Dreamer Dreamer

Have you ever experienced the perfect moment? It's one of those moments in your life when you realise THIS {whatever is happening at the time} is better than you could have imagined. But as soon as you acknowledge the moment, it is gone. Just as you know it would.

Tonight I found myself in that moment. I've got Earl Klugh's Like a Lover playing in the house. The sisters, Saffira and Vida are happily playing up and down the living room punctuating the house with giggles and squeals. My lovely wife is filming the girls on her phone while I'm preparing the best bowl of buttered green beans to serve for our family dinner.

We've just moved house 3 weekends ago and there are still some boxes of stuff that haven't yet found a home in our new home. I looked over at our dining table, it was full of stuff. The coffee table? Full of stuff. I asked Bea if she could perhaps clear the coffee table when she suggested why not have a picnic on the kitchen floor? I nearly said no. I'm glad I didn't.

As a chef I pride myself in clever cooking under strict budgets of material, time or equipment. I can jazz up a 2 minute noodle with egg, extra veg, and slices of leftovers, special seasoning and if available -garnish. Tonight was "Couldn't we just have something simple please?"  So that meant leftover basmati rice with tinned tuna,  boiled eggs, and green beans tossed in butter.

Looking around the picnic rug  watching the family dine simply while listening to my mood music was the perfect moment. I suddenly remembered a moment way back when I was 17. I was in our stylish Pok Fu Lam flat in Hong Kong overlooking the sea. I remember day dreaming how cool it would be to be listening to Earl Klugh in my own funky place with my hot wife and a couple of kiddies running around.  That 20th century day dream pale against the vividness of its 21st century reality. Without realising, it seems every choice I have made in the last 33 years have finally led to a fulfilment.

I wonder what other dreams have I forgotten or dismissed as impossible are on the way still?

Eulogy for Antonio Clores Mencias

In 2009 my father visited Sydney, he told us it would be his last time because after turning 70 he would be required to undergo medical clearance to be issued a visa. He didn't want to be subjected to that kind of scrutiny, also he already knew there was going to be cause for rejection.

He was already starting his decline,  That year he didn't have the energy to go anywhere on his own. On previous visits he would not stay home during the day while I went to work. He would take the train to the city and walk around. His favourite place to go to was an oversized chess set in Hyde Park and he would spend hours playing and watching matches.

He always liked playing chess. He played in IBM, he played in the plaza at Pilar Village. He enjoyed matching wits with an opponent on a level playing field governed by discrete rules. Those times that I watched, he usually won. Those times I played him, he usually won. Except when he played my sister Eileen, she once hustled him by playing for money and he ended up owing her hundreds of pesos when he kept trying to win back his losses. He never played her for money again.

He also liked games of chance, pusoy, pusoy dos, tong-its, and mah-jong among many. I think these were his analogues for living life. There are times when your own talents and choices determine your outcomes, but there are times when you have to play the cards you've been dealt as best you can and leave the rest to luck.

He grew up not knowing his father, he was two years old when the war reached the Philippines and my grandmother gave him up to be raised by an uncle in Manila. It wasn't until the 1980s when the Mencias family reconnected.with Antonio and we got to know our uncles Dondi and Rob, aunties Cielo and Dolly.

As an enterprising young boy, he built himself a wooden shoe-shine box and stocked it with a small bottle of black dye, an old toothbrush to apply the dye, shoe polish, a cloth rag, and a horsehair brush. It had a carry handle that doubled as a stand for customers to rest their foot on as he worked on the shoe. He roamed the streets charging customers money for shoe shines, but he only tells the story of the one angry customer whose white shoes he ruined with black dye.

He went to high school at Jose Abad Santos in Binondo. It was a rough neighbourhood and he learned to hold his own in a fight, Tony was a popular one to have by your side if you ever got into a fight. His high school mates conferred him the title of Sargent-at-arms.

Working as a typist and other odd jobs he was able to put himself through college and obtain a degree in commerce major in Accounting from FEU. It was also in college where he met my mother Marcela. They were both working students and he offered to help with her studies as a handy excuse to spend more time with her.

By the time they married, Antonio was already supporting his cousins Tio Manding, Tita Cora, Tita Mona and putting them through school. Antonio and Marcela lost their first child in a tragic stillbirth, my Kuya Mar-Antonio in 1964. I was born the next year, my sister Eileen, 2 years 2 months later, Marlene another 2 years and 2 months later, and finally Chris 3 years and 3 months later. They took the phrase "Family Planning" and ran with it. We in turn provided 4 grandchildren Alexandra, Tala, Saffira and Vida Ligaya.

His career with IBM peaked when he was posted as an expat at the regional office in Hong Kong, and it hit a low with his subsequent retrenchment upon his return to the Philippines. He hit another career peak as a public servant directly reporting to the Secretary of the Department of Transportation and Communication during the Cory Aquino administration. He capped off his professional career as financial controller of RCS until his retirement in 2004.  After retirement he found use for his talent and experience serving three years as president of  BF Homes Homeowners Association.

It is unnerving when we first realise how frail our parents have become. All our lives they have been this towering figure of strength, wisdom and authority. And almost overnight they cross a threshhold and became old. And then the next instant, they are gone. 

Each life is a story, a narrative of events and relationships, starting with birth and ending in death. Each of us carry a chapter or two of  Antonio's story in our hearts and in our own personal life story. We have been changed by him and we have changed him in return. Over the last few days, we have met many of you and we thank you for sharing your anecdotes.  We take comfort in knowing that his spirit lives on as we live on and enrich each others lives.  Just as he had enriched ours.

Farewell Papa. See you on the other side.

Papi I need you

Bedtime routine for our two kids is a chore and a half. Ideally we would like them in bed and asleep by 8pm, but in reality it means they are in bed by 8pm but getting them to actually settle into sleep is another matter entirely. My primary tactic is to sit with them and try to bore them to sleep by prohibiting any further noise or engagement. However, the sneaky little buggers can see right through that and just make noises anyway; complain they can't sleep; can I have a drink? can I have my teddy bear? I want mummy, etc. I'm either shushing them or running errands for them and it's 930pm already and bloody hell why aren't these little rascals asleep yet!

Sometimes like tonight, I'd employ my secondary tactic which is to kiss them goodnight and leave the room. This is not much more effective than the primary tactic, as the kids just carry on chatting and giggling together until one of us checks the time and bloody hell it's 10pm already and why aren't those little rascals asleep yet?

Except tonight, Saffira had already drifted to sleep while little Vida's voice could be heard saying "Papi, I need you." over and over. Of course I come upstairs promptly lest she wakes up her sister. I sat on the floor next to her bed and gently asked her to go to sleep please. She reached out for my hand and kissed it, then snuggled with it. I watched her face as she looked me over and rubbed her tired eyes. Then it hit me, when was the last time something like this happened with me and my adult daughter? It was something I took for granted as back then I was too busy raising her that only now I realise we never really know when any loving task we cherish is done for the last time ever.

So I just ignored the urge to leave her for some other chore waiting downstairs and instead I just sat there for ages.  I relished watching her toss and turn in her bed until eventually she fell asleep. Who knows when will be the last time I ever get to watch these little rascals drift off to sleep?

Is this Serendipity?

Because sometimes I leave stuff around that should have been put away, I need to think on my feet.

Tonight my daughter asked me what this shiny plastic packet was?

So I told her it was a condom.

Next thing both kids are repeating the word 'condom' as if making sure they never forget that word. Before I could follow through imagining embarrassing scenarios where my 2 or 4 year old daughters could use that knowledge,

they ask me "Papi what is it used for?"

Thinking fast I told them it can also be a balloon. A clever evasion if I might say so. I ripped the packet open and continued to demonstrate the inflation of the balloon. "Oooh it's green!" Saffira shrieks gleefully. I stopped blowing when it was getting hard to blow air into it, knotted the end of it and released it.

To my surprise it didn't come down after I released it. I thought maybe the respired air is warm enough so that it's lighter than air (which is heavier 21% oxygen? or 21% CO2 combined with oxygen?). But what happens when the air cools down? I thought maybe the lightglobe might be keeping it warm, but it stayed up even after the light was switched off.


My best hypothesis is using my understanding of the Combined Gas Law (Boyle/Charles/Gay Lussac)  If you squeeze an amount of gas, its temperature increases. I think that somehow the pressure exerted by the stretched material at the correct volume maintains it's temperature. It just also happens that the mass of gas inside the condom plus the mass of the actual condom displaces a heavier amount of surrounding air.

I'm not sure I can replicate this feat. Started out as parenting agility leading into serendipity. What do you think?

  floating condom balloon with nothing but air video here

The Best Way to Eat Sinigang

So it turns out I've been eating sinigang the wrong way for most of my life, in fact I think we all are.

The way most people eat it is with a plate of rice where the broth, the vegetables and the meat are added. The rice is soaked in the broth because it tastes great that way, plus it changes the textural experience of eating rice from the usual dry or saucy. Using a spoon and fork to scrape a little bit of meat, veg and wet rice onto a mouthful of brothy goodness. That broth, indeed one must have more of it! So now everyone is served a tiny bowl or cup or mug for the 'sabaw' so we can add it to our mouthfuls of sinigang and rice to maintain that delicious soury and savoury note. Until finally you're at that wicked little end game of 'kanin vs ulam' - where you're left with too little rice to finish the sinigang on your plate so you add some rice and as you're down to the last two mouthfuls you realise you need more ulam, so you add more ulam and run out of rice and repeat the process until you say fuck it either just eat what's there or declare you're full leaving what's on the plate as leftovers. Sorry.

Instead I propose eating sinigang like a soup served on a shallow bowl, to which rice is added as required. Think about it. No need for that extra cup or bowl of sabaw. You can still spoon gobful after gobful of rice and sinigang but now you also get as much of that broth as you want with every mouthful. Similar to eating any asian noodle soup you can see when you are at the end of your rice so you can just finish up by eating it like a soup thus avoiding the kanin vs ulam game. You're welcome.

My Broken Cup

We are caught in a whirlwind of decluttering frenzy. Serious questions are asked, every item is in peril of answering why they deserve to be here. And very quickly we shed any material attachment to any object that is overstaying its welcome. The more difficult ones are those that we hang on to for sentimental reasons. So for me, if an item is broken and beyond repair, it's gotta go. I don't have room in my life for broken things. I believe like attracts like in the strange alchemy of life philosophy, and I don't want to attract more broken things.

Which brings me to my broken cup, well okay it's technically a mug. Catering quality white ceramic mug (you can use them to bake giant cupcakes if you like) part of a set of 3, and one day I dropped one resulting in the loss of its handle. If it had been smashed or cracked or leaking, it would go straight in the bin. But surely it can still serve a function, it can still hold liquids, uh no, but okay, we just grab a handful of pens and stick 'em all in and voila ! it's a pen caddy now. I have given it a token job just because it didn't deserve to be rubbish just yet. I feel kinda guilty because it was my fault it lost its handle.

So are there any broken cups in your life? Whether or not you are hanging on to them for the right or wrong reasons is less important than actually knowing the reason you keep them in your life.

Sadistic Mongrel

This is the hate part in the love/hate relationship I have with Zappa. I thought we were going down the valley, we kind of were. It was another new route that started in the middle and led to the creek, across it and uphill again. My lungs were burning, a sensation to be re-experienced several times more today. There was a short-cut, but Zappa ignored it and followed the road up the hill and round the bend. At which point he stopped to check some messages, finally I can catch my breath. The break didn't last long, Zappa led me down via the short-cut he ignored before. Back across the creek and up the hill following the road. We ducked in and out of streets, mostly trotting with occasional stops to sniff or pee at something. Of which I am grateful for as I hungrily suck in more air. Sometimes the lung burn is accompanied by stitches on my kidney. Zappa is happily trotting along while I try to keep up, my pride preventing me from admitting that I am not as fit as this damn dog! Meanwhile I start to recognise and remember houses. I imagine what it must be like to live there and how and when did it come to be. What do the occupants want us to think of them.