Lights(Off), Camera, Action!

Earth Hour 2009. Helping save the planet in our own little way with our little one.

Conquering the Galunggong

I am proud to announce that I have advanced from gigi mangler...


...to a competent enough gigi handler.


Yes, I cleaned them all myself. This time without fuss. Without any cuss words. Without a single gigi head out of place.

Seasoned Traveler

Little Indie seems to think of herself as one. She's perfectly at ease at big airports. She appears to be no stranger to take offs and touchdowns. And shows every indication of familiarity with on-board routine.

During a flight from Bangkok to Manila, upon seeing the stewardesses with the food trolley, she immediately formed a megaphone-like circle over her mouth and dutifully announced to all passengers:

"Eating time, eating time!"

I Think My Hotpot Is Hot

In a month’s time, my hotpot has evolved from edible to yummy, having been the melting pot of a few "learnings" here and there…

1. Beef should be sukiyaki cut. Always. It’s easier on the palate, not to mention the teeth.
2. Add carbs. Like corn. Or noodles. For obvious reasons.
3. Squid balls take some time to cook. A little patience is necessary.
4. The more onion leeks, the better. (Yes, even if they make you cry.)
5. Chili flakes are essential. They add oomph, even to tasteless, flavorless stock.
6. Hot pots look hot with really nice chopsticks.
7. It’s bok choy, not botchok. Always remember and save self from another embarrassing moment in the palengke.

To-Die-For(?) Shoes

Thrice I learned about it. First from a poster hanging by the door of the Crocs store in Greenbelt 5. Second from the Sunday paper. Third from my BPI credit card bill.

Yes, three times. I took it as a sign for me to go and get my little one a new pair.

We, my husband Nubs, my sister Pie, my daughter Indie and myself, arrived at the venue, a tent somewhere along Meralco Ave., 30 minutes later than the designated time which was 10 in the morning. And to our surprise—or should I say horror— there was a line. No, make that two, one for BPI cardholders and another one for those who do not own a BPI card.

The lines were long and getting longer by the minute. It was pretty obvious the event organizers were unprepared for the onslaught of people wanting to get their hands on a marked down pair of the immensely popular, brightly colored rubber sandals.

They stopped letting customers in by 10:45, claiming that the place was jampacked already, and we were among the unlucky ones left to wait under the scorching sun. By midday the sun had grown too hot and had caused quite a good number of hotheads to emerge from the swelling crowd.

There was a middle-aged Chinese man who issued invectives at one defenseless female staff at the gate. There was another guy who shouted kapal ng mukha mo at a woman trying to get in with total disregard for the queuing public. There was a verbal battle, I overheard, that ensued between two car owners in a contest for parking space. It was utter madness and I was afraid a gunshot would be next!

Was all this worth it? I was about to tell Nubs that we should just go home when the guards opened the doors again and, suddenly, I was inside the tent scrambling for a pair of maryjanes for Indie at 60% off and other pairs for my nephews Bubbi and Mojo and niece Yanna at Pie’s bidding. The effort took more than an hour.

The lines leading to the cash registers were discouraging as well. There were only 12 or so cashiers servicing hundreds of shoppers buying around 6 pairs each on the average.

It was a struggle every step of the way. For people from different walks of life. Whose idea of saving in the face of the looming recession was not holding back from spending but shopping at whatever % savings. Who would risk being out there even when things threaten to get ugly. All for the most comfortable but ugliest shoes on earth.

Littlest Bar Girl

When my cousin Charles was home for the holidays, drinking was a nightly staple among us everyday of that week he was with us. The few evenings we spent without going out were reserved for drinking still. As if automatically, it was "bar mode" as soon as dinner was over in our old apartment. That meant dimming all the lights to create an atmosphere conducive for beer and wine—my husband Nubs' idea actually.


One pre-"bar mode" night, Nubs was busy turning off the overhead lights and turning on the mood lamps when little Indie suddenly blurted out:

"Thanks for the drinks, Papa."

Something Fishy

After much furor and a handful of errors, my fledgling chef career has reached its lowest point. I came from the grocery store and brought home a small plastic bag of galunggong, among others, to cook sometime in the middle of the week. Incidentally, I googled galunggong or gigi for short and learned that female gigi is hard-tail mackerel in English while male gigi is round scad. Of course, I had no way of telling the gender of the bunch of dead fish lying on the kitchen sink so I'm not going to refer to these in English for purposes of this entry but will instead use the fish's popular nickname among us Pinoys.


It was my second time to buy gigi and the first time was uneventful as it should be. And so nothing prepared me for the shock of finding my gigis unready for the freezer, uncleaned, complete with all their insides that should have been taken care of by the grocery staff. I was in panic mode! My husband was not there to do something or, at the very least, to listen to me curse. I had never cleaned a single fish in my life before and had no idea how to do it. All I knew was that there was icky stuff to take out of it and that was it. But I just couldn't bring myself to do it! Gore has never been my kind of thing. I watched Kill Bill with eyes closed for the most part of the movie. I dropped out of B.S. Biology knowing I'd never have the stomach to open up a frog. So how? How on earth could I possibly pull this one off?


I took a deep breath, tongs in one hand, plastic covering the other, I tried to extract whatever needed extracting but everything just won't come off. So I did away with the tongs and gave it another try with my kitchen shears. When that still didn't work, I settled with my hands.

Only when I was over and done with the job did I really stop to look again at the poor gigis. It was an appalling sight! One fish's body gaped open as if it was attacked by a wild animal. One seemed to have lost its head to a vicious encounter with a psychopath. And the rest looked like they were abused, mauled, tortured by a person who had gone amok.


I was home alone and was near tears. By the time my husband showed up, I was in a foul mood and I refused to speak to him until I fell asleep. It took me quite some time to accept that I just did not take to cooking—and other related tasks—like a fish to water.