Just Another Ms. Gay

A Sangguniang Kabataan (Youth Council) poster in Taguig.

Gay beauty pageants have become a common occurence across our archipelago. Pinoys adore their barangay gay guys. Usually they are a riot, and have so much more bravado and panache than us mere mortals when it comes to performance.

Our acceptance of the feminine, flamboyant types is a curiosity to other nationalities, in my experience-- except to Southeast Asians.

Underutilized Plants

Cross-posted from my garden blog, a bit of explanation why I've been quite a sporadic blogger, and what I've been working on (aside from a growing business).


I dream of a food revolution in this country. Of new tastes, old wisdom, practicality, and appropriateness to place.

I was previously growing less than half of the vegetables I eat (and I am vegetarian, so that means, all my food aside from rice), but since the discovery of edible weeds (kulitis, above, is one), it has gone up so drastically that I am smiling like a fool all the time. We don't really know what we've got, and we're so used to eating what the groceries (even wet markets) shove us, that we ignore what sprouts effortlessly from the ground.

I'm in a bit of constant study now (explaining less posts) of these wild plants, and learning something new everyday. Old books, interviews, historical text, listening for "Kinakain ito sa amin." ("Where I am from, we eat this.").

I am convinced this will help us, a country of colonization, Americanization, appropriation of dictated-by-other romanticized cultural associations, sweeping and empty "Pinoy ako" declarations, have an identity borne of our own land. How many of us actually know our own land? How can we know about the culture it informed-- and create a unique culture informed by it-- if we don't have the faintest clue what springs from it?

What "invasives" are naturalized and why? What do they like about our country and what can we learn from their adaptation? I have interest in this because ethnically, I carry the bloodlines of naturalized "invasives"-- a constant occurrence in nature.

I don't always get to type it out, but that is what interests me these days. Garden on.

Foot Job

Another outdoor mani-pedi sighting. Vendors can't leave their stalls and carts, so the nail grooming brigade makes good numbers in public markets.

Road Again

"Mama Mary" on "Romy Sidecar".

Been on the move (and in this weather!). But I'm back and I'm busy. Shaking off the dampness and cold bus rides of last week.

Stencil

Outdoor Mani-Pedi

The lady on the left is getting a manicure from the woman seated below.

The typical Filipina treks regularly to the corner parlors (salons) for haircuts, manicures, and pedicures on the cheap-- or the parlors trek to them.

Roving manicuristas are a common sight in markets and on streets where people hang out in front of their homes. Many Filipino women avail of training in their municipal centers for income-augmenting, low-investment service skills like hairstyling and doing nail treatments. The manicuristas I observe always seem to have pre-existing relations with their customers, though I could be wrong about this. Perhaps soon I will chat one or two of them up.

With them they bring a "kit" with different cuticle-cutting and dirt-scraping tools, as well as polish and that funky pink stuff.

Global Crisis

I'm not sure what this is, a gadget on someone's roof up north.

I've been reading about it. People say times are hard. People say it's the call centers keeping us afloat, but I believe it's the informal economy. It's the commonsense portion of reality.

I've always tried to keep myself distanced from "the system", "the man", whatever you call it. I support the man and woman on the streets, those doing things outside large credit and taxation. Screw Bayani Fernando for his vision of a sterile nation. In the Philippines, it is nature, the food, the towns and the streets that are truly alive. There you a smiling culture that is artful in its response to the fickle-weathered tropics. Even on an urban sidewalk, it is there.

Only these people and the environment can tell me that there is a true crisis-- and that crisis we can solve without an invisible hand. Mankind has been doing it for centuries without heavy centralization.

I want to live life living life. All else is, in a systems view, a waste of energy. That's why I feel like the current crisis is just dead flesh cycling back into healthy existence. Things are just getting very interesting. Right now they are rickety structures over structures over structures collapsing, and we are watching from a distance.

Toilethics, A Buzzword That Will Never Be

Thank you for keeping us out of the usual toilethical dilemmas.

If you're a corporation and sponsoring a "public service advisory" poster, try not to insert yourself shamelessly and ungracefully into the text. In parentheses, no less! There are so many other good ways to get your brand across.

I quote the above poster: "Itapon sa basurahan ang gamit na (Joy Bathroom) tissue o (Kotex Newtex) sanitary pad."

Views From The Throne

Cubicle door at Philamlife Theater.


Cubicle door at Little Tokyo.


Bathroom wall at Kusina Salud.


Bathroom wall in Southwestern France.

The Dogs of Palawan

Bearded dog at Snake Island.


Hungry twins at Snake Island.


The demon staring puppy of the El Nido playa.


Wood-eating dog in El Nido town.


Dog in town. Not attracted to our stone.


Obese small dog in Puerto Princesa.

Typical Tools for Cleanliness

A typical Filipino back door.

Once, in Paris, a friend's Basque mom excitedly showed me a broom she had bought in the Philippines. After criticizing all other incarnations of escobas and praising the beauty of the soft walis tambo (and stroking it quite lovingly), she set it back up for display. At that moment I decided I was probably taking these things for granted.

While the fanned out tambo, made of dried native tiger grass, sweeps dirt up better than any plastic implement, over time it sheds its long stalks (though "first class" walis will tend to hold this off for sometime) and you end up sweeping parts of it up as well. A balding one is left with short hairs, but is then superb for dusting out the corners of your ceilings or cabinets.


Walis tambo hanging, and a walis tingting by the dustpan.

The walis tingting is made by gathering the thin sticks at the center of coconut leaves and tying them together. I remember our household helper teaching me how to make one when I was little, brandishing a knife and expertly separating the leaf part and discarding it. The tingting (which literally means something like "thin stick") makes a nice whipping sound when you wave it around in the air.

Our walis is ingenious and beautiful. They are made of quickly renewable, widely available material and goes back into the earth after its useful life. Being a tropical country that is exploding with life and quick decomposition, our tools and housing have always gone through the same relatively short cycles. Nonetheless, relative abundance should make it inexpensive to create replacements. If we want to live effective lives, we need to put importance on biodiversity and encouraging fecundity.

Barge Life

On the tugboat.

People of the ocean have developed appropriate ways of living. It's always fun poking around their abodes, seeing how they get on with so little belongings. They cook on the deck, they have clotheslines all around, they take care of pigeons and chickens in wooden cages and below the floor. There was a dog roaming around and jumping between boats.

During the hot afternoons, they jump overboard into the filthy Manila Bay ocean, where the metropolis drains its untreated household and industrial waste out. The water is brown and looks like piss, even if it's far from the shore (at least it still smells like the sea).

I guess, if you live on the ocean, you can't not dive in. It just wouldn't make sense.


Some fish soup for lunch.


A shower in the open air.

Exploding Rotten Egg

It actually smells much worse than it looks

Yesterday, Juliet approached the tray on our kitchen counter to pick up a suspected rotten egg. As she touched it, it exploded with a loud bang, like a five star firecracker. Bits of shell and goo were on her. Poor her.

To begin with, the egg was probably already "bad" when we bought it (from an organic fowl farmer, as you can see, the shells still have poop on them). After a couple of weeks, the bacteria produced some gaseous reaction that was too much to contain. It smelled nasty.

This reminds me to tell everyone I know that if and when you bake, remember to crack every new egg in a small bowl that is separate from the rest of your batter. In the natural world, especially among animals who have so many offspring, there are bound to be some "bad eggs". You don't want to mix a rotten egg with the rest of your ingredients!

It's A Bird, It's A Plane...

Two young ones looking up at a recent tiangge.

Random Shots

Asking for directions



Oakley