End of Catharsis

Kaeiy is listening to: Waiting For A Sign - Paramita

I'm BACK! I am soooo back! Harharhar!

It's my baby's first birthday tomorrow! I am so proud of him and I love him to pieces. I plan to host a birthday party for him tomorrow afternoon. Jen is going to be there too and that's a very good thing!

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The best things in life are free...

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I am so busy busy busy! But in time, I will find time (that sounded so wrong. Oh well...) to blog more. And for godsakes, I'll update this darn template! After all, para saan pang nakabangon na ako mula sa halos dalawang taong pagkawala sa sarili kung hindi ko rin naman ipagpapatuloy ang aking... katinuan. Am I even capable of being matino?!? Bwahehehehe... We'll find out soon.

Stay tuned!

And just so I won't appear to be a total slacker, I'm posting an entry that I put in another blog I tried to start (and failed miserably. What the hell, story of my life!) that i wrote at around this time last year. And don't even try looking for the damned blog. It's gone! It never existed! Waaah!

Here goes:

THE BOONIE CHRONICLES

WARNING: Some scenes may be too graphic for some readers. If you are sensitive, close the web browser now. If you go ahead and read this then end up puking all over your keyboards and laptops, let me say this: I DID warn you!

So here we go...

One pretty ordinary day in my mundane life, I hit upon the idea: Why not spend a week in the boondocks for some R&R? I felt it was a good idea so I went ahead and did it.

Piled into the ten-year old car was my Nanay (my maternal grandma), Dindey, Rodj (her sons; therefore my uncles) and my (not-so-) little baby boy, Rex.

Oh, and just in case you're wondering, R&R stands for Rex and Rehabilitation. Harhar.

So anyway, we left at 10am to push for the boonies. The trip would take anywhere from 8 and a half (a suicide mission involving no stop-overs whatsoever except for gas and bathroom breaks for the passengers) to 12 hours (including two one-hour stop-overs, copious bathroom breaks and horrendous Manila-style traffic after the highway). Ours took about ten hours. Not bad.

The heat was terrible. Summer is a bitch. But hey, life's a beach!

After driving 4 hours, we stopped by a far-flung branch of Starbucks. I had my coffee fix and got a couple of Maple Oat Scones (on a sidenote: I hate how I could never get those darned scones in any store in Manila after 8am) to eat after a very late lunch. An hour later, the journey resumed. The sunset was beautiful, washing the sky with amber and orange streaked with salmon tinges before plunging the world into temporary blackout.

The boonies were dark and cold when we arrived. With the now-dried sweat plastered to our body and exhaustion tightening its grip, the weary travelers took an hour to prepare their quarters, take a nice hot shower (yes, hot showers in the boonies - the water in the pipes are naturally heated by the merciless sun) and then sink into oblivion.

By 5:30am, I was awake. I was stunned, naturally. I was in vacation mode and yet my body clock was still in work mode. Great, what do I do now? I wake Rex and together we explore the wonderful place called The Town Plaza. Yup, though we were in the boonies, it was still a bit modern. Hey, my cell boasted a full signal all week! Don't knock the boonies! Hemingway, the plaza was just as I remembered it from my very first trip there ten years ago except for a few concretized changes here and there. Same general atmosphere though: population density is such that if the same were applied to Makati, there would probably only be one person occupying every floor of every building in the Makati CBD.

Great, I thought, peace and quiet. This illusion was shattered as I walked back home after enjoying the fresh air and the glorious sunshine. I heard a shriek. A death scream.

One of the three (not-so-) little pigs was spewing crimson blood from its throat into a silver basin held underneath it. Its screams gave way to gurgling moans until it was still. Boiling water was poured and the old man proceeded to shave off its hair with a razor blade.

I continued to watch from 5 meters away. Images of bacon and porkchops and inihaw na liempo danced in my head. Then they start to morph into pigs. A vast multitude of pigs that grew fangs and started chasing me. Aaaagh! I think I'm hungry!

As Manong sliced open the pig from throat to anus, I saw not the porcine corpse but Flatty, our Human Anatomy cadaver (from way back in college) with his preserved internal organs in disarray inside a tapa-like abdominal cavity. Manong started taking out loops of small intestines and made a pink wreath out of it. He cut off the large intestines then hacked off the pig's arms. The abdominal cavity lay open as he extracted the liver and pancreas. He ripped off one kidney with his hand.

I watched silently. Then I reached in and touched the other kidney. It was warm and strangely odorless. It was warm. I pulled it out of the abdominal cavity as I had seen Manong do it a few moments prior. It was still warm. He sliced off the legs and the chest meat. I saw him scoop out blood from the chest cavity with a metal cup. He cut off the heart and handed it to me. Speechless, I held it in my hand as I watched him.

It was warm. It was WARM. IT WAS WARM! AND BLOODY! Aaaagggh!

I used up to a tablespoon of Dial liquid soap to wash my hands.

Lum-lumo, grilled porkchop and sinigang na baboy were served for lunch. I ate dinengdeng na sitaw at saluyot with roasted bunnog. Seriously, can you blame me?!?

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So anyway, now that I have successfully appeared masipag today, I can go back todoing what I do best: slacking. Besides, I have to go take a bath and look for some decent (define decent?) clothes to wear because after two years of being unable to do so... I am going to the Fair tonight! Wheeee!

Till next time.

Ta-ta!

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"Close your eyes and I'll sing you a lullaby
Nothing to fear coz i'm right here by your side"