The Inevitability of Ennui

We live our lives the best way we can. We dance to life's different tunes, varying our steps with the dynamic twists and turns that the choreography requires. Through all the variations, however, a rhythm is developed and that becomes the core of the dance ... a repetitious ballet of seemingly chaotic moves. Much like a painting seen up close, the brush strokes are varied and inconsistent, but as the viewer steps further back, sees all the brush strokes are swept into one canvass painting with a single idea ... a single inspiration ... a single expression.

Eight months in Dubai, and I am still unable to figure out what I truly want in this life.

Financially, I am already picking up the pieces of a ruined spreadsheet. My turbulent spontaneity has caused me to spend more than I was earning back when I was in the Philippines. My stay in Qatar has proven futile to my intent to save as well. Dubai has thrown the rope which I am now thankfully climbing, out of the deep hole I have gotten myself into.

My emotional status, however, remains as erratic as "inverse point" on any scientific calculator. I constantly rage against my nostalgia, burying myself in a blur of hobbies. I have revived my guitar playing and mediocre song-writing, I have taken the pencil once more and started drawing, I have downloaded e-books torrents and started reading new books and re-reading books I have read when I was younger. I have even started a new hobby - photography by buying a Nikon D60. All this, on top of watching movies and enrolling in Excel Advance and Access Core classes sponsored by the Philippine Consulate. Heck, I am even trying to learn "Arabic". Despite all these, however, I still find myself longing for home.

In retrospect, I believe that no matter how many hobbies and new things I discover, I will always find a pattern in this existence away from home. Ennui is inevitable when I am faced with the emptiness of missing my family. I miss my home ... my Dad, my sister, my brother ... and even more so, my Sheiryll, my Sofi and my best buddy ... Andre.

... z ...

Posted by tuliro at 04:51 PM | Add a Comment

My Chicken Adobo Experience

“Popularly regarded as the Filipino national dish; made of meat, poultry (or a combination of both) or seafoods in a dark, tangy sauce. – recipegoldmine.com”

 I’m not much of a cook. Well … if frying is not considered cooking, then I can’t cook at all. I have acknowledged that the only true skills I possess in the kitchen are food tasting and peeking into the refrigerator. I have always found it odd that no matter how I have practically memorized the contents of a refrigerator, I still find myself opening the door every time I am near it.

 Need is the mother of invention. As such, I have decided that I should start developing an ability that sits perfectly with another of my hobbies – eating. How there are skinny chefs, I will never understand. It’s quite amazing how anyone can resist the kaleidoscope of colors and aromas that dominate an active kitchen.

 As I stood in the middle of the kitchen, I ran the ingredients in my head … half cup of dark soy sauce, half a cup of vinegar, water … uhmmnn … how many cups of that again? … lets make it two (I’ll just add soy sauce if it looks too light). Black pepper .. crushed of course … and garlic, enough garlic to kill Count Dracula himself … what else … ahh … chicken … of course, chicken.

 I took the ingredients from the refrigerator one a time. I was so careful with them you’d imagine I was handling holy artifacts. Whether I do right in putting black pepper and garlic in the fridge is something I will have to learn in the future.

 I put the thawed chicken legs into the pot and poured the soy sauce on top them and watched the dark liquid stain the pale raw meat. I then took the cup with vinegar and transferred its contents into the pot. Some of the meat was still poking out of the mixture, so I compensated this with water. I added about two tablespoons of crushed black pepper and threw in my vampire killers with a flick of the wrist. Please understand, of course, that by that time, I imagined I was the world’s best kitchen magician. My heart skipped beats, but my hands were as steady as any expert surgeon. It was adobo, for Pete’s sake … if I still screw this up, then I am truly a hopeless case … besides … I LOVE the dish. I would probably be my own best critic.

 I left the pot cooking on medium flame for exactly … EXACTLY 20 minutes. Three minutes before that, the kitchen was filled with the deliciously familiar aroma. I steeled myself as crept into the kitchen and snuck a peek into the pot. Yes, the dish looked great. I didn’t know whether is was the steam that stung my eyes or that I was crying for joy but I knew from that point on that I could cook an official recipe that could, at the very least … LOOK good!

 I drank one full glass of water before proceeding to the last test of my adobo experience. It was meant to optimize my taste buds, allowing them to fully appreciate or ultimately reject my attempt in cooking. The spoon shook in my hand as I brought the steaming sauce closer to my lips … closer, closer, until the heated metal touched my skin. I slowly breathed the now-thick liquid in and closed my eyes …

 The mixture exploded in my mouth in a fury that caught me off-guard. The tangy soy sauce battled the acerbic vinegar, the course hot black pepper collided with the normally overpowering taste of garlic. The two seconds it took me to discern the flavor of my concoction was the same time it took for the war to rage in me before it finally and smoothly calmed ... rollng into my throat in piquant bliss. I smiled … it was … good.

 … z …

Posted by tuliro at 11:01 PM | 7 comments

Blue Teddy Bear

I sat beside the open window, letting the hot air into my room. I didn’t mind … the airconditioning had kept the room to below tolerable levels anyway. I made a mental note to remind the flat owners to fix the control switch some time soon. It got too damn cold in the room at times.

 The view from the second floor window was not all that great. At that time of night, the pale brown hue of the buildings took on an ugly gray color that spoke of age and despair. The city is riddled with new villas, flats and apartments yet, the company decided to stick me in an obscure side-street address in a non-descript building with dilapidated paint and decadent halls. It’s proximity to some fastfood restaurants and a grocery store is my only consolation to this location.

 In the distance I made out the silhouette of an old mosque barely visible against the darkening sky. The sandstorms usually render this view into a ghostly monochromatic haze … more of a vignette that gives an illusion that the structure was actually in motion. Last night, however, the mosque and its steeple were more visible in the cloudless, starless night.

 In my left hand I held an unlit cigarette and on my right, a palm sized blue teddy bear. As often as I could, I always kept it nearby. Not the cigarette, silly … the small stuffed toy. It was a Christmas gift from my son … half of a pair of indigo colored keychain bears. He says he always keeps his beside him, as well. Five months … always one day too long of missing his company, his daily account of new discoveries … his smile … his laughter. I may have developed the ability to mask these emotions through work, yet I cannot deny that every moment I have to myself be spent playing our memories together in my mind over and over again… an auto-loop command embedded in my head.

 I am not as miserable as the first day I came here nor as desperate, the following months that followed. I do not mope and bury my head in complete disregard of other people and events around me as I used to. I now smile at an errant joke and even find myself visiting my friends on weekends. It was just that last night … sitting on a chair beside my open window … with soft music in the background, I couldn’t hold the twin tears that fell from my eyes. I just let them slowly roll down my cheeks unto my chin. I didn’t bother wiping them … letting the humid Qatari air do me the favor.

 As I was about to slide the window shut, I closed my eyes, threw the unlit cigarette out unto the parapet below and brought the blue teddy bear to my lips and whispered … “I miss you every day, son” … a lonely kiss goodnight to my son so many, many miles away.

... z ...

Posted by tuliro at 02:52 PM | 1 comments

A Breath of Hope

I had a meeting a couple of days ago … in a café at the airport. The meeting was set at 5 o’clock in the afternoon and I was running late. The gentleman I was supposed to meet called me two times just to confirm that I was indeed, on my way. As usual … the traffic was horrendous and I had to calm myself from just breaking out into the street and sprinting the remaining kilometer to the airport. I just had to close my eyes and tell myself that I was fine.

 Decisions are more difficult to make when you are aware that the repercussions are ultimately life-changing. There is likewise no bigger threat when the consequences will not only affect you, but those very dear to you as well.

 Although I knew that the result of this meeting was at best, tentative and unsure, I have taken this first step … a leap of faith.

 See, I feel that my feet have grazed the surreal surface of corporate hell and I have no intention of letting the demons that hold it in thrall pull me down with them. I am unmotivated, upset and most of all … tired. In my long years of working, I have never been tired … it both surprises and distresses me that I feel this way. I am not as young as I used to be and I do not want to spend the peak years of my career feeling this way.

 This meeting was a breath of hope … a light at the end of this long dark tunnel that I have traversed for five months. I will make the decision when the time comes … there is no alternative.

 Insha’Alla  … all will be well …

... z ...

Posted by tuliro at 01:03 PM | 1 comments

The Mathematics of My Life

One, two, three, four …

Math plays a significant role in my life as it inspires me to believe in truth, for what can be more absolute and sincere than the knowledge that one and one is two? Forget the apathetic incongruous clichés that two become one or that one man and a woman equals three (including the baby).

One, two, three, four … the basic arithmetic progression of numbers where a number succeeds another by a factor of one … unity, followed by the war between good and evil, then by the triangle characterized as peace after war and finally, the quaternary symbolizing totality … the perfect 10.

I was distracted … protracting the trivial experience expounding it into something traumatic and unbearable … looking too closely at each individual  cells and not appreciating the wonder as a whole. I lingered … in man’s desperate race towards perfection, I have inadvertently been sidetracked by emotion and contemplation … to peevishly lash at the breeze that blows the wrong way. The unpardonable sin of asking the perpetual query of the desperate, “…why me?” has decimated my logic and placed misery in its place …

There is a finite and explicit sequence of events in my life, as there may also be in yours, my reader. Some just stay too long in number two … and forget that the triad, or number three follows, before we reach the self-perceived flawlessness of our existence.

One, two, three, four …

… z …

Posted by tuliro at 01:36 PM | 3 comments