Follow her train of thought...

Friday, June 22, 2007

1:06 AM

where do we go now

I'm finishing a waaay overdue final paper, running on a sugar and caffeine high (strawberry banana ice cream and 2 mugs of coffee! at 1 a.m!), and doing yet another dance of delay by blogging and asking people not to send e-mails. At least not to my old Yahoo address.

Days ago, I woke up at noon and checked my mail. Only to be informed that my ID and password are invalid. I tried again. No go. Knowing that I hadn't changed the password I've been using FOR SEVEN YEARS, I clicked on the Sign-in problems? link and provided the personal information asked for. Only to be informed that they don't match the information in the account. (Well, it's entirely possible my date of birth has changed since I originally signed up.) So I e-mailed Yahoo Customer Care about my predicament. Two days later, I received an e-mail from Pedro (yes, Pedro) saying that my Yahoo acount can be restored if I can provide the correct Secret Answer to the security question I had set up when I created the account. The secret security question, ladies and gentlemen, is:

"where do i go from here?"

Of course, I have no fucking clue what the answer could be. I've tried to put myself into the mindset of the 18-year-old stranger who asked this question (and smacked her on the head several times too), but I am at a loss. I never fail to amaze myself.

My list of possible one-word answers (keeping my old feeling-profound self in mind) include the following:
1. there
2. nowhere
3. anywhere
4. somewhere
5. everywhere
6. elsewhere
7. up
8. home
9. hell
10. limbo
11. Marikina
12. Ateneo
13. wherever
14. Wonderland
15. Never-Never-Land
16. down
17. away

(The list could go on, but at this point I'm getting hungry, so I'm posting a picture of the SINIGANG I made last week, the first sinigang I've ever cooked. It has all the basic ingredients: kamatis, sibuyas, sitaw, labanos, sili, bok choy (in lieu of the elusive kangkong), baboy. After simmering the pork for over an hour, I threw the vegetables in, poured in a packet and a half of Knorr sinigang mix (ang asim ng tunay na sampalok!), seasoned it with B's Thai patis, and SALIVATED. We made our rice swim in the sour sabaw, scarfed it down in the sweltering heat (28 degrees Celsius, almost like Manila!) and agreed: it tasted like home.)

(It was also Independence Day back home.)

(And I briefly contemplated quitting grad school and enrolling in cooking school.)

But anyway, I e-mailed Pedro back using another account, and offered detailed information about my self and my Yahoo folders to prove I own the account, and included my top 2 answers to the security question while admitting that I don't remember anymore what the right answer could be. Let's hope Pedro finds it in his heart to restore seven years' worth of romantic correspondence, of contacts, of work history, of material for my future biographer (you do know I'm kidding, right?).

In the meantime, please send all future e-mails to naya dot valdellon at utoronto dot ca. Tell me where I can go from here.

Labels: food, life, technology

Sunday, January 07, 2007

10:23 PM

Where Do I Begin

For the first time in a long time, I'm quietly happy. Despite the bandaged thumb, the sniffles, the dwindling resources, the homesickness, the fact that winter term classes start this Tuesday, and the frustrating knowledge that the fact I'm not Canadian closes me off to scholarships and literary contests and other opportunities available to my peers. Today I received so much: Sunday morning backrubs, freshly brewed coffee and the New York Times and the thought of waffles, more hugs than I'd gotten in a month, the return of a friend who's more like a sister now, turones de kasoy, books I'd requested from my shelves back home, notes and little gifts from dear friends I miss, and this reemerging capacity for tenderness. Despite everything, I'm still pretty lucky. I just need to get through this year and this grad school ordeal I've gotten myself into with more resolve and groundedness.

* * *

Museum
by Robert Hass

On the morning of the Kathe Kollwitz exhibit, a young man and woman come into the museum restaurant. She is carrying a baby; he carries the air-freight edition of the Sunday New York Times. She sits in a high-backed wicker chair, cradling the infant in her arms. He fills a tray with fresh fruit, rolls, and coffee in white cups and brings it to the table. His hair is tousled, her eyes are puffy. They look like they were thrown down into sleep and then yanked out if it like divers coming up for air. He holds the baby. She drinks coffee, scans the front page, butters a roll and eats it in their little corner in the sun. After a while, she holds the baby. He reads the Book Review and eats some fruit. Then he holds the baby while she finds the section of the paper she wants and eats fruit and smokes. They’ve hardly exchanged a look. Meanwhile, I have fallen in love with this equitable arrangement, and with the baby who cooperates by sleeping. All around then are faces Kathe Kollwitz carved in wood of people with no talent or capacity for suffering who are suffering the numbest kinds of pain: hunger, helpless terror. But this young couple is reading the Sunday paper in the sun, the baby is sleeping, the green has begun to emerge from the rind of the cantaloupe, and everything seems possible.

Labels: life, love, poetry

Saturday, January 06, 2007

2:01 AM

Slice of Life

I just had a mini scare. I'd slept way earlier than usual (10pm, haha) but woke up past midnight hearing housemates chatting in the kitchen. Feeling hungry, I decided to join them and to toast some bread and cheese. So I got out the Spanish Manchego and had a little trouble slicing its fresh-from-the-fridge hardness. And then the cheese slicer slipped, and I saw part of my left thumbnail (maybe half of the top 1/3, from left to right) sliced. At first I was like, Oh, no big deal, I just cut my nail. Carina told me to wash it under cold water -- so I did, and it started to hurt like hell and bleed a little. Nilo handed me tissue and told me to apply a little pressure -- so I did, and started to feel frantic. Tangina, ang sakit! If this is a dream, I want to wake up! What do I do? Cold shivers ran down my back, and I felt my lips and cheeks tingling, like I was losing color. "I need to sit down," I said, and found a kitchen stool.

Next thing I knew, something cold was being wiped on my lips and forehead and cheeks. I opened my eyes and felt like I was hurtling upwards out of a ravine, and stared straight into Nilo's eyes. I was sitting down, leaning against Ben. And I got really scared, realizing I had fainted. They kept reassuring me I was ok, that I was only out for around 7 seconds. Nilo said she had clipped the nail to the point where it was safe, and she just had to apply antibacterial ointment (from Ben's huge first aid kit, which was one of his mother's Hannukah presents) and bandage it. So at my request, Carina sang to distract me (she can barely keep a tune) and I refused to look at my thumb until it was finished. So now they've exempted me from washing dishes (yehey!) and I just need to replace the band-aids daily until the nail starts growing back. Hmm, at least now I have a good (if unglamorous) conversation starter for a third date.

Two things: 1) I'm really glad I have my housemates around, I don't know what I would've done if I were alone. 2) Now I know what it feels like to faint. It's scary, that upward rush toward consciousness after the body shuts down. What was my body doing during those 7 seconds? Ben said they thought I was joking at first because my eyes were still open and I'd tilted my head back and made a snoring sound. Then they realized I was out and had trouble breathing, so they panicked too while supporting my head, and fanned me until I came to. Wow. So that's my little bit of excitement on a Friday night. All for a piece of toast with cheese.

Labels: house, life

Monday, January 01, 2007

5:27 PM

So this is the new year...

My New Year's Eve was straight out of a Beckett play, like a scene from Waiting for Godot. Due to unforeseen circumstances, all the other housemates were out partying or out of town, so the only people left were me, my favorite German housemate Carina, and her boyfriend Robert who'd just arrived from Munich the day before. (We don't count the couple in the basement, who have their own little world.) We'd intended to greet the New Year drinking on the roof (perhaps not the brightest of ideas), but since it had been raining all day and the roof was slippery, that plan was shot. So we finished a bottle of wine, moved the couch in front of the huge window in Ben's room, and stared at skeletons of trees against a pinkish-grey sky. With cans of beer in hand, we waited for midnight to roll around. Five minutes before the stroke, the city was still quiet. One of us opened the window and listened.

"Why is nothing happening?"
"No firecrackers or fireworks?"
"Do Canadians celebrate New Year?"
"Maybe they'd rather stay in bars than light fireworks?"
"I have no idea; we're not from around here, remember?"
"Maybe everyone's staying inside because of the rain."
"Maybe our clocks are wrong and we're actually an hour early."
"Maybe our calendars are warped and we're actually a day early."
"Maybe we should call someone."

Carina called Nilo who assured us Canadians did indeed celebrate New Year. But that she had leftover sparklers in her room we could help ourselves to just in case we didn't see any fireworks. So five minutes after midnight, after concluding that our window-watching idea was useless, we opened our beers, lit our sparklers, and did little jigs of joy. Three foreigners in a quiet city, ushering in 2007 with whirling lights and much floor-creaking.

* * *

I've loved my previous New Year's Eves too. I remember drinking passionfruit vodka at the Marikina Riverpark with Kael, EJ, and Mitzie to greet 2004. And having champagne and focaccia with Elmo and his mom for 2005. And spending a cold night watching fireworks from the funeral chapel with my family and the Soncuyas for 2006. This time last year I was sitting in limbo, in an eclipse, all my plans up in the air. Now I'm where I want to be, still slightly homesick, but drinking in every last drop of this experience.

* * *

Pictures and mini-stories:

The Smee Casualty Board! We use the kitchen whiteboard for chore reminders, school and job updates, basic info (we realized after 2 months that we had no idea what each other's last names were), and a tally board for mice. We thought we only had one -- who'd eat only whole wheat bread and sunflower seeds -- and affectionately named it Smee, in a pirate-y mood. Then we discovered we had a family. One mouse entered through the space under my door (one disadvantage to living next to the kitchen) and found its way to my bed (no, I'm not that desperate...yet). Carina and Nilo caught it with an upside down trash can, stuffed it along with my blanket in a garbage bag, and we trekked to the park a block away to "set Smee free!" Except the tame little rodent kept snuggling in my blanket. We had to shake it off...and I had to wash my sheets. Twice. We waged war on Smee's relatives, though, who were only assigned numbers, not names. We caught SIX on sticky paper a month ago, and fervently hope we caught them all. I still have dreams about mice, which I assure you aren't as delightful as the rats dancing in the Nutcracker ballet.

The Gingerbread House! One December night before the term ended, Ben wanted Christmas cookies, and Nilo decided she wanted to make a gingerbread house. So we all chipped in -- my contribution was gladly setting aside my unfinished 20-page paper (on notions of privacy and the female outider in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire and Lillian Hellman's The Autumn Garden) and making a literal midnight RUN (with running shoes and jogging pants) to the supermarket to buy...food coloring. The baking took two hours, and the house smelled exquisitely sugary at 2am. Notice how the gingerbread roof rests precariously on the walls and uncooked spaghetti supports. With the leftover dough, we made a tree, a cat, a bike, the number 62, a heart, a woman, and a man -- which they let me eat, head last.

Ok, no real story here. Just a cute picture by the front door, of me and Carina supposedly saying goodbye to Adam. Me in pigtails, days before I cut my hair short again and dyed it "chocolate cherry -- just a fancy name for burgundy brown (and yes, I share Kate Winslet's character's fascination for haircolor names in Eternal Sunshine, among other quirks). I love how you can see the stark trees as well as the hallway light above our heads. We're there, smiling, with the liquid glass blurring what's inside and what's outside, just within reach.

(More photos coming soon!)

Labels: house, life, photographs