The One Who Brings A Lot of Food To The Office

This is who I am now.

Every day that I am in the office, I bring lunch, a drink, two sets of snacks and if my wallet allows, tiny sweets. I find it funny that I look like someone who’s battling hunger everyday. I suddenly feel sad for those kids in poverty-stricken areas.

I leave home before 9AM to make it to the office before 10. Before that, I should have drank milk, eaten a sandwich or a light breakfast. At 11AM, the first set of snack goes down. Lunch happens around 12 in the afternoon. Even when I already ate two sandwiches an hour earlier, trust me, my stomach is already hungry again. At 3PM (after a conscious glance at the computer clock), I would munch on the second set of snack or the tiny sweets. Before I leave the office at 7, I would have consumed enough to feed two to three people one square meal each. Hahahaha!

Is this weird? :D

Cooking Sinangag.

I can’t cook to save myself from hunger.

I think this is why I gave up on one of my dreams when I was a kid: to be a volunteer missionary in far-flung areas in the Philippines. I am too choosy. The veggie family and I are not in mutually beneficial agreement of any sort.

But today was a different day, I guess. Since I have nothing to do, I volunteered to cook sinangag (fried rice) the way I saw my mother cook it at home. And boy, I narrowly missed jackpot.

Sadly, I wasn’t able to take a photo of it. But it looks reddish, because of the hotdogs. I also minced and diced sliced ham, scrambled eggs and added the peas and carrots that my tita bought from the supermarket a few days ago.

It tasted OK, and my cousins and titas love it. Haha! And I know, based on the helpings they got, it was not because they were too polite not to get some of my sinangag.

Pwede na. :D

Sleeping Sushis

Because I was stalking my good friend Bemjo.
Because I was kind of bored.
Because I was waiting for Jennie to finish attaching the photos to be e-mailed.
Because I love sushi when I’m in the mood.
Because sushi is Japanese culture.
Because sushi is bland but tasty.
Because I am hungry.[They looked too cute to be eaten. TnT]

:)

bakasyon na naman

My brother, who is taking up Marine Engineering, recently packed his belongings and rode the boat for Manila with some of his classmates. After staying there for three to four hours, they will be leaving again for Subic, where they will complete a three-month training program—paid of course by the company which took them as scholars.

My sister, however, left for Manila as well. See, our only remaining grandmother’s health is failing and she demanded to see all the family members very soon. My grandmother has long dropped hints of wanting to see us all again, way back since 2008. We thought that this was the right time, since my uncle is also getting married next month and it will also be my mother’s town’s fiesta. Whew! I smell a lot of cholesterol. Hehehe! Since I still had a few matters to attend to at school—alongside marching—I was left here with my mother, uncle and a cousin.

Being left home sibling-less has its perks. For one, I get to have the TV set, DVD players and the refrigerator (and its contents) all to myself. I can watch movies anytime, sing ten times as loud anytime and kick the cat when it misbehaves, anytime. I’m sorry, I am not a feline lover.

However, I also get to shoulder all the responsibilities, all the time. When they left, I realized that our house never looked bigger. Hahaha! That’s the bad news: a big house means BIG maintenance. I get to sweep the floor, feed the dogs, wash the dishes, wash our clothes and water the plants (thankfully, it rains more than four times a week) all by myself.

I would joke around with my mother: How come there are only three of us? You could have added two more so when two leave, there will be three more to help out with the chores. She gave me a blank stare.

Mother: Who’s going to send them to school, you?

My uncle and cousin laughed. OK, enough of that. I’ll just watch movies for all eternity after cleaning the house.

our backyard, after mother and I have finished with the general cleaning

my mother with my epal dog, Lyla

Of collecting brochures and other unnecessary objects

a friend has a weird habit of getting too much napkins from the dispenser even when he does not need them

Being new to a place certainly gives you the right to either be incredibly smart or stupid. It is alright to act like you have never been there before or you have not done it when you first went there.

I’m not talking about something green. I’m talking about collecting unnecessarily quaint or sometimes useful objects for my journal. You see, I am keeping a journal but instead of writing daily entries, I would stick candy wrappers, photos, boat tickets, purchase receipts, coffee cup logos, informal letters, table napkins, price tags and other oddities that should have found its way to the trash can by now had they not met me.

My friend found this interesting and so she started doing the same thing. So, off we went and started our weird collection that should probably tell a lot of interesting stories when we will see them again at 60.

Invariably, I would pick up a few oddities in a new place. If the place is not as quaint as I found it, I would collect brochures. I have brochures from banks, hotels, restaurants, malls, stores, and even from comfort rooms (or perhaps it was left by someone who had lots of them, but who cares? It’s still a brochure).

Collecting brochures may not be as vintage as collecting stamps but stamps do not carry the memories that brochures and other oddities do on the day you picked them. Stamps show tepid butterflies and people you barely knew. But brochures and other oddities remind you of that:

• overpriced meal or dress (P5++? That’s corruption already!)
• boat fare promos that happen only for three hours (Weesam, yeyy!)
• letters that tell you the teacher looks like a frog (pass to the person sitting next to you)
• weird candy you might never get the chance to taste again
• photos of you when you were too anemic for the white background
• coffee cup logos on napkins (because you brought the brand and not the coffee, be honest)

Maybe when I’m 60 and my house burns down, the firemen will have a hard time dousing the fire. But who cares? Stamps don’t save you from fire either. LOL.

price tags from different purchases. www.google.com

soon, all that will be left are the wrappers. www.google.com

camera cafe

I love taking photos of half-eaten food. Or in this case, left-overs.

the lifeless and boneless bangus

” where is the patis?”
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Contrary to most images seen on the web, I usually take photos of what’s left in my friends’ plates when I was holding the camera. Unlike when I view food photos from the web (they only give me the hunger pangs), at least I don’t hear my stomach rumbling when I take a look at my photos after taking the shots, right?

Perhaps it has something to do with the lighting. The mood, the atmosphere, the music and the soft whispers of other people from the nearby tables. Perhaps it has also something to do with the snail-paced movement of one of my friends when eating. Or perhaps it has something to do with the camera being only three plates away.

Right now, when I am at the office feasting on Ching Palace’s shrimp balls, I am thinking of taking a photo of the tray with only four shrimp balls left. As I bent down under the table to rummage in my laptop bag, I remembered that the camera’s battery was left at home. Phew!

Back on the table, the four shrimp balls were nowhere to be seen. Guess my half-eaten-food-shots fetish will have to wait until somebody at the office celebrates his or her birthday.

At BigBy’s
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weird jud!

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I have done/experienced the weirdest of things lately.

For this summer internship, I was expecting wads of radio or TV scripts, video and photo editing and mega-brainstorming. Or if I had been unlucky, stirring somebody’s cup of coffee, photocopying papers, holding an umbrella over somebody else’s head or holding a masking tape for hours.

But we have been lucky. My friend and I have a great boss and the people we have worked with for the past weeks are anything but snobs.

Now here are some of those weird things included in my internship tasks:

• Being humped in the leg by a mayoral candidate’s dog while we were waiting for her to dress up for a live interview
• Taking a photo of a billboard while holding on to a lamppost, in the middle of a traffic and a slight drizzle
• Photo session with a bunch of empty soap boxes
• Taking a picture of a halo-surrounded sun
• Crashing into a mayoral candidate’s lunch meeting for a photo release
• Waking up two days straight for a radio interview which never happened
• Sleeping in a restaurant’s couch (even when there wasn’t any form of ventilation) while waiting for a group of people
• Entering a church which will never open again for the next 25 years
• And many, many more!

All in the Queen City of the South! :)

living a toxic life

I’m slowly getting used to this kind of lifestyle.
And I’m not 100% happy about it.

Going to a new place for a short period ultimately boils down to financial and physical instability. There are many reasons why I am living an extravagant and sometimes unwise lifestyle this summer. Here are some:

We seldom ride public transportation because most of the time, if not always, we walk. If we’re lucky, other people like our boss, a future public official and the friends of our friends let us hitch a ride on their A-class wheels. Besides, walking means less chances of getting lost.

The room is air-conditioned. Not being a fan of the big, noisy, squarish machine that cost us the huge ‘patong’ on our rent, I would wrap myself from head to toe with the inch-thick comforter I brought along. Oftentimes, I would also fancy wearing a bonnet—earning the latter its monicker, the ‘Kawatan Hat’.

Most of the time—meaning breakfast, lunch, dinner, we would eat outside. And since I would always reiterate the importance of not acquiring Hepatitis A, each meal of the day would cost each one of us at most P100-150. The home-cooked meal is even pricier and it will always be fried. Fried fish, fried hotdogs, fried longganisa, fried egg and fried ham. Forget the why-did-we-not-cook?-option. We do not have the balls, oil and pans for it.

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There are just too many malls. Since Cebu is progressing to become one of the most industrialized cities in Asia, a lot of ‘commercial boxes’ are sprouting out of the ground. Inside these commercial boxes are loads and loads of rainbow goodies which—in a way—answer Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I am one of those hags who just can’t get enough of one broomstick.

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Our lifestyle is somewhat toxic.
It’s the ‘I’m-slowly-getting-used-to-it’ part that scares me.

Wish us luck for one more month of a toxic lifestyle. :)