4 without rival

"Is this a sans rival restaurant?" "Why do they have four kinds of sans rival?" "I'm getting drunk from the sugar." "Are you a crunch or a chew?" "Malaswang buttercream!"

Being a part of a food society has its perks. We get to attend great dinners, taste darn good wines, and become friends with amazing and talented women. Three of those amazing women and I have regular email exchanges that make us sound like cake-maniacs. We've been tracking down sources of the tastiest tidbits for a few months now, and last night we finally sat down to our first horizontal tasting.

A horizontal tasting is not about us collapsing in a prone position from stuffing ourselves silly. It's about one type of cake, four to six different sources, and enough taste buds to confirm, argue, critique, and absorb, and in a big splashy (or not) finale, announce what we think is the best of the set.

Last night, our focus was the multi-layered, buttery, sweet, and nutty Sans Rival. It is a difficult cake to make. Layers of meringue, topped with layers of buttercream, a good spread of nuts. Before pulling the collection together, we had to decide if we would bring traditional or non-traditional types of sans rival - cashew seems to be the agreed traditional version, but there are pistachio options and macadamia versions available too. Eventually, after some long email debates and face to face voluble dialogue, we bowed to tradition and chose only cakes with a cashew topping.

We were also facing a bit of a deadline. There was a sans rival that had been brought from the province and was in the freezer awaiting its destiny. We knew that we were already compromising the taste and texture factors by waiting it out this long and it would definitely not improve with age.

The other cakes, all sourced within Metro Manila, came from recommendations of other food/cake lovers. Flurries of texts about who was going to attend, last minute flaking, and tasting notes ensued, plus agreeing that no way were we going to survive on sugar alone. Good thing that K is the owner of a restaurant! She made sure the cakes were properly stored, and that her team were ready and willing to feed our hungry maws.

When the time for the cakes came to pass, we herded ourselves over four luscious looking specimens - the provincial offering, maintaining integrity even after a week of waiting, two circular pieces, and a large rectangular cake. We named them 1, 2, 3, and 4. Our hopes that no one would decipher which cake was which didn't work out since most people knew the shape or box size of most of the cakes. Note to self, have the cakes pre-sliced ahead of time!

We tasted cake 1 first, and even with the time lag, it definitely made most people murmur in appreciation. It has a slightly salty buttercream without a great deal of nuts, and a chewy interior.

Cake 2 had a lot of layers, we counted 7 but could have been 8. It was also notable for a strong nutty flavor, I thought more than necessary. The first of the crunchy cakes, it was one of the stronger contenders.

Cake 3 looked great on the outside. Smooth buttercream finish, a distinct sprinkle of nuts on the top, and when it was cut, definite layers of meringue and cream inside. Taste-wise we were underwhelmed. It was sweet. It didn't make us want to eat more, and some found it lacking in that necessary something that makes you want another bite. A pretty cake for parties, but it won't go down in our annals of great sans rival.

Cake 4 jostled with number 1 for champion's title. Some liked it for the seemingly intense buttercream exterior, however I argue that any cake that is plastered like a brick with buttercream only to show negligible coating inside the cake is a farce, coy, a tease, or worse. It was crunchy, and had lots of nuts, but many of the nuts were a tad too brown for me.

After a lot of noisy arguments (and sugar induced logic), the majority agreed that number one was still the champ. It got extra points for not only standing up to a week's worth of waiting, but for an overall strong presence. Not too sweet, a tasty buttercream, consistency in layering, and even the pro-crunch advocates agreed that in the end, it made us happiest.

This may not be the last of the sans rival taste tests, for we know there are many more out sources out there. Will the Visayan champion stand up against the ones we read about in Davao, Pampanga, or Laguna? And what about those non-cashew based nut cakes? Are they to be left in the annals of cake-dom? Till the next cake chapter!

Picnic food

Mark Bittman (the Minimalist) posted 101 tips for meals in 10 minutes, now in light of the summer season in N. America, he's written up a list of 101 picnic dishes. Many of them would be great for daily munchies too. I particularly like the idea of the edamame salads. Look through the short list of cold noodles and there is the kimchi sesame noodle dish again! I will take it as a sign that I've got to have me some kimchi and noods! Pack these meals in your bento boxes for the kiddies, so they don't turn towards the bag of chips and sugary juice drinks.

The weather on this side of the Pacific is not conducive to picnics, not unless you're into packing rain jackets and boots along with the wicker basket and red checkered cloth. Today's weather speaks of soup and hearty bread, a stew, and hot chocolate. Mulled wine.

Beginning in the middle

January to June are long gone, half the year is over, and I've chanced upon surreptitious christmas jingles in the bookstore. At this point in the year, I've decided to go back to old habits, or perhaps renew old vows. Yes, the dread of going back to the gym is upon us. I've signed up for a full year and I will actually haunt the place on a regular basis.

With the renewed energy of plunking down money for the service, I went off to buy vegetables and healthy (fiber-rich) food. Friend J had posted a quinoa breakfast dish recently, and while I like changing my cereals every so often, I do prefer the wheat like product as a salad. Perhaps its due to the first quinoa dish I had in salad form - with cranberries, pinenuts, and peppers, tossed with a balsamic vinaigrette.

I had no luck finding cranberries, but there's this free box of dates at home, and good looking asparagus in the market, add an orange and I put together the quinoa salad care of the recipe I found online here.

It's hearty and stick to your ribs (and palate) kind of salad. It would probably work with raisins as a substitute for dates if you just can't find them, but I do think dates aren't as difficult to source these days. The sticky texture and gentle sweetness blossom with the orange pairing. This dish makes me want to throw together a date/orange shake with yogurt!

I'm planning to put together a few more of the hot weather recipes that the folks at Serious Eats put together; I have a big basket of baby potatoes for an easy salad, and a lot of buckwheat noodles for making the kimchi-sesame noodle dish. I will reek of garlic after noshing the latter so I best make it for a weekend night, when it's just me and the cat and dog.

Disturbia

Weekends are the getaway from the grind of the weekday. We work from Monday to Friday, occasionally Saturdays, and attempt to regain some of the flux back on Saturday and Sunday. Catch up on sleep, clean the cat box, bring the dog to the groomers and vet, visit a few sales, read, watch tv, have breakfast with friends, and even get last minute dinner invites from friends who you don't see in ages. All of that in the pot, stir, and hope for something positive for a Monday morning.

However, I don't feel that this morning. I feel all betwixt and bothered and bewildered, unfortunately no pal joey. My dog was all ok till Saturday when we noticed wet doggie doo. Two days of that and then reduced appetite. The doctor recommends adding some lactobacilli to her diet (Yakult), and if we still have a problem by tonight, then I bring her in to the vet tomorrow.

I also can't find my *&!%#@ passport! If there's one thing a traveller panics over, it's losing the official document. I'm trying to get it renewed before trips later this year and now I can't find the doggone thing. Dogs and messed up Mondays. I'm going for a walk.

One more game

I need a serious shot of caffeine. Right in my veins if you please. Against my better judgement I went to watch the semi-finals of the Eurocup, Spain vs. Russia. Two a.m. Why can't the football gods be kind to those of us in Asia? We love you football gods, but honestly, I'm just glad this is only every two to four years, otherwise I'd be dead with caffeine and stress.

Thank goodness Spain won. I'm thrilled, totally looking forward to the finals. It's Germany vs Spain, two powerhouses of European football, and a game that mirrors the North-South personalities of the game itself. Spain isn't as soulful as Brazil, but they tend to be spunkier, and far less predictive than the Germans. The team also has a tendency to choke. In the last three World Cups the Spanish team has either been eliminated in the first or q'final rounds. Even though they may do well in their group, they can't seem to get the psychological force of a team and win! This year will be different! Tens of thousands of heads are being prepared for a clean shave if Spain wins (this is the promise, online petition, of the fans of the Spanish team). What's a mere hirsute lock of hair for regaining Eurocup glory?

My friend M didn't get to go to the Eurocup as she had planned, so she's here in Manila, suffering with the rest of us, and as with most of our annual mini-competitions, we have our bets on. Since I called Spain early on, she's forced to take the side of the Germans, who only has one player she actually likes. I already know where she's going to take me for my winner's meal after Sunday!

G, N, or B?

Puttering around Greenbelt 3, I popped into Music One, shocked! Shocked I tell you! First, they've cut off half the space, and the entire store looks dreary and grey. I was probably only 1 of 4 customers wandering the shelves. Has downloadable music and movies caused this or simply the malaise of running a brick and mortar store in the city these days?

Perhaps the reason for people staying away has to do with the lack of expert sales knowledge. I asked for three cd titles, they eventually found one of them, but the other two were just too much for the saleslady. She went up and down the racks looking for the name of the group. A true lost soul, she first thought the group's name, Gnarls Barkley, was a person's name. Started by checking the B's, then with a bit of prodding that it wouldn't be sorted by "last name", she went off to the N's. Oh dear. I figured Yael Naim would not be any easier to find. When she asked another salesclerk, he gave her a look that said "why are you asking me?" No, these are not the right people to ask for alternative music titles. Off to Amazon.

Movie trailers

After work today, I went to Glorietta to watch a movie. Perusing the shows on offer, I decided on Get Smart with Steve Carrell, it was about to start in 10 minutes, while Made of Honor had just started. I wasn't into catching The Hulk, even with Ed Norton. After I get my ticket, and buy a chocolate shake at Dairy Queen, I enter the darkened theater, and search out an empty chair. I can hear the trailer playing, but it's only when I'm ensconced in my seat that I realize it's the X-Files movie trailer. Hmmm. Dana's hair sure is long and Mulder looks older. Storywise, it looks confusing. The guy from Mrs. Brown has blood coming from his eyes! A lot of frozen ground. Still confusing. Ooo Mulder is about to kiss Dana! Got to see the movie if only for that.

Huh, Star Wars? I didn't know they had another episode to show... wait a sec, it's all animated. And weird. Yoda looks ok. Hey, Jabba! What is this story all about... Obi wan, Christopher Lee? Ah Clone Wars. I see. Nope, not watching it. Looks like a badly animated Saturday cartoon.

Dark Knight. My oh my. It's sad, and a tad creepy to watch Heath Ledger in white face. Why does Michael Caine have to take on such minimal roles like Alfred? He's got two Oscars and he's playing Alfred. Sheesh.

Baz Luhrmann's Australia. Nicole looks good in it, no dancing or singing though.

I'm not in Kansas for sure

It's a rare day when I want to write more than one post on this blog, but my brain's full of stuff these days, thinking, worrying, imagining, creating. But a few moments ago, I was staring at my shoes and wondering why I have this thing for flats lately. Ballet flats, leather, suede, and plastic. I've suddenly accumulated around 6 pairs in the last year - two from a local shoe company that custom made my flats for me including a bespoke brown pair that I chose specifically for it's color, another black ballerina flat and a purple suede one in San Francisco, then a pair of blue crocs, and a few days ago, gold Melissa sandal flats. The latter two pairs are sort of completely out of my normal routine. I was anti-crocs for what seemed like forever, partly due to what was an ugly design. But I walked into the store a few weeks ago, saw this design and bought them. They won't work with everything, but I sure do wear them a lot with grey and black clothing, plus anything in shades of pastel.

The gold sandals by the Brazilian company Melissa is also another case of impulse shopping. Do I need gold shoes? No. Do I need another pair of flats, well, not really. And do I think plastic shoes are the best thing for my feet in this tropical, muggy climate? Er. Ok, no. But they're cute! And the kicker, they came in my size! And when I put them on this morning, I felt like I needed something shiny, glittery, which would leave a faint golden trail wherever I go today to boost me through the day. It's been a long, difficult week, and gold shoes, impulse or no, are just the thing to make me contemplate happier moments. So far, I've been told by three seperate people today that I look really good; I'm going to tap my gold shoes' heels together.

Brit soul

If you believe the music writers, there's a new brit invasion on the music scene (segue - why do they call it an invasion? It sounds like a bee hive taking over, buzzing away, and I never matched British singers to bees. Do the Brits call the omnipresent American movies an American swarm? Locust swarm that eats away at the very fiber of one's fabric.), this time led by female soul singers. The biggest of them all is Amy Winehouse, but on her heels are the trio soloists of Duffy, Adele and Gabrielle Cilmi (they were labeled The New Amy's by the music critic of the Times). I enjoyed listening to Amy Winehouse, and had to avoid reading all her news nonsense since it sort of detracts from enjoying her talent. Of the three new girls, Adele sounds the closest to AW, that same Billy Holiday vocal angst, hints of the 50's and 60's rhythm, although I'm not sure if Adele sports a funky hairdo since I've only heard her songs. I caught a tv performance of Duffy a month ago and have sought her songs online. My favorite of her songs is Rockferry from her debut album of the same name. Mercy is the big breakthrough hit from the album, but Rockferry resonates with me. I can see her in my head wailing that song. I like sad songs.

I've seen but have not bought a copy of the new Coldplay album. I was a fan of their first two compilations (Parachutes and A Rush of Blood to the Head), but wasn't keen on their last output (X&Y). Instead I refreshed my fandom of Radiohead's older album Ok Computer and the most recent album In Rainbows. It didn't hurt that Johnny Greenwood is a genius who composed the soundtrack for There Will be Blood. Discordant and haunting.

When you're stuck in a hospital, music can be the only balm to get you out of a funk.

Laughter is the best medicine

Last night my sister and I were by my dad's emergency room bed waiting for his room assignment, and I looked up and told her "this looks new" pointing up to the pneumatic tube snaking around the ceiling. Even with our cumulative exhaustion, we couldn't help but giggle. We've been at the hospital's ER three times in the last 6 months, twice for my dad, and once for my mother. The waits can be rather lengthy, so you tend to notice when they've added new stuff. And the pneumatic tube is not subtle. I think it's a rather nice innovation for a hospital that needed a way to get information up to the rooms or the billing center a lot faster. We've had to wait over an hour in the past for a simple bill, because the elevators were taking too long, or because they had to wait for one piece of paper from one office to get to another.

We continued to chuckle as we came up with the idea that the hospital should give families that end up using the facilities a lot some kind of "mileage points", each confinement or visit earns certain points and you can use it for discounts at the restaurant, or maybe to offset the cost of less serious medical services. Let's say, 1000 points for a confinement, and after 10,000 points, you can get one free diamond peel at the dermatologist. We calculated that in the last six months, we've spent enough to pay for our entire family to travel to the US and Europe. Sayang ang miles!

Cyd Charisse, RIP

I grew up watching MGM musicals like they were candy. Loved them so much, and they were the perfect escape from the heat, the dust, the tropical storms. And they all seemed so exotic to me, a child living in Martial Law controlled Manila. My mom hooked me onto the musicals through Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, and with the advent of Betamax, we'd go through the shows and the shows about the shows (That's Entertainment 1 and 2, and I'm not talking about that local variety show). The bubble gum love stories, the poufy hairdo's, Ester William's synchronized swimming numbers, and of course the great dancing of both Kelly and Astaire. While Astaire had Rogers on his arm for several movies, Kelly was a soloist, who paired up with some lovely partners, but none was ever as leggy or sizzling as Cyd Charisse. I loved Cyd Charisse. Loved her in the dream sequence in Singing in the Rain. Who cares if Debbie Reynolds won Gene in the end? I wanted the brunette hot mama in the sparkly red cocktail dress with a slit up to her neck to win the wayward boy who was gonna dance. And even if she didn't have a single speaking line, you knew they were the ones meant to be, except she was eventually stolen away by her coin tossing gangster boyfriend.

Another great Charisse movie is The Bandwagon, where she was Astaire's partner (they also worked on Silk Stockings, a musical remake of Ninotchka, with Greta Garbo in the original Slavic role). Bandwagon's famous solo dance piece of Astaire has him dancing on the ceiling and walls, the set designers created a revolving room for the action. But my favorite duet with Astaire and Charisse is a simple moment where they take a horse drawn carriage through Central Park, she's wearing this simple and gorgeous white dress, and they dance their pas de duex through the gardens. I can see her skirt swinging in the air as I write this, with Astaire languidly (for he was never one to look like he exerted himself much) leading the way back to the carriage and into the night. (She was in the movie version of Brigadoon with Kelly, but her accent was sort of difficult to take. Great costumes though!)

She was quite tall unlike the other ballerina turned actress, Leslie Caron. I suspect Cyd couldn't wear heels much when dancing with Astaire or Kelly otherwise it would have looked odd. Her voice was dubbed in most of the musicals, but who cared if she wasn't really singing, it was her dancing that made her a star. I remember my mom telling me that Cyd Charisse had the best legs of any movie star, the story goes that she had them insured for a million dollars, a massive fortune in those days.

Both Astaire and Kelly are dancing up in heaven, and Cyd has gone up to join them, forever embedded in my childhood memories as the woman in red and white, smoking the long cigarette, or twirling through the twilight.

Green river

As a child, I had nightmares about falling into the Pasig River, for even in the 70's it was already known as a polluted body of water. In my nightmares, I would be running along the concrete banks and would lose balance and fall into the brackish blackness, waking up just as I hit the water.

The Pasig has not had a break in a long time. Factories and squatters have released so much chemical and organic pollutants into the water for decades. Plans to rehabilitate it are constantly being mentioned by civic groups, and former First Lady Amelita Ramos was once at the forefront of a Pasig clean-up project.

From where I sit in any vehicle passing over the Pasig through a bridge or two, the water is black, usually filled with garbage, and occasionally you catch sight of the Pasig Ferry, that takes commuters from Makati to Manila. Very rarely do I see rowers punting about, although friends have told us about their experiences in rowing teams taking their boats out onto the river. This morning, waiting through traffic, I looked out over the river and saw that it was covered in waterlily plants. I call them waterlilies but am not quite sure what aquatic plant they are. I've never actually seen them flower. But I do know they swarm over the river and seem to sprout overnight. This morning was such a case, I know I hadn't seen any yesterday, but this morning, swathes of the green plants made the river look rather festive and healthy. I don't know if they are good for whatever fish remain in the river, or if they suck up any nutrients for plants that kill algae (if said plants are managing to thrive in the Pasig). But as a verdant flotilla, they are a prettier sight than watching pink plastic bags float along the water.

Hong Mei

How do you describe a fruit not grown locally, rarely available, that has a short shelf-life much less harvest period, and doesn't have a local counterpart? Berry-like, with dark red fruit, and exterior that looks like bumps which turns out to be rods protruding from the pit, lightly tart, juicy. The flavor has been compared to strawberries, cherries, but I don't think they fit. Texture is more like raspberries, no aroma, it's all in the tart flavor and juiciness. Ah well. That's hong mei for you. Hard to pin down.

I was visiting my parents and saw a bowl of the dark, blood red globes, my eyes lit up and instead of turning down dinner, I decided to corner the bowl for myself. My father had found a vendor in Binondo selling them and knowing how rare it was to find the fruit, bought a few boxes. My mother had never had them before so he gifted a box to her. She ate a lot last night, she told me. I haven't seen hong mei since I lived in China, so this was a treat! I ate four before I gave the bowl back to my dad. But he promised to buy me a box when he went back into the maze of Manila's chinatown. In the meantime, I'll savor the 3 pieces my mom put into my bag before I left. My hongmei baon.

10 (books) a week

A couple of weeks back, I popped into Buy the Book, a used bookstore near work, and ended up with 9 books; a subsequent visit to Powerbooks and Fully Booked saw three new books in my pile. If there was such a thing as Books Anonymous, I'd definitely have had to call my sponsor.

As of today, I no longer have any new books to read. I finished the last one this afternoon, and am now faced with picking up some books that I never finished a few months ago or re-reading books.

Most of the books I galloped through were not very good, they would fit into the category of mystery potboilers, written in relatively hackneyed fashion. 4 of the books were by the same author, who I will avoid like the plague for being one of the worst writers I've ever had to skim through.

Finishing up the last book today, I felt like I had mental heartburn. Like a bad burp that needed releasing. Reading all those books in a short time, averaging a book a day, felt like I was on a summer retreat without the benefit of being by the beach, sipping a tropical cocktail with an umbrella. I know I have to return to reading something with relative weight and strong writing to shake the feeling of fogginess. I know there's a copy of something by Joseph Conrad somewhere in my stacks.

Buying books, I have come across a lot of different kinds of booksellers, particularly among used booksellers. I prefer those who don't bug you, ask or offer to help if you need it, but mostly keep their opinions to themselves unless you ask them for suggestions. I remember one seller in Philadelphia who was kind enough to offer a stool when he saw I was seated on the floor going through the stacks. And when I finally went to pay for books, he and his partner pointed a few more books to look at which gave me more reason to wile away the afternoon. And there's Pendragon books in San Francisco, where I've found hard to find books with the help of their professional and outstanding bookcrew.

Unfortunately, a local bookseller doesn't seem to understand that customers need space. At a local farmer's market, there's a stall that sells used books, the owners (a husband and wife team) hound you when you try to look at their wares. The husband will tell you (over your shoulder) when he bought the book, when he read it, and what he thinks about it. If I were rude, I might turn to him and say "Do you think I care?" but I am not about to do that. He will then point out that if you buy one book, they'll throw in 2 books for free (all for the convenient price of P500 for the bundle). As you try to escape from the harangue, he will then point out the other things they sell, pottery, jewelry, and herbal tonics. The hard sell, I don't buy it.

Girltalk

Four women, a van, and a short road trip. Whatever could we end up talking about?

9:20 am "Oooo, Obama clinched the nomination, remember this moment!" "So thrilling, so historic, but my son wanted Hillary!" "Really? Why was he for her?" "He's only 10! But he told me that as a woman I should be for Hillary - 'Mom, you're a strong woman, so Hillary's the candidate for strong women' - I told him it wasn't so simple..."

9:35 am "Did you hear about Richard Quest?" "The CNN guy?" "Yeah! He got caught with drugs and what's that called when guys strangle themselves when having sex?" "Oh, you mean what happened to Michael Hutchins?" "Who... oh the INXS singer... yeah, autoerotic something. Wait, you mean Quest is dead?" "No, but he had a rope around his neck and his hoohoo, and he was caught in Central Park, what an idiot!" "Well, he's probably not that well known in the US, so cruising Central Park might have been the safest place for him!"

9:50 am "Look at all the lush greenery out there, is that the Candaba Swamp?" "Yeah, it looks uninhabited, no?" "Good for the egrets, or am I confusing them with herons? White birds (flaps arms)." "Egrets." "Lahar probably destroyed so much of the swamp though..." "Let's hope they don't start building houses here." "Overpopulation is going to creep up on this space, blink of an eye, gone! (with a snap of the finger)" "Yeah, too many people having too many kids, time to advocate a one child policy like China!" "You're joking right?!"

After arriving at our destination and attending to the work related details, we started back for the big city.

2:30 p.m. "Look how green it is here, it's not like this in Manila, it's so grey and sooty." "Maybe we should suck up our trash and pollution and shoot it up in the atmosphere" "What!!!" "Well, didn't you read the new theory of multi-universes? We could send our trash to the universe that will welcome and recycle!!!"

3:30 p.m. "Her lashes are soooo fake, and did you see how perfect her nose is? Major Belo!"

3:40 p.m. "A friend of a friend told me that Iglesia ni Christo churches will turn into spaceships when the world goes to pot and take their faithful worshippers out into space." "No way. You joke." "No, M, you've heard of this right??" "Yeah I have heard a rumor to that effect." "This Singaporean artist wants to do a documentary on the INC churches but can't get approval from the higher ups in INC." "No duh. Secret society yada yada..." "I taught the Manalo grandson, majorly confused. Won't talk about the family, but he's the blacksheep of the family." "The Sing guy is obsessed with INC." "Artists are crazy."

Fresh donuts

There's a wonderfully detailed article about breakfast and all sorts of delicious looking breakfasts available in the New York magazine. The series on breakfast includes a interesting piece about why we should eat breakfast but it also notes how often most adults skip the meal. Another follow up deals with all sorts of breakfast cereals, and there's a piece just about coffee. While I agree that in the US, breakfast is primarily a solitary chore to cook and eat, leading one to grab and go, part of the problem may lie in the less than appetizing options for healthy breakfasts. Why should it be limited to cereal and milk, or a bran muffin? I love Asian breakfasts - congee with toppings, soup noodles, chinese crullers with soy milk, a spicy bowl of pho, fried rice! Eggs, meat, vegies, pickles even. Garlicky, fruity, hearty. You can eat it leftovers, but better to eat something fresh and newly made no? A favorite breakfast is garlicky fried rice, a couple of yokey eggs, and crunchy dilis or dangit. Have some hot chocolate with it too!

On a recent market trip, I went to a few suki's - the coffee stand, the piaya man. Now, I was reading a recent post about the best piaya in town. My favorite piaya is the freshly made disks at Salcedo. Go around 8, and you'll find the piaya guy cooking them fresh on the flat cooker. Hot and sweet, they match the acid bitterness of the coffee bought a couple of stalls down. On this visit, I was buying empanadas (also a good breakfast option!) for my folks when I saw the vendors cooking up hot and fresh doughnuts, 8 inch logs of doughy goodness, dropped into a baking sheet of sugar before wrapped in wax paper for the customers waiting. One lady before me bought 10 of them! I was determined to try them out, for what fresh donut doesn't taste wonderful? I'm not one for the overly sugary doughnuts of many large multi-national brands, but something made right in front of me, and eaten hot is always a great way to start the day. I bought three, one for me and two to give to my parents. The doughnut is not round, it's a log. It's puffed up from the cooking, and dangerously hot to the tongue. But after a few moments after its sugar dressing, melted a bit on the surface, I take a bite and have that moment of mouth-stomach-brain contentment. What does it take to make someone happy? Sometimes it's just as simple as frying some dough and dusting it with sugar. Add a cup of coffee, and watching other people walk by. It's not rocket science, and it doesn't get any better than that.

Scientific body artt

Tattoos are a symbolic essence of beliefs, emotions, needs, wants. These scientists wear their beliefs on their skins. (See mom? Tattoos are not ju stfor pirates and prisoners!)

Xfiles

I'm probably late in coming to this realization: a new Xfiles movie!!! I knew there was one being made, but I didn't realize it was going to be released so soon, July 25, 2008! I'm so thrilled, that it's now my summer movie goal for the year. I think there's still time to get the new puppy used to a new name... Dana.

Music therapy

I caught Prairie Home Companion on tv last Tuesday; Robert Altman's last film, starring M. Streep, K. Kline, W. Harrelson, L. Lohan, L. Tomlin, and PHC's founder himself G. Keillor. When it was released, I didn't get to see it on the big screen, it's a movie that lends itself well to the cosiness of the small screen. It's a movie about the making of the radio show of the same name, which is broadcast on public radio in the US, with a plot twist. The radio show as I remember it during my college days was sometimes hokey, but always entertaining. Puns, gentle literary humor, music, storytelling, all performed live in front of an audience one hears on air through their applause. Mr. Keillor's voice projects as the tranquil embodiment of the Midwest, very trustworthy in its bass grumble.

While the story was somewhat forgettable, I enjoyed listening to the folk songs performed by the actors. Didn't realize that it was Woody Harrelson until I heard him speak, he seemed shorter than I thought, and paired very well as Dusty to John C. Reilly's Lefty, two cowboys twanging their guitars and singing about all sorts of silliness (cowboy toilet humor). Ms. Streep has shown off her singing chops in previous films, so it comes as no surprise that she warbles as well as she does. She and her sister, played by Ms. Tomlin (her alto harmonizing against Streep's soprano), sing songs in dedication to their mother.

A few weeks back, I recall listening to a podcast about a musical ethnographer in the US who recorded a lot of folk music and ditties throughout the eastern seaboard and the south. He played samples of it through the presentation, and the voices were untrained but charming. Short spurts of it are enough to enjoy, listening to the words, the backyard noises, the underlying melodies. A lot of these songs will probably end up disappearing without the help of academic recordings, or shows like Prairie Home Companion.

Last month, the school I work for hosted a student music camp, and one particular workshop and concert dealt with tribal music, the facilitator (whose name I can't recall) is a dedicated Filipina ethnographist who has studied indigenous music around the country, hoping to save some of it before it all dies out. She taught the students about the links between music, the self, and storytelling without a lot of big instruments or fancy add ons. It was magical for the students to work with basic tools and sounds and learn how to make music through their own sense of rhythm. The students raved about the eye opening themes they picked up from her; I thought how wonderful it would be if their parents could have joined them in that eureka moment.

Snacks

Japanese snacks are usually rather cute and pink and cuddly and saccharine. This is the opposite. Grrr, eat me and feel my roar.

Puppies help the medicine go down

The last few months have been a trial on the family, particularly parent, front. Both my parents are getting on in age, and their physical bodies break down a lot more often than they'd like. Good thing that they don't get sick at the same time, otherwise my siblings and I'd be up the creek!

Recently, it was my mother's turn, and she had a long hospital stay which showed just how difficult a patient she is. Ornery my mom, especially when the doctor tells her to stay and she doesn't want to. After being released from the cold, institutional arms of her flower filled hospital suite, it's been like pulling teeth to get her to go for her blood tests every other week followed by a doctor's visit. Mini-tantrums, lots of phone calls, loads of drama just to get her there and back. Even my dad, who has had his fair share of hospital visits and doctors' consultations, can't understand why she has to go through this process each time. Last night, he told me in an aside "Your mama, so tigas ulo (hardheaded)!" pointing to his head like he was trying to crack a hammer on it.

This week's issue was that she didn't like the tone of my dad's caretaker who has been helping my mom with her test schedules and doctor visits. My mom cancelled her doctor's appointment and test, decided to go off with the grandkids on a shopping spree. My sister and I texted one another in frustration, wondering if she was just making it difficult for a reason or was it some kind of dementia or maybe fear of what the follow up had to say. Probably a bit of everything.

Backtrack a bit to a week ago, I had chosen to get a new pet, a puppy of ten weeks, to join me and my feline taskmaster at home. Me, my cat, my dog, full house! A furry, cinnamony brown puppy with soulful eyes and sweet disposition, whose main occupation is to find a warm spot on my lap and sleep like a cinnamon roll. I began to hatch a plan. I would bring the puppy to my mom, see if the furry bundle of joy could make her a bit more reasonable then attack with a logical (if not insightful dialogue to make her see reason). Good friend M was also facing a similar situation that same night with her aunt, who depends on her for support during medical crisis. So with M's "good luck with the dog plan" ringing on my cellphone, I brought dog, and two tasty gifts (a pan of raisin bread and jumbo pastillas de leche) to court my mother.

I first gave her the food, since it's not just a man's heart that needs feeding. Once she was looking peppier from the sight of the pastillas de leche, I brought in the main act. Bingo. In less than 10 minutes, my mom had succumbed to not just the dog but to my request for the test and doctor's visit. Where grandkids and pleas that fell on deaf ears failed, the dog won the day. Completely worth all the puppy potty training and vaccine shots and swarovski studded dog collar!

Overcome

Ay, I couldn't resist. Ate my marang last night, with gusto of course. Broke open the rind, and ate the tidbits over my kitchen sink while the cat and the new puppy sniffed at each other around my feet.

However, it wasn't the only malodorous item on my dinner plate. I wrote a couple of years ago about a cheese dish I had in Germany called "obatza" (also spelled obatzda, obatzer). It was introduced to me at my first authentic Munich beerhall (Hofbrauhaus if I'm not mistaken), along with my first platter of white sausage, and a hefty stein of beer. From the outset, obatza looks like a mushy, orange plop. For pinoys, think cheese pimiento spread. However, it's not just a mash of shredded cheddar, mayo and red peppers. The recipe I was given was to take some brie or camembert, cream it with butter, add paprika for the color and serve it with thinly sliced red onions and some german pretzels.

Last Sunday, lunch with friends at a local deli found me checking out the deli offerings behind the counter, and what do I spy with my almond shaped eyes? A container of orangy mash with a sign "Obatzer, P190/100g". Holy cow. So I check with the deli man first, what cheese did they use with this? Brie, he says. The flavor is a bit more pungent than I remember, but it is obatza. I bought a small container and finally opened it last night. Since I also bought a good loaf of sourdough, I tore a chunk of the bread and spread a thin line of the cheese on it. Wow. Talk about stonk! This made me wonder if the durian had lost its crown as the king of smelliness. But the taste was lovely, albeit dangerous to hypertensives - way too salty. It must be due to the addition of pickles, since the other additives like the caraway seeds couldn't make it so salty. I would probably add more butter to this to reduce the saltiness if I ever buy it again.

Eating this meal, sharing stomach space with the western cheese smells mixed with eastern indigenous fruit carrying it's own smell, made me wonder what someone from Germany would think of the marang, and how an Asian would consider the obatza. I know of folks from both sides who'd point to each offending item and say "how could you eat that?", "it smells of dirty socks", "it stinks". I felt like I was bridging a multi-cultural gap last night, a bit of cultural fusion running through me. I waved aside the virtual naysayers and screwed up noses, and fed some of the cheese to my cat. She bolted.

Fruit of the south

On the first day of my trip to Zamboanga, we were squashed like sardines in a van taking in the sights. Many of the other fellow van-mates had not been back to Zamboanga in a long time, although they were born in the city. All of us were there to help a friend celebrate her daughter's debut, plus get a chance to relax in the newly retitled "Latin City of Asia" (I'm starting to collect these names of places I go; remember what Dumaguete's title is?).

We were through with the tour of downtown, and had just bought some yakan weave near the military camp. On our way back, we passed a wet market and one of the ladies asked to stop. She had spied marang for sale and wanted to share the taste with everyone.

Marang (Artocarpus odoratissimus) reminds me of three fruis - durian, langka, and atis. The fruit and it's tree are from the same family as the langka or jackfruit, but some people mistake it for a durian as the fruit has a similar squat shape. The smell of the marang can also be a bit pungent, but its less painful to the nose, and less likely to be as offputting (putrid) as the durian. Instead of spikey thorn like protrusions (as with the durian), the marang sports a shell of soft spines, observe those spines carefully as they indicate when the fruit is ready to eat. They turn color and look a bit more hollow when the fruit is ripe. Pull back the spines and squeeze the rind back for an opening then pull apart to get to the white globes within. That's when the fruit reminds me of an atis. Each tidbit of fruit meat surrounds a small seed. Eating a langka reminds me of eating atis, sucking off the sweet fruit and spitting out the seeds. This does not make for tight-assed, prissy eating, people. It's got to be eaten on a tropical island, wearing beach wear, right after a meal of fish or grilled meat and rice, a tall glass of water near by, and friends around gossiping about the latest nonsense. Use your fingers! Don't let that fork go near the fruit. Pluck a piece or two at a time, feel the custardy meat envelope your palate, lick the taste off your fingers. Spit the seed out. Repeat. After awhile, if it's just you and a couple of friends, you might feel like your tummies are full of eggy, creamy dessert. But it's fruit! Good for ya! One marang is enough to feed at least 4 people, or one hungry person when it's all I'm having for lunch.

We had the marang over in Zambo (P50 a kilo at the market) for our dessert after lunch, and most of us loved each and every tidbit.

I went to fruit market to buy some oranges and found a vendor with two marangs, rather puny but looking like they were on their way to ripeness. It was priced at P90 a kilo, but given how rarely I find it in Manila, I bought one right away. It's now ripening in my kitchen, and this morning I woke up, walked to the bathroom and was hit in the nose by the smell of something I couldn't define. Meaty. Smokey. Anyway, after trying to figure out what was putrifying downstairs, I realized it was just my marang. Waiting for the day (tomorrow? please make it tomorrow) when I can break it open and eat it, globule by sweet globule.

Bleak house

After a rather melodramatic rendition of Madame Bovary, the relatively new cable channel Velvet is broadcasting Charles Dickens BLEAK HOUSE, the 2006 Masterpiece Theater/PBS production. Written in the mold of a thriller, probably one of the first in its genre, the plot revolves around who inherits the fortune left behind rather problematically by one Jarndyce, unfortunately with two wills, and a legal system all a-ready to jump on the circumstances. As is now, the lawyers are the only ones to gain. The many strengths of the production lie in its well-adapted screenplay, the surplus of strong acting (Gillian Anderson of the X-Files alongside the British character actors, and enough of them to confuse a new viewer), and appropriately Victorian setting. If you like legal dramas, Law and Order and their ilk, catch Bleak House while it's being shown every Thursday evening. And no, there are no subtitles!

Stark sparks (spoilers)

At the start of his one week trip and before we left for Mindanao, R and I went to Mall of Asia to watch Ironman and the first set of the World Pyro Olympics. As I had never read an Ironman comic before, the story was quite novel, but reminiscent of many a Marvel comic. There's the genius hero with not a few characteristic failings (inability to show his feelings for the girl, loss of parental guidance - do all action heros have to be orphans?, incapacity to see the bad guy when he's right in front of them), lots of action sequences like flying, fast cars, fight scenes, bad guys who won't die, Oscar-winning actresses who have to take a job because better scripts aren't readily available. Robert Downey Jr. is the not as sensitive as he should be hero, who seems to be the pinnacle of capital greed, until life jolts him into realizing what money can't buy (except he still can't tell the girl how he feels, merely parries it into how much she means to him in a very vague, non-committal kind of way, plus would you mind getting killed for me and my attempt to save the world?). Gwyneth plays the girl friday with a freudian name, and another oscar winner, Jeff Bridges, shares shiney head space with the not so subtle typecast Middle Eastern villain. Bald men should boycott all Marvel comic movies. Lex Luther, and now two villains in this movie. Evil geniuses or just needy of Rogaine?

Ironman, aka Tony Sparks, is less broody than Batman/Bruce Wayne, although both are uberbillionaires with playboy reps. Mr. Downey plays the facetious title character with some feyness thrown in, and tight body shirts to show off the pecs and the glowing nuclear heart. Again, as a newbie to Ironman, does the character have to start its engines looking like Chaplin about to waddle? Or is that just a reminder that Downey played Chaplin?

Overall, the story wasn't as emotionally enthralling as the Spiderman or X-men series. Perhaps the writing needs to up the emo quotient the next time around.

As for the World Pyro, I really enjoyed the German team's spectacle, with its symmetry that succeeded without boring the audience, a textural approach to the display, and drama! Sadly the Chinese show, which opened the night, was nice, but had no punch. Wouldn't it have been nice to see an Olympics ring display? Or am I too literal minded?

Pink + babies

There are years when several friends and relatives are all marching down the aisle, there are others when it seems it's all about babies, and then years when it seems everyone I know has a death in the family. Over the last two days, I have received consecutive emails from girlfriends about pregnancies. One is having her second child, and will return to Asia from her posting in Europe just to give birth. Her first pregnancy had its rough moments, and I can only surmise that she's returning due to similar health concerns. That reminds me of the relatively recent birth of the second son of a good friend. She, too, returned to the Philippines to give birth, as she had a difficult pregnancy. There's comfort in working with the same doctor and medical specialists that kept you and the baby safe the first time around.

The second friend who told me today of her future baby is my soul sister S, whose wedding I attended in Germany. She and her husband are in Beijing and as their work plans have been unsettled so far, it is not sure where they will be when the baby is born. I would love to see her before or after she gives birth, but it may be too difficult to plan right now. Time will tell, and I can always avail of the low airfares to see both ladies while they are within the continent.

Nothing to do with babies, except for the color being highly symbolic of girl babies, but I was able to sink my toes (slightly pink in their own way) in the pink sand of Santa Cruz island off the mainland of Zamboanga. After years of visiting Zambo, I had my first visit to Sta Cruz with friends over the weekend. The sand is more salmon color than rose, the source due to crushed red coral mixed in with the beige sand. We also got to walk to the mangroves on the other side of the island (facing Basilan), where we frightened the bright red tiny crabs into their dens. The mangrove islets are awash with the red shellfish, and from afar, it looks like the muddy mounds have red dots, then they move and you realize those aren't flora. Since Zamboanga is better known for its curacha, another crablike creature, we avoided trying to nap the baby shellfish and tucked into several servings of the curacha instead, doused in not so red Alavar sauce. More of an orange hue if I may say so.

Of sandwiches and lost food

Two interesting food articles on New York Times call to mind some thoughts. The first is about sandwiches creating buzz (that sausage sandwich makes me want to grill the hungarian links I have in the refrigerator), and the second is about food losing ground, with their own champion attempting to save them from extinction. Would it be possible to set up a restaurant that only serves one kind of sandwich per day, with a rotation of styles ranging from a simple grilled cheese to a cuban to a banh mi to a hotdog to a basic burger or a simple cucumber sandwich served with teas? I think it might be rather fun, but probably not too profitable. A forum for creativity perhaps, buying fresh bread everyday, a few choice ingredients and putting together whatever strikes your fancy that day. A Sandwich a Day.

As for lost food, it reminds me of a discussion I had with food friend T over lunch. I brought her to the okonomiyaki restaurant in Little Tokyo, and we chatted about food (we're both with a local food society so it sort of makes sense or perhaps we're just obsessed). She asked me about my favorite childhood fruits and foods (typically Filipino foods that might be hard to find these days), and as we chatted nostalgically, suggested that I start surveying people about their childhood meals and put together a book. Hmmm, I think she has far more faith in my abilities than I do. Plus there are bloggers out there doing just that and in a way I wouldn't have time or means to (Marketman for one).

Kukukuchu

Major Bono confluences over the last 24 hours - first with the U2 IMAX experience, then buying the soundtrack to Across the Universe. I knew he sang two songs on the album, "I am the Walrus" and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", am enjoying singing along to the first (hence the title of this post).

On other domestic fronts, I was reading about the Shakers and their food, and came across a simple Shaker Lemon Pie recipe, with less than 10 ingredients to it. Macerated sliced lemons are mixed with eggs and layered into a easy to make pie crust. Bake and serve. I plan to do that this weekend with the best vanilla ice cream I can buy. That will serve as the dessert to a baked chicken plus potatoes and peas in cream, the latter another Shaker recipe. Dessert first (right Lori?)!

Last full show

Does one scream at a concert? Indeed. What about a concert that is filmed then screened on a maxxed out movie screen? Perhaps not.
Food friends C and CJ have called out to those of us who haven't gone to see the U2 concert on IMAX yet, and without much mulling over, I said yes. I've been a U2 fan since the 80's, I love the Edge, and want to see them live in concert one day. But this movie will have to do for now. If only I don't end up being the only one who screams "I love you Edge (Mr. Edge? hehehe)!!!" AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Sticky wicket

After dodging two days of rain, and attending a sad passing this morning, it's good to know there's silliness in the world. The diet Coke-mentos experiments are now on a global scale, with over 1500 students in Belgium breaking a record. Whee!

Please

I'm praying for sun. The school has an afternoon to early evening activity with all our students, parents, faculty, staff, and board members. We've been planning this for two months, all the preparations are on hand, we have little huts set up around the field to provide food, a stage for the band and performances, but as I look up into the sky, it's grey, gloomy and looks like rain. Why oh why in the middle of summer, are we having to worry about rain? Yes, I've heard of La Nina, Yes, global warming too. But why today? Rain god head back home, herd your clouds back into their stables. Sun, come out of hiding.


5:00 pm update: it poured buckets from the sky for an hour, turning the field into a sodden mess. Sigh. Good thing for back up plans and manpower. We've managed to move the food and most of the tables indoors and the event will push through, albeit a bit cramper than planned.

Grocery log

A few things I've bought, tasted, and liked the last two weeks:
1. Toasted and flavored nori snacks: available in Unimart for P50 a bag. Three flavors - original, bbq, and spicy. I downed a bag of the original, and wished I had a bowl of steamed rice to go with it, and a cup of dark green tea.
2. Ice cream cone from Sango, brand name Giant. P75 each. What I liked the most about it is the non-waxy texture of the chocolate coating, and how the ice cream is piped in to fill a cone all the way to the itty bitty end.
3. Bottle Thai iced tea at S&R, approximately P100 each. I stuck a bottle in the freezer to see if I could get it into a frozen slushy consistency that I like when I'm in Bangkok. No go. Probably some stabilizer in the mix that stops it from freezing. But it wasn't horribly sweet, as it uses cane sugar and not high fructose corn syrup. On the pricey side; homemade thai iced tea is pretty cheap.

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For duhat lovers out there, it's summer, the trees are laden, plopping down their dark purple nuggets. Dinner at my parents last night and managed to win a bowl of lightly salted and chilled duhats from my dad. He gave me a look after I finished the last duhat, sorry dad.

The weekend: stewed tomatoes, crying baby, and five shrimp

I took part in a tomato buying group with three others last week, and each of us got 2.5 kilos of tomatoes for only P50. Sweet. Lugging the kilos home, I looked at them and wondered - salsa? tomato jelly? spaghetti sauce for the month? salsa???? I gave a good lot away to my mother who will be able to eat most of her share in salads and healthy foods that she needs to ingest. And the rest, I prettified them by arranging the unripened fruit in a nice white ceramic bowl for a day. A table display. Not salsa.
The next day, starting to worry that the tomatoes would turn into their own salsa without any help from me, I decided to lop off their stems and put them into the slow cooker. I initially thought I'd make pasta sauce, but as I looked at them sllllooooowly heating up (crockpots are the worst for those of us obsessed with watching the pot boil), I figured I'd just douse the tommies with olive oil, some salt and dried herbs. Then I went to see a friend and her baby. 6 hours later, I came home to the smell of Italy. Hahahaha, well, olive oil and herbs and stewed tomatoes. For lo! I had stewed a kilo of tomatoes! Have I eaten them yet? No. But I have plans for my stewed tomatoes and I will get to that later in the week.
My friend R now has two kids, the latest is close to 4 months old and looks a lot like his brother. Mini-Sam the baby is. And he didn't want to be held by anyone but his mama. We did get some photos of him in a kiddie pool, no diaper, dabbling in the water with his older brother. But when his mom needed to eat dinner, he was ferociously unwilling to sleep. According to R, he's less fussy than his bro, but she was sorry he wouldn't deign to let me carry him without bawling. I did manage to hold him for about ten minutes when he had drifted off a bit, but I also had to head home, since Alabang is way far and my bedtime was fast approaching.
As scheduled, friend A and J met me for our Sunday painting session. Rather, the three of us yakked away for a couple of hours about J's recent family trip to Tokyo (Disneyland! and a day in slushy snow!), and all the family turmoil we've had since our last painting session a few years back. Then J's hubby called up and said he was on his way, so it was not as productive a painting session as we had hoped. To salvage what time was left, I ground up some ink, and dabbled on some paper, practicing or at least attempting to figure out the strokes for the shape of what I thought were lobsters, only to find out the painting I was looking at was entitled 6 Shrimps. Oh well. So I ended up with five shrimp, since four is a no-no number in chinese culture. And A said to place my chop and it would be ready for display. Heck no. This was practice. And I need more time to get used to my brushes again. Poor A. After a couple of years of storage, he opened his brush mats to find most of his brushes eaten up by some brush eating insect. Freaky! At least he's heading to China with the family next week and can shop for stuff galore.

Eminent feeding

What do you feed a President, a King, an Emperor or the Pope? What don't you give them when they're dropping by? In online news today, it's been noted that the Pope doesn't really need any more veal sausages of Bavarian issue. I'm sure he doesn't get that homesick for it, and must be easy enough to call up his local deli for a taste when he's back at HQ.

Recently, I had a family dinner at a local restaurant that served the last Pope that visited the Philippines. They kept the silverware and platters and had it displayed near the front door. Photos of the meal adorned the sides, and a small plaque noting the date of the auspicious event. Off-hand, I wondered aloud with my sister why they washed the dishes and utensils after. Wouldn't it be even more interesting to see the fingerprint of the pope on the wine glass?

Potatoe, potatoh

Rice shortages, hoarding, cost of transporting to the market (due to the skyrocketing oil prices), and now increasing wheat prices are constantly in the news and make for sobering thoughts. People speak of how difficult it is in the provinces, lining up for rice that is barely edible, stretching out their budgets to feed the children on gruel.

For consideration then - how about the potato? Scourge of the anti-carbohydrate era, and linked to the image of hungry Irish potato farmers during the blight, it's relatively price steady, a good source of both carbs and protein, just add the fat. Don't forget that it's also got vitamins.

It can be boiled, broiled, baked, fried, sauteed, mashed, hashed, matted, stewed, and even makes for tasty bread. Get yourself a spud today.

MyPersonality.info Badge

Note: I took a couple of days before I read the INFP profile, and while it hits the mark on several levels I wondered about the ff: they list people who are historically in the mold of the INFP/Dreamer. They've got folks like Audrey Hepburn, John F. Kennedy Jr., Peter Jackson, etc. Perhaps these folks took the Myers Briggs at one time. But what about the inclusion of John the disciple and Virgil the poet? How can they add them to the list other than basing it on the little we have of their works??? My eyebrows raised in doubt. Or perhaps that's part of my personality trait. In the list of fictional characters who fit the INFP list, I particularly enjoyed seeing Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes fame) and Fox Mulder in the list. No wonder I like those two series so much!

A food post

In the two week visit of R, we ate at some new places, and revisited other places along the way, plus he cooked for an estimated 130 people. He wanted as much pinoy food as possible, with a quest for beef tapa and fishballs and halohalo. We were waylaid by a stomach bug the last week (it hit me first, then he picked it up a couple of days later), but it didn't stop us from making inroads into our food list.

The day he arrived, I dragged him to the Lung Center Market along Quezon Avenue on Sunday for a breakfast of bibingka and puto bumbong, with a side of pork bbq. We walked around the market looking for lunch options and fruit, picking up super spicy bicol express, a fresh lumpiang ubod, pancit lucban and mangoes. A sprig of camellia blossoms for luck. The market is a much larger spectacle than its Makati cousins (Salcedo and Legaspi Village markets), but parking is difficult after 8 am, and it gets searingly hot and humid after the first blush of the morning. I prefer getting there early, buying gulay or fruits, and stopping by some of the prepared food vendors for regional pinoy cuisine. He nearly picked up a large wooden cutting board and a musical wooden frog :)

We also went out to Angel's Kitchen in Greenhills (along Connecticut) for Sunday dinner. The place has become increasingly popular, and not knowing how packed it gets on a Sunday night, we were lucky to snag a table for two next to the dessert display. They are famous for the lechon kawali and pinakbet rice combination plate and naturally we had to have it along with a salad and fish dish. That night, there wasn't as much punch in the pinakbet, but the dish was still homey and comfortable, with a thick slab of porky lechon kawali to offset the vegetables of the pinakbet. I ordered the dory with asparagus and nori, which had a heavy dousing of black pepper, and redolent with sesame oil. We gave up dessert in lieu of a soothing pot of genmaicha pop - the green tea mixed with popped rice. It's light on the tongue, fragrant, and clears the palate.

Monday, the day we visited Ocean Park, I brought R to Chinatown, looking for a small noodle house on Benavidez. Lamien, or handpulled noodles, are a basic comfort food, propagated by the Uighur minorities in Northwest China. Where you find the Uighur you find darn good lamien noodles all over China. I have good memories of the two little noodle diners near the university where I studied mandarin and when I read of a lamien place in Binondo, my heart leaped! So R had no choice but to give into my need for hot noodle soup. We ordered one lamien soup, with beef, and one dao shao mien or knife cut noodle soup, plus a plate of steamed dumplings. For P200 we were stuffed, and I was happy. The owner makes the noodles herself, thumping the dough on the prep table in front, thump thump THUMP, and from a lump of flour and water, it stretches, ever so violently, into noodles. It's magic. Her cheeks are rosy from the daily exertion, but she has a twinkle in her eye when she sees you smiling at her aerobic cooking. She is also in charge of cutting the noodles for the dao shao mien, her knife skills dangerously fast against the mound of dough she prepares against the boiling stock. Each of the tables is laden with a big bowl of freshly chopped green onions and coriander, plus individual containers of soy sauce, black pepper and hot chilli oil. When you get your orders, add to season as you wish. I like mine extra spicy.

The next three days we spent in the province was lazy with provincial calm. We arrived early morning on Tuesday, toddled off to the market to buy some chicken and other bits, and spent the rest of the day cooking for the visitors attending the first night's procession. Since the Tuesday before Easter isn't a major holiday, the procession is relatively smaller, and the hordes less in number too. R cooked chicken wings with a garlic soy sauce glaze. Along with the meals prepared by the other members of the household, they fed over 30 folks that night, not much leftovers to worry about! Feedback from the garden where people were digging in for the meal was that the chicken was a hit, and R will have to do it again next year. On Maundy Thursday, we got to the market too late to buy beef, so we ended with 10 kilos of pork to grill that night. The procession was going to be much larger than Tuesdays, and we were warned that at least 100 people would show up after they marched through back to church. The miki had been prepared in advance, and calderos of vegetable stew had been simmering, not to mention a really large pot of rice. R was also thinking of a way to provide something sweet for the attendees and after some price haggling, collared an ice cream vendor to give us full use of his ice cream cart for the day. We had two hundred cones, two 10-gallon tubs of ice cream, and the cart! After marinating the pork for several hours in a garlicky dunk, R grilled the meat, then we chopped them into easy bite size slices, enough to fill two bandehados. R's aunt, ie Sorbetera, took up the post of scooping the ice cream for the little ones lining up for a treat, and we had great shots of happy kids eating as much ice cream as they wanted.

By the time we flew to Dumaguete, both of us had been hit by stomach flu bugs. Needless to say, food was downgraded to safe edibles like crackers, soup, noodles, and gatorade. But we hadn't found R's must-eats yet, so once he felt better, we tried a couple of places in the city for beef tapa, tapsilog to be exact. One restaurant had tender beef but the sauce was sooooo salty. It was like a beef salt lick. The other place had somewhat chewy beef with a decent flavor. The last beef tapa he tried was at Antulang, where it was a decent plate but didn't stand out. The quest continues.

The Dumaguete boardwalk has a spot dedicated to vendors of squid balls and "tempura" - mashed up shrimp and flour thinly molded into skewers and deep fried. Returning from a day trip, we walked from the ferry to the sidewalk vendors and chose a spot that was relatively busy, assuming that the higher turnover of customers would relieve us from worrying about hepatitis. Or not. But risks have to be taken in life. And for less than P100 we had ten sticks of squid balls and tempura, two softdrinks and a view of the sea at dusk. One can contemplate on a lot of philosophical issues with a tummy full of floury fishy stuff and a coke while basking in the cooler night air.

For the last quest, halohalo was one of the first meals we had, stopping by Via Mare on a sultry afternoon for a tall glass. Sadly, I remember the VM halohalo being much chunkier before. Lately, it's lost some of the stuffing and added more chunky ice. We had a strawberry ice cream and cereal halo halo in Dumaguete, which contradicted R's convictions of ube ice cream and pinipig. Progress? It was still a decent halo halo in flavor if not in ingredients. I know there was another halo halo stop before we got back, but I can't recall where and whether it was any good. During a dinner with my family, R's tummy had already been hit by the bug, and he was forced to watch my dad gobble up a tall glass of halo halo; sheer torture!

The last dinner on his trip was homemade. We tossed together a sausage ragu and pasta dish, alongside the chickpea salad I posted before; R made garlic bread, while I waited for the other garlic bulbs in the roasting pan to caramelize. Were there any vampires in my neighborhood, they'd have shrivelled up into dust by all the garlic we were consuming that night. To kill a bit of the hearty savory taste, we took a short walk to the Magnolia ice cream parlor around the block for sundaes and parfaits. Childhood memories reminiscing ice cream and summer, what a great combination. And thus was his two week trip completed.

A touchy subject

Mary Roach wrote a book about death, cadavers to be specific and how different historical and scientific er activities revolve around the use of our bodies after we die. Read it, it's a hoot! Or maybe I'm really just a morbid person. But honestly, I haven't read something that interesting in awhile.

Now, I hear that she's tackling another subject. To avoid being filtered by the web-nannies, let's just say that Bonk is all about a basic need. From the review I read and Ms. Roach's interview, I am looking forward to reading all about her research and some of the historical approaches to learning the physiognomy of this aspect of life. She writes in a very accessible manner, sometimes approaching overly facetious, but never disrespectful of the topic.

Moses laid to rest

How many times have you seen The Ten Commandments? I can't count the number of times it was shown in the movie houses or on tv when I was younger. During Easter, there were very few options available, so it was either The Ten Commandments, the Robe, another movie about Moses, and a couple of biblical movies. I don't remember Ben Hur being shown that often, but my mother let us watch it once since she figured Charleston Heston was Moses in the other film so BH must be good viewing. Or so I thought.

Then she started introducing his other movies - El Cid (Sophia Loren vavavoom!), Planet of the Apes, Agony and the Ecstasy, and then probably the movie that made me turn from CH - Soylent Green. What cheese. Or maybe in this world of GMO, what amazing foresight!

Step back - travels in two weeks

Last year, R and I took our first trips around the Philippines together. On his recent return, we retraced a couple of trips, spending a bit more time in two spots; taken several mediums of travel (plane, bus, ferry, car, train, and motorbike under our belts); plus a few more sights to look forward to. We also changed the route around this time, starting with the northernmost, heading a bit south before going further south to Central Visayas.

As we had a couple of days before our holiday trek up north, we spent a day in Manila and Chinatown, going to the newly opened Ocean Park, and seeking out a "lamien" - northern noodle soup restaurant. I'll have more about some of the meals we had in another post, otherwise I'll muddle myself up, and go round and round the topics. Wouldn't want that, I tell you. I had some reservations about the Ocean Park, but figured who best to see a big aquarium with than with R, who is in the business of marine creatures? I had been warned that the lines at the entrance were LONG, but maybe everyone was flaking off that morning as we got in with minimal fuss. The first few tanks were a bit puzzling. River fish, Amazonian fish, fish and plants that don't really have anything to do with "oceans" but I guess we have to show diversity and accessibility. We moved onwards to the small tanks holding ocean creatures. Reef fish, a few samples of corals, shrimp, a large alaskan crab that looked a bit awkward in its cubby. However, we both thought it was sad that the exhibit had to resort to fake coral, and very plasticky looking fakes at that. Stuff you'd find in Bioresearch! By the time we entered the larger tunnel walk and shark tanks we were in need of something awe-inspiring (although the mandarin fish were very cool, so look out for them).

The walk under the tunnel was fun, and watching the diver mobbed during feeding is always a blast - partly because you don't see that kind of interaction in dives in the wild. The rays and the one leopard shark give the kids a thrill, not to mention the larger shark holding tank full of black and white tip reef sharks. I loved the large tank with the three or four large puffers, the zebra puffer had lovely patterns. Then you face a rather confusing exit link back down, through construction as the hotel and the rest of the edifice has a lot left before completion. There are a few more restaurants they plan to add and a small hotel (fish beddings? a goldfish by the bedside?) on the upper stories. I say give the place a few more months before deciding whether it's worth the ticket price (P400 for adults). But for days or weeks when you can't get out to the ocean, this is one option for families over the summer.

Up north, we spent time at R's family ancestral home to attend and take part in the religious ceremonies and processions through the first few days of Holy Week. This is the same house that his relatives had told me was haunted, and even R told me about the footsteps heard around the kitchen late at night. Still no ghostly sightings, even after three nights and days. I am so not sensitive to uncorporeal revelations. Oh well.

We watched two processions, the Tuesday and Maundy Thursday marches. We spent the time before the processions watching and photographing the preparation of the 'santos', the large religious statues and dioramas; R's family has had the Mary Magdalene santa in their family for generations. She was dressed differently for each procession - a gold and silver dress on Tuesday, a dark green cape on Thursday. We were told she'd be in black on Friday or Saturday, then in full color on Sunday. The Tuesday procession only had about 8 santos, while the Thursday procession had at least 13. A lot more people too, which meant feeding a lot more too! But it's that kind of purpose that whips people into attending the gatherings. The kids, the babies, their parents and grandparents, all support the march through the streets. They build the rest stops, called abong-abong, imagine if you will, large scale diaromas depicting religious themes, decorated with local fruits and vegies or just plain vegetation. On Thursday night we walked around to view as many of the abong abongs as we could, everyone else was jammed into cars cruising around the stops taking photos. We may have been the only ones using our own ambulatory power.

After spending Easter in Anilao, Batangas, we headed south to Dumaguete, city of smiles (did you know that was the tag line? I want to go to the city of grumpy people next!). There was work to get done, but we fit in a day trip to Siquijor. I'm thrilled that I can add one new province to my list. And Siquijor has such an interesting reputation, a mystical land full of faith healers, mystics, witches, warlocks. Magical! We rented a motorbike and toured the western part of the island from Siquijor City to Lazi where the old cathedral and convent host a small religious museum. Massive stone pillars keep the building stable, and the floor planks hark back to the days when we had narra trees and molave trees. Forests, people!

Trying to find our way back through the central road, we ended up lost in the middle of the island, high enough to see that we had to head towards one side of the island. Twas a good thing we found our tracks back to Lazi and rushed back to Siquijor city in time to catch the 4:30 ferry. We lost a cap along the main road, and our arms and faces were tanned by the sun.

The last few days in Negros Oriental, we followed the recommendation to try out Antulang, which is supposedly at the very tip of the island. Go look at a map of Negros island (yup, go now and find one), see how it looks like a boot? Now look at the tip where the toes would be and that tip that sticks out into the sea is where Antulang resides. With some luck, you could actually wake up to a sunrise and gaze at a sunset, except our rooms didn't have much luck in the latter. We did have a gorgeous view of the vast waters with a shadow of Mindanao peeping above the horizon. Every hour a pair of fishing bangkas would troll the waters for fish, their nets cast between the two, which must mean there's a vast horde of fishies in those waters offshore. We strolled along the limestone and coral fossil cliffs, along walkways that spoke Gothic novel to me, trying to find any large schools of fish in the strong waves below. Except for some surgeon fish that fought for the bits of bread we threw in, we didn't see much of marine life.

I would definitely cast my vote for another trip to Siquijor, but I dearly want to bring R to Mindanao next. Hopefully his plans pan out and we can do so soon.

Next up - cooking and tasting!

Faces of death

Reading up on blog posts on backlog, I came across this link through Dooce. The reaction that made her open up the comments section made me shake my head, but I can understand why people have such a visceral reaction to the dead, so before checking the link, be prepared to be faced with photos of the dead. The photographers have created a beautiful portrait series, I didn't find myself dismayed that the photos were taken or are on display. There's nothing gratuitous about it.

Likewise, an article in the New Yorker about how long one lives or the eventual end of one's life based on winning the game of life ("my life is longer than yours") grates on me. I see my dad, many of his friends have died, he's survived most of them, and he reflects how sad that is to be the last man standing. He's had to attend funerals more than birthdays or anniversaries. He doesn't have his mates to play mahjong or walk around chinatown or eat a bowl of lugaw down by the estero or smoke ciggies with or plan a trip together. My mom's friends have survived more or less, but they're all in their late 70's or early 80's now and we can't stop fate.

Summer Sundays

Some years ago, I took up chinese watercolor painting at the Ayala Museum, met friends there, and with one other classmate, continued to paint on and off for another two years which led to making even more friends, but primarily for the lunches and meals we'd have and not for painting. Complicated? Sort of, but really, what it's come down to is that I haven't held a paintbrush in two years, although I've bought new paintbrushes and even perused art books in consideration of painting again.

Chinese or oriental brush painting is primarily watercolor based, painted with goat/rabbit/horse/wolf/animal hair brushes, using black ink or watercolor ink, and on rice paper. Watercolor painting is not easy. There's little room for mistakes. When you've put the ink to the paper, it's there. Hard to redo, smudge over, repaint, erase with another color. Good thing rice paper is relatively cheap, but unfortunately, not so easy to find in Manila.

After years of hibernation, my painting friends are interested in reviving the Sunday painting sessions. And I'm all for it. I have my brushes, my inks, my paper, my books, my water holders, and all the stuff I bought years ago. Now I have reason to dust them off and open up my artistic pores.

Chickpea!

In this list of cookbook titles, the one that spoke to me was the one about the garbanzo/s (is it singular or plural?). Last night I tossed a cup garbanzos (canned, drained), thinly sliced shallots, a crushed garlic clove, some parsley, a twist of lime juice and olive oil. I had a small head of radicchio broiling in the turbo oven for 30 minutes and when it was ready, added some slices from it to the salad. A liberal shaving of parmesan cheese. Salt and pepper to taste. Great on toasted french bread, as a side to any dinner main dish, or for leftovers add to chilled noodles. Holy cow batman! 3 in one! And it took no more than 10 minutes to prepare the base salad.

ribbit

My sister who lives in a new-ish subdivision in Northern California complained that she's aggravated by the chorus of frogs in her backyard. She comes home from work and she's got to hear them ribbit all night long. She says they can be so loud that they keep them awake at 2 am.

I am not a froggy fan. I like their legs fried with garlic, but otherwise my associations with all things frog are unpleasant. I skinned my stomach as a child trying to escape a ledge where I saw these large toadlike things at the end, blocking my way down. I took vengeance on them in bio class, but handled them with at least a couple of gloves. And a very unpleasant memory is seeing the backend of a toad/frog stuck at the end of a sewer pipe. Ugh, they wriggle, they slime, they look at you askance. Yes, they are nature's canaries in the pollution wars, and are in some cases endangered. They are not cute though.

My sister was giving away old handbags she accumulates, and one of them, a Fendi, looked like a frog. Dark brown, squat, leathery patches. Took a dislike to it immediately and sold it as soon as I could. I saw a newer cousin of the bag at the Fendi store in Vegas; it may cost the moon but to me it's still a squaty froggy fendi.

rip here and there

My stomach flu may be the cause, but I seem to be picking up only on morbid news these days. Recent deaths internationally include Arthur C. Clarke and Anthony Minghella (I'm a proud English Patient fan, sue me); then today a friend told me one of the old society dames, Chito Madrigal Collantes died last night and that our former President Cory Aquino has been diagnosed with colon cancer (she's not dead yet so there's a positive spin on it).

To offset that, M sent me a list of the cheesiest love songs on a site she found. When I couldn't remember the lyrics, I'd send out a ym to her for help and she'd send me a few clues. Nothing like hearing the shriek from Loving You to clear the mental cobwebs.

Straight from the Pope

The Vatican has added 7 new deadly sins! It's not just about lust, gluttony, and avarice, etc anymore. Now you can sin by dealing in genetic experiments, taking and dealing in illegal drugs, and by creating social injustice through amassing personal wealth (isn't that just plain greed in a nice new title?), among other human things the church doesn't agree with. The church also manages to tiptoe around its representatives sins by saying that paedophilia which created so much damage to the church is a sin, but the media blew it out of proportion. Hypocrites. I'd add that to the list too, but then you'd have to memorize 15 sins.

Connections

Over brunch yesterday, discussion ranged from recent travels and travel plans, movies, weird emails and youtube videos, and food wastage (we could still see the immense mounds of shellfish that wasn't consumed after the buffet was closed). Having members of an embassy among the group also meant some talk ended up revolving around matters of security, visa applications, visa fees, and secondary screening.

First I was relieved to hear from a friend that the renewal of passports over at the Department of Foreign Affairs is not as onerous as I had heard. I've had my last three passports renewed by simply sending it off through the travel agency. Now, I will have to go to the DFA and have my fingerprints taken. But she assured me that she wasn't there for more than an hour, plus everything else went by quickly.

Secondly, the new US visa fee rates in January of this year (an increase from $100 to $135 for non-immigrant applications) caused a few folks to grumble, but as explained by those in the know, most of the embassies are suffering a deficit due to the US dollar weakening against several currencies - including the peso. Most of the embassies don't get consul salaries from congressional funds, so that extra $35 goes towards paying off salaries and services. If the US was not such a high traffic destination, the fees would probably be higher. Luckily, more people are getting multiple year visas again (I'm only referring to tourists here, not any other category), so that extra $35 is spread out again over 5 to 10 years. I still shudder thinking about reapplying for the visa in 2 years however. The stress and the worry are enough to go through once in a lifetime, not every year or few years.

Then a friend told us of his recent experience with secondary security clearance crossing back into the US from Canada. He drove from Toronto into Detroit and was asked to step aside at the border crossing. After being interrogated about his trip, he was given the clearance to re-enter, but was curious about why he had been stopped. He travels to the US so often and this was the first time he'd ever been reviewed so strictly. And the answer he got? His hair had changed from the picture on his passport, it was no longer slicked back, but a bit shorter and spikier. Hmm. I've heard of silly, but that seems a bit myopic. Of course, one person in the table then rejoined about the overly meticulous requirements at a Northern European country's embassy that specifies how much space one needs to allocate between the frame of the photo and the top of the head and sides of the face. To the millimeter! Ok, they make great cars, but who is going to have an aneurism if the margin is off by .05mm?

Finally, the last bit on this thread of talk yesterday ended when I learned of the popularity of blogging about US visa applications in China; the typical discussion is which consul to look for when in line, hoping to get the kind hearted, generous one who never rejects applicants. Here in the Pinas, a long-standing urban visa application myth has been the cruel and heartless Korean lady consul who rejects everyone. In China, they have their own share of cruel, heartless consuls of specific traits (the red headed one, the Asian lady, etc). Unfortunately for anyone trying to line up for the sweet lolo who gives everyone a visa, those stories are never true, there isn't a quota, and it's more like a bank line, when they press the button and your number comes up, you don't get to choose which consul to adjudicate.

(we also discussed the many g/i ailments one gets living the diplomatic life; it is definitely the opposite of glamor!)

Tale of the tuko

Once upon a time, two girls and a boy were sitting on a beach, watching the water wash over the stones, while boats out on the horizon bobbed up and down. They had been walking for a long time and they were tired. They soon grew sleepy and decided to sleep under the coconut trees, they bade each other a good rest and slept.

In the morning, they woke up.

- AAAA! The girl with hair screamed.

- EEEWWWW! the girl with no hair stuck her tongue out in disgust.

- Get it off me!!!! shrieked the boy. For there on his arm was a large, ugly, bumpy, scaley lizard. It made a noise. - Tu, ko, tu, ko. - it stared at all three humans, swivelling its eyes to take in their horror.

- It's a tuko!!! AAAAAAAAA - this was the girl with hair again.

- Oh no, we won't be able to get it off! - the boy shook his arm, hoping it would take the hint and leave him be. But the tuko is known for sticky feet, once it lands on a human, it's stuck!

- Wait! I remember what my mom told me when I was young, said the girl with no hair. Look for a mirror, if the tuko sees its reflection in the mirror, it'll jump off by itself!

The ran around to look for a mirror. The boy found a shard of reflective glass, shouted to the girls to help him. He kept shaking his arm vigorously hoping the tuko would jump off, but the tuko was not going to oblige. It had found a perch and it was sticking to it.

The girl with no hair took the glass and pushed it as close to the tuko's face as close as she could. She twisted it near it's right eye, she turned it to the left. Nothing. The tuko was not afraid of its reflection and it simply stuck its tongue out the girl. -tu, ko!" it said.

- It's not working, bawled the girl with hair. -He's going to be stuck with it forever!!!

- No!!! I can't live with a noisy lizard on my arm! We have to get it off. Wait, what about one of you take a match, light it and try to scare it with fire? The boy asked his companions.

- That sounds really mean! But let's try! The girls ran to look for a match and a flint. They lit the match and poked it as close to the tuko without burning the boy. The tuko twisted to look at the flame, but didn't budge. It flicked it's tongue twice, then looked away from his tormentors. -tu, ko!" it seemed to be a brave lizard.

- Nothing is working! You're going to be stuck with it forever. The girl with no hair faced the boy with a sigh. She felt sorry for him, but was thankful she didn't have to be the one with the tuko.

- No wait, there's still one more thing we could do. The girl with hair looked out at the waves. How about you jump into the water, and keep your arm stuck way down deep into the water? I don't think the lizard can breathe under water right?

The boy cried - I can't swim! What if I drown? I'd rather be stuck with the tuko than die from drowning. Oh, why did we have to sleep under the coconuts?? Why me? Why?

- Let's go to the village. Maybe someone will know what to do. The girl with no hair pulled him on his other arm, as far from the lizard as she could, and dragged him towards the village.

When they got to the village, they asked everyone what to do about the tuko. One man said to cut it off with his machete! One woman thought it was a snail and said to pour salt over it. A child suggested beating the tuko with a paddle. But the boy with the tuko balked at all the choices. He didn't want to get his arm cut off, or be beaten, or salted. He started to cry, and was feeling sick from looking at the scaley lizard flicking its tongue at everything.

The village chief was asked for his help. He thought carefully, trying to avoid looking at the tuko on the boy's arm. He thought for many minutes, thinking how to help the poor boy. He finally stood up. He walked out to the beach; everyone in the village, and the two girls and the boy with the tuko followed him. He pointed to a small island, shaped like a hat and spoke - That is your only hope. You must go to that island with the tuko. - He said to the boy.

The boy was given a boat, and he climbed into the boat. He took the oars and started rowing out to the island. He rowed for hours, rowing over small waves, rowing over bouncy waves, he rowed and rowed towards the hat island. He grew tired, but the tuko didn't care. It stayed on his arm, it flicked its tongue. It looked at the waves, it stayed on his arm. "Tu, ko, tu, ko."

Finally, the boy grew closer and closer to the island. It had a sandy beach, and a steep slope on both sides with a flat top, like a boxy hat. No trees grew on the island, nobody lived on the island. It looked very quiet, very empty. They boy grew scared, but he had to try getting the tuko off his arm.

He landed the boat on the beach, and stepped on the rocky sand. The sun was very hot, and there were no clouds in the sky. The boy felt tired, and sweaty, and hot, and scared. He walked on the sand for a few minutes, looking around and up at the big hat rock. Suddenly, he heard a soft sound behind him. He whipped around and nearly fainted when he saw what was crawling towards him. A swarm of tukos, tens, hundreds of them, No, thousands!!!! They crawled over the sand, the pebbles, the stones, the rocks, towards the boy, towards the tuko on his arm. He ran to the boat, but he wasn't fast enough. They caught up with him and crawled up his leg and his shorts and his shirt. They crawled up to his face, flickering their tongues. They crawled up to the tuko on his arm. And then, just as the boy was about to collapse with fear, they all jumped down. Including the tuko on his arm!

He was free! His arm no longer had a tuko stuck to it! He watched as the tukos, the thousands of them all crawled away, around the hat rock. He didn't want to find out where they were going or what they were doing. He was free! No more tuko, his arm was free!

He jumped back into the boat, and rowed home.

The end.

So you think you can dance... or at least dress

On Saturday early evenings, I find myself channel surfing over to Ch 53 to catch So You Think You Can Dance. This show reminds me Dance Fever!!! I remember watching the latter show as a child with my brother (who styled himself as his generations John Travolta in Grease - he's so going to kill me for saying that heehee), and sometimes my mom. We'd watch the dances, cringe when it was gawdawful, but enjoyed all the twisty dancing and the imagination of the stylings. SYTYCD is my older self's Dance Fever, with way better dancing for the most part. I've been watching for a few weeks now, and while I could easily find out online who won the competition (2nd season I believe), it's far more fun spending an hour or so watching the show, mentally critiquing the dances that fail to speak to me, while the dances that are full of vivo and life are a joy to watch.

Since catching up with who is who, I look forward to seeing a few of the dancers, and try to avoid watching a few of the others. From the first set, Daniella and Natalie are cute, bubbly, smoking, and sympatico; Benjie and Ivan don't turn me off with their weird hairdos or bad dressing and they're getting better each week like any kind of progressive development should prove. On the latter side, please get rid of Dimitri who is a ham actor and barely manages to keep his shirt on. Travis's hair continues to be freakier each time I see the show. He is looking more like the funny looking troll dolls with scary neon hair. The others (10 dancers are still in the show) all sort of blend into one.

Tears

There's a child bawling outside my office. He is in a terrible state, and at his age of no more than two, one can only imagine what terrors are causing him to cry like that. I find it interesting that he's crying for his nanny, I suppose the role of the mother has been superseded in many families so he reaches for the person who cares for him the most.

I feel for the child. He cries for those of us who are losing something or someone. And while I can't really bawl like him, I can empathize. I hope his pain goes away soon, a lot faster than the stuff adults like me have to deal with.

I've caused pain, and I feel the pain directed towards me. It's complicated. At best, I can only accept responsibility for my actions, apologize, and move on. I won't regret that I experienced life. I just wish the pain were as easy to fix as a child's.

Frittering away on a dream

One of my favorite day dreams is to imagine my own bookstore, one that I would own after winning the lottery (segue note - did anyone else see the laconic winners who won the lottery in Atlanta, Georgia? $270 million in prize money, and the winners look like they lost their truck. I don't think I could be so downtrodden if I had just won that amount of money). It would be in a gentrified part of some city, where I wouldn't be in competition with other bookstores, but near enough to nice bakeries and bistros and art galleries. It would have that early 20th century look, brownstone exterior perhaps, with high ceilings, a second floor and lots of shelves on all walls. There would be a small office in the back, near the hallway leading to an external coffee/tea room, semi-alfresco with lots of plants. A couple of sofas, some reading lounges, and stools to sit on or to reach for a book. I'd work there with a couple of support staff, nice friendly folks who love books too. It would be near a college campus or university because we'd want to be a part of that community.

However, book dealing is not all that idealistic. It's hard work, there are lots of permits, insurance concerns, and theft. Independent bookstores rarely make any money, ergo I better win the lottery to open the store and to keep it going. A recent article about book thieves sure chips away at the dream; I may have to test the running skills of my co-workers, make sure they can sprint faster than any thief.

Since synergy always happens, I am in the middle of reading The Book Thief, a recommendation by a couple of teachers here at school. Set in Nazi Germany, it's a far more mature book than I would expect to be written for teens/young adult readers. This touches on similar topics as Schindler's List and Stones from the River (Ursula Hegi's series). Perhaps having an anthromorphized Death narrate allows for some distance to the reality of the sequence of events.

Day and night Isan

One thing that I learned about eating Thai in Thailand is that there is a strong regional belief in the amount of heat that goes into cooking the food. And other than the mountainous North, the other regions vie for the hottest, the spiciest, the tastiest. It's not all one level of spice, and many great Thai cookbooks discuss the importance of a balanced meal with sour, sweet, salt, heat, umami, and probably bitter thrown in.

A personal favorite of mine is the homeyness and sweat inducing food of Isan, a northeastern Thai province. When I visited Khon Kaen in 2004, I was warned that they do spice and heat beyond what was found in Bangkok. That was proved to be true, but it wasn't all about tongue-numbing heat. There were northern sausages, fermented for its sour yeasty flavor; the best roasted chicken for dipping into their version of the Thai salsa; a som tam (papaya salad) with river crab; frog's legs that were so crispy and tasty, you tentatively nibble one and end up finishing the entire plate.

Since it's been a little over 3 years since my last Thailand adventure, I knew that I wanted to eat as local as possible and my friends were kind enough to oblige. My first lunch was at one of the many Isan style al fresco eateries, one that long time friend E habituates for its location near his office. We treated another visitor from Australia to a sampling of the basic cuisine - the savory grilled chicken, a pork larb, slices of roast pork, a tom yum with fresh and sweet shrimp, two kinds of som tam, northeastern sausages - fermented to contrast with the sweet and the hot, and sticky rice to roll up in balls and dip into the sauces. Our fingers grew sticky, our palates held up to the heat, and our stomachs were happily full.

With two Thai friends and M, one of Switzerland's sons who chose the tropics over the Alps, we went out for another night of Isan dining. Beyond the staples, we also had crispy and nibbly frog's legs, a red curry snakehead fish, a chicken larb that reminded me of a ceviche for it's tenderness, and two seafood and vegetable dishes to offset all the heat. Ying ordered a pork intestine dish with herbs and chillis that I liked for its chewiness. Bring along a bottle of inexpensive cabernet sauvignon to cleanse the palate and you will likely feel as full as we were walking back to the apartment. I think the two bags of sweet roasted chestnuts were above and beyond what we could eat at the end, but we couldn't resist the lady seller's charming sales pitch.

Our only sad moment during dinner came when we saw the approach of a mahout and a young elephant. It's illegal for them to be walking the streets, but everytime I've been to Bangkok, I've seen at least one pair. This time was even more sad since the elephant was so young. His handler sold bananas to the customers in restaurants so they could see the elephant eat. Child labor on a different level.

Dining in these Isan eateries is not posh, and sometimes the only way to find them is to depend on friends who live in town and know where to go. I am sure I can find the lunch diner due to its location right down the alley from the Four Seasons while the dinner setting is a few blocks from E's apartment in Sathorn. If I had time enough to take in more soi based dining options, I'd be as well versed in Bangkok eateries as any long term resident could be, but I return to the not-so-spicy Manila food environment later tonight. Best get my needed intake of heat before my flight!