Sinking Feeling

There was a ringing in my ear. No matter how hard I tried to stop it, the high-pitched buzz went on. I covered my ears with my hands, but it did nothing to help.  My eyes shut close, brimming with tears that I couldn’t hold back. Somehow, I was on the floor, twisting and turning, mouthing the words “Make it stop.” I couldn’t hear myself, though I felt my throat getting hoarse.

There was a lump in my throat, sprouted unnoticed but grew until it hindered my airway. I gasped for breath. My heart raced from pain and panic. My body stopped squirming, but my hands touched my ears then my throat. I was frantic, not knowing what to do anymore. As a last resort, my eyes flew wide open, hoping to get a glimpse of the world for the last time. Nobody was around. I was in an unfurnished room all by myself. Only the light bulb on the ceiling was my audience.

“So this is how I die, huh?” I humored myself despite it all. Must have been the lack of oxygen in my brain. This would have been my last thought.

#ThrowbackThursday: Galaw-galaw sa Tag-araw

Time for some Throwback Thursday! (I know, but a little mainstream once in a while won't hurt, right?)

Last push for summer! Here's a video of my friends and I dancing to an old summer TV station ID four years ago during a summer internship in a local college as a requirement in high school. (No, the video was not required of us, but rather, a fancy among friends. The internship was required, though.)

Shout out to Ayanne Aborka, Nicola Alcanzo, Sri Anabo, Charisse Gasataya and Faith Marcelino: I hope you don't mind me sharing this little, uh, adventure we did, and sharing your names here as well. May I ask, though: do you cringe when watching, or even remembering, this?

Acknowledgement to Mark Marcelino for shooting and editing the videos. It was fun!

Lousy baker

My first attempt at baking red velvet cupcakes: FAIL.

With mother's day just around the corner and summer half-way through, my productivity level rose high enough to get me up and about the kitchen and bake a batch of experimental cupcakes. It was good foresight to have tried the recipe I got online way before the second Sunday of the month.

This batch was salty, not the right red, did not rise enough, wrong texture-- and the list of problems goes on. So much for beginner's luck. Thanks to some food tech graduates working at my aunt's business, I have some insight to what actually went wrong and what I could probably do to make my next batches better.

As the old saying goes, I shall try and try until I succeed-- or until summer ends.

Taekwondo

My mother enrolled my brother to taekwondo class to help him "instill discipline and lose some weight." He will start tomorrow. We picked up his uniform earlier today. At home, we tried it on. Yes, we.

Game face: ON 

Garden Show

We swung by the garden area again today. I spent the whole time looking through the viewfinder.

These would be nice at home.

Summer so far

It is that time of the year again when our provincial capitol grounds play host to hundreds of people, locals and tourists alike, for the annual Aklan Piña and Fiber Festival. This includes booths of the different small and medium enterprises, local restaurants, and government units from every town in the province promoting their homegrown produce as part of the "One Town, One Product" advocacy.

Then, as the shops close for the night, food stalls are kept open and entertainment happens-- bands, dancers, singers, comedians. This part of the festival is called Tsibugan sa Kapitolyo, or crudely translated to be "a place to eat at the capitol." 

I have religiously visited the fair since my family brought me there to help out in my aunt's business's booth. Well, I was too small to even help my first time, but when I was mature enough, I have been lending a hand. Thus far, I have not missed a festival week.

How to cook your egg, sunny-side up

Yesterday, I have finished a book. I am proud of this fact because it has been my summer vacation for two weeks yet I have not read a full novel. It has been a long time and I think my brain has dried out of its creative juices. So here I am, writing my time away, hoping to have my thinking machine oiled and tuned up, ready to create and recreate pieces of literature in my head and through my pen (or laptop, in this case).

To start my gears turning, perhaps a little how-to of a common household chore? Simple enough? Interestingly, the most trivial of things is what I find to be the most difficult to write. If you have not seen my previous post on brushing teeth, please check it out to understand my... situation.

Ocean Park 2012

To make my brother's summer vacation complete, we went to Manila Ocean Park this afternoon. The Oceanarium and Jellies, Dancing Sea Fairies, are so last year. This summer, we saw sea lions, penguins and the Musical Fountain Show, among all.

To make it quick, here are a few pictures of our exciting day.

First things first: a picture at the entrance.

Yeah, well, we'll try anything here.

Photos at the airport

Here's some pictures that I took at the pre-departure area in the middle of the night.

Sleeping baby! Hihi :">

I had to take a picture of this baby. She's one of the few children in the pre-departure area. They got on the flight before ours, but it was already past midnight.

Here are the pictures I took while waiting for a frappe. How can we not be sleepy with this around us?

 Remember what I said about an almost deserted airport?

Remaining passengers for the last flight of the hour.

I took this photo a few minutes before we got on board. Whoever's left boarded the flight with us.

At the Airport

Nobody told me that the best way to start the first day of the month is to wait patiently for a flight in a nearly deserted airport.


It turned out that it is not the best experience after all. I discovered this fact ever so slowly tonight, or rather, this morning. This was my first time to fly without sunshine. With my mother and former elementary classmate, I fight away sleep as we wait for our plane in the dead of the night. It was made even harder by our fellow passengers who are lying on benches or leaning on the shoulder of whoever was beside them, apparently on their way to dreamland.

Goodbye, Summer

It's as if my heart is being squeezed like a stress-relieving ball and I don't think I'll get over this feeling soon.

It's past my bedtime already, I know, but I'm trying to prolong my stay here at home. At least my hours awake, that is. I still have some time to rest later since my flight is still tonight.

I have been packing my clothes and stuff in my suitcase for hours. Half the time, though, I wasn't even packing. I was just sitting on my bed with a lump in my throat that just can't go away. Up until now, I can't lock my suitcase yet.

Sweets and Dogs

Excuse me for being melodramatic but the last lollicake to be eaten deserves a few moments in the limelight.

There's nothing significant about the R.

After two weeks of saving the lollicake, I have decided to eat it. This was a big decision for me since I have been keeping them from harm's way, such as my brother's binge eating. Being in charge of the lollicakes (self-proclaimed, but still) that are actually my mother's, I thought that it was high time for the last one to be gone for two reasons: one, it might expire sooner than I think; and two, I'm leaving for Manila soon.

Kitchen Duty

Trying new things is the best way to spend summer vacation. Next would be having a sleep-eat-sleep-only routine 24/7.

For this summer, I opted to learn how to cook (and practice yoga, but that's another story). If green thumb is for gardening, I just don't have whatever you call its counterpart for cooking. Yes, we sell longanizas and a lot of other food but that does not automatically make me a kitchen goddess. Cooking just doesn't come naturally to me. So one of the first things I did upon arriving home was declaring that I wanted a cooking lessons from our cook. Unfortunately, our cook got sick and I didn't get my lessons.

On the bright side, my family has a collection of cook books, which listed lots of dishes and desserts from all over the world. I enjoyed fantasizing that I was constructing culinary masterpieces. However, not all my fantasies end up only as daydreams. No. Many of them actually came true, thanks to my handy work.

More Lollicake Pictures

I have taken pictures of the lollicakes my brother and I have been eating even though they are our gift to our mom on Mother's day. We have been consuming them very slowly, like having to ration food and water to survive. Except it's just for my pleasure of having a lot of one thing at a time. You know, the selfish, hoarder complexes of mine.

Anyway, here are the pictures I took:

Last Ten Days

The countdown for the last TEN days of summer vacation begins today. It's sad that break is almost over, but sadder still that I'm going back to school real soon. The first day of the school year will eventually become the first week. The the first week will just pass by and become a month. Before you know it, the finals are coming.

(c) numerologyzenzone.wordpress.com

But let's look at the bright side, shall we?

With the last days of summer knocking at my door, I suddenly realize everything that I have yet to do before classes begin. Being the student that I am, I cram everything in the last couple of days-- hours even-- before the deadliest deadline. Unfortunately, quality is foregone. I know that I should change, but cramming is just a bad habit that can't be easily, well,  changed. I'm sure you can understand, yes?

Selfishness and Lollicakes

Up until now, we haven't finished the lollicakes that we gave our mom on Mother's Day. You see, I don't let anybody get one and go, even f the cakes are technically my mother's. I have always been selfish with these things-- chocolates, stickers, pencils, stationery. In fact, there's a fine line between me being a collector and me being a hoarder. I just love the feeling of having many of one thing.

But selfish or not, I love taking pictures of the pretty things and pretty people, i.e. lollicakes and my brother. I feel less selfish when I share the pictures I have taken. See?

My brother's daily ration.

Happy Mother's Day

Talking about moms and how great they are makes me all sentimental and mushy, but I don't have enough words that can describe how I love my mom and how grateful I am for her. It makes me sad, though, that many people tend to forget how special their mothers are but magically remember on the second Sundays of May. Even worse, there are those unfortunate souls who don't even care about their mothers! I feel terribly sorry for them. So this isn't just for my mother, but for all the mothers out there.

I don't get to tell my mother how I love her every minute of the day, especially when I'm away for my studies. I try to find time to remind her how special she is for me. Fortunately, I get to celebrate her twice a year: her birthday and Mother's day. And today, my brother and I surprised her with something sweet and special, just like her.

Nanay (Filipino for mother) with her special treat.

In Ten Minutes

Let's try to learn something this summer. How about some history of English?

For under ten minutes, you will learn from this video the origins of the English language, how it grew and how it keeps on growing until today. It is informative. Its animations are just as fun. And for someone with an attention span of a little longer than a goldfish, this video works quite well.

This compilation of videos were taken from the Open University site. Videos of lectures and other informative videos of just about any topic under the sun is available in the website, too.

Lolli Cake

Tonight, my brother and I enjoyed some new treats: lollicakes. Yum!

Red velvet lollicake with pink frosting, butterfly candy and silver balls.

I first saw lollicakes in a booth during the Aklan Piña and Fiber Festival. These lollipops filled with delicious cake is so sumptuous (and cute) that I found it difficult to take the first bite. But when I started devouring it, there's no stopping me. How I wished I bought several more instead of just two.

Book Adventures

There were power failures in the afternoons for almost a week now. As if on cue, the website I'm in would fail to load and the electric fan would stop spinning. Then my laptop beeps, which supposedly meant that it was unplugged from a power source.

Disappointed and irritated, I would turn off my laptop having nothing to do with it anymore. But then I start feeling grateful. I finally have time to get back to the printed pages of a book that I have left for cyberspace.

With a book at hand, I would open a door that leads to open air above a rooftop. (A porch wasn't built but the door stayed.) Having no electricity meant no electric fan to move cool air around. Fortunately, the afternoon breeze would be cool enough to keep me from sweating like a pig. I would set a throw pillow by the door ledge and sit on it cross-legged. Then, I would dive into the book ready for some adventure.