chickenomics

I have a friend who is in the telecom business. He visits me at the house to get free cooking lessons. His one hobby is to annoy and confuse other people. His name is JMV, short for Julius May Virus. This missive is in honor (horror?) of him.

Anyway, during one of those cooking disasters, JMV was sitting on my kitchen counter going on and on about our respective boring lives when suddenly he pipes up, "What's with Nessy and all the other women who can cook? What do they have that we don't? It's not like it's written in the chickenomics recipe book." Nessy, by the way, is the sister of Janice. She does cook up a storm, but I digress.

In that statement of his, JMV was hinting subtly about how bad a cook I am so he goes and shows me an example of a real gourmet, coining that "chickenomics" word in the process. Meanwhile, the eyes at the back of my head could see that not only was JMV not helping, he has both feet (with shoes on) perched on top of my VERY CLEAN, GERM-FREE counter. He was watching me work in rapt admiration (or was it murderous anticipation) for the bad meal that lay ahead. Ay, what can I say, most of my friends like being mean to one another so I'm blissfully unaffected, beyond anything and everything else they have to say.

So I faced him and pointed out that he's not helping, and proceeded to give a long littany on how clueless he is in the kitchen. He wants to go independent for the longest time, mind you, and I am just wondering what mealtime is going to be like for him when he realizes that dream. At this point JMV gives me a helpless shrug, ala que sera, sera.

And I am boring you into a coma again. So much for small talk. I guess this is what happens when you are in limbo, suspended in time and space, not knowing what you're going to do tomorrow when all your friends are gone and there's noone to annoy you anymore. Which is why I'm going to whine some more about the sordid state of affairs called 'getting a life out of this country' in the paragraphs that would follow.

Hah. You wish.

Good day to you.

parallel universe

I am at the mall again, as you may guess. My daughter is with me because our maid is kaput. She has run off, I think, with someone's family driver. My daughter is in a corner, busy with her crayons. I had to buy those crayons so she won't bother me while I'm busy typing my stuff.

A few minutes ago we were at Jollibee, eating Chickenjoy. Incidentally, someone texted me to ask if the chickens were indeed happy when they were killed, kasi nga, bakit chickenJOY ang tawag?

My daughter and I are in an sweet and sour mode. She said things to me like, "I don't like you, go find a cab and get in!" and "I hope Dr. Mansukhani kidnaps you." All in our local dialect, of course. The latter sentence translates to "Kunin ka na ng Bumbay!" I was doing the laundry, again, kasi and she was bugging and bugging me so I incarcerated her inside our room with the Barney VCD on. When I entered the room again, she said those hurting words. Later she would hug me and say, "Mama, Jollibee tayo." To which I responded with eargerness because it meant I could pass by the net cafe.

Do you know what my husband's stupid dog did to my freshly laundered underwear? He ate it. My God, we've been spending thousands for dogfood and all he wants to eat is my underwear. Of all the gory things in the world.

While I'm here, typing away, I wonder obout the other folks out there who are working. I may be having fun now but I am not getting anywhere with all my whining. It can't buy me chocolate, it can't buy me a ticket to somewhere. As it is, my daughter is getting bored. She has taken to chewing on her crayons. And I don't want to spend thousands again just to purge her in the ER so I think I have to go now.

I will try to get my brains in order so I can write about less mundane things such as the dog eating my private stuff.

Take care, wherever you are.

the world is an oven and i'm the cake

Ay, it's so hot! It felt like my feet were sprouting blisters as I hiked to this net cafe. They're widening the road sa may palengke and it didn't surprise me greatly when I saw that the semento was dry enough to walk on when just the other night nung dumaan ako wala pa naman pino-pour na semento dun.

Is it true what they say about the correlation of bloating and heat? (you know, the hotter it gets the more your body expands?) My shorts were not this tight when I left the house but somehow after walking under the sun for 5 minutes to get to this place I find that my fly is open. The zipper must've given way under the extreme pressure of nagpupumiglas na adipose.

Know what, I'll give you an insight on a mother's thoughts. The other evening at the mall I saw a small boy about Isabel's age. He was uh, cleaning his nose with his digits and sampling the bi-products all at once. And I found myself thinking, " I hope my daughter doesn't marry this guy." How weird is that?

After months of suffering from lack of self-worth I have come to the conclusion that I have gotten this huge by eating my daughter's table scrap. Vulgar-speak, SALIN. I don't know where I got this insane "ay, sayang" mentality. And I am bereft. It is only now, painfully, that I realize, mas sayang yung mga pantalon na di ko na nasusuot. Not that I couldn't get this big on my own. I mean, I ate like a pig before but now I eat like a MAMA PIG. And mama pigs are waaayyyy larger than spawnless pigs.

Wait. I know what this is. This is an odyssey. Someday I will pass this part even though it seems like it's caught in a time-warp. Someday, i don't know how many years more, I will metamorphose into a fat-free goddess and everyone will worship me because even my nose will shrink. Right now my nose is also in heat-and-bloating mode. It looks like a mouse, the one connected to your PC.

Monday I am starting acupuncture. Another of Janice's wild and wacky ideas. According to her she lost her appetite completely. I saw her last night and if you ask me what I thought was missing with Janice, I'd say it's her waistline. But I'm going to the acupuncturist just the same. You know me, anything for a chance at thinness. Maybe I can convince the acupuncturist to bury the needle in my mouth and leave it there for the rest of my natural life so that every time I ate I would feel PAIN.

You know what they say "You are what you collect?" I think I will always secretly hate Yeyet for influencing me with her baboy collection. Because when I started collecting swine I collected the weight as well. I remember a few months back when a friend told me, "So, cows na pala ang kino-collect mo ngayon?" I remember smiling stupidly because I could not grasp what she meant at the time. And so I was always lying in bed at night thinking about that incident, puzzled because I never once thought about collecting bovine. And then it occured to me .... mukha na ba akong baka at iniisip niyang baka na ang kino-collect ko?

Newsflash. Kelangan ko pa palang maglaba at kaya ako nandito ay para bumili ng Tide sa grocery, hindi para magbabad sa net cafe.