The year is almost over and I wanted to take a look back to see if
I had stagnated (like I feel) or if I should celebrate, because I've
grown.
I spent most of 2012 taking care of my grandmother and that was a
year that I would celebrate. I spent it cherishing one of the people
who shaped up who I am today and I would be forever thankful for the
opportunity.
The first quarter of this year I spent in Australia. We got my
grandma a rental hospital bed so she would be more comfortable. The
bed would cost about $5K if you bought it, but the health care for
retired Aussies are so good, we only rented it for $120.00 a month.
We were also provided a wheelchair, commode, and anti-bedsore cushion
for $100.00 a year. We were also visited by a pathologist fortnightly
to take her blood samples as well as an Occupational Therapist to
help us adjust to a semi-ambulatory patient. Maybe if our politicians
were not crooks then we'd have a health care as good as this one, but
I'm afraid this will remain a pipe dream.
I also went back to the Art Gallery of NSW for the third time as I
really love it there. I went by the NSW Museum of Contemporary Art
but unfortunately did not go inside. I got intimidated by the size of
the building, thinking that I would need weeks to see everything
inside, plus, contemporary art just puzzles me, unlike classical art.
It may be blasphemous to say, but Picasso's Guernica doesn't evoke
any emotion in me unlike the renaissance masters do. I don't know
what I'm talking about so don't crucify me here.
I went to the beaches as it was summer and those were the
highlights of my wanderings. Bondi I went to with Tita Juliet. Now I
know why surfer babes don't wear bikini tops. I was standing in
thigh-high water feigning coolness with my wayfarers and ballcap when
this huge wave inundated me. My shoulder almost got dislocated from
the force of the water, I rolled end over end toward the shallower
edge and thankfully got deposited sitting up. With my top askew
exposing my non-existent boobs. Yeah, bikinis should have something
to anchor on to. There were a lot of macho rugby and football types
cavorting in the water and fortunately, nobody saw me, I hope. I lost
my wayfarers but not the ballcap (I held on to it as it was signature
while the sunnies were fake-oh) and went home with my coolness factor
leveled down.
I also went alone to Cronulla beach and tried to get a tan with my
SPF100. The difference between Philippine beaches and Aussie beaches
is the temperature of the water. Aussies appreciate a 25 degree
water. We whip out our jackets in December if it gets to 26 degrees,
some even have mufflers like it was wintertime. And they won't think
you're strange if you turn out alone in a beach, unlike here where
they'll whisper behind their hands and think you've gone mad and sad.
You also won't get robbed, but, I'm not that naïve to just leave my
belongings without having my eye on it constantly. So, what I do is
sun myself to get pleasantly hot, run to the beach to get cool, look
behind my back to look at my bag, and stay until I'm shivering. Then
run back to my malong, sun myself again, pass the time looking
around, and go back to the water when it gets too hot. Repeat as
necessary.
I also learnt how to bake. And it was as if I was making up for
lost time. I baked rosemary bread, banana bread, banana cake, carrot
cake, macaroons, and my favorite scones! I made clotted cream,
chantilly cream, buttermilk – from a greek yogurt starter,
chocolate mousse, chicken biryani, and persian rice.
I won a writing competition writing about a fictionalized account
of an incident in my childhood. It was my first time to write about
anything in a long, long time. And I wrote it in one day, yay!
I was also interrogated for an hour and a half by an Australian
Immigration agent thinking that I was going in and out of her country
to work, which I assured her I definitely was not. I was smirking,
she was fuming, I kept my cool, she was sarcastic, I let it pass and
just took it literally instead of taking it for the insult she meant
it to be. In my head I was swaying to the beat of Plants vs. Zombies
and swinging my foot backwards and forwards. The chair was not meant
for little Asians, so I'm swinging, she was standing waving my
passport at my face and threatening that I'm never ever going to get
a multiple entry visa again. “Okay,” I said with a Mona Lisa
smile and she stamped my passport to give me entry to Australia.
Customs was a breeze even if I had 6 boxes of Vita plus in my
backpack. The customs officer just opened one sachet and sniffed the
contents. If it was cocaine she'd have been high.
I also enrolled in school thinking I'd get a student visa, but the
visa got denied so that plan was scuppered. My grandma died so it was
like my anchor was gone and suddenly I was adrift, no job, no
purpose. I buried my head under science fiction books, went home to
Quezon and wanted to live in some other world. I was reading The
Passage by Justin Cronin and that was a dark world to live in. My
brother pulled me up by the hair to go hiking to a nearby falls but I
just wanted to read and read and read. My mother teamed up with him
and I surfaced briefly.
The ride to the river was an event as it was on the back of a
motorcycle that would have long ago given up the ghost were it not
for the stubbornness of having no money to replace it. We made it on
roads that were littered with rocks streaked with marble, the scent
of wild tarragon and cinnamon in the air. We arrived in the back of
beyond, Quezon province looking like some remote outpost in the
Mountain Province were it not for the abundance of coconut trees.
There was a nip in the air, like we were high up in altitude, small
packhorses laden with copra, and a dead snake on the road being eaten
by huge ants.
We stopped by a store which had nothing to sell except for
Halo-halo. The owner was swaying in a hammock and didn't know which
way Dayap falls was. My sister immediately went on campaign mode and
said she'll pave everything, even the falls if she gets elected. She
wasn't even in her district and she knew it. So we set out in the
general course of the vague directions we got. It's easy to get to a
falls, what's hard is wondering when you'd get there.
I was underwhelmed by the falls but it was pretty in a remote kind
of way. The hike to get there was great, it took me out of my head
and into the moment. It was not a hard hike by any means, but you
needed to concentrate if you didn't want to stumble. We also went
back to Borawan Island, Dampalitan Island, and the Bantakay Falls in
Padre Burgos with the relatives after my Grandmother's interment.
When I was accepted into the Writer's Workshop held by Jessica
Zafra, I had this notion that maybe, just maybe, I could really
write. Maybe I could make a living out of this. So here I am now,
trying to finish four books at once. Well, two of them are not really
novel-length, more short novella types while the other one would be a
collection of essays about the supernatural.
So, here's to a new career and hopefully it pays off. Looking
forward to a more productive December and hoping the next year would
be even better.
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