Malaysian Laksa Leads to 7 Hours of Catching Up, Strategies To Get The Girl and Bloomfields Pimpage.
so how about that Dick Cheney, huh? he won’t be getting his Boy Scout Badge for Marksmanship this year. poor guy. and this satirical article was sent to me a few minutes ago by a friend. infernes, constructive suggestion sha.
am I glad to be back here. can’t imagine dragging my ass, much less a heavy rolling suitcase, in 26.9 inches of New York blizzard aftermath, or even its Virginia counterpart of approximately 12 inches. Boston had something like 16 to 24 inches. and all this was experienced by the northeast US after experiencing one of the mildest winters ever - when I was there, they were enjoying spring temepratures on some days. received pics from Manny today, with he and his wife bundled up and gamely hoisting shovels to clear their stoop and driveway. they are doing well, despite the weather. The streets blanketed in all that looks crazy beautiful, though. to my family and friends there, I hope everyone’s safe and early to work now, with a big mug of cocoa to come home to.
Barrytone, my good friend and colleague who was kind enough to take me in when I was in Flint, MI, is now in town for a couple of weeks, to spend vacation time with his family and see his old friends. Met up with him Valentine’s Eve, along with some of our friends Aristotle, Gent, and Lucas in The Banana Leaf Curry House.
eating out of banana leaves. spicy Asian food with coconut milk. Mmm...
i’m happy to see these people again, seeing them come out of their shells, seeing them grow up. they are the heroic ones who opted to keep working where I left, where I may have grown wise but at the same time grew old. and they, most especially Aristotle, are still enthusiastic enough to want to improve the system from the inside. Lucas, even if he sometimes works 72 hours straight in the hospital, garnering only 2-3 hours of sleep every 24 hours, even finds strength and time to run for a position in the Employee’s Association, his pen-and-ink art, his girlfriend, and his blog, not necessarily in that order. i hope that they succeed, for even if I had come to the conclusion that staying on for more years was not the road for me, that place had its strengths and advantages, and I don’t really want it to totally go to hell in a handbasket.
i’m also happy that Barrytone is slowly getting his emotional bearings back through this trip of his, after a miserable period caused by a lazy-ass, power-tripping superior who treats his underlings like pack mules. Barrytone intends to make some changes when he comes back to the US - he might try his fortune somewhere else, in a slightly different place, with a slightly different field. And he might tell the stupid powertripper to stick it where the sun don’t shine. you go boy. :)
oh, and I saw that they were having some kind of hearts decorating contest at the Shoebox Mall (since its building looks like an unaesthetic box, according to my one of my dismayed uncles) for Valentine’s Day…
... papercutting elevated to an art.
...because love can sometimes be groovy rock and roll on acid
...i know it’s a sarimanok or phoenix, but it just screams "tandoori chicken" to me. sorry.
...the King can Love You Tender on Valentine’s too.
...love in many languages.
...and in silver and blue bas-relief.
speaking of Hearts Day, Gent has gathered enough pluck to court a girl that he likes. He plans to ask the lady out on a date on or around Valentine’s Day. which is something, because he tends to clam up in fear in things romantic. yay for women’s lib and all, but truth is, men usually expect to, and still make the tangible or obvious first move to get the courtship wheels going. many women, including me, underestimate the pressure men are subjected to because of this. there are times when some fail to see that the boy being turned down by the girl he asked to dance with is as much hurt as the girl standing alone in the corner of the ballroom not being asked by any boy to dance. and these sometimes come into full relief, especially when one is young, when surrounded by rows and rows of roses and teddy bears and chocolate by the 14th of February.
so, anyway, I said it would be nice if he could save the major date shebang a few days after Valentine’s and on the 14th itself to just come bearing simple flowers or a little gift, and to ask her out for the bigger date set for some other time. the strategy being, a guy should do something for his target, um, the object of his affections, but not big enough to pressure him, increasing the risk of turning the situation awkward and blowing up in his face, and more importantly, not big enough to scare the prey, um, girl into running towards the opposite direction.
every girl, even if they won’t admit it, would get a kick out of being remembered, especially on the day when they see other girls walking around, usually in their school uniforms, holding a rose wrapped in some material that looks like pink operating room gauze or some fluffy toy. on that day, small gestures that say “hey, I like you, and I’m thinking about you, and I’m nice, not a desperate stalker” will do. it puts your intentions out there and gets you hopefully on the same page effortlessly.
to go back, another plus, if you look at the pragmatic side of things, is that small gestures make relatively smaller dents in the budget, especially at a time when all these commercial establishments tend to take advantage. have you tried to get a table in any decent restaurant on Valentine’s Day for dinner? have you seen how much the price of long-stemmed roses skyrocketed on that day alone? trust me, you’re better off saving the big wine-and-dine on the day after they take down the balloons and ribbons…
turns out Gent had flowers, but he had them delivered. oh, all right. I suggested he should stop by where the girl was, just to see how she was and to ask if she liked the flowers. psychology tells us that learning is by association, so Gent better work on reinforcing the “nice guy-remembered me-nice flowers-this year’s valentine’s day-I like him” associations in that girl’s head by making his presence the icing on the cake. Gent was a little nervous to talk to her. fine, call her mobile, keep the conversation short and pleasant, so you wont be floundering and stammering after a few minutes. basta make the whole thing personal and honest for the both of you. that’s what counts.
Lucas the Ladykiller gave more advice from a guy’s point of view, some uncannily accurate hybrid of reading and capitalizing on body language, peppered with some techniques of delicate but sincere flattery. eerie, because I can see the logic of it being effective on people, not just girls in general. me, I’m low maintenance. it takes the weirdest things to get me going. at times, getting a stuffed hedgehog is better and quirkier than any teddy bear….
and someone who would give me a teddy in a teddy…
…and smart enough get the joke is cool in my book.
brain fart: i used to go out with a guy who once gave me a cute stuffed toy horse that had recorded neighs if you press one ear, and galloping sounds if you press the other. anyway, the fun part of romance for me is that it has the possibility to sometimes come in the oddest of forms and in the unlikeliest of circumstances. one just has to be sensitive and optimistic enough to see beauty and poetry in most things. we can never really be ready. so we muddle through, just resolving to be sincere but careful. in the end, as Gent said, “hay naku, bahala na.”
I instead opted to celebrate St. Valentine’s by cooking dinner for my mom - spaghetti with mackerel and spiced cheddar cream sauce, served with Moscato Spumante (not too good of a wine pairing, I know, but she has a thing for sweet wine). when my aunt comes home for the weekend I’ll do the same thing, but since she hates strong spices and white pasta sauce, I might do a red version instead. it will be a good reason to open up a bottle of Merlot soon after finishing what’s left of the Spumante. i think that's a nicer way to spend Heart's Day for someone like me.
Gent scored tickets to the Valentines Day Andy Williams concert at the Araneta Coliseum, since the girl loved retro ‘50s-‘60s music. For some reason they couldn’t go, so he gave the tickets to Aristotle. I sensed a potential band pimpage moment, so I sold him on the idea to take her to Aruba Bar & Restaurant in the Metrowalk Commercial Complex (Aruba's official rarely updated site can be found here and clickthecity.com’s link info here) instead to hear Bloomfields, who play regularly there every Thursday.
Bloomfields (Yahoo! Group addy here) are a bunch of college kids (jj lozano: lead Rickenbacker -- the guitar John Lennon used, louie poco: bass Rickenbacker -- Paul McCartney’s weapon of choice, pepe lozano: electric guitar, lakan hila: piano/organ/keyboards and rocky collado: drums) wearing suits and moptops (well, some have moptops) who play retro pop and rock covers - Beach Boys, Beatles, Jerry Lee Lewis, Cliff Richards, The Shadows, as well as retro-sounding originals. Their energy is infectious, and they take their music roots seriously, so there is a lot of potential there. I was invited by friends to check them out a couple of days ago. Enjoy the pics…
... shutterbugging while waiting for the Bloomfields to come on.
... did Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru suddenly try their hand at bartending?
...still being trigger happy while nursing my Negroni at the bar.
...band huddle
...grand entrance
...soundcheck
...music, now.
...parents, yuppies, ingenues, and everyone in between all come together for rock and roll. at one point, drummer rocky decided to take a break…
...because an audience member, turned out to be a musician himself back in the day, and gamely jammed with the band.
...partiers, all.