The Art Of Taking A Cold Shower
Phase One – Mental Preparation
- Determine the optimal time for said shower: Carefully weigh the pros and cons between taking a shower when it’s hottest (cool and refreshing or freakin’ freezing depending on your viewpoint) – or coldest (maybe less of a shock to the system?)
- Minimize the number of showers taken to reduce exposure to the cold water; but definitely take a shower at least once a week to avoid smelling like a bum.
- Find a window during the day when the least amount of water is being used so that you won’t run out of water while the pump fills up the tank – that’s the worst thing to happen…no pressure in the middle of a cold shower.
- OK, now gather the courage and finally face the cold hard fact that you’re going to have to take a shower, so just deal with it like a man.
Phase Two – The shower
- Turn on the water, and let it run. Imagine the clean refreshing feeling of its coolness running down your skin coated with several days worth of diesel soot, sweat, and dried up DEET. Dip your hands underneath, and forget that it’s ice cold.
- Start with the extremities – feet, then legs. Hands, then arms.
- Work closer to the main part of your body now…let the water touch your belly, then your chest.
- Wet your hair now. See, it’s not too bad…so let out a sigh of relief.
- OK, shut off the water and take a quick break while you grab the shampoo bottle. Work it into your wet hair, and massage your scalp
- The water’s back on now, so quickly dip it under the water – “brrrrrrrrr!!” Go ahead, let out a nice good shiver. As streams of water start dripping down your back, you realize it ain’t too bad.
- And then you actually turn around and let the shower touch your back: BRRRRRR!!!! Got damnit that’s FREAKIN’ cold!!!!
- Now just finish washing your face and you’re all done.
I sure miss my nice warm shower in sunny San Mateo. And my toilet with the power flush and the 24-pack of triple roll Ultra Charmin within arms reach. And my TV. And my stereo. And my car. And my 384kbps cable internet. And sushi. And Thai food. And cuddling up under the covers in my bed. And carpeted floors underneath my feet. And watching the waves during quiet walks to San Francisco bay on sunny & breezy Saturday afternoons.
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Kumakain Ako
It’s freakin’ hot out here.
I swear, one of my crazy prankster cousins must’ve gotten someone to stick a rooster right outside my bedroom window.
…And I’m on the second floor.
On this Saturday morning, my attempts at getting more sleep are thwarted by this conspiring rooster: “ah-ah-aaaaaaaaah-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar!” (I wonder if he knows what my favorite baked poultry is). And even before this crazy bird, it was the tricycles. 3AM, 4AM, 6AM…whenever…you can hear ‘em fire up their two stroke motors (75cc?) and revving into the night: “vroom vroom!”. Then there’s the vendors; with fresh breakfast ingredients at your door: “Baluuuuuut.” “Tilaaaa-pia, tinaaaa-pa.” And then there’s the packs of screaming kids, playing and running outside, yelling at each other in tagalog. Grrr. (Lest I should forget that crazy clock my Dad bought that plays little corny melodies every hour) All kidding aside, it sure makes for quite an experience, one I’ll take with me for the rest of my life. After a few minutes of this, I decide I’ve finally had enough and roll myself out of this mattress (that has one – and only one – bad spring that just happens to be sticking me at the one – and only one – part of my back that hurts).
My brothers and I spent the past two days at my cousin-in-law’s parents’ place in Queen’s Row Cavite. (They were kind enough to invite us along to ma-masyal since all of us were getting cooped up in this tiny barrio sitting waaay out on the coast of Laguna de Bay.) During the drive throughout, we witnessed an economic and social parity similar to the scenic and agricultural parity that runs rampant in California. Just as you have the majestic Sierras towering over the depths of the valley floor, there are multi-million-peso residential estates towering over the neighboring hollow-block homes of the poor and lower class. It’s quite amazing, really, the disparity between the social classes here. You have the ultra-mega-rich, and the ultra-mega-poor. I can’t seem to find the “middle class” (yet). But enough of that… This is about the food. And hot-damn, was it good.
It’s too bad that the grease-laden breakfast from Monday forced me to reach into my supply of those magical wonder pills laden with loperamide. (Mental note: don’t eat sunny side up eggs here!!) I’ve been gun-shy with food since then, hesitant to go all out and dive in to all the dishes. But our first stop was at Max’s Restaurant in Cavite, so I indulged – if only a little bit. Due to our group size (eighteen people – gotta love us Filipinos!) we were thrown into the Music Room. (Think karaoke, but with a REALLY loud sound system, disco lights, and a hostess that sings songs in-between patrons). We had friend chicken, sisig (kinda weird stuff…it had mayo of all things!), kare-kare, sinigang, fried bangus (yum), lechon kawali (hell yeah) and to top it all off was buko pandan.
The next day started off with a breakfast of corned beef swimming (and I mean bathing in a pool of oil) with eggs sunny side up, fried spam, fried hot dogs, pandesal, and sinaag (fried rice). I can’t get over the Magnolia butter here – so damned good because they’re ultra salted! Later that day was a stop at Leslie’s after horseback riding in People’s Picnicgrounds in Tagaytay. Hot-damn, this stuff kicked ass. Perched high above Taal Lake and the volcano (you can make it out in the hazy distance if you look hard) was this restaurant adorned with a dried wood roof and solid hand-carved wood tables & chairs. Complementing the amazing view was a similarly amazing lunch of mango salad, BBQ chicken, beef sinigang, sweet & sour seafood (good clams!), pork sisig (our absolute best so far) and utterly satisfying crispy pata. There was also beef adobo…it was a bit on the dry side, but they have potatoes! So ha! All you people out there (cough-Randy-cough) that have been clowning on my style…We ain’t the only family that does it like that!
(I’d share pictures, but this dial-up isn’t as conducive to uploads of five megapixel images)
I wonder what the food will be like at today’s wedding – at 3PM – thank goodness I don’t have to dress up in this heat. And it doesn’t look like it’s going to rain anytime soon (in fact, it’s quite sunny outside) so I’m sure it’s going to be really freakin’ hot. Maybe I should go back and relax at Jollibee to have my blood pressure tested again (for free) by that cute young nursing student.
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Oh Thanks God
It was only after my fourth bottle of San Miguel Pilsner that I began to feel the slightest bit of confidence in my ability to speak my parents’ native tongue.
For the past several days since I’ve arrived in-country, I’ve been fighting a losing battle with myself to communicate with the people in this land.
I hear the voices, understand the language, but for some reason, can’t get myself to say the right words in the right way.
Only fragmented bits and pieces of improperly fabricated phrases, barely enough to get me by.
The people around me get a kick out of it, but I’m sure the novelty will wear off soon.
This doesn’t bode well for the project I embarked on two days ago (learning Mandarin).
Anyways.
This dimly lit and sparsely populated room of Dehlie’s videoke bar is quite the contrast from my emotional experience earlier in the day… Tuesday was the day of my family’s arrival. I had arrived 3 days earlier, but near midnight, so I wasn’t able to experience fully the visual impact of a drive through the Philippines; only the reflections of headlights in the eyes of the tricycle riders, peering from behind flapping sheets of opaque plastic intended to protect the passengers from the ever present rain. The trip from my Mom’s town of Pila-Pila (a tiny place within the town of Binangonan) to Ninoy Aquino International Airport was about a two to two-and-a-half hour, 37KM ride by car. That’s right: thirty seven kilometers. Such is the transportation infrastructure within the country – not a single bus to be seen, only bicycles, scooters, motorcycles, tricycles, jeepneys, and cars.
The trip started with my second cousin navigating the Mitsubishi Pajero in and out of traffic, weaving his way through tiny wet concrete streets lined with pedestrians and stopped vehicles. And it continued. And continued. No 60mph decreasing radius on-camber freeway ramps here. No carpool lanes. No flashing don’t walk signs with 30 second countdowns…
As I sat in the passenger seat, peering from the air-conditioned cabin perched high above the street below, I struggled to contain an unexpected swell of tears, ashamed to let my cousin in the back seat (from Long Island) see any signs of emotional weakness. Just outside my slightly tinted window were mile after mile of windowless hollow-block homes, shielded from above by roofs made of rusted corrugated aluminum weighed down by old tires and yet more hollow-blocks. The sidewalks (on those rare occasions when there are some) were either covered by dirt, mud, tricycles, or trash. Interspersed throughout the homes were little businesses – junk for sale; auto repair; Mr. Pogi’s Haircuts; fresh buko for sale – people working to put food on the table, and send their children to school, with hopes and dreams of a better life.
Years ago while growing up in the tiny suburban San Diego community of Paradise Hills, my parents would tell me (in various forms throughout my childhood): “If only you experienced just a little bit of the hard life we had in the Philippines, you’d appreciate the life we gave you here. You don’t know how lucky you are.” It’s not that I wasn’t grateful, I was. But the thought never carried so much emotional force as it did that Tuesday morning. Every time I stared out that window, I thought about how hard my life could’ve been and how hard life really is for so many people in the Philippines. I felt a rush of sadness rise up from within me, a sense of hopelessness and pity at the situation. And the engineer in me keeps asking…Why do people have to live this way? Why can’t they fix it? Why?
And so I tried to take my mind off of things by making another attempt at practicing my conversational tagalog (struggling once again), thinking about seeing my parents & brothers again, and waiting for the upcoming opportunity to hear more stories about my parents’ childhood in the land of salted Magnolia butter and hot pandesal.
It’s coming up on 2AM now as the cool night breeze ruffles my oily hair. It’s pitch black in the barrio, our tricycle’s lonely headlight piercing through the dark. I stick my head out the side of the trisicleta and peer into the countryside, the mud and despair temporarily blanketed by the sarap hangin on such a gorgeous night. After our driver and my cousin wrestle several times with a loose chain that kept popping off the sprocket (the motor would race “vrrroooom!” out of control, forcing us to stop, slowly back the chain onto the sprocket, and ease off) we finally arrive back home, our abnormally tall outlines dimly lit by the green streetlight above. It’s so quiet now…the tricycle’s uncorked exhaust was popping and sputtering all the way here, masking the evening solitude. And the moment the driver shut off the 2-stroke air-cooled motor on his circa-1980s Suzuki, my ears were filled by the harmonious cacophony of a million bullfrogs sitting on lillypads just beyond the bayshore singing their obnoxiously loud symphony. I roll into bed and let the San Miguel take its tour through this foreigner’s body, looking forward to what new experiences await me tomorrow.
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Hedonistic Pleasures
Looking over my right shoulder, watching the thin aluminum wing struggle to contain the two screaming starboard turbofan motors right before takeoff, it comes to me...
I’m a hedonistic fool, pure and simple.
I’ve but no other goal in my life but to roam this world and stimulate my pitiful brain with a plethora of auditory and olfactory musings.
Like the simple yet complex working of a wing on a transcontinental jumbo jet… Loaded with jet fuel, flaps extended and carrying two heavy turbofans, the tips of the wing flap impressively several feet up and down as the big Boeing rumbles down the bumpy runway. As the plane gains momentum, the speed of the air above the wing increases disproportionally to the air below the wing until that magical moment when enough lift is generated to hurl this several hundred ton hunk of tin, people, gas, and food up into the air above South San Francisco on this warm summer day.
It really is amazing how much the jet engines move on this thing…they’re literally jiggling in place, and yet manage to stay hooked onto that expertly crafted wing.
I think back to all those meals I’ve crammed into my mouth, from grease-laden and artery -clogging carne asada chips, to delicately rich yet similarly good-for-you pan-seared foie gras, to the somewhat disappointing smoked pork ribs and beef brisket from Memphis Minnie’s (the pulled pork was damned good, though). And I continue to wonder at what lays ahead.
Am I selfish?
Someone reminded me last night that I’m going to be thirty six next year. Thirty six. That’s 252 dog years. That’s 358,026,946,560,000,000 milliseconds. I’ve been squandering all that time on a wandering quest for selfish desires, living for the now, without notion of future, commitments, and permanency. And yet…
Eek, I can’t believe how crappy all this mindless dribble is coming out.
Something’s definitely amiss…maybe it’s the lack of practice writing anything in months; maybe it’s the stresses of leaving work during such a critical juncture; or maybe it’s the excitement of visiting the homeland for what’s essentially my very first time.
Whatever.
At least
Under The Boardwalk is playing, and it sounds
damned good.
I wonder if the other passengers will start freaking out if I burst out in song and choreographed dance?
Heh.
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Incognito
It seems that a sudden burst of
wanderlust and a recent bout with
workaholicism has taken precedence over my desire (need?) to ramble on these pages... Hopefully on tomorrow's painfully long flight to MNL I'll be able to finally jot down my notes from my wonderful trip to the "
Land that the Dutch built"
Until then, just wanted to mention: the coolest thing
ever is having a car with an idle exhaust rumble that's so loud it sets off car alarms on tiny red Miatas in company parking garages. Gawd I love that S38B36... now I understand why annoying little lawyer types like to buzz around on Harleys with uncorked exhausts.
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