My friend, who’s a lawyer in Singapore, messaged me yesterday as she contemplated about going back here in our hometown. She was the one who was hell-bent on getting PR status in Singapore. Now she’s changing her tune.

She said she’s tired. She wants peace in her soul. She feels hopeless about her status, divorced in Singapore but not recognized in the Philippines. She dragged herself into dating hell. Now she wants to retreat to our hometown.

I warned her that she will be shocked because her fast-paced life in Singapore as a lawyer for a global firm is very much different from the slow and quiet life we’re leading here. She might get frustrated since our hometown is for people who are settled and are no longer looking for a love life or excitement. Those who have come back home are those who are looking for peace and quiet, those who want to have a tranquil life.

She is still hoping to get a partner even after her failed marriage and series of broken relationships in quick succession. She admits she couldn’t live alone.

I told her to stay in Singapore for a bit and just come back here when she’s firm with her retirement plans. Because she might get shell-shocked with how boring it is here. I said I drive to Metro Manila at least once a week to give a little complication to my life, to annoy myself with carmageddon, and for some retail therapy. After subjecting myself to the toxicity of the city, I come back home with renewed appreciation for the provincial life. Then the cycle goes on.

Twin I told me that what she missed in my absence the entire week last week was my cooking. She said she missed the variety. While I was away, my daughters ate next door. Twin I said that they ate dishes on repeat in my mom’s house. I told her it’s because they don’t cook or don’t know how to cook so they’re dependent on what was prepared by my mom’s cook every Saturday and Wednesday.

She asked for Spam musubi today so Spam musubi it is.

For dinner, I made tuna mayo rice roll that Twin A loved, with fern salad and homemade Asian sesame dressing.

All morning I was watching Chinese cooking on XiaoHongShu so I was thinking of replicating some of the easier dishes. I think I need a bigger claypot or a Dutch oven (Staub or Le Creuset) for some of the cooking that I just watched.

My other cousin (I have so many cousins right now) showed me this morning the areas where we used to hike with our cousins and friends. When we had more stamina than sense, we would climb the mountain that our town is known for, or hike down to go to Taal Lake.

So there was this pathway that led us down to the foot of the ridge and terminated at a cold spring water pool. A few meters is the edge of the Lake. It was a perfect spot for us restless teenagers to swim, rinse ourselves, and have a picnic. It was a time when Taal Lake was not polluted.

This forested pathway has now become a garden resort. We no longer have access to the spring water pool since this area has been in private hands.

We then drove to another spot where my uncles watched the big Taal Volcano eruption right before the Covid 19 lockdown started. One uncle is a professor of geology at UC San Diego, who was the dissertation advisor of our current Dept of Science and Technology secretary. The other uncle was a metallurgist/materials engineer who initially was a geologist when he first enrolled in UP. They were like little kids giddy with excitement as they watched the fireworks. That was a fond memory for those who were there because one of those uncles passed—he died of Covid during the early days of the lockdown.

Not far from this place is my dad’s property that was handed down to him by my grandma. It has almost the same views of the lake. When he retired early from the university, he didn’t know what to do with himself so he tried to do some silviculture system there.

One time my older sister and I drove our pickup truck to that mountain hideaway and picked up our father. He said he wanted to build a resthouse there. Of course that was fanciful thinking as we knew there was no money for such and he was already sick.

Now I’m inspired to do the same after I saw what other people had done to their properties with their own private views of the lake and the volcano that could rival Tagaytay. I have no money but I can work on the land title. I mean my dad died without any of us fixing the estate. We might get victimized by landgrabbers since there are resorts sprouting like mushrooms in our town.

And just like that, it’s as if the universe is conspiring… My architect uncle—my dad’s younger brother—went to the wake this morning and he just happened to drop by because he was in town. He told me he was fixing the right of way to one of the family’s properties, a farmland at the foot of that same mountain. That farm was an orchard when another uncle, a horticulturist—more specifically, a pomologist—had grown mangoes there. I remember carting baskets upon baskets of ripe mangoes at the back of our pickup truck. One basket contained 25kg of ripe mangoes. And I drove that freaking truck fully loaded with mangoes to our university.

The problem at that time was, ok, you’re an academic putting into practice your expertise. However, you are a bad businessman. You can grow tons of mangoes but you don’t have a ready market for it. 🤦🏻‍♀️ My professor uncle poured so much money into that farm but he wasn’t making money from the produce. It was just like hobby farming.

Anyway, now that this younger uncle is starting to fix some estate matters, I think it’s about time my siblings should stop being lazy and we should start doing the same.

I didn’t realize how tired I was yesterday. Only when I read my blog entry yesterday, writing “diseased” instead of “deceased” did I realize I was already zombie-walking. I was almost brain-dead with exhaustion.

It was a long day today. We finally laid her to rest.

My aunt had my grandfather’s old cook house fixed. She gentrified it. They’re using it occasionally if they need to cook massive amounts of food for gatherings like reunions or fiestas.

There used to be two big concrete wood and ash stoves here where my grandpa cooked regularly. He used to blow through a metal pipe to make the fire going, especially when slow cooking dishes in large vats…

Aside from bulalo, Batangas is also known for lomi, the noodle soup dish made with thick egg noodles in thick broth. You can put anything in it, as seen on this bowl I ordered this afternoon. This was enough to last me until dinner time because it was so heavy on the stomach. 😬

My cousin and I were also able to nab this one:

This completey destroyed my diet. 😋

I was craving for other foodstuff from my childhood here in my parents’ hometown. I wanted to buy buchi from the public market but that’s only available early in the morning. It’s made of sweet potato (kamote) balls and I don’t know what else. It’s different from the Filipino-Chinese buchi (sesame balls/jiandui/煎䭔/煎堆) made from glutinous rice.

I had fond memories of buchi from this town because whenever my mom did her food shopping for my grandma, she always brought home this dessert.

Tonight is the last vigil. My cousin (the eldest daughter of the deceased) who lives in New Jersey said in the US they only have three hours of viewing for friends and family if you hold the wake at a funeral home. She said it’s very different here in the Philippines, where it is 24-hr affair for the entire duration of the wake. A family member must also never leave the dead alone, without anyone guarding the place. So there is always someone there to greet visitors at all hours.

I think this custom was based on the old beliefs in aswangs, which are said to steal bodies of the dead during funerals. The origin has been watered down all that is left is the custom that the dead shouldn’t be left alone until burial. In the very rural areas, this belief is still very strong.

After leaving my cousin’s house this morning to go back to Parañaque, I decided to pay a visit to my bank to order a new checkbook and update my UITF profile. On the way there, I passed through UP, CP Garcia, then Teacher’s Village. There were a lot of new restaurants and CP Garcia was greener than I last saw it.

I sort of miss this area. It was home for a while.

I didn’t drop by our former neighbor’s place because I needed to go to the bank first. Maybe I’ll come back here after I drive my cousin to QC following my aunt’s burial on Friday.

I felt a little pang of nostalgia. My feelings were mixed: I miss the area that I used to intimately know but I am also thankful that I no longer live here because of the horrendous traffic and the apartment was old and leaky. I couldn’t put my finger in it—feelings of wistfulness, regret, sadness, and some inexplicable emotion were jumbled inside me…

I worked for a bit at the funeral, went to SM to buy something for my cousins that was needed for the tribute to my aunt. I also bought a sweater because it was freezing in the chapel.

I just needed a place to crash tonight because there’s only one bed and one two-seater couch in the family room of the chapel. I don’t want to drive back again to QC and come back to Parañaque the next day. The chauffer/personal assistant/emotional support animal needs her sleep.

I’m now having a two-hour massage because all of that driving has frozen my back.

Ah bliss…

All stories have endings. Hers ends here. Or it does not. Her offsprings may continue to write her story or they may choose to put a period and create their own stories from hereon.

As of now I haven’t had a good night’s sleep and I was just powered by caffeine and adrenalin. I drove from QC-Parañaque-QC-Parañaque-QC the entire day today and had my weekly call with my team in the car at noon. Thank God for Skyway. 🫠 The car I was driving also is automatic so it’s less exhausting but still exhausting.

While waiting for my cousin to finish filing  her mom’s death certificate at the city hall, I was able to edit one story and polished a story of my own for publication while having coffee at Banapple. With the amount of coffee I consumed today, it’s no wonder I’m still alive at almost midnight.

I have to skip several events this week so I have to make up for it next week. Hopefully, I wouldn’t miss so much. I’m just not up to it for the next few days.

I’m waiting for the melatonin to take effect any time now…