Bean Sprouts While Chicken Crosses

[another distracted recipe]

Ingredients

1/2 kilo Bean sprouts / Toge
1 Red bell pepper, chopped
1 Green pepper (siling panigang), chopped
2 Tomatoes, chopped
2 Onions / shallots chopped
Garlic
1/2 cup Tomato sauce
Malunggay leaves
Soy sauce
Brown sugar
Salt & Pepper


1. Boil chicken in a little water, 2 tbsp. soy sauce, and ground pepper. Fillet afterwards.

2. Fry onion & garlic in olive oil. Add the chicken, green pepper, tomatoes.

3. Add half a cup of tomato sauce, a little water, brown sugar (or honey), and salt & pepper, according to taste.

4. Add the bean sprouts. Let simmer until cooked.

5. Add the malunggay leaves and the chopped red bell pepper.


Yes, it's healthy. It's got bean sprouts and malunggay, for God's sakes! :)

CAPTCHA word for the day: rabid

Yes. Rabid. Which I may or may not be, depending on the lighting conditions.

They say CAPTCHA, or those annoyingly distorted words you have to type inside boxes and forms and which you have to get right (as in really get right) if you want to successfully register--is the reverse Turing test. In the normal Turing test, humans administer tests to computers. With CAPTCHA, it's the computers giving out puzzles for humans to solve, the nice reverse. There's actually an entire and official site for CAPTCHA, complete with demonstrations, research papers, and news. All devoted to fighting spam and other cyber vandalism.

Back in my work eons ago as a humble SEO, we had to fill out about hundreds of forms with CAPTCHA words. It'd have been nicer if all the words we had to copy were actual words in the dictionary. Some CAPTCHA generate random letters-and-number mixtures for added trickiness. Computers with a vengeance.

Like most inventions that are actually acronyms which we never knew existed, CAPTCHA has one too. It's Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. In this automated age, that's getting a little tough to do. When computers begin asking us to prove we're not a robot, some of us can't find a reason to.

Last Monday, I accompanied my mom to finally (as in finally) settle her account with the bank. Bloated credit card. We were already at the bank, ready to pay but the manager said we had to call this number first and listen so many times to a voice prompt whose options won't work anyway, and finally when we did get through, they told us we had to go visit their other branch, kilometers away.

When we got there, we asked if we can pay only half the amount. And they said Okay just like that, no questions asked. And so we forked over the cash, and the account was closed for good, and we left Libis with our hearts and mind in relative peace.

Later at McDonald's at Quezon Ave, I asked Job and Edge why the bank had so easily yielded to our request. Job, who's worked as a collection officer before, says it's because the bank has long given up on the account that they're willing to get whatever amount that comes their way. In other cases, they sell the account to a third-pary collection agency, which then goes to call and harass the customers and threaten with such and such estafa charges until they cough up the bucks. So the lesson, arrange for a restructured (discounted) payment plan or better yet, don't get a credit card.

You might be asking what this little anecdote now has to do with CAPTCHA, and I'm sure there's an entire philosophy and even meaning behind those randomly-generated letters, but unfortunately my answer is nothing. I'm just being rabid.

Champorado and a Lesson in Physics.

As a kid, I get my free and early lesson in physics (or is it thermodynamics?) whenever I eat champorado. My elders tell me to eat along the sides of the bowl first, as it's usually the cooler part of the porridge. And true enough, when I scoop the champorado in the bowl's periphery, going in a circular, no spiral fashion, it's just the right temperature.

Okay, we still got nippy mornings and chilly late afternoons, but today, before summer arrives in no time and the food of choice is anything cold like the arctic, I had to make champorado. I'm no expert, and anyway, every Filipino household has its own way of making this afternoon merienda. (This would have made it to the breakfast table today if only I wake up early.)

Here's how I do it.

1. Soak the malagkit rice overnight; this makes the rice more glutinuous, and since the grains are already soft, you also get to save gas.

2. In a pot, boil the malagkit rice and plenty of water. The ratio of rice to water should be about 1: 8. Stir occasionally. Put in a knotted pandan leaf for a more aromatic champorado. Add more water depending on how soupy you want your porridge.

3. Dissolve your cocoa powder or, much better, tableya chocolates in hot water, then add into the pot. (Tableya is more bitter and has a richer flavor than your regular cocoa powder. A roll of tableya, which has 8 or 9 tablets costs about 100 Pesos) Boil until the rice is tender and semi-transparent.

4. Serve with toasted pinipig (rice crispies) on top, brown sugar, and lots of milk. They say fresh carabao milk is the best, which takes you back to the sweet province, but plain old evap will do, so long as the milk swirls on top. :)

I've never tried it with fried tuyo, even if tradition and all the food literature tells us it's the best partner for champorado. Actually, instead of tuyo or anything fried, I'd much prefer it if it'd rain while I ate my champorado.

Notice the brown sugar. Now that the price of white sugar is at its highest, all the more reason for us to use the brown cheaper variety. Brown sugar is healthier and more delicious in my humble opinion. We made the switch many years ago, and now, I cannot stand the taste of refined sugar.

Off to See Siajong Angel

News of Siajong Angel's death today made made me scour my stuff for that photograph of him and Ating Caya I took two Decembers ago. I couldn't find it; I must have given it to them already. The photo was a bit blurry, I would have wanted the flowers on Ating Caya's dress to stand out a little more, be crispier than life, but I still haven't figured out the camera back then.

Now whether I find if I have another hard copy of that photo or not won't matter.

This is me when faced with matters of death, I go looking for photographs as if my memory must be nudged. And true enough, in an an old photo of Mami which I found instead, circa 1940s, there's the inscription by her friend at the back: Naway's ang larawang ito magsilbing gamot kung ikaw ay makalilimot.

In those days, photographs were obviously few and far between, each photo shoot was an occasion, people dressed up and went to studios, and film was precious, more often it was a group portrait. And you cannot blink. Not like now where anyone can just whip out their camera phone and capture the moment. Back then, you really have to depend on your memory.

But I havent forgotten how Siajo looks like. True, in a moment of selfishness, I thought to myself, now, I can never get Siajo's birthday greeting for Mami on video anymore. Now, it would only be Ating minus her husband. Siajo was handsome even in old age. In his younger days, he was even dashing, and Mami tells me had other women besides his wife. But of course, like every strong heroine, Ating prevailed in the end.

In a different lifetime, I would have regarded Siajo as a villain, just because of this juicy piece of detail. But that was the past, which I don't even have evidence of, which doesn't concern me at all. All I know is that Siajo was the guy who was good to me and to Edge, even if he knew we were a couple. He'd even crack raunchy jokes about it, raunchy but not disrespectful. He'd say something like, "O, e di nagsusukob na kayo sa isang kulambo n'yan?" And all three of us would laugh. He was older than us, of course, but he never used his seniority to be rude to us, or even show the slightest bit of condescesion or self-righteousness. He was actually decent to us. And that's enough for me.

And I still haven't said a prayer for Siajo's soul. The last time we were in Cabiao (May, for the fiesta), he could already walk unsupervised, albeit with a cane, and from the looks of it he was clearly triumphing over his diabetes. Maybe, it was never a contest in the first place.

We are still arranging our trip to Cabiao to pay our last respects. Mami wants to be there. Me too.

Off to See Siajong Angel

News of Siajong Angel's death today made made me scour my stuff for that photograph of him and Ating Caya I took two Decembers ago. I couldn't find it; I must have given it to them already. The photo was a bit blurry, I would have wanted the flowers on Ating Caya's dress to stand out a little more, be crispier than life, but I still haven't figured out the camera back then.

Now whether I find if I have another hard copy of that photo or not won't matter.

This is me when faced with matters of death, I go looking for photographs as if my memory must be nudged. And true enough, in an an old photo of Mami which I found instead, circa 1940s, there's the inscription by her friend at the back: Naway's ang larawang ito magsilbing gamot kung ikaw ay makalilimot.

In those days, photographs were obviously few and far between, each photo shoot was an occasion, people dressed up and went to studios, and film was precious, more often it was a group portrait. And you cannot blink. Not like now where anyone can just whip out their camera phone and capture the moment. Back then, you really have to depend on your memory.

But I havent forgotten how Siajo looks like. True, in a moment of selfishness, I thought to myself, now, I can never get Siajo's birthday greeting for Mami on video anymore. Now, it would only be Ating minus her husband. Siajo was handsome even in old age. In his younger days, he was even dashing, and Mami tells me had other women besides his wife. But of course, like every strong heroine, Ating prevailed in the end.

In a different lifetime, I would have regarded Siajo as a villain, just because of this juicy piece of detail. But that was the past, which I don't even have evidence of, which doesn't concern me at all. All I know is that Siajo was the guy who was good to me and to Edge, even if he knew we were a couple. He'd even crack raunchy jokes about it, raunchy but not disrespectful. He'd say something like, "O, e di nagsusukob na kayo sa isang kulambo n'yan?" And all three of us would laugh. That's enough for me.

And I still haven't said a prayer for Siajo's soul. The last time we were in Cabiao (May, for the fiesta), he could already walk unsupervised, albeit with a cane, and from the looks of it he was clearly triumphing over his diabetes. Maybe, it was never a contest in the first place.

We are still arranging our trip to Cabiao to pay our last respects. Mami wants to be there. Me too.

4 Poems

eyesight

in the street
called paterno,
optical shops
with false eyelashes,
we hunted
for the perfect
eyesight, not
too oval, not too
squarish, not
too expensive.
Just the right amount
of bitterness, while
wide-eyed salesladies
squintingly
looked us over.
Lovers, and
yet
men.
In the blind evening of
closing time,
we are still
empty-handed.
We are heavy-lidded,
and tired
of things myopic
as mud
on our shoes

at the rooftop


raspberry
glass
blue
fingers
gray
stars
and wine
stains
on your chin,
already
a whole
beehive
humming
in my mind.

a day with the sidewalk vendor of stencils of circles, geometric roses, and hurtling objects



They say no such perfect
circle exists
in the natural world.
Even ripples on water
have flaws,
they crash ashore,
lose their minds,
tend towards
the manageable horizons
of safety. A perfect circle
is only an idea, love.
Suspended like circus rings fired up
for lions to jump through. I tried tracing
circles, with my pencil,
and inspected
the microscopic imperfections
of my orb, the tiny inevitable
graphite slips and operatic tumbles
of my tremor-hand. While you look
over my shoulder,
in perfect agreement.
The shortest distance
between two points
is not always an arc.

soliloquy


here is a picture of our feet, planted
on the sand, with tiny
quiverings in our veins, while we hold
hands, and look on
at strange objects washed up on the shores

Try Try Try Anything.

from The Onion

I guess that's just who I am. I'm open to anything, no matter how pedestrian or mainstream it may be. Last year, I decided to dive headfirst into the realm of the unwashed masses by attending a professional football game. What better way to experience the hive mind than by communing with 70,000 drunken, frostbitten Americans who are only too happy to blow their meager wages cheering on their date-raping, steroid-enhanced gridiron heroes? I don't even remember which teams were playing. All I remember is yelling my head off while surrounded by a sea of jersey-wearing telephone repairmen and electricians, all the while thinking, "This is so authentic!"

I must admit, some of the mind-numbingly lame stuff I've exposed myself to has actually grown on me. I used to go to rummage sales for the sociological thrill of seeing commoners eagerly scrounge through their fellow commoners' crude, mass-produced possessions. You'd see all sorts of amusing parts and parcels from people's tiny lives. After a while, though, I started to enjoy finding good bargains. I even began collecting completed Paint-By-Numbers pictures. My favorite so far is a rabbit where the "artist" confused two of the colors, resulting in what I strongly suspect is the world's only purple-eyed hare. A true snob would never waste his time with something like that, but I am able to see the charm of my inferiors' sad little diversions.

I'll Try Anything With A Detached Air Of Superiority