MAXI had her Recognition Day this morning. It was the prelude to her Prep Graduation Day for tomorrow, and an event to distribute academic and special awards including those in Kinder and Nursery.
One thing I like about the school is that it is very generous about giving away medals. They have an award for just about every pupil for being just about anything.
But before we go there, let me first cite that this year's awardee for the Perfect Attendance didn't make it. On the day his school was to commend him for being there all the time, he chose to be absent. Later the teacher said the poor pupil is downed by chicken pox.
Maxi is very smart and very pretty so I don't really feel bad if others received multiple medals for both academics and special abilities. This year, she didn't make it to the top 10 honors but she nevertheless went home with the Most Disciplined medal.
I was the designated parent on the stage, and when I accompanied Maxi up there with the school officials and bestowed the medal on her neck, I was as proud as the next parent whose kid ran away with the Best in Math, Best in Science, Best in Computer, Best on Language, Best in GMRC, Best on MAPE all at the same time, on top of the honor roll.
I wasn't an excellent student myself back then. I only barged into the Top 10 in Grade 3. My teachers just gave us ribbons for the feat. My first ribbon was in Grade 2 when my teacher deemed me as the ``Best Storyteller'' of the class.
In high school the only medal I got was in CAT class for Best in General Information. Later a buddy who was a high-ranking CAT officer revealed that they just happened to have a spare medal to give away and they thought of bestowing it to the cadet who knows trivia more than anybody else. See, even then it pays to have friends in the high places.
Back to this morning's rites, I noticed that Maxi's teachers appeared to have run out of things to name their awards. One boy received Most Generous award. What would a six-year-old boy do to earn that? He gives away his crayons and shares his lunch?
Another won Most Active. Yet another bagged Most Patient. Am a parent myself and I could very well testify that kids at that age are always active and are never patient. While at it, they might as well give away awards for the student who has best shown Dignity, or Integrity, or Courage.
But the morning ended on a sad note for me. Because I lost the Parent of the Year award for the third straight year.
It was given to a mother who the Principal said was there to pick up her kid everyday, sometimes even braving noontime sun ``without an umbrella.'' She, according to the Principal, was also very active in voicing out her opinions about the school and its policies. I had to disagree on both counts.
First I always bring umbrella when I pick up Maxi from school because I don't want her burned by the sun or soaked by rain. Later in the school year I even decided to avail of the school service, which should be more convenient for my daughter. That actions must earn big points in whatever criteria the school was using.
I also don't complain much about the school and its policies. Except now.
THE joke goes something like this: One lent, an old lady was praying the Station of the Cross. But for some reason she started it from the opposite end, when Jesus Christ was nailed to the Cross, and was thus going the wrong way.
And when somebody informed her that she got it all wrong, she quipped: ``So that's why Jesus gets stronger and stronger...''Of course He would. Because Jesus would have been up and about by the time the old lady reaches the last station.I first heard that joke from the great Joey de Leon many years ago, and just recently I heard him crack it once more in Eat Bulaga. I guess just like beaches and mangoes, that joke comes in season.Well the reason I used that as grabber is that we're again planning a long drive to Abra next week, Holy Week. I enjoy road trips with the family especially on the long, smooth country lanes of Ilocandia. But my chief concern is traffic.Based on our experience last year, travelling anywhere out of Metro Manila around that time is almost like doing the way of the cross in itself.Last year we left Marilao 6 a.m. of Maundy Thursday and arrived in Tayum 6 p.m. We caught the tail-end of the gridlock near Sta. Ines exit and plodded from then on. We hit Luisita in Tarlac where we had breakfast at 9:20 a.m. after only covering 95 kilometers!The whole stretch of Tarlac was by then the traffic ground zero. We only reached Rosario, La Union (where all Baguio-goers stop) at 1:20 p.m. There we had quick lunch and freshened up. By then we had travelled 191 km. After one hour and 10 minutes we refueled at a small gas station in Bangar, La Union's last town going to Ilocos Sur.We were already logging on 357 kms on our mileage when we came to Narvacan Junction at 5:15 p.m., which offered a fork to the right if you're heading Bangued and left if you're going to Vigan. But just when I thought it would only be a few minutes to go, it took us another 30 kms and 45 minutes to finally reach Tayum.On the way back home, we took off 3 p.m. Easter Sunday and made it home 3 a.m. the following day.The drive back home was even rougher because everybody was asleep. We took many layovers to recharge and keep awake, including one last time in a gas station along NLEX where I had a coke and a chocolate bar. I also did some stretching while the wife and kids were in dreamland. But the eyes couldn't stay open and my thoughts wandered. So I had to take the slow lane all the way and not make unnecesary risk.
It was like taking the penance for all the sins I have committed the whole year.
THERE'S one reason efforts to oust President Arroyo from her post won't succeed: Jun Lozada totally lacks convincing power.
He's not the type of person that would compel people like me to march in the streets or at least join noise barrage by blowing my horn when I happen to pass by them.
He may be telling the truth but I don't think he's the right guy for the opposition to get people rally behind him. Political/religious rallies just won't push GMA out of power for as long as they don't replace Lozada as their main man.
And I'm coming out with this stand based on the single reason that I don't like his face. I'm not talking about his sins which he readily admitted and asked forgiveness for -- right in the church pulpit, no less.
I anchor my statement on account of his face: He can't be trusted.
Now I have a strong credentials to lay claim of this talent that I posses. I can predict, almost 100 percent of the time, if a person is nice just by the look of his/her face.
It's not something I learn over the years like writing, but it's something that has been with me ever since. I can always tell if a person is up to something good or bad by observing the way he moves his eyes, shakes his head, open his mouth. I don't even have to hear a person speak to make an educated guess of his/her personality.
Now back to Lozada.
He has an unsure, half-smile, half-grin of a small-time crook caught red-handed. It was as if he's always trying to charm his way around people, especially those in the Senate who are all obviously so eager to accept whatever dirt he has on the President.
When he's not having the senate hearing floor but the camera is focused on him, look at how he conducts himself. He moistens his lips and gives everybody a shy look. I bet he never does that when he's all by himself, or at least when he's surrounded by house help or his employees.
Then he cries. Without tears. The kind of crying Willie Revillame did when he was You Tubed cheating on his game show.
What's strange is that when he laughs, he suddenly turns into a different person. Especially when he cracks self-deprecating jokes meant to endear himself with the crowd. That just won't work with me.
His eyebrows would always droop on the sides of face whenever he talks, which gives the impression that he's helpless and thereby in need of sympathy.
I don't care if what he's telling is gospel truth regarding the ZTE-NBN deal but from what I'm reading -- and I'm very good at it -- his face speaks of treachery. Tusong matsing.
Fortunately, it appears like many people read faces as excellent as I do.
VANGIE had the virus more than a week ago, which was about the same time Maxi had – or so we thought.
Turned out Maxi's flu-like symptoms metamorphed into pneumonia which explained why the cough didn't subside. But that's leaping ahead of the story. Mavi, over the past four days, got high fever and also wasn't able to go to school.
So last Saturday we headed to the hospital confident with the thought they would just be given antibiotic prescriptions. Traffic was unspeakable at Edsa and we lost almost an hour on the road which I could have utilized writing a story, and Vangie attending a meeting with her comebacking boss.
Vangie has slipped to the office by the time the doctor saw the girls. The doctor, admitting she's on a hurry to catch her own kid's school program, didn't like the way Mavi looked. ``She looks sick, I might need to admit her,'' the doctor said.
Shen then ordered complete blood tests for both Mavi and Maxi. Urinalysis for Mavi and X-ray for Maxi – procedures to be done in different corners of Makati Med.
The frenetic shifting from the doctor's clinic to the health card to the pathologist lab and x-ray lab and back would have been a breeze if not for the fact that I was tagging along two sick girls. It was already past 4 p.m. and we haven't had lunch after getting stuck in traffic. I was thinking the girls may have been more hungry than sick.
But what the results said floored me. I didn't understand Mavi's blood test results but her white blood cells exceeded the usual (signs of infection, doctors would later explain). Maxi, on the other hand, had something in her chest x-ray which prompted a resident from the radiology dept. to ask me if she ever had contact with somebody who had tuberculosis.
We brought the results to the pedia's clinic only to be referred to the emergency dept., because the girls, they said, just might need confinement. I was by then burning the texting lines to update Vangie.
At the ER doctors were questioning me about the two of them all at the same time.
``When did Mavi's fever begin?''
Thursday
``Did Maxi's cough and colds come with high fever? What's the highest?''
It came with all three symptoms. The highest was 38.5 degrees
``Which one is Mavi?
The one with the pink sweater
``Are they twins?''
No.
Emergency doctors next told me they will consult the girls' pedia and fill her in with the lab results. There was trouble at the Makati Med ER that time because shooting victims were rolled in and there were police officers at the looby. I would usually inquire about it but under the circumstances I let it slide.
Then Vangie came. Her boss still wasn't in so she left a word (later in the evening the office called to say the meeting was reset for the next Monday). Good thing she brought food, it was almost 7 p.m. by then, I wasn't able to leave the girls to buy anything and there was not even a vendo machine nearby.
The ER resident then approached us. We had two options, we could have the Mavi and Maxi admitted and take medications through IV. But since they saw the girls eat and concluded that they never lost their appetite, we could choose to take them home with prescriptions medicines to be taken orally.
We chose to go home. But it didn't go smoothly.
Back home, Maxi threw up the first two times she took her medicine. Mavi thrice, one after another. So all in all I mopped the floor five times before I threatened to drive them back to the hospital and get doctors to prick big needles into their veins.
MOST LOCAL food experts point to one reason Filipino dish just fail to break into the international cuisine radar screen.
Our food generally lacked color, they said.
Vangie, who happens to be one of the best food writers in the country, explained that to me bite-sized.
Adobo is plain brown. Dinuguan is all black. All dishes with coconut milk white or off-white. Sinigang looked just like stock or broth. Even sidewalk barbecue looked like burned meat.
They just don't have the prettiness of French dishes, or the blush of Vietnamese or Thai cuisine. Taste, ironically, is not the only factor when it comes to food. Maybe that's why presentation weighed heavily in Iron Chef decisions.
I thought about it after I tried to salvage a failed attempt to cook a dish my mother suggested – chicken-pork-squid adobo.
Just because I whipped a chicken-pork adobo which Maxi raved about, I thought that gave me all-access pass to adobo country.
Well the long arms of the law quickly caught me and deported me back to reality last week.
The main problem turned out to be the extra ingredient I tossed – rather carelessly – in what I believed to be tried and tested formula.
There was too much ink than I initially considered.
It spoiled the rich chicken-liver taste because even if the pork was tender and chicken peeled from its fibers, the murky black sauce just don't appeal to the palate of my little girls. Ewwww!
That was for lunch. And since I knew they won't be as nice when they saw the same disgusting thing by dinner, I did some major renovations. I poured all the sauce to the sink and then fried the grimy meat on fresh cooking oil.
And then I started adobo all over again.
