a fried egg, rice, and ketchup

that's what i grew up eating

i love being filipino. during thanksgiving celebrations, whenever i have to answer the question what i'm most thankful for, i almost always answer "i'm thankful that my parents were filipino, cuz that means i'm a pilipino" (yes i know i switched them up mid-sentence and i don't care) and really, i mean it. being filipino has heavily influenced every part of my life thus far, and i really am grateful for it.

anyway, i only bring this up because one of the things i always found weird was how my family, and how i assumed all filipino families, mourned the loss of a loved one. I always thought it a little strange how we threw nights after nights of parties, drank, gambled, laughed the night away all because we lost one of our own. it sounds a little backwards right? shouldn't the mood be somber? shouldn't we be praying for her soul? come on filipinos, get your act together! i wasn't the only one seeing this way, right?

unfortunately, my grandma passed away this week, and as i type this at 1230am on a thursday morning, my extended family is just leaving my house after another night of eating laughing drinking gambling praying. yesterday, my aunties and uncles stayed playing cards until 3am, on a friggin wednesday night! they even asked my cousins to drive some folks home cuz they were drinking, on a frigging wednesday night! yet i don't find it weird anymore. i get it. i'm sure my grandma is loving the fact that we're all together because of her. laughing at us as we stumbled through a prayer we got from the internet. proud because some of us, just one really, can make the best biscuits filipinos have ever known to make with their own hands. and just happy that we really do enjoy each other's company, even if we play beer pong way too much for grown ass people. maybe it's really just helping us all cope by spending hella time together, but it's also beautiful too.

so yes, i can now say i love everything about being filipino. except maybe the whole you have to be as catholic as you can be part. but other than that, i love being pilipino.

rest in peace, apu.

hello? is this thing still on?

it's way too early to still be awake. i wish i could control my thoughts. but i can't. i can't stop thinking about it. everything reminds me.

everything.

i'm sorry for the sadness of this post. i remember telling myself that this blog should never be a release for my negative emotions, and that i would try and keep it entertaining and funny. but the arena for random funny thoughts is now owned by twitter. and i find myself awake, with a million thoughts running through my brain, wishing i had somebody to talk to. but it's 5:06am as i type this sentence.

i thought about working out. thought about doing pushups until i get tired enough to fall asleep, until i can no longer tell the difference between my sweat and tears, until my arms ache more than my heart does. but really, i can't keep avoiding the fact that it was my fault. and i know it.

i have a new love, and her name is kim chi

yessir.

i didn't really like kimchi at first. i was like "what is this shit next to my steve's korean bbq?" then in one of my classes, we were given an assignment to do a powerpoint on anything we wanted to, and this dood gave a presentation on why kimchi is the greatest food in the world. and i was like "respect, my korean compadre." there was also that part in planet bboy where the korean team is trying to ration the kimchi cuz they can't stand the cafeteria food. part of me hopes that the kimchi will magically give me bboy powers. (btw kimchi and fried rice is bangin good)

so now i have a jar of it. i spent at least 10 minutes in the kimchi section of the korean market in daly city just staring at them, trying to make up reasons of why i should choose different jars of kimchi. this one isn't very hot. but it's still tasty.

also, if anybody can read the jar please tell me what it says. or you can just tell me what you think it says.

lovingly prepared by the best

does anybody remember the show "great chefs, great cities" on discovery channel? did you watch it as religiously as i did? cuz if you did you are my new best friend.

if you didn't, i feel bad for you, cuz you will never know what the food world was like before rachel ray introduced the term "E-V-O-O", which is more difficult to say anyway and takes away all the sexiness of saying "extra virgin". and before sandra lee ever designed an overly ambitious tablescape as a form of food viagra to boost her impotent attempt at gourmet home cooking. (ok, really, back then, even i was too young to know what a food/restaurant industry was, or what the word industry meant, but still)

anyways, i'm bringing this up because youtube has a channel dedicated to around 70 episodes of the show. here it is. keep in mind that this show was aired back when profiling chefs wasn't really that interesting to most people, so it's pretty boring compared to today's cooking show standards, but shit, this is the food version of pong to today's super mario galaxy, so pay your respects.

(i've been pretty bad about taking pictures, but i cook hella eggs. i'm pretty good at making an omelet now, try me)

i gave up bread for lent

so i took my communion host/jesus piece outside and fed it to a rat.
that rat transmogrified into jesus, and he told me he was proud of me for sticking to my guns, even in the face of excommunication from the house that he built. and i was proud of myself.
there's prolly a message in that story.

there's no good time to take a picture during church. but i had to. there was a little boy in front of us that had brought toys to church, and had lined them up perfectly. i snapped this pic during the time when everybody was shaking hands. cuz that part of church always feels like the micro-recess of church. it's blurry cuz my mom kinna got mad at me and hit my shoulder mid-shot, the way eyawn would try to block my shot but really foul me in the process, and then complain about the call. me and my mom's exchange below the pic.

mom: WTF?!? what are you doing?
me: FOUL! i'm taking a picture, look how funny the toys look.
mom: oh.. lol

here's wally, trying to measure the size of his face with one hand. frances doesn't care.
(really, i thought a long time about the caption for this pic.)

i'm trying to make a series of shots where i set my timer to 2 seconds and run away as fast as possible.i call this one "rip and run: sorry old man, it's all in the game"