Corne's Store

It's a little mom-and-pop-type convenience store, owned by Cora and Ne Ne, that sits on the corner of the main road going north and south along the western coast of Cebu Island, and the little mountain road going up to Emelie's house and beyond. Cora is Emelie's cousin. Ne Ne is a relative as well. The place is usually busy, as it serves the mountain people coming to town or going home, who want load (minutes) for their cell phones, cigarettes, beer and pop and other sundries.

The store is in the front part of an old, wooden house, close to the street. The front is opened up with a half-wall going from ground level up to about 4 feet and a wooden counter on the top of it. Customers rest an elbow on the counter to order, quench their thirst, smoke or have a snack while chatting with the owners or other customers. Cigarettes can bought one at a time for a peso - about two and a half cents. Lighters hang down from the ceiling on strings over the counter. Its not unusual to see a small child standing on tiptoes, pulling herself up with one hand, while holding a peso in the other, waiting patiently to buy a piece of candy from one of the candy jars.

There are always a few folks sitting on the weathered old bench out front to watch the traffic go by, or wait for a habal habal (motorcyle-taxi) driver to take them back up the mountain.

Relatives and friends who come down from the mountain often hang out in the common room of the house and chat with whomever is there. They are always invited to eat when its meal time. Emelie and I have eaten there several times. There are a couple of bamboo couches where you can relax, get a massage from Cora's sister, Fe, drink beer, chat or take a nap. Done them all, myself. More than once.

If you find yourself standing around, you might be buying something one moment and waiting on customers the next. It's hard to know who is an employee and who is just helping out for the moment. Girlie works at the store on Tuesdays. Josephine comes with her baby when she's needed. Emelie's sister, Jane, helps when she's there, carrying her little girl, Mimi, in her arms. Any of the other relatives will lend a hand when they happen to be hanging out. It gets a little crowded at times, but Filipinos, even if they might bump into one another in close quarters, are never guilty of stepping on toes. Just part of their culture: never offend, if you can help it.

A Small Bakery, Philippine Style

I mentioned, in a previous post, about a delicious bread they call coco bread. It is made in small, mom-and- pop bakeries just about everywhere in the area. The coco bread has a fresh, coconut filling in the middle of a delicious roll.

Kneeding the dough between rollers

Well, here are some pictures of a bakery just about a kilometer from our house. The bakery takes up most of the small home of the couple who own it. The two are hard working: they both bake and take turns driving their tricycle-taxi, like the one Emelie and I use to transport ourselves and family around town, only they use theirs, picking up passengers for 7 peso a ride, to add income to the small profit they make from the bakery.*

Their cocobread is the best I've eaten from the several bakeries in the area that make the same bread.

Baking pans with rolls waiting to go into the oven

From Scratch:
The bread dough is mixed then put through rollers to kneed, then laid on a large table where the baker pulls off just the right size chunks of dough and places them on baking pans. His practiced hands move very quickly. No measuring is done but all his rolls are exactly the same size and shaped perfectly into the several kinds of rolls he is making.

Two oil drums made into an oven

When the oven is hot and the rolls are ready, the pans are put into the oven, which is made of two, fifty-five gallon drums laid down,placed side by side and surrounded by concrete blocks cemented together for support and insulation.Dried sticks of wood are fed into the cavity under the ovens, on ther right-hand side. After 30 years of baking bread, the baker knows just how much wood to use to get the oven to operating temperature. No thermometer is used, either. The temperature is adjusted only by how much wood he feeds into the oven's bottom. And he pulls the bread from the oven whenever he thinks it is time, without using a  timer.

Halfway through the baking process, the rolls are removed and the pans are turned around 180 degrees, for even baking, because the ovens do not heat evenly throughout. The red dot in the center of each roll distinguishes the coco bread from other filled rolls of the same shape. These are starting to look pretty darn good!

The finished product : Coco bread!

Well, here is the fresh-baked coco bread, hot and delicious. Just wonderful with a cup of coffee or hot chocolate. Three is my minimum and maximum. Never less, never more.

Hats off to the Filipinos who are small business owners, like the man and woman who own this bakery. Their profit margin is slim, yet they work all day long, seven days a week to support their families.

*At the request of the owners, I have not mentioned their names.

Shall We Meet at, Say, Tomorrowish?

August 13, 2012

It's just another evening. We came to the internet cafe somewhere between 7 and 7:30PM, not really caring exactly where the minute hand fell within that window of time.  That's a reflection of our lifestyle; of the Philippine lifestyle, actually. In this age of precision and exactitude, with atomic clocks that err no more than a second a year, a sundial would be too much accuracy - a show of obsession about time - for most Filipinos. In fact, meetings are made for morning, afternoon or evening, or after one of the three major meals, with no mention of time.

We have attended PTA meetings for Clyde, Jan Mark, Frederick and Gabriel, and grade report meetings for those same boys, as well. On one of our first such attendances, the meeting was scheduled for 1PM at Kabatuan School. At 2PM, Emelie was still relaxing on the porch with a cup of coffee, while listening to the drama that drones on for hours from morning till late afternoon, 6 days a week. I asked her if we were still going to the school for the meeting. She said that, indeed, we were. Then she was silent, as if the subject was given all the attention it needed. 

"Well," I said, "Shouldn't we be going then? It's two PM now!"

She looked at her watch and yawned. "No hurry." She said. "It won't get started till at least three."

At 3PM, Emelie again looked at her watch. She got up slowly, walked to the bedroom and began to undress. I watched with interest, not knowing if she was planning a nap or a change of clothes. Half dressed, she stood still as a statue for a minute and half, and looked as if she was dreaming of far away places and times.

When I asked if we shouldn't be hurrying just a little, her reply was, "I don't want to be one of the first ones there!"

As it turned out, we weren't the first. We were numbers 5 and  6. When we walked into the classroom where the meeting was to be held, the principle was adjusting the microphone volume on his PA system while chatting leisurely with several of his teachers. The others, parents and guardians who were brash enough to show up earlier than we did, were slumped at child-size desks and fanning themselves to blow around the hot air.

Forty five minutes later, the meeting started. Sort of. The exact beginning could not be pinned down, as it began with a discussion of motherhood, tree planting and the nutritional value of certain foods. Given enough latitude, all of these subjects could be said to occupy a place on the periphery of school-related topics.

Gradually, the real meat of school issues began to trickle into the conversation and by 6PM, we were right in the thick of it. Facts and figures flew up on the chalk board. Money, times, dates, grades, attrition rates, etc. It was all there! Elsie was in the top ten but not in the top five. Johnny moved up three positions since last grading period but had not met his goal of surpassing Edna by two positions because Edna had moved up herself. Jan Mark had a perfect attendance record, even though the only class he attended was lunch, The rest of the time, he could be found sitting under the cigarillo tree, doodling in one of his notebooks while resting his head on the pile of school books that he was assigned. Six students departed - though no one died - and one student came back, in his thirties, to finish second grade. A round of applause for all of them.

The end of the meeting was as ambiguous as the beginning. I suppose it was marked by the moment when the first group of late arrivals suddenly rose and walked out, after which, others seemed to spontaneously arise and walk out the door, as well. It was like being at a revival meeting, where the spirit moved a person, but the movement was always in the direction of the exit. Shortly after, the principle himself laid down his microphone and walked out. That was my cue. I rose to leave, intending to follow on his heels, but my wife grabbed my arm and said, "Sit down. It's not over yet."

When I looked at her quizzically, she added, "He just went to pee."

Sure enough, he came back, looking relieved and refreshed; ready for a new onslaught, I'm sorry to say. That man must have read every book on winning friends and influencing people, against their will, but with their full cooperation and a smile to boot.

It ended, eventually. We left.
 

Buy an Old House for a New House? I Wood.

August 9, 2012

Emelie and I bought a piece of property over a year ago, with intentions of building a house on it. We have been saving and spending and saving and spending: ten steps forward and nine steps back. So, we've saved a little but not enough to build a whole house. We could afford about a third of a house right now. I would start with the bathroom, then add a bedroom and then, maybe, if there is still a little money left over, put at least enough of the roof on to shelter what we've made.

Sometimes it seems that my life is nothing more than a cycle of eating, pooping and sleeping. I've always wanted a refrigerator in the bathroom so I wouldn't have to get off the toilet to eat. And with a bed close by, I could just roll over, from the toilet, and fall into bed. It would sure save time and energy, and since we probably wouldn't put a wall between the two rooms right away, for lack of funds, my sicko idea would seem justified. I'm not even going to mention it to my wife, though. (But I don't mind mentioning it to the rest of the world.)

Today I bought a house. It's not anywhere close to our property, and there is nothing left of it but a floor, floor beams, some upright beams and 10 sections of trees used as poles for supporting the entire structure, holding it several feet off the ground. The house is probably around 100 years old. It's way up in the mountains. The road leading to it is rough. It's more like a treacherous path than a real road.

Our plan is to disassemble the house and truck the wood down to our property by the sea. It will take two days to do so - one trip each day. The wood from that old house is a type that is strong, durable, and too hard for termites to eat. It's the best there is here, but no longer available because it is now scarce. And it's illegal to sell or buy new wood or cut the trees. Buying the house was cheaper than buying the same amount of new mahogany or gemelina, the other two hardwoods used for building in this part of the Philippines.

So, part of our new house will be one hundred years old and the house will have a history before we even live in it.

No News on the Home Front

After I wrote the title, I looked at it and thought: Is this really my home? The answer is a big "yes". And that kind of answers another question that might, and probably is, a on a person's mind if they are thinking of moving here. Can I ever feel at home in a foreign country, where I know no one and no one also knows me; where the customs are different, the first language is different, and the people even look different.

Maybe there are places in the world, and even in the Philippines - like the Muslim-dominant parts of Mindanao - that wouldn't be quite so hospitable to a white foreigner who doesn't know the language or the customs. But here in Ginatilan, Cebu, life is easy and pleasant and the locals love foreigners. I honestly feel safer here than in any place I've lived in the U.S. And it is my guess, with input from many friends here, that life anywhere in the Province, outside of the city, is just as friendly and welcoming.

Cities are cities, anywhere. There is always the danger of being accosted by someone whose intentions are not favorable to your welfare. Cebu City is dirty and crowded with smog where the traffic is heaviest. Crime is standard fare.

I really enjoy shopping in Cebu City. The streets are filled with a clutter of small shops, crammed together and harboring just about anything you could want. The malls are modern and a joy to peruse. SM mall is where we always go to buy computers for our internet cafe, or stock up on supplies. The grocery store there has just about everything a modern grocery in the U.S. would offer.

But there are seedy and dirty and smelly parts of the city I would really not want to frequent, let alone live anywhere near. Shanty towns known for drug involvement are visible from the main roads. Poverty sucks but it is particularly nasty in the city where the environment induces children of the poor to become panhandlers, prostitutes and drug addicts.

Travel Calculations

August 1, 2012

My life has been packed to the gills with activity. Time to post and catch up.

When  my friends here in Ginatilan would ask me when I planned to return to the U.S., I would shrug and say "I don't have any plans to return." Shit happens. Plans change. In the middle of June, I was notified that I needed to go back to Ohio to take care of some business, and get it done before July 1st. So, I got a last-minute ticket, hopped the plane and was in Ohio lickety split, compared to any other method of travel.

$2000 is a lot of money to pay for some thirty hours of travel torture. It's not worth putting myself through it all for a just a week in the U.S. and then return home immediately. I decided a month would be about right. I could more-easily justify that 2 grand spent, if I divided it by 30 and thought of it as a daily expense.

So, the sojourn began: Emelie, Shane and I left our house on the first air-conditioned bus heading for Cebu City. Four hours later we were at the south bus terminal, hailing a taxi to take us to Cherry's Pension House in Mandaue, just outside of "the City". After making arrangements for Emelie and Shane for the night, we headed for the airport. My flight to Manila would leave at 10PM.

They dropped me off and went back to the hotel. My God, I felt lonely as I walked through the security check point. I missed my wife and little girl already.

When I got to Manila, I spent the rest of the night laying on a bench outside the International Terminal, waiting for the check-in early the next morning. The plane left at six and headed for Narita, Japan. For some reason beyond my comprehension, we had to deplane in Narita, go through the security check again, then wait at a gate to get back on the same plane we took out of Manila. It's all very official and very senseless. And it takes an additional hour and half or so. Oh well.

From Narita, we headed northwest (or maybe it was northeast, not sure. It doesn't matter much, since the world is mostly round, anyway. You always get to where you're going no matter which direction you start out. If time is a consideration, though, it's best to take the shortest route). Geography was never a subject that caught my interest, but I think we flew over Korea, and Russia and jumped into Canadian airspace on the way to Detroit airport.

Aside:
You know, it's a funny thing, we always think of the world as being divided into countries. It isn't. When you fly over Russia, you see mountains and rivers and lakes; dry areas, wet areas and such. Some snow here; some dessert there. The rest of the world is about the same, with the addition of oceans. Narry an intracontinental boundary, anywhere. Our artificial, political divisions don't really exist.

Someday we may come together as a world team, our political and religious boundaries dissolved, and we will have peace on earth, which means we will be free...free to focus our violence on alien lifeforms and planets everywhere, killing and annihilating all the new "thems" that we've decided are a threat to "us". We'll have an opportunity to create a fresh, new set of differences. "We can drag in our old fears and prejudices and justifications and rocket them to new heights, for the exploitation of our galaxy and beyond. Can't wait. Makes me want to sing the national anthem and vote republican.

Back to Center:
Okay, so, 12 hours of sitting on my ass from Narita to Detroit, with a few meals, a movie or two, a couple of chapters in a novel, one time through the "old geezer" songs of my MP3 player, a few winks - a very few winks, an inordinately inadequate few winks - and we're there. Voila! Back to earth and the U.S.A.! An hour or so more, laying over in Detroit, then a short jaunt to Cleveland. And then a one-hour drive to the old homestead in Massillon, Ohio. Home. Plop! I did it!

From the Philippines to Ohio, I traveled 12 time zones in reverse, at a speed of about 500mph, while the earth rotated in the opposite direction at about 1,000 miles per hour, at the equator, which means that I was going forward, into the future, at the rate of only 500mph. At that rate, it would take me 48 hours to travel for one day.

The plane left, for the direct flight from Japan to Detroit, at about 1PM on Tuesday afternoon, and arrived in Detroit at 3PM on Thursday. I took this into consideration, beginning immediately after reboarding the plane in Narita, Japan, and tried to develop an equation that would take into account all the variables and constants and spit out a meaningful number on the right side of the equal sign.

I ordered a beer and contemplated. When the numbers were all there, in my mind, I started calculating. I began with addition, my favorite and an easy warmup for subtraction, division and multiplication. The numbers were flying around in my head. Another beer slowed them down just a little. When I exhausted my supply of known calculations, I brought in tangent, sine and cosine, since we were traveling on an arc, anyway. I got stuck somewhere between the equator and the cosine of an arc produced by the minute hand on a clock, which has passed from 12 to 4:30. I went back and rounded off all numbers to two decimal places and drank a third beer. The combination produced a number: 2.4. I was satisfied.

Just a NOTE!

I recently received a comment from someone who wanted me to reply. I can't find a way to do that through Blogger.com and I don't have your email address to send a response. So, for you or anyone else who wants to contact me, I have created an email account just for this blog. Please address your emails to Living.Paradise@aol.com.

There is a period between the two words. I put it there, but on this screen I can't see the damn thing. Not that my eyes are getting old or that I need new glasses or anything like that. Ha! (The kids call me 'Old carabaw'. That's okay. It's a majestic animal, in my opinion.)

Mark

Three Posts from the Parish Pew

These three posts are from over a year ago. I put them away, on my laptop and then couldn't find them when I wanted to post. Never mind. Here they are:


Father, Son and...Holy Ghost, is  that a Dog!

Sunday, Sept. 19, 2010

After breakfast, on Sunday mornings, we go to church. We started that a few weeks ago. I went to Catholic Church until I was seventeen and quit for lack of inspiration to continue. But this is clearly different. For one thing, I really like the music. I can't understand the words but the music is beautiful and the choir, though small, sings their heart out. My lack of understanding suits my lack of faith just perfectly.

I never considered church a place for entertainment, but the last two Sundays have changed my mind. This morning, a very nice-looking dog - beefy and well-groomed - walked right through the middle of church, in the middle of the service, from one side to the other. He looked like a cross between a Scottish Terrier and a Yellow Lab. He came in the south door of St. Gregory's and exited the north door. And then, a few minutes later, he did the same thing in the other direction. I didn't think it was a Catholic dog: it didn't stop for holy water and the sign of the cross at the entrance and it didn't genuflect in front of the altar when it reached the center isle. He marched right through like he owned the place, and with a hurried gate that let us all know he had matters of importance out the opposite door. No time for lolly-gagging. Same thing on his return to the first side; marching with his head erect and with an air like he was the archbishop come to see that all was proper and in order.

Either no one else noticed him or he was such a regular customer that they paid no attention. I thought it was pretty funny. I'm not used to animals in church and in this dog, and the sparrows and swallows, have free reign. The birds build nests are all over place, close to the ceiling. They come and go throughout the service and add their part to the music.

I've also seen a few cats hanging out in the archway entrances to catch a nap in the shade. But cats have a mind of their own. They are not about to accept a belief system with rules that just might interfere with their habits and preferences. So, they are content to sleep on the fringes of Catholicism without actually entering its sanctum. Not so the dog, though it seems he's in the habit of just passing through, not tarrying long enough to be penetrated by the restrictive dogma that we humans crave.

When church was over, I asked Emelie if she happened to notice the presence of the dog. She said “yes, it's Father Jerry's dog.” hat explains a lot, though I think one of the herding breeds would be more appropriate, under the circumstances. 

After all, He's just "God", spelled backwards.

Oct. 3, 2010

The dog showed up again today. (I wonder what the priest named him?)  He was very late for mass. Came waltzing right in, in the middle of his master’s sermon, from the door behind and to the right of the altar. (If my rusty, Catholic memory serves me right, it’s called the ‘Sacristy’.) With his head held high; wagging his tail like nobody’s business, he pranced right up to the statue of Mary, at the front, right of the altar and paused. Mary was standing on a makeshift dais, a cloth-covered table. Pooch was very close to one of its legs. He looked up at Mary, his tongue hanging out of his mouth. Then he sniffed the table leg. At that moment, I became very interested in the subject of nature versus nurture; sin versus virtue. (Is that redundancy?)

My eyes were riveted to his foot, closest to the table. That foot started to rise. My muscles tensed just a little and I felt a sense of impending adventure, like the moment just prior to peeing in the swimming pool, as a child (thought I’d better add that note), despite all the admonitions to the contrary. 

His foot settled back to the sacred marble floor and he trotted away, down the steps and into the congregation, heading right for a pew about halfway back. He went to sleep on the floor, his head hidden from view under the seat of the pew, beside a prayerful congregant who made a point of demonstrating his pious and dutiful nature by paying no apparent notice to the dog.

I elbowed my wife. “Did you see the dog?” I asked.

I don’t know how my mom does it, or how women do it, for that matter. Communicate, I mean. I’ve listened to every conversation that my mom and wife have had on the telephone or via computer. (They’ve never met in person.)  Not one time has my mother ever said, “… and if he acts up in church, give him one of those condescending, sidelong glances that indicate disgust and carry a heavy threat of consequences.”

With my head down and my tail between my legs I sat back quietly, envious of the dog. 

Church, Beer, a Crazy Lady and Bloody Underwear: A Perfect Sunday.

Sometime in  late 2010

I was in church this morning when the crazy lady showed up. The timing was right, as I was about to do whatever a good, tired Christian does on a Sunday morning when the sermon lulls him into thinking he is at home with a cold beer, in front of the T.V., during  half-time’s thrilling commentator assessment.

If she wouldn’t have had that 12” X  12”, quarter-inch piece of plywood, things would have worked out all different. As it was, when she slammed it down on the elbow resters in front of her, the bang cleared out the first three rows of believers. I never saw a fart clear pews that fast.

The ushers always sit in rows 1 and 2. They had on their usherly uniforms of pastel-yellow dresses. These handsome, aging ladies were crowned with lacy, matching head covers bordered in white. They looked like two rows of yellow birds on the telephone wire. When they got up in a hurry, and cleared away with equal haste, I thought for a moment I might save a few pisos at collection time. It wasn’t my luck. They only flew back a few rows and resettled, leaving one lone woman in a blue top, front and center in the first pew.

People around me were chattering away about the incident. Emelie was talking to the two women in front of us. Here in Ginatilan, I am used to being on the outside of a conversation, without a clue. And I must say that I am thankful for my ignorance – Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Amen. English is my first and only language, thus far, but I am learning the local vernacular with a bit of ambivalence about the outcome.

Gossip is tiring! I never realized to what degree. Nor did I notice the extent. When one person leaks a little of it over the backyard fence, that woman doesn’t realize that the few drops she spills into the ears of her neighbor has anything to do with the flood that results from the thousands adding theirs to the town bucket.

People probably talk about me a lot. I know they do. They look; they laugh. I smile. I hope that doesn’t change. I like to think that all of them have only friendly and endearing thoughts about me. Education could ruin the bliss of my ignorance. Maybe it’s fortunate that I’m a slow learner. I memorize about 4 or 5 words of Cebuano a week and by the following week have forgotten 6. It’s taking a bite out of my English vocabulary.

So, I knew that the church gossip was about the lady in blue, in the front pew. And I was happy just to sit and listen to the twitter around me, the way you listen to the important chatter of the chicken coop and allow it to be the pleasant background noise that it is.

I’ve drifted. I was talking about the crazy woman. I will get back to that in just a moment, but a preface to this morning’s events, though not necessary, adds a little color to the story. Last night we slept just as peacefully as we usually do, with the fan on high and blocking out all sound shy of the thunder resulting from a direct lightning strike, which is slightly louder than the horn of the bus from Cebu City as it passes and toots right in front of our door, in the hours between midnight and 4AM.

Emelie was the first to get out of bed this morning, an occurrence so rare as to make itself a suspect of cause when the day veered from straight and narrow to twists and bends of a most unusual nature. For instance: usually, we don’t have blood smeared on  the porch, in front of the door; usually, there is not a pair of women’s jogging pants hanging from the bamboo fence, with fresh blood in the crotch; and usually, there is no piece of cardboard with a pool of liquid smelling strongly of piss, on the porch.

There is no point in boring you with the intermediary details, so we can just go back to the lady in the front row of the church with the blue top. But to fill in where lengthy description is lacking, that woman smelled like bladder control was an issue, not only for the present, but in days passed as well. A discriminating nose would be able to discern the several day’s worth of aging urine, with the added bouquet of monthly blood.

She was instantly dubbed “the crazy woman”. I was proud of Father Jerry. His sermon gave no evidence of interruption when the ungodly slam shook the congregation from whatever reverie held those parishioners in their inattentive state (I was one, remember?).  Thanks be to God.

I watched the ladies in yellow as they attempted to hide their ruffled feathers with nervous laughter and giggles. They were scared shitless.

The gap in the congregation around the crazy woman had as subtle an appearance as a missing tooth in an ear-to-ear grin.

Surprisingly, the woman sat quietly throughout the rest of service. After communion she got up and went to the back of the church, where she communed with God solely in the company of her own stink and pew. So be it.

The really funny part to this whole story is the gate to the bamboo fence that surrounds our house. The whole incident, be it good, bad or indifferent, is worth the tickle it gives me every time I think of that gate – the same one which the crazy woman passed through on her way to pissing on our porch, except that it has been “updated”, with Fort Knox style fortification, since her visit..

Bamboo is a grass. Let that serve as a hint to the crux of the issue I am about to present. Bamboo has a certain kind of strength. But that kind of strength is not the sort that can prevent a weakened, mangy dog from getting to the other side of the fence for a meatless and sun-parched bone. (I hope you’re getting my drift.) In addition, the spaces between the horizontal pieces of bamboo are large enough to allow passage of anything a fence could possibly be designed to keep out.

Aux contraire, the gate. A charging herd of elephants would pile themselves up on the outside of that gate, if they could be convinced to charge in single file and not cheat by stepping out of line to blow down the fence.

I know who made that gate. I’m not telling you. No sir, Chinese water torture and the rack couldn’t persuade me to do so. My marriage means too much for me to go around blabbing about a thing like that.

Amen!

A Chunk of Evening, Well-Spent

Monday,  March 5, 2012

 I pissed away the last half hour before sunset, sitting on my front porch, looking out to the sea, and listening to a goat and a chicken in a farewell duet to the setting orb. It sucked, according human standards. The goat lowed an irregular, mournful note over and over, while the hen clucked out a regular beat and let out a loud, happy cackle every six or eight notes. The sound of the ocean lapping the shore was the background music. Its tempo lagged that of the chicken, and was unaffected by the chicken's choice of beat. Having pounded out its own rhythm since day one, it wasn't going to follow the lead of impertinent upstarts.

I could have been doing something worthwhile. After all, there is always an unfinished job to tie up (or screw up. Its my choice, after all.) or a new project to start, or even just the kitchen table to wipe off for the umpteenth time today. Life is a never-ending stream of such stuff. Know what I mean? As I sat there on the porch, adding nothing to life, but just taking it all in, a whole list of things I could do never even entered my consciousness. I mean, I thought of nothing. It's awfully hard to feel guilty about not getting things done when those things never even occur to you, in the first place. Thank god.

So, the sun set; the chicken and goat duet gave way to the sound of crickets. The sea changed clothes, from sunset red to moonlight silver. I held Shane in my arms, in the front yard, and we looked at the moon and talked  to it.

Nothing much noteworthy has occurred since then, and that's just fine with me.

Pizza Fix!

Thursday, February 23, 2012

I've been wanting pizza for more than a year now; 'wanting' in the way that a drug addict 'wants' another fix. When I think of what I miss from back home, my thoughts focus on my mother, brothers and sisters and a few friends.Those thoughts of loved ones last only a few seconds, before an extra-large pizza appears on the screen of my mind, blotting out all other thoughts and visions. Sometimes the pie has pepperoni; sometimes it's a Hawaiian, and often it's a pizza with white sauce, chicken and three kinds of cheese. I can see those cheeses clearly. The ricotta is pure white. It's creamy and light with a hint of curdle to it. The taste? Mild and delicious. And then there's mozzarella, the mainstay of pizza and there is no acceptable substitute for good quality when it comes to mozzarella. The creamy white is..... Oh my gosh! I'm not writing a food review here! Ha! I was taken off course by my vision. Never mind.

I hail from Massillon, Ohio, which has enough pizza places and beer joints to service the entire state. Massillon's claim to fame is its football team. But its players are big and beefy because of pizza, washed down with a cold brew - usually Budweiser, but I don't hold that against them.Teenage boys think it rounds them out as potentials for professional sports stardom.

Pizza is a complete food. I read that once. Maybe I was the one who wrote it. I can't remember, but it doesn't matter. Its good enough for me  The mere fact that it's in print makes it believable, which is a strong persuasion for it's truthfulness.  Fact is, there's never been a clinical study to refute the nutritional value of pizza. If you don't believe me, look up 'pizza' under "Clinicaltrials.gov." And there's evidence that any kind of pizza, sprinkled with powdered aspirin, helps alleviate a head ache. (It's a recipe I got from a beer-guzzling halfback, as a sure cure for the 'day after'.)

All bullshit aside, (don't believe it!) I am completely and wonderfully satisfied, more so than I've been for a long time. Don't tell my wife, though. Filipinas are known for their jealous natures and my wife is pure Filipina, to the bone. Sounds kind of silly, I suppose, to suggest that her jealous nature might be roused into a pique over a pizza. But I'm not taking a chance. Someday, maybe just one particularly wonderful day, I can be eating pizza in bed with my wife, Emelie, while we are... Oh, don't get your minds all wrapped up in a pornographic, sauce-licking vision of melted cheese on a hard salami pizza! (Is there such a thing? Should be.)

I can't think of anything else to write, so I'll just kick back and digest what I ate. I hope you can do the same with what you just read.

Shake, Rattle and Roll

Tuesday, January  7, 2012

There has never been a tremor, let alone an earthquake, of this magnitude, in this area of the Philippines. Yesterday, I was driving my tricycle home from town when the first tremor shook the earth and the nerves of the people. As I was soon to discover, Emelie and her sister, Jane had run out of the house into the yard. On the way out, Jane grabbed her granddaughter (our little two year-old) Shane, and her 9 month-old, Meagan, off the porch and whisked them out to the yard with her.

But I wasn't aware of any of this. The center of the quake was about 40 miles from us, on the neighboring island of Negros. Many of our area's residents told me later, just how traumatic it was. The quake hit 6.9 on the Richter Scale. However, my tricycle - a motor scooter with a side car - rattles its way to the equivalent of about 8.0 on that same scale. So, my shake-rattle-and-roll machine kept me from feeling the quivering earth.

I had just sold a bicycle to a woman named Jam and I was taking her and her daughter and the bike, to her home in Guiwanon, a few miles further up the national highway than our rental house. Along both sides of the street, people had gathered to share their personal experiences of the tremors, and to discuss what might yet come. Since this was a first for Cebu, no one knew what to expect. I wondered why they had gathered as I still had no knowledge of the quake.

After pulling up in front of Jam's house, in the midst of a group of residents, Jam's husband, Romel, told us what happened. Other people there were either chattering or making cell phone calls to family and friends.

When I got home, Emelie told me how scared she and Jane were. She said the house was making strange noises as the moving ground put a serious strain on the steel and the cement blocks. A few minutes later, the Ginatilan fire truck passed, blaring an excited warning for residents living by the sea to move to higher ground, in case a tsunami, an enormous wall of water, is formed from the earthquake if it is under the sea.

Well, the tsunami never came, but a false alarm in Cebu City panicked crowds of people and sent them running in all directions to escape the rumored tsunami.

There were about 8 or 9 separate tremors over the course of the day and the night that followed. I had never experienced anything like it. The earth is a solid sphere, isn't it? It can't break apart, right? We depend on its stability without question or even thought. It's taken for granted that the earth does not move under our feet and fall apart in random places. Under every thought and thing we do lies an assumption that the earth is there to support us. We walk, over the earth. We drive a car, on solid ground. Instability is the stuff of water and air - where airplanes and boats waft and wobble - not the ground where our houses sit, where we sit comfortably in the evening watching the tube, relaxed as if the world is a safe place to be.

Good Food

Friday, January 27, 2012

My wife made tinola isda - fish soup - today. I ate it for both lunch and supper. With fresh greens from the garden; lemon grass from the yard, just outside the fence; squash, onions, garlic, peppers and okra from the market, it ranks number one on my list of tasty and healthy foods.

The fish is always the day’s catch, bought from our fisherman/neighbors or from the market in town, and it’s almost always delicious. Today’s variety was one I’m not familiar with. It had a smooth, nutty-buttery kind of flavor, similar to yellow fin tuna, but milder. The flesh was very white and solid, not quite as solid as tuna, but close.

The greens warrant a more detailed description. The tastiest is one called alugbati. (I don’t know if there is an English word for it.) It is dark green and similar to spinach, but I think the taste is much better. Then there is malonggay, which is the small green leaves of the tree by the same name. The leaves are round and smaller than a penny. The taste is very mild. Malonggay has more concentrated nutrition than just about any other plant on the planet. Google it, if you are interested. It’s also called Kalamonggay. Last in our lunch and supper pot was camote tops, which are the green leaves of a native sweet potato. Camote tops are also packed full of nutrition and are tasty, however they are used.

My system is not used to a “strictly healthy” diet, so I balanced out all that nutrition with some coconut bread and a cup of malted milk (Milo) and coffee. In my estimation, coconut bread deserves a post all to itself. Briefly though…well…it’s just damn good! And it’s made in a wood-fired oven just a few blocks from here. 

Going with the Flow

Friday,  January 20, 2012

Grumble, grumble, grumble, pee and moan. It was just the mood I was in. Don't bother me about how I should have been in a better one, it would just piss me off. Goody-two-shoes and forever-on-the-righteous-road, beware! I ain't in the mood.

It can happen anywhere in the world; under the best of circumstances. It started when I woke up this morning. The sun had an ornery glare to it, as it passed through a dusty jalousy window and pierced my eyeballs. My wife was sleeping peacefully beside me. That could have been a slight smirk on her face and it rubbed me the wrong way. What nerve, to be sleeping  like a baby, right beside me, when life was a burr in my underwear.

I got out of bed hoping for something to go wrong, so I could work up a full of head of steam in the direction I was traveling. I was thrown a curve ball in the form of a little, half-pint, two year-old. She got up right after me, smiling her usual sweet smile and asking for num num. A change in attitude took hold of me before I could set a solid course for screwing up my whole day with a bad mood. In a matter of minutes Shane and I were sitting together on the porch, looking for ships on the sea, singing Barney songs and munching on yesterday's bread.

Life is Good.

I Can Smell the Sea Again!!

It is New Year’s Day, 2012. I’m home, sitting at the kitchen table. Shane is asleep in the hammock, on the front porch. I have the door open so I can hear her and look around the corner of the jam to give an occasional check. Frederick, Jan Mark and Clyde left to walk to the internet shop about half an hour ago. I like this quiet time when the kids are gone or asleep. 

Our septic tank was overflowing for the past week. Every flush gave our noses a fresh reminder of a part of the human condition that, with due cause, is seldom the focus of everyday chatter. But when the septic tank overflows we are reminded that the lowly and the great all put out the same crap. Maybe its not a nice thing to think about or proper to mention, but Marilyn Monroe pooped and peed, ever since birth. So did Thomas Edison, Alexander the Great, and Einstein. No more, though. They're all dead. But I'm still alive and pooping (as of this writing), and thankful for the opportunity.

Well,  because of today's diggings, there's a new hole in the ground next to the old one and a pipe that connects the two. When the old one overflows, it drains into the new one. Hopefully, we won't have to add a third or a fourth hole. I wouldn't want people thinking we have that much shit to offer the world.

Happy New Year!!!!!