one of my favorite things in the world are roasted, salted cashew nuts.

when i was a kid, me and my cousins would hang around their place in balibago, mabalacat, pampanga. this place was heaven. there was a pool, a man-made lake where we could go fishing, and lots of trees. blackberry trees from which we could pick the fruit and directly stuff them in our mouths, and cashew trees.

at certain times of the year, we would pick the cashew fruit (which is shaped somewhat like a macopa, like a bell) from the tree, detach the nut from the bottom, and toss it into a small pile of glowing embers. after a few minutes, the nut would be nice and toasty and ready to eat.

now i have cashews from bags and jars. no, it's not the same, but it's always yummy.

recently we got a jar of cashews from vietnam. i was more than a little surprised to see how big they were, easily twice or thrice the local variety.

"wow, look at those big fat cashews," i said.

"what?" leah, my somewhat deaf sister, asks.

"big fat cashews."

"what?"

i shrug in the direction of elina, my niece. "you explain," i say.

"big fat cashews," she says.

then my sister goes, "who's fat?" 

Once you've been tagged (which I have been by Stef), you have to write 8 facts/things/habits about yourself, saying who tagged you. In the end you need to choose the next people to be tagged and list their names. No tag backs.

(do they have to be true? hehe) 

1. To the best of my ability I don't drink softdrinks. My tummy is big enough as it is.

2. I sleep with a pillow over my head. Now people know how to kill me.

3. I do yoga. Believe it or not.

4. Four months ago I gave up beef and pork. My immense craving for hotdogs has also since passed.

5. Sometimes I sit at the computer of our recording studio and just listen to the stuff people have recorded. It's always amazing to be part of a creative process.

6. I am an extremely terribly sore loser.

7. I can spend hours on the net researching hotels, travel routes, etc when I have a trip coming up. I'm considering taking up a course on travel agenthood.

8. If I don't spend all my money traveling, I would like to enrol in a culinary course.

Hmm. Who next? Karlo, sagutin mo nga 'to hehe. Winnie at Tina din if you happen to read this in time. Dez, you've been tagged. 

(this is a fragment of an essay that's coming out in the second book. this is cheating on my part and reflects the fact that i can't think of anything new to write.)

Today, even if I am connected with the College of Arts and Letters, which avoids anything to do with numbers like the plague, the specter of accounting dogs me. Being one of the few in the college with a business background, I am often made to take care of the accounting matters of the projects I am involved in. And, true to form, my numbers never balance.

It’s uncanny. I consider myself to be a reasonably intelligent person – I mean I did manage to get through a college degree – why can’t I manage to get two columns of figures to have the same total?

Part of me now thinks I shouldn’t have set foot in the College of Business in the first place. But how else was I to achieve my cherished dream of becoming a yuppie? It was all that mattered. In high school my life ambitions were to earn a lot of money, live in a condo, drink vodka, and drive a BMW.

It shouldn't have been too hard. From what I saw on TV, yuppies didn’t seem to need to do much. All they did was look good and become rich. Of course now I realize that a profession, some sort of job, is actually necessary to earn money to buy things. And together with that I also came to terms with the fact that ‘yuppie’ isn’t an actual profession. I’m sure if somebody had clued me in that such material wealth requires an incredible amount of work, my worldview would have been drastically different.

for breakfast this morning i had egg salad. hard-boiled egg, pickle relish, salt and pepper, and lots of mayonnaise.

i love the stuff. there are people out there who are appalled by mayonnaise. i guess the fact that it's made from eggs and oil does it, and the idea that 1 tablespoon contains 100 calories (95 from fat) and 5mg cholesterol can put one off mayo. but it just tastes so good.

i can eat mayonnaise sandwiches. you know, get a piece of bread, spread with a heckuva lot of mayo then put another piece of bread on top. toast for added goodness.

and that is the recipe for the day. lethal? you betcha. 

student: "maam, do you know aigy roxas?"

me: "of course! she was my classmate in high school! fantastic person. how do you know her?"

student: "she's my mom."