relieving drudgery at petit barracks

a good part of my family's time and money last month was spent on formalizing our baby racket. (the better part was spent on this, haha). husband, who has more experience than me in registering a business, did most of the work. i only went with him when my presence - aka my signature - was needed.

to while away the time as we waited, waited, and then waited some more at BIR, DTI, city licensing, city health, city police, city treasurer, city jail (joke. even listing them down here makes me want to pull my hair out at the memory of the mind-killing drudgery and i HAVE TO insert a joke somewhere to keep me sane), i brought along my camera.


this is city health. that is what oficina de salud means, for those of you who do not know any better.

this is where you can wait, wait, wait as the salud people inside attend to your needs s-l-o-w-l-y. but at least the waiting can be done in style, don't you think?

while i was taking these pictures, my husband was doing all the things our city government graciously enough listed in the surprisingly easy to understand billboard here. our taxes, for once, working to make our lives easier! yey!


city health is on petit barracks, one of the nicest places in the city. i wanted to take pictures of the acacia-lined street and the other old buildings in the area but i really thought that husband would not like it if, when it was FINALLY our turn at the window and he needed my signature or something, i would be missing. i still value my life and limbs so i only took pictures of things that were within shouting distance of my already frazzled husband. this old structure was only a building away from oficina de salud.


the house next to it was more picturesque but you already know why i could not, at that time, take a picture of it.

in crush

i am so deeply in crush with edward cullen its disgusting.

in the past two weeks i managed to read all five books in the series (yes, even the aborted fetus of a book that is midnight sun) AT LEAST TWO TIMES EACH and watch the dvd FOUR TIMES.

to fully realize the magnitude of that accomplishment, you have to know that last week was exam week of BOTH my two elder kids and my three college classes.

and while i love watching movies, i am the kind who has to let at least a month pass before i will watch the same one again.

but no. for edward cullen, i repeated and repeated and repeated. i have been staying awake til 2am on average. i sneak in a film viewing at lunch break. i download stills from the movie into my laptop. i keep everything a secret from my husband (he wouldn't understand) and my eldest son (he would understand too much and would tease me endlessly about it).

and they weren't even good books nor movie.

yes, i am infatuated. its horribly juvenile but so delightful at the same time. sort of reminds me of the years before 1993, my crush years. i miss my crushes (obet, alan, ericson, another alan, michael, terby). their existence made my teenage years extraordinary. for that, i am eternally grateful and so i hope they are somewhere happy. hopefully, for their sakes as well as mine, somewhere away from this blog. more specifically, away from this particular post.

so i really though my crush days were over. and then he came. move over ariel delgado. make room for the new vampire in my life:

kate moss wants my halo-halo

i love, love, love, LOVE icy edibles.

i can't resist ice candy, slurpee, ice drop, refrigerator cake, buko salad.

surprisingly, i don't like all ice cream. from nestle's (or is it magnolia? the one with the annoyingly upbeat jingle) roving vendors, i prefer the icy treats rather than the creamy ones: jelly tongue over drum stick.

what i do love with all my black, well, gray, heart is halo-halo.

my sister treated me to razon's halo-halo at market-market in ft. bonifacio. it was very good. i sort of wanted to stop eating when she told me 1/3rd into my tall glass that the secret to its unusual creaminess is carabao milk. eww.

but my pagka haragan (the chavacano word for matakaw but which i prefer because it sounds ruder) prevailed and i finished my razon's hh 'til the last single drop, even as i shivered and huddled into my too-thin blouse, not expecting what the news program later reported as an cold front.

last weekend, i had halo-halo again. but no razon's in zamboanga. so i had this.


it's only Ps 10 from a stall on the side entrance of LB Supermarket on tumaga. I told them to hold the red food coloring because i am more than 8 years old.

let's be realistic. it was only 10 pesos. the plastic glass probably cost 1.25. the plastic spoon, .65. the ice, maybe .50 cents. so they had to make do with a little over 7 for the milk, banana, sago, ube jam, nangka. so all that considered, the halo-halo was good. the razon's probably cost my sister between 75 to 100.

look at the photo again. even kate moss was looking at my halo-halo with desire in her eyes.

11 months more

today is the last day of the first month the the year 2009. an occasion so momentous, i want to take dedicate a whole post, a whole salamagan post, to...my favorite annual planner.

for five years now, i have been using the planner Pioneer Insurance gives out to its friends and valued clients. i am neither to pioneer insurance. i just get them from either my former boss or eldest sister.


i've seen better planners. the collector's planner ING gave out in 2002 still makes me regret not being on their friends list. leather bound, gilded pages, the yummiest paper ever. sigh.

but pioneer insurance planner and i, we go a looooong way back.


on cold, lonely days, i get out my planners, look lovingly at each entry, and say to myself: you have not been lazy naman pala this past five years, yen.

zamboanga bloggers

my friend ryann elumba over at seed interactive is trying to create a database of zamboangueño bloggers. He says:

"This petition is for all Zamboangueños (even those who are living in another city or country) who own a blog...Zamboanga bloggers can participate regardless of the type of blog service provider (i.e. blogspot, wordpress, multiply, friendster)."

thanks ryann for initiating this worthwhile project. i hope many will submit their blogs for inclusion.

my boa constrictor

if he could swallow the book whole like a boa constrictor, he would. the reason why i am posting this photo now is to commemorate a new love: bicycling. and instances of him lounging like this are on the wane.

his first bike run was along the highway near our place (this is not his first time to ride a bike. he learned how to about three years ago then forgot all about it). he came home with a badly abraded ankle and knee and a grin that reached his temples. the second run was a secret until he arrived home, filthy, recounting his ride from our house, to san jose, then baliwasan, then camins, then sta. maria, then back home to san roque. the third time, just this weekend, he went to boulevard! by himself! alone! solo! without a companion!

something has finally captivated him as passionately as reading has.

Merloquet

when you did something particularly jologs (though the word didn't enter my lexicon until i started teaching college students), the neighborhood kids in my particular purok of baranggay san roque, zamboanga city had a vile label for you: "de omerloket".

i didn't know what, where, who "de omerloket" was. i was a snotty kid just arrived from the even more provincial hinunangan, southern leyte, frustrated in my struggle to always remember that "ojas" was leaf and "ojos" meant eyes, and keeping the bile down when new friends suggested we cook "atole" because that just meant congee and will not require us to pool our ear waxes in an empty can of alpine and cook it over dead banana leaves.

i eventually learned what "de omerloket" implied. it roughly translates into "from a place called Omerloket." it further implied that the inhabitants of this mythical place were ignorant, hick, uncouth, awkwardly simple, maybe even...dumb.

so if you are from omerloket (de omerloket), you are all of those things i just said.

so we avoided doing anything that would merit the label. thus my ongoing quest for coolness started.

so i was dumbstruck when 30 or so years later, a friend of a friend tells me Omerloket does exists. Its an interior baranggay near Vitali. and it's name is more sophisticated than our childhood phonetic spelling: its actually Merloquet. see, it even sounds faintly French. and the inhabitants, they apparently wear clothes. some even have cellphones. imagine that.

now, it's famous (in fairness to me, not THAT famous) for its waterfalls:


the people you see crouching on the stones are not cave men, they are mountaineers from the lowlands. among them, i think, is the friend of my friend who is now my friend too. her name is suzette. this photo was taken by her co-mountaineer.

if someone calls me "de omerloket" now, i wouldn't mind. with this in your backyard, who would?