The Logos Hope Childhood

The last time I went to the big ship bookstore, it was still the MV Doulos before and I took my two little brothers with me.  They were less than 10 years old back then and now they're gigantic men attending college with schedules and lives of their own far apart from mine.  Digging up the old photos makes me a bit sad that those days can never return.  There will never be that ease of taking them out at a whim because they have to consult their girlfriend or classmates. 

I went today to the MV Logos Hope with my husband, son and stepmom.   I was hoping to bring the once-little-now-big Carlo and Bobby but they had classes.  It's always a joy bringing children anywhere since they see everything with the freshest of eyes and Joshua was no different grinning with excitement at the gigantic ship.  

These are the books I got - nine all in all priced at P100 - P150.  I didn't want to go over that range because if I did then I should've just bought from Booksale.  However I allowed myself the indulgence of a P250 Hot Air Balloon book because we recently went to the Clark Hot Air Balloon Fest and Joshua would swoon over the pictures of the colorful flying objects.

That drawing on the left side was made by Joshua while we waited for Tita Tessie to finish shopping for all the Christian books her heart desired.  Joshua's usually glued to the Disney Junior channel so it's great to find Handy Manny and Little Einsteins sticker books.  I chose only one book for myself -- the Asian cookbook.  Usually, I'd get more but I'm awaiting the arrival of a Kindle so got to practice self-control.

Too bad the people behind Logos Hope didn't sell food beyond hotdogs, popcorn, cookies and ice cream because we would have loved to try cuisine from different continents.  It would be a great way to share culture if they had various nationalities represented through food.  The other thing they didn't take advantage of is the lovely ocean setting.  We were just shepherded into the bookstore, a gallery and into a cafe and except for the cafe, it was just a big windowless room that could be anywhere.  It would be nice if they allocated deck space to welcome visitors who can enjoy the infinite ocean - sky view, sitting down sipping latte or tea and chatting up the crew. 

We had a very late lunch at the nearby Little Lamb hotpot restaurant, one of my hubby's favorite and now my stepmom's too.  The healthy broth was so gorgeous and after leaving the place, I dreamed of going back there as soon as tonight.

Here are more photos of Carlo and Bobby - sentimental trip down memorable childhood.  I hope as Joshua grows up, I can always take him places and he doesn't have to check his calendar.

Randomly: William and Ashley

I was waiting for my turn at the clinic of Dr. Mow and there was the usual stack of Newsweek.  Underneath were two copies of this book which I flipped through and couldn't help but want to share it with everyone.  If I can get it into the hands of my brothers, Carlo, Bobby and RM, cousin Juggie plus a list of other people, I'd be very excited-happy-ecstatic for them to read Dr. William Tan's raw-inspiring true tale.

William contracted polio when he was two years old but this was not a deterrent at all to pursuing his dreams of becoming a doctor and marathon "runner." He was a Harvard Fullbright and Oxford Raffles Scholar and trained at the Mayo Clinic.  He took a year off from his medical practice as a neurosurgeon and through seven continents, raced in his wheelchair through ten marathons in the Antarctica, Argentina, Egypt, Thailand, South Africa, Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and USA.  Makes you think anything you're going through now should be easy.  Makes you think any dream you can conjure can be realized.

I don't know how it ended up in my hand but I must have accidentally, unconsciously taken the TIME magazine also from the doctor's office so another random inspirational discovery landed on my lap.  Ashley Sutton's bar in Bangkok was featured and it was amazing how his artistic inclinations expressed themselves in his life story and were the basis for various successful businesses.

He was an iron-ore miner working in what we can only imagine as a bleak, dreary environment.  Letting his imagination run cannonball loose, he created a world of faeries in his mind that led to sketches and a series of beautifully crafted books that appealed to both children and adults.

He started sculpting metal faeries based on his imagined creatures and they sold the world over through shops and the internet.  He opened up a faerie-world-themed bar in Bangkok where he now lives while continuing to operate the entrepreneurial fruits of his pure creations.

Someday, I wish to discover something like this that I can do, have fun and spread around in an enterprise and I wonder, William and Ashley, when that day will come.

Finding the Real Deal

My hubby who is from mainland China has been trying out living in the Philippines for over a year now and I can’t believe there are only THREE Chinese restaurants that thus far have passed muster for him – one in Malate, one in Binondo and another near MOA.  I made it my mission thus to desperately jack this number up. 

Let me explain how this is not a simple task.  Most of the Chinese restaurants here are considered “fake” by my husband’s standards and if you’ve lived in China for a number of years, you would be able to relate and commiserate with him.   Working in Tianjin (two hours east of Beijing) made me realize how vastly different the food is there from the Chinese food we’re so used to here in Manila to the point that I’d be hankering for our very own siopao and siomai.  

But back to the task at hand, the key to spotting the “real deal” for my hubby is to find restaurants where the customers are from mainland China who speak Mandarin.   The menu also provides a clue.  If you see words like siopao, siomai or asado then it’s “Filipinized” already.   If the pictures on the wall or menu look too familiar to the Pinoy, then it’s probably not what we’re looking for either.   Hubby also shuns the big, palatial looking types which he thinks are way overpriced especially for tasteless fare as he prefers the small, no-pretense type of gigs.

Eagerly poring over food blogs, I thought I found one hopeful in this much hyped and talked about hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Rockwell.  Sadly, when hubby and I tried it, it was a disappointment.  Maybe we didn’t order right but my hubby is strict when it comes to matching the value-for-money with the taste factor.   Ah well, try again.

Last night, it was an important date for the Chinese since it was the fifteenth day after the Lunar New Year so we headed for Binondo.   Traffic has subsided considerably at night so the stroll is easier but I thought after walking down Ongpin that we’d never find a single candidate.  The establishments on the main street look just like that – very much established through the years so they’re Filipinized.   Hubby however had the magic eye and could read the characters and he found a place off the main street that proved to be our savior.

The owner spoke to us in Mandarin and everyone else eating there spoke in Putonghua.  Jackpot!  And when we tasted the food, it brought us back to China with the fish choking and drowning in a sea of chillies. 

Talking to the owner’s wife also took me back to China since she did what any Chinese woman would do seeing another woman with a small child – give a lecture about what to feed and not to feed a baby and why.  I got those lectures a lot not only from my mother-in-law but from total strangers who weren't shy about giving their opinion and usually aghast at the sight of a diaper.  They’re very against using diapers in China and mothers won’t mince words making you feel that you’ve done a major wrong deed.

Our score card is up to four – a bit paltry but with renewed determination, we'll discover more.   

The others in the list were introduced to my hubby by his adventurous friend who didn't speak a word of English and yet managed to go all over the Philippines inspecting mining sites by himself.  He introduced the restaurant in Binondo where you can get turtle soup which hopefully doesn't use the endangered type.  Jason, my husband was so happy with this find because turtle soup is a delicacy in China that costs a fortune but in Manila, it was unbelievably cheap.   The other restaurant is the Suzhou Dimsum on Mabini St. and the third is the Hong Kong ____ place at the seafood market near MOA.  A group of mainlanders entered that restaurant lugging bottles of wine in SM supermarket bags.  Definitely mainlanders since they want their meals together with their alcohol.  Passing by their table, hearing Mandarin like music to my ears and seeing what they were feasting on, I want to go back there to order what they ordered plus more.

There is a hotpot place near Manila Hotel which is a big chain in China called Little Sheep and it's the closest we can get to the Mongolian hotpot that we miss.  However, the sauce -- which is a key element -- is not as good as the one in China but passable if you crave the ultra thin slices of lamb cooked in boiling broth.  

The disappointing restaurant pictured above was so promising based on blog entries alone but experiencing it ourselves, the colorful barangay parade that passed by the window was the most interesting part of the trip.  Before going to the restaurant ourselves, I told some friends about it since they, a Canadian married to a Chinese mainlander, were also in search of the holy grail of Chinese cuisine.  They checked out the place and also weren't impressed.  They theorize that maybe the chef was away for the New Year holiday so they'll give it another try after a month.  

So What's the Next Project???

2011 saw me going back to my earlier passion for architecture and I was happy with the opportunities I got to renovate and construct.  Due to health reasons, I don't know if I can continue with those type of projects this year because they can be physically straining.  This blog is supposed to be anything I'm involved with at the moment so I was brainstorming other things I could talk about.  However, I'm my own worst blog topic killer, shooting down ideas before they hit the screen.

I had a kitchen project going on late last year when a chef was hired to teach the cooks in our house.  That episode must have been worth at least two posts with lots of pictures but after a week's worth of teaching, while there were really sumptuous creations, my expectations were simply not met. The cooking focused too much on unfamiliar territory involving hard-to-spell French terms that could have been made more down to earth by simpler and more Filipino dishes.  I didn't like the way the chef lumped too many recipes within 6 days -- too much of a whirlwind affair, not much training quality and most disappointing was we still didn't know where to get a wider variety of fresh ingredients.  While I appreciate the actual application of some techniques in daily meals, the one week crash course could have been better planned.

I could write about food experiences like the obsessed foodies and food bloggers I so love reading but for me, the eating event has to be extremely excellent before it becomes worthwhile to describe.

I could write about the joys of parenthood but then having Facebook makes it too easy to instantly share pictures of my wonderful boy enjoying every facet life.

I could write about getting cancer but then it's too personal.

Then I got a call yesterday from my friend, Fr. Robert Reyes who asked me to make a brief reflection with photo for his book compiling stories of cancer survivors in Hong Kong.   I cannot say "no" to Fr. Robert so I got something to put up on my blog as well.

Ending a Death Wish

by Joei Villarama

Death is so much easier than life.  In life, you have unreachable dreams, unfulfilled hopes, time that can’t be turned back, loves that are lost.  Death is peaceful eternity back in our original home where we are meant to be.  

I lived with a death wish hanging over my head.  When I was stationed in China, I was building up to arranging a trip to the Western most part of the country and riding the bus to Pakistan so I could end up in Afghanistan.  Then I got married, had a son and told myself what silly thoughts they were and maybe I could get back to that plan when my son was old enough to take care of himself.  So that death wish never left me until ironically, I had cancer and it was crystal clear that I will survive because great things are in store even for a life that seems messed up, that God will make sense of it all even without knowing exactly how.

Last year, I was diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis (blood clots in my legs) which led to the discovery that I was nine weeks pregnant plus had a 12cm large ovarian mass.  The ovarian mass was safely taken out when my baby was 14 weeks but then the pathology heralded bad news – malignant cells, the aggressive kind.  The doctors said I could get chemotherapy while carrying the baby.  This divided my family because one half of the members including me believed that the baby and I can both transcend this while the other half thought it was a foolish risk, an unwise gamble to take. 

For that other half, it was important for me to survive even without the baby because that will ensure that my two year old son will have a mother as he grows.  They rationalized that I already pushed my luck enough by having my first baby at 38 and that I should just be happy and grateful for that.  Which doctor do we listen to?  Who can we believe and trust?   Eventually, they came around to respecting my decision to keep the baby while continuing the treatment.  They are nervous about the effects the medication will have on the baby and worry about the worst if the baby is born with abnormalities.   This is again where our faiths diverge.

We won’t know until the baby is born several months from now.  Meanwhile, all we’ll have is faith or fear depending on what we choose to sustain or sink us.  I choose faith and it has made a difference.  Never before in my life did I have such a certainty in the goodness and generosity of God. 

My death wish was borne of the fact that I will never accomplish the grand things I dream of realizing because it’s too late and I’ve fallen too far behind.  I will not only remain the daughter with the lowest ROI (Return on Investment) in the world but will end up with triple negative ROI.  Here I am with zero career, a uniquely complex condition, more unknowns about the future than ever before but for the first time, I have total faith and the death wish is replaced by a renewed desire for life.  

Just when you’re stripped to nothing, you find everything. 

Maybe that’s the slap in the face I needed to learn the lesson I couldn’t learn no matter how much I’m reminded by experience or by well-meaning advisers.  My entire life I’ve pegged on a performance board with graph lines that could barely rise above mediocre.  Closest friends will tell me that’s not how it goes, that the measure for success shouldn’t be income or anything in the material realm, that God loves us because we are His child and not because of what we do or achieve. Tell that to somebody who desperately wants to do something and feels powerless to do it.  There’s no excuse.  Not even God.

But what if God just wants to hold you in the palm of His hands and show you otherwise?  You have no choice but to curl up in the grace and comfort that He, not you, is the One in control.  

Finished! . . . What's Next?

It's been finished since mid-December but there was one last correction I had to make.  I couldn't bear posting the pictures without the correction because oddly enough, even if there were a dozen mistakes before this, this particular one got on my nerves in a way that I couldn't even blog about it.  The shower head fixture was placed too high and I had to send a worker to rectify it.  But now that the project is finished, what's next?

The above pictures show how the house would be when the user, my mom won't be there -- completely sealed and secured.  On the other hand, when she's visiting the beach, it'll open up to the elements.

The client is very particular about the bathroom so I hope this one passes.

So by the year end of 2011, my team of hardworking people and I completed six renovation and construction projects.  Who knows what 2012 would bring.

Moving Along

Getting the local "arawan" to finish the bathroom was really the right and wise move.  He's easy to work with, "madaling kausapin" and the job got done on time without excuses unlike the local contractor who milked the project without giving back quality on-time work.  I'm still berating myself for choosing wrongly but it seems I have a weakness where I get immediately impressed by somebody, get satisfied with just one discussion with the person and don't shop around anymore for alternatives.  This practice has got to stop.  This bad habit has got to be fixed.

The lamp foot is courtesy of Elsor who is based in Manila.  I tried it with a heavy piece of metal first but that didn't work out.  This one's a nice piece of molave from Mom's workshop.

The headboard is almost finished except for the box where the cellphones and other gadgets can be plugged in.

Locked up and secured, the house looks like this:

What I like about the picture below is that it shows how small the structures are in the landscape.  I'm afraid of the three story house my Mom would like to eventually build on this site.  I don't like buildings overwhelming natural beauty if the structure is insensitively proportioned or supersized.

Besides not seeing the mini-beach home through the finish line, the other hard thing about not being able to personally visit Calatagan now is missing my beach outings with Joshua.  At least we enjoyed a good holiday in Matabungkay the last time we went together and Jason takes pictures that make me feel I've relished the day with them.