Thank You

In the office, today, someone I did not know well enough to call my friend gave me a huge chocolate bar.
I said "thank you," but couldn't resist asking, with a puzzled smile "why?"
She said "because you have been nice to me. Thank you so much."
I felt strangely touched, both by the gesture and the answer to my question.
I was reminded that kindness, when given without expecting to be returned, is almost always sure to come back.

Lit Geek Update #7

Hurrah pour moi!

I never thought I'd be able to go back to my books, but whaddya know, am reading again! This time, it's Ursula Hegi's short story collection Hotel of the Saints. It's a quaint little book full of quaint little people and colorful little lives (but what life is little, eh?).

I loved her in Stones From the River and even more in Intrusions and, judging by the four or so stories I've read, so far, this collection promises to be worth the while.

I just hope I'd have the diligence to see the book through until the last page, and not let it meet the same fate as Isaac Bashevis Singer's Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories, half of which I read during some waiting stint in Starbucks, and the rest of the lot, well, I never really got to finish.

A half-read book (especially if it's a good one) is a sad thing.

Aimee Mann's Got Something New

Aimee Mann has a new album out! And the title's pretty cool, too. So far, "Freeway" is my favorite track.

Prayer

My own heart let me more have pity on; let

Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,

Charitable; not live this tormented mind

With this tormented mind tormenting yet.

I cast for comfort I can no more get

By groping round my comfortless, than blind

Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find...

- from Gerard Manley Hopkins'
"My own heart let me more have pity on"

Break shots

Shrimp Tales (and then some)

Yesterday, when I went on a trip to Festival Mall, I wasn't at all planning to bargain-hunt. As it turned out, however, I was able to snag a few items for half the price!

My main destination was Shopwise, as I had contemplated, for a good quarter of the day, to have hilabos na hipon for dinner. I love shrimps dearly and I hadn't had any for quite some time. Back in Naga, my brothers and I, being shrimp junkies, would spend close to two hours on the dining table, devouring a sizeable quantity of shrimps (pasayan in Bikol). Daddy, being the kind of father that he is, would snitch just a few, then leave the rest to his shrimp-crazy kids. My mom, of course, would snub it (and its high cholesterol content) altogether.

Anyway.

So there I was, on my way to the grocery, trying my hardest to keep my path straight. It was sale weekend and I had promised myself that I wouldn't buy any article of clothing, footwear or accessories, nothing along that line. Alas, I happened (yeah, right) to pass by Kamiseta, and found that my feet were inching their way towards its wide-open door.

A quarter of an hour later, I emerged with my loot: two dresses with "50% off" marks on their tags!

I then made my way, as fast as I could, to Shopwise' seafood section, determined not to have any more detours. And what do you know, the shrimps were on sale, too! Originally priced at P500 a kilo, they had been marked down to P380. I bought half a kilo and then made my way home. Along the way, I went dreaming of the feast that dinner was going to be, and wished that I would have enough restraint in eating the dear crustaceans, as I had been reminding myself lately to go easy on food.

I had wished in vain, though. Shrimps and restraint don't seem to go well together.

Itching for Elsewhere

I can't wait to get my hands on Conchitina Cruz's new book, Elsewhere Held and Lingered. I keep forgetting to look it up in the bookstores.

Now, let me make a mental note to do that the next time I visit the mall, as I seem to be afflicted with short-term memory loss.

Okay, done.

Hope it doesn't get erased.

Click on this for Mabi David's words.

The rain fell, heavy and noisy, like rice grains from the gaping mouths of hundreds and thousands of canvas sacks.

Me: (speechless)

Conversation #1:

Jackie: (voice quivering) Why is everyone forcing me to study?

Me: Baby, you need to study because it's exam week. Do you want to get low scores in your exams?

Jackie: I hate, hate school. All my classmates do. Mommy, who invented school ba?

Me: (speechless)

Jackie: I wish nobody invented school. It's so boring. No kid likes school, you know.

Me: Listen, baby. You need to go to school so you'll learn. If you don't go to school, you won't be able to find a job when you grow up. Sige ka.

Jackie: Oh, that's okay. Then I'll have lots of time to read.

Me: (speechless)

Conversation #2:

Me: What subjects for tomorrow?

Jackie: (sighing) Sibika and, ugh, Math! I hate those two subjects! Who invented Math, Mommy?

Me: I don't know, Baby. The Chinese, I think? But I'm not really sure. Go and practice your subtraction.

Jackie: It's so hard, all those carry-carry and borrow-borrow. I think I like addition more than subtraction.

Me: (sighing) Me, too. But go ahead, study your Math, baby. You have to study. Oh, and yeah, there's one more thing I need to tell you about studying. If you don't study, you'll get really low scores and really low grades. And then you'll be stuck in grade 3. Next year, all your other classmates will be in grade 4 and you'll still be in grade 3. Do you want that?

Jackie: (eyes widening) Oh! Oh! Ok. I better study, then.

Me: (relieved) Good girl! Go ahead, now.

Jackie: (after some moments of deep thought) But, Mommy, how come I won 2nd place in the spelling bee even if I didn't study?

Me: (speechless)

c")

good times with my rugrats

Weight Woes

At least one week per month, I go through what I call a "hungry phase."

During these periods and if I happen to be in the office, I then become a much too frequent visitor of the 2/F pantry's vendo machine, from where I usually snag three items: a can of soda, a bag of chips and a chocolate bar. This, mostly after lunch--which is an entirely different feast: a half cup of rice, beef tapa or chicken flakes and orange juice in a plastic cup. On "extra-hungry" days, there will almost always be sprints to McDonald's or Hen-Lin, which stand so conveniently near to my workplace. And, an hour into my shift, I would already have finished off a medium-sized frappucino--an appetizer of sorts before lunch.

Tsk, tsk. Bad, bad, bad.

It's a good thing this happens only 7 days (give or take a few days, I can never really be sure), or else it wouldn't take that long for me to double my present size, which isn't something I'm proud of, in the first place. Like a number of, if not most, women, I have a never-ending preoccupation with my weight. Reed-thin is beautiful, and any pound of flesh (or fat, for that matter) that goes beyond that, is something to be alarmed about.

I am aware that this will sound superficial to some, but the fact remains that this subject goes far, far deeper than most of us would be willing to take it to be. The compulsion to be "un-fat" may be traced back to any number of things, like: a problematic childhood, a deeply-rooted insecurity brought about by an extremely low self-esteem, severe depression, some long-forgotten trauma that surfaces again and again, pressure from the mass media, etc., in the same way that it could subsequently lead to any number of things, like: (again) severe depression, a continuously deteriorating self-esteem, anorexia or bulimia (I had the latter when I was in second-year college), numerous sicknesses (like hyperacidity, ulcers and hypertension), and many other results with scary-sounding names, I'm sure.

The cure?

I wish I knew.

Right now, I am...

1. sleepy and know that I ought to sleep; instead I am blog-hopping and having a lot of fun reading about other people's lives.

2. wondering how other bloggers manage to find something to write about day after day. I, on the other hand, have these dry spells wherein I simply can't, for the life of me, type a single sentence, let alone one whole entry!

3. still thinking about my key take-away from the Emotional Intelligence training class I attended this morning: that I am, in no way, emotionally intelligent.

4. listening absently to Jay Leno's blabber--the TV's volume is too low for me to really make out what he's saying.

5. seeing blue spots on the screen--I must've stared too long at the blue wall.

6. reminding myself to remind Jackie and Kim to study for their upcoming exams. I know Jackie will complain that studying takes too much out of her "fun" time. She'd cooperate more if you ask her to study Anne of Green Gables, though. Sigh. You should see her stare, horrified, at a page of math problems. She is simply too much like me.

7. counting my blessings.

8. bracing myself for a storm which I know is coming very soon. Time to test my mettle, once more.

9. trying to make out what Jay Leno is saying. I wish I didn't feel too lazy to reach for the remote control and turn up the volume.

10. ending this entry.

Mother-Daughter Kikay Chronicle #1

I am a self-confessed shoe fiend, guilty of failing to exercise the virtue of temperance when I find myself in a place where beautiful shoes are sold.

And Jackie is beginning to show signs that she will take after me. In this particular hunt for school shoes, she asked me to buy her pambahay slippers because the ones she had weren't pink and she had to have pink ones. It took her half an hour to decide which pair to buy!

Moonbeam (by Louise Gluck)

The mist rose with a little sound. Like a thud.
Which was the heart beating. And the sun rose, briefly diluted.
And after what seemed years, it sank again
and twilight washed over the shore and deepened there.
And from out of nowhere lovers came,
people who still had bodies and hearts. Who still had
arms, legs, mouths, although by day they might be
housewives and businessmen.

The same night also produced people like ourselves.
You are like me, whether or not you admit it.
Unsatisfied, meticulous. And your hunger is not for experience
but for understanding, as though it could be had in the abstract.

Then it's daylight again and the world goes back to normal.
The lovers smooth their hair; the moon resumes its hollow existence.
And the beach belongs again to mysterious birds
soon to appear on postage stamps.

But what of our memories, the memories of those who depend on images?
Do they count for nothing?

The mist rose, taking back proof of love.
Without which we have only the mirror, you and I.

(from The Seven Ages)

Pensive mode, once more

The doldrums are here.

Time to listen to Carrie Underwood's

"Lessons Learned" and Corinne Bailey

Rae's "Put Your Records On."

Hope it does the trick.

Sigh.
Sigh.
Sigh.

About...Food!

Yesterday, I found myself glued to the Discovery Travel and Living channel. I caught: Jamie's Italian Getaway (groovy chef Jamie Oliver celebrates his 30th birthday in romantic Italy and has to cook for culinary-savvy and meticulous Italians--what a feat!), Take-Home Chef (Aussie master chef Curtis Stone, with a whole bunch of camera crew, ambushes innocent grocery shoppers and offers to pay for the items. In exchange, the poor souls will take the chef and his crew to his/her house, where Curtis will cook a meal for free! How awesome is that?) and Kylie Kwong: My China (a culinary show which features, of course, Chinese cooking, all shot on location in China). I just loved them all! The shows' premises are so cool.

What is it about food shows that fascinates us so? The obvious answer, I guess, is that food is one topic that interests people of all sizes, ages, races, etc. We eat more than the average "three meals a day," have these periodic cravings for our favorite dishes, and are constantly on the look-out for new, gastronomical delights, especially when home-cooked meals start to get stale to our taste. What more, watching all those sumptuous, myriad (from the sophisticated to the quotidian) meals being cooked and presented in full color is an experience only a few could resist. Well, I certainly couldn't.

Plus, there are all these wonderful stuff to learn! Yesterday, for example, I found out that Zucchini flowers can be eaten. You just stuff some cheese into them, deep-fry, then, voila! You have yourself fried Zucchini flowers! But what else could they be, eh? Other tidbits: stir-fried Lotus roots are a favorite Chinese delicacy, though the harvesting alone is a really arduous process; and, in Italy, a box of pizza is meant to be eaten by one person (ain't that heaven?).

Am definitely hooked.

The sad thing is that I was never really much of a cook. Unlike some people who get their first taste of kitchen navigation (whaat?) at a young age, I learned how to cook when I was already in College and found myself away from home. My friends/house-mates, then, Emillie, Ribbon and Fenina, patiently taught me the art of frying (I will never forget the giant blister I got the first time I tried to fry tilapia and I've always dreaded frying, from then on), sauteeing, boiling, and all that stuff. I know very few recipes, and am thankful that I was able to write down my Lola's (she was a master cook, oh yes, she was!) precious recipes before she passed away. I make good adobo (my own concoction: Shan-style adobo!) and beef steak (my Lola's recipe), though, and some pasta (mac and cheese, Puttanesca). And, once, when I cooked carbonara for my team and some friends, they praised it to the high heavens and are cajoling me, until now, to cook another batch for them.

I think I will, soon.

:)

Yellow Day

The sun was shining and so were our shirts, so we decided to have lunch out in the sunshine. It was, after all, month-end (a particularly strong one for the team, at that) and the end of another work week so we had enough reasons to unwind and celebrate. So that's just what we did: had lunch out and peppered it with loads of laughter, teasing and tall-tales, and, of course, girl-watching and beer for the guys. We were a noisy bunch, but we didn't care. Work could really take its toll on us, so breaks like these are a welcome necessity.
To my team, thank you for a really strong, fabulous month! You guys are gems for making the otherwise taxing, irksome life in the office much more jazzy!