co-teachers, inside the campus to boot, wearing underwear.

but nobody got it. again, i stand alone, sartorially misunderstood. as ever. forever. and ever.

sigh.

on the other hand, and this is very important, i had a blast that night. the organizers did a good job of setting up the stage for a fun night, and the other students did not disappoint by giving it their all. my facial muscles were practically sore from having to laugh so much. well, the games got a bit too "parental guidance" at times for me but you could see it was all clean so we carried on.

the students prettified the television studio very well: mats on the floor, mood lighting, lots of plush toys, a colorful and graphic backdrop.

attendance was great. normally, a huge chunk of the student population would boycott (a sentiment i don't understand nor have much patience for) parties like this but that night, only very few were absent. and they all wore....pajamas. bah! predictable! (can you hear the sound of....sour graping? haha).

the guy (aherm) in the foreground with the blue shirt? he is wearing that, that....helmet as punishment for not coming in pajamas.

and they all performed at the time they were supposed to perform just like the great troopers they are. and expectedly, they had a "let's ridicule the teachers" portion. let's just say the game entailed teachers revealing to the student body their guilty pleasure, their first kiss, their first date, their secret fantasy. if you were there, you'd be privy to the faculty's answers. if you weren't, enroll next year.

(both photos were lifted off students' facebook. thanks!)

i am about to have...

2009-09-18T18:46:00.000-07:00

i am very excited about my current PILE of reading materials. i capitalize pile because i tend to get overacting when it comes to gathering together things to read. i have the reading sub-genre of Attention Deficit Disorder.

i borrowed five books from the university library yesterday. the ateneo library is the third reason why its hard for me to leave this job. the second is the free 24/7 internet connection. and the third is my baffling love for this school.

although pictures of these books are on the shelf to the right (generously brought to you by shelfari.com!), i willl post them here anyway in keeping with my overacting and easily excitable nature.
the diana chronicles. because tina brown wrote it. if british tatler, vanity fair, and the new yorker all thought she was good enough to be their editor-in-chief, then she certainly is good enough for me as author of a book on a tragic princess' life.

the children of hurin. because i want to know if this is anything like the other LOTR prequel, silmarillion, which is to say, mind-numbingly boring.

excerpts from the diaries of the late God. the title alone makes me want to drop everything and read. published in 1968. no photo available off the net. the book i borrowed from the library has long lost its dust cover.

good omens. at the back it says "what's so funny about armageddon." i really wanna know.

get shorty. because john travolta starred in the movie.

but these are not all. i also am reading:

two vogue magazines. one with gwynneth and the other with giselle and lebron james. ugly girls. back issues because current issues cost more than our water bill for five months. (i can go five months without running water, just so long as i have a vogue magazine to peruse as i live in filth. but will my children be as resolute?).

two elle decor magazine. back issues again. no celebries on the cover. the work area in the photo above is sheila bridges (remember her from a show on the lifestyle channel?). those stripes on the wall were painted on, with real paint, with real brushes, by real house painters. i want one.

a book on personal finance for pinoys. because we really need to buckle up and get organized. seriously.

a book on helping pinoy families help their kids do well in school by queena lee chua. so that my four kids will all graduate valedictorian and get good college scholarships, thus enabling me to use our money on better things: current issues of vogue and elle decor. for some reason, no image is available off the net.

a book on how to be a good teacher. kina-career talaga. i am not posting an image because i am self-conscious about reading this book. too heart-on-my-sleeve.

beneath this pile of fashion and shelter magazines and.....arghh... self-help books, are two hard bound books of which i am author. you got that right. i. the first is a big acid-free, lined journal. its pages are as yet pristine. got them from my sister anna for my birthday. have i told you i love notebooks? i haven't? then let me tell you now. i love notebooks. i lust after notebooks. i can almost not live without notebooks. the other is a white notebook which i use when i am feeling...artistic. its my doodle notebook. my kids, to whom i am the-one-who-cannot-do-anything-wrong, consider it a great privilege when i let them browse through it: "never mind if kuya rashdi will not let you watch that salamagan japanese animation dvd. don't cry. i will let you look at the pictures in my notebook."

a long weekend ahead. a pile of good reading. i think i am about to have a good weekend.

i wish you a good one too.

tale of two sundaes

2009-09-16T19:41:00.000-07:00

i'd like to but i'm not going to rant because i don't like people to think that that is the only way i know how to write.

i just want to say that i prefer the sundae from mcdo than from jollibee because the soft ice cream is creamier, and the chocolate fudge is yummier.

but between the sundae served by mcdo la purisima and the one served by mcdo gateway, i prefer the latter simply because the serving is larger.

when you dig into your mcdo la purisima sundae, your plastic spoon will be coated with..... air because the center is an absolute...vacuum. their trick, i suspect, is that when they fill the cup, they just aim to pile it up the sides, leaving a nice and clean center hole. of course this hole is topped with a little ice cream and a little chocolate dressing so that no one is the wiser...until nga you start eating na.

their chicken here is smaller too than the gateway counterpart. haha. just wanted to say that. now i stop before this turns into out and out rant.

will someone please tell me what they are fixing in front of jolibee camins?!!!

2009-09-15T17:09:00.000-07:00

i will bet my christmas bonus that over half the population of pasonanca, sta. maria, gov. camins, and gov. ramos are on the verge of insanity. yes i will.

about two months ago, whoever is in charge of these things decided that the jollibee camins intersection needed to be fixed. as for me, me with my constant whining about how poorly the government maintains its infrastructures, i could not see what it was that needed fixing. could not see anything wrong at all. i, i, i, yenyen, i who could and would see the minutest wrong in ANYTHING, could not see anything wrong with the jollibee camins intersection AT ALL.

and if someone better than me (is that possible? how?) did manage to uncover even one ugly structural defect about that road, nothing could possibly be so bad as to merit the evil, devil, hevil, baweevil traffic that that....road re-construction is unleashing on the seven million people who have no option but to use that intersection to go to and from home to work, school, errands in pueblo, ukay-ukay in sta. cruz, etc., etc..

heck, if those verging-on-insane residents finally succumb, their families, verging on insanity themselves, will also be pushed over the edge as they try to navigate that intersection on the way to the mental facility in zamboanga medical hospital. families that go through that road together, go mental together.

to illustrate. yesterday, i thought eating lunch at busy bee camins would alleviate what my friends and family diagnosed as migraine. (thanks, guys. and there i was, ecstatic that i was finally going to be able to justify getting a nice looking pair of reading glasses. false alarm pala). so, stupid planner that i am, left the office at 12:10 and took a tricy to camins. ooops. the line started just before manang terry's chicken inato on canelar. the movement of the line can be measured in millimeters. i was hungry. i had a headache. it was still very muggy. it was dusty. i had no load so texting was out. i did not bring a book nor the ipod. di ba i told you na i am a stupid planner?

fast forward to the year 2017, the tricy driver and i were within sight of the triangular rotunda. a couple of years more and we were under the traffic light, turning left towards the new chowking where gonzalo's convenience store used to be (note to self: try that place soon. compare to chowking near mindpro where service and servings are amazingly... disappointing), then finally, in front of la terraza, with the goal so, so, so very close, a pasonanca jeep plugs the flow. it wants to u turn. it came from pueblo like us, it entered the road going to the airport like us, but unlike us, it wants to u turn in front of la terraza so that it can go back up to the intersection and proceed to sta maria, then to its ultimate destination, pasonanca.

hair straightening business is probably on a roll now too.

when i got to busy bee, my friend marsha, looks at me knowingly, and asked: "how many minutes?" and "how many did you make mura to?".

well, just one. the kundoktor of that pasonanca jeep. but hindi naman mura. just a gentle, "hoy! bastusan na yan!!!".

granted, the city government is trying to keep things tidy. they have succeeded i guess in the sense that i have not heard of a driver killing another driver so far. how do i know the agents are the city government's? they all wear this gray t shirt that reads C-E-L-S-O, that's why. It is an acronym for Community Elegant Landing Something Other. haha. joke.

hey. i have a tip. if you are coming from pueblo on the way to sta. maria and you do not want to do the u-turn in front of la terraza, stay on right side of the road, hug the curve in front of jollibee, go over that little bridge on the right side of jolibee, pretend you are going to ukay-ukay (as added motivation) then, when you are in front of 3rd cup cafe, do a u-turn. go back up the same road, then turn right after the bridge and you are on your merry way to sta maria.

how is this different from the la terraza maneuver? that goes left, this goes right. that's all.

i am 37!

2009-09-10T23:49:00.000-07:00

i have come to the scary realization that, if you let it, facebook will take over your day.

but i indulged today and have been intermittently logged on since 8am, because, i figured, its my birthday so what the h!

i have zombie for students

2009-09-08T17:39:00.000-07:00

i have a feeling 21 young men and women got very, very little sleep - if any - last night on my account. i could feel the animosity flowing over my cellulite-ridden body as 21 pairs of bloodshot eyes threw virtual daggers at me all night long for making them write a publication-ready feature article.

if it is any consolation to you guys, I will be the one NOT SLEEPING for many days as i evaluate 21 full-length stories from 21 writers-in-training.

for both our sakes, i pray for articles i can read with pleasure rather than pain. let the papers stream in! (5pm deadline, okay?).

bitten by a bug

2009-09-07T20:00:00.000-07:00

husband and i are on our way to Sia Laboratory to have his blood and urine checked. (sorry i had to mention that papa. but i have an honesty pledge with myself for this blog. you'll argue that i could just have omitted the fact, but that would still constitute dishonesty. i think...). he fears it is dengue. he's paranoid about illnesses and he tends to look at the littlest fever with suspicion bordering on....insane (mama, gabriel is coughing, maybe we should nebulize him. no? then let's give him ventolin syrup. not yet? how about dimetapp? not that either? neo kiddielets? antibacterial cream? hot water bottle? ice pack? betadine? band aid? well, how about applying katinko to his chest. i can do that? wow, thanks yen, you are so supportive of my insanity about our kids health!).

but i really hope it's not dengue.

my birthday is coming up and it would be such a bummer if he has dengue to use as alibi for not getting me that gift.

oh george

2009-09-03T01:53:00.000-07:00

this is george. he is my son rashdi's dog. he is about one thousand times bigger now than he is here. george was given to us by my brother monching and his wife mimi. monching claims he is a mongrel with a lot of belgian malinois in him. his great granny was supposed to be a canine of the phil national police.

since we moved, i have not seen george. he is still with my mother's, being cared for by cousin rani. rashdi visits him almost daily. this weekend, we're getting him. i hope he doesn't develop separation anxiety.

lets cash in!

2009-08-27T02:29:00.000-07:00

i got myself a globe sim last week just so i can pay for some online purchases with gcash.

i spent a good part of yesterday afternoon calling the globe business center in san jose. i wanted to ask them if they had a "cash-in" (where you convert your cash to gcash) center in pueblo so that i don't have to take the tricy to their business center. the two numbers i tried just rang and rang and rang. when i called the third number listed, the timid sounding girl who answered said that if its about gcash then it has to be the two numbers i have already tried because she was with the globe broadband office and the business center is another office. i explained to her that i have been trying to call for a VERY LONG TIME but she simply said "try lang ulit man". i gave up for the day.

at mid morning today, i went to the business center. of course the first thing i did when i reached the place was asked the guard, patay malisya, "close office nyo kahapon?"

"open kami ma'am", sabi ng isang guard.

agree naman ang pangalawang guard.

"eh bakit ring lang nang ring ang 992-3935 at 992-3944? sira ba ang phones?"

"ay ma'am nandito kami pero di lang nila sinasagot yang mga numbers na yan"

WHAT ZE EFFFF???!!!

"eh yun yung listed nyo na numbers papano namin kayo ma contact? bakit hindi ninyo sinasagot?" ang high-pitched kong sigaw, este, sabi.

"ma'am busy kasi yung mga tao dito palagi"

okay. fine. i followed the advice of my facebook friends and breathed in, breathed out. breathed in, breathed out. externally calm but internally combusting, i went past the door.

"ay, ma'am, anong purpose nyo?" guard two said.

i wanted to say to request an audience with the sons of don jaime (to kiss them, those cute lads) but i had a feeling it would be pointless so i told him the truth he can manage: gcash cash-in.

everything else was pretty incident free after that , thank goodness.

i am still trying to figure out what is going on with their phone lines. is it because the lines are pldt lines, the sister company of their arch enemy smart? are they trying to make people believe pldt lines are no good? are pldt people sabotaging the globe office phones? has watching too much "24" addled my brains even more?

u haul

2009-08-24T19:53:00.000-07:00

if i told you i needed to oversee the hauling of the detritus of a family of six from one cramped duplex to a house about a kilometer away, would you excuse my four-day absence from this blog?

because that is what i really did. honest. peks.

the move to the new house was very exciting and i don't know where to start talking about it. so i am going to give it to you in bite-size pieces (may also be referred to as "being coy").

the house came with everything except for a disco ball and an escalator. we didn't need to fix anything up to make it livable. in fact, our helper jennilyn had this little tableau assembled on the morning of our first day of moving in -- all by herself. that girl, she's gonna go far...

the illustrations are christmas cards from set given to me by my sister. the plant came from our old house. i don't know what it is but it grew in every nook and cranny of our old neighborhood. this particular one i stole from the capre living in the acacia tree on the empty lot across our old duplex. the clear plastic stands are five effing pesos from big V department store and the tall glass is the last from a set of four. dear yaya mila broke all the others "kay bug-at man gud 'te."

and this flower came from a valiant plant beside the gate of the new house that bloomed prettily despite months of neglect. i LOVE how this flower looks but i have grown to hate it over the years simply because of its ubiquity. can people please stop planting euphorbias now? please lang. move on to something else.

that photo is one of my favorite. it's my dad with rashdi when he was two. they are both holding a specimen of the creature my father loved above all others, a rooster.

the mother of these leaves lives in my mother's house. it takes so much to kill these leaves. i just got these so maybe they'll be around still come christmas. the fishes that used to live in this fishbowl have all died. they were all named after characters in the chronicles of narnia. i already forget the names but i know the gold one with the huge fringes was aslan. the other two, the black and the bronze must have been evil characters.

i have posted other photos of the house on flickr. i have managed somehow to imbed a flicker widget in this here my long-suffering blog. it is at the very bottom of this page. if you click on it, you will see THE house.

memories of a funny sounding store name

2009-08-19T13:50:00.000-07:00

i grew up in pharmacies. when we were still living in southern leyte, my mom had a small drugstore called ABC Pharmacy. abc presumably stood for annabella barot cruz, her name. or, it could have stood for anna concepcion, blanca anne, and carmel mathilda, her first three children. i console myself by thinking that the store name was registered before i was born, otherwise, i will demand that it be retroactively renamed ABCM. never mind that the store is long gone. and girlie will want ABCMG, and ramon jr will want ABCMGR, and ryan will want ABCMGRR.

when we migrated to zamboanga, when i was around six, mommy put up another store again. the name of the store is the stuff of family legend. my mom's sister's husband put up the money to build the structure. so of course the privelege of naming the store belonged to him by right. but then he went and named it, brace yourselves, botica sitio bangcas, after the purok in hinunangan where he was born and grew up.

IF the store were in hinunagngan, no sweat. people have gotten immune to the sitio bangcas name in the same way that zamboanguenos do not bat an eyelash at such names as bolong, dulian, taguiti, tumitus, lumayang, kalabasa, guisao....i am sure you get the point.

(by the way, to create the list above, i referred to this website. it is my first time to have heard of baranggay tumitus. cute. i hope they have tomato farms there to justify the name. and that they have a botica tumitus).

but the problem was, the store was in zamboanga. on a major road. when you exit the airport and you turn right, you'd see it, right between st. joseph school and zamboanga village restaurant.

all my life as a teenager in zamboanga, i have to constantly deal with classmates and friends asking "ano pa nga pangalan ng tindahan nyo yen?" or some similarly aggravating question. my teenaged self-conscious soul could almost not bear it.

but you know what the point of this blog entry is? it's just that i want to say how happy i am that the cheap quality meds act has finally, FINALLY, been approved. this was a long time coming.

mommy's store virtually funded the college education of seven, SEVENNN, kids. to ateneo expensive de zamboanga. it sent us, but barely. contrary to what many people think, drug stores don't really make a killing from selling medicines alone, unless you are part of a giant chain, like joan's, cecile's, oro, or united. drugstores made patong only 5%. the big chains can afford even 3% because of the sheer volume of their sales, much to the disadvantage of smaller stores, like my mom's. competition was fierce. my mom innovated by selling non-drug products like grocery items, toiletries, school supplies, snacks, and even small hardware stuff. heck, we even sold cigarettes tingi-tingi. at that time, in the early 80s, no other drugstore had an operation like that. there were times when we'd get comments from customers such as a sarcastic "grabe naman itong botika, pati bumbilya at pako, meron".

now, my visionary mom would turn her noses at the big drugstores, all, ALL, of them selling non-drug items. she's probably thinking, i thought of it first. some shouldn't even be called drugstores anymore. they are a grocery store, with a pharmacy department.

everyone in the family took turns watching the store. unlike in other places, people here buy medicines tingi-tingi. an old woman who has a once-a-day maintenance med for hypertension bought that same medicine once-a-day. tomorrow's medicine will be bought after she finds the money for it, tomorrow also. antibiotics for a seven day regimen aren't bought all at once. at around the time she closed the store, in mid 2000s, when she was growing cranky and curt, my mom would go on and on and on about how irresponsible people were with their antibiotic drinking. i think there was even a time she refused to sell antibiotic to someone who wanted to buy only one, afraid that the med-taker won't complete his regimen.

now botica sitio bangcas is closed too. it's now a restaurant called chinito's. i am sure apple go has a good reason for naming her chain of restaurants that.

Warning: the post below involves frontal nudity

2009-08-17T18:01:00.000-07:00

this is my one and only topless photo. the sex video traders in the country will just snicker at it, but in my opinion, it's very, very appealing.

this is me, zero years old, with my mommy. i know its me, and not one of my six siblings, because of the trademark furrowed brow and downturned mouth. i still wear this frown with pride to this day. it is my face's default setting. but the saggy boobs, eh. i will not discuss that here. former and current students drop by this blog from time to time. as my dad loved to say, i have an image to project, a name to protect.

but the most remarkable thing about this photo, aside from my incandescent cuteness, is not my frown nor my infantile boobs. its the dress my mom is wearing. because. because. because i got to wear it twenty two years later.

that is me in 1995 with our son rashdi.

in the photos above, mommy and i are wearing a circa 70s jumpsuit. but i guess i don't have to say that it is from the 70s because there is no such thing as an 80s jumpsuit (in pleated georgette?) nor 90s jumpsuit (in minimalistic shantung?) nor a 00s jumpsuit (this fashion history is still being written). its made of a very 70s fabric as well. huge synthetic-feeling thread, huge weave, heavy, in colors that are a bit muddy.

for those whose brains haven't been damaged by reading too much vogue magazines, you can wake up now. i will resume talking about the dress and the frontal nudity in sane terms again.

the pantsuit has huge flowers scattered all over a red orange field. it has pretty simple lines, zips at the back and like any self-respecting garment from the 70s, its pant legs end with a huge flare.

Wikipedia says a jumpsuit originally referred to the utilitarian one-piece garments used by parachuters and skydivers, but has come to be used as a common term for any one-piece garment with sleeves and legs. Starting in the 1960s, the jumpsuit has made occasional appearances in common and high fashion (particularly in the 1980s), but has never been a common item of everyday wear. They retain connotations of futurism because they have been frequently featured in popular science fiction.^[3]

unfortunately, you cannot see a lot of my mom in our photo but those are definitely her lips and those are her fingers holding on to me. as for me, in the spirit of my outfit, i flipped the ends of my hair out.

rashdi, our eldest, was less than a year old here. we have the same shape head (like coconuts), but he doesn't have my frown. if you look closely at the photo of me as a mom, i am smiling but the frown is still there, flittering about the outer edges of my brows. i bet even vicky belo doesn't have anything for that in her clinics' menu.

my baby photo was taken when we were still living in hinunangan, southern leyte, in my lola's old house. my mom would be in her early 30's. she had her first child quite late, at 29. i on the other hand, could not wait to be a mom and had rashdi at 22. that photo of me and rashdi was taken in front of the white gazebo my parents had at that time. when mommy renovated her house, she took it down, but with a little advance and unsolicited help from a termite colony.

i am not sure if i could still put on that dress now. my mom was slim (she'd brag about this to us again and again. peace, mommy, hehe) as a young woman. us, her five girls, however, mostly took after the huge-boned blancos. the last time i had a 23-inch waistline was at grade four.

a much needed weekend break cut short

2009-08-16T21:55:00.000-07:00

yesterday, sunday, august 16 was the fiesta of baranggay san roque.

my family celebrated by stealthily fleeing our neighborhood under cover of 4:45 am darkness on bisperas to a beach more than 200 kilometers away.

after four hours of land travel on mostly good roads, we reached liloy where a sister and her family lives and another sister has a beach house. talk about enjoying the fruits of others' labors.

but we really have a good excuse for leaving our neighbors to make merry without the benefit of our company. one, we needed to fetch a new helper, and two, we needed to unwind after a very stressful but very fruitful several weeks (this event is subject for another entry. i hope i will be able to find a way to write it.).

but our good alibis probably did not hack it with our patron saint san roque de montpelier because after enjoying only 50% of our out-of-town weekend, diego and jana came down with high fever, headache (diego, because he is just four, and does not yet know the concept of headache so he would shout to us that he had an ear ache. i look forward to when he has kids of his own, then he will have both ear ache and headache. espera lang le), and non-stop vomiting.

so while i snorkeled and husband enjoyed the breeze reclining on the rattan sofa, my two middle kids writhed in pain inside the house. in between writhing in pain, they'd run to the toilet to puke whatever they can find inside their stomachs to puke. most of the time it'd be just stomach acids because they not only had zero appetite, every time they ate or drank anything, anything at all, it'll hurl itself out after a few seconds.

when husband and i could not stand the constant sorrowful moaning anymore, we dejectedly accepted the reality that the weekend would just have to be what it was, cut short by kj kids. sigh. we thought, well, even if we did not enjoy the place to the fullest, at least we found a helper to bring home

we left liloy at a little past one, and arrived zamboanga past five. we went directly to western mindanao medical center to have laboratory check diego and jana's blood and urine. will single people ever understand parents of sick children? i don't think so. there i was in their waiting area, carrying a scared and feverish four-year-old boy, a vial of urine, the slips of paper from the cashier, my hands reeking of urine (try catching your son's weewee in the parking lot with a vial whose opening is smaller than the diameter of a five centavo coin) and trying not to whiff in the smell of vomit emanating from my son's hair, cheeks, shirt, pants, legs, from his very soul. and i, trying not to be conscious of my huge legs exposed by my short shorts and sack-like t-shirt, my hair in a messy pigtail (best hairdo for long distance travel but not flattering AT ALL for a 37 year old to wear in public, like a hospital). and with all of these monstrosities in the waiting area, what do you think the lab techs do? they ignore me for a few minutes while they sing a bastos tagalog version of an akon song: tikman mo ang aking banananana.......

they would have continued on with their merrymaking had i not threatened them with a vomit fest in their lab. that got them going. while diego was stoic during his blood extraction, low-pain tolerance jana let it all out. because the lab tech had her hands in his firm grip, my daughter used her imitation-croc clad feet to express herself. all thoughout the extraction, my daughter clapped, clapped, clapped her feet together, frantically, while letting out an angry hissing sound. clap, clap, clap. hissssssssssssssss. it went on for a long time because the blood extraction technique was something new to me, longer. instead of dabbing a few drops of blood into a glass slide and suctioning a few more into a thin capillary tube, he kept on milking my daughter's finger to fill about 1/8th of a narrow 2-inch test tube. he would milk, then press the blood against the top of the tube, again and again. meanwhile my daughter goes clap, clap, clap, hisssssssssssss...

we finally got home at almost seven. and because i am stupid that way, the first thing i did was sweep and mop our room. yes. don't ask me why. if you ask my husband, he will just tell you stress makes me crazy. using a different set of words.

in the middle of the fun-filled ride home, there were quiet moments. like when we were passing through ipil. those moments allowed me to observe, think. like why is it that ipil still looks like a frontier town, with most establishments still looking transitory, as if they have no plans of really staying. the town is now the capital of a new provice, zamboanga-sibugay, but looking at it, you would not know. it's not a very pretty place. it is bustling, you can feel the energy, but i somehow could not sense a history. everyone seemed to be going, going, going, but it somehow looks very....downtrodden. maybe the town has been permanently scarred by the ipil raid of 1994 (or was it 1995?).

the place i love passing through every time we take this weekend excursion is a town in the outskirts of zamboanga city. it is called buenavista. on both sides of the road you will see gently rolling hills that is devoid of any tree or shrubbery. it would just be grassy hills and the sky, going on and on. i imagine this place was called buenavista because of just that buena vista, good view.

i enjoyed the view as much as i could, while praying for us to finally get to the hospital.

i called the hospital later that night and confirmed by sister's suspicion of UTI. we gave co-tri to both right away and they slept through the night.

at 6.30 this morning i woke to a most curious sound. jana and diego giggling at the antics of tom and jerry. this while enjoying their oatmeal. kids.

my one and only personality flaw

2009-08-12T21:11:00.000-07:00

i have this compulsive need to have all people like me all the time.

ALL PEOPLE ALL THE TIME.

it's disgusting.

when i sense that people do not like something i do or say, i bend over backwards, and then some more, until my entire being is contorted, just to make sure that when we part ways, they have a positive image of me.

if you have never felt this strong uncontrollable urge before, then you could not possibly imagine just how crippling it is.

i am an effing apologist for my own effing person. an effing crowd-pleasing pollyanna.

aside from being disgusting, it's pathetically pathetic.

so whenever i say "i am to please" and people think that i am being sarcastic, or ironic, or being funny, i am not even halfway joking.

aside from this however, my personality is flawless.

another hammer to the head

2009-08-11T03:31:00.000-07:00

i have bitten the bullet.

i have joined the other side. this other side, it is more popularly known as facebook.

and the net effect? it is already 6:34 and i am still at the office. never has this blog, nor shelfari, nor 43things, nor flickr done this to me.

does that mean i love facebook more than my other web presences?

hardly.

i don't like it. maybe not yet. but it certainly feels like maybe not ever.

what i hate: the interface, the appearance (so cluttered!!!), and the fact that i don't know how to do what. most of these things are supposed to be intuitive. so maybe i am not wired for the facebook intuition. i don't know.

what i like: maybe that i now realize i have a lot of .... friends? at least 61 of them. isn't that amazing?

self, welcome to facebook.

How to go about having a glamour portrait of myself done in Zamboanga

2009-08-06T17:41:00.000-07:00

a third post about cory's death? sigh. this is backsliding.

but then, it's better than the months-long lull between posts, di ba?

i was just thinking, seeing all those huge photos of cory at the cathedral, maybe i should get portraits of myself done too?

how horrible if i died and my family would display enlarged copies of my passport picture atop my casket.

so my latest project has been identified. have a portrait done.

to do:
1. decide on a look
2. find dress (or blouse -- my portrait will be a bust shot only. no whole body stewardess application photos please)
3. find good local make-up artist
4. find good local hair person
5. find a good local photographer
6. find a good local kunsintidora friend to hold my hand during the shoot
7. go have that portrait taken
8. somewhere between numbers 1 and 7, find money to fund this endeavor

the look of the photo
i would like for it to be a "glamour shot". so shoot me for wanting something very different from my daily life. with the advent of digital cameras, i have too many, far, far too many shoots of me looking the way i do everyday. it will be obviously done in the studio. no location shoots for my glamour shot. right now i am thinking black and white. timeless. something that will look good when it turns sepia with age. something that will look good inside either a golden baroque frame or a plain shaker-style wooden one. yes. i am full of shit. i have heard that said of me before. get over it. i have.

the look of me
i want to look like catherine zeta jones or penelope cruz (my cousin on my mother's side, haha. along with tom cruise). you know, smouldering. big hair, smoky eyes. very aloof but very come hither also. that should give my friends and family something to talk about during my wake.

the great thing about Cathy's photo above is that it came from a site that contained an article called "How To: Look Gorgeous in Pictuers". Don't ask me about the appropriateness of the colon in the title. For my part, I am just happy to have found, all in one site, a great picture of Mrs. Douglas and a helpful article. P.S. My hair won't be as messy as hers here. and i don't know if i can pull off that look-into-the distance thing during the shoot. but i will really, really try.

i have serious misgivings about the material of her gown. nothing wrong with it, per se, but it's so un-me. but doesn't she look gorgeous? her hair isn't big but i like it, like it, like it. Hmm. mother dear gave me a bottle of hair dye. maybe it's time i go to the parlor and have highlights put in....

and why is it that everytime i line my eyes with black pencil like penelope did here, it just looks so.....wrong?

honestly, i am not really into make-up, or into hair for that matter. my last haircut was something i gave myself a month ago in front of the mirror with the scissors i use to cut my beading cords. i call it a "very blunt cut". but since college i have been told this jalandoni guy is great. he used to have a shop on nunez street but i am not sure. when i got married, someone from david's salon on mindpro did my face. he was so happy with his handiwork but i hated it. it didn't help that after the wedding, i managed to pry from my husband his opinion of the makeup. and this is what he said: "kamukha mo kanina si queen amidala." he said this during reception, after i had gone to the bathroom to wipe off some of the brown gunk and my original brows had resurfaced. here's an illustration of my husband's memory of me during our wedding:

the photographer
i know of two good local photographers, rikki lim and keith lorenzo. they'd be rolling on the floor laughing if i tell them all of these things but that's a small price to pay for a good photo for people to remember me by.

this is derrick lim, rikki's son. of course papa took the picture. gwapo 'no? blame his mom's genes, hehe.

now if i were really, really flush with cash, i'd have my glamour shot done by the team over at mimi and karl. i have been making tulo laway over at their site for almost a month now. sigh. i probably have to facilitate 25 writing workshops or sell seven million beads or take my son off his meds or do all three to afford these guys. but i just think they are the greatest.

if you can ignore the obvious fact that she is wearing a wedding gown and we all know how star wars like my wedding look was, this is how i want my portrait to look like. no come hither here, its all just haughty, but you know what i mean. i hope. here are other mimi and karl masterpieces

the friend
my sister maita would only roll her eyes at my kaartehan, so not her. my friend marsha would want to be in the shot, so definitely not her. my friends vina and sheila would be really, really great, and i can imagine sheila taking on the styling tasks, but they are both in the states earning dollars, so it cannot be them. i have a feeling jane and ivy would be tolerant and their taste levels are high. so maybe either of them....
all my other sisters aren't here either. but i can imagine the eldest making kunsinti....since she already had glamour shots of herself taken!

....time lapse....

thirty minutes ago i started to add images i have gleefully ripped off photographers' websites but until now, the orange thing that goes round and round, indicating that blogspot is still working on my command, is still going round and round. and i am losing my patience. so i am going to end this entry, come back to it tomorrow or this afternoon. and add those photos that will illustrate what i am raving about regarding my glamour portrait.

hindi ako nagiisa

2009-08-06T01:36:00.000-07:00

apparently, like cory, hindi ako nag-iisa.

at least in my deep feelings of gratitude to the four blokes i wrote about in an earlier entry.

the senate is going to commend the four honor guards of cory's remains. this news broke just two hours ago.

imagine that. getting a senate commendation for being able to stand for a damned long time.

if i stand for eight hours and 15 minutes on a flatbed truck going to pagadian from ipil, i will demand a commendation from senator pia cayetano too. make that two commendations. if you have been on the ipil-pagadian road, you will understand.

four poor but enduring blokes

2009-08-05T21:20:00.001-07:00

i could talk about kris and her speech that included yet another self-proclamation of her favored child status in the aquino family.

i could talk about the wonder and awe i felt looking at thousands upon thousands all over the country who gave in to the obviously strong urges they were feeling inside to do something, anything, to show their gratitude to a former president.

i could talk about the nausea i felt when i saw jamby madrigal at the cemetery, yellow flower in hand.

i could talk about how vindicated she must feel, IF cory were a vindictive person, which i doubt, about the humongous outpouring of grief and gratitude from millions, having suffered through those coup attempts and frequent mudslingings.

but i want to talk about the four men instead. the four men who escorted cory's remains from the church to the cemetery. this seemingly inconsequential thing kept nudging itself into my busy brain yesterday as i, along with seven hundred million Filipinos all over the world, virtually walked beside the truck through rain and a sea of people. but at least we walked. and to my mind, at least we could scratch if something itched. and we could carefully sip on the water we imaginably remembered to bring along.

those four could not only not do those things, they could not even move at all! for eight hours! there they faced the casket, standing at stiff attention, on a platform that surged forward, stopped. surged forward, stopped. again and again everlastingly.

i wondered if confetti landed on their lips. but it probably wouldn't stick, their lips were probably too dry from dehydration. i wondered if they felt the urge to take a leak. that must have hurt, holding it in. for eight hours. and on top of the confetti, people hurled flowers, not at them, admittedly, but at the casket, but surely a few must have missed the intended target and hit them instead? and its not as if there was not enough flowers already. they were standing on a virtual flower garden. What if they were asthmatic? and there was that part of the journey where the local fire department felt the need to send cory off with a literal shower of water from at least six hoses. so flowers, confetti, a moving truck, people shouting, strongs winds, and a drenching to boot.

the military is so happy with those poor dudes, they're thinking of giving them medals or something. to my mind, the military and the police (because one of the four was contributed by the pnp) should be happy and proud of everything they did for cory yesterday. the best. as for me, i am saluting the four blokes now. a lousy salute, but a heartfelt one. thanks.

MJ

2009-07-06T21:43:00.000-07:00

if you asked me on june 25 if i would cry if michael jackson died, i would have given you an unqualified "no". at the time of his death, most news story about him focused on how circus-y his life had become. if i thought of him at all, it was to think how self-indulgent he was.

but i wasn't really paying much attention to michael jackson anymore. he had become irrelevant to my life. just last month, as i was tweaking with my playlists, i deleted three of the five songs i had of him. i only kept "ben" and "man in the mirror". i removed beat it and thriller and billie jean because they left me cold. so the sadness that i felt at the news of his death took me by surprise. i still have not read in full any article about his death. when stories on him come up on tv, i tune them out too. i am sorrowed that it took his death to remind me of his genius.

i am waiting for the time magazine special edition on him. i guess that would be my way of paying michael jackson my last respects. reading on him in peace and quiet. for he did seem to have had a noisy life. and he seemed to me a quiet man.

2009-06-25T22:25:00.000-07:00

i first met ram of buddha banana a couple years ago, when he was still a fourth year college student. he was in my class. his projects were always the neatest and best-looking.

he was a cousin of my high school buddy vina. he now works in a pr firm in makati and was nice enough to sponsor three of my current students - karen, josh, liza - to do their internship there. expectedly, they had a blast (while learning a lot, i know they would insist).

yesterday, ram was nice enough to "polarize" three pictures of my son gabriel. ram saw them in yesterday's post, thought they can be improved on and voila, here they are:

that's a photo of my thumbsucking two-year-old, Gabriel. He is standing in the middle of a squash field in a mango farm in boalan wearing swim trunks.

the pictures look like they were taken circa 1970.

thanks, ram!

our hayden....NOT!!!!!

2009-06-24T21:44:00.001-07:00

so i was reading this father's day article on a national broadsheet about what the author would do if his daughter took it upon herself to star in a homemade sex video, or worse (his sentiments, not necessarily mine), hayden kho, the wannabee blue movie producer, was his son.

the author's words were expected but it was effective in the sense that he did make me think....about how my husband insists out son looks like hayden kho here

well, gabriel DOES look like a gigolo in this photo....

will it help dispel that notion from your mind if i told you two nights ago he tried to turn off the computer by pointing the tv remote control at it?

and that when it's time for his minder to go home, he says "namaste" coupled with the hand gesture and mini genuflect?

that he is a terrible thumb sucker?

or that while he sucks on his thumb (right, never left), he worries with his fingers either a knotted shorts drawstring or an earlobe (mine or ariel's, never anyone else's)?

secret shame

2009-05-28T21:16:00.000-07:00

boyzone, backstreet boys, and westlife are on my ipod.

developmental stages

2009-05-25T00:43:00.000-07:00

Assigning developmental stages is a favorite preoccupation among my children. They were at it again this morning.

Jana (born 2001): "diego's body is a toddler but his additude (sic, ok?) is a baby."

Diego (born 2004): "dili ko baby!"

Gabriel (born 2007): "gabel baby."

Mama (born far too early in the century, in my opinion): "diego is not a baby. he is a pre-schooler."

Diego (born intensely contrary): "dili ko school!"

mercifully, rashdi (born 1994), stage development assigner emeritus, was not around.

leonine queen

2009-04-24T00:12:00.000-07:00

my drug of choice now is kings of leon.

lovely picture, no? they look like the john, paul, george, and ringo at around the time beatles wanted to break-up: unwashed, uncombed hair, mustache, jeans that are skinny and bell-bottomed at the same time, lots of browns and oranges.

and the frowns and smirks. if you were an artist in the seventies, you were not allowed to smile. you had to either look as if you were thinking deep thoughts, or stoned.

january kanindot, the prettiest girl at the university press (never mind that she is the only girl there), allowed me to pirate two kings of leon albums off her laptop. and now i can't stop listening to it.

if i can marry songs, then i'd be happily, monogamously married to "i want you" albeit covetously eyeing (listening?) to "closer", "manhattan", and "be somebody".

definitely some of the sexiest songs i've heard in a very long time. the frantic drums in "be somebody" makes me laugh (in a good way) but that's about the only description i will put down here. i don't want to sound like an priggish music columnist.

grass green with envy

2009-04-21T00:35:00.000-07:00

my mom annabella and my sisters anna and blanca anne (yes, we like the name anna. two grand kids sport a variation of the name. hey, my super secret real name is even a mutation of it) visited still another sister (yes, aside from having too many annas, we have too many girls in the family) based in Connecticut in the US of A in March.

in the photo above are, from left to right, my gorgeous sisters anna and blanca, my mom (why are you wearing a purple puffy jacket mommy?), and a very pretty....cousin? that means my sister girlie was being a gracious host and taking pictures.

mother is still there, abandoned in part by my sisters because of their careers but mostly because they want to retain their sanity for a couple more years.

my mom. she bought a pillow to bring home to the philippines. it now patiently waits curled inside a balikbayan box in the sala of an aunt in new jersey. just an ordinary pillow, not the goose down filled variety. just an ordinary made-in-china pillow you will find for sure in the famous shoppers' chain of stores of zamboanga.

anyone else would have used that space taken up by the pillow for bringing home make-up, chocolates, and star, people, us weekly, and enquirer magazines. but my mom. she is the opposite of anyone else. and you are supposed to let her be. that is the rule.

i don't know what that gray building behind them is. but doesn't the grass remind you of a tennis ball? it's almost neon green.

my sister anna visits on average two countries a year. my sister blanca has travelled the world. her husband used to be captain of an ocean-going ship, for crying out loud. my mom leaves zamboanga probably every two months.

like the rest of the family, i am infected with the wanderlust too. but you know what is so beyond pathetic? the farthest i have ever been to is hongkong. syet.

"A tomboy ran away with my market money!"

2009-04-20T22:57:00.000-07:00

a thieving lesbian is apparently on the loose in the city. i read about it here.

its an op/ed, a blog entry, a news item (mainly because it is in the news section), a cautionary tale, an entertainment and lifestyle story all rolled into one. In other words, the pinnacle of convergence journalism!