Fashion Failure
My dad’s elder sister, the one who raised me in my pre-puberty years, is a bona fide fashion plate. In her GSIS days (between the late 60′s to the early 80′s) she had a new dress for every party, and most of the time I had a miniature version of what she had. She was always aware of the latest women’s fashion trends.
I remember every other weekend my aunt would weave through the maze of Zurbaran with me in tow, shopping for the latest in fabrics. We would then take our booty to her mother’s dress shop at the corner of Taft Avenue and Nakpil, where my grandmother would conjure a design with a pencil on a corner of her pattern paper, and by next weekend would bring out the finished product with a flourish. My grandmother, well-known among students (and their mothers) who went to the Philippine Women’s University across the street from her shop was considered to be one of the established women’s clothing designers in her time.
I’m rather disappointed that I never got to spend my teen-age years with them. If I had I wouldn’t be the fashion wreck that I am today. Back then neither my aunt nor my grandmother would allow me to attend a wedding in my denims, much less go to the office in them. The office always meant formal clothing, sensible skirts or slacks and Dansko shoes. And makeup. I am helpless in all of that, preferring to wear the office uniform (dark blue polo shirt with the company logo on the sleeve) and either loose slacks or denims and my trusty pair of Converse moccasins. If they were here with me now I’d bet they’d be dropping magazines that offered style resources for women and tut-tutting at me for the way I dress.
Tan. I mean, really.
Tetchie Agbayani
My co-worker Cel has an enviable tan. It’s her natural skin color. My husband Sam had commented once that Cel reminds him of a young Tetchie Agbayani. I agree.
We were having lunch once, Cel and I, and she mentioned that one of her older sisters gave her some whitening lotion that she couldn’t wait to try out.
“Whitening lotion?” I said, incredulous. “If I looked like you I’d walk down the beach in Boracay in a two piece swimsuit and feel the envy of everyone spread out on the sand trying to get the tan that I naturally posses!”
And I wonder where it will all come to, whitening stuff for Asian women while caucasians try their darndnest to get a tan.
Not a very good bday postscript
I must have caught a virus somewhere on the way to Diliman last Wednesday. I started to feel it an hour or so after lunch, when I started yawning almost uncontrollably while waiting for the coffee at Khaz. Sam had stood up to greet his friend Rasti who was a couple of tables away with another friend, and in the few minutes that he was away I nodded off.
By the time we got home I was close to catatonic. I didn’t even bother to have dinner. I didn’t have a fever, but everything ached like hell. I didn’t have a temperature, but it got so bad I asked Ate Beng for a hilot.
This is one of the Cebuano words I have trouble with translating into any language. The word “hilot” is closer to acupressure than to massage, but I’m not sure if there is an actual equivalent. Hilot is applied so that “panuhot” can be expelled from one’s system, the word panuhot translating loosely into “gas”. But while gas can only be in the stomach, panuhot can be in joints and muscles, and it is expelled either by sweating shortly after the hilot or by passing gas by burping or through the other end.
After I put myself under Ate Beng’s hands I retired to our bedroom, turned the lighting down and slept. When I woke up in the morning I felt too sick to work. I informed the office and then went back to sleep, and stayed asleep the whole day. My little girl Maia came into the room and was told that Mommy was sick.
She went back to her room and got her play doctor set, stuck a plastic thermometer in my mouth, listened to my heartbeat with her plastic stethoscope, and tried to pull out two of my teeth with her plastic forceps. Then she asked “Are you fine now, Mommy?”
I told her I was, after which she put her toys away and lay down beside me. A few minutes later she was asleep too.
A Walk through the Republic
Life for me has been rather interesting the past two weeks, but there were developments I was waiting for before I could finally blog about them.
My son Maui is in fourth year high school, a time when you can no longer postpone the decision of what you want to do with your life. A huge part of that is where to go to college. At first I thought it was not going to be that difficult, as I had attended a parent-teacher meeting at his school where his adviser said that the school’s guidance office will coordinate with the colleges and the students regarding applications for entrance exams. This is, the advisor said, to avoid the absences a student would have to incur on the days that he/she would go to the chosen college to get application forms and such.
About Me
