Spending Christmas Eve at Nengkoy’s place has always been festive, cheery and hilarious. My general feeling every Christmas Eve at Nengkoy’s is like that of sailing into the supermoon with my family or it’s the feeling of being the biggest doll among all dolls in the babushka doll. Everyone’s positive energy resonates which gives light to what a happy Christmas should be.
Celebrating the holidays has made my family even closer together. And I will never exchange for anything the time I would get to spend Christmas Eve at Nengkoy’s place.
Nengkoy has a new look, particularly the header. It is sourced and adapted from the cool calligraphy by http://howyouare.com/calligraphy which I found in Facebook.
Me and my elder sister Gaying believes that there is a direct and positive correlation between the way a person looks and the number of flyers that person receives every time he or she is in a mall. We believe the more affluent-looking or rich-looking you are, the more flyers will be handed to you by Flyer Ladies and Flysheet Dudes inside a mall.
That is why when I and my elder sister Gaying would be together inside a mall for some shopping, we have some sort of a small competition. We would tally how many flyers would be handed over to each of us. The person who receives the most number of flyers at the end of shopping wins.
Scoring would actually depend on the type of flyer given to us. If the flyer would be about a luxury car, a posh condo unit or a high-born club membership that would mean high points. But if the flyer is about a missing pet, a launching of a new soy sauce brand or would be about a dishwashing liquid that would definitely trigger hilarious pang-aapi (verbal oppression) and riotous heckling towards the person who received it.
me and ate gaying love osaka!
And since it’s my Ate Gaying’s birthday today and though we did not go shopping today, let me concede and declare that today even without any flyer (just for today though) that she looks richer and more high-heeled than I am.
Sige dahil bertday mo, mas mukha kang mayaman ngayong araw kesa sa kin. Happy Birthday Ate!
Based on genetics, half of the reason why I look so delicious is because of Nengkoy (my mother). So if you hate the way I look, don’t blame me. Blame my mother for giving me such a stunning set of RNA components and eye-catching DNA segments.
Though I am still a work in progress, I consider myself to be a mature, open-minded and caring human being. But if you dislike me, don’t blame me. Blame my mother because a big chunk of what I am today is the rearing that she gave me.
But if you like me (or at least don’t hate me that much), then let me thank my lovely mother. Seriously, without Nengkoy, I’d probably be in some stinky gutter somewhere.
nengkoy 2015
Thank you Nengkoy for being such a beautiful human being. And thank you for always thinking about me even though it sometimes makes you go bonkers and so loony. Hahaha!
Being a 100% Filipino living all throughout my delicious life in the hot tropics of Metro Manila, my DNA for sure is not coded for winter season and much worse for a winter sport. But with my exceptional passion and spirit to be acquainted with these uncommon affairs, I built up enough guts to master what needs to be mastered about winter and its associated sport.
enjoying the cold with nengkoy and erika
with dr. william smith scott at sapporo hitsujigaoka observatory hill
my dear sister on a fine powdery snow…
my three japan-based “pamangkins”
That is why while I was in Sapporo in Hokkaido, Japan, the host of the 1972 Winter Olympics, I took the opportunity to try and pursue the sport of skiing. And true enough, I easily mastered the art of sliding down the snowy slopes of Sapporo.
Just watch the short video below on how I did the various skiing maneuvers. From the Iron Cross, to 540 turn, to the Daffy aerial trick, to the Lincoln Loop and of course the Back Flip aerial maneuver. Given another 2 days, I believe I can win the world cup in both slalom and downhill categories.
But seriously, I think skiing is an extremely difficult winter sport that demands great physical stamina and skill. I actually fell four times while doing a single round of the snow-filled Ishikari Plain at the Hitsujigaoka Observation Hill.
I also learned that falling with the ski on is much easier than standing up from it. It took less than a second to plunge down on my butt but took me more than a minute to stand up and regain my balance. I was not embarrassed though because the few people who were also skiing for the first time were also slipping and tumbling like tired toy soldiers.
And guess what? Right after I finished what seem to be an endless round of skiing, I was sweating so profusely I was craving for a strawberry ice cream! It was never in my wildest dream to ski, but the experience is truly one for the books.
Now that 2014 is now officially a memory, my first 2015 out of town adventure is appropriately significant for it is with no other than Nengkoy. Along with a few members of our family, we decided to have a two-week holiday to our family’s favorite country (next to the Philippines, of course) Japan.
hokkaido adventure starts now!
This adventure will actually be our first sub-zero winter season adventure. Being inhabitants of a tropical country with abundant vitamin D, we actually do not know what to expect. What we know is that this adventure would be a lot of cold and freezing exploits.
The mere thought of mountains of snow already makes me feel so icy! Hokkaido, here we come!
Icelandic legend has it that anyone not dressed with brand new clothes on Christmas Day would be devoured by the ferocious Yule Cat. Though my family is not from the Nordic country of Iceland, we do observe the tradition of wearing new clothes during the festive Christmas Day.
More than five years now, my family has kept a somewhat different variety of tradition in terms of wearing new clothes on Christmas. It is because we opt to be wearing the same design of clothing every year during Christmas Eve. Call if uniform, call it a costume or call it regalia but this tradition has kept us in a way to be more bonded as a family.
And every year, it takes weeks before the final color and design will be agreed upon. Knowing how liberal and outspoken each and every member of my family is, it comes not as a big surprise that there were lots of funny debates, hilarious deliberations and side-splitting discussions on how the style and design would look like.
A way of kicking the Yule Cat’s ass this year, my family opted for a vibrant baby pink color shirt with a somewhat retro chocolate brown design print. Here’s how it looks…
cool!
i love it!
Sino ba ‘yan Yul Kat na ‘yan? Pusang gala lang yata ‘yan!
Nengkoy and I would like to express – through the general parts of speech – our one of a kind 2014 Yuletide greetings and wishes to everyone!
Our wish is for you to possess your most wanted adjective, fulfill your most yearned verb, experience your dream adverb and express nothing but delightful interjections. Nengkoy and I both hope that all these shall be in conjunction with the fulfillment of your dream to be with your most desired noun and pronoun in whatever preposition you may be this Christmas Season.
Before Nengkoy and a bunch of her grandchildren headed to Davao (a southern city province of the Philippines) for a short vacay, I and my elder sister particularly told our adventuresome nephews and nieces not to subject their Lola (grandmother) to any hell raising thrill ride that they plan to take during this journey.
This specific order was put in place because every time Nengkoy and her grandchildren convene outside of Metro Manila they would often go for some adrenaline-infused adventure. One particular exploit was when they went through some limestone caves in Palawan then capped it with a 330-meter zip-line ride. Nengkoy then was already 74 years old.
And as expected, my adventuresome nephews, nieces and Nengkoy defied such orders. Nengkoy now 77 years old further pushed the envelope when she conquered the white water rapids of the Davao river. According to my nephews and nieces, Nengkoy was the oldest female rider who did the water rafting for this particular route. And the oldest male rider is actually 3 months older than her!
Here’s one of those many scary obstacles during their adventure…
Nengkoy is the one who refuse to raise her paddle after the challenge!! Hahaha!
stars of beauty in a bottle: angeline, angelica and assunta (photo grabbed from starcinema.abs-cbn.com website)
Perceiving the unseen world of angels, ghosts or elements from a different plane and dimension is not my sixth sense. It is because what I consider as my sixth sense is my sense of humor.
And this has recently been sharpened and utilized when I recently laughed so hard inside a cinema. It is because of the Tagalog/Filipino movie Beauty In A Bottle that stars Angelica Panganiban, Assunta De Rossi and Angeline Quinto which I, Nengkoy and thirteen other members of my family watched.
Beauty In A Bottle is the type of movie that you would not mind in the end if it was good or bad. But what matters most was the spending of considerable amount of time having a good laughing spell.
The movie flutters basically about the old principles of ‘inner beauty’ and ‘self-esteem’ hilariously being paralleled to having smooth skin, young age, desirable diction and attractive body. I don’t remember when was the last time I laughed this hard on a Tagalog/Filipino movie. It was a riot! It was so funny I was having pits of persistent laughter even by simply seeing the movie’s video loop ads when we were already out of the movie theater.
But if I deeply assess what the movie waves about, maybe the reason why my sixth sense had a good workout is because I can relate. The very same hardships that the main characters in the movie are having trouble about – the rekindling of “the young and beautiful you” – are the very same troubles that I have been irrationally minding about. The theme is so close to my being! I was like laughing at my own reflection!
Laugh at yourself! Hone your sixth sense! See Beauty In A Bottle!
Spending Christmas Eve at Nengkoy’s place has always been festive, cheery and hilarious. My general feeling every Christmas Eve at Nengkoy’s is like that of sailing into the supermoon with my family or it’s the feeling of being the biggest doll among all dolls in the babushka doll. Everyone’s positive energy resonates which gives light to what a happy Christmas should be.
Nengkoy 