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.

Backlog

The longer it's been from our Bohol trip, the harder I find it to blog about Bohol although I was over the moon about it a full week after we had returned. I also find that posting photos of the trip on Facebook before blogging takes the fun out of the latter.

I also wanted to blog about the two really great books I read on the trip. 

But. Bleh. Blogging is such a mood-driven thing for me. 

Maybe tomorrow.

Client from hell

One of my clients from hell made it to Clients from Hell!

Buti na lang di kami natuloy sa project na 'to. Para pala silang tiangge kung mambarat e!

Pasalubong

Marlon arrived last night from Manila! Happiness :)

I surprised him at the door with a big, cheery bunch of blush-colored gerberas from the Tanjong Pagar market. As I was arranging the flowers in the recycled wine bottles we use as vases, he turned to me all pleased and googly-eyed and said: "This is the first time a girl has ever given me flowers! I love it! Thank you!"

I replied: "Well, this is the first time a guy has ever given me a box of Century Tuna Spanish Style, Lucky Me Pancit Canton Chilimansi, Purefoods Sisig, half a dozen Pan de Manila, a gallon tin of home-baked chocolate chip cookies, half a kilo of coffee beans and mini cinnamon rolls from Bag of Beans. So I guess we're even!"

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!