paranoia

After typhoon ondoy, I have been musing lately. Although cotabato has never been directly hit by a typhoon, yet we are not immune to natural or man made calamities here. I have had my own experiences of big flood, earthquakes, fires, theft at night, bombings, war and etc that I have now acquired paranoia behaviors such as:
I check and double check the door locks,
I close the window shutters at the onset of rain at night,
I unplug unnecessary wire connections before I go to sleep,
I have flashlights inside drawers,
I stashed candles and matches even inside the bathrooms,
I keep fire extinguishers in my kitchen and one of the bedrooms,
I try to replenish as oftenly my food stock and water supply;
basic medicines like paracetamol and first aids are kept handy....lest my love ones are caught in harm's way and left empty handed, yet still sometimes I personally get caught unprepared in many ways. (Believe me if I tell you that I even have three life vests in one of my dressing shelves in Manila - those were from our Butanding excursion to Sorsogon.hehe)

And yesterday, after having heard about the earthquakes and tsunami in Samoa and Indonesia and another typhoon coming to the Philippines....Last night I called up my children  and instructed them about safety measures at home and in work places. Before I went to sleep I checked to see whether my husband's and my second pair of eyeglasses were tucked inside the drawers of our night tables. I also recharged the portable fluorescent light and my cellphone too. What a paranoid!
This morning, I am really happy to have waken up to sunshine and good weather. May God protect us from all harm and danger. Take care everybody and keep safe.

Baking

Angel posted her baking goodies of cakes and cupcakes in the facebook, and I was thereby enticed to revive my baking skills. As Christmas season will come in three months time, I will have time enough to practice and show off. hehehe
Last Sunday, I went to South Sea's Mall and there I met the parents of a former pupil. We had small talks and when the father heard that I was baking too, he gregariously ordered 200 pcs of assorted cupcakes for December 23. Suddenly I find myself embarking in an entrepreneurial vocation......I have to really get serious with baking now.....I am even thinking of getting more customers.
But there is a down side to it though. I have to taste my own products and this morning I ate already two deliciously hot cupcakes.I will get doubly fat from this!

cheap and/or free fruits

We tend to get a lot of free and/or cheap fruits these days:
1. pineapples from sis jeannette
2. fresh young coconuts from our city plot
3. durian from store customer
4. marang and maharlika rambutans from our driver's daughter who came home from Kidapawan.
5. cheap papayas from a regular seller
6. lanzones at P45.00 a kilo
7. tundan banana at P20.00 a bunch
8. 3 kilos of fresh young corn from the Chua's
No mangoosteen yet. They are still at sky high price.

And since we are in the season of Ramadan, Lucas was given muslim pilipit made out of bean paste by a customer. Few days ago, siolan gave me dudol who got it from a friend in Dulawan. The dudol is my favorite Muslim delicacy. It is specially yummy from Siolan's friend because they are not made for sale and they are also not super sweet. hehehe. No wonder I am full to the brim every meal....help, help!....I am getting fat!

I think I wrote a similar blog some two years back hehehe.

Saturday night

I look forward to Saturday nights where my friends and I continue to exercise at home by way of group dancing. Actually it was more of the camaraderie and keeping in touch that we look forward to. The remaining few of us are siolan, sofia, kian, tina and I. While the girls are doing the cha cha routines, James Yap and Lucas sip tea ( not beer :) and they watch Chinese tv shows in the sala.
For the past several weeks, we have decided to fore-go the old chacha, instead we opted to do new challenging moves. hahaha! We are now practicing "My Little Grass Shack" a Hawaiian dance, follow by a mild modern tahitian number "Jeho" (not sure of the spelling :) and also a modern Chinese dance which concludes our workout for the night. But these three new dances that we taught ourselves make us all topsy turby. There is a little difficulty with memory and mobility but we are still dead set on catching up the new challenge :)
It so happened that last night we tried to out-do each other. We did 6 rounds of hawaiian, 3 rounds of tahitian and 3 rounds of modern chinese. On the final round of the Chinese song, Siolan and I were so tired that we were all in a hurry to finish the dance. At the end, we were all dancing it wrong individually and I was always ahead of the next steps. While dancing, I could see Sofia seriousness in trying to remember, Siolan"s confused expressions and Tina and Kian efforts to keep up. Siolan did several wrong turns and twice I looked like a comedian doing a number ahead of the others that I laughed out loud and long. I laughed so hard that my rib cage hurt. I have not laughed liked this for a long long time. Hahahahaha... What a Saturday night!

the marines are back!

Hahaha......rather my maids are back from vacation! I can lay back and let them do all the household chores again. Two weeks into it has made me a scrub and shine freak. The scary part was, I was kind of becoming obsessive. (Arranging and rearranging things neatly and putting all the things back to its proper places.) But hey, don't you worry, it just so happened that given a work, I must to do it well. I just want to enjoy whatever I am doing. Now, it's back to laid back time once more..hehehe