The Journey. It’s Mine. [My personal take on love, life, parenting and blogging.]

2 days before the big day:

On Thursday, the 23rd (ante-bisperas ng pasko), we’re gonna harvest the rice plants in the green house. Plants will be processed, separate the roots from the shoots…quickly freeze them in liquid nitrogen and then will be kept in a minus 80 degree freezer for further RNA extraction. But that’s not the end of it…we have new seedlings ready for planting, so right after the harvest…yep, we’re gonna plant new ones.

Darn this scientific eklabu! I’ve lost my muse and more so I can’t feel the Christmas spirit. While others are busy planning and preparing for their menus on Christmas Eve; I’m busy in the lab, slicing roots and shoots of the most important cereal in the world: Rice. Instead of cheerily toasting glasses of wine and beer with my friends; I’ve almost drowned with tons of liters of this freaking nutrient solution which seems like I can’t make the compositions right because the plants haven’t reacted like it supposed to. We’re supposed to stress them plants that should eventually die. But guess what?! They’ve grown as beautiful like they’ve never grown before. I’m no plant scientist, but I guess the plants were able to come up with a good mechanism to resist all the stress that we’ve put in.

Now that’s one BIG thought that should keep my Boss’ pipe burning over the Holidays. (Di nya alam, nahawa na sa akin yung mga halaman, sanay sa stress, ha ha!) So while my boss has to think about the mystery that is science while in Cebu, at the end of our big day, I will totally forget about rice plants and nutrient solutions: I will be in Bicolandia gorging in ginataan whathaveyous and seafoods galore. Yum! I cant wait to get HOME.

I hate it, when as early as September, most TV and radio shows/programs start their Christmas countdown…

today: 5 days before Christmas, 9 days before Raine turns two.

But still I’m not panicking.
How could I? My boss since last week is like possessed: ideas pouring out of his looking-forward-to-Cebu-holiday-scientific brain. So, like Santa’s little elves toiling hard to come up with what’s on Santa’s list before Christmas Eve…we too are busy setting up little greenhouse experiments. Planting rice seedlings in tons of liters of nutrient solution: all for the love of science and feeding the hungry world.

(awkk!! nakakasuka!!)

What a Christmas countdown!!

This is the first time in years that I’m gonna let the holiday rush just pass me by…
> except for the usual trips to the grocery for our daily needs: i haven’t done any real Christmas shopping.
> i’m skipping this year’s Christmas parties: the contribution hurts and i don’t have the resources and the time to furnish myself with a costume to go with this year’s “motif’.
> i can’t stay late for parties…i need to pick-up Raine from “daycare” at 7 pm - tops.

Well, I am not turning into a scrooge, just practicing some austerity measures. The Christmas spirit should be felt in the heart anyway.
By the way, I did not get drunk Friday night. Raine is enough to keep me warm after all…

Borongan, Samar: used to be called the Philippine’s doorway of typhoons. And I grew up in the nearby island: Gubat, Sorsogon. So, whatever is the typhoon signal in Borongan, we get the same in Gubat.

If you watch the local news on Philippine TV these days, all you will get, even in the breaking news are the disaster that recent typhoons(Winnie and Yoyong)brought to our kababayans up north in Nueva Ecija to down south in Real, Quezon. I know my heart should symphatize to all the typhoon victims but honestly, I don’t feel a thing. I don’t know why: maybe because I’ve been there so many times before? I didn’t lost a family member or a relative to any typhoon but I do have my typhoon story to tell:

> lost count on how many times a typhoon blew away our house roof
> our family album(containing memoirs of my childhood)and some precious books were gone with the rain (and wind)
> spent stormy nights in wet clothes.
> experienced 6 months without electricity after a super typhoon
> dead bodies, identities both known and unknown (that died of drowning or some other-typhoon related accident)rolled in “banig” in front of the church waiting for the priest’s blessing prior to a mass burial.)
> 6 months to 1 year after a typhoon: we can’t eat any produce from the sea. (marami kasing nalunod…yung iba hindi pa lumulutang o hindi na lumutang, so mga isda ang kakain sa kanila kung hindi man, mag-dedecay na sila sa dagat. meanwhile magsasawa kami sa ginataang ubod na sinahugan ng sardinas)
> pumila sa nagbibigay ng relief goods (sardinas at bigas lang ang usually binibigay noon. mahirap o mayaman man ay entititled sa relief goods basta’t didaster stricken ang area nyo. at least samin noon ganun, ewan ko lang sa iba.)
> on the other hand, we have to gorge ourselves with fruits in season like avocado and banana. (nilaglag na ng bagyo sa puno so hinog sa pilit ang labas ng prutas. dahil brownout, di mo ma-preserve, walang ref so kelangan kainin na lahat: breakfast, merienda, lunch, merienda, dinner: you have to eat avocado. 3 sacks of avocado kelangan ubusin eh. di mo mapamigay sa kapit-bahay kasi sila meron din. di mo mabenta sa palengke dahil mabubulok din. that was year 1986 (o 1987 yata)…since then, until now…di pa ako ulit kumakain ng avocado, promise!)

My parents decided to come home to Bicol (after more than 10 years of working/settling in Manila) in 1983. I was in fifth grade when we moved back there. I left again in 1989 to study in Los Baños. 7 years in Gubat, 15 years in Los Baños. 7 years that I witnessed my family weather countless storms, both literal and figurative…not to mention the 3 or 4 times we found our home in the middle of NPA and military encounters.

From someone who came from a place where the climate is wet and wetter, where super typhoons come and go like sunrise and sunset, where there’s only 2 months of continous dry spells (March, April)…it is odd that I get depressed when it’s raining continously, that I cant’ sleep at night when the rain is pouring hard on our roofs and the wind is howling outside, that I can’t distinguish the sound of a gunshot from a firecraker.

Now, our lives may not be a total bliss but having a good steady roof over our heads and enough food on the table will be sufficient for the super typhoons that mother nature may be brewing up next.