Mango salsa

Greetings, members of the Temporarily Spouseless Club, and friends!

Today, we will put our idle hours -- not to mention our delicious payload of Cebu mangoes -- to good use by making mango salsa!

The scent of mangoes and cilantro will surely brighten up your mood and make you forget that it will be two more long and dull nights until your Traveling Spouse returns! It's like sunshine in your kitchen... and in your miserable lonely heart!

There are a number of useful mango salsa recipes on the web. If you find yourself staring at an inordinate amount of unused produce in your refrigerator (a clear sign that it's been a Temporarily Spouseless week!), you may want to just use these helpful suggestions as a base and throw in a few other odds and ends!

For my own version of mango salsa, I used the following:

• 2 ripe mangoes, flesh chopped
• 3 quarters of a large onion, diced
• Small handful of fresh basil leaves, roughly chopped
• Fresh coriander leaves, roughly chopped
• One medium red chili, de-seeded and chopped (I left in some of the seeds because I know my Traveling Spouse likes a little bit of warmth!)
• Juice and grated zest of two medium limes 
• A dash of sea salt
• A dash of pepper

Just chop everything and chuck it into a jar! Jamie Oliver likes to drizzle a little olive oil into mixtures like this to "loosen up" the flavors, but I think it's okay to skip this step.

Then, mix all the ingredients with a spoon and taste! Mmm... tangy!

Cover the jar tightly to ensure that the salsa will still be lovely and ready to enjoy when your Traveling Spouse returns! This will be great with pan-fried salmon or even some grilled chicken. Perfect for a welcome home dinner as he presents you with a plethora of gifts from his latest trip!

Till the next meeting of the Temporarily Spouseless Club... keep busy!

The Temporarily Spouseless Club

This weekend I know of two friends who are, like me, finding ways to while away the time while their spouses are away.

All three of us have been uncharacteristically active on Facebook, documenting our restlessness. Gerwin has been having the same kind of weekend as I am -- catching up on stockpiled movies and TV series, doing chores, doing short errand jaunts -- in Hong Kong while his wife Charlie and their newborn darling George are in Manila. Tria has been diligently occupying herself with art, music and the company of friends while her husband Peter is in Paris for work.

Unlike Tria, I decided to stay in all weekend. I figured that one of the upsides to Marlon being in Manila over the weekend was that I can stay in bed all day and not feel guilty about it. I am a hundred times more of a sloth than he is and he gets restless if we're still in bed after 10am. So I usually compromise and rouse myself from my hibernation.

So I gleefully made the bed my base of activities for the whole of Saturday. With the exception of cooking lunch and watching Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros in the TV room, I staunchly parked my ass in bed until about 4 o'clock.

At which time it began to get old. Really old. Which spurred me into a frenzy of activity.

After doing two loads of laundry, washing dishes, cleaning the kitchen, uploading nearly 400 pictures of Bohol to Facebook, reading various blogs,writing a blog post about Cebu, chatting with my mom, watching Food Inc on my laptop, and eating dinner, I was stuck. It seemed I had run out of things to do.

So I (GASP!) exercised. I walked/jogged 5 km, or five laps around the condo. Who would think that boredom/desperation would be my key driver for physical activity?

Today I woke up at 9:30 a.m, went to Mass, did the groceries (remembering to bring my canvas bag!), and had so much time to kill that I took the bus instead of hopping into a cab, and going home, obediently queued for 20 minutes at the taxi stand instead of fast-booking a taxi. Could it be that being single makes me more active, less impatient and more thrifty?

And all the while, I was accompanied by my short-time, temporary spouses -- an iPod Shuffle (which I never would have bought on my own! Thanks Ate!) and a good book. These must be the proverbial cards for card-carrying members of the Temporarily Spouseless Club.

Chomping through Cebu

Whew! Finally managed to finish uploading all the photos from my Chinese New Year trip. Now I can start blogging.

So Chinese New Year this year was spent in Cebu and Bohol. Marlon and had originally not planned to take any days off apart from the Monday and Tuesday public holidays, so we figured somewhere with a direct flight from Singapore and minimum land travel was our best bet. Thus, Cebu and its ferry-able neighbor, Bohol. But then both my clients and design team decided to disappear for the rest of the week, prompting me to do the same. So a four-day holiday stretched out into a full week, which we discovered, was just about right.

Kate generously offered us a place at her house in Talamban, which was like staying at a boutique hotel or b&b for free. (Check out the guest house, on the left.) Oh, and her family fed us like pigs for slaughter. Her stepdad is an amazing cook, and it was a particularly sore regret we couldn't stay for his homemade lechon since we had to go off to Bohol the next day.

It was at Kate's family's table that I had my first taste of Cebu lechon. We woke up at noon on Saturday to find that Kate's mom had ordered Rico's Lechon for us.

Now, pork is my second least favorite animal product to eat, after eggs. I've only had lechon twice in my life, and those were forgettable affairs where I had to eat it or starve, because it was one of only a few items on a buffet. When I tried it, I didn't get what was so great about it, so I've stayed away from lechon since then.

My taste buds must have known what they were doing, because apparently they've been saving themselves for Cebu lechon all along. Like innocent young maidens saving themselves for The One, my taste buds turned into complete whores who couldn't get enough after the first taste. That first encounter with the salty, savory sinfulness of Cebu lechon set the tone for the rest of our stay in Cebu.

If it had been humanly possible to eat for 36 hours straight, until we finally set off for Tagbilaran, I'm sure we would have found a way to do it. As it turned out, sightseeing and shopping were only stop-gap activities meant to kill time until the next meal. It was definitely a disservice to Cebu to see only the Santo Nino Basilica, the Cebu Cathedral, and Ayala Center -- one we eagerly attempted to make amends for by sampling as much of its culinary delights as we could in only four mealtimes.

Kinilaw is one of my three favorite Pinoy dishes of all time (it's right up there with adobo and salpicao), and Cebu is its home. In honor of this glorious fact, I had kinilaw twice in as many days -- once at Jo's Inato (a Cebuano version of  chicken inasal), and another time at Chika-an, two fantastic Filipino restaurants on Salinas Drive in Lahug. For me, big, pink tender chunks of tanigue with the jaw-clenching sweet-sourness of coconut vinegar are a combination that's tough to beat.

Speaking of Jo's Inato, that's where I met up with Gids for dinner. He was in town to conduct a performance with an orchestra (his first!). I can't put my finger on what was so special about Jo's chicken inato, but I couldn't stop eating! I am not normally a bottomless rice kinda gal, but I swear I must have had about three helpings of rice that evening! It was Gids who recommended Chika-an (over the Cebu classic, Golden Cowrie) and we were not disappointed at all when we went there for lunch on Sunday.

Anthony Bourdain's anointed "Best. Pig. Ever" was a must on our list, and we managed to get a bit of Marketman's acupunctured Zubuchon on Sunday. There was barely anyone at Banilad Town Center, so the staff even gave us bits of crunchy skin for free! We snuck our package of lechon into Chika-an for lunch and had it with their bottomless rice. Sarap! I am not a pig lover but I ate so much of it sumakit ang batok ko pagkatapos. To be fair to Chika-an, we ordered a host of other stuff -- their monggo soup in particular is creamy and rich, something the miserably thin monggo soups of your childhood could only dream of becoming after seven lifetimes of settling karmic debt. I suspect it's cooked like Indian dal, with cream and butter.

We also tried out Oh Georg! at Ayala Center, and it was a struggle to make space for this wonderfully sticky toffee pudding. But for this dense, moist cake with its smoky sweetness of ever-so-slightly burnt toffee, the "struggle" was worth it.

After 36 hours of such frenetic eating, I was afraid of stepping onto the Supercat to Tagbilaran lest I single-handedly sink it with my weight. But to paraphrase the old adage: those who eat and sail away, return to eat another day...

Jakpat

Inspired by J's wishful thinking, I have decided to fritter away my last afternoon at work before the long weekend deciding how I would spend the Philippine Super Lotto jackpot of Php 200 million. Yes, I know some lucky bastard already won it but it's still fun to dream.

1. Buy back my childhood home on Hydra Street in Bel-Air 3 and give it a makeover
2. Barring that, I would buy this old house and give it a makeover. The lot is huge so I would build a detached unit for my mom
3. Buy beach property or property in Tagaytay, and build a small beach house, resort or cafe 
4. Spend at least Php 1 million on art. I'd be happy with an Arturo Luz, a Bencab, and a Geraldine Javier.
5. Buy a car each for me and Marlon. My tastes are simple, I'd want something cute like a Honda Jazz or Mini Cooper. I would love to have a sporty BMW, but flashy cars in Manila are buwaya magnets
6. Clean out my sister's credit card bill (if she hasn't already by now!)
7. Give my mom a huge balato to spend as she pleases
   
8. Hit Bottega Veneta, Chanel, Miu Miu and YSL. Or basta, go shopping.
9. Plunk a sizeable amount into insurance and mutual funds
10. Convince Marlon to take his overdue sabbatical from work and gallivant around Europe for at least a month
11. Make a generous donation to the Ateneo Scholars Fund. I was a scholar and know how much difference the money can make :)

But since some lukcy bastard already won the jackpot -- err, jakpat -- I will simply have to content myself with a week of cheap eats, shopping and mani-pedis in Cebu, as well as bumming on the beaches of Bohol... because that is precisely what I'll be doing starting tomorrow!

A note on the title of this post: this word always reminds me of a semi-hot conyotic-looking guy in one of my classes back in college, whom everyone was crushing on. It was freshman year and nobody really knew each other yet so parang cool and mysterious pa siya.

Anyway, one afternoon in class, a spontaneous pocket of silence opened up for a split second, just enough to let the whole class hear him crow, "Pare, JAKPAT!"  

Ngek. Tinginan ang mga elitistang Atenista. Hindi na siya cute pagkatapos nun. 

Back from business

I'm back from my first ever business trip! While the people closest to me, Marlon and my sister, have been pretty much jetting all over the world on business for many many years, this weekend marks the first time I have had to travel anywhere requiring a passport, in a professional capacity.

I spent the last six days in Kuala Lumpur on a shoot for a long-running project for Disney Channel. The team that flew down was composed of me, James, Jerrold, Mike and Leang -- a producer, director, assistant director/editor, graphic designer and director of photography, respectively. We each got our own rooms in a surprisingly good hotel -- the Dorsett Regency right smack in the middle of Bukit Bintang in downtown KL. For $70/night, the hotel wasn't bad at all! The location couldn't be beat, and it was a dead ringer for the pre-renovation Manila Pen. 

The whole experience of being away on business seemed slightly surreal to me. It was like I had momentarily stepped out of reality into something that was pretending to be my life, but was distinctly separate from it. Shooting on location all day and coming home to an empty hotel room simply nothing to do with my "real" life. It wasn't an unpleasant experience, and I even feel grateful that my days were so full and I was so tired there wasn't much room for loneliness. 

But I felt like being away had hit the "pause" button on something inside me (my ability to be fully present? To fully enjoy an experience?) and I was just waiting for the time when I could... unpause myself. 

Still, it feels good to be sent to another country because of something that I can do, and do reasonably well. (Let's hope it's a good sign of more travels to come, hmm?) I enjoyed spending time with my team (it's James' last shoot before he leaves BDA!) and my sister and her friends. I also enjoyed the "me" time in the cushy hotel room, and shoe shopping in Sungei Wang, the Greenhills/Tutuban Mall of Kuala Lumpur. And of course completing a successful shoot always gives me a high. 

But now I'm back home, cocooned in the arms of my Bulgari-scented husband (he knows I love it so he wore it to the airport!), in the comfort of my very own home, and in the spotty affections of my tempestuous cat. And no professional high can beat that. 

First impressions

It's a very short walk from the bus stop to the office. I think I'll stick this route: free shuttle from condo to MRT station, MRT to the hubby's office, bus from the hubby's office to mine. With the number of transfers it almost feels like a Manila commute. Travel time: nearly an hour and a half.

Our neighbor, the International Academy of Film and TV (still empty as yet) has what I'd say is a 100-inch plasma TV mounted on the wall. That there is the biggest TV I've ever seen.

Stickers on the frosted glass telling everyone what we do. This is probably to distinguish us from a bank, which is what I think of when I see these half-frosted, half-clear all glass facades.

Well, at least the London bosses finally get the fancy reception area they've been insisting on for donkey's years.

Whoa. The floors are shiny.

Whoa. It's bright. Really bright. The light! It burns!

Wow. James really looks like a creative director now. Too bad he's leaving. These offices make people look more important. 

Wow. All the awkward, oddly-sized pillars scattered around in random places are gone. Or at least, have been well hidden. Good work!

Very nice wavy perforated steel like thingy in the meeting room. And we now have a very big TV. Nowhere near the IAFTV Jumbotron, but respectably big.

The edit and audio suites are nice. They look suitably maze-like, like all post facilities must be required to look. I like the grey walls. 

Brrr. It's freezing in here.

Where is my coffee mug? Where is the coffee? General confusion.

Where is _________? Did he get lost or show up at the old office? It's nearly lunch time.

Damnit, there he is. And I have a clear view of him from my new desk. Must adjust this monitor -- ah, there. Perfect. It's almost as if he doesn't exist. Until he starts talking.

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More on the new office (with pictures!) when I get back from KL!