Meat

“Meat
We bought from the butcher’s once,
half a pig, and with
the efficiency of hunters
or pork connoisseurs maybe, we
made our portions
marvelling at the shape and heft
of each one, a shoulder smooth
of sinew, rippling meat
firm under a delicate blanket of fat
this is the belly we point out,
it will find tenderness,
surrender,
with our sharp hungry teeth”
— RA

I Want To Be Famous

The family says that my nephew Migs is turning out to be like me- vain. But it's quite inaccurate. When I was his age, I was invisible. Other boys were taller, more fit, had better, more conventionally handsome faces. The expectation for me was that I should do well in school- which I did anyway with an effortlessness that belied the fact that I was only choosing to excel in the things I liked. Who cared about math, or Filipino?

I also (secretly) wanted to be the school crush, which I actually was, for about a year, a strange one, when I was elected Class Adonis in all but one class. But it had been so fleeting that before I could revel and bask in something that I thought I never could have, I was found out to be more than just the standard pretty face and the following year, I was Mayor in a couple of classes and Vice Mayor in some. Boring.

And I think that's the essence of attractiveness- it should be natural; it should be confirmed unfortunately by others and not by your own pronouncements. And it's also, sadly, always fleeting unless embedded in something more lasting than a face that starts to shift with the years.

I never did find out what people saw in me in that one memorable year but suffice it to say that I've been chasing it all my life, because really, beauty- especially the kind that makes you go out each day with clean clothes and a positive demeanor- is something to aspire for.

I think Migs will be alright, but I would hate to be in his shoes. This generation sucks. Migs hates his nose which is perfectly fine but it's challenging to convince him of that when 'normal' today is how you want things to be. 

There are a number of things about myself that I would have changed as well but I've discovered that three things do the trick- exercise, prudent eating (on most days) and clothes.

Here are some I'd like to have in my wardrobe if I was a twelve-year-who-could-pass-for-16 and with access to my adult income! (Migs would have picked these as well).

A few things I'd like to do when it rains

Listen to Beyonce's Lemonade as I did in the car going to the supermarket. In Sandcastles, she cries: Dishes smashed on my counter / From our last encounter/ Pictures snatched out the frame / Bitch I scratched out your name/ And your face/ What is it about you? / That I can't erase baby
When every promise don't work out that way/ No no baby/ When every promise don't work out that way..

Catch up on Greys Anatomy; and yes, I'll be watching it till the end of time or until I give up the conceit that I could have been a doctor.

Bike in the rain if I had a bike.

photo by Michael Quinn

photo by Michael Quinn

Make a cardamom cream cake courtesy of my favourite cook Melissa Clarke of The New York Times.

Make hainanese chicken, which I just might for Friday night. The forecast has rain the whole week.

Download and read Moshin Hamid's novel 'Exit West' where migrants try to find a home via a series of magical doors ala the magical wardrobe in the Narnian Chronicles. I think it's plausible because didn't we just all enter one marked 'Trump World'?.

But Hamid sort of reassures us: 

“the apocalypse appeared to have arrived and yet it was not apocalyptic, which is to say that while the changes were jarring they were not the end, and people found things to do and ways to be and people to be with, and plausible desirable futures began to emerge, unimaginable previously, but not unimaginable now.”

The Seven-Day Challenge

I was on the road to the hospital to visit Dave and mulling over some overdue blog posts when Leila messaged saying her domain had expired. To cut a long story short, we restored the domain, fiddled with her settings because the site wasn't showing on her end, and saddled ourselves with a challenge to write a post every day until Sunday.

Now that's not hard is it? God after all made the world in seven days, easy peasy. Britney Spears and Jason Alexander married and divorced in 55 hours. Judi Dench logged in 8 minutes of screen time, practically a day's work, in Shakespeare in Love and got an Oscar for her efforts. 

So what is seven days- throw in a photo (as I've been doing for the longest time, in lieu of words) or three; a movie review (Trainspotting 2 was fantastic); two birthday shout-outs (to Tonic and Ally); and another photo of a Sunday dinner (another glorious roast maybe, that bastion of white-people food)- and it will be all good.

Why do I feel though as if I'm short-changing myself? Why does Monday look and feel suspiciously like the Monday previous? Lunch is the same predictable steamed chicken and vegetables and I doubt it if it will really save me, that it makes a difference in the over-all scheme of things, which at the moment is looking the way I've always seen it; a sameness punctuated with ineffectual punches we describe cheerfully as 'soldiering on'.

Dave- who by the way is the owner of the flat I currently live in- got home from an ordinary fishing trip, one of a countless he'd done complaining of a sore leg, nothing really out of ordinary for someone in his mid 50's, and 24-hours later was facing multi-organ failure because of a ruptured and infected bowel.

He survived and is now 'soldiering on' towards a slow and tedious recovery. A week in ICU, hovering between life and death, he had not seen anyone gesturing to him to go towards the light. Between half-lucid and drug-addled moments, he cursed his doctors and nurses, his parents, his children. He emerged from the other side, battered, gaping open wounds in his side and leg healing slowly and having to confront the reality that life was not altered- only disrupted.

We think we grapple with time; we think we're given a reprieve, or a punishment; or foolishly, a reward but time doesn't wait for no one.

Don't wait for epiphanies. Just do it.

Sorry batch

Really sorry; for missing your wedding, for failing to write those 'vow thingies'.

To think that after all these years, you're just one of only two people who actually still asks me to write something- and that these requests to write poetry, vignettes, essays.. makes me remember the person that I was (the person that you know) and the person that I still am.

Hope to make it up to you somehow. 

Allow me to publish the last thing I wrote for you- a piece for which your only instructions were: 

Batch, help. Write me an article entitled : I want a boring life. Then enumerate why you want a boring life : things that a man who is ready to settle down would trade for a life of bachelor galore :  parties, gimmicks, travel, etc. A man who is ready to settle down and be a father. Those things that most bachelor would consider boring. Thanks batch!

P.S. Ano na balita sa'yo? :)

Who knew that several months later, this would all mean something.

I Want a Boring Life

There were three text messages from M. The first one was, ‘how was the run?’. I texted back, ‘was great. a bit sore now. great sunrise’. Sure. I threw in a photo to go with the text, a sunrise, taken four months ago. I sort of prayed that she hadn’t seen that photo. I swung my legs off the bed, got up a bit too quickly than I would have wanted and the room spun. 

The second message had a photo of a bowl of oatmeal with the missive, ‘recover with a good breakfast.’ Milk. Congealed oats. I felt like gagging. Grease. I needed grease. I tottered over to the small kitchen and opened a refrigerator that predictably had what I really needed; eggs, a slab of bacon, Purefoods frankfurters. I heated a pan and dumped everything in. There was some leftover rice in the rice-cooker from God knows when (I sniffed it, it smelled fine). Meats done, I took out a bit of Pampanga taba-ng-talanka, garlic bits and made fried rice. 

Wolfing everything down, I started to feel a bit better and slightly sleepy. I thought that a long nap was due and then maybe catching up with a few episodes of ‘House of Cards’ when I woke up at around 6pm. I actually was about to smile at the thought of a nice, quiet and relaxing afternoon (by myself!) when I realised that I hadn’t read the third message. 

I knew instinctively that it wasn’t good news. ‘See you at 2 @ the planners, you will love the flowers.’ 

I actually rolled my eyes and groaned at the same time and felt it, a stab of guilt so strong, I was worried the feeling of nausea would come over me again, pushing my lunch up. 

What was wrong with me?? I loved M absolutely and unequivocally. I had no doubts about that- none at all. In a life peppered with quite a few of them, with M, there was only clarity and understanding. Here was someone who actually meshed with me where it mattered most. She understood my fears and never mocked them. She knew my faults and not only accepted them, but pitched in to help me out when I got myself caught in a corner. She didn’t judge me and neither did I. We had great sex- heck, amazing sex on top of everything. 

In a generation obsessed with relationship concepts that at best were hypothetical, we actually put the work into our relationship. And everything was going fine until for some reason, we thought of marriage and tellingly, we actually came upon the idea together outside of a bar in Bonifacio City, on a night we thought we had it good and that maybe the next step was formalizing what we had.

‘I’m sick of this actually’ M says as we pushed our way through the crowd and out the club into the cold dawn air.’ Why we even bothered to come for someone we barely knew…’ M didn’t even finish the sentence knowing fully well that it was at her insistence that we came, that she wanted to see what the fuss was about with the club and that she wanted to wear this Herve Leger dress she wanted to show off while she was at the weight she worked hard to get. 

I hated her work-friends and I would have wanted a more casual, laid-back drinking crowd over a hyped-up bar. I could have rebuked her as I would normally do when we were on the cusp of her admitting that she f_cked up. But she looked so distressed and so beautiful that I felt a tug in my throat. I simply held her face in my hands and kissed her forehead, ‘we don’t need to do these things anymore you know..we can move on from this..’I said, my voice trembling.

And we looked at each other, smiled at the same time and knew what the moment was saying to us. Or did we?

I don’t exactly remember now what we talked about afterwards. Did I even say will you marry me?? Did I drop down on one knee in a moment of drunken epiphany and offered a make-believe ring? Did she even say yes? But I do remember the morning of it, at the McDonalds down her apartment where we laid down the basics in a haze of half-sleeplessness and adrenaline; the date, the venue, the budget.

Then she called her parents who lived in Boston. It was 8pm there when she rang and they were having dinner. On the speaker phone, the chorus of happy, surprised congratulatory voices seemed strangely un-parental, like she was just talking with friends her own age. There was only uncomplicated joy and the promise of getting together soon. We love you D! See you soon D! they holler out to me and I could only marvel at these strangers whom I only heard and read about on Facebook. Soon, I would be meeting these strangers under closer scrutiny, away from the cozy shield of Facebook’s pseudo-familiarity.

‘Now it’s your turn’ she tells me and I sort of blink, half-dazed. ‘Aren’t you going to call your parents to tell them the good news?’  Call it job experience (I’m in advertising) or survival (M would’ve killed me if she knew) but I wasn’t about to get caught out. There was no backing out now. I pretended to call my parents and I must admit that while I’ve made some pretty convincing lies in the past, I’ve never, ever seriously lied to M. But she was too caught up in the moment to notice that I was just going through the motions and that once someone picked up on the other end (I did call my parent’s landline), I hung up and told her that no one was home. 

And that’s how it started- the ‘lies’ that weren’t exactly lies.

It wasn’t that my parents would have been horrified but that they were vastly different from M’s self-assured, social-media savvy, touchy-feely parents. They would’ve been embarrassed to have been put on speaker-phone nor would they the type who would holler effusive endearments to a person they weren’t even close to (they have met M a couple of times). I did tell them eventually about two weeks later and it was a quiet, no-nonsense talk that involved frank common-sense. They only asked me two questions: did I love M and how much money did I want them to contribute for the wedding?

When M asked me about it, the ‘lies’ somehow were necessary in the sense that I’ve never seen her so happy. And it wasn’t the happiness that she normally exhibited with a new dress, a fancy dinner or the surprise overseas trips we normally have. It was happiness from the belief that what we were embarking on was momentous. That it was truly special. That it was meant to be.

‘She cried a bit- with happiness’ (my mother never even cries watching dramatic movies) I tell her, describing how I broke the news to my parents. ‘And my dad thinks that its great what your dad does for immigration’ (in truth, my dad felt that Filipinos with Ivy League educations never really cared for fellow Filipinos who weren’t in the same social league as them). But I strongly felt that M didn’t need to know these things. What was important was that she believed we were going to be better after this- that marriage was going to make us better people. And that I was going to do whatever it took- all these ‘lies’ included- to make this happen.

My belief was that all I needed to do was to catch up with her. This was natural, I told myself, to doubt, to ‘lie’. After all, my heart was in the right place. I truly loved her. All I needed to do was try harder, to believe it a bit more. And maybe it will happen, like waking up one morning to discover that all the lying was nothing but an unpleasant dream.

But it hasn’t and it was becoming more and more apparent that it was splitting me into two- the person I truly was and the person I thought she wanted me to be.

(This is where it ends).

 

If I Was The President

“Even then, selfish people like many among us are more than willing to subjugate the freedom of others if it is the most efficient means by which we can achieve our ends..”
— Christopher Ryan Maboloc

1. I would ban all tricycles and other forms of transport which are unable to maintain a travelling speed of at least 75kph from major highways and national roads to lessen congestion. P_ tang ina; umaakyat kami sa zig-zag na daan, sampung sasakyan naka-convoy at 25kph dahil lang sa tricycle sa unahan!

2. I would ban the use of so-called 'man-bags' by men, defined as any sort of pouch/bag/purse that is slung across the shoulder and may possibly be used to hold such things as cigarettes (smoking is BAD for your health); make-up (YUK! Kalalaki mong tao); or drugs (obviously). 

3. I would compel all telecommunication companies to have a standard set of pre-paid credit load plans/top-ups. The proliferation of all these unlit/surf-max/e-load/GigaSurf/Pasa-Load/SOS Load/Express Pasa-Load/GoSakto/GoSurf/GoUnli/UnliTXT/GOAllNet/GoSakto/TextAll/RegaLOAD IS GODDAMNED CONFUSING. The poor who cannot afford to subscribe to a post-paid plan are made to believe that all these are saving them money, but in reality, they end up paying more, sa ka-lo-load nila!

4. I decree that by 2018, every household in the Philippines be connected to the Internet either by ADSL, VDSL or Fibre depending on location. The rich should not monopolise the Internet and I have this nagging suspicion that Internet cafes corrupt the youth.

5. I decree that all OPM (Original Pilipino Music) can only be revived TWICE. I was listening to the radio the other day and sabi ko, p_tang ina- ilang beses na bang na-revive yang Neocolours song na iyan??? Aside from the fact that Neocolours pa rin and the best na version, this is also to encourage our artists to be more creative, productive and original. Tama na yung paulit-ulit!

Lost weight, will fit into Nudies

In my mind, I'm nearly 6 feet tall and weigh 70kgs. That's the physique that holds when I look at clothes. In reality, things are a bit different- my actual physique sort of closely resembles that of Tom Cruise; a bit squat with a weird lumpy chest and shoulders too wide for my 5 foot 8 frame. 

But I live to hope and dream, at least for fashion. I've lost nearly 5 kgs (which a friend claims is all water weight from the heat) and looking at Nudie, I'm feeling the slim denims and the classic aesthete vibe- (flannel! greys!).

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Home

Between the ages of 21 and 28, I was homeless at least in my mind. Flitting between jobs and various places in Manila, the only constant was getting on that bus to Pangasinan to go home to Naguilayan for some respite; for some money from my dad; for some breathing space. Burdened with a really bad memory, I can only recall bits and pieces from this period, all seemingly unconnected except for one common thread- I was actually aimless. I would have grieved, been regretful for literally wasting a decade, but ignorance is really bliss. How does one grieve for something one can't remember losing? 

Project Four in my mind

There is a life we led before
we had all these facetious connections.
I certainly didn't need
to Google, iMessage, tweet
to find you.
Because I did.
A bunch of yellow roses,
led the way home

 

You’re an Water Rat if you’re born in 1972 (New Year 2032 will be the next Water Rat generation to come). In 2016, you’re 44 years old. Your Totem Number is 49. Your Unlucky Number is 55.*

People born in the Year of the Water Rat can tolerate many things provided to get a benefit from their patience and efforts. The more money a Water Rat earns, the better he/she works.

The Water Rat is the most secret, but also the most tender of all Rats. Extremely pragmatic and farsighted, the Water Rat does not engage in a relationship unless he sees some value in it. Very sociable, enjoying a good chat, but also discreet and solitary depending on his mood, the Water Rat isn't the kind of Rat who will seek the spotlight at all costs. Always charming and charismatic, the Water Rat excels as much in negotiation than in revenge, brilliantly combining humor and insight in his relation with others (from Karmaweather.com).

And the Housewives ride off into the sunset

They came, they said the N word and got into a small debt trying to dress like they didn't live in Auckland. A season ends and while the rest of us hem and haw trying to figure out what to do next Tuesday after Labour Weekend, the Real Housewives Of Auckland have it all figured out...

 

Reading: Annihilation by Jeff Vandemeer

I did give up on The Goldfinch. And lately, there has been much a feeling of being unhinged, not crazy unhinged (!), but more of being neither here nor there. And the weather is not helping. It has been raining a lot lately which I think is normal for spring, but it has been raining more than usual in the eight years that I have been living in New Zealand. 

I close my eyes and it sounds like I'm back home, in June. But I guess rain would sound the same anywhere, more so if you close your eyes. But it has been unnerving being woken up in the middle of the night by rain and lying there in that state of half-consciousness uncertain of where you are.

It's usually during these moods that I drift towards science-fiction which is apt. One hopes that science can explain the unexplainable but it can't and that's not the point of science-fiction anyway as I see it. The point I think is that we head towards the inevitable whatever that may be and that science is only one of many things we have at our disposal to make sure that there's a positive outcome. If not, then at least, it would help us understand because the worst fate of all is falling into oblivion completely clueless.

After about 2 hours last night, I'm a quarter of the way into the book which is a good thing; I'm going to finish this one. To save myself the trouble of doing a summary, here's what the book is all about courtesy of Wikipedia:

Annihilation is a 2014 novel by Jeff VanderMeer. It is the first in a series of three books called the Southern Reach Trilogy. The book describes a team of four (a biologist, an anthropologist, a psychologist, and a surveyor) who set out into an area known as Area X. The area is abandoned and cut off from the rest of civilization.[1] They are the 12th expedition. The other expeditions have been fraught with disappearances, suicides, aggressive cancers, and mental trauma. The novel won the 2014 Nebula Award for Best Novel[2] and the 2014 Shirley Jackson Award for best novel (Wikipedia).

First impressions: it reads like Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant

Where I heard about the book from: WIRED magazine's Book Club

What made me get the book: Choosing books is a hit and miss and reviews don't necessarily guarantee that you'll end up liking what you've picked. Been peckish for some science-fiction and while Wired magazine has recommended complete clunkers in the past (like Carpathia and Abe Lincoln the Vampire Hunter) what caught my attention about the book was that the author published all three books in one year. Sort of like a novel binge-reading.

The novel's writer Jeff Vandermeer writes about this publishing experiment, a backgrounder on how the trilogy started and on the writing process in a piece for The Atlantic:

I. Annihilation

March 2012. I’m driving down to Orlando for a conference on the fantastic in the arts. My wife, Ann, is in the passenger seat, reading the manuscript of my new novel, Annihilation. I’m nervous as hell and finding it hard to concentrate on the highway—that boring part of I-75 that serves as a gullet down toward the artificial guts of Disney World. What the hell have I written? The book is about a dysfunctional secret agency called Southern Reach and its efforts to solve the mysteries behind Area X, a strange pristine wilderness. For 30 years, Area X has been closed off from the rest of the world by an invisible border and peculiar things are happening inside. Most expeditions meet with disaster.

As I wait for Ann’s verdict, I’m filled with doubts. Maybe the book is just an aimless ramble about four women wandering a facsimile of the 14-mile trail I hike out at St. Marks Wildlife Refuge, complete with abandoned lighthouse. Maybe this isn’t the first thing to show my new agent, Sally Harding. Maybe my first novel in four years should be something else. Maybe I should just concentrate on my driving.

READ IN FULL HERE

Maybe it's not meant to be

I have a fondness for shoes. And it's justified by the fact that apparently, this predilection is inherited according to my mother; so when science and your own mother are in agreement then it must be true. Anyways, I've only just gotten back again to buying Nike. There was a period- I think it was a  full decade- when their designs just didn't appeal.

What brought me back to the fold was when the Flyknit came out in 2012; finally, a shoe that had a slim silhouette as opposed to the imposing bulkiness of the Air Maxes that had been a Nike stalwart since the 80s, and whose look has seem to be permanently stuck there (which its devoted fans love).

The Flyknit was meant to be a racing shoe but of course anyone who takes their sport seriously seem to use another brand altogether for training and actual competitions. I don't do either so the shoe suits me just fine. Since then, I've bought a pair of Roshe Ones, a customised NIKE I.D. all-white Roshe Ones (which I regret and have only worn once), Flyknit Lunar 3s and Flyknit Trainer Chukka FSBs. 

To be honest, the shoes all have faults- the Roshe Ones have hard tubular laces which create painful pressure points on top of my feet. The Lunar 3s which I only found in a size 9 (and still bought them even if my true comfort size is 8.5) have a tendency to loosen up if you're wearing them all day, so woe to you if you actually use them for training/running and they happen to be half a size bigger. And the trainer chukkas, while adequately water-resistant, are truly for the outdoors- using them like for the city possibly puts you at risk of slipping on urban surfaces for which the shoes have absolutely zero grip. And yet looking at its Flyknit texture would you honestly use it for hiking in muddy conditions?? 

But as all Nike fans know, we buy the shoes in spite of their faults because they're like nothing else, and that's reason enough especially if you can afford them anyway.

So when the Lunarepics came out there was no question that I wanted a pair. My excitement grew even more fever pitched when Nike.com finally opened an online store for New Zealand. But at $270, I had to do some research before forking out the money. I got the chance on a trip to Melbourne which in hindsight, was organised partly because I was hoping to get the shoes in Australia.

But as it turned out, the black variant was rare; while it wasn't available at the outlet stores, I was able at least to see how they looked and my initial fear that they would look too bulky was put to rest. They looked just fine. Apparently, the women's version is identical to the men's and a black variant was available, hooray! And at just $150, it was a steal, but my joy was short-lived- checking it out at the counter, we discovered that the pair I had were two different sizes like WTF? Some stupid ass-bitch was out there wearing different sized shoes!

And my bad luck continues. I think. I finally bought them online and even after track and trace has placed them as having arrived in New Zealand 10 days ago, they have yet to bust out of customs, quarantine or whatever goddamned place they're being kept in. 

I didn't even get to the gym for a whole week (well, I had sinusitis anyway so) because I had used the shoe purchase to keep me motivated to sticking to my gym schedule; sans the shoes, I just lost the spirit. 

Silly I know, but if you're not a Nike devotee, you just wouldn't understand!

Post Script: the shipping did say 9-12 days and if that period discounted weekends, actual delivery should commence next week. I hope.

#TBT weird but pretty photos from Sony Xperia Z1

That foray into Android seems like a million years ago. But then, the Sony Xperia Z1 looked good- on paper at least; it was water-resistant, had a sleek, black rectangular body and a 20 megapixel camera.

A 20 MEGAPIXEL CAMERA FOR CHRISSAKES!

The thing is, I love taking photos but don't know much about photography.

I didn't even know that I could change the aspect-ratio of the Z1 so I was blissfully stuck with a whole bunch of photos that were taken at 16:9. It was a challenge to fit the world into a horizontal space, so I had to teach myself to look that on occasion, life looked best from a vertical angle. 

Happy birthday Binky!

I think that I tend towards writing fiction because I don't remember things very well. I think it also keeps me young in a sense- I'm never burdened by the past. When it's gone, it's gone and I only recall the good and happy memories. It makes for skipping and jumping towards the future much easier and less painful on the knees and joints too!

So on the occasion of Binky's birthday, I'll try to jog my memory a bit and try to recall stuff about her; she could always email to correct me if I got things wrong.

1. She won every beauty contest in high school

2. She got into UP Diliman but chose to study in Dagupan instead

3. She took the Physical Therapy national licensure exams a few months after graduating. The exams were somewhere in Pasay, or Cubao and were held for three consecutive days. Her fiance Al and I accompanied her and we all stayed in a motel that didn't have windows. I don't remember ever going out in those three days and just ordered in; my dad paid for all of it. It had a good result though; she ranked 11th over-all. 

4. My dad gave her and Al a bed and mattress as a wedding gift, but they didn't get to use it much because they had to leave for overseas. I ended up using the bed at home in Naguilayan.

5. The last time she visited the Philippines was 2004 when my dad passed away.

6. Happy birthday!