It sounds so stupidly simple that it must be stupid

The other week, after a strenuous massage therapy (did not eat anything prior), I was ravenous. I was in Newmarket, passing through the mall, and passed by ever-cinnamon-reeking Cinnabon (nope); a sushi place with California maki so elaborate they looked like exotic deep-sea creatures (nope) and Luna Bakery with their array of monstrous croissants on steroids (nope).

Sugar, carbs, sugar, carbs, sugar.

On the train home, my stomach felt so hollow that it made me smile. That’s what I want- a stomach so flat that in my mind’s eye, the flatness accentuates my broad shoulders and chest, my muscled thighs, my small but firm calves. But this is all fantasy, of course. I have a decent enough body, but not in a way that I usually delusionally picture it. But this is the carrot that I’ve dangled in front of me.

I could plausibly achieve this, I’ve said to myself. You could look like this only if you STOPPED EATING SUGAR AND CARBS.

It sounds so stupidly simple that it must be stupid.

When I got off the train at Manurewa, I went to the supermarket for some stuff. Now, this place is safe; what it has on offer has never really appealed to me. Sad styrofoam packets of cheap meal combos like fried chicken pieces with either rice or chips; burgers with deflated buns; fistfuls of Chinese noodles glistening with an evil coating of sugar and soy; crumbed everything.

NOPE.

I got one of those single-serve, squeezie things. Plain Greek-style yogurt. Fifteen grams of protein. Zero sugar.

As I was sucking on it on the bus home, I felt strangely virtuous as if I passed some sort of test.

I will get it, I will get that body, I told myself over and over.

Happy Valentine's Day y'all!

1. When I was in high school, I was obsessed with Valentine’s Day. I don’t remember how I ever got the money, but I was able to buy roses and kitschy shit from, remember Blue Magic?, and even chocolates. There were two girls I really liked who got these gifts and all through high school, there was this song and dance of secret glances, cryptic messages on slum books and meaningful hand squeezes while practising the prom cotillon dance. When I met up with my high school friends Bam and Janice in December, it was hours of traipsing down memory lane, recontextualising experiences (Yes, that was bullying! Yes that was toxic!) and connecting the dots of who hooked up with whom. "So what happened with you and your girlfriend, M and the other one (also) M?” I looked at them, perplexed. “They weren’t really my girlfriends because I didn’t get to sleep with them”. I don’t remember now how Bam and Janice reacted to that, but it’s the truth.

2. Sex is important in a relationship. If it’s gone, you better hope you have enough money to compensate, though I doubt even millions or billions ever do.

3. I love chicken hearts. Hearts, in general, and it doesn’t matter if it’s chicken or beef, have this interesting texture that is neither soft nor firm, but somewhere in the middle. And however you season it, it just sits there as an outside layer of flavour, which doesn’t overwhelm the texture of the heart. I’m glad the local supermarkets sell them, though I only buy them as a treat (I’ve heard that they have a lot of cholesterol). I simply cook them like I do adobe and finish them off with butter. I don’t eat them with rice, or as a meal and instead snack on them the whole day with a glass of cold (no sugar) coke.

4. We did go out for Valentines at Pearl Garden. The roast pork that I was looking forward to was a big miss though; I had a sneaking suspicion they did it on an air-fryer.

Friday

The forecast was for deluge (not in Auckland anyway) so I thought, I might as well work from home as it won’t be too hot. It was humid though which I discovered when I had to go to Papakura for some stuff; just a shirt then and leave the hoodie behind.

The plan was to take the bus to Papakura and then Uber back - it was more affordable to do only one trip at $26. I picked up stationery stuff at Whitcoulls and got some gift-wrapping stuff from what is probably the worst $2 shop I’ve been in. The place was massive, but it hardly had anything and the stuff that was in there was worse than shit. How the hell could these people afford the lease??

But I didn’t want to go to another one so I just got what I needed. Near the exit was this big mirror and I saw that I was frowning. I remembered this random lady on TikTok being bullied by her stupid retard child, who (aptly) described the lines on her mum’s forehead as looking exactly like the wifi icon.

Well, mine weren’t as bad, but I probably need to set aside some savings for botox. Or not.

Then lunch which was Starbucks for my usual and I was hoping for som tacos from Broke Boy Tacos at the Papakura Bodega, but they had a sign that said they didn’t have any because there was no gas. Hmmmmmmmm.

So got a bao bun and some fresh spring rolls instead.

Feel like a nap now (I only work to 2pm on Fridays).

Food (lately)

1. I bought a 2kg box of cherries (Central Otago cherries) and ate them all by myself (nearly- gave a small packet to a co-worker) because why not?. I missed them at Christmas, and even then, they’re too expensive and usually not of export-quality, like these. The big market is usually China, and when inexplicably, they’re not all sold out, then it’s half price for poor bastards like me who like them big and firm.

2. Can you eat tortang talong without rice?? You certainly can. I realised too late that I had two big eggplants that would soon end up in the compost bin so I had to cook them, and torta was the only recipe I knew that had protein in it (I used pork mince). But the meal fell on a non-rice day, so in lieu of that, I had spinach (sauteed) and duck eggs on the side.

3. For someone who has had fresh, shaved truffles, I never learn. The chips themselves were great, but they’re far, far, far from the real thing. So don’t get scammed- get the real deal or no deal.

4. Fat on fat; baked eggs on avocado.

5. I had a bottle of chimichurri sauce, but no steak. Guess what? It works on beef strips.

6. If you love salted duck-egg anything, here’s a tip, especially if you like to use it for chicken wings. You don’t need a whole carton to get a satisfactory flavour. You can use three or four yolks and augment them with miso and butter.

Library Series (Botany)

Did you know what actually convinced to live in New Zealand permanently? It was the libraries.

I would spend every weekend at the library, making a whole day of it. A typical library Saturday would go like this: Gym, coffee, first book, meal break, 2nd book, walking break, 3rd book, espresso, last book of the day, walk home.

It gave me everything that I wanted and needed, beyond what a job or a relationship could ever give. I felt safe. I felt confident that I could find within it, the tools and knowledge I needed to solve any problem, hurdle any challenge. I felt validated, that being alone did not mean that you didn’t have anyone.

I felt entertained and mentally and intellectually satiated in a way that no amount of television (then) or social media (now) could ever fill.

And the last couple of months, I also discovered that in lieu of going out to eat, you could go to a library instead (well, we could always have good coffee after minus the pastry or the big brunch). But to make it more interesting, we’ve been going to different libraries; I would need to do an actual check, but this is our 12th library that we’ve visited in Auckland?

The Auckland Council Libraries is one of the best public library systems in the world; clean, efficient, housed in fit for purpose buildings, and actively involved within the communities they’re situated in.

When you have a society that cherishes and values food for the mind and soul without hidden agendas or censorship, then you know that society is doing things right.

Food lately

1. I love Ortiz sardines, but at NZ$15 a can, it’s a love savoured only on occasion. A lot of recipes involve completely hiding it in a fried cannolini, or mashed and buried with cream cheese and capers as a dip. I like to taste the fish itself, flavoured with nothing more than a dash of lemon or a dab of mustard. To make it more substantial for dinner, it’s the protein filling with boiled eggs, romaine lettuce within low-carb, high-protein wraps.

2. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should; the ‘orange juice Americano’ which mixes fresh orange juice (we used bottled) and two shots of espresso. It was okay.

3. Pasta and steak is one of those meals you rarely ever find, in a sea of trendy, less substantial, aesthetic menus. Do you have it together? Or is it pasta first and then steak? But we were having it at home. It was Sam’s birthday dinner in lieu of going out (the day was a Wednesday) and there was no rush. Pasta was cooked first and when it was cooling a bit (because it was simply going to have a butter and cheese sauce and if the pasta was too hot, the freshly grated parmigiano was going to seize-up and harden), the wagyu scotch fillets were pan-fried and then finished off in the oven. I was grieving over the fact that the preference for them was well-done (it wasn’t my birthday so..).

4. It still amazes me to get vegetables just from the local supermarket and realise how actually so fresh they are that all you need to do is blanch them in boiling water for 8-10 minutes. The green beans had the crispness and sweetness of a perfect summer day. There was even no point dipping them into a sauce or condiment.

5. I only have rice twice a week for dinner and I make it count. I make sure I don’t get a shitty protein to accompany it, but nothing too extra either that you’re forced to go beyond the 1 (generous) cup limit. I love pompano and I always end up baking it in the oven. The seasoning is fresh ginger and garlic scallion sauce with a side of stir-fried greens.

China (town)

1. Auckland doesn’t really have a Chinatown section per se; this was just a humungous aircraft-hangar sized mall-type structure with a food-court, a maze of shops, some restaurants, a supermarket and fish and meat shops. To complete the vibe, nobody really speaks English.

2. ‘A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!'. No, we weren’t desperate like King Richard III, we just loved how it looked and the fact that every time we asked for the prices of other stuff in his shop, the old Chinese guy kept lowering his price for the horse. When we were paying for it, our eyes were glued on the EFTPOS machine to make sure the amount didn’t have extra zeroes in it. Plus, it’s the year of the horse!

3. Haggle, haggle, haggle! Or not.

4. Looking for dumplings that have actual broth inside them? You can find them here.

5. I wanted to buy some skate wings so bad, but I was intimidated by how big these were. I wish I photographed my hand with them for reference; a piece was bigger than an A4 sized paper.

Rant of the day

I love Costco chicken; the size is substantial, it’s well-seasoned (tastes like chicken hamonado) and cheap. Having said that, we only get it when do the occasional Costco trip like, what, every four or five months? For my everyday chicken needs, I purchase free-range or organic chicken online.

We’d usually get two, divvy it up into the parts we like and store what we don’t eat in the freezer. Do I check the ingredient list or the fine print? I don’t. It’s a goddamned rotisserie chicken for fuck’s sakes. Since we generally cook with whole foods, I’m not bothered by preservatives. What’s in our scope are the bad/refined carbs, sugar and saturated fats that are the villains in our lives.

I know that this legal shenanigan is in the US- how does it affect the chicken in other countries?- and that something like it is unlikely in New Zealand, but add it to the long list of triggering, outrageous stuff coming from the US will you?

A normal, sensible person would simply stop buying the damn things, but these fucking goddamned, most likely MAGA/MAHA CUNTS would rather use it to enrich themselves and deprive a whole lot of people access to cheap, healthy food in the process.

Art or food (it's somewhat the same) ?

A long time ago, we had eggs Benedict at a cafe in Takaanini every Sunday without fail for over two years.

It was basic, but it was the best. When the cafe closed, we couldn’t quite find the same kind of eggs benedict ever again that didn’t use fancy, hard-as-rocks toasted to an inch of its life ciabatta or sordough (they used traditional English muffins), unnecessary wilted greens, watery hollandaise and horrors, potato rosti. We had a bowl of hot chips on the side to mop up the generous sauce.

My GP once told me that my ‘healthiest’ period was, ironically, during this time that I had a steady diet of basically liquefied butter and trans fats (also snacked on chips and ice-cream on the non-work nights of Friday and Saturday and stayed up til 2am playing PlayStation).

But never again. You have to be smart to know that you can get away with shit only once.

Today, it’s either coffee at home, or (really good) coffee at the petrol station, or a rare pie.

We had both, but only after dropping by to see the new exhibits at The Arts House Trust, located in the historic Pah Homestead, within Hillsborough's Monte Cecilia Park.

1. Yvonne Todd had a food-themed exhibition, and she captured exactly how we were feeling; the act of eating becomes emptied of pleasure and transformed into a performance of restraint, an obligation rather than a desire.

2. I wanted to touch it so bad because we couldn’t tell what Heidi Brickell’s sinuous, organic sculptures were made of; leather? Bronze? Turns out, they’re made of New Zealand Bull kelp (rimurapa in Maori), or brown seaweed.

Essence by Freya Burnett; her work places viewers within an immersive projection-mapped environment that operates as a loosely defined interior. The projected surfaces build a reflective atmosphere, nesting textures together; Jewel tones, carbonated liquids, speckled light and mirror-like imagery that build on Burnett’s existing visual language (Plomacy).

Stop!

Wild weather week

It had been raining on and off for weeks since Christmas and it honestly feels like June in the Philippines (my favourite month growing up because it’s back to school, love the smell of new notebooks and love the cold, grey, moody weather). It’s not the same as typhoons, and we’re happy with that!

Auckland has escaped the worst of it which is ironic given how many people seem to loathe living here.

Mondays

Not well enough to go to work, but not sick enough to spend the day in bed.

So I worked (I was actually on sick leave), but wasn’t compelled to stay on my desk. I did laundry. I made arroz caldo for dinner using chicken drumsticks. I made pork ribs pinapaitan-sampalok for the next night’s dinner.

I did some bench presses in the garage. I did dishes. I finalised what I needed to make for Sam’s birthday. I shaved my head with the new replacement head-shaver (and still marveling how you can get a replacement without any questions asked, by simply returning the item and them finding the receipt in the system). I kept the receipt of this new one in a safe place and took a photo of it for good measure.

I thought I was feeling funny at around 3pm so I went to bed, but ended up watching Tron:Ares on Disney Plus (how can I get Jared Leto’s taut, poreless face??).

It started raining at 5pm and I didn’t bother taking the socks and the houseclothes in from the line.

The Weekend

1. How do you eat a King Crab?

2. We didn’t buy the special edition Lays for the Chinese New Year, but are mulling whether to buy a horse sculpture for the deck.

3. Finally, Cillian Murphy makes an appearance in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. But how did the character become an erudite, Oxford Professor type?? But the more important question is, does humanity’s list of stupidities matter in the face of a zombie apocalypse?

4. Did you know that if you cut up aubergines really thinly and used them like say, in pinapaitan or some soupy dish with meaty chunks of meat, you’d be fooled in thinking you were eating the buttery ribbons of fat you’re not supposed to eat?

Sick and behind on my reading list

The cough has developed into a full-blown-whatever-it-is (bothersome sinuses, chesty cough, dry throat) and I’m still slogging through book three of The Empyrean series by Rebecca Yarros, like what the sigma????

Full disclosure- I love dragons and magic, but I skip through the unimaginative (!) sex parts of the book. I’m in the middle part now where they finally find Andarna’s kind and the fucking cunts reject her because apparently, she’s the dragon equivalent of someone with special needs. Anyhow, 500+ more pages to go!

Here’s what’s next:

Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Cespedes, translated by Ann Goldstein
Out running an errand, Valeria Cossati gives in to a sudden impulse - she buys a shiny black notebook. She starts keeping a diary in secret, recording her concerns about her daughter, the constant churn of the domestic routine and her fears that her husband will discover her new habit.

Girl With Curious Hair by David Foster Wallace
In these short stories, the author renders the bizarre normal and the absurd hilarious, from the eerily real, almost holographic evocations of historical figures.

Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett
A fresh take on the coming-of-age novel-one in which we don't already know how the story will end, or if it will have an 'ending' at all

You Like It Darker by Stephen King
Short fiction from one of my favourite authors whose long works I now kinda avoid.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The dystopian classic, but in comics form!

Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata
The strange, surreal, humorous and the grotesque as only Japanese writers can write them

Ghost Roots by Demi Aguda
Debut short-story collection by a Nigerian writer that was a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction.

When you need to actually recover from the vacation you just had

1. I picked up a cough from sleeping every single night in an air-conditioned room, would you believe?? If someone tells you that this is the norm, that there isn’t really any other way, it’s not and they’re wrong (Auckland however, sits at a perfect (night) summer temperature between 16 to 18 degrees centigrade with less than 50% humidity).

2. Indulge in the quiet; just birds in the morning, or someone doing the lawn. I miss the malunggay bread seller though, announcing himself through a loudspeaker on cue every afternoon around 3pm (and the bread is good).

3. A near-empty refrigerator and going back to one meal a day.

4. Losing weight is not the point (lost 1 kg), but to get your fitness level to where it was before.

5. Finding something to do, like washing the dishes, doing laundry, sorting clothes- anything really that gets you up and moving, because having everything done for you is just wrong.

True or False?

1. It’s worth reconnecting with SOME people in your past.

2. The flooding in Pangasinan is an act of God.

3. Voters are to blame.

4. The first step towards creating a genuine equitable society is getting rid of political dynasties. For real and for good.

5. Having this much food is a distraction (from the actual issues) as well as a health risk (especially when the health care system you have is neither equitable nor free).

Done

1. Not being able to find an ideal place to walk, to jog (not fucking jogging on the highway).

2. Eating three meals a day

3. Waiting for the garbage to be picked up

4. Listening to the drone of the television blasting cheerful programming the whole day

5. Listening to the rooster crowing the whole day

6. Being approached by people asking me for shit

Bye!

Things I'll Do If I Was Rich (1)

One day, all the rats as big as housecats had mysteriously disappeared. Turns out, a family of unrelated cats had started hanging out in the backyard. My sister-in-law’s mum, bless her heart, had taken to feeding one of them (Mr. Moustache) and he stuck around. Pretty soon, several more white, slinky-bodied strangers followed soon after. I’d met them all last June and this year, I got acquainted with a young ginger kitten who was too young to resist me picking her up. How she came to be with the adult cats I’ll never know.

In less than a week, she would come running at the sound of my voice (well, I always had food for her so..). Feeding her special tidbits, I’d make sure to fend off the other cats from trying to steal what she was eating. In less than a week, she’d gained a bit more weight and some sass to get some food for herself when they would all be fed from a single trough.

If I was rich, I would definitely bring her back with me to New Zealand. Though the process is quite straightforward, it would be quite expensive.

Little ginger would have to take her chances in Naguilayan. I pray to the spirits of nature to protect and nurture her until we meet again.

Scanned for life

Every time I visit, I go through a never-ending pile of photos which I bring home and scan. Some are so damaged that it’s a painstaking effort to clean them up and fix them; AI can only do so much. I should seriously start to think about how what happens next, otherwise, they’ll end up joining 40,000 other digital images in my cloud account.

I was three years old with my mum, my grandfather Adolfo Amor and my aunt Lita Amor Agbayani

Dad (left) the fashion plate

Mom (middle) and her court lol

My uncle Ady Amor

Our last faithful dog Gabby

The late former Pangasinan Governor Aguedo Agbayani (this was probably a draft for a painting that my dad had planned to do)

High school reunion! (sort of)

My cousin told me that my old high school was holding a Grand Alumni Homecoming but 1) it was too late to go; 2) I didn’t bring anything to wear; 3) I didn’t really want to go.

My cousin was able to reconnect me with an old high school friend, however and it’s funny how you just pick up where you’ve left off. B and I became fast friends only after high school and it was cemented one Christmas day when instead of going to hear mass, I cycled to her house for our usual long chats and got involved in an accident on the way home. ‘That’s what you get for skipping mass on Jesus’ birthday, ’ my mother screamed at me through hysterical tears. I only got a few scrapes and bruises, but my bicycle was totalled.

We ended up at a coffee shop (of course), and a few of our batch mates dropped by. Turns out, there wasn’t really much of a crowd this year and B and I were honest in admitting that our social batteries could only handle interactions with people from our class (snooty much?). We figured that look, we’re old, we’re a skip and a hop away from retirement, death or disease, so we might as well do what we actually feel like doing and say what needed to be said.

And of course we all did, which for me was far more productive and satisfying than wearing a one-size-fits-all all alumni shirt and hanging around the school the whole day trying to figure out who that person is claiming you were best friends back in the day.

Life is too short for pointless nostalgia and weak tea, though we’ve reluctantly resurrected an age-old question that has been making the rounds since we left school (and still no answers).

WHERE THE HELL IS SWEET HAZEL VARGAS???