We've Moved!

Just the blog, not the house. At least, not yet. You can find the new blog here:

http://bambit.kusangpalo.com

Pasyal kayo dun ha?

:)

Moving, on a larger scale

*ring*

"Hello, my name is Victoria Gaerlan and I'm calling from Iligan City. I'd like to know if the 3 bedroom house you have advertised on the Bulletin Today is still available?"

"That was last Sunday."

"Yes, the Bulletin Today last Sunday."

"Yes, it's still available. Ilan ba kayong titira?"

"Four adults, one teen-ager, one baby."

"I'm sorry, we don't like babies. They cry all the time and the house only has one bathroom and there's four of you adults. It will be difficult."

I clicked off trying to absorb the logic of that statement. Multiply this conversation by at least 5 times in several variations in a day and you will have an idea of how difficult it is to find a house long distance.

Da hubby has been redeployed to Manila, and we dutifully will follow. We were looking for houses in the Diliman area, as the head office was in the same location. But we slowly realized that a single detached unit in the UP Village/Sikatuna/Scout area was way beyond our projected budget. After two weeks of calls long distance (buti nalang may promo ang PLDT) and still no results that were making us happy, my dad called from Cebu.

"Kamusta na kayo?"

"Eto, nagpapanic na kasi hindi pa kami nakakahanap ng bahay."

"Nakahanap na ba kayo ng bahay?"

"Hindi pa po."

"Kasi ganito . . ."

And he went on to tell me that the family house that we left behind when we moved to Cebu in the mid-70s was to become available again.

He had rented it to a series of intriguing tenants through the years, the latest of which is a backyard kutsinta entrepreneur. But the businesswoman's contract was running out in mid-April, and would we like to live there, my father wanted to know.

YES!

The house, he said, was far from being pristine, after 30 years of being rented out. I realized that it had been rented out for longer than we had lived there. If there was anyone in Manila that we could ask to look at the house to assess repairs and renovations needed . . .

That would be Alex, my ever dependable brother-in-law, da hubby's younger brother. After being given all the necessary contact numbers, Alex had quickly arranged a visit with the current tenant. In the meantime, I tried to draw from memory a rough sketch of the floor plan of the house. It stood on 450sqm of land in a subdivision on the fringe of what used to be known as the Manila International Airport. When I was done drawing I showed it to da hubby, and he said

"Looks big."

"It is big," I said. I told him which of the three bedrooms had belonged to whom and how part of the driveway was closed off to make an extension of the already expansive sala and of the two doors that led to the back area and the servants quarters. Sometimes it took our yayas more than half an hour to find my brother and me so they could give us a bath, there were so many places to hide in. "Looks big," he said again, and I didn't really know if he was referring to the house or my drawing of it. Ok, I said to myself, maybe I am making it out to be big. I last saw the house when I was in elementary school, and children do tend to remember houses and such to be bigger than they actually were.

On the day that Alex was visiting the tenant, he texted us as he was leaving their house in Tayuman. It was a Saturday, and I estimated he should be at our house in less than an hour, and sure enough, he was. He texted, "Andito na ako. Malaki pala."

Toldja.

He had come armed with a camera and his engaging personality that put the current tenant at ease. The houseowner (my father) was very mabait, she said, and had let them stay on for several months past their end of contract, and didn't mind too much if they fell behind on the rent once in a while. She claims that the tenant previous to her was undoubtedly a drug dealer or some malfeasant of the same ilk, because he had caused the house, once a sprawling bungalow of a design unique to the 60s, to look like a sealed bodega. She let Alex take pictures and even offered him a snack, which he politely declined. When he was done and out of the house he gave us his quick assessment.

Several parts of the house needed fixing, windows mostly. The kutsinta factory at the back had produced the equivalent of five years' residue which will need industrial cleaning. But the core structure was intact and there was no sign of termites anywhere, so it wasn't as bad as we expected. The pictures he took should tell us the story in detail.

Two days later, the pictures arrived. For a minute I stood just staring at the 3-Rs that we laid out on the dining table. This was not the house that I remembered. The front looked like the headquarters of some lost armed detachment, all it needed was a 60 calibre gun mounted on the pagoda-like structure of the pedestrian gate. A rolled out GI sheet covered most of the front wall to the height of the carport roof that had been extended to cover what used to be the front lawn. It was worse inside. Someone had thought to paint the front door as well as the top third parts of the walls a curious shade of red. But the floor was intact (marmolisado, my dad referred to it as) and all the wrought iron bars on the stairs and windows were still in place. It really wasn't that bad. Then we looked at the shots of the back of the house and agreed it needed chemical cleaning.

The appropriate persons and companies have been alerted and are now on standby. Mid-April is just four weeks away. Time flies like an arrow. (Fruit flies like a banana, Kuya Maui adds. That's his little joke.) By the end of April we will be back in the house that my father had built for his young family, and we will be working on bringing it back to the way it was. It will be a well-thought out, graduated process, but we're thinking in a year or two it will look like it did in its heyday. It should be a good house for kids to grow up in.

To Move or Not to Move

We have just acquired our own home in cyberspace, www.kusangpalo.com, with the services of Ploghost. It already has a graphical menu, and Samuel Bilibit has moved in. I, on the other hand, am procrastinating like a hydrophobic swimmer on a chilly day.

Should give up my blogger setup and dive into Wordpress 1.5? Three setups of it exist on the server, Sam's, my testblog, and a conjugal blog that is still in development stage. I also have Pixelpost, which will serve as the definitive family photo album. I could change blogger settings and have it publish on our server but that seems to be just doing it halfway. But I still have to find THE wordpress template that will fit my obsessive-compulsive attitude towards blogging and web design.

I guess this explains why I haven't been posting these days. Am busy with FTP and EditPlus and css. Not to mention a Maia who now refuses to take afternoon naps. *sigh*

Red Ribbon: The Final Word

As the family and I are caught in the middle of teething troubles, relocation pre-flight and pre-graduation anxiety, allow me to turn over this post to Mr. Jorge Q. Concepcion. Mr. Concepcion, as you may know, is the gallant Vice-President and General Manager of Red Ribbon Bakeshop. He has been monitoring our exchanges here and would like to add more information to the universal truth that we all like Red Ribbon products. Mr. Concepcion--teyk it awiiii...

Dear Ms. Gaerlan,

I read through your blog last Wednesday the article, "A Red Ribbon Postscript" and the comments it generated and felt compelled to write you about a number of things:

1) Yes, our organization is particularly proud of our many long-serving employees like Ofel, who certainly typifies the ethos of the people that has built the reputation of the Company over the past 25 years.

2) Tiramisu Meltdown, the cake Ofel gave you to try, is our newest cake offering that was launched only last Tuesday. It is now available in all our stores in the Philippines.

3) In response to your reader, Watson, yes, we will gladly service a customer order in any one of our stores for pick it up in any of our other stores within the Philippines. Within a certain distance from the dispatching store, we can also arrange delivery for a token fee (which may even be waived in certain circumstances). In fact, one may even place an order in any one of our 15 existing stores in California, USA, for delivery in the Philippines!

4) We are presently looking at means to enhance our website to allow our customers to even order on-line. We recognize that our more internet/computer-literate clients, such as you and your readers, would find great value in the convenience of this service. I will personally make sure that you (and Watson) are duly informed, once this service is activated.

I am heartened to see that you and your readers are unanimously gratified with the manner by which we have addressed your concern. Nevertheless, I would like to reiterate my appreciation for the feedback you have given. You have my assurance that measures are now being undertaken to avoid the inadvertent mistakes that were made. Much as we'd rather it not, there will be the inevitable lapses, but for as long as we have vigilant and loyal customers like you who will provide us with constructive feedback, we are confident we can exceed your expectations and continuously delight you with the Red Ribbon experience whenever you patronize our stores.

Sincerely,

Jorge Ma. Q. Concepcion
Vice President & General Manager
Red Ribbon Bakeshop, Inc.

A Red Ribbon Postscript, or may happy ending din pala sa totoong buhay

This is the fourth of Tiramisu Meltdown* Ofel Clavo brought me late this afternoon. Ofel is an area manager for Red Ribbon Bakeshop. I haven't taken it out of the styrofoam box it came in, it's too fragile. I can't eat too much of it, that would be too much heaven. It's soooo yummy. wats0n, if you're reading this, you can lick the pic.

Ofel's job is to go from one Philippine city to another putting up Red Ribbon Bakeshop branches. She's currently based in Cagayan de Oro. She visited the Iligan branch to see how they're doing, and since she was in town, she asked to see me as well. Her direct boss is Jorge Maria Q. Concepcion, whose gracious and generous letter ended my animosity towards the RRB Iligan Branch.

It was an informal visit that lasted for more than an hour. She assured me that a new system has been put in place so that what happened to me will not happen to anyone else ever again. A very engaging conversationalist, Ofel is. RRB is fortunate to have her. Because of Ofel, a couple of students at the nearby Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT) now know that their allowances can go a long way at Red Ribbon, when at first they thought it was a high-class place they could not afford. Expect the Iligan branch to be a students hangout real soon.

Before Ofel ended her visit, she gave me these:

Mmmm... malapit na bday ni da hubby. Sana may stock ng sylvannas pagpunta ko ng Red Ribbon...
-------------
*I had erroneously written Liqueur Tiramisu in my first draft. It's Red Ribbon's new product that was launched only last Tuesday, 1 March 2005.

Teething Blues

Maia's got a cold. And a bad case of prickly heat. Her doctor prescribed antibiotics for the cold, and a steroid ointment for the rash. I don't know how this happened, she's in front of the electric fan all the time, with her hair up and she's always in spaghetti strap shirts. Her pedia says to bathe her at least twice a day, three times if possible. Maia would love that. She would stay in her tub the whole day if I let her. These are typical signs of teething, but her gums remain smooth at the edges, and although you can see the bumps that are her teeth, they are adamantly refusing to break through. I've been told late teething is good because the baby is now big enough to withstand the pain and discomfort. I don't know. She seemed especially irritable this morning, when we went out for our usual bill-paying foray. She used to be so well-behaved, but this morning she would not abide standing in line. No bills got paid this morning. Try again tomorrow, they're not due till the 9th anyway.

She's been asleep for two and a half hours now, probably fatigued from the screaming fit she threw at the bank this morning. I hope she wakes up in a better mood. It breaks my heart to see her miserable.

a red rag to a bull

I buy pirated CDs. I have 3 maybe 4 suking tindahans in downtown Iligan. They're at the back of Chow King, but I don't think Mr. Manzano will be going there himself anytime in future. Imbibe a bit of the Iliganon culture and you'll know why. The shops I'm a regular of allow me to return defective cd's even a week after I've bought them. Since I usually buy five or six at a time, they know they can't expect me to spot skips and bad subtitles in 24-48 hours.

On an international scale, I ask friends who are going to Bangkok to pick up a jersey or two for me at the Chatuchak weekend market. Over there, for the equivalent of Php 300, you can get a Real Madrid jersey with authentic patches and adidas (yes, just two d's) tag just like the ones you see in the malls. I've never been to Bangkok myself, but my husband has. I have therefore been the recipient of pasalubong purchased from Chatuchak. He didn't have a camera at the time, so I borrowed this photo from www.into-asia.com.

Look at the upper right hand area of this photo and you will see a Manchester United jersey on display, pretty much like Divisoria. In the same area near the edge is what looks like a Barcelona FC jersey. You can get them blank or you can ask the storeowner to appliqué your favorite player's monicker and number at the back. The stuff here is better than what you can get, and more expensively too, at the replica shops in the respective countries. My brother-in-law came home from a workshop in Spain with Ronaldinho's #10. The Chatuchak products looked better, cost less.

I need to change topics now, as this post may be misconstrued as encouragement to violate IPR. I may be accosted at an MRT station, when the time comes that I'll be using that mode of transport again, for wearing a fake jersey. But I don't think so. Wearing the red ManU kit may make me look like I'm advertising a brand of cellphone, or a telecommunications company, if I wear Real Madrid. Only a full-blooded bicycle-kicking, hat-trick scoring footbolero would know that I'm a fan.

One of the stuff da hubby brought home from Chatuchak was this carving from a fishbone. It must have been a pretty big fish, as this measures 6x3x1 inches. It's the Three Wise Monkeys: See No Evil, Speak No Evil, Hear No Evil--with their new friend Do No Evil. Very appropriate for this day and age.

So does Do No Evil include buying fake cd's and jerseys? Perhaps from Edu's point of view, yes. But not from mine. In my opinion, these shops perform a necessary service, providing entertainment and sensory gratification for people who cannot afford expensive originals. Not all of us can walk into a brand shop and walk away with an original (after having paid for it, of course. I do not endorse outright thievery.) I can go on and start a discourse on how a worker on an assembly line that makes signature denim jeans can churn out 10 finished pieces a day but whose daily takehome pay is merely a fraction of the selling price of the 10 pairs of jeans he made. But I won't. I'll leave that to the natdems or socdems or whatever they call demselves.

You gonna cuff me now?

Lace Panties

I miss those lace panties all little girls used to wear back when I was a kid. I don't miss them because I want to wear them now... I miss them because I want to get some for my little girl and they're nowhere to be found. Early last year my husband and I braved a thunderstorm in Divisoria just so we could go look for them. They weren't any there either. At least not in the places where we looked. And if you can't find it in Divisoria, then you can't find it anywhere else.

The picture I have here is only an approximation of what they used to look like. The lace was wider and it covered more than half of the butt part of the panties. I think they were made of nylon. Or some translucent material. I remember having white ones, blue ones, pale yellow ones, and maybe a red one too. Little girls wore them with So-en sandos. Typcial housewear, they were. Little girls had their hair picked up on top of their heads with a rubber band. Like Pebbles in The Flintstones. Looking back now I think they're really cute, little girl walking with her little behind jiggling, ruffles bouncing as she goes on her way.

I want my little girl to have all the nice things I had when I was a little girl. The lace panties stand out in my memory. I sure wish I could find some.

The Whole Nine Yards

Cathy (or Catherine as her owners used to call her) was a mixed Japanese spitz and was the queen of the canines in this apartment building where we live. She ruled over all of them, as most of them were her offspring, or were acquired by their owners in her lifetime. Cathy was quite friendly, and barked only at strangers at the gate. She used to lay her battered green tennis ball at my feet, asking me to play with her. Although she was quiet and amiable, the other dogs dared not show off in her presence; not Lucas the nyctalopic pure white spitz, who was her first born son; not Nikka who was her daughter; not Spot who was her first grandpuppy. Not the other 10 or so dogs in the compound. Definitely not Naxo, who is a mix between a dachshund and a very creative street mutt. Naxo was the biggest dog in the pack, and epileptic to boot (so her owners claim). This was until the owners acquired King, the german shepherd dog (GSD). But neither King the puppy nor Naxo the full grown dog could strut their airs when Cathy was around. No, they all kept their peace and were very good dogs.

One morning Cathy was taking a nap under her owners blue mazda pickup, when her "daddy" (her owner, and--if you read my previous post on dogs--our landlord) got into the pickup to go to work. He was backing out through the gates when we all heard a muffled "crrrunnnchhh". Turned out Cathy did not shift her head in time to avoid the moving front left tire. She died on the spot. Her "mommy" (our landlady) was devastated. Cathy was her first dog here in Iligan, and had given her litters and litters of pups that now formed the canine crew and gave her endless hours of pleasure. "Mommy" took the limp and bloodied Cathy over to the garden faucet and bathed her face over and over again, cooing softly to the dead pooch, crying.

About a month after Cathy died we noticed a marked difference in the behaviour of the other dogs. Lucas, who used to terrorize tenants who'd come out the front door after dark no longer did so. He stopped barking at anyone who stood close to the gate, and would yelp a greeting at anyone who would call out his name. The other dogs pretty much minded their own business.

But Naxo took Cathy's death as her liberation. Naxo now prowls the compound at will, barking at anything and anyone that moves. When Naxo starts barking, all the other 15 dogs join in. If you happen to be the person she's snarling and growling at, and you know her from the time Cathy was still alive, you'd be shocked at her ferocity. Calling her name will do you no good. Not even her "mommy's" or "daddy's" orders can shut her up. The latest victims of her newfound agressiveness are Bebing, our part-time helper and--you guessed it--my son, Maui, the two members of this household who are the least enamoured with dogs.

Still wary from last Thursday's incident with my son and the King the GSD, I made it a point to walk to and from the gate both my son and Bebing as they went about their business for the morning. Sure enough, although King was tied up by his cage, Naxo was roaming free and feeling quite queenly. She was like Alice's playing card regnant screaming "off with their heads!" and sounding like she would willingly bite them off herself. As I escorted Bebing to the gate I heard Maia cry out in her playpen, so I went back into the house. A minute or two later, I heard Naxo's deep loud barking again. I went to the door and sure enough, there was Mr. Landlord lecturing Bebing, who was still outside the gate, on how to deal with Naxo. "Just keep calling out her name, don't worry she won't bite you, she just wants to play, but if she bites you don't worry, she's had her rabies shots..."

I went to the gate, shooed Naxo away with my usual non-kynophobic emphasis, let Bebing in and then said to Mr. Landlord, "She cannot help it if she's afraid of dogs. You cannot help it if she is afraid of dogs. If one is afraid of dogs one is afraid of dogs, and unless you are willing to pay to put Bebing through psychiatric treatment for her to get rid of her fear of dogs, there is nothing you can do. Telling her not to worry because the dog has had her rabies shots will not take the pain away from the bite wound, should she get bitten by your dog." I marched Bebing into the house and got myself ready for another foray into dog world this time with my son on his way to school. This time Mr. Landlord accosted me at the gate after I had let my son safely out.

Mr. Landlord said "Misis, ayaw pud pang-isog dayon..."

I don't know what got me riled up all over again, the fact that the compound dogs were well into a crescendo or that Mr. Landlord had called me "Misis". We had been living here for almost a year, but he's never got my name right, or my children's names right, for that matter. So I let loose. I let him have the whole nine yards, including the murderous look I had chosen not to let them see last week. I told him how he would never understand another person's fear of dogs because all he thinks of are his dogs, and never the people around them. He countered that he lets the dogs loose for our own security. I told him I didn't care if he let the entire pack out because I have absolutely no fear of them. I do care about the people in my fold that ARE afraid of dogs, hence my vehement protest. He just stood there with his mouth half open, uncomprehending the fact that there are people who may not like his dogs, his pets, his "grandchildren".

I left him there and went inside the house and willed myself to cool down. I looked for and read the house rental contract to see if there was anything in what I just did that could constitute enough cause for them to kick us out of our apartment, but there wasn't any--it was a generic contract with no modifications to suit either party. What the heck, we are on our last month here anyway. Shhhh, I haven't told the Landpeople/Dogpeople yet. I still need to find a single detached unit in the QC area that has at least three bedrooms and two bathrooms, for under 20T a month. Is that reasonable?

The Beautiful Game

It was 1999 and I had just joined an IT services and consulting comany in Makati. It was inevitable that I would be drawn into football, the beautiful game, as my Scottish-born, British-passport-holding-boss was an avid fan. EPL, FA Cup, Champions League ... these were words that I heard as often as client visit, change request, documentation. I started scouring the net for information, just so I could put in a word or two when he'd say he's off to watch a game. I got to the point where I could name the star players for each team, and recognize them by sight. I found it strange at first how a Frenchman could be a goalie for an English team, and how Arsenal's lineup was more Latin than caucasian.

But two major events that were about to happen in my life would cement the foundations of my football fanhood. One was meeting the man I was going to live with for the rest of my life. He introduced me to the football the rest of the world played. I quickly learned the difference between FIFA and UEFA and the Euro, Conmenbol and Primera Liga, Serie A and Bundesliga. I assimilated his admiration for Real Madrid, and with him followed the odyssey of players from one team to another. Soon I became as quick as he is to shout "offside!" and I proved indispensable when it came to "translating" the English of football commentators, which often sounded greek to him.

The other event was the World Cup 2002.

The World Cup Korea-Japan and the days that led to it put the Kalayaan-Jupiter-Makati Avenue area in an absolute tizzy. Almost all the bars advertised LIVE matches, some even opening in the morning if there was a scheduled game, and putting on special menus as an added come-on. There were streamers and blinking colored lights everywhere, but it was all third-person limited to me until one afternoon when my boss suddenly came into the dev room and crooked his finger at me. "Bring your mobile," he said. I thought we were going on an urgent client call. Then as I found us walking down the length of Rockwell towards Kalayaan, I realized the urgency--but it was not for a client. It was Spain vs Slovenia. He was rooting for Spain. He had made sure I had my mobile so the people back at the office could contact us if they needed to. They didn't.

I was up for a week's leave after that, and my boyfriend and I used my time off savoring game after thrilling game. During the Brazil vs England quarterfinals match our group even got into a tumble with an expat (he was a Brit and we were cheering for Cafu and the boys) which could have landed us in the evening news if cooler heads had not intervened. In the evening of that same day, a couple of drunk Englishmen accosted my boyfriend's brother who was wearing the Brazil yellow and green jersey. "I'm here to cheer for Germany," he declared. The Englishmen backed off, they were cheering for Germany too. The Germans were playing the Americans.

When the practice became too rich for our pockets we settled for the Yahoo tickertape coverage on the internet. The screen would click everytime there was a shot, and something that sounded like a cowbell would ring if there was a goal. It was a great boon to us when the championship game between Germany and Brazil was shown LIVE on a big screen at the Rockwell parking lot. We sat on the cement steps with a group of boys from Don Bosco, heckling the female host who pronounced the French superstar Zinedine Zidane's name to rhyme with "pain"... "Sine-din Zee-deyn" she said. We shouted "Mag basketball ka na lang!"

As my husband and I count the days till World Cup 2006, there are games to watch on ESPN and Star Sports. On nights before a LIVE match we set alarms for 3am and sleep before 10pm. Our daughter claps her hands at every goal she sees in the daytime roundups, and her father is thinking of getting her the kiddie-sized Real Madrid kit he saw at the Shangri-la mall. Her brother can't wait till we move to a bigger place with enough room to kick a ball around. A genuine football family we are, because it really is a beautiful game.