THE NEXT ACT

“Boxing Day?  What the heck is a boxing day?” I was clueless when I got to understand that this is one of the days NZ celebrates.  And so my mind worked on me at first to figure out by myself what it would be.  The picture popped up from my brain when I first heard Boxing Day was Manny Pacquiao.  And so maybe 26 th of December is special day when every town in NZ would put up boxing rings and celebrate Boxing Day by participating and watching boxing matches.  But then I thought “Isn’t it that Rugby is the big sport in NZ?  Why not Rugby Day?”  And so I played around with my mind a bit and was stubborn by not to look at Wikipedia to end this nosiness.  What do Kiwis do on the day after Christmas?  Shopping?  Maybe back then when people shopped they put all the sold items in boxes and not yet in plastic bags because plastic was not yet invented then.  But why should they come up with a statutory day benefiting merely commercial ...

Who wants to suffer in the first place? You may say that if it ain't for something good you prefer to have a worry-free, careless, fantastic life.  I would rather lie down on the beach than crawling in the wilderness.  Or I prefer to eat a burger over a plate of mashed carrots.  Or I would rather watch TV than mowing.  But there must be something good behind the pain. Sacrificing is making you suffer for a good cause. A lady colligue of mine shaved her whole head in support for the cure of her bff's cancer. She used to sport a fantastic short blond hair sparkling a flyaway on her back neck.  And she was willing to go bald.  She came over my desk bald and all with a money basket. I who has been used to credits did not have cash at that moment but I promised to go over her desk to donate once I got the cash which I did.  Sweet. I mean who would refuse to give money to someone who has deprived herself from looking good to show that she cares and tha...

Most of time you would never know how special a close one is until somebody notices it for you. In our backyard, we got two trees both of which are full of oranges. “Hitik sa bunga” is a Filipino term for it. It has been for several weeks that oranges of both trees so shining in the pursuit of attention. Over mature fruits kept on falling and we kept on throwing them in the rubbish bag. One nice day barbecuing in the house with close friends got the attention that both trees wanted. Friends were in awe how rich the trees were with oranges. They tried tasting them and indeed they were sweet and juicy. “Take as many as you want.” By all means they sought for plastic bags and filled them with shimmering oranges. Each of them brought home at least two plastic bags filled with oranges. At the end of the day, there are still more clinging in those trees. The following day and the next, friends brought friends and friends’ friend to the house to get some more plastics of oranges. “If you’ll r...

We were grocery shopping in Raeward. When we were picking up some vegetables, right before our very eyes was a bunch of Sayote. You see tinola is the all-time favorite dish of JC. It has been a frustration when we couldn’t cook tinola in NZ for the reason it has been hard to buy sayote. Not today. All of a sudden we were excited to go home and cook tinola. JC had missed tinola so much. It was obvious in his drooling mouth at the very first sight of sayote floating in that rich tinola soup. We wanted to hoard because we never knew when sayote would be available again. We just bought few of them so as we are able to cook tinola every other day till the next four weeks. Naahh. I am just joking. Rayward is few houses from our house. It’s easy to buy them maybe…..tomorrow again? Tinola, anyone?