dishwasher safe

and UV resistant

quickly...

I don’t have to be a dishwasher. I can enroll in a legitimate culinary school. I don’t have to be a dishwasher.

I could say that over and over like some Celtic chant but let’s face it: it’s not going to happen. Unless I have money. Or have rich parents. (And since neither is true, I’ll just have to take the other logical step.) Tuition for a diploma course alone is Php 225,000. That is just obscene.

Is it me or does obscene sound (even remotely) like absinthe? You know the stuff that sent van Gogh and friends to loonyville.

Green Fairy, is that you?

posted by: Giuli812 at 11:55 | link | comments (2) |

there's the rain when you don't need it

Man, the heat. I can’t stand the goddam heat. Even when I sit here still I perspire ever so profusely. Hell I could feel my sweat trickling down my back earlier even as I was taking a shower.

So, tonight, I thought, “I want a nice glass of fresh coconut water.” (I find that coconut water effectively quenches thirst without necessarily being ice-cold. Beats Gatorade anytime.) With that thought I went to the kitchen and there it was, – not a sparkly glassful of coconut water but – a whole bunch of coconuts sitting at one corner. Ha, magic. No, but I realized I was not dreaming that one morning when I woke up and promptly got outside to water my plants to happen to see coconuts strewn about the ground and my brother’s friend climbing down our palm tree. It was real. It did happen. It’s not magic that brought these coconuts here. It was nature.

I stood there for a second thinking, “You’re going to have to work out quite a bit to get into one of those coconuts. Sure you’re thirsty? Water. Cold. In the refrigerator.”

I was thirsty. But I wanted coconut water. And it’s not that it was going to be the first time that I’d ever do it, anyway. I’d done it many times before - no reason I could not do it now - except that it had been a long time since the last. And I might’ve gotten dull since. Like the cleaver that I was holding by now.

God, that cleaver. I wish to say something clever but I’m feeling as dumb as the cleaver was dull.

I hewed away at the bottom end of the coconut for a good few minutes until finally the cleaver cracked into something hard – the shell. A treasure hunter’s shovel digging through soil and finally hitting something portentously hard – a piece of metal, a treasure chest. The Holy Grail? In the movies, Jonesy.

I continued to carve out a small opening on the exposed shell, ever so careful not to squirt a drop of the water in doing so. Into a tall glass then I poured the water; the crisp sound of gush into the glass was music to my ears. I took one quick gulp and returned to the coconut. I wanted the meat.

I struck the cleaver hard right down the middle of the coconut. Ever the dull cleaver, it wouldn’t sink past the husk into the shell until after about a hundred attempts. When I thought it was broken loose enough, I tried to break it further open with my bare hands – squat-trick-reinforced, of course. And it came right off.

After all that work, I enjoyed the sweet juice - and nutty, milky flesh - of my labor. Oh did it hit the spot.

And now I sit here to log in and find work. And I do find one. A dishwashing job. The first posting I’ve received since deciding to take on professional dishwashing. It’s here now. I should be happy. An opportunity presenting itself... not. Apparently, I’m biologically unqualified. For a job that is usually reserved at homes for people like me.

posted by: Giuli812 at 00:57 | link | comments (2) |

bad egg, baaaad egg

There’s a bit of pulse action going on somewhere around my neck. A little to the right side, a tad down my throat, slightly above my collarbone, or near-ish. There, there. (Pardon my miniscule understanding of my anatomy.) Pesky little thing. Even worse than that unreachable itch. Must be the eggs I’ve eaten lately; bad-ass cholesterol blocking my arteries. Gah. Should I be thankful the pulsing is not happening on my nape? 'Cause then I’d be in seriously fierce trouble, wouldn’t I? Take that sphygmosomethingmeter away from me. It makes me much too nervous.

I used to watch my egg consumption. Just two a week at most. (It was not as much about health issues as it was about daughterly issues, though. “Because mom says so”, that sort of thing.) Usually no eggs at all unless I treat myself to an Egg McMuffin. Which doesn’t really happen a lot either. But boy, lately I’ve just been gorging up on those eggs. Omelette, hard-boiled… custard… soufflé, the good ol’ sunny side up. A sudden stint of egg rebellion. In less than a week I’ve probably gone 6 times over my supposed limit, my “quota,” if you will. Yesterday alone I had something amounting to 4 eggs. Of course when you eat omelette you never really know how much of an egg you get especially when you’re sharing it with a few other people. But if you cook the omelette yourself like I do, allotting 2 eggs per head, assuming each one of you gets their fair share, with you later on ending up eating the share of that person who you know all along doesn’t eat eggs and yet you still count them in, then you might have an idea. Then you’ll never have to wonder why you get that nasty pulsing business the next day, if ever. And you’ll never have to complain, unless you got the nerve. Because you’ll probably have had a nosebleed and passed out long before. So be a good kid. Listen to mom. Cut down on those eggs.

posted by: Giuli812 at 00:09 | link | comments (2) |