Mid-morning boredom?

Has resulted in online bikini shopping. Bandeau halter tops are today's mission.

Volcom Slip N Slide in Orange stripes & purple polka dots versus Billabong True Love in black & white?

The moratorium has been lifted

Wednesday. 8:30am. Already twiddling my thumbs.

Badmouthing the Hag and the Dipshit (see previous post referencing to bad Dolly) can only keep me entertained for so long. It has finally dawned on me that I will still have to work with these people and it makes me sick to my stomach. It may well be just a delayed reaction. But it feels kinda like when you first discover your ex has a new girlfriend. Big replacing Carrie with Natasha sick. (Sidenote: Run away from people who will string you along because they don't have the balls to tell you they have committment issues. ) Call in sick for a week and torture your liver sick. I've got all next week off from work. I think I will do just that. Wine tasting with GFs Jenn & Kristen will be the perfect send off!

Party of One

So my one sane colleague has left the department for greener pastures. I am now left with the Hag and two newbies that I don’t care to solicit friendships from. Mini-Hag’s replacement is turning out to be nothing more than a full-sized, aging version of the same dipshit co-worker. Come to think of it, she’s worse. She literally stinks this place up. She eats her lunch at her cube, which almost always spurs a gag reflex so violent, I have to run out of the building. She comes back from her smoke breaks and, with every exhale, pollutes the air that I breathe. Hmm.. that explains the bad, raspy impersonation of Dolly Parton but the overgrown, unkempt, fungus-infested acrylic nails? That is just gross.

The other newbie, Brown Girl Jr, is competent and smart. Unfortunately, she is also a short-timer. She is just waiting for her Canadian residency status to be approved, an essential for people hoping to live and work in Canada. In the meantime, she has become the victim of the Hag’s favoritism (well, I guess there’s a reason why witches stick to their covens) and possibly even racism. She has been assigned the bunk task of claims auditing, possibly the bane of any internal auditor. I estimate the poor girl is bound to start getting nightmares, of rows upon rows of excel data attacking her, after she is finished with her first quarterly audit only to realize she has to do the same thing for the next quarter.

As for me? I have become the rogue employee doing whatever I want to, now that I have become the only repository of knowledge in my area. The Hag tries to learn but her brain capacity and processing speed just aren't enough. For the sake of the department, I hope she finds someone capable before I leave. I've given up on waiting around for her to get canned. She falls under four protected classes after all: female, over-40, disabled and stupid. (Damn it, I hate it when the minority card isn't enough!)

At the moment, importing a husband is forcing me to stick around. Apparently the U.S. Government prefers that both petitioner and beneficiary not be wards of the state before they grant visas. HA! But when the day comes, it will be a glorious celebration, bitches!

Rafting trumps the gym

Things I learned over the weekend:

• Chilliwack is civilized. I found a Starbucks!
• White water rafting in 3-degree Celsius water means you will freeze your buns (and fingers and toes) off!
• There is no need to hang on to the oar with a death grip. You will not fall off the raft.
• Sticking your foot in the raft siding doesn't do anything but give you a bruised shin. You will not fall off the raft.
• Bloodcurdling screams are only appropriate for slasher flick actresses. You will not fall off the raft.
• Always participate in group warm-ups, even if it means looking silly. Better that than being pulled to the front and getting singled out. Then you just look silly by yourself.
• There will always be a Skank-a-gawea in the group. You know the type. Attention-hungry, posing as the girl next door in pigtails, look at me as I parade in my bikini, I gotta bitch about everything, bimbo. (Oh, she got banished to the other raft, alright.)

I did not fall off the raft! I think it's safe to say this has been another milestone in getting over my fear of being in the water. Pics are up on Ive's website. There is talk of doing a longer rafting trip in Lytton next month. Maybe I will actually jump into the water next time. For now, I think the perfect reward for this brave girl is an afternoon at the salon! Mmmm...

It may be cold up here, but it's still bikini season.

Angry moment over. Back to normalcy. Somehow, I came up with the fabulous idea that the moratorium of alcohol consumption should be hand in hand with my return to the gym. This weekend's river rafting trip is making me realize that it is already mid-June and I have done absolutely nothing to make sure my ass is bikini ready.

Tunes? Check. Runners? Check. Ponytail? Check. Cute shorts? Check! (Love Lululemon!) Matching terry cloth head and wrist bands in lime green? Just kidding. There is absolutely no excuse for fashion embracing neon as it's flagship color for a decade.

If you never hear from me again it just means my old nemesis, le treadmill, has gotten the better of me.

Castigo Brutal

The headline read: COUPLE FINISHED RESTAURANT MEAL WHILE CHILD TIED IN HOT CAR.

"Castigo Brutal." That's what my grandmother used to threaten us with. It usually meant getting a couple slaps in the butt with her tsinelas (flip-flops). But that's why summer vacations were always an exciting time. It was time away from my shitty mother and her husband.

It never ceases to amaze me how many ways parents come up with to abuse, deprive, hurt and ignore their children, all in the name of discipline. Most of you know this is a sore topic for me, having lived through the deterioration of my parents' marriage and seeing the replacement father figure force feed his brand of punishment to my siblings.

For years, I couldn't understand why he would get ticked off at the littlest things. Then it dawned on me. He was compensating for being a military reject, a corrupt cop (sure, we'll believe you when you say you killed him in self-defense), an overshadowed husband and most of all, for being a short, short man.

I suppose it must be hard to deal with having a wife that makes more money and holds down a more respectable job than you. I probaby would be peeved if a nine year old corrected my ENGRRRISH. But how do you justify beating your kid with a rolled up newspaper because she couldn't find a pair of socks for you? What in the world would make you think holding a toddler upside down is going to make her stop crying? How did you come to the conclusion that because a kid didn't finish a glass of milk, she ought to be made to eat a stick of butter? Buddy, this isn't the back streets of Manila anymore. You're nobody in these parts. So why don't you take your third-world, macho gangsta mentality and shove it up your ass. Or since you adamantly refuse to adjust to your environment, why don't you just crawl back up your momma's crack?

Where was my mother during all this, you ask? She was a mute observer. She let it happen. As a matter of fact, she continues to do so. She still denies any physical abuse, whether on her or the children, despite documentation from Child Protective Services proving the contrary! I've lost count of how many times she's reported him for domestic abuse but never follows through. She divorced him and then got back together several months later without telling her children. She said it was because she never gave him a chance to wear the pants in the family and make the decisions. She even went so far as to kick me out of the house during a 2005 visit, in an effort to gain forgiveness and prove to him she was serious about making things work. Yet she wonders why her children have alienated her?

Yo, motherfucker! (Ha! Imagine that. He really is one in every sense of the word, for he truly has fucked my mother.) I may be in voluntary exile but you will never shut me up. I will continue to tell everyone what you've done and how you two have screwed up the lives of five children. I hope to God I never snap because thanks to you two, I consider bruises and name calling the stuff of amateurs. You will probably not enjoy what I would come up with.

Sometimes I think the reason why I don't have bridges to burn is because I refuse to build them. But that would make for a very sad, shallow, solitary existence. Life is about exploring the relationships that you form and trying your best to maintain the ones you consider to be the most important.

Reasons to give up the one arm cup curl

A work in progress.

1. While I usually try my best to leave an entertaining voicemail, drunk dialing still requires damage control the next morning.
2. Getting admonished for throwing a hissy fit is never fun.
3. Flip Cup is an activity I shouldn't excel in.
4. Forgetting that you have company over is not an excuse to be traipsing around in your underwear. (I'm sure it would have been hilarious to some degree.)
5. A hangover that lasts until 3pm is a bitch to deal with.

Hmm.. I will have to find a different self-indulgent activity that doesn't require ibuprofens and Xuca episodes in the morning. I knew I had it right the first time around - I'm back on retail therapy!!!

Love in all the wrong places

Does three in a row make me an addict? For the third time in as many nights, I sat in front of a sushi chef - in Louisiana. Huh? I was dubious about whether or not I would survive it the first night. But the need to satisfy my rice craving won so, I split open a fresh pair of chopsticks and dove headlong. Freestylin' ala Kevin:

1. Sunomono salad - all the good stuff, none of the icky noodles.
2. Spicy tuna on a shrimp chip
3. Baby octopus salad on a bed of seaweed and cucumber, topped with snow crab, masago and siraacha.
4. Yellowtail sashimi with ponzu pesto sauce topped with fried onions.
5. Tuna tataki with cucumber strings
6. Snowcrab and cream cheese wrapped in salmon and cooked tempura style - Salmon poppers
7. Apple, strawberry, avocado and cream cheese wrapped in a thin crepe and topped with kiwi and toasted coconut and doused with Grand Marnier syrup.
   

Let bygones be bygones so you can go and get the hell on

Lafayette est petit. Shreveport est mort. I got into Louisiana at 9pm last night. Six hours later than my original ETA. It made for a very long travel day. The First Officer for my Bellingham to Salt Lake City flight was apparently ill. Flight cancelled. My original itinerary was BLI-SLC-DAL-SHV. But instead of the 6am flight time as planned, I ended up having to take the shuttle to Seatac. I flew out of Seatac to Memphis to Shreveport.

Once I got to Seattle, I ran around trying to find the right counter to check in at, because somehow, Delta forgot to fucking mention that the flight was actually going to be operated by Northwest Airlines. Lo and behold, the NWA counter was four lines deep with people trying to do the same thing I was. (Flight cancellations ought to be compensated with first class, you mofos.) Once I got to the front of the line, the useless service rep kept insisting there was no reason why I couldn’t use the self-serve check in machines – despite having already told her twice that my flight had been cancelled and I had gotten rerouted. (I say this again, dumb people should all be sentenced to life on an uninhabited, shark-infested island.)

So for a second time in 5 hours, I was in line to get my baggage and person checked through airport security. “Maam, you have been randomly selected for secondary screening.” It was the perfect trifecta. This, mesdames e messieurs, is how the TSA fucks you up the ass, all without ever getting off the ground.

My travel profile stating I preferred an aisle seat was obviously ignored, because I spent the 3.5 hours to Memphis stuck between an ex-gold bar stacking, small talk loving Grandpa with stinky breath and a whiny teacher with no bladder control. Many Fort Knox stories and 3 trips to the bathroom later, I was glad to race out of the plane and breath some clean air.

The last leg of my trip flew by much quicker. I was seated next to a nice man who orchestrates building doctors' offices for a living, participates in triathlons on his spare time and shares my penchant for Grey Goose. Forty-six minutes later, I was being told I looked “like a Mustang kind of girl” by the rental car agent. Hmm… y’all wanna see an Asian drive a domestic? I’ll be in the red one tearing down Interstate 10 to Baton Rouge tomorrow.

Ah shit. Why am I whining? I signed up for this. You can all just consider me a masochist. A happy one, because I found a decent sushi place in Lafayette. Tsunami on Jefferson in downtown Lafayette (watch out Bellingham, it has all of three streets in it’s downtown core, one more than you!) makes great Ika and does wondrous things with snow crab and salmon.

It took me a while but I guess I'm not it anymore.

When Jap posed the blog tag challenge my first thought was, "How the hell am I going to write about my Flip pride when I don't even feel like I have any?" I dove headlong and became fully immersed into the melting pot/acceptance & tolerance culture years ago and it has almost made me forget about the Motherland. I took a couple of days to think it over and have come to the conclusion that although, the majority of my stay in the country was depressing and full of turmoil, I did walk away with things that I love. These are the same things that I miss. These are also the same things that make me proud to be Pilipino.

Old-school Values – growing up, discipline was about avoiding the belt or kneeling on a bed of coarse rock salt (how’s that for cruel and unusual punishment?!). I wasn’t sent into a corner or given a timeout. I was made to understand that if I did something wrong, the repercussions weren’t light. Now I recognize the fine line that divides discipline and child abuse. I lived that life, remember? But I am still a proponent for raising children with the right balance of indulgence and fear. It just makes for better people.

Food – Lumpia, Embutido, Lechon, Dinuguan (That's blood stew for all you picky eaters. Perhaps a good explanation of why I can be such a witch at times?), Bulalo, Inasal, Lagaw, Relleno nga Bangrus, Valenciana, Ibus, Suman, Kalamay Hati, Mangoes (I’m talking about the good kind, none of that green & red skinned BS).

I could go on and on. Those of us that have had it can properly appreciate why the mere mention of these dishes brings salivary glands into overdrive. Those of you that haven't and have particularly daring taste buds can give me a shout. I'll be happy to guide you through a tour of the gastronomic heaven that is Flip food.

Lastly, the way of life. Everything is so laissez faire over there. I want to be able to appreciate not having anything to do. I want to be able to not get restless because I don’t have anything planned for the day. Ofcourse there are drawbacks to this type of mentality. But oh, what I wouldn’t give to park my ass on the beach all day, go home and do the same thing over again the next day! Shieeeet. How can people expect vacations to last you until retirement?

Now then, I guess this blogtag will have to die here as my contact list is practically non-existent. Perhaps we could change the topic, Jap? Jin? Brett?