Ouch

Note to self: If you've only gone running four times in your entire life (1. When you had to run the 50-yard dash for a grade school PE class, 2. When your freshman gym class was made to run six times around the U.P. track oval without a break and you were silently wishing, while you felt your heart burning a hole through your chest, that the teacher would shrivel up and die, 3. When, instead of playing some less-agitating badminton, your friends had the bright idea of taking a run around Camp Karingal, and while you felt your heart burning a hole through your chest you wished that they and the rest of the world would shrivel up and die, and 4. When you very recently went for that 6AM jog along the beach at Pueblo por la Playa), jogging (technically, "jalking", jogging (20%) and walking (80%)) twice around the U.P. oval on a Sunday morning with your more experienced sister will most certainly end up in muscle pain.

Omega Pain Killer has been my good friend since Monday morning. My calves and my ankles are as stiff as plywood, and I reek of liniment. The only comfortable way to walk is to drag both feet across the floor. I am in pain but I am masochistically enjoying it. I've agreed to go jalking again next Sunday with the more experienced sister who runs in head-to-toe Adidas, and to seal my commitment I have purchased a better pair of shorts and acquired a free and barely used Clima-lite top from cousin Yami-chan (yasashii ne! domo arigato!). Ever since I took that morning jog at the beach last month (I honestly only did it because I wanted to break in my new Nikes), I've been thinking about running. I hated running before, but now I'm starting to kind of like it. Go figure. It might be the MTV effect of having music playing into my ear from an i-Pod while my feet are pounding on the pavement. It might be because I feel this urgency to find every possible way to defy ageing and stay in shape before I turn forty.

Even if it might mean that I'll have to take a bath in liniment, even if my ankles and calves might feel like cement, come Sunday I will go running with the Adidas-clad sister again, and I won't be content with just two circuits around the Oval. I'll do three, and I promise I won't regret it.

He's 38 and he still looks fabulous. If he can do it, so can I.

Beach Bum

It was my mother's 69th birthday last Sunday. We would have taken her out for a spa party and a nice dinner, but she had made arrangements to show her old med school classmates the Bantigue beach-front property, as well as the fully-developed resort right next to it called Pueblo por la Playa for an upcoming reunion. So we got my mom to agree to stay overnight at the Pueblo, and ended up tagging along with the oldies on their road trip.

It takes about three and a half hours to drive from Manila to Lucena, but even with the ever-reliable Mang Nes at the wheel, it felt like forever in the silly green Crosswind that was in desperate need of a new set of shock absorbers. Try riding a bucking horse for three and a half hours, see if you don't feel like your insides have been through the blender.

My mother rode in the lead car with her classmates and they went straight on to Bantigue; the rest of us in the bucking bronco were assigned grunt duty: pick up the food at Lola's house. My grandmother has been bedridden since 2000, and has lived with my mother since then, but her house in the Lucena town proper still stands, and is under the care of Mang Nes and his wife, Ate Rosie. Whenever we dream up weekend outings like this, it's always Ate Rosie we call for the food preparations.

When we arrived at Lola's house, I went upstairs to see whether it had changed much since I last saw it. I lived there for three years beginning 1997. Except for some furniture that might have switched places, it still looks the same, from the TV nook with the ancient Carlos family portrait hanging above it, down to my grandmother's showcase filled with dolls -- most of them collected over the years from her trips overseas, and the rest given by her grandchildren.

We had to wait a little while longer for the food to get stowed properly into the boot, so to pass the time I bought half a dozen buns from the bakery located at the corner of the house. I used to love these buns when I was a kid and I wanted to find out whether they would taste the same now that I'm six times older. They're half-moon shaped bread with red filling in the middle; properly called "kalihim" (secretary), but I can never seem to remember it, and it's the unofficial monicker (taught to me by a colorful college friend) that sticks to my brain like cancer: "pan de regla". Loosely translated as (eek) "menstruation bread"

So... where was I? The food! Well, it was all finally loaded into the car, and we drove off for Bantigue. First a short stopover at the CDLI office to drop off Mang Nes, and then my sister took over the wheel, with a firm reminder from Mang Nes to drive slowly when she gets to the sloping driveway of the Bantigue property, or risk spilling our precious cargo of soup for the prawn sinigang. My sister took it way too seriously and drove rather too slowly the entire way. On top of that, she missed the turn to Bantigue and had to take a u-turn, just nearly kissing the headlights of a giant truck. Slow slow slow slow. The winding road that is Barangay Bantigue seems longer when the driver doesn't want to get killed around the next bend, but when we finally passed the gates of the property, it was like the amen after a dull homily.

The last time I was here was six years ago, when I brought four friends over for a weekend, but it's the same as I remember it. The city flies out of your mind as soon as you see the water.

The food was given the last touches in the kitchen, slabs of pork and a giant fish were cooked on the outdoor grill, my mother's siblings, their spouses and some of our cousins came over, and each of us ate enough lunch to choke a horse.

We had the pleasure of meeting three interesting animals on the beach that day: Ashley, Barnard and Marie's chihuahua, which is really so small you actually can stuff it into a bag; a fluffy white cat with a yellow tail and a yellow patch (he ran away when I first tried to make friends, but I caught him sleeping under the cabana and it turns out he just likes to play hard-to-get), christened 'Takuya' by yours truly; and last comes Doglas, the faux-Dalmatian with the big sad eyes (stupidly, I forgot to take his picture).

My mother's classmates made their way back to Manila late in the afternoon, and the relatives went home. The rest of us - watashi, my mom, my sister, brother-in-law Chris and nephew Jakob, jumped over to the fancy-shmancy resort next door. In a place like Pueblo por la Playa, you can only get in if you are endorsed by a member of the club (domo arigato, Tiya Mila!). While the casita rates are pretty reasonable (3500 daily for a place that can sleep five comfortably), the food prices are a little prohibitive (bringing food from outside the resort is not allowed). Moreover, unless the member's right there to sign all your charge slips, an automatic 12% gets slapped onto your bill. But in spite of the fact that this vacation was burning holes into our pockets (I was paying for the casita, my sister and Chris were springing for the food), every minute was worth every cent.

Soon after we were given our red guest identification bracelets and the keys to house 4-A, we got into our suits and jumped into the pool. The one closer to the beach is meant for kids and is barely three feet deep, but I like hanging out with the nephew, so I stuck around and tried to teach him how to use a kickboard. Gave him a proper demo too, but you know how it is with artists; they like to do their own thing. To this kid, one kickboard makes a frisbee, and two kickboards make a pair of wings.

We had dinner that night at the Oaxaca Cafe. So-so. My Salpicao was a bit on the tough side, and the Pizza Margherita crust was much to thin as to be floppy. In the menu, their description for the Burger Steak reads: "Beef patty grilled to your likeness..." (hahaha *snort*). I wish I had ordered it; now I'll never know what I would look like if I were a hamburger.

Though I was paying through the nose for the casita rental, I was not given the privilege of choosing where I would sleep. My sister and her husband commandeered the bed on the TV side of the room so they could watch 'Mutiny on the Bounty' (Marlon Brando waaaaay before he got extremely porky). I was to share the queensize bed with my mother and my nephew on the nothing-there-but-the-bed side of the room.

I wasn't sleepy yet, so I went out on the terrace and sat in the hammock with my phone and journal. Just to annoy my friends (who were all stuck in the city) I sent them this message: "Ah this is nice. Sea wind coming in from the beach as I lie in a hammock on the terrace. All I need now is Kimura Takuya." (If by some miracle he did blunder by? Spider trap!!! I'd twist him up in the hammock like a helpless fly. Aw, come to meeeeeee Takuyaaaaaaaa.)

I went to bed around 11PM, but I didn't get much sleep. My nephew, as it turns out, is a

mumbler, squealer, blanket-grabber, and nocturnal kicker. At least eight times during the night

I got kicked in various areas of my backside, and at least two landed on my spine. I gave up

trying to sleep when the clock struck 6AM, and within the next fifteen minutes I was out the

door. I went for a run along the beach, with a camera in my pocket, and j-pop playing on my

iPod.

The rest of the family wandered down to the beach thirty minutes later, and after a few snapshots we made our way to the Oaxaca for breakfast. If dinner did not impress me, breakfast certainly did. The free continental breakfast (for two) was very good, the coffee was strong and kept hot in a thermos, and the pancakes I ordered were light and fluffy. My mother's fruit platter was fresh, and the nephew's strawberry waffle was loaded.

After breakfast, there was time left for another swim before the noontime checkout. I stayed in the water as long as I could, soaking in the coolness, worshipping the sun, hoping to turn a little brown before the city claimed us all again.

I came down with the flu the evening after we returned to Quezon City. Maybe I had way too much fun that it blew up my system. But if I had known that I would catch a bug on this trip and get laid up for almost a week, I still would have jumped into the silly green bucking Crosswind and taken my chances.

Umi ga daisuki desu.

I love the beach!

Takufever

Kimura Takuya as Halu Satonaka in the television dorama 'Pride'. Even if this man were to shoot a hockey puck straight to the center of my forehead, I'd still go out with him.

('Maybe.')

('Must be!')

*SIGH*