in my mind's eye

i am alive

yesterday, today tomorrow

where the blue sky never changes

it is the same blue,

and I am me, the way I have always been

in my mind’s eye

where i live forever.

Sometimes, it's easier to know what you're not (or a passel of adjectives)

1. Idle

2. Un-creative

3. Passive

4. Cruel

5. Weak

6. Selfish

7. Boring

8. Sad

9. Afraid

10. Fatalistic

Awful Things

1. Working too hard and actually liking it

2. Not being able to blog as often as I’d like

3. Crafting my best work- a comprehensive appeal to God on why I should win the lottery- and not winning anything

4. Not being able to determine if I’m inept at DIY things or if I’m just lazy

5. That I still can’t get my abs to show

6. Family members and friends who get divided by politics- like that is the STUPIDEST thing and I can hear Satan actually laughing in the background.

7. That winter last for only four months and not enough time to buy and wear all the beautiful coats you want

8. That 90% of content on Netflix and Neon is actually crap

9. When you realise you’ve wasted three hours on that crap

10. When time flies and doesn’t give a shit about you

A truth

“I don’t write anymore because I no longer feel lonely”

Working from home

work & home

I work at home when I usually need to do design and creative work and having peace and quiet helps.

creating your own space

This is the general area work space but I’m not feeling it

lunch

..is leftovers..I tried to do chicken cooked in pineapple but I ended up putting curry in it and mashed kumara and was not quite the Filipino dish that I was aiming for

My space

Bought a cheap $99 Ikea desk which is going into this space

Coffee break

I would usually end up having up to 3 espressos when working at home

The weekly list

1. Game of Thrones done and that was nearly a decade worth of episodes which makes you re-think of how you perceive the passage of time. Are you living life on your terms or is it hinged on superficial stuff that you consume like content-streaming?

2. Loving my Huawei P30 pro (shot above taken by it) but wondering how the current persecution of the company and anti-Chinese anything in general is going to affect it down the track.

3. Where are you Lei?

4. It’s June. Half the year gone.

5. Love should be steady and consistent.

6. When you finally warm up to the reality of home-ownership and open your wallet accordingly

7. Where do you see yourself 3 years from now?

Remember how complicated your child's birthday used to be?

It was Matt’s birthday last Friday but because everyone’s schedules was all over, dinner was re-set for Saturday. We went to Kalye Manila, a Filipino restaurant. Matt ordered everything he wanted to eat; he had sisig, tokwa’t baboy and lechon kawali. His grandmother would’ve been horrified, but he’s 23; he could eat anything he wants and does.

When you need a vacation to recover from a vacation

I hate travelling.

Give me a good book (or Netflix), a quiet day without any commitments to work and two comforting meals (like the poached chicken above) and i’m all good. I will be restored.

Caught a slight chill in Australia with that scratchy throat and all the familiar accompanying symptoms.

Lozenges were all I could do then. When I got back, I just worked from home, made soup, avoided expending negative energy (eg. getting enraged at the news, reacting to people on social media).

And all was restored. For now at least.

Shopped out

I was minutes away from upgrading my Apple Series 2 watch to the 4; a stainless steel model in gold (after years of preferring silver) even if this was for the Australian market. The 4 series stainless steel Apple watch variants are not sold in New Zealand because the telcos have yet to adopt eSIM capable devices. If I bought it, the watch would have limited coverage as well as limited consumer protection guarantee if it somehow got broken but…

The meeting was delayed. I sighed, adjusting the sleeve of my knitted cashmere shirt. The stainless steel Apple watch in gold on my wrist with its matching gold Milanese loop, glinted as it caught the light. The face complication mimics that of a mechanical watch, but rendered in full digital colour and this contrast between the traditional and the new never fails to excite me…

It’s perfect I murmur to the sales-staff (a woman in her late 30s wearing horn-rimmed glasses) who knew that I was on the verge of buying it, that I was the type who bought these things. It would be my dressy watch, I had told her earlier as she nodded approvingly; and in my head, for when I get that cashmere knit, the pale tan Chinos, the navy-blue double-breasted pea-coat and suede Chelsea boots to go with it.

The enumeration of these items, of where I’d get them, of how much they’d cost, of which other item of clothing they’d match with in so many combinations felt as if I had fallen down a steep stairwell, everything a blur, a jumble of colour.

A co-worker called her to come over for a second and when she turned her back, I stood up from where I had fallen and slipped away as stealthy as a ninja and escaped.

Is it outrageous to spend over AUS$5,000 for a bag? In my mind, having already spent the same amount for a non-essential, it doesn’t seem to be.

The black Yves Saint Laurent Sac Du Jour is done in a seamless matte black leather with matching matte black hardware and padlock. The first one I had ever seen was in shiny, black croc skin which I thought was too feminine. But this one was perfect- it had heft and a structure that meant you could put in it, your grey MacBook Pro and black iPad Pro; you’d need several Classic Moleskine notebooks as well, a proper metal pen and none of those gel-inked ones that may stain the bag.

I would need ink-black Nudie jeans (a tighter, skinnier fit than the pair I already own); a black pair of Brogue boots; red plaid shirt and maybe a sleeveless puffer jacket (dark green?).

I work in a part of Auckland that Aucklanders describe as rough; but of course the standards for rough are vastly different from the standards I used to apply when I still lived in the Philippines. Rough meant that the only eating places within walking distance were a Burger King and a bakery. Rough meant that when you were waiting for the bus or caught the train that you were a bit more careful than usual about who was loitering around (like 6 foot tall teens who would steal shoes off your feet if they liked them).

Rough meant that some staff go to work in clothes I would only wear at home- not that there’s anything wrong with that.

And I take public transport- sometimes I take the train, walking along a walk-way which at night or even at noon could be trouble.

And here I was possibly walking through it with a $5K bag with $5K worth of tech inside, in $250 jeans and a $350 puffer jacket.

I put the bag down, thanked the sales assistant for her time and walked out the store.

---

I had to go to a bookstore, like this one
Bookstores and libraries are my safe places,
I feel reassured that somehow,
when everything has been lost, taken
by fate, or by foolish choices,
I will find myself here again.
All I have to do is look

Dinner

Does walking an average of 8kms a day justify eating pizza?

I don't like this camera anymore (in the tone of a petulant child)

I’ve discovered that sales-staff at camera shops know their stuff, like I think that some of them are actual photographers or content creators. The good thing about this is that they can point you out in the right direction in terms of what gear to get. On one hand, you’ll encounter someone so passionate about their craft that they FAIL to distinguish between their personal opinions and their duty to provide factual information and advice.

‘I never did warm up to the (Lumix) G9” I said. ‘Why??” He replied, ‘I have a G9’, his face showed slight irritation as if what I said was a personal repudiation of his own ownership of one. After a few more awkward words, he took the camera (the new Lumix S1) off my hands and I left.

Well fuck you, I thought. I may not be a completely knowledgeable photographer but I don’t sweat long hours working in a stupid camera shop and acting like a know-it-all asshole.

I don’t like my camera anymore and it’s as simple as that. Trouble is, after having spent nearly $5,000 getting my current one only a few months back, where am I gonna get another $5,000 to get a new one?

Reading: Fires by Raymond Carver

“I once sat down to write what turned out to be a pretty good story, though only the first sentence of the story had offered itself to me when I began it. For several days I’d been going around with this sentence in my head: “He was running the vacuum cleaner when the telephone rang.” I knew a story was there and that it wanted telling. I felt it in my bones, that a story belonged with that beginning, if i could just have the time to write it. I found the time, an entire day- twelve, fifteen hours even- if I wanted to make use of it. I did, and sat down in the morning and wrote the first sentence, and other sentences promptly began to attach themselves. I made the story just as I’d make a poem; one line and then the next. Pretty soon I could see a story, and I knew it was my story, the one I’d been wanting to write.”

— Raymond Carver

Reading: Nutrient Dense Food on a Shoe-String Budget

I was calm today when we went to the Queen Victoria Market. The only time I audibly gasped was when I saw a stand selling bratwurst on a good-sized baguette and with sauerkraut that reminded me of insipid atchara. I’ve been here three times so it wasn’t at all startling to see mounds of antipasto (six kinds of olive, octopus, apricot stuffed with sweetened mascarpone), french pastry, cured meats and pale-pink langoustine cooling on beds of ice. I had the bratwurst and then $10 worth of what locals call chicken ribs (which is really a chicken’s scapula, the meat on which is part of the breast) which has a bit of crispy, rendered skin and a good enough sliver of meat). And it wasn’t even 9:30am.

But I tell myself, I’m on holiday and of course, normalcy goes out the window.

And that’s good because at some point, you’d really want to go back to the normalcy of ‘normal’ food. It’s cost-effective (I got a $20 sliver of truffled manchego cheese) and healthy (the last time I had greens was four days ago). In the afternoon, rummaging through a clearance book centre I found what I thought was a good $3 deal for a cookbook or any book for that matter. Nutrient Dense Food on a Shoe-String Budget by Arabella Forge won’t win you Master Chef, but that’s the whole point of real cooking- simplicity, flavour and practicality (guess how I could buy that Gucci bumbag I’ve been eyeing? Yup, by savings from preparing basic meals, a compromise which to me, is a win-win).

Basic in this sense, means the right kind of food; unprocessed, fresh, nutritious and cheap.

Looking forward to:

1. Making my own DIY bacon

2. Shifting shopping sources to local farmer’s markets

3. Stricter food planning

4. Making natural sauces

5. Baked apples stuffed with mince and peas

6. Making kim chi

7. Making lemon curd cheese

8. Pickled salmon (yum!)

Huawei is 'able to make splendid things'...

Translated, Huawei according to Wikipedia means ‘splendid act’. It can also mean ‘China is able’. So let me mash those together and say that Huawei is really ‘able to make splendid things’ like perhaps the most spectacular camera-phone ever made yet. Let’s face it- phones are now cameras in which we all communicate in visual short-hand via emojis, Instagram, Snapchat. I have always been after the perfect image, the most compelling shot and in in lieu of the written word, I take photos instead.

And so now, I carry two phones with me which is kinda stupid isn’t it?

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Macro Mode (a table-mat's weave up-close)

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Wide-Angle is my favourite

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Wide-Angle

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I look better on Android and that's a fact

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It's funny..

You could repeat every line and word from the last post from Jan 11 and it would describe exactly what every week and month was since then.

Literally wash, rinse, dry, repeat. April is nearly done. I turned a year older, actual age irrelevant. Matt will be 22 in May and spends his days ordering food via Uber. Leila should’ve stayed behind in the UK. Dagupan burned in the summer-heat. Elections are coming up in the Philippines and the only reason I care is because for some strange reason, I even bothered to sign up to vote even when we know that it’s POINTLESS. When I think of it, it makes me want to vomit bile; it makes me think of horrible things I would like to do if I only had the means because the truth is this- NOTHING HAS CHANGED. What does it take to remove a mountain blocking your path? YOU BLOW IT UP (God, forgive me).

(Breathe)

I need to put this aside because another truth is this- it’s no longer my life, even part of my family is still there; it’s no longer my reality. When I putter around the house that I bought and see a sunrise across the Pahurehure inlet where the Auckland Southern motorway runs through, it is something that absolutely does not remind me of anything of the life I left behind. It feels that I am starting again, that this is finally, the life I actually want.

Everything is both new and old. I am both old and young.

And then it starts..

A whole work-week finally done. What did I accomplish? A lot actually. And the thing is, no matter how much I love my job or how interesting it is, I’ve never really blogged about it. It’s enough that after I clock out (while actually still doing snippets of work after work, on the weekends, on the bus, on my vacation…) there is little enough (just in my mind I believe) time or energy for personal stuff which is funny and ironical because the stuff I like to do after work is the same thing I do for work (insert that laughing emoji with tears).

But this week I managed to maintain a decent work-out routine. It helped I think that I got new shoes to motivate me (insert that laughing emoji again with the tears.)

I also got my new glasses and at the bus stop today I struggled juggling the damned things- take out the reading ones to read texts; put it back and put on the distance ones to check the bus time-table; put everything away and take out the sunnies because the bus is coming.

After having vowed never to buy Wayfarers again after having lost my fifth pair, I bought a new one (OMFG, insert that laughing emoji again with the tears ) because they were 60% off. Who can resist that tell me?

Plum Cake

I’m not much of a fruit-person really but it’s hard to ignore fruit when they’re growing everywhere; and Kiwis don’t generally care if their yard is carpeted with fallen fruit just rotting away. So what to do with a bagful of plums from Jong’s garden and from the neighbours at Wattle Downs? Make a plum cake.

This recipe- and there are a million recipes for this cake- is from Chelsea Sugar’s Recipe Club Bake-Off winner and uses almond meal which I think gives this cake (and fig cake which I’ve done before) a lighter, airier texture which I like.

• Ingredients:
  10 dark red plums
  3 Tbsp white Sugar
  300g butter
  1½ cups white Sugar (I only used 3/4 cup)
  3 eggs
  Zest of 1 orange (I didn’t have an orange so didn’t include this)
  1 tsp vanilla essence
  ½ cup milk
  1½ cups flour
  1 cup ground almonds
  1 tsp baking powder
  Icing Sugar for sprinkling

• Method

  Preheat oven 180°C and grease a 26cm tin. Cut plums, discard stones and put into a bowl with 3 Tbsp sugar. Set aside.
  
  Beat butter and sugar until creamy. Add eggs one at a time and then mix in zest and vanilla. Stir in milk, flour, almonds and baking powder.
  
  Spread into prepared tin and then place plums over the top. Bake for 1 hour.
  Sprinkle icing sugar on top when cool