The theme for this year (and the new one) is: less carbs. Well, I’ve been doing this for decades really but I guess it hits home when you try it and seeing for yourself how dramatic the results can be as Jong has found out. We had grilled lamb, pork and chicken, a salad, shrimps. For desert, Doyet baked a cassava cake- we tried to look up Erwan Heussaff’s recipe- but with half the sugar. Over-all, the meal was satisfying and the clean-up, a breeze. Less is definitely more.
The good thing about celebrating the New Year is that it’s not burdened by sentiment- that’s reserved for Christmas. You start afresh. There’s promise of a new beginning (whether you believe in that or not). The day literally transitions from an old day to a new one- and so can you.
The worst thing you can do is to mentally believe that nothing has changed.
I like Eddie Garcia. First thing, he looks like dad. My dad was like him in so many ways except for one thing- a distrust of our very mortal bodies. This was one man who was incredibly fit and incredibly conscious of his health. If my dad had been more of the same, he would most likely be still alive today.
About fifteen years ago, I read an article about this and how he supposedly takes more than a dozen vitamins and supplements a day. I’ve done the same thing since then and never questioned the cost or the efficacy because if there’s ever a guarantee for things whose outcomes are not certain, it’s consistency.
Be consistent on maintaining a healthy lifestyle and the results would be optimal; be consistent in eating crap and sitting on your ass the whole day and well, you know how that story turns out…
What you could do today, you should do now so you could do something else tomorrow
Tiime and discipline are important
On directing and editing: be definitive on what you want
Passion is important. if you can’t find passion in your job, find something else (for nearly 70 years I continuously did movies because it was a job i really liked)
Money earned but not spent is really not your money
The reason you earn is because you want to spend it
Women should be put on a pedestal (Ryan: and pray that they’re worth it)
Cheating (when you’re in a relationship) is wasting time
Only set goals that are realistically achievable
On legacies: if you’re dead, you’re dead. Who cares if nobody remembers you?
I’ve also done an Eddie Garcia on skin-care because what’s the point of living up to a very old age but look like you’re already dead and decomposing??? Again, it’s consistency; just as I never miss taking my medications, I never miss slathering something on my face before I go to bed or before I go out. Brands change, but at this point, I always have something for my eyes; for night, I have a serum, a moisturiser and a facial oil; for day, I have another serum specific for day and a sun-screen with an SPF of 50.
I should be grateful and not moaning about the fact that my camera was not getting the shots I pictured in my head. My go-to answer is always- buy another one..but I won’t. Christmas done, and for New Year and my main resolution- be smarter; work and study harder. Much as I’d like to believe I’m already doing that, I’m actually not. I could do so much more- we can be so much more.
Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson is as far removed from the Christian tradition as anything. It’s a collection of short-stories linked by a troubled narrator who is an addict. In one story, the narrator hitches a ride in a car he somehow knew before-hand was going to crash- supernatural prescience? Too much drugs?
There was a time in the 90s and all the way to the early 2000s when all I looked forward to on Christmas eve was to drink alcohol at friend’s houses. I started on my street and finished off at my best friend Eric’s before staggering back home and putting out the food 30 minutes before mid-night. Things changed when we all became adults. My parents had always been a team- left to their own devices, they would have coped happily whispering sweet-nothings to each other without having to worry about keeping up tradition for their adult children. Alcohol and the company of friends made the night more bearable.
But things swung back to how they were when the kids started to come- there was Matt and several years of Christmases when all the gifts under the tree were his; then Yanna but all too briefly because Al & Binky already lived abroad; then Toni and Jay’s kids.
Christmas is really about the children, no doubt about it. When Chini grows up, I think finally, I can have that Christmas I’ve always only recently, been thinking of having- to be alone, somewhere cold (or hot it wouldn't really matter), happily coping with just memories, and drinking tons of alcohol because this time, I’m actually happy at the thought that the holidays- unburdened by glossy memories of the past- is finally mine and mine alone..(does this make sense?).
THE PRESIDENT IS MISSING, by Bill Clinton and James Patterson. I remember one Christmas break when I read The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy and it affected me so deeply that I was in some weird funk for weeks. So never again, and this time, something you’d read with a popcorn in hand. I think this is the first novel of James Patterson’s that I’ve read- everything else I’ve probably watched as a movie. This is the kind of fiction that has brought this man over $750 million.
All the best meals and food items for 2018 in photos because why not- you’re a compulsive photo-taker of your food since 2003!
I will eat pork barbecue until the end of time. We were thinking of getting pork barbecue already prepped for New Year’s Eve. There’s a Filipino shop in Takanini that does it for the Otara markets and you can order in advance for $1 a stick
Dumplings got big in 2018 with heaps of frozen selections in the freezer aisle of supermarkets. The best are those made from scratch at the Asian food-stalls in East Tamaki; pillowy white, either steamed or boiled, the burst of flavourful broth as you bite into them is always a pleasant surprise.
Pork, beef, chicken..we’ve had all sorts. Versatile, they’re also incredibly easy to make
So who cares if they’re selling off Tip Top? Sure, it has some great flavours (I love Gummy-Gummy Gum Drops), but it’s time to educate your palate to something more global like Haagen-Dazs, Ben & Jerry’s, or something local that actually can be global like Duck Island ice cream. It makes it worth it driving all the way to Hamilton for a tub.
There are chicken nuggets and then there are BP Cafe’s nuggets on steroids (I hope not lol). At a dollar each, they’re meaty, hefty and chickeny.
You don’t need Julia Child’s cooking talent to make a pot. In spite of the posh Frenchy name, it’s as homey and easy to make as adobo. Only one special requirement- choose the wine carefully
It’s the most coveted invitation to the best ribs in town that nobody’s ever heard of. I hope we get invited again next year.
Delicious breads, buttery-cinnammony rolls- and then Jong needed to cut down on carbs and it all came to an end. One day…
It only took me tries to actually duplicate the one we had at a restaurant in Palmerston North- what you’re looking for is a tender, flavourful head redolent with butter and herbs and sitting ever so nicely atop a mash of your own choosing
The fruit of summer always makes me crave for guavas
Can’t get enough of them- pan-fried, grilled or steamed, they don’t have that denseness you sometimes get with sausages where the ‘meat’ is actually fillers and extenders.
How can you be generous to other people when you can’t be generous to yourself? I’m still mulling over getting a pair of Nike Air Zoom Pegasus 35 Shield Water-Repellent running shoes but then who knows?
With knowledge comes the realisation that you need to buy the tools for it; at $548, this zoom lens is middle of the road but can still do the job
Bought a couple of e-books based on the NY Times Best Books of 2018
I only relented to get a digital subscription to Wired Magazine because it was US$5 for one year
Paying off and closing a credit card is so immensely satisfying..
I love totes. I love camo. And I love dinosaurs so it’s a win-win for this Coach Rexy Tote 42
Finally, the holiday break. I could breathe. I could vacillate between wanting to do something creative/productive or simply curl up in bed watching Netflix (I’m aiming to finish the entire run of ‘The Originals’). I could make a list as I’ve always had for the past 20 years- and I did below…
Get fit (finally get to the gym everyday or commit to finishing 100 push-ups a day, stretching and and exercises).
Study the features/functionalities of the camera I bought (Lumix G9).
Write a really, really short, short-story collection just to flex those flabby creative muscles.
Cook something I’ve never done before (wanting to bake a black-forest cake, but since sugary cakes are out of the picture…)
Do facial skin treatments every-night
Complete my transfer papers to a new doctor/GP
Post actual Christmas/New Year cards
Get another eye-check
Read five new books
Sort clothes
This is what Doyet’s fridge looks like 3 days before Christmas
Days before Doyet was asking me if we could find a ‘sugar-free cake’. So search I did and felt confused when I came across confections that still had sugar, but that the sugar was ‘unrefined sugar’. And of course I had to be sure so Googled it I did and thought, when did the act of eating become so complicated?? The right thing to do was probably NOT to have a cake for Christmas; save the money (natural, organic cakes cost three times more) and save your health gains.
I watched two movies in the last 24 hours. Eric Matti’s BuyBust was on Netflix and I was worried that I would see right through it as I normally would with Filipino movies, but it was either too good or I hadn’t seen a Filipino movie in a long time that it actually was good in my eyes. The movie made me so angry that I wanted to log into an old Twitter account just so I could troll some people. Fortunately I couldn’t remember the password anymore or the email that I used to open it. After a while, I felt really stupid. And horrified- what if I had gun? Would I be one of those people?? Apparently, I think I have one of those ‘tendencies’.
The next morning, the kids and I (minus Toni) went to see Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindewald. We got on the wrong bus and we had to get off at Manurewa to catch the right one, but we made it to the mall with time to spare. After about an hour, Chini says to me, ‘is this an adult movie'?’ and I said that it probably was even if half the theatre was filled with kids. It felt like the later and darker Harry Potter movies that we dragged the kids to, I think more for our enjoyment than theirs. The movie turned out to be as the trailer portrayed it; frenetic without the thrill and magical, but without the joy. It was a good thing Chini was preoccupied with popcorn, an orb-shaped, hard to hold (for a child) coke container designed for the new Grinch movie and a bag of Maltesers.
Five minutes towards the end, Chini had to go to the bathroom (I had told her to hold it in 15 minutes earlier, but she couldn’t any longer) so we had to leave and the funny thing was, I didn’t really care if I missed the ending.
We were on one of our usual road-trips for work and we stopped by this town called Woodville. Now I’ve lived in New Zealand for nearly a decade but my perception of life is still distinctly different; ‘just get on with it’ does not always cut it, like I will not go to a wedding in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. And so a town derided as being hicksville is for me, actually charming and serene; of week-day afternoons walking down the empty main town-centre and stopping by at the cafe for coffee. I wouldn’t mind living in hicksville, in a ‘bucolic’ hovel filled with books (or an iPad filled with books), with a comfy bed, and an over-grown garden. In reality however, I cannot account for how I’ll survive- what to do for a job (maybe rely on the benefit system?) to pay for Internet (not sure if Woodville has fibre connection), for proper heating in winter and for food because I honestly have no idea on how to create and sustain a garden.
But that is the clear picture in my head coupled with a sense of relief that I probably wouldn’t have to worry about ‘just getting it on’ with what to wear to a wedding; I would have no need for fancy clothes nor score invites to weddings. I would just be this old Asian person shuffling about town with the same regularity as everything else.
Does that sound sad? I actually think of it as a possibility, an outcome and I neither fear nor dread it.
It could be worse- like a future you never anticipated and in which you’re too old and too fragile to cope with even the simplest things.
I have been very busy which I guess, is a good enough excuse to miss blogging. At some point I begin to question the whole point of this, and then ultimately, to question every other thing that I do that is not about work, or living (like eating properly, exercising, taking your meds, putting on moisturiser followed by a serum and then another moisturiser). I am after all, my work and I think, isn't that enough? It puts food on my table (good food), guarantees some security in my old age, makes me smug in the belief that I am actually happy.
So why don't I just leave it at that?
I started writing yesterday a post about how because of work and the winter season, I was on the road to catching a bad cold, but because I did my usual pre-emptive scorched-earth barrage of medication, I was able to arrest it- when I realised that I had written about this before. So here we are, millions of grams of drugs and pitchers of hot lemon-honey water later, feeling up to it I think. I'm off to a work thing down the much colder south island for three-days so taking the precautions and saying my prayers that my body holds.
Will my body hold? Such a fragile thing we think, but the sense of fragility is most often in our heads. A thought that crosses my mind every morning when I look in the mirror is, God I'm old- but of course it's a fact that no one is exempt from this.
So when I tuck into my kale and tuna salad at lunch even if my whole being is screaming for fried chicken and rice, I try to hang on to the belief that there is indeed something more to well-being than just a smooth face and taut limbs.
And so I changed the blog template last night to something that was more image-centric; because apparently (and obviously), I've been in that mode for the longest time that it feels like a deliberate snub. It's as if I had a secret child out of wedlock, raised and loved the damned child but still somehow unable to recognise it as truly my own. So it's out- I take pictures; and I hope that it won't be the end all and be all of my 'vast' (!) creative gifts.
Someone told me that a long road trip would do wonders for my creativity, that it would stir up my imagination, make me want to write again and that this time, something would come out of it. Turned out they were right. My imagination was stirred up. I wanted to create something, but it wasn't stories- I wanted to take pictures and make videos.
Now, I've been taking photos the moment I had a mobile camera. I have photos on the cloud that pre-date Apple's iCloud. Sixty-percent of the storage on all my devices is images. There is a probably an image of something or someone every other day of my life since 2006. I barely remember stuff, but I can scroll back in time and see what I had done, what I had felt, eaten and worn. It makes sense to take pictures and make videos but what doesn't make sense is how shallow my understanding of it all is and how superficial. I take pretty pictures but have no understanding of how I do it.
I remember one summer (I think) when my dad brought home the first professional camera he's had since he was at university studying Fine Arts. It was a manual Canon, the model of which I can no longer remember. He took photos of all of us- of my mother posed touching flowers in the garden; of my sisters in half-profile, with those weird bowl-cut bangs of the 80s; of me super up-close, pupils half-way up as if I was rolling them; and the best photo of all, of my brother Jay with his famed curls that everyone envied and with our mother's beautiful, placid face.
But this was the thing- half the photos were bad. The one of my mothers' touching the flowers and even the close-up were under-exposed. There was a photo of my dad from the shoulders up taken as if someone had bent at the knees, camera tilted awkwardly downwards (was it my mother who took this with instructions from my dad? Was there a tripod I couldn't remember?) I would've used a different lens to capture a wider angle, or I would simply take the photo face on perpendicular to the subject.
And I know this now because since the trip, I've been studying- something which I HAD NEVER DONE. My dad did photography as well as painting when he was younger and in the space of time between that and the summer he got the camera, a lot of things had changed. I don't know why he had that idea to get the camera and do a leisurely shoot. Was it to take the photos as references to future paintings? Was it to update himself on a hobby/art that he used to do? Whatever the reason, that was the last and only time. The camera was put away in his closet and we would on occasion, try it out after saving enough money to buy film and to have it developed (we had this 'photo-shoot' once with my sisters where they put on make-up and wore black satin dresses and the whole mess turned out blurry and over-exposed, the face foundation coming off as if they fell face first, onto a plate of flour).
I just feel that most of the time, we do things where we just coast along, and I have a long list of these- but after the trip I felt like this is one thing I am simply no longer taking for granted. I don't want to look back and regret having just done things casually and in the same vain of what Leila and I have to label as impeccant mediocrity.
"Ang gand, pwede na" no longer cuts it.
Because of this....(would post a lengthy explanation when I get the time!)....belated happy birthday Lei! Sorry! Love you!!!!
I didn't drive of course. In my mind though, I was the one behind the wheel.
I try to imagine if I could drive and I see myself just driving on and on. I used to do that when I still had my motorcycle. The destination wasn't anything specific; the whole point was the drive itself and how it somehow puts your mind in a zone where you can be away from everything else. This is morbid but I also think of myself dying, some horrific accident that ends my life instantly (it could statistically happen) and the thought forces me to do a quick accounting- have I done enough? How far have I become as a person? Have I loved enough and how true?
And the thing is this, whether you reach this reckoning (of no return or alteration) or not, every so often you do need that accounting.
You need to pause to see if you're moving forward to a destination wherever that may be and to be careful that you're not caught in an endless, repetitious loop like these GIFs below..
Pick your own spot and stay there (Lake Tekapo)
Lake Tekapo is a small town located at the southern end of the lake of the same name in the inland South Island of New Zealand (wikipedia)
Lindis Pass is a Scenic Reserve, which lies approximately 32 km Southwest of Omarama, but the boundary for the scenic reserve starts about 18 km South of Omarama on State Highway 8
We arrived in Ranfurly at 6pm, but it might as well been after midnight as the town was effectively asleep as the winter darkness had fallen fast. Tick off the usual suspects- Four Square, the local pub, the hotel restaurant, a small Indian place- they were all deserted.
We dropped our stuff off at the motel (amazingly well-appointed, the Hawkdun Lodge) and accepted the reality that we would be trying to organise dinner from stuff at the supermarket. The Ranfurly supermarket was also empty save for the lone person/cashier/attendant. She was nice enough to suggest Naseby which was a few kilometers away. The directions seemed straightforward enough but I trusted Google Maps more.
It was total darkness all the way and 12 minutes in, some houses came into view, their lights dull. Was there really something in this place?? We drove silently into the centre of town and the few buildings there- the post office, the museum- were art deco and the road lamps were replicas of gas lamps like you would find in Victorian England. It looked to me, so Jack The Ripperish except that, why would Jack go here? Condemned perhaps to a town in the middle of nowhere where he could do little mischief once he dispatched what few residents the town had?
As it turned out, Naseby has only a population of 100.
We find the pub called The Ancient Briton and actually had a pleasant evening...one more day to go and snow forecast for the morrow...
..and discovered to his eternal dismay, that there were no victims to be found
(this is from its website) Built in 1863, the Ancient Briton was Naseby's first hotel and today it is one of only two remaining hotels in the town. For the weary miners, high-country shepherds and curlers it was a sanctuary offering respite from the cold and today it is still the town's social and cultural hub.
The bar and restaurant has 5 fireplaces and seats up to 80 people, offering some private enclaves for socialising and dining
It’s been hard- this is my 4th beer in as many days
This fireplace is saying: For the weary miners, high-country shepherds and curlers it was a sanctuary offering respite from the cold and today it is still the town's social and cultural hub.
Founded in the 1860s, Naseby still retains its gold-mining heritage. Naseby was established to service the gold-miners who flocked to Central Otago to seek their fortunes and today it is one of the last truly authentic 'Central' towns, unspoiled by the passage of time.
I had blue-cod- a choice I would regret later after realising that it would’ve been frozen for weeks- but it was good enough
Quince and apple compote which was more of a crumble, but it was warm and cold at the same time and it was perfect
Strangely enough, the most interesting things of the day were dead and stuffed.
Bored out of our wits driving for hours on end between stops, we happened to see in Pleasant Point in Canterbury, a brightly-lit room filled with a menagerie of stuffed animals so we stopped.
The O'Rourke Brothers taxidermy has been doing taxidermy for almost 60 years and of a quality that is high enough for their work to be contracted by the likes of the Auckland Museum and the Department of Conservation.
The new owner (who still employs one of the O'Rourke Brothers) Rob Morrison has a direct connection to the business- he is an avid hunter- which is really the first stage in someone wanting an animal (which they have shot) to be stuffed. I guess you either eat it or put aside some serious cash (prices start at $1000 for game heads) to have it stuffed and mounted. Rob took me to the back to see how it's all put together and it's not pretty. But then there is nothing delicate about hunting, or even the processing of meat for food.
The back-end of the shop is literally a sort of butcher-shop; the animals after all, like any shot game, have to be prepared and prepped. For a moment, I thought I would puke at the smell of flesh, sinew and blood, but then I think- it's like when I was 15 again and my dad was teaching me how to de-feather and dress a snipe.
I expected to also smell again, the last part of that process when you singe the skin over a flame to burn off the nubs from where the feathers had been plucked. But there was none of that bitter, acrid fume. Instead, the smell was of cold death- he opens a walk-in freezer the size of a shipping container and brings out a fish waiting its turn to be reincarnated, the sallow flesh, resilient and shiny again like something fresh out of water. The container is filled with wrapped dead animals or parts of them as far back as I can see like some serial-killers grisly cache of unfortunate victims.
The waiting time to get a medium-sized animal done is 10-15 months.
Back in the front of shop, I spy a small fawn in a sitting pose- prices are also determined by how an animal is posed- and it looks unequivocally lifelike, perfect and immortal...I think we should consider ourselves lucky if we had the same fate.
Dear Lei; so basically going around New Zealand for a work project (never mind what it is exactly) which started up north and slowly making our way south. Our routine for the last four days is this; we wake up at 7am and get on the road by 8am or 8:30. We drive (well, the driver does, not me) an average of 200kms between places and it's equally exhausting just sitting down and making conversation (it's inexplicably getting harder trying to communicate with 30-year olds these days). There is nothing much to see in the interior of New Zealand; at some point, the endless stunning landscapes cease to be stunning and just become this blur. Read what you will of what it means to you but really it starts to mean nothing because there is no one there. Suddenly, the idea of someone actually living in the middle of this desolation is an exciting, disruptive prospect (I have fantasized about this so many times). Sorry, but I think I'm convinced that nature is NOTHING without humanity's touch, destructive or otherwise.
I have slept in about four different motels/hotels. My single piece of luggage is open like a disemboweled thingy on the floor and who brings these many creams and shit?? (I do) Not to mention my normal medication and vitamins (there's this new thing with Garlic combined with zinc, vitamin C and horseradish to stop allergic reactions- seems to work because my nose has stopped itching).
In the next few days (we fly out, the rental SUV ditched, on Thursday), I might see snow and I'm looking forward to that. I have this belief that I have this affinity with the cold, with winter.
I am I think, trying hard to convince myself of that. I look in the mirror and see my skin struggling- needs more moisture I think; thank God I have enough creams in the world for that...
xx
Woke up to this today
Before it did, out of those mountains, we were already on the road
But the truth of this landscape is that it’s cold and wet and muddy. And if you slip on the rocks and fall unconscious, you’re dead- it would be weeks before someone would find you
And those little surprises in the middle of nowhere like a French bakery run by a real French baker with (presumably) real French food
New Zealand is littered with these and I don’t know, the stuff is pretty, but I’ve never really bought anything
So I decided to launder some of my clothes in the hotel and discovered that I couldn’t work the controls of the washing machine. I ended up bagging my still wet stuff and drying them under the West Coast sun
I miss cycling, but I need to be able to drive to get to these trails
