Easing back into it
What is the sum of all my fears?
Vaguely afraid of the heat. An all-enveloping one that sticks to you like how you’d feel cling film would. And you keep asking, when did it get this bad? Would you really get used to it? Is it just something in the mind, and that the mind can override it? On the fourth day, I gave up and retreated to one of the rooms to read and turned the air-conditioning on. I didn’t get to use half the usual facial stuff I normally put on my mug daily, and gave up wearing underwear altogether.
Authority/the Powers-that-be. I’d like to believe that our family name still has some value and that it’s a currency you can use when needed. But I hope that we won’t need to, not anymore anyway since we’re now citizens of another country. Or let my mother use it for herself instead to navigate an even more complex, even more sinister system running on favours, contacts and kickbacks.
Violence. I studied college in Manila and spent some time working there, but I can’t say exactly that I know it, not when the places I inhabited and moved around were places of privilege. Stepping out into a place like Cubao or Pasay is still jarring. You wish you were chameleon-like, to blend into the scenery, to look a little rough at the edges, your skin duller, your body language slightly less assured and more defeated. But have never succeeded in fooling the dodgy taxi drivers at the airport that I was an OFW, or those roving opportunists when my father was running for re-election that I was no one but the household help. Maybe it’s all in my imagination. Maybe it’s all mostly random. But I never linger, the share-ride mere minutes away to whisk me off to a ‘safer’ place, all my cash (in the mid-5 digits) stuffed in my tight pants pockets where I feel it’s safer. But in Pangasinan, I relax a little bit. I take the jeep around Dagupan which is forever fixing itself but never really succeeding. I take a tricycle home and take some perverse pleasure at all the gawking, of people trying to recognise me - look at that guy, he looks different.
24 or so hours in China
The plane circled around Guangzhou for over an hour. There was a weather event the pilot said and looking out, the sky though was clear and the city below sparkled. But who knows- the weather everywhere has been strange. Then there was another announcement; the plane was being asked to fly and land in another airport an hour or so away.
So by the time we headed back, it was well past 3am and our connecting flight was canceled. When the airport staff started talking in barely incomprehensible English, my stomach lurched. You sort of realise that language universality is arbitrary; they can choose to not learn English fluently.
It felt like one of those disaster movies where people who were minding their business on the plane and keeping to themselves, suddenly start reaching out to one another. Earlier, when the plane was doing loops above Guangzhou, my seatmate who was a Filpino dairy farm hand working in Hastings started talking to me and we were hopeful, expecting it even, that no matter what happened, we were flying home to New Zealand. But it was not meant to be.
And in the chaos and babble of sleep-deprived passengers and mask-wearing airport staff, it was every man to himself. Or maybe that was just me. Growing up, I wasn’t reliant on anyone. I had to figure things out by myself whether I did a good job or not. I had to sort my shit first especially when to my shock, I was handed a boarding pass that indicated my flight to be nearly 24 hours away. The only thing I understood from the airport staff was ‘transit visa’ and ‘hotel’.
The other Filipinos were families and the Caucasians stuck together which didn’t help much as they thought that Googling the situation was better than trying to make sense of what the staff were saying. The Pinoy dairy farm hand vanished.
I managed to get the transit visa (how the officer understood my handwriting I would never know); then went through immigration where inexplicably, most of the Caucasians failed to even fill up the declaration card before getting into the queue and were asked to step out and do it first. Then I got through and it was finding the airline counter next so that they could give me accommodation.
The Filipino groups were seemingly wandering around and my first thought was that, well you do your own thing and I’ll do mine. I have never been a team person. My focus was getting out of the airport so I walked past them and left them to it. I thought briefly about my luggage and I assumed that since I was already given a boarding pass, my luggage would be delivered to that plane. If not, well, fuck it, there’s insurance.
I had my backpack which had my meds, my toiletries, and my electronics. Unfortunately, the only clothes I had were the clothes I wore for the flight, but there was nothing I could do about that.
I realised when I went through customs that we weren’t the only flight canceled. There was a queue several meters long to the China Southern counter. At this point, my hoodie was hot and my eyes were watering from being up so late. I went straight through to the counter and no one was paying attention; everyone was on their phone.
The staff were besieged by angry passengers; one even reached out to try and grab one of the staff’s keyboards. I felt sort of nauseous at the thought that this was hell, and that the worst fate of all, was being trapped in a situation not of your own making where you don’t understand the context of what was happening and where you can’t speak out.
But I knew what I wanted though - I wanted a bed. I wanted to wash my face. I didn’t want to sleep in the airport. I didn’t want to wash my armpits in a public sink. I didn’t want to amuse myself wandering into duty-free stores daydreaming of stuff I couldn’t afford.
I also was able to speak out - in the best American English I could muster 😂 - and the staff was more than happy to assist someone not screaming into her face in Mandarin or Cantonese or whatever.
In 15 minutes, I was on my way in a shuttle to the Marriott.
The barrio life
The barrio life is too 🥵.
Eight o’clock in the morning feels like high noon; like summer on the Australian Gold Coast (which is why I only cross the ditch in winter). The climate has changed, my brother says.
Who has the energy to cook three meals? But they do and I’m glad for once, not to be the cook and two, to sit down for another meal.
A shower doesn’t help, especially when your skin is used to at least three layers of creams. I just settle for a facial sunscreen, and being topless for most of the day, use the same cream for my neck, arms, hands and feet. The humidity clings to you like a needy lover and half the time, I flee from it and seek refuge in an air-conditioned room. What was once a luxury, is now a necessity; taking the Skyway in Manila, ugly and dilapidated shanties sport rows of condenser units.
If there’s nothing to do, there’s the pool, but even that sticks out in your mind like a red flag. We didn’t grow up with AC and swimming pools, or heat that has arrived like a guest that has stayed on permanently in your home.
You just make the best of it or in my case, sad as it makes me, bear with it for a bit longer before going back to my own home.
Words with friends
Maintenance
HMO
Retirement car
Retirement
lipid profile
Generation Z
Consistency
Unapologetic
Diplomatic
China
Much love to this one and happiest of birthdays
Happy birthday mommy
We were shocked and laughed at the decor (hope they weren’t offended) but then realised, this is the Philippines in 2024 and the road to the Lingayen venue had changed drastically in the last seven years we were here last. The speeches were long and florid, the display of affection genuine and the sudden dance turns on the floor both bizarre and impressive (for people in their 70s who complain of a million and one ailments). But in the end, what mattered most was seeing people again who continue to hold a soft spot in your heart and memory.
Goals
Not to be toxic
Which is like thinking that all our efforts to mitigate impending climate change disasters can actually work. It’s sort of too late and we’re too far gone. Everything and everyone is toxic. But have hopped off that bandwagon after realising that I wasn’t getting anything tangible out of it. Pay me $5 dollars- no, let me negotiate that to $20 - and I’ll probably do it. Maybe.
Time is money AND a commodity
I’ve started Ubering all the time when I saw that my hourly rate was over $70 (before taxes). I can’t be sitting at a bus stop waiting for the next one in 30 minutes because it’s simply a waste of my time, I reasoned. I’m too good to wait. And now, Uber rides have gone up like 25% and I’m thinking, I could have used that added fare for an extra bottle of Emma Lewisham Supernatural Face Elixir. So I’ve started bussing again and simply readjusted what I normally do like prepping meals the night before so that when I got home, I could start on the meal at an even earlier time. And today, I managed to take public transport, finish a gym workout in 30 minutes, dropped by the supermarket for some stuff and got the same bus back, all in under an hour (we have a 30-minute lunch-break and morning tea and I just worked through those). Save me nearly $30 had I taken Uber.
Be healthier
have to admit that I’m slightly better with my health than my finances. However, I don’t want to be super aggressive about it and end up as a cautionary tale. I secretly revel in the fact that all my medical stats are good. But during my recent check-up and blood work, I got a younger doctor who thinks that my stats are rubbish. He straightforwardly told me to my face that I had the worst of luck because genes determine 75% of me, and that, it seems, there’s nothing I can do about it—except medicate, that is.
“Maybe it’s my coffee drinking,” I told him.
“How many coffees do you have in a day?” he asked.
“Eight to ten espressos.”
“Is that a lot,” he asked, “compared to a latte?”
I blinked. Mmmmmm.
There’s an earnestness there that’s missing from my regular GP, who I think is in her seventies.
“I think we can get this under control,” he said.
“What’s our timeline?” I asked.
“A fortnight- and if we don’t, we’ll find another strategy,” he said cheerfully. He has thin, ascetic features and wears rimless glasses. It’s the comforting, generic face of a doctor who believes that nothing is impossible in medicine.
I have my doubts, but if you’re receiving subsidized health care, your job isn’t to doubt it.
“Let’s do it then,” I said, smiling back.
Comforts
After working over the weekend at one of our shows, I spent a few days at Doyet’s. We had plans, but a drizzle that fell late Sunday and actually drenched most of the country stayed put and so did we. There’s nothing more intrinsically sad and lethargic than bright autumn trees drooping and sodden with rain.
I had the small heater on the whole day in the spare bedroom. I worked remotely in the morning and went to the gym in the afternoon. I had coffee on-tap. I took long, sweet dreamless naps. I ate Doyet’s food which always perfectly aligns to my memory of how they’re cooked back home in the Philippines. I couldn’t have gotten a better vacation no matter how brief, or basic.
Just the three Fs- food, family and fitness.
state of things
Laughing
Aurora
the week that you left
the skies celebrated;
a glorious, vulgar display of colour and light.
You would have shrugged your shoulders
ignored it for Temptation Island
and a bit of burrata on toast.
Or you could have dragged
someone out to the ocean
where you can revel in the celestial show,
washed down with a bottle or three of Tui.
But from where I’m standing
in the darkness of our deck
vainly squinting at the horizon,
I don’t see anything.
I don’t see you,
didn’t really know you.
All I see is blackness.
All I see is nothing,
and the vast empty night sky.
Today
A full head of hair is over-rated
A good friend is hard to find
Bacon can kill you
Stick to the truth no matter what
The past is pointless if all you do is look back and remember
Moderation is under-rated
Imagination is king
Kindness should be your baseline behaviour
Loving is so EASY
Hating is so HARD
Hating is not worth your time and energy
When it’s time to let go of something, you’ll know
I need to eat more
The last couple of months since going back to the gym, I’ve been feeling hungrier than usual. I had a couple of moments when I felt that condition that Filipinos call ‘nalipasan ng gutom’- you’ve eaten (like your first solid meal of the day at 5pm) but the weakness lingers.
So I did a food diary which I had intended to do for at least a month. I stopped after over a week because every-day (except weekends and special holidays) looked exactly like this:
Morning
Coffee (two espressos with almond milk, artificial sweetener)
An espresso around 10am topped up with water, no sugar + a cookie or two from the office kitchen pantry
Afternoon
Packed lunch (usually a protein and rice)
Watered down espresso after lunch and around 3pm
Evening
Pre-workout drink
Protein and a cup of rice after work-out
Espresso!
A protein shake if I remember it
So yeah, I need to eat a bit more!
Dream 1
It’s always this dream and variations of it; I’m somewhere which in my dreams is an amalgamation of all the places I’ve been in my life, and I’m trying to get home but I can’t. I get delayed by something or someone. Something doesn't work. I walk and I get lost. I take a car and it doesn’t move. But it’s never clear to me really where home is. In a variation of the dream, I am home (in the Philippines), but I’m still trying to leave, to flee.
And the dream never resolves itself. I wake up and it’s small comfort at least in that moment when you’re half-awake, that you’re in your bed, in the place that feels and smells like home.
What to do
Today, I didn’t bring my work home. Or rather, I forgot the external drive where I usually put all my content work in. Putting stuff that I’m currently doing on the drive allows me to work anywhere where I can obviously plug it in.
But today, I forgot to bring it home and I saunter into the house as if I was seeing and smelling it for the 1st time. I do take a sniff - it’s a small house with a kitchen upstairs and I never cook anything on a regular rotation that would allow the smell to stick around. So I don’t cook fish (too expensive anyway), and we always do Indian and Chinese to-go (what you make at home doesn’t taste the same). I’ve ridden in enough Uber Camrys smelling permanently of Chicken Tikka Masala, and been inside cozy $1.2m Auckland apartments reeking of cabbage and onions to realise, that unpleasant food smells are more offensive than clutter or tacky decor.
Today, there isn’t any discernible smell, not even from the butter-laden shortbread that I made last night on an impulse. But I did see the clutter in the spare bedroom that we -or rather I - converted into a ‘laundry room’ where freshly-laundered clothes are dumped into the bed for sorting, or for ironing later. I’ve started to sort out my sock and underwear drawer; all the ‘small’ sized Calvins are going, and no, I didn’t get fat. I had started doing steep, inclined treadmill runs the last couple of months, and suddenly, I could feel the pinching tightness of the fabric against my groin and my testicles. So now they’re on a pile on the bedroom floor and I’m thinking, what happens to old underwear? Should I take a photo of my buff hamstrings?
I find Lily on the bed and she automatically goes into begging mode. I realise that it’s actually past 5pm which is her feeding time. I feed her half a packet of her prescription food (she has a delicate tummy) and a packet of broth, which is $1.50 for about two tablespoons of a gelatinous liquid and a smidgen of meat or fish. She eats for about five minutes, walks away, and goes up to her tower in a manner that is meant to attract my attention and means, where’s my after-dinner treat? This is what she does every day. This is her routine.
I give her two of the Temptations and then I make myself a double espresso. I get a piece of the shortbread and settle myself down on my desk and wake up the Mac. I open Outlook to check on my emails. This is my routine.
Well, not doing this today. I put the Mac to sleep and now I’m completely and utterly at loss at what to do…
When am I NOT busy?
Sorry, I’ve tried, but I think I’d rather do sex work than do physical labour.
We look at the world, and it spurs a strange kind of busyness; but we’re merely reacting thinking we’re doing something productive or substantial. We’re not.
An acquaintance has been messaging me without fail (on WhatsApp) and all I could say were variations of, I’m busy. I’m being truthful though. I’ve been tempted to make something up just to be different, but the messages stopped and it’s been two years.
And stupid me - I WAS TOO BUSY to realise that maybe it was my turn to message back.
Looking forward to April for a bit of a slight break.
Currently Reading: Fires by Raymond Carver (Essays, Poems, Stories)
Every so often, I would come back to Raymond to reassure myself that even as I don’t even get a foothold into the fiction writing that I did when I was younger, I could still apply the creative rules that characterised his body of work - to life.
(on why his favourites were poems and short-stories) Get in, get out. Don’t linger. Go on.
A lot of writers have talent. But a unique and exact way of looking at things, and finding the right context for expressing that way of looking, that’s something else.
No (cheap) tricks or gimmicks.
A writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing - a sunset or an old shoe - in absolute and simple amazement.
Work trip
The whole trip took a little over 7 hours. A flight to Christchurch, then a connecting flight to Hokitika and an hour and a half of driving through the interior of the West Coast.
And all the quiet landscapes; empty, brutally beautiful, remote.
I always picture myself driving through these (in a motorcycle of course which is the dream), or having a moment (wading, swimming in the shallows?) at some picturesque stream or river. But in that fantasy, I never stay, I always keep moving.
I’m never one to shy away from solitude, but there has to be something more alluring than quietude for me to consider staying just a little bit longer. But what would though, other than that feeling of wanting to be disconnected from a world, that is increasingly hurtling towards something dark? Can we truly disconnect? Can I really disconnect, me??
I think it’s an illusion to believe we can get away from it all, but after having spent the weekend in this little town, I think that you probably can - here in New Zealand anyway.
Tuesday's adobo
There was a time when I over-thought making adobo.
I seared the meat first; cooked the pork and chicken separately; added honey; added mirin; added sesame oil; put in two whole heads of garlic. I watched a lot of stupid YouTube videos that claimed they had the ultimate adobo recipe.
Again, you always reference your memories, of how your dad for example, made it. And the fact is, I never really watched him prepare it. How I thought he made it was most likely something my mom or my sister told me. So you go by taste, making it over and over until you do get it. But I realised that I probably won’t; that it’s like chasing a ghost.
So I’ve made my peace with it and have decided, that I will make it the way I like it.
So Tuesday’s Adobo, is Ryan’s adobo.
Ingredients
-Chicken pieces, drumsticks and breast with skin (about 700 grams total)
-A whole head of garlic
-peppercorns, fresh bay leaf
-butter about 50 grams
-half a cup vinegar
-half a cup Kikkoman soy sauce
-teaspoon of brown sugar
Method
Sear the chicken pieces until brown. Add vinegar, peppercorns and bay leaf and let simmer until it’s almost all evaporated. Add butter and garlic cloves, letting the chicken fry in it for a bit. Add soy sauce and cover. Let simmer in low temperature for about 30 minutes. Uncover and raise the temperature until the sauce thickens.
Detachment
At the gym, I’ve developed a habit of not putting my glasses on when I work out, and this is what the world looks like.
It’s funny to think that the last time I was at the gym, my eyesight was actually normal; and now I’ve discovered that the glasses get icky when you sweat, and it’s so much trouble wiping them off every so often.
So they stay inside my bumbag until I’m done and then I need them to do the NYTimes Connection game, which is enough time to cool down before heading home.
But this is not the only time that I deliberately choose to look at the world around me through blurred vision; I don’t use my glasses when cleaning the house, the kitchen or when I wake up at 5:15 am and stumble my way out of the bedroom to go upstairs for a cup of coffee.
It actually helps that during these moments, I don’t see things with clarity because the truth is, I don’t need to.
I don’t need to make eye contact at the gym, because I’m not there to make friends. I don’t need to see that we need to repaint the walls because that would mean doing it ourselves or paying someone $15k to do them, either of which we’re not prepared to do just yet. Same with the kitchen. And I don’t want to scroll through my phone so early in the morning to read about Palestine or another guilt trip that we’re not doing enough for climate change (sorry, it’s actually too late at this point).