Places: Jogging at QC Circle and UP

Two Saturdays ago, my roommates and I had a jogging date. We went to Quezon City Circle, which was just a short walk from our boarding house. The place is huge, and it took us a while to find the place where the joggers were.

QC Circle, apart from being one of very few parks in Metro Manila, amuses me in many ways. It has huge, old trees lining the pathwalks. There's an area where restaurants and fastfoods are. There's a playground, an area where people were doing aerobics and you can join them for a minimal fee, zipline, BIKES!!, and many other activities. But what struck me most were the street foods and the tiangge, which caught my attention the moment we walked past them. My eyes quickly scanned the clothes and stuffs on sale, and the food stalls we passed by. They caught my attention the way a moreno, kind and smart-looking man, with a handsome smile, does.

In short, we haven't started jogging yet, but my mind was already glued on what we'd do after the jog. Which did not really take too long.

We left the house at 8am, which means the morning's cool air is almost already gone. While the jogging area in QC Circle was a pleasant place too, and with a CR nearby, there were no trees to shade joggers and runners from the heat of the sun. So after about 8 minutes of jogging, I got tired already, and felt like I was being fried. That must be past 8:30am already, or about 9am. We decided to jog a bit more in a more shaded area of the Circle, but got tired again after a few minutes.

Then, the fun part began. We shopped. And we ate. :) There were good clothes being sold at very low prices. I was able to buy 4 pieces of clothing, for less than P400. (Let me defend myself. I rarely buy clothes. And I only bought those on my priority list, ie. I really needed to buy.)

Then, we ate. The choices were so many. There were siomai, pancit, fruitshakes, hotdogs, corn, kikiam, siopao, fishballs, and even rice meals. Name it. There was even paella. We of course spent more time eating and shopping than jogging.




The following Saturday though, we jogged at UP. We were deliberately avoiding QC Circle. It's too tempting! We had a "serious" jog, by which I mean we jogged continuously for about 2 kilometers, and then did another 2 km more walk around the oval. Of course, it would not be complete without food. But unlike the previous Saturday, I deliberately brought only P40, to make sure I don't do some shopping. I bought taho (my roommate bought karioka), then we had fruitshakes too! (There was an event, and the fruitshake stand at the UP Shopping Center had a booth near the oval at the time. I'd say it was meant to be. :P I love their shakes.)

Life: Notebooks

Well, I am a researcher by occupation and vocation. Plus, even before I was even in college, I kept a diary, or a journal, and in college, I write down everything I need to get done, etc. in a small notebook.

I am still the same person, I guess. Plus I was also influenced by my researcher-boss/mentor.

In addition to my cellphone (where I had set reminders for my other tasks), these notebooks help me organize my life. The green notebook is my fielwork notebook (matataranta ako pag nawala yan); the yellow one is my to-do/to-buy notebook, the brown one is newly opened (it was a gift), and I intend to use it to write down Bible passages and prayers I liked (seriously, I think I need to do this if I want my faith to grow even by a few centimeters); annd the striped one was the notebook I used to list down our Boracay trip expenses. For now, I decided to use it as my recipe notebook (i.e., recipes I copied from the internet and followed).

Welcome to my world!

Food: Cooking Chicken Adobo

I just have to put this on record. This is my first EVER chicken adobo. Shempre, it's not perfect. But it tasted okay, and tasted like adobo to my housemates. :)

Faith: Disturbing the Already Disturbed

This morning, I attended the Pasig Feast. During Bro. Obet's talk, they flashed a prayer, and we were asked to read parts of it. The prayer was "Disturb us, O Lord."

I've encountered the prayer before. And while I was reading it aloud together with the other attendees, I somehow stopped and stared at the lines. My friend, who was sitting beside me, I realized, also stopped reading. Then we both laughed.

As it is, our lives are already disturbed. Actually, we don't know if we want more disturbances right now. Haha!

But I still posted parts of it on my Facebook account. And I am writing about it here. Because some lines struck me:

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,

To venture on wilder seas

Where storms will show Your mastery...

I just thought I'd hang on to my edited Prayer No. 1. I don't understand why things happened the way they did, and whether there's even a purpose for it. But maybe, just maybe, it's one of those few things with a purpose indeed, and it will unfold in time.

I'm hanging on to hope. Sana it is granted. Not just for me and my siblings. Above all, it's for my parents. Mataray man ako at matigas ang ulo, love ko sila. I am praying for their happiness, for the best that life can still offer them.

I know at a certain point, I need to let go and let God. I can't keep telling God what to do. I just need to ask, and now that I have, to just trust Him. Argh. This is difficult to someone like me who wants to be in control of things. Grrr.

Pero fine. I'm trying. Really. I mean I will try, starting tonight.

Below is the complete text of the prayer. (Copied from http://churchedge.blogspot.com/2007/11/disturb-us-o-lord.html)

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push back the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

This we ask in the name of our Captain,
Who is Jesus Christ.

Sir Francis Drake

Faith: Good deeds are not enough

Before I shut this computer down and try to cook my first-ever chicken adobo, I think I owe it to write this one down.

Naisip ko, I've been trying to be a good person. I've been trying to do good. To serve God through others. But at the end of the day, it still doesn't feel enough. May kulang pa rin.

Now I understand. Good deeds are not enough. You really need a personal relationship with Him.

Faith: Faith

As a kid, I had always been the more quiet type. I keep things to myself most of the time. Until I can't anymore, and I just explode. My rebellion began in high school, if I'm not mistaken. Over the years, life tamed my temper. At the same time, I began talking about my feelings to others. About what was going on in my life. But lately, I was back to being that quiet kid. I kept things to myself, until I can't do so any longer. I realized I needed people to listen, without judgment. Sometimes, I need them to simply understand, but they can't. And several things made me crawl back to my shell, opening up once in a while, but never as often as before.

Bottled up, my emotions at times overwhelms me. Life is sometimes so damn good at pouring too many things on your plate. It doesn't really care if it's beyond your strength. They say you won't be given trials you can't bear. I'd say, you definitely will be, at times more than your own fair share of burdens, even if you try to be the best human being on earth. You will just learn to pick yourself up along the way. Yes, trials can bring out the best in you, if it doesn't ruin you in the process.

Anyways, I decided, before I lose my sanity, to call up one of my close friends. Someone I think may be going through probably the same set of dilemmas. And she knows the background stories already, so I need not start telling her about the context.

During our conversation, faith and prayer came into the picture. I think I also raised something about Christians I've met who remember the exact date they accepted God into their lives. I grew up as a Catholic, and our equivalent of that, if I'm not mistaken, is baptism and probably confirmation (gosh, I hope I got this one correctly). She patiently explained to me that it's not a baptism, there's no ceremony. It's just you and God, and you accepting him as your Savior. Oh, and she remembers the exact date she did that one too. Nice.

I do remember, I was once a very faithful person. Yes, back in grade school and high school, I always prayed. And I believed. Despite everything. But in college, I just gave up. I got angry. Life was just too tough, and together with all the questions about God and religion piling up in my head, I just dropped faith. Once in a while, I still fulfilled my Catholic obligations, but not as regularly as before. I began welcoming other religions. I read other books. I wanted to understand, not just believe. I have to know what sort of God I'm believing in. And I guess I was also trying to find an explanation for all the things that had been going on in my life.

After college, faith was an on-and-off thing. I would join a group, but the business of life would get in the way. Or I'd lose interest. Or my faith would wane again.

My friend told me that maybe I am doing all these, but, just like before, she asked me about my personal relationship with God. Strangely though, or maybe not-so-strange for Christians, but that's the second time I've heard of "personal relationship with God" this week. One was last Sunday, from a barangay councilor we were working with. Was this just really such an essential part of Christians' language, that it gets mentioned again and again?

It only took me a few seconds to answer that question to myself. I don't. I know I don't have a personal relationship with him. When I was a kid, I know I didn't just pray. I talked with Him. Now, I read a short reflection every morning. That takes at most 3 minutes. Then I rush off to work. Sometimes, I say a VERY short prayer at night.

I guess you may say I have stopped praying. And even if I do, my faith was so miniscule. I rarely pray for the things that are so important to me. My faith wanes and withers so slowly, yet so steadily. Life just gets tougher each moment, despite my own efforts to make them simple. And I hate it. I hate it so much. Ive stopped praying because my life was barely changing for the better. My prayers were not being answered. It was so unfair. If you are among the unfortunate who had to be strong for others who draw strength from you, but you almost have no one to encourage you when the going gets tough, you'd know how I feel. At a certain point, you just get tired of trying to be strong, of sacrificing your own happiness. Leche. You have needs to, you need to be taken care of too, but you just have to take care of yourself, and nurse your own wounds. Then you face the world again, and try to be strong, when in fact deep within you are falling apart.

Sabi nila, whatever place you find yourself in, you brought yourself there. Not always true. When you are part of relationships, of any social circle, you will either benefit or suffer the consequences of other people's decision. Even if you are just a victim of circumstances, walking away is not an option.

Sana, if I and my siblings get a chance to have our own family and kids someday, our kids will never have to go through what we went through. Hindi ko kaya. This will just break my heart. And right now, I just want to do things that will allow me a chance to have a happy family. I'd like to be able to give to my children things I was not able to have. A love-filled, peaceful home. And many more.

Yes, I'm still dreaming and working even if I know life has the tendency to ruin things. And God has not been answering my prayers. I know it's bullshit to keep moving forward. But it's either I do that or I just drift through life, suffering not at all but also going nowhere.

Anyways, going back to the faith thing. My friend told me to just suspend all rationalizations and just have faith. Ouch. To me, that's hard. I can't believe what I don't understand. Or maybe I can. But God has a bad record when it comes to answering the things that are soooo important to me. If you were in my place, will you jump in, knowing you'd wound yourself? You won't.

So now, it's almost 1am, on a Friday. But I still didn't want to sleep. I have always been stuck in this place--of wanting to believe, but not wanting to have faith in a God who had disappointed me many times before. When one problem follows another, as if I do not have the right to rest.

Sorry, God, galit lang talaga ako sa inyo. And I honestly don't know if I can trust you again, the way I did when I was a kid, who would just bear things silently, cry, and pray.

Faith: Prayers

This morning, I woke up feeling really sad.

Maybe it was just because I had been dead tired the day before. We were on fieldwork and while we did had fun, I ended up working from late afternoon when I got home til night, trying to prepare for our meetings in the next days.

Maybe it was also triggered by discussions with a barangay councilor we were working with. She was a Christian. She told us about the hardships she and her family went through (she was from a low-income family), and about the miracles and blessings that came her way.

I couldn't help compare my situation with hers, and her faith with mine. Life may have been difficult for me, but it must have been worse for her. But her faith was a lot deeper than mine.

Before I opened up my prayer book, I looked outside. It was a gloomy morning. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I thought about how God has not granted my biggest prayers. Still. Yes, I do receive blessings in other aspects of life, but those 3 big wishes/prayers/hopes, they remain unanswered. My question this morning was the same question I have been asking myself ever since that time when I started questioning God (that was in college):

After all the things I went through, am going through, and may still have to go through, how do I trust you?

What is the point of praying for these 3 things which are so important to me? Ang sakit dahil hindi mo binibigay. Ayoko nang mag-expect. Hindi ko na nga alam kung papalitan ko na nga lang ba yung prayer, tutal mukhang no na talaga ang sagot mo doon sa isa.

Siguro I am just feeling lost. Obviously, ang daming hadlang para mangyari yung 3 big wishes. At honestly, hindi ko na alam anong gagawin ko. I am torn between being hopeful pa rin, and just being realistic. There's a chance these prayers may not happen. Damn.

Naalala ko nanaman tuloy ang Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change (mukhang Prayer 1 falls under this category)

The courage to change the things I can (I think Prayers 2 and 3 fall under this category)

And the wisdom to know the difference. (Did I classify the 3 prayers correctly?)

Hay, ewan. Ngayong naisulat ko na, ayoko muna isipin. Ganun na ko napagod. Ang tagal na ng mga prayers na ito. Baka naman one day, I'd be ready to deal with them. Again.

Food: Fried Chicken and Gravy

So, today, I decided to do something different for dinner. I dropped by the grocery, and bought ingredients for.....

Fried chicken, gravy, and mashed potato.

(Note to people who do not know me personally: I don't know how to cook, and I am not particularly talented when it comes to anything kitchen-related.)

I dropped the mashed potato idea for tonight.

I bought two kinds of breading mixes: McCormick's lemon and pepper, and Crispy Fry original. I liked how both tasted, although the former was obviously tastier.

After frying the chicken (note: I managed not to burn it), I tried making home-made gravy. I saw a recipe on the web.

Grabe. I was glad my housemate was there to rescue me. I didn't know what to do with the chicken broth, and why my gravy wasn't turning sticky. We decided to put a bit more cornstarch.

Now, I did not take a photo of it, but here's how it looked. Do you remember those pastes in colored tubes which we used to have in preschool? It looked like that, only this one's yellow. Yes, yellow (because of the chicken cubes) and not your KFC/Jollibee/McDonald brown gravy.

I wouldn't really mind the look, if only it tasted like gravy. But imagine your noodle soup, where you placed too little water. That would be very salty. Or imagine broth cubes dissolved in less than the prescribed amount of water. My gravy tasted like chicken broth cubes dissolved in too little water. It was VERY, VERY salty.

So to put all the description together: My homemade gravy was a yellow, really sticky liquid which tasted like chicken broth cubes dissolved in very little water. With a dash of pepper.

I decided to give it another try. I found another recipe on the web. The end product was almost like the first one, except that while the first was consistently sticky, this one was even sticker and lumpy. (When I had to throw away my first gravy, I simply poured it in the kitchen sink. The second gravy I had to throw in the biodegradable garbage can. It was so sticky and lumpy it would clog our sink.)

The third gravy was the closest I got to a real, commercial gravy. It was very light brown in color. The consistency was just right. But my housemate told me it was walang lasa. It was bland.

I love gravy. I think I'll try this again next time. But I'll have a gravy mix too, in case the homemade recipe is again a flop.