Lookie!

My first and only action fig was a GI Joe character named Beach Head. After losing his tubes I lost interest in these muscled dolls and pondered on their purpose. Barbies on steroids? Digital camera came too late, and my sense of humor has yet to mature twelve years later.

In other news, I've setup Fire Water Husband: Leave. Shoot. Eat. I've finally found a way to marry photography, food and design (is marriage allowed for more than two parties?). I was inspired by Good Housekeeping's centurygothicked cookbook series. Time, or the lack of it, is but another matter so lower your expectations, thank you. Takes too long to load in dial-up, but the photo dimensions are made that way.

Vigan-bound tomorrow evening.

Would I? Should I?

Strange, I find Heny Sison sexy. She's up there in my pantheon alongside Nigella Lawson, Monica Belluci, Kylie Minogue, Pearlsha Abubakar and Cindy Kurleto.

Just yesterday I discovered gravlax. It's not the drug for constipation, but if you didn't do the recipe right it might be. It's not smoked salmon we see in hotel buffets, but one cured in dill (or in this case, lemon verbena or lemongrass) and salt for two or three days. Just a slice and I smell Scandinavia what it ought to be in my imagination, snow snow snow everywhere, much like how coriander turns my kitchen into a busy Chung Li night market where the pungency of barbecues mingles with the breath of a Taiwanese girl.

Brushing aside the family propensity for colon cancer, I subscribe to the maxim "Life is too short to drink bad wine and to eat bad food." from Mireille Guiliano, author of "French Women Don't Get Fat". I won't finish canteen food if the dinuguan is just pork fat swimming in sacrilegious coagulation, a bangus relleno when the meat is boardy as leather, or the notorious Backburner from Kitchen which is more rice coffee than chicken soup. I won't say no to clear fish soup like pesa or grilled tuyo paired with tomatoes. But pork swimming in thick sauce gives me the vertigo, unless it is pressure-cooked pork humba with its caramel-coated flesh melting in my mouth like infinity. I'd trade my soul for a wedge of gravlax, or even a thick strip of sashimi.

That would be indulgence.

*Image courtesy of Cooking for Engineers.

We received about 25 entries for the upcoming Warm Bodies 3 and are now into the editing portion. Portion being the operative word here, well-loved by our noontime hosts like Chiqui Hollmann-Yulo and Jam Morales, not to mention Pilita Corrales' spiel every Sunday night, to affix and integrate She's Got The Look's question and answer portion, Ang Bagong Kampeon's Pwede Pa Kami portion or an ethnic rendition of a Madonna medley in a Little Miss Philippines talent portion into the whole program.

Much of the entries, at least those assigned to me, dealt with how music and performers shaped their growing-up years. Some of them reminded me of music articles I have read on the pages of Jingle Extra Hot, the only thing lacking is the solid square of ink that's supposed to show the artist's image. Some are enumerative and should have sent me timeline diagrams instead. In fairness, 20 years ago is history and the estates of Teodoro Agoncillo and Gregorio Zaide should take note to revise their books with Vincent Daffalong and APO Hiking Society.

At least one of them mentioned a specific boyband that I can't relate to but somehow rekindled my irritation against them.

Now that is what I call nostalgia.

Until then, we will notify the lucky homepartner, I mean, the blogger who makes it to Warm Bodies 3. I won't mention them in the grand finals portion since most are searchable within the Internet and the fun will be spoiled.

We'll just keep you posted. Saranghameda, Bo.

So I played pizza boy over the weekend which started Friday at our village's bazaar. My bones still ache from bending in front of the oven, running from one customer to the other and carrying boxes of frozen stuff from the house. After the first day, it's become second nature to execute the histrionics with gusto, even in my sleep.

And I will be starting my social realism at this point. Where is the justification for a 300-peso minimum wage when at the end of the day, your body aches with all the movements you've performed an hour before opening and another after closing? Carry styro boxes. Thaw pizza. Pre-heat oven. Arrange storefront. Put on uniform. Wash hands. Look good. Greet prospective customers. Convince customer to buy pizza. Get order. Load pizza into oven. Turn every three minutes. Pack into box. Recite the thank you spiel. Check inventory. Prepare sales report. Pack things, go home and take a shower.

At peak hours you get to do these all at the same time, not to mention deal with low-EQ customers, an unreliable oven and a full bladder. Sometimes I feel like I want to subscribe to Thads Bentulan's Hyperwage Theory. 300 won't get you anywhere, and it can't buy you a good painkiller or a massage on top of your daily necessities after the backbreaking free facial in front of a 250-degree oven. I'd say give 20,000 pesos to the vendor too. Good thing that I have my day job and this is just an experiment in franchising, in running a business and promoting the product to the village folks.

Realizing how much we gained from the three-day exercise, I said to the wife that if it were not for the experience, I would have reported to the office the whole day Sunday and got more than the profit we calculated.

But as the cliche goes, I've learned a lot and collected some epiphanies.

People prefer Hawaiian. Harsh. No, I will valiantly defend my thesis that a pizza with pineapples or any other fruit is not called a pizza. Minimum required colors are red, white and green for the Italian flag and they should be represented by the tomato sauce, cheese and capsicum, respectively. The green thingy should be enough to provide the sweetness.

They want it cheap. I feel the reality of the economic crunch and the shrinking power of the peso. One customer asked if he can buy in slices, and I said there are miniature versions that we sell. There's a boy who thought he could buy one with his five pesos. Well yes, if you can go back to 1986 when a slice of 3M is worth 2.50. Price is proportional to quality. The tarpauline pictures are liars, and a fully-loaded dough with toppings screaming for space with a below-100 pesos tag price is just a myth.

If it's pizza for the masses, it's called "pee-cha pie." One with bread-like dough, none of the pliant, tasteless mozzarella but the generic "pizza cheese". Must be sweet. And customers should use hot sauce like it was iced tea--bottomless.

No other immersion program or retreat can beat selling pizza to show you the harshness of living. Berating a vendor is tantamount to fascism, like beating a fallen rallyist with a truncheon.

If I see another box of pizza in my lifetime, I might get a plastic twine, tie it, insert a piece of table napkin and a sachet of hot sauce, and say "Thank you ma'am/sir. Balik po kayo." I won't perform the proverbial faint.

There was a time when I know classes will be cancelled. That is, when the rain makes an endless metallic patter on the zinc roof like it does on an anahaw leaf, an open umbrella or a stretched tarpauline, when I wake an hour too early until the time I get out of bed.

It is when a freshly-ironed school uniform feels like a gossamer embrace, useless but warm on a sudden holiday. Mama is mending a tattered shirt. The radio is crooning "How much is that doggy in the window?" followed by Dobol B's station ID followed by Nilo Rosas' flowery announcement.

I'd never take off these clothes and sleep in them again. By the time I get up three hours later my soul tries to linger more in its reclaimed freedom.

I hear a father-in-law's Jupiterian banter, a wife's tap on the keyboard, a son's wake-up cry.

Silence has never been home again.

One more day to go and we have seven people as of last count who sent their entries, plus several pledges, to Warm Bodies 3: Nostalgia Galore.

Must. Cast. The. Net. Wider. One. Last. Time.

UPDATE: Make that nine.

We're everywhere, in case you want to know.

Blogs
Phil's Notebook
Touchkey's Other Side
The Sassy Lawyer
Notes from the Peanut Gallery
Homunculus
Digital Filipino
About A Pinoy
iblog - The 1st Philippine Blogging Summit

e-Newspapers:
SunStar Cebu
YOU Blog Addicts

and many others.

EWF image courtesy of this site.

From Oliver from Chris. Just because I'm writing something else and blogging seems to get in the way.

20 years ago

My mother asked if I can be put in the star section the next year. She convinced my teacher that being consistent in the top spot merits a slot, which I got the year after until I graduated. She also bought me a Musical Multiplication cassette tape which I pined for months.

I never knew anything about Ninoy, but spelling the word "assassination" predicted a three-year hold on the Spelling Bee Champion throne which would be reprised in my last year in high school.

Had my first taste of pornography as my uncles watched from a film projector inside a nearby warehouse. There really is a purpose in corncobs, I concluded.

15 years ago

Turnover to a new decade without Papa around. Discovered masturbation, its relic a dark spot on my pillow which survived to this day, hidden somewhere in our ancestral home when Mama retired officially.

Argued with classmate on masturbation-associated guilt. Consulted a very nice priest who said beating the bishop is ok as long as it does not become a habit. Court girls, he said.

Start of the dark ages. I left the 80's Chucky Dreyfus look and faced the backprinted shirts and Vans loafers with reluctance. Good thing there were no pictures to remind.

The year after, Wilson Philips and Kylie Minogue came. And so did I with long midnight sessions in the bathroom.

10 years ago

Batch president, UP 49ers. I'm more of the lion accepting commands from the ringmaster.

Had my first taste of failure in my whole academic life in Engineering Science 11 and got used to its sequels. Late-night study sessions at the Burger Machine in Quezon Avenue and Wendy's Tandang Sora. Smuggled beer and I woke up to a half-naked roommate before an exam.

Very dull and tense year.

5 years ago

Y2K is one big effing marketing ploy! My Nokia 5110 still worked. But Erap didn't. Jobs are few and far between because I'm picky, temping for a government metrology program that never took off.

Later landed in one where I stayed for four years. Kvetch is a great breakfast I'd take every working day except payday.

3 years ago

Discovered blogging. And because I aged, much better than masturbation, though the two aren't exactly poles apart. I can do them at the same time. Discovered multi-tasking too.

Staying in Shanghai for a month can be lonely too. Thus the paragraph above.

Last year

Tagged myself as a resignation letter expert. Damn, I wish I've given one person the butt-smacking he deserves. But looking at the present arrangement, I can say that karma is cooked a la Provence. Too many herbs, too long to prepare, but tastes good in the end anyway.

This year

Moved to Laguna and renounced all the white noise of the big city. There are weekly pilgrimages to the altar of sophistication which can't seem to get out of my system though.

Sometimes transferring to a new job is a better pimple treatment than full-strength PanOxyl.

Yesterday

Got down to business. Serious business with all financial accounting, inventory management and pre- and post-closing procedures. The works.

Last night

Finished Rama Revealed, the last installment in Arthur C. Clarke's Rama chronicles. Then wrote my first 600 words for a dragon fic entry.

Today

Work. Not really. Countdown to payday.

Tomorrow

Still work. But I spring back to life at 5:30.

Next year

Still holding on to a day job. I wouldn't say here or anywhere else, but I'd probably be fine.

I know I'm getting published.

5-10 years from now

The boys will start with grade school.

We'll be having a contest of This Was What Sex Was Like In The 90's What Is It Now?

Nest egg grows and I'll be living off retirement and some royalties. The engineering life becomes a blur, except when the boys want some help with their homeworks or the wife complains about the poso negro.


Go tag yourself!

Finally. People of the world, meet my lifedrive, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Will be busy over the weekend poking her with my stylus.

Image courtesy of Amazon.