Death Sentence

What do you do when a death sentence

Is handed down

And it turned out every breath had to be accounted for

In a ledger that raged and set off an automatic alarm system

Because the balance was too high to ever be repaid

In one lifetime?

You stand in the middle of the courtyard, look up and

Think:

I have walked every inch of this earth and beyond

Each city and countryside combed and smelled and loved

Like a dog enjoying blades of grass with his nose

Which knows the boundless, guiltless joy

Of roaming every capital and hicktown and planet created

Both on and off maps, radars and global positioning satellites
I have lived every permutation there is, was and will be
Tossing off judgement to the wind because

Everything has been paid eons ago

With glee and with blood

Anticipating the sadness

Man makes a ledger that is not honored elsewhere

(They don’t take Visa or MasterCard where we’re headed)

So, start digging

Inch by inch with your hands through sewer pipes underground

Bodies caked with mud, shit and grime

Only to surface clean, spotless

Immaculate,

Blue skies and freedom                

Lessons from the Popsicle Sticks

Sometimes when the lesson is staring me right at the face unblinking, calling my attention, I still miss it.  That’s what happened with the popsicle sticks I was crafting into a house, garage and flying vehicle for my four-year old son, Joshua who was excited by the powerful glue gun.  The temporality of it all should have warned me and kept me from losing my temper whenever my design is not followed.  Everything is temporary and we’re just passing through so any attachment to anything be it a physical object or an idea is never ever healthy.

Popsicle sticks like toy blocks and sand castles are often subject to instant destruction from the hands that fashion them. Why should architectural ideas be any different?  Nothing is ever written in stone and even water erodes eons of hardness.  So should we accept temporality with grace.

Not Bruce Lee Enough

Today I realized that I wasn’t Bruce Lee enough and made the mistake of resisting forces head-on instead of flowing and humbling myself like water.  It’s a depressing realization because I brought upon myself so much stress, angst and agony for nothing.  

I could’ve just acquiesced and adjusted to fit the required mold because anyway, there was room for creativity elsewhere though not in areas where it required I bend.  In refusing to bend, in rushing to beat imaginary finish lines helter skelter, I ended up broken, defeated in a battle that is so very not worth it.  It’s embarrassing and more embarrassing to say, stupid.

I apologize to and must forgive myself for committing this error and hope it goes down the annals of personal history as a turning point to just be Bruce Lee and learn from water by being water. 

But the merits of water never appealed to me till now that I’m pushed and broken, stretched and cannot return to the original shape.  Ah, when does next time come so I can prove myself worthy of Bruce Lee?  When is the next battle that I can transform into a non-battle?  When is the next opportunity to redeem myself?

Soon!  They come every day and I only have to write and sleep this nightmare episode off because there are more disturbances to come.  But this time I’ll be Bruce Lee enough to turn specter into their opposites and I would be living, breathing and walking a dream.   I would be water.

Our Oasis

Every time I walk into Serendra from the hustle and bustle of the outside world, it’s like entering a calm ocean of serenity.  The noise of commerce and cars switches into a hush of leaves rustling in the wind and it’s like landing on a different planet.  At night, my four year old son goes out with his headlamp to hunt for slugs, snails, centipedes and other insects.  My husband has caught dragonflies and grasshoppers for him.  We go stargazing on the lounge beds by the Palm pool.  Although the night sky is not as clear as the countryside’s, it’s still an awesome experience feeling like you’re in a resort in the middle of Manila.

During the day, the paths that curve through the lush tropical garden escort us out to where we need to go.  The trellis of dangling white flowers never fails to amaze me no matter how many times I’ve strolled underneath, thankful for whoever designed and built this structure.  There’s space for all ages to enjoy – kids playing football on the grass, babies squealing with delight at the bright orange koi in the pond, people meeting in casual lobbies. 

There’s a constant stream of improvements and upgrading going on like there’s an army taking care to ensure the plants and trees stay healthy and facilities well-maintained.  Simply put, living here makes me feel like one lucky soul in a paradise setting.  Too lucky in fact, that I’m sometimes bothered by it, wondering if Metro Manila can ever be “Serendrified.”  Isn’t that a mad, ludicrous, impossible dream?  Imagine the city with a network of parks, gardens and mini-forests.  It’s like people wishing we can be like Singapore knowing fully well that we can never be because we can’t get our act together. From this perspective, it may look bleak for our city. 

Fort Bonifacio is already one of the few hyper sanitized, stylized, secured areas in a city famously described as a gateway to hell.  We don’t have enough parks and greenery.  Our sidewalks are too narrow and public spaces ill-maintained.  There is no affordable housing so squatters have little choice over where they reside.  Public transportation is a nightmare and urban planning is non-existent.  All developers care about is profit, never mind the environment.  What’s sensible and logical is thrown out the window.  Moving within the confines of Fort Bonifacio, especially Serendra, one can forget these inconvenient truths of living in Manila.  If one came home to an oasis, whose problem is it anyway?

There are attempts to bring beauty and greenery into the city like those plant and art walls along EDSA but one wishes for more than token efforts.  One wishes action on a scale so massive, so extensive that it’ll give everyone access to a “Serendra” in their neighbourhood – for free!  But nothing is for free especially Serendra which comes at a price.  However, the economics and sustainability of better and greener public spaces is something that should be worked out perhaps by a group of people in each community.  If there’s no such person or group, then people get the environment they work for and deserve.  Perhaps the best we can hope for are pockets of best practices that can multiply by contaminating others.

Where the Cucumbers Led Us

When I look back at where the cucumbers led us in a span of a few months since we started harvesting them, I am amazed at the twists and turns the ride has taken us.  At some points, I wanted to get off the spinning wheel and surrender.  But it was my husband's project and I had to help him even if I had to drag my feet through the process.  It's his dream to develop my dad's idle farm in Angat, Bulacan and when the project just kept bleeding without any return, I felt like quitting.  I was obsessed with spreadsheets and the figures were stratospheres away from ideal. My husband's firm and constant resolve kept me going on despite the anxiety and fear and for that and many things, I am so grateful.

1.  Discovery of a really good, hole-in-a-wall Chinese restaurant in Makati courtesy of Tito Vic when we passed by to deliver cucumbers to him and Tita Honi
2.  Connected to the Money Doctors for financial planning which led to more doors opening and all because we delivered cucumbers to Charlie and met her mother who was the financial planner I've been looking for
3.  Had an adventure taking a tricycle from Nepa Q Mart to Farmer's Market with 3-year old Joshua in tow and he saw in the "bagsakan" area how men passed watermelons to each other like a basketball relay
4.  Experienced going door to door hopping from one restaurant to the next hoping to make a sale and being told repeatedly that our kind of cucumber was not the kind chefs needed
5.  Met Joey from Salcedo Market and visited his farm in Cavite which was proof of how much can be done with less than a hectare by a hardworking, "maabilidad na Ilocano"
6.  Got to sell stuff at Echo Store even if it was just a measly 25 kilos for one month
7.  Figured out another way to do this farming thing by hiring a farm manager as recommended by my friend Aouie whose dad had a farm and she explained how it was run by the manager.  Indeed why reinvent the wheel or shoot yourself in the foot by experimenting on something you know little about?
8.  Posted ads for a farm manager at the Department of Agriculture and online, got texts and emails from applicants.  Got to interview one candidate before deciding on the second interviewee which is such an amazing stroke of luck because I thought it would take a number of tries before we find the "right" person.  It felt like a hand from heaven was helping us along.
9.  Breathing second life to the farm by hiring Egay, our new farm manager with a heart for the land and organic farming.  We'll see in two to three months where that new direction will take us.  Things can only look up.

Charlie and Larry

Why would Charlie and Larry have us seated that way?  In the reception, the bride and groom usually sit with the sponsors and parents, not with a seemingly random group of people, friends they may be.  But as Sec. Dinky said after people were volunteering to transfer tables, it was not an accident.  We soon traced the connections, the coming-full-circles and other reasons why of course we were destined to be seatmates in a beautiful, inspiring celebration starting a unique couple's new life.

It started out with the most animated and creative mass delivered by Fr. Elis complete with props, blinking lights and bubbles.  This is the homily that I wish can be put on You Tube soon so I can immediately share with others because it drove home many points in a manner that makes you want to jump out of the pew and grab people, shake them up and demand, how may I serve you.  After hearing the homily, I wanted to run to my former boss, Sec. Dinky and ask her if I could do something, anything, just give me an assignment please.

To married couples old and new, Fr. Elis delivered punch after punch of powerful truths.  He tells Charlie that she's not marrying the best man.  The best man is somewhere out there but it's certainly not Larry.  We don't marry perfect persons period.  It's an idea that we know at the back of our minds but because it's at the back, we often forget it and expect too much or something else from another individual who can never be our exact replica.

When I thought that Fr. Elis has pulled out all the props from his cassock, he surprises us with something else -- blowing bubbles over the altar and making it into such an unexpectedly meaningful metaphor for our faith.  He says we should just be as light, joyful and carefree as bubbles.  Sometimes the bubbles disappear as joy often does in our lives but that's why we have to go back to the source, dip into the container of soap so that we may be refreshed and full of joy once more.  If you want to have joy more often, dip into the source more often.

Then there were the speeches at the reception.  Hearing Charlie's Mom was doubly amazing for me because I consider her to be such a nurturing mentor who has patiently and skilfully guided me through session after session of financial planning and management.  Her eloquence was all the more amplified because here she was "giving away" a daughter, hesitantly but ultimately surpassed with a completely embracing grace.

I was touched by a nephew's testimony about the groom.  It confirmed my suspicions since before that Larry was one great guy for my friend, Charlie.  He was the type of uncle who didn't play a background role in the lives of his pamangkins.  He was at the forefront, pro-actively taking them out, spending time with them, giving them a shining example to follow.

Then back to the mystery of why we were at table one instead of someplace else.  Officials from the World Food Program mingled with an urban planning barrista who turned out to be working for an ex-boss in my long-ago architecture days when I met Sec. Dinky doing my dream project of cleaning up the Pasig River.  It turns out that ASec. JV who was there at the table too, is currently working on an estero rehabilitation with in-city relocation for squatters which was exactly my big dream way back then -- and still is but on hold. Sec. Dinky remembers vividly the thesis of my friend, Yancey who designed in-city relocation in Intramuros using stacked container vans with a twist -- the elevator was an old ferris wheel.

And the urban planning barrista was such one dreamer too putting up Coffee Aid to help coffee farmers, advocating fair trade and organizing tree planting activities in the Cordilleras.

  

Farm Log Number Whatever

I was supposed to religiously keep track of farm-related activities through this blog but I realized that when reality veers away from plans, it gets discouraging to have ideas whittled down.  However, now it's apparent that they were dressed down for a purpose.

For the Calatagan farm, I set out with a list of ideas only to be left with the fishpond and now that I've got bangus fingerlings deposited into the recently repaired ponds, I'm thinking of bailing out because it's too frustrating to deal with the landowner.  The light switches on, blinks and bleeps, "Don't give up!"  I've got to hold on at least till harvest time.  Meanwhile, we're having trouble finding prawn fry and tree saplings are being put in plastic bags to be replanted.

Regarding the farm in Angat, we're regrouping after almost a year of lackluster performance. The cucumbers took us for an interesting, lesson-filled, serendipitous ride and now hubby and I are ready for the next step. We've decided to get a farm manager upon hearing the story of my friend whose dad simply hired someone who knew more than he did agriculturally and their farm has been fruitful and profitable since then.  I placed ads through the internet and we're in the process of interviewing the candidates.

We met someone who seems to share the same dreams and vision about organic farming so things are definitely looking up and up.

Dulong Langit

How does one translate "Dulong Langit?"  Heaven's End, Edge of Heaven, At the End of Heaven?  It's one of those phrases that loses something of its poetry in translation.  It became the title of a book about a sad, bitter family feud.  It's the name of a place I have not visited for over a decade because the family was torn apart by circumstances that snowballed into an irreversible tragedy.  The family members are still at war with each other and only the lawyers are profiting big time from other people's misery.  I thought lawyers ought to have a pact of honor among themselves not to take cases like these so the family is forced to settle things outside the legal labyrinth.  But no such pact exists.

So many birthdays, Christmases and milestones missed.  Time spent with grandchildren lost, impossible to regain. Walking around this paradise-like setting, I think, what use are all these beautiful things, land, houses, properties, wealth acquired if you can't even enjoy a simple meal with somebody who gave birth to you and with somebody you once held in your arms so tightly you thought nothing could separate you but then something did. 

That something that's strong enough to turn mother against child and child against mother -- it's a scary idea for somebody who is a mother herself.   One cannot fathom why these things have to happen or why they can't be stopped.  There must be a purpose hidden somewhere but meanwhile, what can one do except hug babies tighter and kiss them more often because I do not want them ever to forget that my love for them is forever.

I remember sitting on this long metal swinging chair with my cousins when we were small.

When I Just Don't Know

It’s like almost every moment is an I-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-my-life moment and it gets tiring regurgitating the same things in my head, reading all these so-called inspirational articles only to be inspired momentarily and confused the next, listening to broken record sermons from well-meaning family and friends, being encouraged and discouraged by advice and circumstance, praying and getting answers in complex cryptic codes that I think pointed this way but more clues lead further astray on an unmarked path illuminated by moody fireflies that keep you lost. 

There’s the opinion from my father that I should be a designer and the long frustrated expectation of my mother for me to be an architect.  My father tells me he knows me best, my talents and what I’m capable of, but somehow I’m not convinced.  I don’t know what it will take to convince me because I think I just have to be convinced myself period, but I’m not so I continue to live an unconvincing life.  Well, it’s only partly that way because the “work” and “career” portion is the most unconvincing part.  I’m happy with where I’m at with my family, blessed with the greatest privilege of maximizing time with my four year old and one year old boys.  However, this professional part has had me hanging almost eight years now on the brink of nervous despair and disrepair. 

I dream of having my own business but then my parents don’t think I’m cut out for business.  I know that’s only a pathetic excuse (as my sister, Mariel would agree) and that if I wanted to, I could be a successful entrepreneur.  But then I keep having these business ideas with nowhere to go, afraid of putting capital where my mouth is except for the fishpond business which my dad says is not really my line because I’m not an agriculturist.  I do have money down on that one and it’s just a matter of months before we see the results.

I dream of having a SINFULLY huge (as in Bill Gates huge) amount of passive income so I invested more than three years attending seminars and courses to improve financial literacy and I’m very happy with what I’ve learned and even more excited with what I’ve applied while getting other people close to me introduced to the rudiments of money management.  I figured if I have this “trust fund” life, that will give me freedom to pursue all the advocacies I want.

So there’s this tension between other people’s expectation that I am an artist and that I’m artistic and thus should use that in building my career and on the other hand, there’s this disinterest in that area because there’s this other part which wants to emerge but is just not emerging, like two monsters in the lake battling it out to the death when I’ve got to somehow keep both alive, fed and satisfied.

In short, because it’s in my face, I can’t recognize anything but the emergency of this lack of emerging. And the only thing I know is I don’t know.

Frugal Fort, Ort & Mort

In my entry called Frugal Fort, I forgot to include New Bombay and Chuck's Deli in the group of restaurants that do not inflict that much pain on the pocket while satisfying the taste buds. New Bombay is located beside Suzhou which is near the Starbucks with the drive thru while Chuck's Deli is in Serendra.  Neighboring Mexicali's not bad either.

I also happily discovered that my favorite in the Ortigas area, Brasas Latin American Street Food was now present at SM Aura although it was a bit disappointing to always find long lines in the food court on weekends.  When I finally tried it out one quiet weeknight, it was not as good as the Podium branch.

My other frugal favorite in the Ortigas area is this Korean buffet restaurant along Meralco Ave. on the building beside Caltex where there's a Brother's Burger and 7-11 on the ground floor.  This place gets a lot of Korean customers and I go gaga over the grilled meat you wrap in big leaves, make-your-own bibimbap and noodles.  I wanted to take a picture of the noodle set-up but it gets finished by famished patrons fast so I just took a photo of the instructions.  If you go there during lunch time, you can have the buffet (pork only for the grill) for P299 inclusive of VAT.

The other happy belt-tightening discovery was 7-11 in Angat, Bulacan.  I usually am wary about those microwavable food because more often than not, the quality does not come with the low price but this time, the roasted chicken was surprisingly tasty.  Now I'm wondering if this is true for all 7-11 branches or is this just a fluke?  I'm hoping it's the former so I'd have hope that value meals really do have value.

Grace of Mary Grace

I always enjoy going to Mary Grace for the food, the homey atmosphere and Joshua's favorite cheese roll.  It was a pleasant surprise that at SM Southmall they added on to this list a cozy children's play corner and a shelf full of products made by stay-at-home mom-preneurs.   The nook on the loft was crammed with wooden toys, dinosaurs, dragons, toys and story books.  On the shelf downstairs, I discovered a Philippine made line of perfume called Haraya and fell for the scent of "Alaala" although my husband insisted that he'd go for the natural smell anytime.  

In a place aptly brimming with grace shared all around, it was hard to whisk Joshua away from the play area to eat his dinner.  Before heading down, we read quite a blessing of a book, "I Know Jesus Loves Me."  It ends, "He even makes certain, every now and again, to send me a blessing just because he's my friend.  It's easy to see he enjoys pleasing me."