exactly one year ago, i made a call that changed my life. i was sprawled on the carpet of my tiny dorm room in seoul, struck down by homesickness, despair, and other unpleasant things. in short, i was crying like heck. calling my mom didn't help. neither did calling my sister. so i called the polymath, who was the actual source of my misery. snippet of half-remembered conversation:
him: o, what's wrong?
me: (waaaaah!) ... (waaaaah!)
him: take your time...
me: i feel awful. i'm just sooooo tired.
him: ...
me: i'm tired of all these guys around me. they won't leave me alone eh.
him: ...
me: they just won't stay away. i don't want them. i want you.
him: ...
me: do you understand what i'm saying? i want you. nobody else.
him: (makes hushing sounds) don't cry. tahan na.
me: but what's it gonna be like when i get back? i'm just so, so tired...
him: it'll be fine. we'll be fine.
on hindsight, i'm slightly suspicious about what i remember. i could be making up all that. it's like something from a movie. a really bad movie. heh.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Thursday, June 21, 2007
eerily familiar #4 (last of the series)
this time, i'll let the images speak for themselves. first, me again:
next, me with less melanin. kinda doughy, eh? and milk-fed, like veal.
and me if i'd been born to frolic on the sands of the carribean. feel irie!
next, me with less melanin. kinda doughy, eh? and milk-fed, like veal.
and me if i'd been born to frolic on the sands of the carribean. feel irie!
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
eerily familiar #3
here's the original photo again.
and here's how i would look as an elderly person:
don't i look fabulous? if i play my cards right (or wrong, depending on your perspective), fifty years from now, i'd be a drugged out lola tripping on painkillers. yay.
but the creepy thing about this photo: i actually resemble my paternal grandfather's sisters, especially my lola caring.
and here's how i would look as an elderly person:
don't i look fabulous? if i play my cards right (or wrong, depending on your perspective), fifty years from now, i'd be a drugged out lola tripping on painkillers. yay.
but the creepy thing about this photo: i actually resemble my paternal grandfather's sisters, especially my lola caring.
my poor sick doggie
brought kitty to the vet today. she hasn't eaten in two days, spends the whole night crying and keeping me awake, and has been particularly irritable. when she bit my face last night after she snuggled into my pillow, i knew something was up.
turns out she has some serious liver problems, probably connected to some blood parasite. the vet who analyzed her blood at the UP vetmed lab said that the infection may have started some time ago from an old tick infestation.
so for the next two weeks, kitty is on a special l/d diet and has to take doxyvet antibiotics and a liver tonic. she's a really picky eater. if she doesn't take to the special diet, we'll have to confine her at the vet hospital. she's eaten a bit, and didn't spit out too much of her medicine.
really really hope she gets better. and i hope she lets me sleep tonight. i'm exhausted from all this worrying.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
eerily familiar #2
second installment in the face tranformer series. first we start with the original: me looking like a doof. taken sometime 2006 in a tiny dorm room. note the wayward bra strap and the pink bimpo.
i ran this photo through a face transformer website and it gets artsy all of a sudden. lookee:
so this is how i would look if i had been painted by boticelli. i dunno if it's a big improvement though. but the goof factor is definitely minimized. i would love to get a tan this lovely. and already i'm wondering if i can find this particular shade of lip gloss.
this last one would be me as painted by modigliani, which i like very much. not only do i look tragic and depressed, i also seem to have shed 40 pounds. if only losing weight were that easy.
i ran this photo through a face transformer website and it gets artsy all of a sudden. lookee:
so this is how i would look if i had been painted by boticelli. i dunno if it's a big improvement though. but the goof factor is definitely minimized. i would love to get a tan this lovely. and already i'm wondering if i can find this particular shade of lip gloss.
this last one would be me as painted by modigliani, which i like very much. not only do i look tragic and depressed, i also seem to have shed 40 pounds. if only losing weight were that easy.
eerily familiar #1
the polymath pointed me to a cool website that transforms your face (actually, a photo) and shows how you would look if you were younger, elderly, painted by modigliani, 50% chimp, or a different race.
so, of course, i had to try it out. had fun thursday night morphing my face (actually, my photo) and got acquainted with some eerily familiar people. first posting the original here (photo taken last year in my tiny dorm room in seoul), plus how i would look had i been born han chinese.
the other transformations will be posted one at a time starting tomorrow. so come visit again, people.
so, of course, i had to try it out. had fun thursday night morphing my face (actually, my photo) and got acquainted with some eerily familiar people. first posting the original here (photo taken last year in my tiny dorm room in seoul), plus how i would look had i been born han chinese.
the other transformations will be posted one at a time starting tomorrow. so come visit again, people.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
first day of skool
three things from today:
1) i got lost going to my first classroom (a building labeled pldt-convergent tech something). i know that sounds really really stupid but having spent exactly 1/3 of my life in up diliman, i get lost if i'm anywhere else. like makati, for example. to be honest, i get lost if i'm outside my qc haunts. tried to read the maps around and follow directions but i ended up horribly late. eek.
2) the kids seem okay. although i detected a certain smugness from the boys who grew up going to school there. not surprised. really looking forward to the intro to fiction class. science nerds--i like em already. heh.
3) but it really is a different planet over there. on hot days, my up kids cooled off with dirty ice cream from the mamang sorbetero outside fc. or with fruit shakes from casaa. at the new school, there was a BTIC frozen yogurt stand. mwehwehwe.
1) i got lost going to my first classroom (a building labeled pldt-convergent tech something). i know that sounds really really stupid but having spent exactly 1/3 of my life in up diliman, i get lost if i'm anywhere else. like makati, for example. to be honest, i get lost if i'm outside my qc haunts. tried to read the maps around and follow directions but i ended up horribly late. eek.
2) the kids seem okay. although i detected a certain smugness from the boys who grew up going to school there. not surprised. really looking forward to the intro to fiction class. science nerds--i like em already. heh.
3) but it really is a different planet over there. on hot days, my up kids cooled off with dirty ice cream from the mamang sorbetero outside fc. or with fruit shakes from casaa. at the new school, there was a BTIC frozen yogurt stand. mwehwehwe.
Friday, June 08, 2007
some alleged weirdness
saw this meme on the polymath's blog, who'd stolen it from fairlycloudy, who'd stolen it from faye's extra dirty mind. felt compelled to do it even if i have other stuff to do. my brain needs a bit of downtime after three days of learning how to teach "the areneow way" (more on that some udder time).
so i'm supposed to write 6 weird things about myself. but here's my caveat: if you step back far enough to see the bigger picture, every little thing that everyone does can arguably seem weird.
1) i'm constantly talking to myself in my head, bitching about stuff, remembering stuff, planning stuff, wondering about what stuff i want to eat, read, cook. but mostly i try to remember stuff, and remembering for me is pretty much equal to reliving it. and if i happen to remember something i did or said that was particularly stupid, i find myself humming, clearing my throat or making some sudden nonsense sound. it's like a reflex. so if you see me sitting quietly (or being borderline autistic) for a long time, just listening to the yakking voice in my head, and then i suddenly make a weird sound or start humming, you know that's my way of kicking myself inside my head.
2) i like picking at my dead skin cells. if i feel one tiny hangnail on one finger, i rip it off (which occasionally results in a bloody little mess) and look at the nail beds on my other fingers to see if i have other little hangnails to rip out. sometimes when i get too lazy to give myself a foot spa, all the walking i do results in some miniature flaps of dead skin curling up from my sole. they seem to follow the tiny contours of my footprints (as opposed to fingerprints, although that weird peeling has happened on the inside of my right thumb). so i pick at em. i leave my hair alone (ie, i don't pluck them out) but i constantly fiddle with it.
3) when my dog wants to hump my leg (or sometimes, my head), i let her. and i take videos of her in action, sometimes with early U2 songs in the background. imagine this: close up of a small furry white dog, panting and humping a leg, while Bono sings "Sunday Bloody Sunday."
4) i always feel compelled to finish whatever food is in front of me. growing up, my titas always made me feel guilty about the biafra babies in africa and the starving children of negros. i used to get away with it but now it's made me kinda fat. sometimes this devolves into mindless eating--i can finish a huge bag of chips without realizing it because i get kinda hypnotized by the rhythm of chewing and the nice crunchy sounds made by teeth crushing dehyrated fried potatoes.
5) i hate it when things are not in their proper places, or not aligned, or somehow look asymmetrical. when this happens in my kitchen (usually when papa or the maid is around), it just drives my nuts. there is always a logical reason when i deliberately place an object at a specific location or position it in a certain way. and i really hate when people don't realize the implications of my arrangements and mess everything up. uhm, this is a disease, no?
6) i feel truly depressed and subhuman when i'm hungry. and i mean depressed in a wallowing-in-self pity kind of way. but the moment i eat something to end the hunger pangs, it feels so good everything feels right with the world and i'm thankful i can't do cartwheels because that would be very embarrassing. imagine doing cartwheels in front of the fishball vendor. sheesh.
so i'm supposed to write 6 weird things about myself. but here's my caveat: if you step back far enough to see the bigger picture, every little thing that everyone does can arguably seem weird.
1) i'm constantly talking to myself in my head, bitching about stuff, remembering stuff, planning stuff, wondering about what stuff i want to eat, read, cook. but mostly i try to remember stuff, and remembering for me is pretty much equal to reliving it. and if i happen to remember something i did or said that was particularly stupid, i find myself humming, clearing my throat or making some sudden nonsense sound. it's like a reflex. so if you see me sitting quietly (or being borderline autistic) for a long time, just listening to the yakking voice in my head, and then i suddenly make a weird sound or start humming, you know that's my way of kicking myself inside my head.
2) i like picking at my dead skin cells. if i feel one tiny hangnail on one finger, i rip it off (which occasionally results in a bloody little mess) and look at the nail beds on my other fingers to see if i have other little hangnails to rip out. sometimes when i get too lazy to give myself a foot spa, all the walking i do results in some miniature flaps of dead skin curling up from my sole. they seem to follow the tiny contours of my footprints (as opposed to fingerprints, although that weird peeling has happened on the inside of my right thumb). so i pick at em. i leave my hair alone (ie, i don't pluck them out) but i constantly fiddle with it.
3) when my dog wants to hump my leg (or sometimes, my head), i let her. and i take videos of her in action, sometimes with early U2 songs in the background. imagine this: close up of a small furry white dog, panting and humping a leg, while Bono sings "Sunday Bloody Sunday."
4) i always feel compelled to finish whatever food is in front of me. growing up, my titas always made me feel guilty about the biafra babies in africa and the starving children of negros. i used to get away with it but now it's made me kinda fat. sometimes this devolves into mindless eating--i can finish a huge bag of chips without realizing it because i get kinda hypnotized by the rhythm of chewing and the nice crunchy sounds made by teeth crushing dehyrated fried potatoes.
5) i hate it when things are not in their proper places, or not aligned, or somehow look asymmetrical. when this happens in my kitchen (usually when papa or the maid is around), it just drives my nuts. there is always a logical reason when i deliberately place an object at a specific location or position it in a certain way. and i really hate when people don't realize the implications of my arrangements and mess everything up. uhm, this is a disease, no?
6) i feel truly depressed and subhuman when i'm hungry. and i mean depressed in a wallowing-in-self pity kind of way. but the moment i eat something to end the hunger pangs, it feels so good everything feels right with the world and i'm thankful i can't do cartwheels because that would be very embarrassing. imagine doing cartwheels in front of the fishball vendor. sheesh.
Saturday, June 02, 2007
ice cream update
i had problems with the last batch of ice cream i made. the texture was kinda weird. nice when perfectly frozen but melts horridly, halfway between watery and nubbly. the only thing it had going for it were the divine chopped chocolate chunklets i had mixed into the softly churned ice cream.
but of course, i had to fiddle with it. so i melted it all down at the stovetop. gently, as to avoid boiling the cream. then i whisked into it four beaten egg yolks, to give it a richer consistency. i like how yolks smooth things out. putting in the whites might have turned it lumpy. couldn't risk that.
after 10 minutes over a low fire, the coffee cream and chocolate chunks melted into a lovely mocha custard. i let it cool on the table and left for galleria. the problem started when i asked my brother to put the custard in the fridge once it reached room temp. the damn thing thickened and set, of course. that would have been perfect if i had wanted pudding. but a disaster for ice cream.
so i warmed up a little milk and thinned out the custard. thankfully, loosened up but stayed cold enough for immediate churning. i wish i could say at this point that it's now finally perfect. except that the only milk in the house this evening was the gross evaporated kind (bought by kuya) that comes in a little tetrabrik. so, okay: the texture is now smooth and dense. but, dammit, the flavor is a little off.
argh.
but i must say... i know what to do next time. so i won't forget, here are 2 recipes for ice cream:
Mocha Chip Ice Cream
2 cups cream
2 cups soymilk
3/4 cup sugar or splenda
4 egg yolks
4 tablespoons instant coffee
1 cup chocolate chips or chunks
heat cream, soymilk, & splenda in big saucepan over low fire. avoid boiling. add coffee powder & mix again. beat egg yolks to death. temper yolks with half cup of coffee cream then whisk slowly into saucepan. heat for 8 to 10 mins till thick-ish or spoon-coatish. cool to room temp. chill in fridge for 3 hours. check consistency. if needed, thin with warm soymilk, half cup at a time. churn in ice cream maker to soft-serve consistency. pour chips slowly into churner & mix for 5 mins. freeze for 3 hours.
Durian Ice Cream
2 cups cream
2 cups soymilk
3/4 cup sugar or splenda
4 egg yolks
1/4 tsp salt
1 to 2 cups durian preserve, to taste
heat cream, soymilk, durian & splenda in big saucepan over low fire. avoid boiling. whisk to dissolve durian into cream. beat egg yolks to death. temper yolks with half cup of durian cream then whisk slowly into saucepan. heat for 8 to 10 mins till thick-ish or spoon-coatish. cool to room temp. chill in fridge for 3 hours. check consistency. if needed, thin with warm soymilk, half cup at a time. churn in ice cream maker to soft-serve consistency. freeze for 3 hours.
but of course, i had to fiddle with it. so i melted it all down at the stovetop. gently, as to avoid boiling the cream. then i whisked into it four beaten egg yolks, to give it a richer consistency. i like how yolks smooth things out. putting in the whites might have turned it lumpy. couldn't risk that.
after 10 minutes over a low fire, the coffee cream and chocolate chunks melted into a lovely mocha custard. i let it cool on the table and left for galleria. the problem started when i asked my brother to put the custard in the fridge once it reached room temp. the damn thing thickened and set, of course. that would have been perfect if i had wanted pudding. but a disaster for ice cream.
so i warmed up a little milk and thinned out the custard. thankfully, loosened up but stayed cold enough for immediate churning. i wish i could say at this point that it's now finally perfect. except that the only milk in the house this evening was the gross evaporated kind (bought by kuya) that comes in a little tetrabrik. so, okay: the texture is now smooth and dense. but, dammit, the flavor is a little off.
argh.
but i must say... i know what to do next time. so i won't forget, here are 2 recipes for ice cream:
Mocha Chip Ice Cream
2 cups cream
2 cups soymilk
3/4 cup sugar or splenda
4 egg yolks
4 tablespoons instant coffee
1 cup chocolate chips or chunks
heat cream, soymilk, & splenda in big saucepan over low fire. avoid boiling. add coffee powder & mix again. beat egg yolks to death. temper yolks with half cup of coffee cream then whisk slowly into saucepan. heat for 8 to 10 mins till thick-ish or spoon-coatish. cool to room temp. chill in fridge for 3 hours. check consistency. if needed, thin with warm soymilk, half cup at a time. churn in ice cream maker to soft-serve consistency. pour chips slowly into churner & mix for 5 mins. freeze for 3 hours.
Durian Ice Cream
2 cups cream
2 cups soymilk
3/4 cup sugar or splenda
4 egg yolks
1/4 tsp salt
1 to 2 cups durian preserve, to taste
heat cream, soymilk, durian & splenda in big saucepan over low fire. avoid boiling. whisk to dissolve durian into cream. beat egg yolks to death. temper yolks with half cup of durian cream then whisk slowly into saucepan. heat for 8 to 10 mins till thick-ish or spoon-coatish. cool to room temp. chill in fridge for 3 hours. check consistency. if needed, thin with warm soymilk, half cup at a time. churn in ice cream maker to soft-serve consistency. freeze for 3 hours.
bardy gifts
was at galleria this evening to get my pasalubong from my buddy, partybread. he gave me some Bard-related goodies bought at shakespeare's globe theater, where he watched othello at groundling level for 5 quid. he said he was spitting distance from the stage, and may have gotten spattered by the actors at some point.
anyway, he got me a replica of a copper groundling penny--sort of like an olde tyme theater ticket or token--excavated from the foundations of the original wood-and-thatch globe building. it features the bard's face and signature, and the inscriptions: "admit to my plaie" and "one penny in the yard". on the other side is the theater and "shakespeare's globe 1599-1642".
the other nifty gifty is a yellow pen with scented ink and a hamlet quote: "it smells to heaven." and it does. heh.
anyway, he got me a replica of a copper groundling penny--sort of like an olde tyme theater ticket or token--excavated from the foundations of the original wood-and-thatch globe building. it features the bard's face and signature, and the inscriptions: "admit to my plaie" and "one penny in the yard". on the other side is the theater and "shakespeare's globe 1599-1642".
the other nifty gifty is a yellow pen with scented ink and a hamlet quote: "it smells to heaven." and it does. heh.
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