Kukuyis

Iska again

noreply@blogger.com (Ilya of Vasay) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 09:52:00 +0000

I'm into my fifth week of classes for my masters and, with the exception of a couple of "freshie moments" (some would call them "senior moments"), the going has been smooth. But the recently re-commissioned ship is approaching battle zone. Reporting period has started in both courses, with the writing course being, well, a writing course. Take home writing assignments in addition to writing exercises every meeting. I appreciate that, but I also write at work so it gets numbing sometimes.

Right now I am working on a short story that's due tomorrow afternoon, in two formats (dialogue and paragraph). I took a little break to blog.

here it comes

noreply@blogger.com (Ilya of Vasay) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 02:44:00 +0000

A wise person once told me that the most fearful thing in this age will be nothing compared to what is to come. At the time (20 years ago), I decided I feared war the most. And then came terrorism, which turned up an uglier face each time it surfaced. I did not think anything could be worse than 911, but the world did not end there just yet. So there must be something else, something that is not fully conceived in our consciousness yet. What kind of evil is awaiting in the sidelines for its turn?

Evil changes faces. We will no longer find it in the usual fronts. It no longer looks ugly. It looks friendly, amiable, smart, new. It grins up to its ears. It speaks eloquently. It tells people what they want to hear, thus it is popular. It gives you options. Ooh, humans love options. It carries in his banner a promise to make it easy.

It's a big wait and see.

i got tagged.

noreply@blogger.com (Ilya of Vasay) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 08:44:00 +0000

I got tagged by Wyatt, UPLB vetmed graduate, a Lingkod kuya and, may I say, a Leonardo of gastronomy. Visit his food blog (or better, his kitchen) and you will see what I mean.

The Rules:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

My 7 Things:

1. i'm a peanut butter junkie on rehab

2. i find it hard to sleep on moonlit nights

3. i eat dog meat, but only in my islands

4. i have a love-hate relationship with females

5. my childhood literature was spy novels, Asiaweek, Newsweek (i lost my innocence very early)

6. i had my first crush at 8 - Robert Redford in "The Natural"

7. in college i dissected more toads than required for lab or self study. i enjoyed pithing with manic glee.

I intend to tag:

lavern
rona
monet
francois
eisen
au l
joy g
jojo

hello again!

noreply@blogger.com (Ilya of Vasay) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 09:07:00 +0000

No, the tornado did not get me. But nobody seems to have noticed, so let's not go there.

A quick update:

Sarai is having solids. No problem so far. We add a new kind of food each week to track allergies if any. The other night, I started her on squash, adding a lot of water to the pulp at first, and then adding just a bit the next time, so its thicker. She had no problems adjusting, and I love how she moves her lips toward the spoon every time; she must really enjoy food! Which is good.

She also holds her bottle now and can reach for her teether, grasp the handle, and put it to her mouth. Although sometimes it's the handle or her fingers that ends up between her gums. That must hurt... hmm.

The best part of the past month is her increasing communication skills, of which we her parents are the greedy beneficiaries. Can't get enough of the happy shrieks and low belly laughs! And of our little girl 'talking' as though she already has an opinion about everything.

buhawi (tornado) in Los Baños!

noreply@blogger.com (Ilya of Vasay) — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 02:18:00 +0000

14 August. We heard noises outside at around 4PM. From my office window I could see students flocking towards the UPLB Gate, cellphones aimed at something above the Grove area. My first thought was, some building was on fire. With another wave of delighted screams, I saw several among the crowd aim their camera phones higher and eastward.

I ran out the door and saw a huge debris cloud swirling high above the tallest structures on the ground. I could not make out how far it was from where I was standing.

Seconds later, a funnel cloud was visible higher up in the southeastern sky. It seemed to be moving in the direction of the lake. Our house, and my baby, is less than a kilometer from the water. I could not phone the yaya because the networks were suddenly clogged. I felt panic pangs.

I was relieved when the funnel cloud gradually tucked itself back into the clouds. As scared as I was, the whole thing was amazing to watch. I have never seen one before. What a spectacle.

The final moments of the funnel cloud:

can't stop laughing

noreply@blogger.com (Ilya of Vasay) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 03:03:00 +0000

Can't help posting these. Hope you enjoy as much as I did. :-D

I actually felt sorry for this guy. He did his best to keep a straight face, which is not easy when your diaphragm is about to explode.

The type of woman I'd fall for, if I were a guy. Someone who can't help laughing.

Feast Day in my hometown!

noreply@blogger.com (Ilya of Vasay) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 02:03:00 +0000

Happy Pista du atavu Ivasay!

While the rest of the world tunes to the Beijing Olympics opening, folks in the little town of Basco, Batanes will gather in one anothers' houses today to celebrate the feast of our patron, Sto. Domingo de Guzman.

Early this morning I received a text message from my mother, informing me that she has prepared uved, a dish made from grated banana root, mixed with fish, seasoned with salt and pepper, wrapped in leaves and steamed. How my mouth watered...

Maparara kamu pas' vunung!!!

The torturous thing about craving things of home is that they could only be had there. There is no other way.

mommy's first heartbreak

noreply@blogger.com (Ilya of Vasay) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 09:13:00 +0000

It is a mother's worst heartbreak, when child becomes more responsive to the yaya* than to her.
It is the curse of the working mom. This "simple" symptom of 'progress' or 'women empowerment' or whatever else you call it - women taking day jobs - starts a chain of degeneration. Mom has to go to work, so another female has to leave her own family to go look after the working mom's kid.

So that's two sets of kids left in the care of someone other than the real mom. It's senseless.

My yaya is single, but if she does well and I keep her for long-term, she forgoes her chance of marrying and having her own kids at the prime of her life. I am spending the prime hours of my day at work, she spends hers with my daughter. It's twisted.

One can say that it's the quality of time, not the quantity, that matters. But for a baby, it's the face she constantly sees, the scent she most often smells, the voice she most often hears that she remembers. To a baby, quantity is just as good as quality.

* yaya - stay-in babysitter

pesto bruschetta

noreply@blogger.com (Ilya of Vasay) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 01:23:00 +0000

Hubby's. It's so good I crave it the whole day.

mug with a cause

noreply@blogger.com (Ilya of Vasay) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 07:41:00 +0000

No longer using Nestle products? We, too, have moved on to the...

shiitake chowder with chicken and corn

noreply@blogger.com (Ilya of Vasay) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 08:25:00 +0000

Rainy days make me crave hot soup. You know the snake I mentioned in the previous entry? I didn't use it to make soup, but...

On a recent rainy day, I set out making soup but ended up with this. It looked like chowder, tasted like chowder. I therefore declare that I just made chowder for the first time.

creepy visitors

noreply@blogger.com (Ilya of Vasay) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:06:00 +0000

Hubby found a snake among scraps of wood a few days ago, right below the living room window on the other side of which is Sarai's turf. The reptile was about an inch at its widest part. Ahas tulog ("sleepy" snake), he reported. He struck it repeatedly with a sharp piece of metal and had the pieces thrown near a vacant lot before he told me (which saved us needless hysterics).

Later in the day we found this little toad among tile scraps (we need to clear up the shed), although toads are fine. We get a lot of them especially during the rainy months.

There was also a cutworm from the new periwinkle plant. Hubby hates cutworms - evident in the way he crushed it - which is why I opted not to take a photo.

hubby's garden

noreply@blogger.com (Ilya of Vasay) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 07:43:00 +0000

Hubby has a new 'toy': our tiny front yard, which he is, almost singlehandedly, turning into a garden. (I don't have a very good history with plants. They tend to die on my watch so I just let him get dirty on his own.)

He said the garden must be ready for Sarai when she's ready for it, so he decided to get periwinkles to supplement the hibiscus and helianthus (decapetalus, it seems... a flower is hidden among the leaves in the lower right part of the photo).

Grass is next on the list. I am insistent on getting bermuda because I want Sarai to play on the same type of grass I grew up on. Bermuda can be quite prickly when you lie down on it, even with a shirt on. But I survived and she will.

Did you know that bermuda grass grows wild in many parts of Batanes? We usually just let it grow where it will, meaning, it is not cut, so it grows loose. Unkempt, it looks like green fur hugging the cold stone walls.

(Photo from http://philecotourism.wordpress.com)

wish my second cup of coffee was beer

noreply@blogger.com (Ilya of Vasay) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 09:28:00 +0000

Just got back from an emergency staff meeting.

Bottomline: senior writer and I have been assigned to write the chancellor's annual report, and it must be out by first week of August. That's next week! They gave us the framework today. Which means, counting time for layout and printing, the text should be final and edited by tomorrow afternoon. Either my bosses are crazy or I am crazy to accept this task. Ha ha ha ha ha hu hu hu hu hu... Sarai got it from her mother, laughing and crying at the same time.

Oh, and I am also taking over as managing editor for the third quarter publication because the assigned ME for the issue is going to Japan for a month. I volunteered. Heehee... bring it on.

Sarai sees her Lolo again

noreply@blogger.com (Ilya of Vasay) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 06:46:00 +0000

My father arrived from Batanes last week. From the airport, he went straight to LB and then, after lunch, to our place in Bay to see his first apo (grandchild). The yaya later recounted that Sarai, who has not seen her lolo since April, seemed undecided whether to be happy or scared. She gave a wide smile but her eyes welled up at the same time and soon, she was crying. Then she smiled again.

Can babies' have happy tears already? I doubt it. On Sunday though, they were able to get their act together.

Lobo biscuit!

noreply@blogger.com (Ilya of Vasay) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 09:12:00 +0000

Remember Lobo biscuit? It was a favorite when I was little. I think back then it cost 25 centavos a 4-piece pack. I found some at South last week. Same packaging, same taste. Some things do stay the same.

on 'development'

noreply@blogger.com (Ilya of Vasay) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 09:09:00 +0000

Is progress always good? Of course not. Is development? If development of livelihood is a right, must all people demand it? Can't some just say no? Or, can we say no in behalf of some of our people?

(To be continued.)

ground beef with bell pepper

noreply@blogger.com (Ilya of Vasay) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 08:12:00 +0000

Still on dry meat. During the weekend I made this, something we often had at home in Batanes. I'm not sure it's Ivatan, probably not. Just make sure you drain off the fat after the beef is browned, and use olive or some other healthy oil to saute the garlic and onions.

Tip for those who live in the vicinity: the ground beef at South Supermarket is by far the leanest.

pot roast like i used to do it

noreply@blogger.com (Ilya of Vasay) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 08:55:00 +0000

That was an awfully rushed way to make pot roast, but when I could make one at leisure years back, I enjoyed it immensely.

Years ago, in Batanes, my mother would usually give me something from the ulukan (our portion of a slaughter, as there was no meat market in my islands) that she cannot use, usually spare ribs, and say "imu'ynulay (you may do with these as you please)" and I would experiment on a marinade and the rest.

But sometimes I would ask for a slab of pork (beef scares me). That's when I learned to make pot roast, although at the time I did not know what it was called. I simmered the whole slab, about 5 or 6" across, in a covered pot with a little water and vinegar, salt, pepper, garlic. Sometimes I put in quartered onions, sometimes a little sugar. It was all just experimenting. When I was quite sure the meat was cooked through, usually after a few hours, I take the whole piece and then brown all sides in hot oil. Slice and serve. Still dry, but not greasy.

baby "talks"!

noreply@blogger.com (Ilya of Vasay) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 07:06:00 +0000

I am all the time dizzy from nights of broken sleep but nature compensates, always.

About a couple of months back, our little girl began to chuckle and make little sounds. Those were far-between then, but the delightful little moments have become frequent. As of last week, she could already "talk" to us. Her "words" are shrieks and gurgles and little sounds but she delivers them with the proper facial expression and with such focus on her audience that it's impossible not to think she actually is telling you something. It's so cute. And she's good at maintaining eye contact.

Hubby and I make it a point to savor these episodes, dropping everything to listen. We 'hold' the conversation with her to encourage her (knowing that the day will come when we'd have to shut her up instead). But while these magical days last, we are the captive audience - misty-eyed and hearts swelling with joy - of our little Sarai.

tenderloin 'pot roast'

noreply@blogger.com (Ilya of Vasay) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:40:00 +0000

My wife and my daughter have been feeding me vegetables.
I have not had meat for 36 hours.
Today is the longest day of my life.
- my husband

Hubby is not particularly meat-loving but after a few days of mostly veggies and oatmeal (while watching whole seasons of 24) we were due for some protein.

So last night I took a whole piece of pork tenderloin, marinated it for an hour in vinegar, olive oil, salt, garlic, nutmeg, and a bit of thyme and browned it in oil - sort of a quickie mini-pot roast - then sliced across it. On the side, I cut up a carrot in strips, dipped them in vinaigrette (my own) and used these for garnish.

Still dry meat, but since I discovered the magic of herbs, there's no turning back.

meat, the Ivatan way

noreply@blogger.com (Ilya of Vasay) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:03:00 +0000

I have been asked a few times, and - no, I DO NOT KNOW how to cook kare-kare or kaldereta, or most dishes found in Tagalog dinner tables.

Whenever I have a piece of meat on my hands, I would proceed the way it was done when I was young: keep it dry.

Pork would usually become adobo (the garlicky Ivatan version) or luñis (fatty portions boiled in salted water, drained, rolled in salt, and deep-fried), and beef would become dry beefsteak or something else dry. The innards would become dinuguan ("cooked in blood," which is what it is), again, the dry version.

Ivatan meat dishes are usually dry. Not that we do not like sauce or gravy. We just did not start out eating meat with sauce or gravy. Until the early 90s we did not have regular power supply and therefore, we had no freezers. Meat is preserved by keeping them really salty and dry.

(The Ivatan cuisine may now include its own versions of igado, kaldereta, etc. Ipulas are often given the courtesy of preparing a dish on occasion and Ivatans are relatively open to new ways of cooking, but these are not main fare.)

Over the last several years I have learned to cook some naypula dishes (pochero, chicken curry, menudo, giniling, adobo, nilaga, chop suey) but I have never been able to master these :-). Partly because I'm stubborn, but mostly because when it comes down to being burp-happy, I'd just rather keep it dry.

home becomes the dream

noreply@blogger.com (Ilya of Vasay) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 08:15:00 +0000

It just dawned on me that by next year, indeed, I will have spent half my life away from Batanes. I have married an Ipula (non-Ivatan) and have set up camp with him and our 4-month-old in Bay, the next town from Los Baños.

I did college here, I work here, and now I have in-laws here. Things like that do not happen overnight. I have been in LB too long. Or rather, I have been away from Batanes too long.

I never imagined I would carry on this long. I was always homesick. You'd think the homesickness would let up when my sister joined me at the dorm two years later, but no. She had it even worse. Our frequent 'senti' - reliving Batanes moments, the textures and scents of home - fed our melancholy. Every year when Christmas break neared, she and I would become 'aliens' -- walking around but never really around, giddy with thoughts of finally going home again, starry-eyed in anticipation.

Now the whole brood is here but very little has changed. If there is an illness we could embrace, this is it.

best in LB

noreply@blogger.com (Ilya of Vasay) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 02:04:00 +0000

A college town like Los Baños can never stay the same. But some things are tied to memory and remain with you, some even long after they cease to exist. Having lived almost half my life in LB (oops, too much info), I have put together a list of favorite go-to places to feed. Not cuisine exactly, but I always left these places burp-happy.

My top ten (not in order):

1. pork barbeque sa Bambang - a small stall near the welcome arch to Brgy. Bambang in Los Baños Bayan. follow the smoke and the mouthwatering smell of sizzling fat. P12/stick.

2. beef stroganoff sa Bambang - located beside the BBQ stall. it's a pansitan, if I remember right (I need to pay attention to store names and signboards). but their beef stroganoff is the best so far in all of LB.

3. Sirufus' sisig - blockmate April brought me there during freshman year. I had never heard of the word "sisig" before. Somebody explain to me why they closed shop :-(

4. Bonitos pasta - the aglio olio is my favorite. Pesto is also good, although I find their version too "leafy." But they make their own pasta. It's what makes their limited pasta selection so good and quite enough.

5. siomai sa Bernardo - find the little sari-sari store on Road 1, right side entering Bernardo Village in Mayondon. (I wasn't a Papu's fan for very long. Ask me why in private.)

6. Lapitan's lechon - lechon needs no explanation. Lapitan's Lechon is located just after the small bridge in Anos, right side going to Bayan.

7. garlic mushroom ng 10411 - my staple during 10411 days... some good things never last.

8. beer sa 10411 - SanMig Light never tasted better. the secret? location, location, location. (I miss 10411. Closing shop without prior advisory should be a crime...)

9. Ellen's fried chicken - the best-tasting fried chicken in LB, period. they don't have three branches in LB for nothing.

10. tapang kalabaw ng Toyang's - it's good with rice and will go just as well with beer. Toyang's is a few paces from the Bangkal arch at Junction.

about the blog name

noreply@blogger.com (Ilya of Vasay) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 01:53:00 +0000

'Kukuyis' is an Ivatan term. I don't know what it means, I'm not even sure it's a word. It is from a rhyme that my parents used to recite when they gave us stretching exercises as babies. I use it on my baby now and from her giggles, she seems to like it. It's probably the push and pull on her arms and legs that she enjoys, not the vocals. Nevertheless, it's a piece of oral tradition that I'm more than glad to pass on. It gives a sense of continuity, even if I am raising her far from home, far from the islands I so miss.