August roundup

We’re back for a new month’s round of updates. I can’t promise it’ll be exciting. If you like to live vicariously through other people’s mundane day-to-day routines (as I do) then you’re at the right place.


I learned to iron linen

I’m not gonna lie—I never bothered to iron my clothes in my twenties. I figured it was a thing of the past, for people who wore stuffy, starched dress shirts to work every day. There was only that one time in the past when my boyfriend’s mom pointed out that my dress was wrinkled, and at the time I didn’t think much of it, but that’s about it.

Fast forward to last year, when Ben and I were visiting at his parents for a week. My mother-in-law, Sue, offered to do our laundry for us (I don’t think Ben could have stopped her if he tried). What surprised me was that she ironed all our clothes, and I could see the difference at once.

Granted, so many of my clothes do not need it, truly. We take out our clothes from the washing as soon as Washy sings to us, and I hang them properly—smoothing the fabric as I go, and lining up the seams. These little things go a long way.

Nonetheless, I have a penchant for linen as of late, which means I cannot just sit idle and not iron my clothes—linen is very prone to wrinkling, with some people going as far as to tell you that it’s part of the fabric’s charm.

At any rate, it wasn’t charming for me. I looked through a handful of articles and YouTube videos, and this one was the most convincing:

This also answers the question, ‘What on earth is a press cloth?’ I saw it in the care instructions on of some of my clothes, which just discouraged me from pursuing further care. Honestly, any old, thin, ratty piece of cotton cloth you have will do. For myself, I have a couple yards’ Swiss cotton at home, so I cut out a rough rectangle to serve as my press cloth.

Instead of spraying the cloth to moisten it, I soak the entire thing and run it on the shortest cycle in our spin-dryer.

Why I had a few yards’ Swiss cotton lying around, you’ll find out further on.


Bought a piano

As a child, I’ve had brief encounters with the piano. My father also owned an electric keyboard through the nineties—possibly due to the height of New Wave and Pet Shop Boys during his youth, his ‘piano’ was a tad… interesting. He called it a synthesizer, and it had a stock of hundreds of short tunes and dozens of emulated sounds you could record and store in its modest memory. Needless to say, that occupied my time more than trying to learn my scales and arpeggios. Besides, most people will tell you that the best way to learn piano properly is to get a tutor.

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This afternoon was interesting. I took a Grab to some Korean lady’s house to pick up a digital piano I was going to buy. She invited me to visit her home so I could test it. I’ve read that this model is portable. Maybe it is, if you have a bag and a wrench on hand to disassemble it. So what did they do when they found out I only came in by Grab? They sent their driver to drive me and the piano all the way back to my building! I try to buy things secondhand, mostly for sustainability reasons. But it’s also nice to get a good deal out of it. I just wanted to share the overwhelming positive experience I had today. A piano has been on my bucket list since I was a fresh grad and now, it’s time to see if I can make it a hobby. Plugging @carousell.ph because that’s where the magic happens. Special acknowledgment to @_benguin , who did not expect this huge-ass piano to enroach on our already-small space. I had told him in the past that we could store it under the bed when not in use, LOL. Wish us luck. Also hit me up with your favourite grade 1 pieces! 😆

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‘Learn to play the piano’ has been on my bucket list since the time I started writing one. And so, here I am. I am trying to get by with self-learning at the moment. I went to the piano subreddit and interestingly they hate the piano app that I’ve found myself preferring. (It’s called Simply Piano.)

Please hit me up with your favourite grade 1 sheet music.


Thrift and frugal corner

I’m still rather pleased with myself for practically thrifting the Yamaha P-45 I am now the owner of. It is a very, very decent model that gets recommended a lot. And in terms of buying secondhand, I’m not stopping there.

Bought an athletic set from Carousell

I also recently bought a secondhand set of active wear, since my scant four-outfit rotation since 2017 is starting to look old and tired.

Actual photo from Carousell. Either the seller has some nifty lightbox going on or she got mad Photoshop skillz.

My primary motive for buying active wear secondhand is sustainability. It’s rare yet to find bras, leggings, and breathable shirts that are not made of synthetic fibres (that is, plastic). I personally avoid synthetic fibres now, when I can. And if I must, the next best thing is to get them secondhand.

For this set, I find the bra top very charming and I know it’s meant to be worn by itself if you so wanted. For the leggings, I had a hunch it was too small, at size 28 (although that’s my regular jean size), and I was right. I could wear it, but it’s a bit tight. No problem, I will fit into it eventually.

The set came in reeking of laundry detergent, lol. Nonetheless, I gave it another wash.

I might post how it looks on me, after I fit into the leggings a bit better. =))

Where’d that Swiss cotton come from?

So when bought my wedding dress in late 2018 it literally came in a cardboard box. I wanted to store it properly while keeping it from Ben’s sight, so I bought a nice wooden coat hanger from Muji and decided I wanted to cover the gown with good, plain white cloth. I ended up buying four yards of Swiss cotton at the first fabric store I walked in. I’ve since donated the dress, but kept the cotton because… well, at 380 pesos per yard I wasn’t about to discard it! (I suppose it’s the type of cotton you’re supposed to tailor dress shirts with…)

Fortunately, after more than a year I found some use for it:

When you think about, it cost more than a generic piano dust cover that I can get from Lazada. #frugaljerk


Making an effort

I checked myself after my last blog post. I was so dismissive about my inability to wear mascara, but was it valid? I had been putting so much effort in other areas of my life: cooking, ironing, pursuing hobbies, not to mention I’m a bit of a go-getter in my career. Why was I being obstinate? So I watched YouTube videos on how to wear mascara for Asian lashes. They all start with eyelash curler, lol.

I applied this same effort to other endeavours: I started taking the time to style my hair, to my pleasure. I actually used my tripod to take a decent portrait of myself. I took that one step further and…

Started a podcast with my friends

Whenever I hang out with Chad and Jeph we would inevitably have in-depth conversations about… anything, really. I find it engaging, and commenting for the umpteenth time that we should try a podcast, we really did it this time. Jeph had already been streaming anyway, and there are practically dozens of recording and video conferencing software available to us.

I admit our first episodes were too long and do not really cater to a wide audience, but if you’re interested, please do give our page a like:

This podcast is primarily motivated by fun and good times, so at the moment I try not to take it too seriously. Our mentality is to currently just ‘ship it’ although we’ve talked about chipping in for the monthly cost of SquadCast.


Caught up with my book-reading

When the quarantines started in March, I had to very slowly reconstruct a daily routine that worked for me. It also means that my initial motivation in January to be more intentional and all that jazz fell through the cracks.

I had a goal of reading twelve books in 2020. After finishing For Whom the Bell Tolls, I had a lull in my reading as my phone dominated my ‘wake up’ and ‘sleepy time’ hours.

I set myself straight this month and finished two books:

The Plague by Albert Camus

I came across The Plague in freshman year. I took up world literature (English 12 for all you UP Diliman peeps) as one of my required Arts and Humanities electives and, feeble and uncultivated as my seventeen-year-old mind was, Camus’ passages on the human condition impressed upon me so that I did not forget it so quickly.

The book revolves around a town, quarantined as it was in a state of plague. Cliché as this may sound, the novel becomes more fascinating to read in light of our real-world pandemic. Some themes, such as death and separation, ring true today as it did when Camus wrote the book.

I realise now that it was quite a heavy read. There were a few sentences I found difficult to parse, and people tell me I’m reasonably intelligent and capably fluent in English. Ergo, I cannot imagine my seventeen-year-old self understanding what every sentence carried.

To my delight, someone else has typeset my favourite passage from the book. It’s an entire chapter, but I invite you to read it, if you have a few minutes to spare:

Wuthering Heights

I have very recently finished this book that my roommate, Bea, gifted to me, I believe Christmas of 2013. Not gonna lie, my interest in it had lain in the fact that Bella Swan references it in Twilight. I had no idea whatsoever what the book was about, and did not know what to expect.

It took me a full eight years, would you believe, to read the book.

So… it’s very interesting to read a proper English novel. Here are some of my thoughts:

  • Brontë really went out of her way to exhibit Joseph’s Yorkshire dialect. I was incredibly confused when I read his lines the first time, and asked Ben what on earth his accent was. Ben could only guess ‘brogue’. I nearly set down the book when his dialogue filled an entire page. I tried to enunciate the words carefully, but I could pick out perhaps two in ten words. I resigned myself to not fully understanding his lines—he rambles on about the same things throughout the book, anyway. He’s such a one-dimensional character.
  • Apparently it’s really dreary in the Yorkshire moors. Also scary. Twice I had to set down the book and call for Ben because… I was spooked.
  • Characters ridiculed other characters for having a Liverpool accent.
  • Reading the book made me realise how much pleasure I take in reading old tomes. The English is never the same, but they’re often artfully brought together in their own way.
  • Having said that, some old words were rather charming or so ubiquitous I had to google them:
    • Things like ‘settle’ (a piece of furniture), ‘fain’, and ‘bonny’, which could be regarded of a lad or a lass.
    • Some expressions were so reminiscent of Robert Jordan’s characters in Wheel of Time—think referring to someone as a ‘sop’, and ‘boxing one’s ears’. You’d almost think Jordan was English, when he wasn’t.
    • I had to google what ‘hisseln’ meant. I was a bit too thick to get it from context.
    • Ah, to enjoy one’s ‘society’, referring to a person’s presence or company.

As for the book itself, well, perhaps I might write a review of it separately. All I can say right now, is that it comes second on the list of ‘train wrecks of a “love” story that I’ve ever come across’—the lead being Gone With the Wind.

Catch-22

This month I shall tackle the book that introduced a concept so nifty it became its own idiom.

This novel, although set in the Second World War, is apparently funny, according to my friend Steve, the synopsis of the back cover of my copy, and a certain James Webb mentioned in the introduction. Now I am afraid to expect too much.

Nonetheless, it does, supposedly, bid you to think of the gravity of war. But, having read For Whom The Bell Tolls, I dare say this book has quite some shoes to fill.

I noticed Heller’s humour set in very early—petulant, sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek. Pleased to report that as I closed on the first chapter, he did elicit a chuckle from me.

The only downside is that the 50th anniversary edition paperback I’m holding makes me not want to wear the book out too much.


Home cooking updates

Six months into the pandemic, here’s what our kitchen is cooking up:

Accidentally made vegan and vegetarian lunches

This came about simply because chicken fell out of favour in our household due to one too many food poisoning incidents on Ben’s part. He’s taken to making turkey ham sandwiches for himself, while I took to tofu.

Here are the dishes I developed by chance, only thinking of their flavour and macronutrient profile:

Tofu and tamagoyaki salad with white cheese
Japanese curry (potato, carrot, eggplant… It should have onion, too, but on this occasion I forgot), with tofu

By macronutrient profile, I just meant that I wanted to make sure there’s enough protein and fibre to go with my meals so I don’t go hungry too quickly. Also, eating a whole-food plant-based diet is shown to reverse cardiovascular disease, based on limited studies, so I also aim to eat ‘half my plate’ of vegetables (even if it’s just down to your starchy root crops).

For the record, I’m not vegan or vegetarian, nor do I plan to be. But I recognise that I stand to gain by consuming more plants. Ria of The Whole Happy Life convinces me as well—whether for weight loss, better skin, or reduced bloating.

I also realise how much I dislike chicken, excepting certain preparations. I would happily pick my happy fried tofu over sad chicken breast any day of the week.

Pork tonkatsu. Oh my goodness

Dinner is the one meal I share with Ben. We still have lamb with vegetables as the old standby, although we noticed Rustan’s has not carried their bulk lamb in a while. Sometimes we do carbonara, if but for the excuse to eat fresh mushrooms.

Nonetheless, we discovered an intensely guilty pleasure for dinner:

CDO released a ‘premium’ frozen pork tonkatsu. The pieces are thin and look underwhelming. But it’s ridiculously good. Ben likes his over rice and vegetables, with liquid seasoning. I like mine soaked in my Japanese curry. You’d expect cheap, frozen tonkatsu to bide poorly, but it’s so good. We go through a pack in one sitting, and even then Ben often ends up craving for more.

I would take this over Yabu because I’m a peasant and I don’t need no fine pork for my katsu.

Hong Kong-style milk tea

I have loose-leaf Ceylon / black tea… but they’re all at my workplace. 🙁

I’m fond of hot milk tea. Cold milk tea (also called bubble tea) is all the rage, and I can order them any time if I wanted to. But why should I? I can just pour ice over whole milk and 50 grams of sugar and drink it straight… It’s same net effect, really, and the same self-loathing and queasiness that follow.

There are few places where I can enjoy hot milk tea—Shi Lin, Nanyang, Wee Nam Kee… not the kind of establishments that feature prominently when you’re looking for milk tea on Grab. And so I thought, ‘Jean, if there’s anything this quarantine taught you, it’s that you can make most anything at home.’

I had a good read of the interesting history of Hong Kong milk tea, as well as its difference to teh tarik. In any case, here’s a delightful recipe page that tells you a bit about its history, and how to quickly reproduce it without the stockings and pots:

The things that I’ve learned from making this are:

  1. Hong Kong-style milk tea is terrifyingly strong. You need three tea bags to reproduce one cup. That’s more caffeine than your cup of morning brew.
  2. Condensed milk is terrifyingly high in sugar. WTF.

The result was satisfactory, but nowhere near in thickness or richness that I remember from restaurants, so I tweaked the recipe to my liking—I reduce the evaporated milk to one tablespoon. Sweetness from condensed milk is to taste. I try to limit my cup to 200 kcals. A bit much, but eliminates any peckishness for a mid-afternoon bite.


Garden updates

I promised this last roundup. Here’s how my garden’s looking as of late:

I should probably write about my plants on a separate photo-blog post. If you’re sharp, you’ll notice I’ll have killed my poor jade plant. 🙁


Bought a moka pot

We make pour-over coffee at home. Ever since we started home-composting, I couldn’t bring myself to keep throwing the used grounds and filters in the regular trash anymore. The problem is, while coffee filters are compostable, it would quickly fill up our compost bin with cellulose and moldy grounds. I figured there must be a way to brew coffee without needing anything disposable—those cheap coffee brewers with plastic filter baskets won’t do—their coffee is shit.

I somehow came across the moka pot and bought a cute one for myself. Of course it’s available on Lazada:

I’m very pleased with it—it brews coffee a bit stronger and thicker than pour-over, too. Something that Ben noticed as well. It requires no electricity, and doesn’t need any filter. The only other moka pot I’ve ever seen is Nikki’s, which makes her a truer hipster than the non-zero-waste Chemex-loving peeps I know. I used to own and gift French presses to my dad but sadly, they keep breaking, man!

The coffee was such a nice change that I finally gave in and bought myself some bone china cup and saucer from Muji. It wasn’t cheap, wasn’t prohibitive, but was just a tad frivolous. Never mind—I had been eyeing it for months! I have a tendency to nurse my coffee (and beer, and wine… anything I sip really) and having a dainty coffee cup helps me prepare just the right amount.


A bit of introspection

I wanted to take the time to talk about myself—I’ve seen women tackle these things themselves and there’s strength in being able to relate.

I hold myself back a lot

I’m always self-conscious regardless of my endeavour. When Chad and Jeph and I started talking about the podcast I felt like I was the only one shrinking from it—how bad will I look on video? How stupid will I sound if I allow myself to talk freely? (Although to be fair, if you took a shot each time I said ‘parang‘ in our podcasts you’d pass out!)

I follow a lot of women YouTubers and a recurring theme they play out in their videos is the element of self-care, ‘showing up for yourself’, and looking and feeling your best. I’m always checking myself, as though if I let my guard down I would turn into a vain, vapid woman who only cares about her appearance. But the truth is that every other day I don’t feel good about myself. I’m a bit tired of not being good enough for me. I’m not saying I need to make changes or that I cannot accept myself for what I am now. I just want to stop caring so much and start being happy for what and where I am right now.

When we published our first podcast episode, it was a rare, elating feeling. Before then I had never watched myself on video without cringing. Now I re-watch our episodes with pleasure. I can accept the person I see. I want to build more of that self-confidence.

I might be a tad intense with my work

Around last year, I wrote documentation for a new feature we were releasing. I put a lot of effort in it and was pleased with how detailed some sections were. After it published, it only took a couple of weeks for the first reported issue to surface—the sections and details could have been more helpful, the reporter said. I was so upset I teared up.

Lately I’ve been telling my manager that I get upset with when I make a mistake, and kick myself when I’m unable to respond to a message in good time. I can’t remember her exact words, but she told me that I can calm down—these little mistakes are normal and no one’s getting hurt because of them.

I say these things because work had been stressing me recently, and I realise a lot of the stress and pressures I undergo at work are self-induced, because of how I choose to process things that happen at work.

In college I had an orgmate, Wesley, to whom people gave the nickname ‘Mr. Intensity’. It was because he was so fired up at nearly every endeavour he came across—whether school work or in org events. Perhaps I am a little bit Mrs. Intensity?


And now, bite-sized lessons in English

As I was donating some clutter from our home (we have a decluttering Facebook group for residents of this building), a woman I was talking to said this:

‘I’ll pass for it this evening.’

And then, a little later:

‘I’ll pass for it now.’

This expression, nonsensical to native English speakers (you would think she wasn’t interested in the item!), only made sense to me because I knew the speaker was Filipino—she meant to say that she will drop by to get the items. Dadaanan niya kasi. For non-Tagalog speakers, we have a base word ‘daan‘, which means ‘way’, ‘route’, or ‘to pass by or through’. The latter meaning introduces an ambiguous case wherein someone either passes by some place (‘Nadaanan namin ‘yong school mo kanina‘) or passes through, or drops by, somewhere (‘Dumaan kami sa Clark pauwi‘), depending entirely on context and verb conjugation.

Colloquially, in Tagalog, you could say that you would drop by, with the sole intent to pick something up. And, translating from Tagalog in her head, that’s exactly what the woman meant. It’s an interesting example of non-native English borne from translating one’s own native language to English.

Another example is an interview with the once-infamous Janina San Miguel (I’m convinced the clip was deliberately cut to make her look less bright):

‘Would you rather be beautiful or smart?’

‘Same’

Again, an answer that sounds stupid in English, but only makes sense when you translate from Tagalog. The word pareho could mean ‘same’ and ‘both’, depending on the context.

For reference, Janina was a beauty pageant contestant who went viral because she blundered through a question asked her, because she insistent on speaking in English. English proficiency is a matter of pride and status among Filipinos, especially if you receive the lofty Fil-Am accent! So, heaven forbid you’re less than perfect.

English and Tagalog terrify me sometimes, when certain words translate almost perfectly, in word and in usage. Think of ‘at last’ and the Tagalog ‘sa wakas‘. But for the most part, if you want to get better at native English proficiency then you have to stop relying on Tagalog to form your thoughts, and instead learn expressions the way native speakers do. It means dropping ‘for a while’ in favour of ‘just a sec’, or banishing ‘I commuted’ from your vernacular, because you simply mean you took the bus. (Commute does not mean to take public transport—that’s a purely Filipino use for it.)

I’m very far from perfect in my English. Ben corrects my pronunciation a lot. Particularly when I’m in Melbourne or Brisbane, I lose snippets of conversation here and there—native speakers don’t enunciate as clearly as non-native speakers. Think of how you’d read this in real life: Anong oras na? Tapos saan tayo kakain?


USCCB has updated its site

When I can, I read the daily mass readings, as a matter of personal piety. The Catholic Church in the Philippines seems to heavily abide by the USCCB. I could swear we use the very same readings, verbatim. Anyway, their website just looked so dated and unreadable. For a very long time I have had to use Clearly on the site just to read the mass readings. Also now that I’m no longer young I can’t read in font size 12 anymore. It has be like 20 or something.

They very recently updated the whole look and feel of the site. The mass readings now come with a podcast clip and an occasional reflection video. Quite a nice touch.


I cannot wait for Advent

When you live near the equator, the ‘turning of the season’ is just a matter of deciding whether you need an umbrella out or not, for the most part, or whether your lunch walk will get you tan. In temperate countries people do change their routines as temperatures rise and fall, and as the days grow shorter or longer—people might fancy a jog in at nine in the evening, or make heartier stews for dinner in the colder months. Once, while walking at dusk in the Melbourne suburbs I noticed more people than usual out and about. Ben told me they were prepping for the coming summer.

This long lockdown has been taking its toll on me. I like my routine, but today feels just like the day before. Think of Jose Arcadio Buendia going mad because every day looked the same as the last—he could not make out the passage of time.

I cannot wait to see some change. I want to take out our Christmas tree, our glittery throw pillow cases. I want to play Christmas carols. I want to walk in the cool December breezes in the evening and see the lights. I miss going to church, hearing the choir, and celebrating the liturgy!

I have no delusions about things ‘going back to normal’ any time soon. Still, I want to see the seasons turn.


My husband commissioned a heraldic achievement

For those not well-acquainted with my husband, on some documents he goes by the title ‘lord’. He likes to share it over drinks when acquainting with people at work and common friends, as a matter of good humour.

You see, you can buy a square foot of Scottish highland (and therefore helping preserve the said land), which entitles you the courtesy title of laird, lord, or lady. That’s what Ben did, all as a matter of good, clean fun. It means virtually nothing, but again, it’s a nice talking point over a pint. Formal titles like these have no legal basis, at least in Australia, which is why Ben got to use them on his bank card, for example.

Before we got married he took it upon himself to buy another square foot of land in my name, which entitles me the salutation of ‘lady’. Again, probably not in the United Kingdom, but it’s all for laughs.

One afternoon he chanced upon my laptop as I was looking up lilies, and he caught sight of a fleur-de-lis. His obsession took hold, and he spent the next several hours researching heraldlry, coats of arms, and looking up an illustrator artist who would make a heraldic achievement for us.

After finding an artist, and thoroughly discussing the achievement with me, we ended up with this:

Art by Miguel Co

It shows both his roots and mine, and us as a family unit. I’m not going to tell you what each colour or symbol means. But do tell me what you pick up. 😉


That’s all for now. See you on the next roundup.