“The day I was born I was born free and that is my Privilege.”

I had yet my worst allergic attack yesterday. A friend had a treat of a bilao of spaghetti, rice cakes, and bottles of soda, and we decided to bring the food at a nearby park to eat. Hungry, I forgot that spaghetti can be topped with cheese or the cheese can be included in the cooking of its sauce. Cheese, the one food that I am allergic to. I had allergy to chicken, egg, shrimp and, I think, crabs too before, but it cured for some reason, which I am thankful for.

After eating two platefuls, I even commended that it was delicious, that it had some distinct taste. And now I am thinking that the cheese can explain its peculiarity, which after a few minutes caused me flushing of skin which then turned to skin inflammation, light headache, heart palpitation, and nausea.

Luckily, my friends are there to accompany me. I dragged one to walk with me to buy my medication at the nearest pharmacy. I take Zyrtec whenever I have a cheese allergy attack, and it always costs me almost 40 pesos to buy a small tablet. I sat on a bench with two friends, the other keeping me awake with his stories while I am making a pillow out of a shoulder of the other. As I am nauseous, two girlfriends were guiding me on my two arms, walking me to the terminal, one of them even getting me home. Honestly, I am embarrassed having seen by my friends in such state, but I cannot do nothing but to take my medication and wait till the swelling subsides.

On Hitch, a Will Smith film, there is a scene where the man ate dinner at the woman’s house. The food prepared contains shellfish which he is allergic to. Too ashamed to explain of his allergy to the woman’s mistress, he humbly ate the shellfish, if my memory serves me right. A few bites then caused his face to swell severely. That is what I remembered when I had my attack last night.  It’s an ugly facial distortion. I was not recognizable.

In an article that I read it says that what I have is called food intolerance, allergic not to milk but to its by-product, one of which is cheese. It is still unknown to me what cheese is a foe, but as far as I know, cheddar is still good for me, particularly Kraft, and other cheeses taken in small servings I am still able to eat. You could mock me if I should say that I am depressed a bit thinking that I have a food restriction. I could not eat anything with cheese. Even if I will reason out that I can still eat baked macaroni, mussels, and oyters, that Zyrtec will help me through another allergic reaction, but I had heart palpitation, difficulty breathing, and nausea last night, symptoms that I haven’t experienced in my previous attacks and which kind of scares me.

No, this couldn’t be happening.

It started out when I put a cup of oil into the pan. And while waiting for it to heaten up, I prepared the sauce mix for my adobo — poured soy sauce, vinegar, quartered onions, searched through our spices organizer for the bottle of whole peppercorns and laurel leaf and put some into the mixture, poured a cup of water, tasted it, and then set the pan on the stove after including in the porkchops. I saw a can of button mushrooms on our grocery cabinet and remembered the baby potatoes I bought last week. And suddenly the idea of putting them in my adobo as meat extenders got me excited.

At the time that I finished this up, I saw that the oil was already hot. The panicky me grabbed the sabas, peeled off three pieces and threw it into the heated oil. I then opened a bottle of muscovado sugar, as this is the only one available, placed two to three tablespoons on top of the bananas and started to constantly mixing it. It must be my first time to cook caramelized banana or the infamous Banana Cue. And that happened on the last Sunday of my 23rd year.  Oooohh, am I romanticizing everything?

Sleep came to me 2:00 a.m. last night, so I failed to wake up early to attend mass with my mother. My alarm instead woke me up around 8:00 a.m. “What will I do this day?” I asked myself. While thinking of an answer, I grabbed my phone placed on my bookshelf and read a text message from a friend greeting me a good morning. As much as I wanted to reply, I couldn’t, so I just played En Vogue’s Don’t Let Go thrice and sang my heart out.

Fast forward.

2:30 p.m., after a warm bath, I saw my phone blinked, indicating an unread message. My friends advised me that the UAAP Cheerdance Competition just started, one even tried to call me. Oh, yes, I remember about it lunch hour, but I do not know what’s the exact time it will be shown on TV. I opened the television, saw the dome filled with students from various schools. Knowing that half f it was occupied by my fellow UP-ians made me really excited. There I was in front of the television jumping while shouting “LABAN UP!!! UP FIGHT!!!” And it felt really good. We placed third, but still “Unibersidad ng Buhay Namin, UP, Ang Galing Mo!”

And to quote a friend: “UP Pep Squad: “What happens in Diliman, stays in Diliman.” Oh, yeah, I love the spirit, Yabang Pinoy!”

——————————–

Wait, garlic in my adobo is missing, not too late to put some into it, though! Lucky!

On Tuesday, I will be a year older. It’s kind of depressing knowing that you’re getting older and here again Impatience questioning me what, so far, happened to my life.   Any future plans? Having relayed that thought to a friend, she lessoned me to immediately get rid of it and to always think that the small things I have had done should amount to something bigger than what I expected. And, come on, I am still alive, meaning blessed that I have a chance still to fulfill my dreams, whatever those are.
Okay. Enough. Jolly Jel, come out now!

So let’s talk about what happened so far on the last Saturday of my 23rd year. And I warn those who are generous enough to waste their precious time reading what I must write here that this could be as boring as you can get, and I don’t mind talking about it here.

I ate the last serving of chicken curry for brunch. I have been eating it since the night before the last. My mom cooked it for us, which she so often does, I mean, cook, but this time she defied her daily menu and tried to cook an almost foreign dish to her. So it’s me showing too much appreciation to my mother’s  effort of cooking my favorite chicken curry.

The dessert is nothing close to sweet, though.  My mother told me a devastating story of a neighbor pouring hot water on them cats causing a ruckus on their roof, disturbing their silence, and of another neighbor taking advantage of my brother’s generosity.  The latter act, most often that not,  is always experienced by my family, and I intend not to boast.

Two friends accompany me in text today.  One tells his story of him being a godfather to his second godchild. His last text narrates of him being happy having a picture holding the cute baby in his arms when shortly before that he thought that he could not have a panoramic moment with his godchild as the child is happily asleep.

This reminds me of the niece, still a baby, of my friend.  She lightened up the room where her late grandmother was being mourned by with her cute smiles and acts, alleviating grief.

Child’s innocence brings joy.  Now, I miss my nephew Cole and I can’t wait to have my picture taken with him.

And another friend of mine talks about the idea of going out today as, for a while, the rain stopped.  I encouraged her to make herself happy; said that I demand a greeting on Tuesday, that I won’t accept a late greeting even if it is just a minute late; pleaded for our joint celebration to be moved on the 11th of next month instead of the 26th; and we both ended up, in the hopes that our other friends would agree, being excited of visiting Manila Ocean Park and Makansutra, a newly opened food haven in Roxas Boulevard.

I will cook pancit for dinner. My mother is doing our laundry.  I folded my umbrella neatly.

The sky is still overcast. No portion of blue can be seen. I pray not a weather like this on the 19th. And I hope to see a beautiful sunset at the end of that day.

Here comes my enlightenment.

Stand up and congratulate me.

“Congratulations! Congratulations!”

It takes a text message to make me realize that I am still walking on the yellow brick road.  Now I say to myself, no, you have reached the castle.  You’ve splashed a bucket of water to Elphaba and you already had Nessarose’s little red glittery shoes.  Shout “Freedom” like William Wallace.   Survive reality because you own a brave heart.  What a citation! Hahaha!

I’ll just join John Nozuka as he sings After Tonight.

And after that, I’ll sway with James Morrison’s You Give Me Something.

And I  just miss this song, so I am including it here.

And I just went to check my dashboard, chanced upon this entry on drafts and never really remember the reason why I wrote those words above.  But I will post it anyway.

Oh, wait! I remember it now!

All hope abandon, ye who enter here –  an inscription to the gates of hell in the words of Dante Alighieri in Inferno.  I never read the book, but I know of the title and its author.  As much as I want to read it, the stories are in verses that my plain mind had a hard time deciphering.   So let this game that EA will release on February of next year, if my memory serves me well, transport me to the depths of hell to accompany Dante in his journey.

I like hack and slash games especially in a story mode.   Maybe because I don’t want any interruptions except for a short  game cinematics.   That kind of gives an impression of being fast-paced.  The recent game of that type that I played is Daxter, and previous to that, Prince of Persia Rival Swords, both a revisit, just changing the games difficulty level from normal to hard.  The best hack and slash game for me would be God of War Chains of Olympus — good graphics; interesting story, at least for me, I like Greek mythology; and the gameplay is just great. That’s a 9 out of 10 rating from this gamer for Kratos’s journey up to the underworld in a battle with Persephone to save the world in a hope that the Gods will release him from the burdens of his past.

We are all waiting for the sequel of Chains of Olympus.  Rumors say that the God of War sequel will be released next year.  But for now,  let me just satisfy myself with one trailer of Dante’s Inferno.   And credits to my PSP buddies in the office who told me about Dante’s Inferno’s trailer release.

She thought of not being in a relationship at her age right now after a trip to nowhere alone.  I said to her that I’ve thought of that myself, too, but yet I am not ready for the scenarios like telling him every little thing that you decided to do with your momentary life like what color should I use if I have chosen to dye my hair.

To express oneself is as hard as showing apathy while you’re in a rollercoaster ride.   Tell me what to do.

I just want someone to hug, I said to another she.  Surprised, she told me to just grab a pillow and that my wish will be fulfilled.  Look for a mature one, she then advised me.  I asked her to qualify what she means by “mature.”  She typed in like bullet points — brave enough to face everything you two will go through in the relationship and the side of you that he doesn’t know yet, who knows insensitivity enough not to befriend it, who doesn’t get angry when you’re nearly misanthropic.  And I just listened as she tells her story following that.

I know about it but I don’t understand it.

That night I read a line in a book saying, “Flirting with alternative pasts only made it more difficult to face the present.” A memory flashed back and I refused to read for hours.

I was on my bed last night reading Sara Backer’s American Fuji, a book I just snatched from my friend’s bookshelf when I went at her place last Sunday. I saw a John Grisham o a double-decker and asked her, while she was half-asleep, if I could borrow it. She mumbled a few words and pointed me to a collection of books on the table. I moved the bouquet of flowers on top of the stack and picked the one she recommended me reading.

Sleep refused to get through me yesterday even though the rainy weather kept on persuading me to close my eyes and dream. Reading a few pages lulled me to sleep, but I was awakened by the thought that there was something that I should be doing rather than rest. My mind is awake. I went to my brother’s room to get the guitar, played a few chords then went back to my room to continue reading the book.

The story centers on two individuals, both of them Americans, that is, Gabby and Alex. A former professor at a university in Tokyo, Gaby talks old men on how they want their remains be handled, how their last respects be done for a favorable price. At Gone With the Wind, her company, the package called “Fly Me to the Moon” is the most expensive.  “Liar,” the wife of her rich client called her after discussing its details to the old man. “One’s ashes will be transported to the moon, that is nonsense. It’s against the tradition,” she said.

You will be a part of everyone when you die, a molecule on a plant dew, your nucleus will be in the air that everyone breaths in; I read that in a book. And I kind of like that concept of death.

Gaby sells death, that’s what she does now.  But Gaby misses teaching, that cannot be denied. Lester often blames her for staying at her current work and not pursuing her passion. She was terminated at her teaching post a few years back, and the reason was not discussed to her in detail.  A Ph.D. holder, fluent in both English and Japanese, the dean tells his regret of losing a good teacher like her, but he also stresses out needing someone else to do her job.

In working at Gone With the Wind, she will meet Alex, an author by profession, a father whose son, a student in a university at Tokyo, died in a motorcycle accident a year ago. The details of his death was never known to Alex.  “Your company transported my son’s body in a casket back to America,” he said.  He also claimed he had transfer papers to prove it, but Gaby couldn’t find a record of it in their file.

That is to the extent of what I read. Telling their story is a relief and an alibi of not narrating mine. Merely because mine is a sad one. It involves greed, disrespect, deceit resulting to tears, confusion, anger, empathy which then turns to apathy.

One hour close to midnight I end this post.

—————————————————————

Brandon Boyd, believing in that 1 percent of a chance that you’ll read this,  I just want to say my deepest thanks for including my Ectoplasm post in your blog. Continue to inspire other people through your music and art.   I will wait for the release of  Monuments and Melodies  here in my country.  By the way, I love what you said in your recent interview with LiveDaily; that is,  “I hadn’t thought about the lyric in a long time — there’s a lyric in the song “Monuments and Melodies” that refers to where one has been and where one is going and being sort of in praise of the process of growth.”

Then let’s all move forward.

Now, that put colors on my dull cheeks.

I need money for my travel expenses. It’s a dream to tour the world, pero sabi nga ni Nanay given the chance she’ll tour the Philippines first. So that’s what I am trying to do now.

One more Friday, two more of the rest of the days, then Quezon off I go with my lovely friends.

And Jandy texted me a little while ago, “Friend, sorry, pressure, book na kita ha. July tayo.” I replied a resounding yes. That will be our Cebu-Bohol trip. I really have to go! I missed the Puerto Galera and Potipot, Zambales adventures with them because of certain concerns, and I feel like I’m missing a whole lot. So I decided to say yes this time without the buts.

Takot ako sa idea ng plane ride. Di ako sanay sa adrenaline rush, sa Morning Rush lang. Hahahaha. But I should do this or I can’t say hello to my soulmate in Greece — haha — a place I really want to go to before I die.

I just realized am touring Visayas.  It’s Camiguin for Mindanao. I will eat Pastel there.  Yippeee!