Dear Amsterdam

I have made a decision to not obsess about you for the next few weeks.

That means no apartment hunting, no memorizing of city maps and neighborhoods, no reviewing the little I know of how to pronounce words in your language.

That means curbing my lustful fantasies about toasty fires in white snowy winters, long walks in your Vondelpark amidst a shower of falling autumn leaves (ting alert!), hopping on a weekend train to practically anywhere in Europe from the wonder of a transport hub you call Schiphol, your large-windowed Art Deco apartments, your damnably delectable stroopwafels...

*Cough* Curbed! These lustful fantasies are curbed, I say!

I really panicked this week and thought we were about to enter into a long-term relationship within the next three months. The erratic spikes in my heart rate have not been healthy (and you know I'm all about the healthy now, what with all this biking and running that I have been attempting).

So until I have a better idea of the life you have to offer me (aside from the opportunity to finally try pot for the first time at the ripe old age of 28), we'll just have to file away our relationship as that ridiculously brilliant high school invention known as a cool-off.

Get back to me when you have something good. Okay?

Love,
Currystrumpet

P.S. My husband might be another story. You might want to have a word with him in private.

Barong answer

Lah-lah Land may have many wonderful things, but one random thing that they seem to be missing over here is the concept of indigenous fabric. Ang hirap talaga kapag wala kang natural resources.

Today, Marlon brought his barong Tagalog to the dry cleaners for the first time since we arrived in Singapore.

The dry cleaner recoiled in horror.

"Wah liao! This one confirm cannot clean. So old already leh. Fabric so thin one. Look, got so many holes already. And very yellow lor! This one ah, you give me very hard time, cannot make white for you."

Auntie, parang silk lang yan. I don't know what Marlon had to say to make them take the barong and not wreck it by turning it bright, gleaming white, but after much prodding they agreed to take it.

Sigh lah.

Girl about town

After my initial two days of sloth last week, suddenly I was all over the place!

At Robertson Quay living up to my new identity as a "lady who lunches" with K and Bianca...

Walking down to the colorful, iconic MICA Building at Clarke Quay to pay for a writing workshop organized by the National Arts Council (which I ended up not waking up for!)...

Renewing my library card and stocking up on books (Gordon Ramsay's Fast Food! Time Out Beijing! Lonely Planet San Francisco!) at the National Library...

Dashing back to Robertson Quay to judge a kiddie singing contest (!!!)...

The Alkaff Bridge at Robertson Quay, painted by our very own Pacita Abad

Semifinalists in the 4 to 6 year-old category... so cute!

Filing my taxes for the very first time at the Inland Revenue Authority in Novena (a government experience whose efficiency deserves a post in itself!)...

Skipping back to the office to attend a client presentation with one huge difference -- I get to bill the company per hour of my presence!

The poor dears seem to be cracking up without me... I keed, I keed

Heading into glass skyscraper country, dodging secretaries in cocktail dresses (nobody knows the difference between day vs. night dressing around here) and expat investment bankers...

... to visit Lilian and James' new office in Boat Quay! It's on the top floor of a shophouse, which explains the high, steeply pitched ceiling and exposed beams. Very cool. 

Hanging around for two hours (two hours! Why is it that only Pinoys are capable of being this late? Nobody I know here in Singapore has ever been that late!) at Lau Pa Sat waiting for my fellow Kapusos. 

Flor and Ian, an artist and writer, respectively, from my old department now work here, and we never get to meet up! Finally we had a reason to: the arrival of Cecil, our beloved nutty mother figure who was in town visiting her daughter, an intern at the Ritz. 

Finally winding down the week with a show at the Esplanade: Chicago! (And all that jazz...)

I couldn't take any photos of the show, so here's a picture of Marlon in this cool bamboo installation on the Esplanade grounds instead.

What a week! Busing and walking around in the scorching heat left me completely shacked... but shacked in a good way, without any pressure or stress. Despite the heat and humidity, there was an underlying sense of freedom that just gave me a really good burst of energy and powered me through the week.

This week I'm looking forward to establishing more of a routine for myself, one that includes exercise, writing (I can't completely not work!), flamenco and my domestic duties of cooking, grocery shopping and cleaning. 

Now if I could only start waking up before 10 a.m.... 

Summertime

... and the living is easy.

The first few days of my return to the couchwife life have found me taking it very, very easy. I rolled out of bed at noon on my first non-working Monday, snacked on leftovers while catching up on my stockpile of Gossip Girl episodes, and did a lot of surfing.

Having failed at my attempt to get up early and cook my husband breakfast, I compensated by having dinner up and running by the time he got home -- grilled cinnamon and ginger chicken with couscous salad. I can't remember the last time I did that and it felt wonderful to be wifely again.

Yesterday I swam a few laps at our condo's bleached-hot, deserted swimming pool. Then I did the groceries, whereupon I found that the deserted supermarket aisles do wonders to alleviate the usual "supermarket-cart rage" that comes upon me on Sunday evenings at Fairprice. In the evening I met up with Bianca and Chi to help Chi put together his Miss Greece costume for a Miss Gay Universe pageant on Saturday. Craziness!

I'm at home and really feeling like it's summer, what with these long, lazy and unbelievably hot days. I quickly learned that one of the upsides to working full-time is having the aircon on 24/7 at full blast, and not having to pay for it. Still, as I putter around in a constant sheen of sweat, I am almost giddy with gratitude at being home to experience a summer vacation for the first time since graduating from college.

On this summer vacation, I am both child and parent. I'm finding things to fill my own days -- overseas trips, exercise, lunches, visits from friends, doctor's appointments (hello Mommy!) errands and cleaning sprees. My supposed holiday is turning out busier than I expected, but I can't complain when I see the neat little boxes in my iCal filled entirely with things I want and choose to do.

It's a big change from the couchwife life of two years ago, when I had just moved here and was still trying to find work. We're financially in a better position to fund my "summer vacation", so I don't feel so guilty about leaving the house and doing things like having lunch with friends or buying tickets to shows I would like to see. There are freelance clients -- not to mention new skills and a level of confidence -- I have now that I didn't two years ago.

All in all it's shaping up to be a good summer. Now if only it wasn't quite so hot...

Change

With just two working days left until I officially leave the company, I've begun turning over my projects, introducing new colleagues to old clients, clearing files from my computer and cleaning out my desk.

While organizing my numerous work files for the next user of my poor overloaded Mac, I found this scanned illustration by one of our former interns.

Suddenly, it seemed like a hundred years ago that the company I worked for felt like a family, and the office I worked out of felt like a home.

We had office pets, for goodness' sake!


We had Da Hui ("Big Gray"), the stunningly gorgeous but impossibly cranky feline who hated to be carried, often got lost, liked to sit on top of the printer and keep watch out the window, once stank up the office with his ear infection, liked to climb on the roof and eat bamboo, who needed to be fed and watered and whose litter needed to be replaced over the weekend.

I first laid eyes on Da Hui at my initial interview; seeing him was like receiving The Sign that I needed, that I was destined to work here! Da Hui has since retired from the busy life of an office feline and now shares an uneasy but well-decorated space with James' old cat.

We had koi fish in a shallow pond, which we transferred from office to office by rolling up our jeans, wading into the pond and startling them into a cooler one by one.

We had occasional visits from Snugger, a perky, fluffy and often dressed-up white terrier who belonged to Lilian. We used to walk him at times, and my heart would melt seeing him stare mournfully at the door waiting for Lilian to come back from some meeting or other. Then I would laugh when she'd come back and he would leap on her, licking and yapping uncontrollably in a frenzy of joy.

The place I work for now seems so different from this company that once kept pets. Pets! Maybe because you really need to care to keep pets around. And maybe it's why leaving is the right decision.

Restless

Remember il ya from Philo 101? Metaphysical unease: I find myself in that state these days.

It's manifesting as a form of the Seven-Year Itch. It's got nothing to do with my marriage (which is what the Seven-Year Itch supposedly is), but with an itch to move on from Singapore. A Three-Year Itch, maybe?

I'm starting my third year here, and our friend Tinus (who lived here for six years before moving to New York, and just moved back) told me that it was about his third year that he seriously started rattling the bars of his cushy, manicured, tropical cage.

Or it could just be wanderlust. I find myself raring to move on to the next phase of my life, which not only means leaving Singapore but also starting a family. Yet I feel the compulsion to have one big adventure, a "last hurrah" before I have a baby and am thus unable (and from what I hear about parenting, unwilling) to travel for a long time. So, I spend an inordinate amount of time looking up hotels and flights and hostels and travel guides. I find myself increasingly unsatisfied at the thought of mini-breaks and weekend getaways, and am hankering for some long-term immersive travel.

Unfortunately, Marlon and I are at different stages in our lives. I've just quit my job and am free as a bird, crazed with the prospect of freedom and time, while he just started a new role at work and has yet to make his mark. So while both of us love the idea of long-term travel, the reality is that we're stuck here for a while. And those mini-breaks and weekend getaways, which don't appeal to me as much as they used to, will have to hold me in stead for at least six months to a year.

In the meantime, it's fun to plan. So here I am looking up ryokan in Kyoto, hostels in Istanbul, day trips to Abu Simbel. As they say, libre ang mangarap.

Spellbound

When Kate asked me if I wanted to watch Imogen Heap live in Singapore, I hesitated.

Up to that point I had only heard of her and listened to a few of her songs once or twice. I couldn't accurately call myself a fan. After a few seconds, I figured "Who cares?" and told Kate I would love to buy tickets from her.

It turned out to be one of the best impulse purchases I had ever made, in a long history of impulse purchases that include multiple pairs of ill-fitting shoes, unwatched DVDs, hideous statement tees from Landmark, and one too many chocolate bars at supermarket checkout counters.

Kate had bought a block for second-row seats and was flying in from Manila for the concert. The tickets were not cheap -- $140 each for Marlon and me -- and as the concert date neared I wondered if I should be listening to Imogen (or Immi, as Kate lovingly called her) more to familiarize myself with her music.

Then I thought of two things. The first was my thought bubble when I saw a particularly annoying acquaintance announce on Facebook that he had great seats for the Coldplay concert -- and that he had to rush out to buy and finish listening to all of their albums in time for the show. My thought bubble: Loserrrrr!

The second thing I thought of was that I had stopped going to concerts to discover great music. Ticket prices can be so prohibitive sometimes that we only spend on acts that we are huge fans of and thus will fail to disappoint us... music that is sure to be bankable, "worth it", safe. What about great acts that we've never even heard of? Some of the music I love to this day are from artists I had never heard of till I caught them live. Take Rajaton, for example: I can't believe I would never have heard of them if I hadn't been performing after them in Cork, Ireland. They were totally misplaced in a choral festival, but they rocked my socks and I've been a fan for ten (TEN!!!!!) years now. Same goes for Club For Five.

So I left Imogen Heap alone and unplayed until Monday night. Whereupon she completely spellbound, entranced, delighted, tickled, enchanted, haunted and moved me.

With her Attack of the Forty Foot Woman dress (and height)...

Her feathered fascinator, her bouffant hair, her raccoon brooches...

Her whimsy, her charm, her candor, her wit, her lovely Bri'ish accent, her stuffed bird...

Her miked-up wrists, her tinkling bells...

Her whistling wineglass...

Her Perspex piano...

Her singing whirly vacuum tube...

Her looper and glittery synth keyboard...

Her absolute insistence on teaching the audience a round song (the harmonies for "Just for Now") and her unflagging determination to conduct it while singing herself...

And above all, by her music, and her artistry. I don't exaggerate when I say that this is one of the best concerts I've watched in a long, long, long time.

Marlon rarely has very strong emotional reactions to music, but when Immi played Between Sheets, he hugged me tight and whispered, "This is how I feel about you. I don't think I've ever heard a song that captured it so well." Naturally, I cried.

You and me between the sheets
It just doesn't get better than this
The many windswept yellow stickies of my mind
Are the molten emotional front line
I couldn't care less I'm transfixed in this absolute bliss
Sweet sleepless, tumbling night
Oh, and the morning on the your skin and loved up light
Tracing patterns in the maze of your back
Softly, softly the goose bumps like that
And then a kiss...
Maybe another,
And another one

When we got home, he insisted I download it, that we listen to it again, and could it please be officially our song. That really surprised me. Naturally, I agreed.

Hostess with the mostest

Marlon and I had one of our favorite couple friends - Susie and Tinus, who just moved back to Lah-Lah Land from New York -- over for brunch today. And it got me thinking about entertaining and hosting social occasions at home.

Brunch guests Susie and Mr. T at our table, making mimosas

Part of being a young wife is the newness, fun and confusion of being a hostess. (Not a hoh-stess, but a hoe-stess. Just so we're clear.) Marlon and I have guests over for lunch or dinner once in a while, and while Marlon does more of the prep work than any husband I've ever come across, these social occasions are always supposed to be the wife's thing -- making me, for the first time in my life, a hostess.

I love planning the menu and having friends over, but I have yet to get the hang of this entertaining thing. As a (relatively still) newlywed couple, we always find out just how little we have in the way of proper cutlery and china when it's time to have people over. 

Our very first dinner guests, David and Phyllis, brought us a bottle of wine when we invited them over one weekend... only for us to discover that we didn't even have a corkscrew. Marlon had to escape to the kitchen (which is open anyway) and stab at the cork with a bread knife, and we had to fish bits of out of our wineglasses all evening. David presented Marlon with a corkscrew the following Monday. 

Influenced by the Singaporean habit of stocking up on duty-free wine and liquor with every trip to Changi, we have a bottle each of champagne, dessert wine, Baileys and Absolut Tropical in the house... but only one set of all-purpose wine glasses from Ikea. I recently took advantage of a sale at Tang's to buy serving plates, serving bowls and serving utensils because I realized we couldn't go any longer plunking the metal pot of the rice cooker down on a trivet on the table, or serving couscous salad out of a scratched-up melamine bowl that Marlon used and abused through his bachelor days. Then when we bought pandesal from Lucky Plaza, I realized we didn't even have a bread basket to keep the pandesal warm throughout brunch. It seems to never end!

And that's just lunch or dinner for four people. When Marlon's boss and his wife decided to bring their little daughter over for dinner, Marlon had to eat off a white plastic plate. Anything far beyond that magic number means paper plates for all -- since we only have four pieces of everything.

Then there's the matter of place settings. For brunch this morning, I had glasses and wine glasses on the table and had no idea if I should keep the tea cups for hot chocolate off the table or just plunk them in there. It's almost enough to make a girl wish she had gone to finishing school. 

Tablea reveals itself to Susie... amidst our new serving ware from Tang's!

Thankfully, most of the wives who come over are young wives like me. I haven't seen anyone raise an eyebrow or make furtive notes on a checklist just yet. And luckily, our friends are pretty chill (and rather nutty). I spend a lot of time rushing back and forth before people come over, but once we're all seated I wonder if I should even be wondering about how to be a proper hostess. And the champagne starts pouring, our friends start digging in and raving about Marlon's latest culinary success, and we're all laughing, there seems to be so much more to life than doing things properly.

Too late the hero

Nais kong malaman... bakit ngayon ka lang dumating?

Dumating nung Lunes yung bago kong amo. Yung pinalit nila dun sa amo kong saksakan ng galeng pero tinira nila ng patalikod at ngayon ay pinapaaway nila sa abogado. Puti siya so kinabahan lahat ng tao sa opisina. Yung mga huli kasing puti na pinadala sa amin, walang kwenta. 

Pero shet. Ang galing niya. Mabait siya, magaling makitungo sa tao. Yung una niyang ginawa pagdating niya sa opisina, pagkatapos ilapag ang mga gamit niya sa mesa, ay kausapin at kilalanin ang bawat isa sa amin. Yung mga puti na unang pumasok, never nilang ginawa yon hanggang ngayon. Pati yung Intsik namin na opisina na parang limang salita lang ang alam sa Ingles, tiniyaga niyang kausapin ng mahigit kalahating oras. 

At nung nagsimula na kaming mag-isip ng concept para sa isang malaking proyekto. Pakshet. Para kaming kinuryente nung pinagsama. Higit pa sa chemistry. Alchemy siguro. Sapul na sapul ang istilo niya sa mga tipo ng proyekto na matagal ko nang gustong gawin. At sa tipo ng pagsusulat na pinakagusto ko. Ang kinalabasan ng brainstorming namin, hindi mo mapaghihiwalay kung ano ang naisip niya sa naisip ko. Matagal na akong hindi kinikilig ng ganito sa trabaho. 

Ang saya ko nung araw na yon. Nagsusulat ako, nag-iisip, nag-e-enjoy. Parang naging ako na 'ko ulit. Or yun yung ako na gusto ko maging nung una kong sinimulan ang trabahong 'to.

Napaisip tuloy ako kung nagkamali ako sa pag-alis. 

As in, napaisip talaga ako ng malalim.

Aalis pa rin ako. Ngunit hindi ako hihindi kung alukin nila ako magsulat paminsan-minsan. Siyempre, mamimili pa rin ako ng proyekto. Pero ang pinakamahalaga sa akin sa ngayon ay ang pagkakataong makatrabaho siya ulit.

Kasi sayang e. Bakit nga ba ngayon lang siya?

---


Sorry Pia! Let's chat about it na lang!

Times gone by

Another happy thoughts post! 

As I've mentioned before, I love old houses. So I was ecstatic to find that Bohol had a huge concentration of them, still standing in varying degrees of dis/repair. 

They were everywhere -- lining along both sides of the main avenida of Tagbilaran City and dotting narrow village paths winding among lush green fields. The true grand dames stand their ground in their places of pride across town plazas, staring centuries-old coral churches squarely in their stained-glass eyes. 

The more practical ones have welcomed bakeries, sari-sari stores and beauty parlors into their bosoms, quietly bearing the inconguous indignity of loud plastic signs and misspelled tarpaulin banners stretched across their midsections with as much grace as they can muster. "We were here before you," they seem to remind their petulant young tenants with a patient sigh, "and we will be here long after you are gone." 

Thick black tangles of electrical and telephone wiring stretch across their wooden or capiz shutters, like fetters keeping these proud houses from rising up in revolt. (Pia, pet peeve alert!)  

Many other smaller ones continue to serve their purposes as family homes, with most seeming to prefer a ramshackle half-existence over the rude invasion of glass-paned windows or painted concrete reinforcements. These houses lean at absurd angles, their thin wooden planks like matchsticks just barely held together by some supernatural force. 

If you've ever wanted to see faith in action, you have only to see the alarming angles at which some houses lining the bridge from the Bohol mainland to Panglao manage to stay upright. Glimpsing a Santo Nino through a perpetually open window, I imagine it is only the residents' piety and prayers that keep the sea breeze from blowing the houses over entirely.

Some are for sale, and I wonder if they will be lost forever to practicality and "progress", with quotation marks. Will these beauties be bought by a pragmatic or a romantic? All that stands between a beautiful heritage museum, like the one-of-a-kind Clarin ancestral house in Loay, and a concrete pharmacy/mall/apartment building like thousands of others, is a sense of romance and duty. 

While it is my foolish fantasy to come back to Bohol and scour the countryside for beautiful old callado panels and residents hard up enough to part with them for a few thousand pesos (both of which seem like a dime a dozen in these parts), it feels like an infringement upon the houses' integrity to rip those delicately carved ventanillas away to leave gaping holes. After all, why should the beauty of one family's home be sacrificed for mine? I don't know if I will ever actually do it, but just thinking about it, I feel conflicted already. 

Seeing at these houses alongside Americanized, spanking new concrete houses, I wonder what it is that made us give up this style of dwelling for another. They're breezy and suited to our tropical climate. Why don't we live in these types of houses anymore? What changed? 

If I built one in a fit of romantic madness (assuming it had basic modern comforts like indoor plumbing and... er, Wi-fi) would I regret it in three, four, five years? 

Is there a way to bring what I love about old houses and marry them with all the good things about modern houses... and not make the result look theme-y or fake?

I guess we'll only know when Marlon and I build our own home in a couple of years. Till then, I can only look... and dream.

Happy thoughts

I'm in need of more happy thoughts today. A huge opportunity I had been waiting to be confirmed for more than a month now has been confirmed.

I have been praying for it for a while now, and even lit a candle for it at the Santo Nino cathedral in Cebu (ergo photo on the left). So I guess I got my answer...

And the answer is no. I'm not getting it.

It was a writing job for three to four months in Athens (ATHENS!!!!) and despite being the top choice for the job. My well-placed source (I have eyes everywhere) told me the company basically loved me. And it was a writing job I could not only do with minimal stress, but one that I was actually looking forward to after all the production work.

Basically it all boiled down to our wonderful Philippine passport -- the visa was the only thing stopping me from starting within 10 days like they wanted me to.

It sucks. It's almost enough to make me consider Singaporean citizenship just for the mobility. Or maybe a Spanish citizenship, since apparently it only takes two years of residency for us Pinoys (and other former colonies screwed by the teenaged, sowing-its-wild-oats Spain) vs ten years for everyone else.

It's not that I'm lacking good options here. I have a job waiting for me after I leave the company --

AY. I RESIGNED PALA. I TENDERED LAST MONDAY. MY LAST DAY AT WORK WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN APRIL FOOL'S DAY, BUT OUT OF THE GOODNESS OF MY HEART I EXTENDED IT TO APRIL 9TH.

-- anyway where was I?

Yes, I have good things waiting in the wings.

I can take most of April and maybe a little of May off to bum around, finally clean the walk-in closet, and work on my tan. My former muay thai trainer and Pinay gym-mate are fighting in Bangkok in April, and watching them shed blood sounds exciting, so I might go. Marlon is planning a work trip to the States in May, and I'm looking forward to flying to LAX with him then going off to San Fo to eat Chris and JD out of house and home see Chris and JD while he is off working in Cincinnati. I could also make the trip to Cinci, since Loi and Mimoy are a bus ride away once I get there.

Those are happy enough thoughts no?

Beach with my fellow beaches

When the project stalls! When they don't confirm! 
When I'm feeling sad! 
I simply remember my favorite things... 
and then I don't feeeeeel... SOOOO BAAAAD!

Nase-stress ako sa month-long marshmallow test. So I shall think about my favorite things! Like... the beach!

Nge! Beach FAIL.

This was the supposed beach of my supposed beachfront resort in Panglao, Bohol. I was upset for the better part of an hour until I accepted it -- if I really wanted a good beach with a wider variety of dining options (how Boracay has spoiled us!), it was a Php 200 trike ride away.

Or, as it turned out, a five minute walk away. Our gracious hostess (whose warmth and kindness alone  salvaged the entire beach situation) pointed us to a small, secluded cove with blinding white sand, turquoise waters and zero tourists, a short walk from our resort.

Now that's more like it!

Eventually, Marlon and I ended up making the trike ride to Alona Beach, Panglao's main and most happening strip of white said, almost daily. 

O ha. Ang macho ng asawa ko.

The beach is gorgeous, so it was worth it. 

Besides being the white sand-spoiled brat that I am, I didn't have much of a choice!

My only beef about the beach? The "grass" that starts a few meters from the shoreline. It's really just seaweed and I saw a lot of people walking on it, but it gave me the itchies all the same. 

The grass's only redeeming quality was the number of starfish hidden within its itchy knolls. It gave Marlon plenty of opportunities to play with our multipurpose/ underwater ziplock camera bag and take pictures of the starfish, even if he detests them.

The beach at Virgin Island, a wide, crescent-shaped sandbar off Panglao, was also of note.

At some point though the powdery whiteness segues into a swathe of coral fragments and pebbles, which can hurt to walk on. The fishermen told us it was a cure for arthritis -- kind of like those reflexology slippers that my grandmother used to wear, with the gradiated rubber studs rising up out of the sole to poke your foot in supposedly strategic points.

Nevertheless, Virgin Island is the only beach I've been to where you can buy freshly caught sea urchin (uni) and crack them open to eat on the spot! Only two uni vendors walk around on Virgin Island, and they sell the urchins for Php 30 apiece, Php 50 for two (unless you're obviously a foreigner). 

While I declined this delicacy, Marlon was happy to have my share.

But I digress... sea urchins are most certainly not high on my list of favorite things. Especially when they sting you and make your knee puffy.

Okay, that was not a happy memory. Time to go think of other favorite things.