Cycles.

Whenever I'm in Canada or the U.S., I do my own laundry. It's a breeze. You sort your clothes , drop the right number of quarters (if you're in a laundromat), put detergent and softener, choose the cycle ( whites, colored, delicates, perma press, etc), and wait.

Condo dwellers who don't have or are not allowed to have washing machine and dryers in their units, would usually bring their laundry in the Condo Laundry Room, and after loading the clothes, go up to their Unit, go down at the allotted time, transfer the clothes into the dryer, go up again, and come down when the drying cycle is done, usually about 50 minutes. Then, the folding of the clothes begin.

In condos, and even in rental apartments, the Laundry Rooms are clean and sanitized. There's always folding tables, big trash cans for the lint, and big, well lit areas for waiting.

Doing the laundry with the aid of machines is easy. Washing manually is a difficult task. "Washing dirty linens in public" is draining.

Inspite of this, more and more people wash their linens in public, in social sites, like the blog, facebook, and lately, tweeter.

Couple of days ago, I became a victim of violent behaviour from outside family. The matter is pending; suffice to say, I believe in exacting justice where justice is due.

We cannot allow dark outside forces ruin our lives. Instead, the Summum Bonum must prevail.

Summum bonum (Latin for the highest good) is an expression used in philosophy, particularly in medieval philosophy and in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, to describe the ultimate importance, the singular and most ultimate end which human beings ought to pursue. The summum bonum is generally thought of as being an end in itself, and at the same time containing all other goods.

In Christian philosophy, the highest good is usually defined as the life of the righteous, the life led in Communion with God and according to God's precepts.

Family is summum bonum. Control by so-called beloved may lead to battery, as already seen from early stages. Heed the righteous path, child. Family always awaits.

Que, Banana?

A couple plus weeks ago, I harvested a bunch of bananas, "saguing na saba," from the backyard tree.

The individual bananas were of varying stages of ripeness; some were ready for the eating, some were still greenish. And then there were whitish stuff on some.

So I soaked the big bunch into a basin-full of water to cleanse it. Then I boiled the ripe ones which turned out to be sweet. Few days after, more bananas ripened, but the rest I had to throw out.

Then sis Jo from QC gave the household a humongous "langka" fruit, one of the few hanging from her front yard. Henz and his Mom did the gruesome peeling of the sticky fruit, but were dismayed to discover that it was already spoiled. Toyz was disheartened; she had been "eyeing" the fruit for weeks, and planning on making it a "postre." Now, she's nagging sis for the one remaining "langka" from the tree.

Lesson learned from these two experiences is to harvest the fruit in a timely manner; dapat eksakto sa oras.

I love "saguing na saba" - boiled, minatamis or sweetened, as "turon" (banana fritters), banana-cued, and especially fried.

Breakfast is the best time for fried bananas, dipped in sugar. Morning merienda is the best time for boiled bananas, afternoon snack is the best time for "turon" and banana cue, and after dinner is the best time for "sweetened" bananas, taken as dessert.



When my sis and I were small and living with our aunt, we had playmates, the tenants' kids, who plied the neighbourhood hawking banana cues. They were hired "manlalako," or street sellers.

Behind our aunt's back, we went with these kids, and we even crossed the big street into the other side of town, the so-called slum area, to peddle the sticked-bananas. Oh, those were the fun days, and me and my sis didn't even get a cent nor a free banana cue for doing this.

"Saguing na saba" comes from the Plantain banana family. In Canada and the U.S., Pinoys who want to have a "turon" or fried bananas, would use the Plantain variety, the elongated ones, popular also in Jamaica. But in Washington State, "saguing na saba" as we know it in the Philippines, is commonly available in groceries.



These days, I have enough potassium supply, thanks to the "saguing na saba"/bananas.

Dark Knight.

One of my favorite comic super heroes is Batman. Even if in the movies, he had been portrayed by numerous actors - excellent and bad ones - Batman remains top on my list.

I like his persona because he's haunted by his childhood trauma, and this made him both weak and strong.

A lot of us non-heroic mortals are haunted by our past, and Freudian thought has taught us that a lot of our problems in adulthood can be traced to childhood dilemmas, and often, brought about by the adults around us, especially by our parents.

A week ago, we sought help from a lady lawyer for our friends who experienced violence in the hands of their closest relative. Upon reviewing the case, she commented that there's always a "dark" persona in every family, including her own.

Batman has his dark side: he is moody, he is a womanizer, he is uncommunicative, he cannot move on from his past, in spite and despite of his millions.

Many of us, although accused and judged by people around us, has remained procrastinators throughout our lives. We can't just shake the dust off our coats; we remain glued to scenes of us as five years old, in our twelves, twenties, thirties. We continue to keep mementos of rejected work, clippings of old projects, small photographs of unforgotten people, old and un-mailed letters, trashy poetry, old ATM slips, old boarding passes, etc.

Darkness looms everywhere; evil surrounds us.

But the Dark Knight is pure gold, at heart.

Are You, You?

Writers live multiple lives. They can create characters who seem real to their readers. Harry Potter and company, though they're sorcerers, are all too real to millions of viewers and readers. Agent 007 will remain as young and as cool as the actor playing him at any time. The Die Hard Cop will be forever tough.

A lot of novelists live colorful lives, but there are those whose lives are as drab as the grey skies over at Washington State. But when they start to type those words, their little creatures come to life.

I wonder about those writers who can concoct exciting personalities, live them in the blank pages and yet, personally, they don't seem to leap out of the bound books they've written.

Believing in the characters or the plots that writers turn out are acceptable; but readers should not start to live the lives of these imaginary creatures, no matter how brilliantly concocted they are.

Zipped file.

Zombie-like days happen during rainy days. Projects get hung. Bed beckons company. Breakfast is eaten in an instant, then snack, then lunch, snack again, dinner. Eyes constantly droop, and body and bones move like a robot.

Winter time in North America should be worse than these. But nope, I could cope better with winter blues.

During winter, the horizon is blazing white, the air is cold, the sun appears like a shielded warrior. But the crispiness of it all jolts you out of your pj's and of your dreams, and you jump unless you want to be frozen stiff. You need to move your limbs and your neck and your heart needs to warm itself by breathing continuously.

I remember my days while still working in Manhattan and jogging in place, just to warm and un-freeze myself while waiting for the bus to Journal Square. I had to constantly rub my gloved-hands together, stomp my booted-feet on ground, wet my glossed lips per second, keep my muffed-ears intact, and hunch my neck inside the woolen muffler.

But when snow fell, and everything was covered white, and kids appeared on bob sleds at the park, it felt wonderful.

Floods were ice slush; mosquitoes were lady bugs; and leptospirosis was non existent over in North America.

Back in Ohio, my faithful dog Spike aka Shadow must still be bloated by this time through the over generous feeding it gets from my sister ; Shadee, its counterpart here in Metro Manila, is just as bloated and as lazy.

Rainy days, I'm like a zipped file; I need to be unzipped quickly. I need a jolt.

New kits on the block.

I hate stray cats; I used to love 'em when I was a kid. Our house was full of thirteen, maybe more cats, at one time. There was once a stray cat we named "Wooly Bully," who made my feet his sleeping quarters.

About a month ago, we asked our laundry woman to get us a cat because I saw a rat romping at the backyard; she brought a white nice female feline. But the dog at the backyard, Yabi, barked at her, so she scampered away, climbed the tall fence, into the neighbour's backyard. We didn't see her again.

Now we have two new fellows in the house.

At my age, I am no longer amenable to adjusting my ways to accommodate other people. Twenty years of living independently in a country and culture where "the self" comes first and foremost, and neighbourliness is saying "hello" and "hi" even to strangers in the elevator and shopping malls, has made me civil and not really cozy towards others.

I don't see anything wrong with it and I don't feel offended if others treat me the same way. In offices where I worked in the last twenty years, being frank, forthright and aggressive were considered assets and musts. If you weren't, you'd be swallowed by the rest.

Saying what's in one's mind is the best way to cope with the workplace and in other relationships, business or personal.

But I'm finding it difficult to be the same person I had been here in P.I. Words like "you have to adjust, don't say that it would hurt the other person's feelings," have been hurled at me. Certain individuals have a habit of making others feel guilty for standing their ground and it is simply and utterly ignorant and selfish of them. Quoting bible verses, and pointing accusations for someone's religiousity, is becoming the Devil, instead of being the Right One.

Lately, taking in fellows into the house meant charity, even if it equates to the owner's being uncomfortable, and unhappy.

If this scenario happened in Canada, I needn't even have to worry in the first place; I only take "those in need" temporarily until they can stand on their own two feet. That's real charity.

The home is the one place where people are supposed to be happiest. I pray you see that.