Mary Grace-ing once too often

It seems Mary Grace is the bakery-restaurant of choice among friends who agree to meet at either Greenbelt Makati or Trinoma, the Ayala mall in Quezon City. When I'm early and waiting for my lunch companions, I like reading the little handwritten stuff under the glass-topped tables. I've often wondered if those are real notes addressed to real persons or they were just made up to add to the place's homey ambience.

While looking at these photos, the first taken sometime August, the other just at the close of this past month, I noticed how I ballooned and grew in heft. Well, you caught me there--enjoying once too often Mary Grace's deceitfully lightweight ensaymada and cheese roll!

With Pablo Tariman, Vergel Santos and Chit Roces Santos

Even Althea Sarmenta seems to say of Mary Grace, "I love you this much!" Others in picture are former colleagues and lifetime friends Bob Navarro, Amadis Ma. Guerrero, Cynthia Alberto Diaz and Althea's dad Joel.

Old friends

Dario checks out my two panoramic shots of a Batanes seashore dating back to '98. He now has them in his collection.

Rustie lets out a hearty guffaw

Ahhh, I wil not let this month end without claiming a semblance of poetry on this space. Too tired from the heat and the constant composing and correcting of manuscripts, I've decided to just let balladeer Michael Feinstein sing "Old Friend" while I post pictures of the people I spent Sunday with, a pleasurable company of persons with whom I've had a history: Rustie Otico, Cynthia Alberto Diaz, Dario Noche and Alejandrino "Al" Vicente. 

Al explains why Anne Proulx's short story "Brokeback Mountain" is notches better than the film version and brings out Rustie's copy of the O. Henry reader of prize-winning short stories as evidence.

Until gentler winds bring us all together again. Meanwhile, this is for all of you, old pals. There are several songs with the same title of "Old Friend", but this by far says it all for me as I go over traces of an afternoon of shared laughter, the clinking of glasses of red wine, one faux pas after another whenever memory faltered. And that was often.  My four traveling companions to Cavite are true friends--not even decades of being apart diminished the warmth when we clasped hands with Al who has traveled the world, including hot spots in the Arab world, as a diplomat but who has remained the articulate literatteur and cineaste of old.

Love is rare, life is strange
Nothing lasts, people change

Every time I lost another lover
I call up my old friend
And I say let's get together
I'm under the weather
Another love has come to an end

And she listens as I tell her my sad story
And wonders at my taste in friends
And we ponder why I do it
And the pain of getting through it
And she laughs and says, "You'll do it again"

But we sit in a bar and talk till two
'Bout life and love as old friends do
And tell each other what we've been through
Our love is rare, life is strange
Nothing lasts, people change

And I ask her if her life is ever lonely
And if she ever feels despair
And she says she's learned to love it
'Cause that's really all part of it
And it helps her feel the good times when they're there

Yes, we sit in a bar and talk till two
About life and love as old friends do
And tell each other what we've been through
Our love is rare, life is strange
Nothing lasts, people change

And we wonder if I live with any lovers
Or spend my life alone
And the bartender is dozing
And it's getting time for closing
So we figured that I'll go out on my own

But we'll meet the year was '62
And travel the world as old friends do
And tell each other what we've been through
Our love is rare, life is strange
Nothing lasts, people change

Love is rare, life is strange
Nothing lasts, people change
Old friend


Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtABADNJnT4

Cynthia always seems to carry a bag, not a barrel, of laughs, in a manner of speaking.

Rustie studies Cynthia's camera while we suggest that he consider taking up a new interest like photography and journaling after decades of being an unsung copy editor. He insists on regaining his strength first before venturing into anything new.

During the supposedly best hour for taking pictures (4 p.m.), Rustie led us to his fence where we peeked over the edge and gazed at his neighbor's orchids. That he finally has time again to admire flowers is a personal cause for rejoicing and thanksgiving.

 Photos by Babeth Lolarga

A Food Journal of a Sort

Reading Julia Child’s My Years in France early in the year prodded me to begin a food journal just to keep track if I’m staying on the safe side and not over-indulging when the season for that has passed.

I once wondered aloud what is it about my kids’ generation. It is almost SOP for them to take pictures of the food set before them before they dig in. Good friend Gou de Jesus surmised people like us prefer to chew on the thought, that is, savor food first, then reconstruct the flavor, texture, presentation, etc., with words. We liked to have our memory do the work, not the digicam.

Which is why I don’t have food pics for this remembrance of a recent repast I had on the first Sunday of this year, the Feast of the Three Kings.

My other gourmand friend Cynthia Alberto Diaz and I have kept a January tradition of visiting the Sieverts (painters Federico and Grace, their son, our godson Gabriel). At their former residence in Baesa, Quezon City, we used to pile on mismatched dishes and drink and be jolly till way past Gabriel’s bedtime. Now that they live with Grace’s mother somewhere near Project 6, we felt we had to be more subdued.

My box of empanada matched Cyn’s pansit Malabon and pichi-pichi. Grace prepared something I had craved for all year round, ginataang halo-halo. We set the modest feast in their backyard, by the tool shed and not far from the coop of Gabriel’s hen.

Federico brought out a bottle of red wine and set it before Cyn. And we “talked stories” all afternoon long while I made repeated trips to the makeshift buffet table, refilling my bowl of ginataan until I had to unbutton my pants so I could breathe and sigh the sigh of the satiated.

The secret, Cyn and Federico agreed, was not only to have all the cubed ingredients present in the pot (ube, langka, saba, kamote, bilo-bilo, sago and coconut milk) but to let the whole mix boil slowly until it is of a thick, sticky consistency. Malapot is the word for it.

Cyn, the true-blue Navotas girl, had a forkful of pansit and quickly noted it lacked salt. A bottle of patis was brought out to remedy the situation.

Then Federico brought out his presents for us. Lo and behold, colorful paper mobiles with twirling tails and doily-like cutouts. So colorful and reminiscent of the southern sarimanok. They were each attached to a string so we could hang them. Somewhere below was a separate rectangular paper with a cut-out of the name Jesus; behind it was an abstract cut-out of a fish. I’ve always addressed Grace “Grace of Jesus” when we were colleagues at a media office. (De Jesus is her maiden name.)

Federico also handed us a bookmark—just a length of white paper with two diagonal red ribbons pasted on one side. He said, “If you have faith, you will find him.” I raised my bookmark against the light, and there it was: the name Jesus.

Photo shows one of Federico's birds in the making (from his Facebook profile)

Proceeds from a Long Laughing Break

Upon learning that I was spending half of summer in seething Manila, Cynthia Alberto Diaz, my ex-colleague at the now defunct Raya Media Services Inc., rounded up the usual suspects for a long overdue luncheon reunion yesterday at Pot and Noodle Restaurant on the fourth floor of SM Megamall. The others who confirmed attendance were our drinking mates at John Michael's, a restaurant at the original EDSA Central.

Few wanted to try out another ex-Raya officemate Joel Sarmenta's place on Morato Avenue, Quezon City, which they found too far (he is now in the marketing department of a food chain after a colorful career as history teacher at the Philippine High School for the Arts, University of Asia and the Pacific, St. Paul College, then onto more marketing duties for an insurance firm, a motorcycle manufacturer, among others).

It is not for anything that my life partner likes to call me and my friends put together "Baltic and Company."

My first stop once the glass doors of the mall opened at 10 a.m. was at the Pain and Rehab Care for my fifth physical therapy session to lessen the tenderness in my sprained left ankle and the shooting pains in my right knew joint (signs of wear and tear or degenerative conditions as I move ever farther from five-oh and closer to 60). As the therapist counted while I wrote the alphabet in the air with my pointed left toes, my cell phone pinged. Pablo Tariman announced that he was at the Chinese resto already, waiting. Give me a few minutes, I told him, to wind up my rehab session. He texted back: "In that case, I shall do my yoga."

I managed to walk with a cane to the fourth floor where Cynthia and painter Grace de Jesus Sievert, former Raya graphic artist, were already seated by a long table. Fellow freelancer Pablo was sipping hot tea, an image I still find incongruous to this minute, at a separate table. Apparently, they failed to recognize each other--that was how long they hadn't seen one another.

I ordered the jellyfish with century eggs and a bottle of San Mig Lite for Pablo and me. He didn't need to be persuaded to change his drink.

We weren't done knocking off our second bottle when the hooting and laughing began. Amadis Ma. Guerrero waltzed in, barely catching his breath to say, "I only have five hundred pesos in my wallet. Two hundred is my share for this lunch. Two hundred for the Aeta children. Leave me one hundred so I can have transportation money to collect my contributor's fee from Inquirer and go home." (A few days before the reunion, I had asked my friends to bring donations of old/unused children's clothes, old/new children's books, toiletries like shampoo, soap and toothpaste for 38 Aeta school kids in Dinalupihan, Bataan, where I am set to go to do outreach work with a friend and our daughters, but that's another story.) Forthwith, I fished out P100 from my wallet and handed it to Amadis. His P500 went to Jo Ladisla, the efficient executive assistant from our Raya days, who was appointed treasurer for that afternoon.

Then in came Bob Navarro, Joel and finally Rustie Otico. By this time the noise emanating from our table was making heads turn, especially when Pablo let out his signature laughter which we could only blame on natural exuberance.

Finally when the bill arrived after that long, lingering meal and drinking, there was enough change added to the common pot. Before I knew it, we managed to raise in one afternoon P1,460 for the Aeta children's cause.

Amadis quickly advised me to spend the money not on something "luxurious" like shampoo but on a basic staple like food...or maybe soap. He approved of the last item. And off to the supermarket I went late that afternoon for some serious shopping with the memory of friends having that long overdue "laughing break." This kind of break, I'm proud to say, I instituted at the old Raya office in Paranaque. Whenever I felt stressed out from pounding on my typewriter in the early 1980s, I'd go to the table of our circulation manager Jose "Ping" de la Paz, who'd cheer me up with one corny joke after another until a joke found its mark, and I'd be filled with an incredible lightness of being.

Next outreach is scheduled on June 12 . Please reach out to the children of Dinalupihan. Drop-off points for donations are these addresses: 3 Santa Clara Street, Barangay Kapitolyo, Pasig City, or 47 Mahabagin Street, Teachers Village East, Quezon City.