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…

Loud meowing outside my bedroom door at 5:30 am. On a Sunday morning. Because she wanted pets. Awww kitty…

I was awakened early today because…

My aunt/godmother died early this morning. On my mother’s birthday. My godmother is my mom’s eldest sister.

I had to miss my mom’s 75th birthday dinner party.

I drove all the way to QC to be my cousin’s (who is like a sister to me) emotional support/personal assistant since she can’t drive long distances because of distress and lack of sleep. I packed her personal belongings because we will be holding the funeral at St. Peter’s and then bring my godmother to their hometown in Batangas after two days. But for now, I gave my cousin melatonin tablets so she can sleep and rest.

I will be driving back and forth several cities tomorrow to arrange the death certificate and other logistical issues before the body can be ready for viewing and so internment arrangements can be made…

I’ve been here before.

When my dad died 19 years ago, I was the only one functional in our family. I was the one who arranged the funeral, the death certification, the death notice in newspaper (required when fixing the estate for the heirs), and the cremation. I did the grocery shopping for the supplies and food & drinks during the funeral. All the practical stuff. My mom was just floating then—she wasn’t on earth at that time so it fell on me to do those things. My brother was lucid but he has a young family then so he can’t really be hands-on when it comes to the nitty-gritty stuff. My sisters were too distraught.

I was just powered by adrenalin and only slept for a total of 5 hrs that week (or something like that). I was 25 years old then, still young so my body could take that kind of abuse.

But my cousin is 45, she needs all the help she can have, especially rest.

So now it’s early evening and we’re already tucked in bed. We are going to have a looooong day tomorrow.

Psalm 23

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
2
He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters,
3
he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
4
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, [1] I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

I thought I saw white hair strands when I was looking at the mirror tonight. I double checked and triple checked… It was just the reflection of the lamplight on my black hair.

I was surprised by my reaction; I didn’t imagine that I would panic at the sight of white hair. I thought I wasn’t bothered about ageing—except for the backpain that came with it—but I guess I was wrong. I did care about how it would affect the color of my hair. I don’t know why it did.

You see, I like myself now better than I was in my 20s and 30s. I am turning 45 in three weeks and I feel like this age is pivotal. Not young but not old. I have wisened up but I’m still just winging it in life. I still haven’t figured it out and I just make stuff up as I go along.

I feel like life is just starting for me. I’m not physically tied anymore to my infants, toddlers, or pre-schoolers. I no longer have to stress about my school graders. I finally have my own thing as my now-teenaged kids have theirs. I am no longer tied and held back by a partner.

I’m still young. I have yet to do many things.

I think I panicked when I mistakenly saw white hair strands because that is the signal that I am indeed old. Maybe the inner me rejects the idea that I am old, that I can’t do anything else, and that I am now limited in terms of what I can do. That is one half of what makes me scared about ageing—I’m afraid of limits, of being boxed in or pigeonholed. Because women of certain age are boxed in or pigeonholed by society. I am deathly afraid of that ceiling that is/will be put over me.

I want to have Iris Apfel’s spirit—she didn’t let age stop her from pursuing life. At age 97 she was signed on as a model by IMG because she was so much sought after by so many brands.

I want to think that age is just a number, ageing is all in the mind.

My back, however, disagrees.

Here is Nicole Kidman and Jimmy Fallon, on national television, talking about how clueless and stupid Jimmy was.

Jimmy was told by a mutual friend that he will bring Nicole Kidman to his NY apartment because she wants to talk to him, maybe for Bewitched. This was a time Jimmy was still in SNL. The idiot didn’t know what to do. Was told to buy brie cheese and crackers and that’s it.

Nicole, on the other hand, liked Jimmy and the mutual friend was trying to fix them up. Jimmy had no idea.

So here they were in his apartment, Jimmy didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what to say, so he put on a video game and played!

Nicole said, OMG, this is not going anywhere—no chemistry, no he didn’t like me, I’m embarrassed—and that is that.

Jimmy said, wait—did I just go on a date with Nicole Kidman?!

Idiot, yes!

On national TV, Jimmy wanted to die and melt into the floor. 🤣

But I don’t fault him. I was in his position when I was in college. I was so shy in front of this guy I stalked for so long and my friends and I are still talking about this like it was yesterday. 🤣

Let’s call him Benj, a biology major. He was the reason why I always had hung out in my mom’s building and spent inordinate time with my bio major friends. I memorized his schedule—well some of his classes—and knew he would pass by at 3 pm in front of the bio bldg to go home to his apartment. So I had hung out at the lobby where there were benches and sat there so I could see him. I often was with my bffs at that time and sometimes with my guy bff but normally I would push him away so we won’t be mistaken as my bf. I did that for several semesters. The time slots changed, but still the same modus operandi.

One of my bffs was classmates with him in one Humanities or English subject, I can’t remember now. I often fetched this bff from this class so I could just have a glimpse of my crush.

A brother from my Greek-letter organization was roommates with him. One time he orchestrated my meeting with Benj. We were in front of the Humanities building and my brod introduced me to Benj. Like it was a well-planned meeting, a really carefully staged one. After I was introduced, I was so shy that I couldn’t say anything at all and I ran away! The idiot me just literally ran away! Maybe I said I had football practice or something.

My brod was flabbergasted and asked “me what did you do?!” when we met later. I said, I don’t know! I was just so shy that I wanted the ground to swallow me up.

During my last semester in college, I was finally classmates with Benj in one general ed class. I sat infront of him. I couldn’t bring myself to reintroduce myself to him because I was still so shy with him—and him alone. Our professor then knew my dad because he used to teach this very same subject before his early retirement due to his diabetic foot. “Ah you’re the daughter of ____,” our prof said during the first day.

So Benj should have known my name. But I still couldn’t bring myself to talk to him. The whole semester my back was just very conscious of his presence.

All my friends were already frustrated with me. The loud, confident me has been reduced to a tongue-tied idiot in the presence of this guy. The only person who reduced me into one big puddle on the ground.

Decades later, my friends and I still couldn’t find him on social media…

Oh wait, I just found him! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

He’s a doctor now in a southern city. Still married with two boys. Well good for him. Haha!

He has noooooo idea.

Ooooh damn, I want to try this but I think I will die.

French cuisine eaten in a farm in Cavite. The cooking methods are simple enough but the ingredients are hard to obtain here in the Philippines.

Authentic French food in the Philippines found in Cavite