Midnight Serendipity

It was 11 PM in Australia and I was about to turn in for the night.  I switched to the tab to close my Gmail but I noticed an email from Sunshine.   It was quite unusual to receive a message from her.  In the first place she does not sent out a lot of email (unless she's at the office or is at home doing work remotely),  and in the second place, it was the middle of the night in her side of the world.   Naturally I had to read her email.  

Her message was short and straight to the point. She could not sleep.  It was 3AM in California.  She was hoping to catch someone in Skype but could not remember her username and password.   (Yes, the two of us are definitely related.)

Anyway, given that "call for help" the least I could do was email back her username, right? So I logged in to Skype and (lo and behold) found Sunshine online.  

Seeing her online meant that she did not need my help to recall her username and obviously she'd also figured out her password.  Of course I had to ring her up even if it was the middle of the night here and even more so the middle of the night there.   How often would I get the opportunity to talk with her? She is hardly ever online during my timezone.  In fact, she is probably hardly ever online considering she almost forgot her username and password.   (Yes, definitely my sister.)

So we were able to chat for a while.   

There was serendipity in our middle of the night call.  I think the call helped me more than it helped her.  She was the one who could not sleep, remember?  Well I was the one who had a massive headache and eye-ache that lasted over three days.  I was the one that stepped out of the office on Tuesday to get my eye pressure checked and finally took a day off from work on Thursday to go see a doctor.  (If you are interested, my eye pressure was normal and by the time I saw the GP on Thursday, I was feeling much better.  The doctor didn't find anything and just advised me to take the day off.)  

MacGyver keeps telling me it is the stress and lack of sleep.  I believe him.  I really do.  And I am trying to work my way around the issues that are causing my stress and anxiety.  He often says I'm the bullheaded Taurus woman and that I don't listen to him, but in reality I think it is more the teflon brain at work causing me to forget the things he patiently repeats when I am in distress.  

Admittedly I am constantly trying to find my peace.  Well, Sunshine mentioned something in line with this during our conversation.  Aside from giving me sound advice, she introduced me to a Buddhist monk named Thich Nhat Hanh.  (In case you are curious, it was Oprah who introduced her to this monk.)

Our midnight chat was cut short because little Ronald woke up and jump-started her Saturday.

I took the opportunity to learn a bit more about Thich Nhat Hanh before going to bed.   

So far, I have picked up the following 

• be passionately present for the here and now
• respond with compassion
• keep the peace in yourself
• deep listening will help the other person suffer less
• shake off wrong perceptions of yourself  
• learn from your sufferings 

I believe everyone can learn something from him.  You can read more on his four matras. 

The Four Mantras of Relationships

Darling, I am here for you.

Darling, I know you are there and I am very happy.

Darling, I know that you suffer, that is why I'm here for you.

Darling, I suffer. Please help me.

-Thich Nhat Hanh

Reach Out and Touch Someone

It was 6:30 AM when the alarm went off. My first thoughts were 'What time is it in London?'

It was the birthday of my aunt Tita SIS (big sis) yesterday. She lives in London. I wanted to give her a call to greet her a happy birthday.

Last time I checked, about lunchtime yesterday, it was 1:30 AM in London, Tuesday, 01 March. Nobody calls at that ungodly hour unless it is an emergency. Then I forgot to check the time again until 01 March passed in my time zone. I had gone to bed on Tuesday and by the time I woke up, it was Wednesday already.

When I consulted the World Clock of my Nokia, it said that it is still 01 March in London. Just my luck, it was still Tita SIS's birthday in her corner of the world! In fact, it was a decent 7:30 PM in London at that very moment. (Hurrah!)

I quickly brought her record up from my Address Book button and hit the CALL button.

I was happy that she answered after the first ring. We were able to chat for a bit.

She sounds just like my mom. What did I expect? She IS Mother's sister. (I have often been told that I sound like my siblings. In fact, on one occasion, I was told that I sound like my BROTHER!)

After talking to her, thoughts of being connected to siblings crossed my mind. I know for a fact that Mother loves her sister a lot and in spite being oceans apart, they are still very close. I love all my siblings dearly. Mother knows Tita SIS's number by heart. Sadly, I can't say the same for me and my siblings' telephone numbers. (In my defense, I do have the disadvantage of having nine siblings while Mother just has one.)

When we were younger, Mother used to have our birthdays listed in the back of a family photo she kept in her handbag. There are six of us married now and our combined efforts have brought thirteen children to this world. I think Mother would need to keep an 8R photo in her bag if she wanted to retain the list in the back of a family picture, not to mention that she'd need a pretty big handbag to put it in.

I am happy to announce that I know all the birthdays of my siblings and children. I'm not saying that I will still remember all these dates in twenty years but at the moment I can still say that I remember these. However, I must admit that this is the extent of my memory, and that my memory has a lot of support in the form of my Book of Days, Facebook, YahooGroups calendars, etc.

Unlike Mother, I would not be able to dial any of my siblings' numbers even if my life depended on it (except maybe for Z's because she still lives at home). I do not even know what time it is in their sides of the world. Fortunately, technology has come to my rescue. My cellphone takes care of both these issues. Family members' telephone numbers are in my cellphone Address Book while the World Clock tells me what time it is in different parts of the world. Aside from my phone, I have back-ups -- a spreadsheet with family members addresses and telephone numbers, plus the ever reliable (as long as there is electricity and the internet connection is up), World Time found in the side of this blog c/o timeanddate.com.

So (belated) Happy Birthday to Tita SIS and a special thanks to Alexander Graham Bell.

(No, this is not the family picture Mother keeps in her bag with all of our birthdays. This picture was taken on Father and Mother's 25th wedding anniversary in 1986. I think this was the last one we have that has all twelve of us together. )

ImPRESSive Cookies

We had an old cookie press at Cebu Avenue.

Did it belong to my mother or to her mother? I honestly don't know. All I know is that the thing fascinated me. (I'm sure I considered asking for it before we moved to Australia.)

I think we made cookies using that gadget a long, long time ago.

A few weeks before MyGirl's birthday, I saw a cookie press at Victoria's Basement while I was browsing. I wasn't sure she'd appreciate one so when we went out and chanced upon a similar one, I asked her in passing whether she was interested in the thing.

I should have known that her answer would be an enthusiastic YES.

First chance I got, I bought her the cookie press for her birthday.

It was almost the end of February and the cookie press was still idle in MyGirl's closet. I figured I owed it to her to note down a recipe we could try, so I noted one down in our "orange notebook." (The 'orange notebook' is yet another of my recipe notebooks. I started this one close to New Year with the intention of diligently trying the recipes I would write there, as well as placing comments so that I would remember if the recipe was worth repeating or not.)

Among the recipes currently found in the orange notebook are mamon and taisan. I had the urge to make these when I got one-fourth piece of a mamon last week. The parents of my boss (who decided to retire in Manila) had just arrived for a three week visit and brought a lot of goodie (Choc-Nut, Nagaraya, barquillos, peanut brittle, mamon, etc.) for their family which she was kind enough to share with us.

So last Sunday, when MyGirl asked if we could bake something, I asked her if she wanted to make mamon/taisan or the caramel spritz cookies using the cookie press.

I should have known that the answer would be cookies. (In all honesty, I am the one craving for mamon/taisan.)

So it was settled -- cookies then.

"Bring out the butter and the eggs, MyGirl."

MyGirl did most of the work. The cookies turned out perfectly. We managed to make about 75 cookies so we had a "budget" of 15 cookies each.

YUM!

I would have wanted them a tad sweeter, but that is just my sweet tooth talking.

They turned out beautifully. MyGirl brought some to school to share with her classmates. When they saw the cookies, they asked her if she BOUGHT them.

Isn't that just the best compliment? Ü

Time to Smell the Sampaguitas

I grew up in a house full of books. Reading was hobby, not a chore. The books in our house could probably surpass that of a small library in terms of the selection as well as the number of books to be found.

Over the years, I bought more books for us, mainly cookbooks and religious books for myself and children's books for the kids. To give you an idea of the number of books we had, aside from the three bookcases (in Makati at one point), there were books stashed away in boxes, plastic crates and drawers both in Makati and Cebu Avenue.

When we moved to Australia, our books were among our prized possessions. I remember that as we were packing, I asked the children to segregate the books they wanted to bring and the books they were willing to give away. I ended up with two tall KEEP piles and two or three books in the GIVE AWAY pile.

Much as I would have wanted to take all our books with us, it was physically impossible and financially challenging to do so. In the end, I packed away many and left a lot. We had at least 4 boxes/crates filled with books that were shipped along with our things. (Yeah, yeah, most of them were mine.)

By the time we'd moved into our rental and our shipping boxes arrived, we were fortunate enough to have inherited one bookshelf. I thought I'd be home all day, so the cookbooks and the Sinag-Tala books got the shelf space.

I have been wanting to take an inventory of the books we have in the house because I honestly don't remember which books we brought and which ones we left behind. Last night, I decided to START taking the inventory. I sat down in front of the linen closet with a small laptop and brought out one of the HP boxes of books stored in there. I pulled out books from the box in mini-piles at a time and started an excel file to get my inventory going.

There were about six low stacks of books inside the box (which once held a CPU). I managed to get four stacks into my excel, reaching seventy records. I guess I got distracted because I found something of special interest to me. Of the 70 books I keyed into the inventory, there was only one book in particular that I felt like reading -- Time to Smell the Sampaguitas.

This is a very special book. You cannot find this book in any bookstore, anywhere in the world. There is a very limited number of copies of this autobiography. I don't even know how many copies of this book exists. But surely, there are at least ten.

I brought the book along with me today and read it on the bus going home. I loved reading it. It brought a lot of smiles and gave me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

I marvel at the author's writing style. She describes her life growing up in the farm (Chapter 1). She uses words and phrases which border on poetic. She manages to document her life and express her thoughts and feelings with such clarity and vividness.

She incorporated stories about her family life which were funny and memorable. She wrote about how she and her future husband were reunited after she came home from the States. She gave a run down of her children, all ten of them, adding a sprinkling of stories about each one. She didn't whitewash her history nor her personality. She said it as she saw it. She wrote it as she felt it.

I can't quite figure out when she wrote this book. (Late 1980's or early 1990's perhaps?) I wish I could because then I would be able to tell her exactly how many years it took before one of her dreams came true.

On page 43 of her book when she talks about the family tradition of circulating a birthday list of needs and wants, she writes what hers would be like -- " a chapter of a book" or "a clean room".

I have to mention that "clean" is relative but "a chapter" is tangible. So it is entirely possible that she got her 'clean' room (not the quote location) early on. The dream come true I am talking about here is the 'chapter of the a book'.

I couldn't help but smile because FINALLY, after possibly 20 years of waiting (asking, reminding, prodding, and anything short of bribing), she was able to get the chapters of her dreams as we her children kept our noses to the grindstone and produced a chapter each, as per request.

The sequel of sorts to Time to Smell the Sampaguitas will be Rainbow Run.

Hope you are practicing what you preach, Mother.

Relax. Relax. Smell the sampaguitas.

O Christmas Tree

The tradition of trimming the Christmas tree was something I loved as a child. We always had a fairly tall Christmas tree set up in one of the corners of the living room at Cebu Avenue. The Christmas tree itself was stored somewhere downstairs while the boxes with our Christmas ornaments were stashed in the cabinet in the study room above our pigeon holes.

Once Mother decreed that the tree was to be set up, the tree would be brought upstairs and the Christmas decor would be brought down.

Assembling the Christmas tree would require sorting the branches by size. The longer ones belong on the lower part of the tree while the shorter ones would go towards the top. These were laid out on the floor of the living room the connected to the tree trunk. (As the years wore on and the plastic got brittle, some of the branches needed slings to keep them up. Eventually the tree looked like a scene from a World War 2 movie and Father decided it was time to get a replacement.)

Over the years, we managed to gather an assortment of Christmas ornaments. There never seemed to be a rhyme or a reason to our decoration but there was always much love that went into decorating the tree. I took a picture of our Christmas tree almost every year. (I just don't know where that set is anymore. Maybe one day I will find those pictures.)

When I got married and moved out of Cebu Avenue, it is quite possible that for our first Christmas we didn't even purchase a tree. GI was only three months old then and we didn't think he'd mind if we didn't have a tree. Besides, most of the Christmas season was spent at Quezon City anyway.

I do remember that when GI was one year old, we purchased Christmas lights because GI loved watching them blink. Eventually we got a small tree to put the lights on. By the time RD arrived, our Christmas tree was in full swing with Christmas lights that played a selection of Christmas carols. What MyGirl remembers is the beautiful star that went on top of our tree.

Growing up, we would find gifts from siblings, parents and Santa under our Christmas tree. For GI, RD and MyGirl, the trees with the most number of gifts for them have always been outside our house. These would be gifts from the grandparents, the uncles and the aunts. In Manila, we would always be at Project 7 (MacGyver's parents' place) on Christmas eve then we'd be at my parents' place at Cebu Avenue for Christmas morning and most of Christmas Day. Now that we are in Australia, Christmas (and similar occasions) are spent at the house of close relations. As a result, the tree at home doesn't have the same impact on the children as it did on me as a child.

Nonetheless, there would be no excuse not to put up a Christmas tree at home. We got a nice hand-me-down tree with some Christmas decor last year after we arrived. I surprised the family about a week before Christmas and set up the tree one evening. I put the Christmas balls we had brought from Manila and added a star I had purchased when I was on leave last November. I let the kids add whatever other decor they wanted.

I have to admit, at times I do wish that I could give the children more, especially on Christmas. But it warms my heart to see that they happily accept the modest gifts we are able to offer them.

Maybe in the years to come I will put more thought into the decorating of the Christmas tree. For now, I will just enjoy the Christmas tree other people put up to see.

This one is at the Queen Victoria Building across my office. The QVB has three floors. At the ground floor, you can only see the base of the tree. You would have to be at the second or third floor of the building to see the star on top of the tree.

Here is the tree from the second floor looking up...
... and looking down.

This is a 'close up' of the top of the tree taken from the third floor.

(08 Jan 2011)

I decided I wanted to take a few extra shots of the Queen Victoria Building Christmas tree just to show how beautiful it is.

This is the base of the tree ...

while this shows the tree from top to bottom.

Letting Go

We let RD go off and watch a movie with his friends today. It was the birthday of one of his classmates and he was invited to join the celebration. Even if it was a school night, we allowed him to party. They were scheduled to have pizza at 4:45pm then catch the movie at 6pm. Pick up was set for 8pm.

Our little baby is a big boy already.