Friday, March 25, 2005

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Things that keep the world in order

Inspired by the Flickr.com gig: What's in your bag?

· The tin case - (upper right), holds the paperworks, passbooks, passport, insurance, Inkan (Jap personal stamp) This case keep the things that attest to the truth of my existence, without em I walk among the dead...Nelshawn of the Dead.
· Pillbox - Because this mortal suit sometimes functions erratically out of sync.
· Cellphone – Because I didn’t come with a tracking device.
· Digital Camera – Because it can capture and explain a more realistic visual rendering of an event far better than my brain could.
· Ze iPod - Because music is a great company, now all of em can tag along.
· An Electronic organizer – Because it was advertised to put all of humanity's wants (not needs) in one nifty package...it has a camera(not that great), video camera(sucks), mp3 player(plays only with stoopid memory stick), Organizer (excellent!, but I found out that I actually have no use for it).
.100 yen multi-purpose tool - commonly referred to as "Swiss Knife". – Because I didn’t come with Wolverine’s adamantium claws…sigh.
. Inside the pouches – a 2.5 inch 6Gb Hard Drive – Because some of my computer junk wouldn’t fit on a USB Stick, A paperback and a PSP– Because idleness happens.

As I look into my bag I've come to admit to myself that yes, I've become a gullible consumer, I've bitten the fruit of materialism and taken its promises that I cant possibly live without these things...and in the course of all these conditioning, I really felt the coffee-like dependence. The bag carries the things that help me connect – to my social needs, to systems, to culture, to fashion and to all the needs that the great geek A. Maslow stated. My bag tells me who and what I am...not completely, but its in that ballpark. Geek!!

Monday, March 21, 2005

Ginataan for the Wandering Soul

Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago. -- Horace Mann

As lunch time progresses, everyone's eager to see what i have for the day. Being the only non-supervisory-guy-who-eats-lunch-with-the-rest-of-us, I also happen to be the only foreigner within the group. I was raised in the Philippines...therefore I cook Filipino ...duh. As always, everybody awaits then tries whatever weird stuff I have for the day. They've come accustomed to: Adobo - a vinegar-soy sauce based viand, Sinigang - a clear sour soup, and Tinola - your regular chicken soup with ginger, Longganiza (sausage) and Tocino (sweetened pork). Other than these, I try to limit my lunch menu into non-offensive-smelling cullinaries. There are certain rules/adjustments that I have learned as far as my cooking/food intake is concerned:

1. Patis - Unless you are a Thai, Indonesian or Filipino, fish sauce is not welcome in any place where people breathe.
2. Bagoong - shrimp paste is as worse as 1.
3. Filipino taste is extreme. Shake the salt down.
4. Tuyo -dried anchovies shares the fate of 1 and 2.
5. Avocado in Japan is to soy sauce , as it is to condensed milk in the Philippines.
6. Oil is not a basic ingredient, and yes, you can fry food without the unnecessary oil depth.
7. Animal fat and oil should be avoided like its some kind of a potbelly-inducing ingredient...it is.
8. Potato and Rice whatever the manner it is cooked is as redundant as eating tinapay-palaman fried rice.
9. Dinuguan - Swine blood in vinegar, is considered a barbaric and just plain eeky food... I can only eat it alone, at home...with the lights off.

My taste buds were honed in the carinderias of Manila, therefore its highly accustomed to extreme tastes; really sweet, salty, sour, or spicy. But in time, as I have learned to adopt to the Japanese cuisine (which is by my first impression, bland), I've relearned to identify the natural tastes of food.

Magoro-toro (a pricey fatty Tuna) sushi for example, has a lot of stages in taste. From the time it enters your mouth to the time you swallow it...the first experience after dipping on the Jap-brewed soy sauce is its salty and alcohol-like fermented spirit spreading on your tongue, then as you chew, the creamy fat of the fish spreads out, making the taste totally indescernible from that of an Avocado (mentally connect to no. 5), then the raw Tuna taste kicks in, followed by the nasal arrest of the horse-radish...you pause to take a deep breath from your nostrils to ease the wasabi tang, then back again to the enjoyment of the whole sushi as its taste conjures up into one dynamic sensation. But in contrast, I used to remember how Aling Ising's Sinigang tastes like... sour...dip to Patis..salty..ease away with rice, repeat.

I still enjoy authentic Filipino food. But now, it just became a tad bit too tasty. The Ginataang Hipon that I used to order at the Fil resto here , as I have realized lately, was really salty ...they didnt change the recipe, my taste has changed...and maybe my perception of food, and perhaps ...life itself.

Tuesday, March 15, 2005


The book was featured in Time magazine, it talks about first impressions, instantaneous judgment... something in the lines of - "analyzing events, actions or a person's character in a whim". Bought it, skeptical about it at first as the author starts to talk to me like Im a gullible kid, ...further down the chapter all skepticism were dismissed...this book should not make it to your bookshelf. Its got great reviews but it just didnt taste right. Uncooked book. Its like your grand father telling you great stories about his life, part of it you believed, part of it you thought was just added exaggeration to fire interest to the story...but this book inclined itself more on the latter. Gladwell being a writer for The New Yorker , a Marketing guru (as articles say of him) ...makes me suspect he's using his skills to get people to buy his stuff.. indecent..you bad, bad writer you.

Friday, March 11, 2005

A Forest

Come closer and see
See into the trees
Find the girl
While you can
Come closer and see
See into the dark
Just follow your eyes
Just follow your eyes


I hear her voice
Calling my name
The sound is deep
In the dark
I hear her voice
And start to run
Into the trees
Into the trees

Into the trees

Suddenly I stop
But I know it's too late
I'm lost in a forest
All alone
The girl was never there
It's always the same
I'm running towards nothing
Again and again and again


The Cure

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Late nite family calls

So warmed up was my bed, on a chilly night nothing beats a goose down blanket... then the mobile rang...,its either mom or my sis, if its mom I'd predict shed want me to drop by and get some food she made...if it was sis, then shes most likely to have discovered a new way to make her skin better and she would want to share the precious discovery. I glanced at the screen ...its sis. I tried to sound bed-ready...and said " yep??", and she went, "hey boy, its like 10 o'clock even my kids are still awake"...then I went " well your kids dont go to work at 7", then she went, "I sleep at 1am and wake up early to prepare for the hubby and kids", and I threw back my infamous one liner, " Well, you chose that life, I chose this one™". Thats the usual salutation to a wonderful late night call from sis. So the topic tonite:"Meri Discovers That Things Happen for a Reason (Patent pending)". She was so happy to recount her teenage days and connect them to meaningful present co-existences...( buy her a Celestine Prophecy book for her bday).

I just let her babble through it. I can sense her stress, her bacteriaphobia, acrophobia, aviatophobia and all the other fears that dwell in her seeped through the entire conversation.
Girls have to talk, its either they talk or they're gonna be walking time bombs. After realizing that my mobile has started to melt, I just had to tell her good nite and I'd call her if I have some discoveries of my own. Well, as for me, its comforting enough to be reminded that with a discovery or not, I have a family who I can turn to anytime, at any hour of any day.