- My mother’s been having health problems. Fatty liver, kidney stones (one with a diameter of one centimeter), and she’s also pre-diabetic. I’m flabbergasted. My mother doesn’t even eat fast food. I said, I eat all sorts of things, and I’m fine. She said, “Bata ka pa.” (You’re still young.) I won’t be, for long. I really need to start eating right. Meanwhile, we can’t bring home any more sweets and salty things. (I brought home ice cream on Friday; my sister brought cake.) I wonder what I can bring home. A salad?
- I’d appreciate any health-related advice from you guys. :)
- On a happier note, Jaykie’s family are back from the States! I got tons of pasalubong. Tops, chocolate, a new wallet. Thank you. :)
- My father found a chicken wandering around on our roof. It laid an egg but it broke. So now we have a pet chicken. Ang rural!
- Pray for my mother. And for Jaykie, who is set to take an important exam on the 28th.
- I have yet to see the last Harry Potter movie. My siblings say the epilogue is laughable.
- I have a story idea. Working on it. Sayeth the Muse, “Write this down, bitch!”
Category: personal
philippines free press literary awards 2011
The Winners and Finalists of the Philippines Free Press Literary Awards:
FICTION: (Judges are Charlson Ong, Celeste Flores-Coscolluela, Exie Abola)
1. Erscheinung – Michelangelo Samson (3rd Place)
2. Panopticon of El Hogar – Russel Stanley Geronimo
3. After The Body Displaces Water – Daryll Jane Delgado
4. When You See A Dog – Jenette Vizcocho (2nd Place)
5. Recuerdos de Patay – Caroline Hau (1st Place)
6. Sweet – Marguerite de Leon
7. Spawn – Popi Laudico
8. Desert Winds – Jean Gerald Anuddin
9. Numb – Jenette Vizcocho
10. A Study of Insects – Irene Carolina Sarmiento
11. Works Cited – U. Eliserio
12. Fade to Red – Twink Macaraig
POETRY: (Judges are Noelle Leslie de la Cruz, Marne Kilates, Gemino Abad)
1. Variations on the Expulsion from Eden – Eliza Victoria
2. The Painted Prince – Frank Penones Jr.
3. Duwende – Myrna Peña-Reyes
4. Love is How We Come Undone -Amado Bajarias
5. How to Kill a Whale Shark – Timi Siytangco (2nd Place)
6. Warrior’s Wife (After Li Po) – Ino Habana
7. Weight Without Gravity – Andrea Teran (3rd Place)
8. The Widow, Upon Learning That Her Old Lover Had Returned to the Island of San Antonio – Merlie Alunan
9. Zeno’s Paradox – Luisa A. Igloria (1st Place)
10. Weight of the World – Michellan Sarile-Alagao
Congrats to the winners!
This year’s event was held at the Club Cafe of the Makati Sports Club.
On that table (partly seen in the picture) sits National Artist F. Sionil Jose. I was too shy to take a picture of him.
While drinking wine and having a dinner of meat-and-asparagus rolls, lumpia, kani sandwich, penne pasta, and sweet fruit tarts (my approximation of the dishes served that night), I was able to talk to Noelle, Joel, Khavn (so sorry I didn’t recognize you at once eek I’m still embarrassed), Michelangelo Samson (congrats on the win!), Andrea Teran (congrats!) and Jenette Vizcocho. (She asked me what my category was before the announcement, and when I said Poetry, she said, “Ayos, friends tayo.” HAHA!) Tin’s cousin, Gian Lao, approached me and said lovely things about my poetry. “This is about meeting THE Eliza Victoria.” That’s too much! But thank you!
We were also able to share a table with Twink Macaraig and her husband.
And now for the nominated poem:
Continue reading philippines free press literary awards 2011
weekend update
Rainy weekend. Bleh.
Badminton on Friday, where a long rally often ended up with me smashing the shuttlecock past the line. But I’ve stopped playing for points against J a long time ago. I just enjoy the game now. :) Went to Chocolate Kiss later and tried their elusive chicken kebabs with yogurt sauce.
Chicken Kebabs & Tzatziki
Skewers of chicken fillet marinated in Mediterranean spices. Served with yogurt sauce, and turmeric rice or warm pita bread.
Highly recommended! For dinner we had seared chicken breasts and homemade slaw and the cake slices we weren’t able to finish at Cho Kiss. I should have taken pictures, J sears chicken perfectly.
Saturday, while J went off to UP, I went to Trinoma and ended up buying this:
I asked people online and most of my friends said Smart Bro is more reliable than Globe. What I didn’t like is that the free 125 hours of surfing the prepaid Power Plug-it offers can only be used for 5 days. Five days, are you kidding me? At least Globe makes its free hours available for 30 days. But then only Smart offers a one-year warranty for the dongle (heh dongle heh) and its interface shows your load balance. I haven’t tried it myself. I should be able to check it out when I go home for my father’s birthday next week. Oh my God, I hope it works well in Bulacan.
That’s all I really wanted to buy, but there was a sale at Artwork and there was this book in Powerbooks –
You know how it goes. Lunch was pasta with a shot of espresso from Seattle’s Best which, for some reason, did not help me stay awake at all.
Later that night, Kanin Club at Ayala Technohub for HGC’s sixth anniversary dinner. :) I’m not a member, but I’m all for geeks and food!
Deadly food, it appeared. The group ordered crispy pata and aligue rice.
Photo source.
Jaykie and I added pritong manok (fried chicken) and pad thai. I loved everything, but I liked Mango Tree Bistro’s pad thai better.
We went back to Jaykie’s place and into that black hole of a drinking game called “I have never”.
I have never played “I have never” (shot).
We were at Podium earlier today and only then realized that Delifrance is now Cafe France. Oh-kay. I had their dish for Sunday: one-half serving of spaghetti pomodoro and an egg sandwich. I’m craving for that spaghetti pomodoro now. I should have followed my heart (chos!) and bought take-out pasta for my dinner later.
In other news, I: am currently a walking vat of cholesterol.
updatery
- I’ve set up an appointment for a passport application later this month. FINALLY!
- I still don’t understand why, everytime I come to the dentist for oral prophylaxis, I leave with at least two permanent fillings and no money.
- Received an email bearing beautiful, earth-shattering news that, if things go as planned, guarantees a crazy, exciting, crazyexciting 2012 for me. Squee! I’ll leave things cryptic and wait for things to become official.
- I just realized that Twink Macaraig is nominated in the Fiction category of the FP Awards. Pupunta kaya siya sa Tuesday? Kate demands that I take a picture with her haha!
- I want to buy me one of these:
Just prepaid, though. Hm.
Or the MyFi, since I have a wi-fi ready phone and I’m planning to buy a Galaxy Tab (in the far future) anyway. Hm. Thoughts? MyFi is, of course, more expensive than the simple dongle.
Or: why can’t I just have free wi-fi from a generous neighbor.
- A move…that I’ll just tell you in August. ;) Good luck to meeeee.
Happy we were finally able to go home to Bulacan, despite the near knee-high flood submerging the subdivision. Happy, too, that Jaykie agreed to stay till Monday morning, and he was able to finally meet my sister and my lola. They were showing Pak Pak Dr. Kwak on the bus, and I laughed at times, to my utter horror. We arrived late Saturday and had my mother’s (famous!) caldereta, Reese’s ice cream, leftover sansrival cake, yema, and possible diabetes. My father insisted that Jaykie drink; isang shot lang daw, pero maya-maya ubos na ang laman ng bote. Also learned that he was going to have an air-con installed in the master bedroom, but every time he sets an appointment for the workers to come in, a storm enters Philippine territory. All of my siblings enjoyed Jaykie’s iPad, lured by Fruit Ninja. Discovered this new TV game show via my sister: R U Kidding Me? where host Vic Sotto (si Vic na naman, sinundan kami galing sa bus!) on Saturday night mistakenly said, “Magbabalik ang Who Wants To Be – ” Then we all got freaked out by this segment on Kapuso Mo, Jessica Soho about people who eat raw meat. Kare-kare for lunch the next day, then spaghetti, then fish for dinner, then these banana cookies made by the creators of Boy Bawang (they’re yummy), then more sansrival, and the entire second season of Justified. On our way back to QC they were showing You To Me Are Everything on the bus, but I think I fell asleep.
PS I’ve sold a science fiction story called “The Mechanic” to Kaleidotrope. Hooray! Details to follow.
weekend update
I wasn’t too fond of this series last year, but later in the season the acting and writing got better, scenes got to that level of dark they needed and deserved, and now Pretty Little Liar‘s among those shows I look forward to seeing every week.
Ezra still bores me though. Jesus.
*
And that’s all I can say about the weekend. Oh wait, I also finished the first season of Justified (very good), and we’re also almost done with the third season of Damages (Patty Hewes is less crazy this time around). With the city flooded, there’s really nothing to do but stay indoors, sleep, read, monitor the flood via Twitter, or watch something entertaining.
I wasn’t able to go home for my mother’s birthday. I am majorly pissed. I monitored the news and made phone calls, hoping I might make it home. But the flood was already thigh-high outside our home on Saturday and there was water inside the house and it won’t stop raining so my mother decided that it’d be better if I just stayed put.
I wish we could move. I wish we could move the river.
*
Before that, Thursday night/Friday morning was a bit crazy. For a while there the office looked like an evacuation center. There were reports of five-foot high floods in the metro, and roads were either unpassable or congested. (When we say “traffic jam” we mean “parking lot-like”.) Fortunately, I was able to go home to the condo in my jacket and flip-flops because the flood outside the office was only ankle-deep.
Jaykie and I meet up on Thursday nights, and he wanted to go that night, but Chino Roces cor. Vito Cruz Extension looked like this from 9:30 pm to I-don’t-know-what-time-really-because-I-fell-asleep-waiting.
I suddenly woke up at around 2 in the morning and saw from my window that the streets were clear. I texted Jaykie this, as a joke, thinking he was asleep anyway, but he replied and said he’d go pick me up. Before I gave him the go-signal, I called MMDA’s hotline number (136) to check if the roads he would take were flooded. They weren’t, so we met up, had food from Mini-Stop, downed some Gilbey’s, and went to sleep.
That was one unproductive weekend, I have to say.
Went to Makati Med armed with my healthcard to have my ears checked, thinking they were the culprit for my vertigo. The ENT doctor said my eardrums were clean. I had a hearing exam (pure tone audiometry and PTA with speech, similar to the one I had last year), and the results came and my hearing was fine. So I guess the diagnosis is still BPPV. He handed me a brochure with information about vertigo and how to deal with it (see above photo), and instructed me to keep taking Serc as long as I was “symptomatic” and avoid salty and spicy food.
Crap. I thought I had ear blockage of some sort and the doctor could make my vertigo magically disappear. Oh well. At least my ears are okay.
That night Jaykie and I watched the first two episodes of Justified. I’ll be sure to follow this. I didn’t know it was based on an Elmore Leonard story! Have a read:
“Fire in the Hole” by Elmore Leonard
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Oh, on Monday night Jaykie dropped by work to pick me up. We had dinner at Mom & Tina‘s before we went to his condo to watch the season finale of Game of Thrones.
Sniff. No more Game of Thrones. I don’t know how long viewers had to wait for Season 2.
I have reviewed all four books (so far) of A Song of Ice and Fire series, but I haven’t reviewed the TV adaptation. I only have this to say: it’s good TV. Good production values, rich scenic detail, spot-on casting.
(Cut for possible spoilers.)
Eliza Victoria 