A perfect hollandaise sauce from a first attempt
Finishing a book amidst all the distraction
Taking a nice nap after a go-see of all your current streaming subscriptions and finding nothing worth your while to watch
A clean kitchen for five straight days
30 squats
A couple of Hail Mary’s before you fall asleep
Getting onto Twitter and ‘walking away’ when coming across a MAGA supporter, a Republican, an anti-vaxxer, an LGBTQ+ agitator, a dumb politician, a misogynist, an anonymous, self-righteous white, male boomer, a whinging farmer, a conservative…
‘Walking away’ from purchasing another pair of shoes, jeans and hoodie
Being distracted by other people’s shit
Waking up the next day to a world still somewhat intact
A list
I worked for two consecutive weekends, and it wasn’t like night shifts or repetitious things like on a conveyor belt or something, or that for meals, I had nothing but a pie and a glass of water. It was conducting seminars, smiling a lot, taking nice photos, dinners at this nice restaurant and generally just socialising. A bit of it was physical- but it was no different from, say, cleaning your house. But I was EXHAUSTED. DEAD TIRED. I wonder how I’d survive if I actually needed to work two jobs.
But you learn to pace yourself- two important things; 1) find time to exercise even if it’s no more than 15 min; 2) SLEEP WELL.
Twitter is vicious. Stepping into it without anonymity is both empowering and frustrating.
But who cares right? My gut feel is that the world is ending, and all these things that have trapped everyone into a never-ending combat of words is pointless.
I keep telling myself, step out of it- do you. Care for yourself alone and the people you love.
I asked a couple of questions over at ChatGPT…
7. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.
8. Found a new fried chicken place called Peach’s Hot Chicken
Wednesday's List
My siblings posted photos of the kids’ Valentine's Day dates on our family chat account- time flies. But I still feel the same though I doubt if I still look the same.
Have yet to find an available booking for a root canal; might use the money instead for some facial treatments.
People sometimes act strange. The good thing about it is that I don’t really consider them good/close friends, so I’m never really obliged to ask why. It’s good sometimes to go about your day just doing you.
It’s certainly hard to make (real) friends after a certain age, but I don’t mind. After all, I only made some well into my mid to late 20s and I can definitively say that friendship can be over-rated.
Back into semi-serious body-training again. Ugh.
It came and we waited...
I had to Google it- ‘how different is a typhoon from a cyclone’?.
Turns out they’re the same, with the name difference based on location.
But they don’t feel the same- and I should know, having been the veteran of a hundred or so typhoons since I was a baby. The year I was born (and I’m not telling you the year), a succession of strong typhoons inundated most parts of the island of Luzon. The deluge was such that BongBong M’s daddy intoned while surveying the damage from a helicopter, ‘“For the first time, the waters of Manila Bay linked up with those of Lingayen Gulf...”
Years later, older and not necessarily wiser, I had spent the night drinking in a friend’s house as a typhoon raged, not realizing that the worst was yet to come after I had passed out in their living room. When I woke up, nearly all the trees and power lines in Naguilayan were down. Our narra tree, planted the year Binky was born (I think) had fallen and I managed to crawl through it and get inside our house and pretend that I was home during the night.
When I came to New Zealand, it was a pleasant surprise to realise that there was virtually nothing in nature that could kill you. If you were harmed, it was basically because you made the decision to swim through the rip-tides, walk through the bush without telling anyone, or climb up a mountain unequipped with the right gear.
Nothing in this country was actually hostile until the weather started to change. And change it did, and now we have tornados (killed a Filipino worker a few years back) and cyclones that could be coming more frequently.
The topography of Auckland is strange because just over 40kms away from where we live- and that’s not a great distance- there were massive flooding and landslips, while we actually had none. But we didn’t take any chances even if what we did wasn’t much- I filled the bathtub with water in case the water supply was cut off, filled empty soda bottles with drinking water, kept my more expensive shoes away from windows, cooked an extra pot of rice…
And we waited as the slow-ass cyclone (moving at a glacial pace of 11kms per hour) made its way down. I set the alarm at 4am which would have been the time where it was nearest to Auckland. I slept through it and was woken up by the cat at 5am who wanted so badly to pee (we closed the laundry door to prevent the rain from going through the cat flap).
Everything was quiet. The house was intact. And I was in the middle of a dream where I was cooking Peking Duck, so I went back to sleep.
$21.20 per hour
How much of your daily life is really yours?
It’s beginning to dawn on me, that Saturday is the only day that I get full possession of my life.
I wake up anytime I want and have ditched setting alarms. If I wake up at noon, then so be it (I never do). I do a quick check of the phone charging overnight on my bedside table. If it’s nothing urgent, I just leave it there. I avoid reacting to the news. If a comet had crashed into the earth in the middle of the night, there’s nothing we could have done. We’ll get painlessly pulverised in our sleep hopefully, and be mercifully eternally bound in whatever dreams we’re in.
Coffee. Then another coffee. A great bowel movement. Shower. I put on my face- serum, moisturiser, sunscreen if we needed to go out somewhere. Unlike weekdays where I don’t eat any breakfast, we either eat out or have some old favourites like Spam and rice, pancakes, a well-buttered toast.
Then it’s chores. The week’s laundry in batches; coloreds, whites and delicates. There is some sort of weird comfort in the washing cycle- wash, soak, rinse, spin. I love doing laundry because it echoes life. I’m perpetually organising my clothes, my shoes. I think of the week ahead and mentally put together outfits. I feel that I have too much. I also feel that I never seem to have enough.
I think about dinner because more than likely, there is something that I’d like to eat, something I’d like to cook that I’ve been planning for the whole week.
For this Saturday, it’s a simple roast chicken but done the way this restaurant in Paris does it. They only use a small portion of the breast and serve it with a hefty shaving of black truffles and bearnaise sauce.
I won’t be putting shaved truffles on it, but I was thinking of making bearnaise sauce (you can check out a YouTube video of how Le Clarence makes its roast chicken here).
But by midday, I’d changed my mind about the bearnaise sauce; we had gone to the Asian store, but I had completely forgotten to get white wine vinegar and shallots. Maybe some other time then.
The only thing unusual with the way the restaurant roasts its chicken is that it’s placed inside a dutch casserole and then placed in the oven; it’s then taken out at regular intervals where it’s basted with its own juices. Towards the end when it has browned, you put in butter, garlic cloves and fresh rosemary, basting it again over and over until it’s done.
This forces me to always check the clock.
The done part was about 45 minutes more than the usual way I roast chicken. I make a salad out of leftover romaine lettuce. I’ve taken out buns from the freezer and defrosted them. I make a normal gravy with chicken cubes and buttered roux. We start to eat at 6:15 pm, later than usual, but in the middle of summer, it feels more like noon.
The chicken is much more noticeable moist than usual though. It’s delicious actually though I detect a hint of bitterness from the rosemary; perhaps I put too much.
What next? I feel like doing something and automatically, I try to look for the time. It’s always, do I have enough time??
I stop myself and make a drink (gin and tonic, which I don’t normally do) instead.
New Year's Resolutions list (1)
Schedule that goddamned root canal
Clean and re-season the iron skillet
Look at getting a new food processor
Look at either signing up at a gym or updating your fitness equipment
Sort your clothes for real (give them away to the Salvation Army)
More cardio
Go see a dermatologist
Increase your vegetable intake
Aim to read more (start on the books you already have)
Less of the bad fat
Start writing again please, even if it’s in small batches
What do you have planned for 2023?
Hope springs eternal as they say, so even if I enter 2023 with not enough money (it’s never enough isn’t it?) or personal accomplishment (where’s that novel huh?) or abs (my thighs have grown muscular though), I have an (over) abundance of hope- and the will to try, and try again.
As I’ve always said, if you’ve stopped trying or fallen behind a certain threshold of trying, you might as well check out (not literally).
T'was NOT the night before Christmas
I don't wanna...
Cook dinner and then sit on the couch feeling bloated while doing the daily Quordle
Read, tweet, react to politics of any kind. I want to take a vacation from all that
Read, tweet, react on anything Elon Musk
Think about anyone at work and what they do or feel or think. I want to take a vacation from all that
Believe that time is slipping away. It’s NOT.
Tuesday
Got my Twitter account restored. I’ve been contacting Twitter support for months with ZERO response until Elon Musk came in and in less than 30 seconds, was able to login with a new confirmed email address. The guy’s a TWAT, but he must be doing something right, like firing incompetent, sanctimonious Twitter staff who can’t even solve simple technical issues.
The Daily List
My friend L, speaks of having of having isolated herself ‘from almost everyone I care about and I'm not a part of any organization or circle that I can call my tribe’. The funny thing is that I’ve done that willingly. I found in New Zealand, a life where you can opt to opt out and you’re not judged by it. Filipino culture just makes that impossible I think.
I don’t object to having friends, but they’re really rare to come by. I’ve worked with some people for over a decade and I still consciously would not consider them friends. I’m always friendly and open with my opinions, and apparently generous, but when I get home, it’s a life I don’t really share in its entirety- I never have, and I probably never will. I’m always present sure, but when I’ve exited the building, I’m gone.
How do you find a friend? I’ve found the very precious few that I have by accident or circumstance.
Struggling to write the last couple of years (the last two decades actually), I’ve thought of enrolling in some creative writing classes which I thought would be getting two birds in one stone; you get inspiration to write, and you might get to meet like-minded people who can possibly, become friends. Get to belong to a community of writers. The fees however are a bit expensive.
I meant to do NaNoWriMo this month..and failed again. Mmmm. I have this story idea about domestic cats empowered by a strange force to help humans fight against an invading alien species.
The week that was (in images + a video)
Love/Hate
HATE
Gaurav Sharma, a quack, hack, and a major TWAT
The US Federal Reserve and the fucking, goddamned American dollar
Having to wait years for the next seasons of streaming shows
People who are easily brain-washed
Costco New Zealand; waste of money
LOVE
Taylor Swift’s new album (finally, bitch GROWS UP).
My new Apple devices :-)
Conceding that spending so much money at Christmas is, well, a waste of money
American Costco (if you want garish consumerism, then do it right. Do it the American way).
Climate change; WE’RE ALL GOING DOWN, no one is exempt
Fantasy
Playing James Bond- apparently, in spite of my youthful looks, I’m too old to be in the role. Fact: Daniel Craig was 35 when he did his 1st Bond film.
That in one magical moment, I can draw a perfect, amazing drawing on one of my numerous sketch-books lying about the house.
That in one magical moment, I can finish writing a perfect, amazing short-story on one of my numerous digital devices lying about the house.
Baking the perfect macarons in under an hour using just a hand-held electric mixer.
Getting the perfect body within 30 days by doing exercises 3x a week.
Growing the most luscious, luxurious mustache.
Getting super youthful skin by applying not two, not three, not four, but six products every night.
Getting the cat to love me for what I am.
Looking exactly in real life, like your digital photos.
Trump and Putin dying painful, lonely deaths and Duterte ending up in jail.
All the brazen thieves in Auckland getting the electric-chair
Saturday (in images)
What happened in the world today? DON’T CARE- to each his own.I have chores to do and things to learn.
The 'fuck you' list (because why not?)
Ron DeSantis and to every Florida lawmaker who opposed climate law changes; you deserve what nature gave you.
To the common cold ( as it turns out, it’s not Covid but is worse than Covid).
Herschel Walker
Luxury labels raising their prices
Password security
Black duvet, natural sunlight, a good camera and Lightroom
When we were kids, my sisters and I thought of having a photoshoot. We got blankets, an instamatic camera and a black satin dress. My sisters put on make-up borrowed from my mothers and posed like their lives depended on it. When the film roll was developed- yep, someone saw those photos- everything was washed out, over and under-exposed and the make-up was patchy. I can’t remember whether we found it hilarious or horrific.
Fast-forward to 2022 and we did the same thing for Toni’s graduation. We got an $18 black studio sheet on Trade Me that turned out to be too sheer, so we put a black duvet sheet behind it. We used natural sunlight, used a consistent focal length of 60mm on the Nikon Z 6ii and edited the RAW files on Adobe Lightroom.
Good photography is a talent I know, but to charge $$$$$ for it is criminal.
The questions list
what are you really, really good at that?
Is this what you’re supposed to do?
do you really, really need to have it?
Are you prepared to get it?
Do you have what it takes to get it?
Will doing it prove once and for all, that it’s what you’re meant to do?
If not, what then?
It wasn't that hard was it?
I’m not kidding, but several YouTube tutorials and a few dozen test shots later, I can actually shoot manual now. I’ve been shooting photos for so long that it was a matter of finally looking where I had refused to look.
And suddenly, there were all there, and there were only three things: aperture, shutter-speed and ISO.
I’m not saying I’m going to win the next Nikon or Canon Photo competition (I wouldn’t even bother to join), but I feel less of a fake when someone praises my photos. I feel less guilty for spending thousands of dollars on all the gear.