i think i need new sheets. seriously. although i'm pretty comfortable sleeping on sheets that don't reflect my age (winnie the pooh) and i don't get many guests anyway who can criticize my poor taste in sheets or my general lack of interest in interior design, i really think i should retire winnie and the old sheet my mom lent me in favor of something with a higher thread count, and maybe a more solid, bold color. when i first moved out of my parents' house and decided to live close to where i work, i had grand ideas of remodeling and coordinating my space. i wanted to exude something earthy and close to nature. i wanted plain white plates with a minimal leaf design, a green curtain to reflect my love for the environment, a brown mattress set to show my connection with the earth... but i pursued none of those and decided to have function over form. but now my unit is a mess, and dishes from 3 days ago still sit on the sink. i haven't polished my floor since i can't remember, and i've never had more than 3 hours of television in the last 27 months. i've read many books (currently reading ian mcewan's "a child in time" and an essay collection by pico iyer), solved many puzzles, and compiled many magazines as a consequence. i renewed my lease contract just last month, so i can look forward to 10 more months in my makati foxhole. i really must do something to better the space i live in. it's close to being a sty. haha.

two weeks ago, after we had successfully climbed apo to induct close to 40 new members to the club, we dropped by camp sabros in bgy. kapatagan, digos city, not far away from the resort where we spent the night. sabros has a few exciting rides: zip lines with lengths of 380 meters, 400 meters, and 800 meters. the last one was, until recently, the longest zip line in the philippines, and even all of asia, until CDO extended it by 200 meters and stole the title. to get to the camp, we had to walk a kilometer uphill from the street, along an unpaved, winding road. i've done zip lines before, but nothing as long and as picturesque as the ones in sabros (clear skies allowed us an unimpeded view of mounts apo and talomo). the facility was built around a small patch of pine forest, so we zipped through small openings between trees. the 800-meter zip line takes 44 seconds, and has a rather rude ending (check out the video), but it's a lot of fun because you get the feeling of flying: you're strapped on a jacket that makes you lie flat in mid-air: it's really the closest you'll get to defying gravity. it actually wasn't terrifying, but ann nearly broke her vocal chords from too much screaming.


anyway, this i did despite the infection in my gums that was causing my left jaw to swell. 3 hours later, immediately upon our arrival in davao city, i went straight to the dentist who prescribed some medicines and drained the infection. i felt better almost instantly, and that night, managed to chew on something at luz kinilaw. the following day, i just dropped by aldevinco and then had to pack up for my flight. we were holed at the davao medical school foundation, which had 3 indian restaurants. the owner (who is indian) informed me that there are currently more indian students in the school's nursing program than filipinos. now that's something!

right now i'm still on medication, but hopefully i'll be weaned from it with my scheduled visit to the dentist. i shudder at the thought of some invasive procedure to be done. i really hope it's nothing that would require more visits. sigh.

i'm rather excited about this weekend. i'm still a bit torn about what to do, but if i decide finally to go to the mountains, then i'll actually get to see a new mountain. that's a cool treat.

Tags: adventure, bachelor life, camp sabros, davao, dental health, literary consumption

i spent the better part of saturday having a battlestar galactica marathon while cleaning up my unit and wrapping books.

first, about battlestar galactica: i'm surprised that i only started watching this series now, although i've heard of it over 2 years ago. i'm already done with season 1 and am now watching the first few episodes of season 3 as i type, although i had an incomplete season 2. i might return it to my DVD supplier and insist on a complete set. it's pretty engaging and i'm loving the moral conflicts embedded into the story arc. it has to be the one of the best TV series i have ever seen, and the fact that i've done nothing but watch it endlessly galvanizes my resolve not to get television: i'm addicted to the tube in a way that is both destructive and far from productive. although i have plans to get the complete season 2, i'm trying out other options as well: torrents, although, admittedly, it is going to take the next 2 weeks before i completely download the full season. haha. so much for wireless broadband.

now, about fixing my place: i've just started organizing my closet, cleaning out, and filling two trashbags. i realize that i have too many clothes for the space that's available, although when dressing up for anything outside of work, i often feel that i haven't got many options. still, i've already set aside a few things up for donation. or a huge garage sale.


stacking is the best way to achieve maximum compression
on the third thing, i've began wrapping books i bought from kinokuniya in bangkok, page one in taipei, backstreet books in chiang mai, powerbooks in trinoma and fully booked in rockwell. i'm really a bibliophile more than a bookworm, the distinction being that i buy more books than i can read. i probably have a love for books more powerful than my love for reading them. i read much less than i would wish. it's a shame, really. if i want to avoid unnecessary spending, i stay away from book sellers. and i have not been very successful, i have to say.


here's a book i wrapped in the late 90s: i haven't even finished reading this
so anyway, i enjoyed wrapping them, and i've employed the same technique i've developed since way back when i was in college. when i began collecting books, one of the first things i always did was to wrap them in plastic. i've tried other methods, but i've stuck to a method which i'd like to share with everyone. now a long time ago, jessica zafra actually wrote a column in the now-defunct today newspaper describing her style. i remember distinctly that she said the secret to wrapping books would be found in two volumes of collier's encyclopedia. she didn't mean that one had to do research. rather, she meant that the wrapped book had to be sandwiched between two heavier books overnight. for over a year before she came out with that column, i had been doing a similar, if not, far more technical method which is meticulous, comparatively painstaking, and requires equipment.


notice something? no tape
here are my materials, other than the plastic wrap and the new book: scissors, a big ruler, a cutting board, and a cutter. first i measure the book against the plastic wrap, cut plastic crudely, lay it out against the book on a cutting board, and with a ruler, refine the edges with a cutter. then i fold in the edges. i estimate some space from the spine and fold in the excess rather than cut it off completely. that way, i avoid tears and reinforce both edges of the spine. and here's why i need bigger and heavier books: i don't use any kind of tape to keep the plastic on the book. i noticed that tape can cause stains on the inside cover of a book. i leave the new books stacked and sandwiched overnight: at least 24 hours, and if they could wait, a lot longer.

Tags: bachelor life, battlestar galactica, bibliophilia, literary consumption, television

so i've realized that i cannot fit more than 24 hours into a day, or more than seven days into a week, and that my body needs at least 7 hours of sleep everyday, and many more hours just doing nothing.

i've been reflecting on my weekly schedules and all the things that i want to do, and although i don't really have strict itineraries or appointments outside of work, i have some more-or-less defined activities for most days of the week. tuesday and thursday evenings are allocated for french classes. the entire wednesday evening is spent for AMCI. weekends are for going out of town to pursue my outdoor passions. so given this schedule, i only basically have monday and friday evenings free. since i don't get to relax or to rest during the weekend, i tend to oversleep on mondays: i get home at around 6pm, and would sleep beginning at 7pm. then on fridays, when i get off at 2pm, i would do my groceries, maybe swim a little, do some gym, etc. but until last night, i haven't been to the gym in a month. that's a whole month's worth of membership gone to waste. and yet, there are a lot of other things that i already do and would still want to do: i'd like to pick up on my reading (which currently i do intermittently before i go to sleep), do some low-light nighttime photography, run some more, lift weights in the morning, cook for myself, clean the house, change my sheets often, go out with friends for a bottle or two, maybe take up a teaching position, see movies, just walk aimlessly at the mall, update my blog more regularly, spend more time with my family who now live about 2 hours away, write poetry and prose... there's just not enough time to do all of these things.

so i've decided that i would have to give up on something. the gym seems to be on top of the list because it costs a whole lot. but i'm reaching an age when my body begins to either sag or grow horizontally, and it's not something i want to accept, at least not until 10 years from now. i could also give up on my french classes; i could just buy a book and practice conversations with my european colleagues. but i'm getting good at the language and the classes force me to study and speak. i could give up on wednesdays with AMCI and just show up for climbs, that's possible. or i could just whip my lazy self and wake up before 6am at least twice a week for a good morning run, stay up monday evenings for a movie or to read something, go home religiously even if it's just to say hi to my mom and dad and filch some home-cooked meals, and read whenever and wherever i can.

so i really need to plan better, focus on my life's priorities and basically get more work done! i don't commute as much as i used to but i'm ending up getting less things done!

Tags: bachelor life, daily grind, future plans, random update

one of my geeky interests is following the progress of certain infrastructure projects. so the other week when i had nothing to do, i went to monumento with my camera to see how much of the LRT extension has been built, and i have to say that i am mighty surprised at the speed of the construction. only last january, they were digging several holes into the highway, and now, a huge part of the beams have been put in place.





another thing that excites me is the financial closing of the MRT-7, which will traverse commonwealth ave. and have a common terminal with LRT-1 and MRT-3 in front of SM north. that would be so cool! i can't wait for 2013. MRT-7 will begin construction in april 2010, and i hope it doesn't go the way of MRT-1, which had to cut back on costs due to the financial crisis of 1997, and looks sorry and outdated. i hope it looks a lot like the LRT-2 along aurora blvd., or would at least rival bangkok's BTS in terms of aesthetic appeal. plus it wouldn't hurt if it had wider coaches so that there wouldn't be any mini-stampedes every morning (such as what takes place in the MRT-3).

this really should appear on the infrastructure blog that i've created but haven't updated since december. oh: where to find the time?

* * *


two weeks ago, the elevator here at my building was dismantled to make way for a new one. of course, i could only wish work was done speedily, but i'd have to keep using the stairs for the next 4 weeks. it has also discouraged me from taking my bike out, but i'm used to carrying heavy loads through steep terrain and i carried my bike down and up the other day and it wasn't so hard. other people seemed to be very impressed. haha. i'm actually kind of lucky that i live on the 3rd floor. others have to go up and down 12 flights!

Tags: bachelor life, infrastructure, railway

i came back from my southeast asian vacation with at least 15 souvenir t-shirts. about half of that will be part of my wardrobe. but given the state of things, i haven't got much space for t-shirts in my closet: i already have quite a lot left in my parents' house, and not just a few of them languishing in a few boxes somewhere. since i had to make space for the new additions, i decided to get rid of a few ones: old shirts that i no longer wear, or hold no sentimental value for me. they're all in pretty good condition, and can still be worn. i would wear them, except that i think that newer ones should also get laundered sometime, and be given a chance to get old. so now i need suggestions: where do i bring these shirts to find new bodies? i am open to ideas. i could just give them to the folks rummaging through the weekend garbage at the corner, but perhaps others might be in better need of clothing. i know that a series of typhoons have just devastated a number of provinces in the south and near the eastern seaboard. so please do tell me where i could bring my old t-shirts. i can't bring them home to my parents' house because for sure, my mom would hesitate about giving them away. precisely because there's nothing wrong with them. but then again, giving garbage to the poor isn't charity.

so this is how my closet looks like now:


it does look like i have a whole lot of t-shirts, but that is not the case. i often worry that i'm always wearing the same t-shirts, as my photos are sort of repetitions of the same things. but i'm not complaining. at least, i'm blessed with the luxury of selection. i know that not many people have that; there was a time that i didn't.

also, just last weekend, i finally decided to get a shoerack, to pursue my attempts of organizing my little space. i already got the modular shelf recently, and i mentioned that i did want to organize my footwear, which often looks like this:


i am not kidding. this is how my shoes look like on a good day. most of the time, they are scattered in 5 places around my unit. but i happened to walk into make room at rockwell and decided to get a stackable shoerack by merrick. it's all about expandability. i love these inventions. haha. so at least, by going up and organizing, i've increased my floorspace! more room to mess up! this is how my shoes look like now:


i know, i have too many athletic shoes, and not enough leather pairs. and goodness, does anyone have shoes this dirty? i'm an outdoorsman! you should see my hiking boots (which i don't keep here, but in my room at my parents').

Tags: bachelor life, charity, fashion, footwear

so people have been turning to twitter and FB and plurk and even gmail to constantly keep other people -- even those who aren't necessarily asking -- about what they're currently doing. it's actually micro-blogging: status updates are after all telegraphed entries: installments of an autobiography: the slow unfolding of a life. i have been doing that with my blog since i started this in 2004, so FB has just been an extension of it, but with its limits on text, i would rather stick to the macro format, because i always have a mouthful of things to say. and here are some status updates:

* * *

i began a ritual of cleansing last weekend, when i cleared my cupboards and my refrigerator of expiring food and condiments, and was positively surprised to find many of them: a variety of sauces, mayonnaise, oatmeal, juice concentrates, muesli, rice noodles, sesame oil, fruits, several bars of chocolate, etc. i may have absentmindedly used some of them, inducing an upset stomach which made me think hard about its cause. now i shouldn't be so surprised. other than unwittingly submitting myself to the positively disastrous effects of food poisoning, it also allowed me to reflect on my buying patterns. i often go to the grocery and buy stuff i could cook at home with the end in view of saving a lot. and in theory, i should be saving a lot compared to if i always bought food from restaurants. but if i end up throwing away many of the stuff i buy, then i don't really achieve my objectives, right? besides, it just pains me to be throwing away food, since i am aware that hunger is a very real problem, and it occurs around me. i myself am not a stranger to hunger -- either of the involuntary or imposed kind.

* * *

i have just finished the first part of ian mcewan's "atonement", a luscious narrative of a precocious child's misunderstanding of adult motives, and i can't contain my current irritation for one of the characters, briony, since i am finding myself identifying with robbie (a bright son of a charlady, who attended cambridge on a scholarship and finished with a first -- i can relate). which is not to say that i am not mesmerized by mcewan's writing. his prose has always been magical and surreal without falling into the trap of being unreal. i have encountered few authors who have managed to keep me enthralled just by the beauty of the language they employ in telling a story, particularly one which is gripping and exciting, inspiring in me a sense of awe and anxiety. i am eager to know what happens next, and i am about to rip a page, but instead, mcewan relaxes me with a description of an artificial lake. i remember putting down his "in the comfort of strangers", and feeling absolutely stunned, as if i had just been robbed and was so shocked i had no time to process the event and react appropriately so i had to pick it up again and read the last few pages to confirm that i have read what i have thought i read denying that it was what i've read. i know that i turned to mcewan to take a break from the weight of garcía márquez's prose, but the diversion hasn't been necessarily easier. not that i'm complaining, since if i would like to get easy reading, i could just pick up a magazine. besides, i've long known that my brain is so much more resilient to torture than my body, and i can stretch its limitations, and it has seldom given up, unlike my body which surrenders at the mere thought of more exertion. but it's a good thing that i have a really good dictionary on my iPhone, because mcewan has been expanding my vocabulary with every turn of the page.

* * *

i leave for saigon in about 30 hours and i've picked out a few shirts and shorts to pack, and just 2 pairs of pants for the whole 13-day trip. i'm too lazy to wash my underwear so i just decided to go to bench body to purchase a new set of sous-vêtements, which is emblazoned on the garters of the line designed for bench by mobo. i asked the saleslady if mobo was french, and she said the line is from london, and so i asked why the french phrase, and she was surprised to find out it was french, and i said, yes it is, in fact it means under garments. haha. so after that i went to the cashier to pay for my purchases and i was convinced by the cashier to get a lifestyle card to rake up points, which i could also use at human, celio, aldo, etc. i suppose, although you need to spend PHP10,000 to get PHP200, it'll add up since i get my haircut at fix and most of mes sous-vêtements are from bench so i said sure why not, filled out the form, and paid PHP100 for the card. afterwards, the cashier punched my purchases, took my cash, put the stuff inside a nice paper bag, and said: oh shit, i wasn't able to credit your purchases to your card. she was about to amend it but she bungled, and ended up saying that there was no way i could get the points, which would've given me just 8,600 points before my first PHP200. sir pano yan, she said, and i replied: well, you convinced me to get this card and you categorically said that these purchases would be credited, so what do you want me to do? sir, hindi ko kasi na pasok yung card nyo. i was smiling all this time, although i had half the mind to berate her for her inefficiency and basically say: that's not my problem, but i said: do you want me to have a creative outburst? and i chuckled at my own joke, and finally said: okay never mind, you might have a security camera here and i might end up apologizing on national TV about hunger and a long "overhauled" flight, so i smiled again and left.

* * *

everyone in my club seems to be in some sort of secret training, and i have not been excused from the exercise. apparently, a lot of people know that i can now swim, despite all my asseverations in the past that i am a sinker -- which is true. i still am, but with proper instruction and better technique, i am now able to swim about a kilometer in under an hour: that's 20 laps on an olympic-sized pool. for many years i've longed to take up swimming, but i've conjured several excuses: lack of time, an unsightly belly, dark buns, sick-looking legs, etc. finally, last february, i had no excuse but my own imagined shame when janice told me to take up swimming with her, niel, and rendo, with july, a swimming coach at the makati aqua sports arena, just beside the pasig river. i kid you not when i say that during our first session, i couldn't even finish 50m. it was only on our 3rd day that i managed to get to the other side of the pool without stopping, and by the 10th session (we have 2 one-hour sessions per day), i was swimming continuously, and 20 laps are sort of nothing unusual. on my last swim, i timed my first 50m, and it took me 61 seconds in total, which is actually quite fast. so i can now do free. whether this will translate to taking up triathlon as a sport is something that remains to be seen: the prospect of being in open water still scares me so i am not about to go there willingly. but who knows? i am surprising many, even myself.

Tags: bachelor life, literary consumption, literature, random update, retail therapy, swimming

this must be my year of implementation, because i have grown tired of making plans while life takes place, and have generally just decided to do things and tick off items from my to-do lists of years ago. ever since i moved to makati in the last quarter of 2007, i have always planned to get a shelf where i could place all the stuff that i usually just leave scattered on the floor, or on half of the bed. but i've been put off by the prospect of having to go to the furniture store and haul a shelf all by my self, so it has never happened, and the visitors to my house have all been less-than-mute witnesses to the clutter of my living space.

also, ever since i've started to cook and do the groceries for myself, i've been wanting to get membership at S&R, just to add variety to my everyday ideas and get a regular supply of ben & jerry's ice cream. and although the fort is only less than 10 minutes away, i never got to do it.

so finally, last saturday evening, after i spent the better part of my morning editing videos, i weighed my plans for the evening, and suddenly decided: why not go to S&R. and by so doing, i ticked off both plans because other than some heineken and the ice cream, i ended up buying a DIY rack, which requires absolutely no tools. this is the rack i'd been dreaming of, and last sunday, i was awake till around 2 in the morning (i had gotten back from watching "the watchmen" at midnight) putting the blocks together and putting my things, and probably my life, in order. and just like that i managed to fill up all eight cubes, and free up half of the bed, my table, the top of the refrigerator, and even the floor. haha. so this is how it looks like so far.


best of all is that it's modular, so i can expand/add/reduce/modify blocks/cubes in the future. all that's lacking now is a shoe rack and maybe a stand for my bike. but i'd rather not plan these things nor put a deadline on myself. i just know they're going to happen. so i wonder what else among my many other plans will be implemented this year. that would be interesting to see.

Tags: bachelor life, future plans

i had a very lazy weekend, and divided my time between reading and visiting the gym. i finally finished mcewan's "on chesil beach" and vonnegut's "bagombo snuff box". now i'm a bit eager to get my next vonnegut short story collection. his style really isn't much to my liking, but i'm particularly interested in his explorations of working class and suburban america, particularly the surprises in his stories. nonetheless, i most appreciated vonnegut when he stepped out of his familiar world of a small town band master and real-life blue collar concerns and weaved tales of a 21st century where a cure to aging had been discovered and the world's population was regulated at 40 million. 2BR02B, the 0 pronounced "naught", was positively disturbing and is my favorite. mcewan's short novel, on the other hand, is much more my style, and his predilection for in-depth descriptions and experiments with the limitations of language appealed to me. he is like a western garcía márquez, in that he has these lengthy explanations and non-linear story telling, plus, he isn't confident about his own characters' dialogues, that he would rather write about what's been talked about, the little nuances of their eyes, the quiver of their lips, and the inner workings of their bodies. now i'm inclined to think that writers who let their characters speak too much are either lacking in deft or talent. anyway, that's just my opinion.

so why did i spend this nice weekend just at home? well, saturday noon, someone was at my unit to install my new aircon. i had complained to my landlord about 5 weeks ago regarding the busted aircon which conked out about 3 weeks earlier. so i've endured the worst heat of summer without a working aircon, and only a very weak fan. it's really funny how one side of my body facing the window where the sunrise makes a direct hit would be sweating, and the other side facing the fan would be fine. anyway, i'm not such a big fan of airconditioning, and would only turn it on when the heat was unbearable -- besides, since i moved in september 2007, my electric bill has averaged only about P400 a month (a high of about P1,300, and a low of P170). so it's been a long overdue installation, but at least i didn't have to cough up P17,000 for the new unit. i didn't know it was such a complicated thing to install an aircon. i thought you just sort of inserted it into a hollow area on the wall!

so, inspired by an imaginary love, i spent the weekend cooking for myself, reading, writing, mopping my floor, cleaning up. maybe, if i keep this up, i can actually have guests over again. my house isn't so embarrassingly disorganized anymore, and i'm constantly cleaning things up. i need to save up for something big so i've been making these calculations in my mind, and trying to find ways to reduce my financial exposures. eating out less is just one thing, but realizing that small expenses always always add up to a whole lot is something i should carve to my head. also this weekend, i stuffed myself with 3 mcdonald's value meals because i suddenly decided that i want to collect all those beijing olympics coca-cola glasses that's sold for just P20. and they're by luminarc, no less. 2 more glasses, and my collection's complete. haha. but please, no more mcdonald's. i hate fast food, really. can i just buy the set instead?

yesterday, i decided to go home to QC and ended up staying there longer than i planned because i decided to watch game 1 of the PBA semi-finals. my team the barangay ginebra kings clobbered red bull! it was a boring game because the kings dominated the bulls from beginning to end. hindi man lang ako kinabahan!

Tags: bachelor life, basketball, future plans, literary consumption, random update

although my mountaineering friends have heaped praises on my abilities as an outdoor chef, i am afraid that neither the magic nor the skill extend far when i am indoors. for such reason, i have surrendered to the inevitable conclusion: that i cannot fight the option to always buy my breakfast and lunch and dinner somewhere. when i began to live alone, one of my first purchases was a teflon pan. i figured that i would do a lot of cooking. i wanted to do a lot of cooking not so much because i had so much confidence in myself as a cook, but because i wanted to save money on food. when i began work at the EU, i spent an average of PhP140 on lunch, and often much more than that for dinner. my meals evolved when i moved to makati, and i would often spend less than PhP15 on breakfast which consisted of a banana, or taho, or a sandwich. but my lunch meals were always too much, and although i could sustain and afford meals priced at more than a hundred pesos, i knew early on that there was no chance i'd manage to save anything substantial if i kept ordering food from RCBC's restaurants. besides, i'd like to treat myself to expensive meals only on rare occasions -- that makes the experience a lot more special.

so i attempted cooking. while i have had some measure of success in preparing meals for myself, much of what i purchase monthly goes to waste: either because they haven't been cooked, or because i get sick of eating the same thing at least 3 times in a week. it isn't realistic to cook for 1 person, and it certainly is impractical, but i feel bad about all the food that goes to waste. so although i have a new teflon pot in my small kitchen, i've decided that i can still save even when i don't cook. and to do this, i have to look for places outside of RCBC for my meals.


last week, i stocked on food from the salcedo and legazpi community markets. this week, i'm trying out the carinderia just below my building. of course food from those markets aren't that cheap either but they're pretty good, and still a little cheaper than where our lunch meals come from. the food from the turo-turo isn't that bad either, although the choices are always very limited. my pedestrian palate isn't very demanding, so i won't condescend on your standard adobo or menudo. they often do the job, which is to address my hunger, provide me with some nourishment, and keep me away from pork as much as possible. yes, although i hold on to no vegetarian fantasies, as much as i can, i avoid pork, am not necessarily drawn to beef, and would prefer seafood and if there is nothing else, chicken.

nonetheless, i think my experiments in the kitchen will continue, though at a significantly reduced rate: i will focus more on pastas and international cuisine (what to do with my vietnamese rice paper and pad thai rice noodles?). i am stocking on herbs and spices, rather than meats and fish. i've purchased several plastic containers, so after i cook, i can just stock them in the refrigerator. i wonder whether i will find a lunch group in RCBC which allows me to cook and share my meals with strangers. i've heard of something like that somewhere.


so anyway, after many several postponements, and owing perhaps to the fact that i am always out of town on weekends, i finally had time to visit the salcedo and legazpi community markets. they're both very interesting, although it's strange why salcedo has more patrons. and i must say, i've never seen such a chic crowd at a market. of course, this isn't just any market, since no one shouts, "oy suki! bili ka na! buena mano!" rather, i'd hear "french food! get your french food here!" from a real frenchman. i'd even practiced ordering in french for une galette, s'il vous plaît or in spanish too: quiero un ceviche, por favor. haha.

it's very interesting though that each time i've gone (and i've only gone twice to salcedo, meeting fab_ab both times), i always discover something new that i hadn't seen previously. so it only means that i'll keep coming back. and i'd gladly take anyone along.

Tags: bachelor life, food, makati, photography: street, salcedo market

yesterday, i took my parents out to lunch. my dad had a check-up with his doctor following his eye surgery, and i invited them to go to makati because i haven't seen them for nearly 2 weeks. so my dad's left eye is almost good as new, and he gets dizzy wearing his old glasses since at least one eye is already 20/20. his other eye will also go under the knife in the coming weeks. for lunch, i decided to take them to new bombay at the columns, across RCBC. i wasn't sure whether either of them would appreciate indian food, but i wanted them to taste something different. my mom is a very good cook, but she's not much of a connoisseur of anything that's not filipino.

anyway, we wolfed down plates of chapati, pratha, masala, and tandoori. after that, i invited them to see my place. i've been living away from home since september, but they have no idea where i live. it usually takes me under 6 minutes to walk from the corner of buendia and malugay to the corner of ayala and buendia, but with my mom's rheumatism, it took us more than double that. haha.

finally, when i opened my door to my studio unit, my mom said it didn't depart from my room at home: it was small and in complete disarray! my mom said she'll go back one of these days with one of our kasambahays to clean the place. i really should get a shelf or something. but my room at home is in perpetual chaos because i have no sense of order, and i'm perfectly at ease with all the clutter. sometimes, when my mom would supervise a clean-up of my room, i'd end up grumbling because i'm suddenly disoriented and i couldn't find anything. also, they used to assume that things that are on the floor are supposed to be thrown away. but no, they're on the floor for a reason.

so i left them to take a nap at my place while i returned to the office. when i got back home after work, they'd done something: cleaned my place! there was suddenly more space, my sink was cleared of soiled dishes, my shoes were put on one corner, and a lot of my stuff was organized. my mom called me today and said: you don't even have a proper rug or a broom! she's bugging me about changing my curtain, scrubbing my toilet, and waxing my floor. haha. i love my mom, she deserves that essay i've long wanted to write.

Tags: bachelor life, family, mama's boy