after 20 years of driving, i have finally decided to minimize the wear and tear on myself and switch to an automatic.

my knees, which have always been a littly gippy, were dancing with joy when they found out. if they could, i swear my knees would have given me a hug.

so now the crawl to and from work is a little less painful, if only a little more boring. although right now driving an automatic still carries some excitement for me because any moment i might just shift gears out of habit and zoom into reverse.

was in the vicinity of SM North a couple of days ago and I saw this huge billboard that said:

Placenta

now it doesn't really matter how much you believe in truth in advertising, or how wonderful the product is. it could be the real-deal cure for cancer for all i care but please... call it something else. surely there's some other word out there that can capture what the product is about. surely.

the only time i was ever as taken aback with a sign was when i passed a gay bar in timog and saw its banner which said:

Rectum, Prisoners of Desire

i am afraid of roaches. that is one truth about me. once, when i had to spend some time in a rural, armed-rebel-infested area, i asked the people i would be with if they had no qualms about killing roaches.

"mas natakot ka pa sa ipis, hindi sa npa," they were laughing.

"eh kasi yung npa," i said, "hindi lumilipad." 

but while i am afraid of roaches, they cannot strike me with terror. no, not snakes either. and not those creepy fastfood mascots - although they come close. the critter that can freeze me with fear are big... giant... spiders.

and you know what? there's one in my bathroom right now. 

i wish i could write.

i wish i could write about how every night there's a different sort of bug hanging on the screen of my window right behind my computer and how that bug is peeping in at the light, thinking that maybe my room would be a really happening place to hang.

i wish i could write about how each day i think about how to allocate the daily amount of money i allow myself to spend and how one day i discovered to my utter joy that the little sari-sari store type place in our building had 3 musketeers and how the world all of a sudden became a much better place to live in and how i am now alloting P50 twice a week to treat myself.

i wish i could write about how tragic i felt the day i had to buy toothpaste at a nearby watson's and fell in line with people on their lunchbreak also buying toiletries and how the sameness of it all completely broke my heart.

i wish i could write about how frightening it is to realize that i am beginning to totally run out of time to write and that while it's not as if i can write great things to begin with, it still has the same feel as running out of air. and now, more than anything, i just wish i could write.

(caveat: this is a culinary entry, in case you get unduly excited by the title haha)

 i recently prepared for myself a plate of spaghetti con aglio e olio - garlic and oil. to add a little zing to the whole thing, i decided to make it spicy - and i did this by adding the spice to the oil the garlic was to brown in (and the same oil that would serve as the actual sauce).

when the oil is hot but not smoky, toss in a ripe, red sili labuyo. i'm sure the bigger sili used for sinigang will be ok, but the flavor will certainly be different. less rounded my guess is. anyway, toss in the sili and then puncture it with a fork. press down in a rolling motion until enough sili oil comes out - you can see just how much oil is coming out, so you can tell.

when you think the oil is spicy enough, stop pressing, but don't take the sili out just yet. this is the important part i discovered. the sili has to stay in there long enough for the flavor of the spice to be on the toasty side and not too raw. take the sili out of the pan when it is tender, right before it browns.

my feeling is this method of "heating" up will work best on oil-based sauces and light sautees.

if you find yourself in the makati area with a hankering for italian food, then head to balducci at serendra in fort bonifacio. this was a happy accidental discovery made under a light drizzle. we were walking around the perimeter of serendra, splooshing around puddles, not really knowing what there was to eat, me only remembering that there was a row of restaurants there and that one was bound to be good. and, to my luck, i found it.

this restaurant has a good range of italian cuisine. balducci has around 7 each of pasta dishes, salads, pizzas, and the heftier main courses. prices are on the high side, but considering that 1. the surroundings are really nice, and 2. the food tastes really good, it's worth it. pizzas go for 290 for the margherita to around 350 for the marinara. the pastas are in the mid-300s. main courses from 400-950.

we had the pasta sampler (any 3 of the existing flavors) which had a salmon gnocchi, a spinach and marscapone ravioli and a seafood fettucinni. it was supposed to be good for two but we took one look and asked for a pizza. so first tip, the sampler is pretty much for one person. but i'm glad we tried the pizza margherita because it was quite good. the dough was on the chewy side, reminiscent of the pizzas in tuscany or veneto. could have used more basil, but i appreciate the fact that it was a minimalist sort of pizza so all the flavors came through.

the ravioli was just flat out excellent. subtle and fresh. perfect. the seafood one i can't help but think was the one adjusted to the pinoy palate. it was on the salty side - not bad, but the flavors were heavy. the gnocchi was also good, but after a bit i was salmoned out. what they did was to incorporate the salmon into the gnocchi itself, a technique i found to work really well.

one thing that i was most happy about was the wine selection. a wide range of good wines. even what they had by the glass was good - which is unusual for the restaurants i've tried here. their white is a pinot grigio from the veneto region and the red, the nero d'avola from sicily. come to think about it, the second i saw the nero d'avola, i knew i was already won over.