personal – Page 8 – Eliza Victoria

twenty-four

We were in Tagaytay on our first year together. To celebrate our second year (exact date is tomorrow, a Monday) we just stayed in the metro and enjoyed a buffet lunch at Beurre Blanc.

(Photo credit: tipidobo)

Price is P650 per head, exclusive of service charge. We got a 10 percent discount because we got seated before 12 noon. (You’ll get a 5 percent discount if you use a credit card instead of paying in cash.)

They have a small selection, but we enjoyed the dishes a lot. Our favorites: beef shortribs, salmon carpaccio, baked oyster, top blade fillet, tomato mozzarella salad, ravioli, and banoffee (really really good). And I loved their sauces: barbecue, mushroom gravy, pepper cognac!

Another great lunch with this silly boy:

I want more of this banoffee!

This lunch was made possible by a couple of kind people living oceans away. Thank you. :)

A kiss for more happy years.

kindness

I received two messages today. One, a gift. The other, a promise of a gift. The messages are unexpected and came one after the other, during that hour when my heart is blue and lonely. Now my heart is full. To the first messenger, J and I thank you. To the second, I can’t wait!

Thank you, thank you, thank you. (You know who you are.)

I don’t know what bug it was that hit us, but J and I were both quite sick from Tuesday onwards so the weekend just passed us by.

I am a full bag of worries nowadays. The flood back home, my siblings’ financial needs, the total cost of flood damage, J’s coding ticket and unclaimed license, his difficulties at the job market, my own uncertainties. Money problems, life problems. It keeps you up at night.

I’ll be 25 in less than a month. J and I will turn two in about a week. I wonder if I’ll be able to celebrate, with the miserable flood, and my miserable bank account.

I need something beautiful to look forward to, is all.

what happened on sunday

Received a text message from my parents saying that they’re okay, and that the flood water’s starting to recede. Tried calling them but failed to reach them. I think they turned off their phones on Saturday to save power (and probably turned them off again?) since they still don’t have electricity. At least I got word from them after more than 24 hours. Thanks to everyone who expressed their concern and offered their prayers and good thoughts. :)
Met up with two of my siblings (my brother was in UPLB) and my cousin and J. Lunch at Friday’s in Trinoma, coffee at Seattle’s Best. We also saw The Change-Up.

Body switch comedy, like a mini-Here Comes The Bride. (Bongga sa comparison!) Toilet humor galore and formulaic but enjoyable enough for a lazy Sunday.
Still a bit blue but life goes on. It’s Monday now.

6 Luzon dams release water, worsen floods

Calumpit floods worst in 40 years

Floods swamp Bulacan as dams release water

I called my mother yesterday and she said the Hagonoy town market (including our store, and most of our goods for sale) is now underwater. Water inside the house now reaches her neck, and the water outside can completely submerge a person. My parents and my lola still have food and drinking water, but there’s still no electricity and running water’s scarce. They can’t leave the house. Prayers, please. :(

post-pedring, etc

Really bad storm yesterday. J and I were in his parked car around lunch and we felt the car rock as the wind slammed against us. Didn’t go to work, couldn’t. (Office work was suspended anyway, but I heard some office mates had continued with their shoots like a bunch of crazy people.) No electricity. Cell phone dying by midday. Back in Bulacan, my parents had to deal with the chest-high flood outside the house and the waist-high water inside and the fact that our refrigerator was submerged. I could replace the refrigerator, but I heard the frustration and the exhaustion made my father cry and that really broke my heart. So fuck you, Pedring. Fuck you very much.

But today’s another day. (My parents said pretty much the same thing.) So yes – I have a poem in the fifth volume of Stone Telling called “Prayer“. Read and share, if you are so inclined. Lots of fantastic authors here.

And I’ve been reading a lot of comics lately! I’ve finished two memoirs. In Pyongyang, Guy Delisle talks about his stay in the North Korean capital with equal snark and sadness. For such a dark topic, Delisle actually manages to keep the tone light till the last page. There is a degree of outrage, but it is dampened with humor. I guess it’s a defense mechanism – if he allowed himself to be affected by the apparent brainwashing and injustice going on around him, he’d go insane. (Hell, I would.) Or end up dead. (He did bring a copy of Orwell’s 1984 to his hotel, and even had the audacity to lend it to his North Korean guide. Ha!)

Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home is a brave introspection of her relationship with her father, his life and his death, and how his secrets had affected her family. And oh, what beautiful, vivid language to go with the art!

Some (ongoing) series that I would recommend:

Chew – Set in a post-bird flu world, where chicken and other bird meat are declared illegal, and the Food and Drug Administration is kick-ass and the Department of Agriculture has sexy covert operatives. (I know, right?!) Tony Chu, a police officer, gets hired by the FDA after a chicken buy-bust operation. He is a cibopath, a person who gets information about the origins and circumstances of everything he eats. (Except beets. He gets nothing from beets.) He uses this ability to solve crimes, so yeah, sometimes he has to eat a severed limb. Or worse.

The Unwritten – A story about stories! That is all I’m going to say! Very engrossing.

Runaways – Set in a world where superheroes and villains are a regular occurrence. (Especially New York.) A group of teenagers discover that their parents are members of a crime ring called The Pride. I think the quality is inconsistent – the series kept changing writers and illustrators – but I guess I’ll keep reading. I’ve heard this series is on hiatus.

Bone – Premium kids’ literature right here. Funny and exciting and I can’t wait to read the entire series.

How much does a good refrigerator go for these days?

inuman at marikina riverbanks

Sept. 17th, Christian’s birthday, and off we went to Marikina, to the Riverbank Grille, for crispy pata and beer and possible heart complications. It happened to be SM Marikina’s 3-Day Sale so Marcos Highway felt more like the Marcos Parking Lot for a while. J and I got there just in time for dinner. I really loved the crispy pata.

Happy birthday, Christian!