theloveblug

Missing Cardinal Sin

2011-09-07T21:52:00.000-07:00

By Archbishop Socrates B. Villegas
August 31, 2011

Do you still care to remember Jaime Cardinal Sin? He passed away only six years ago. How time flies! How fast we forget! He would have been eighty three years old today. I wonder if people still remember. As for me, how can I forget? I will always remember and I still miss him.

Cardinal Sin had something to say about almost everything happening to the Church and Philippine society. He did not have to go to Luneta to be heard. Even if he whispered to the wall, society somehow caught his opinion, media was swift to publish and gossipers were quick to exaggerate.

I lived with him as his secretary for eighteen years. I lived with him longer than I lived with my own parents. He taught me. He guided me. He allowed me to care for him. I knew he cared for me as much as he cared for the millions who belonged to his flock. He knew the meaning of living a dangerous life. He knew the meaning of being ready to die to protect his beloved.

What would Cardinal Sin tell us about what is going on the country now? What would Cardinal Sin do about the situation of the Church and government now? Only Cardinal Sin can answer for Cardinal Sin and only Cardinal Sin can answer like Cardinal Sin.

As I remember him and as I knew him, I offer these conjectures of a nostalgic former secretary.

I close my eyes and imagine him in the car on our way to an engagement. I imagine him say: The real battle about the reproductive health bill is not with the legislature where the debates are ongoing and where the voting will be done. The real person to wrestle with is not the President who has sadly called the bill a priority bill. The real battle is in the minds and hearts of our youth. The youth are being misled by wrong teachings. The youth are like parched dry sponge. In their thirst, they absorb all and retain them regardless of the purity of source. I pity our youth. The Church cannot impose its right and authority in this highly pluralistic society. It must be willing to join the arena of public opinion, use new methods and approaches and even jejemon vocabulary to make the message of God convincing. It is not the duty of churchmen to lobby in government offices. Our duty is to teach Christ and only Christ. Our duty is to form people’s minds and prick consciences and let those formed consciences speak up in the plaza of public opinion. This is lay empowerment. This is youth empowerment. This is the church of the people not the church of bishops.

There is a problem deeper than the anti life and anti family bills in the legislature. The blasphemous art exhibits point to a deeper and more alarming issue. The irreverent calumny thrown at religious leaders are symptoms of deeper problems. It is due to the wrong understanding of freedom and the misplaced primacy that is laid on conscience.

After EDSA 1986, we all discovered a fresh breeze of freedom in the air. Lost liberties were restored and the freedom to express was held in high esteem. Freedom is indeed a noble human right and a sublime aspiration but it not unlimited. Freedom since EDSA 1986 has been abused, terribly abused. Freedom is not absolute. The limit of freedom is love. The exercise of freedom must make us more loving. If the use of freedom violates the freedom of another, it is licentiousness; it fails to love. That freedom is lewd and obscene.

There is no absolute freedom. Freedom has limits. Its limit is truth. When freedom violates or assails truth, it can no longer be called freedom. It is debauchery and brute arrogance.

Freedom must respect the law. Freedom without respect for law is anarchy. Laws do not restrict freedom. Laws help us to live in order. When life is orderly, freedom is also safeguarded.

Our countrymen who declare themselves Catholics because they attend Catholic liturgies but disregard the commandments of God and the precepts of the Church are gravely in error. To be a Catholic, it is not enough to pray the Catholic prayers. To say you are a Catholic, you must also live as a Catholic. It is not enough to act according to conscience. Before listening to that conscience, we must first insure that the conscience is sensitive to the laws of God. Conscience is not the ultimate tribunal. The Truth that God has taught us is the highest tribunal. That Truth is in the bible. That Truth is handed to us in the teachings of the Church.

How I miss Cardinal Sin! He taught me to cherish freedom but he also warned me not to raise it to a value more than it deserves. Freedom is one of the great gifts of God to men but the greatest gift is love. Use your freedom to be more loving because “the greatest is love”. Aim for the greatest. Freedom must recognize unchanging truths. Freedom must not enchain truth. Truth is the mother of freedom and it is the height of ingratitude to enslave your mother, isn’t it?

He taught me: Follow your conscience when it speaks but make sure the ears of that conscience are ever attuned to God. When a deaf conscience speaks, ignore that voice. That is the voice of error. Knowing what is right and what is wrong is not inborn. Conscience must be formed and molded unto Christ. The duty of conscience is to listen to its God so that it may be credible when it speaks.

The legacy of Cardinal Sin is freedom. Let us understand freedom in depth. The love of Cardinal Sin was the youth and children. He taught them well. I will honor him by loving those he loved and living as he lived and believing in what he stood for.

Falling

2011-01-19T01:23:00.000-08:00

They make it seem like such an easy thing, finding love and falling in love. On tv everyone's just tripping all over themselves high in love, thundering with passion and twisting in desire. In books, songs, pictures, and everywhere you turn people are caught up in the business of loving.

Lies.

It isn't that easy finding love. Not at all easy, actually. Attraction, yes. Maybe. But, action and follow through are quite entirely different things.

I have searched for love. I have knocked politely at its doors, then banged and kicked, rung the bell and clawed at its walls. Love remains hidden from me. Changing costumes, rewriting lines, changing views and even breaking the rules proved useless for me. And all this unfruitful search has now led me to ask am I disabled in some way? Suffering from some rare but vicious form of love impairment that somehow makes me repulsive to love? Have I been blind all this time and not have known about it? Have I been going the wrong way or doing the wrong things?

And how long shall my search last? How long til it's time to give up? Will love find me when I finally stop moving, stop feeling? Because I am still human, though accursed. I shall soon wear out from trying and falling and failing, without being able to stop myself from continuing to try and fall and (hopefully not) and fail.

Chapter 11

2010-01-25T05:51:00.001-08:00

"Time goes on, and your life is still there, and you have to live it. After a while you remember the good things more often than the bad. Then, gradually, the empty silent parts of you fill up with the sounds of talking and laughter again, and the jagged edges of sadness are softened by memories.

Nothing will be the same, ever...But there's a whole world waiting, still, and there are good things in it.

It was September, and time to leave the little house that had begun to seem like home...

It is hard to give up the being together with someone...

Somewhere, for (Tatay), I thought suddenly, it would be summer still, summer always."

-Lois Lowry, A Summer To Die

A Summer To Die: An Open Letter to Lois Lowry

2010-01-14T16:16:00.000-08:00

Dear Ms. Lowry,

You don't know me. I am a third-grade Language Arts teacher from halfway around the world. I am a fan of yours, though I’ve only read four of your books: The Giver, Gooney Bird and the Room Mother, Gathering Blue, and most recently (just last night, actually) A Summer To Die.

Allow me to digress a bit and provide you with a short background of myself before I get to why I am writing to you now.

A number of tragedies hit me and my family last year, my dad passing away and floods inundating our home being the most heart-wrenching ones. I lost all my books in that flood. My students, with whom I shared my survival story, since then have been sharing their books for me to read. One has lent me your Gathering Blue and A Summer To Die. And I loved, love, both dearly. A Summer To Die especially. It wasn’t until I as in the middle of reading it that I realized it reminded me of my father.

My father was my best friend. I can’t get to the details of our relationship here because it would simply take up too much time and space, but it was a lot like Meg’s relationship with Will Banks combined with her relationship to Molly. He was also sick. He was diagnosed with diabetes in his forties and lived with it for nearly thirty years. He would be seventy-three now, if he lived.

The past couple of years, my dad went in and out of hospitals as his organs started bailing out on him, which was a consequence of his having diabetes. He started dialysis last 2008, which terrified him greatly, then had his worst attack last April. He spent nearly a week in the ICU while we slept on the cold, hard floor of the hospital waiting area. When he recovered, he gave us firm orders not to put him through that again. It must have been a million times more excruciating for him that for us who were just stuck watching helplessly, agonizingly. We knew that the end would come soon.

It did only a month after.

I wasn’t even there when he was rushed to a small hospital nearby (no big, ultra hi-tech hospitals for him anymore), which I didn’t really dwell on at that time. It didn’t really bother me at all because there were too many other things to think about then. Now, I realize it must’ve been God’s way of working things out. See, weeks before that my mother told me she couldn’t just stand by and follow my dad’s wish of not getting the best medical treatment there was to save whatever frail life was left in him. My mother said that if my dad wanted to be left in peace, she would have to stay out of the hospital. But in the end, she didn’t. Which was how it should be. Just the two of them. My mom stayed by my dad’s side ‘til the end.

My dad’s passing was a cheerful event for me, or so it seemed at that time. He was such a cheerful soul that literally moments after his death, I was left laughing with unexplained joy.
I did not grieve, for a long time. When I finally started to four months later in September, a super typhoon came and dumped the heaviest rainfall our country’s seen in decades. The ensuing floods swept away everything: our home, our car, all our belongings, our memories, everything. It was like a Divine Hand telling us to move on, don’t waste time holding on and grieving over a happy soul.

Now, we’ve all started over. We’ve left behind our old house with all the memories of my dad. Of course, we haven’t forgotten still. I just remember the happy times.

Reading your book, it touched my heart. Though starkly different in many ways, our stories have eerily similar circumstances, including the important fact that my dad died in May (which is summer in our country) and that we left our home, too (or rather, the flood drove us away), one September day like the Chalmers. I also felt a strong connection with Meg. Our attitudes and behavior are remarkably the same (yes, even at my present age) and interests, too. I was a good student with an eye for art. And I have always felt somewhat unpretty and slightly out of place wherever I go.

Ms. Lowry, of your four books that I read, A Summer To Die is not my favorite but it has struck me the deepest and will not be easy to forget. I will probably never read it again, but such are great books, I think, that are difficult to read (for one reason or another) and must only ever be read once. I wanted to write to you to share this all with you, though I’m not entirely sure now why. If it offers any enlightenment or consolation, another great book I’ve read but which I cannot read again is Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude. Have you read it? I read it a long time ago. The main character, Jose Arcadio Buendia, reminds me very much of my father.

Joy!

2010-01-01T02:32:00.000-08:00

Because I am HAPPY. And this song makes me HAPPY. It makes me want to JUMP!
This video is so HAPPY. It makes me HAPPY. I am HAPPY. Welcome 2010!

U-Turn

2009-09-06T20:18:00.000-07:00

So I'm not all that good at selling. Alright. I get it.

I don't know why I even decided to go that way when it's never been on my compass from the very beginning. A good advice I picked up sometime ago was to start with LOVE. With something you LOVE. And everything else should follow.

Damn. How could I have gotten so lost? And so with LOVE, I shall begin.

A few months ago, the greatest LOVE of my life gave me the greatest heartbreak I could ever ever receive. And he did it with so much LOVE, which made it even more heartbreakingly unbearable.

My father took to eternal rest with a smile on his face and nary the slightest bit of farewell to me.

He was my best friend. My hero. He was my prince charming on a broken down horse riding off into the sunset. He was my John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, and my Jimmy Stewart. He was my gossip monger, my broken record, and my corny punch line. My messy chef, my teddy bear, my #1 fan.

I have very few memories without my father. If jumped off a roof this instant and my life flashed before my eyes, his face would keep popping up in my head like an old nickelodeon movie.

I don't know how it happened, but somewhere along the way, my dad raised me. And he seemed to have done it so unintentionally, like he never planned it for him to be the one molding a precocious little spoiled princess. But he did. And with such seemless naturalness that before anybody noticed anything, I had turned into a mini version of him.

I read his books, listened to his music, and spoke his words. I argued in his voice, and wore his clothes. I performed his chores and visited his life. I walked in his stride and sat in his chair. I jumped to his conclusions and garnered all his faults. I believed everything he said and learned from his every move. I laughed his laugh, finished his crosswords, and took up his interests. I saw with his eyes, LOVED with his heart, and dreamed his dreams.

In the end, I never had to check if he was there. I didn't feel like I had to answer his questions. I didn't ask if he would, or if I would. I just knew.

By the time I had come to him that fateful day, he had already gone under the blanket of unconsciousness. He didn't even wait for me. He didn't really have to. I guess he knew, too.

We didn't have to.

He is in my heart. Where I don't have to ask, don't have to look. He's always just there, as naturally as he always did the things he did. As naturally as he LOVED me the way he did.

And I go by, without my other half. Without the big man in my life. And it feels like I lost my compass and I have to pick up the trail in the shifting sand. He was my anchor and I am adrift. And it isn't completely bad drifting to who-knows-where but it scares the bejeezes out of me.

Now I have to go right back and begin again. This time on my own. Because John Wayne is gone and he's never coming back. And there's a whole lot of world coming at me if I don't take the first step. That step, he taught me how to make, with a little jig and a little shake. Set and determined. It's that step I have to make. His step.

Love, Love, Love

2009-06-13T04:27:00.000-07:00

04 April 2007, Unsolicited
posted by Winnifred
http://plunkert.blog.friendster.com/

these past few days, i’ve been thinking a lot. and since i can’t seem to wrap my head around the thoughts i’ve been trying to contain, i’ve been singing a lot.

strange.

a friend reminded me a few days ago how it’s better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all. yeah. i used to think i agreed with that, until he asked me to look it in the nose and say it in one breath. i don’t believe in it. even though i really want to (i think), i can’t. i don’t know if i can BE wrong about something so invaluable. i don’t know if i’d be willing to "have loved and lost". love is too precious. and too abused. turned too tepid. been dealt with too callously. i don’t want to be another who would do that to SOMETHING that has been my life’s blood.

but i still am wanting love, perfect or no. just now needing someone to knock my head senseless to give me some sense.

what is love anyway? do i dare discuss? all the songs never really give you a good idea of what it is, no matter how good the melody. poetic words only seem to manifest its emotions, but not really its life. here’s what i found from deep inside my head where the barump-bump suddenly made sense:

love is a verb. it is something that does. strange. love is choice. an act of will.

one now begs to argue, is there still love when a person does something unwillingly? is the love true when there is no sincerity? yes. i would say yes.

it’s easy to just look at everything from the surface. i think that’s pretty much how we function as human beings. it would drive us nuts if we tried to figure out the essence of every action, every thought. but it doesn’t mean that we never do. what are we here for?

doing something unwillingly, without sincerity, can be love. if the reason was to act in love. else, why would you do something you would not want to do if it wasn’t out of intimidation, fear, invevitability? some would say ‘loved’ ones can be quite intimidating. loving is intimidating. if you love someone, you won’t have any choice but to do what is asked, even if unwillingly. and is that love? true love? true love. true, if it is done in love and nothing else. not in basic human need which can be quite similar, or even in basic human want. it can be quite complicated since love can turn into both. but it doesn’t have to be. true or no, is it love? yes. loving IS intimidating, because it means laying down one’s freedom for the sake of another. if you love someone, you will do what is asked because you forego other options for the sake of another, and that’s ALL that you see. you won’t have a choice simply because you CHOSE it to be so. you love. the action is without sincerity, but the choice to do such insincere action for the sake of another is real. you love.

we love what we know. and i mean, KNOW. through and through. of course. what we know, simply is not part of our existence. and those we care to stop knowing, we don’t love, or have lost love.

and here, my thoughts pour out, of the past few days i have sung. there is no greater love than this, that one should lay down his life for another. ideally, it wouldn’t matter if we KNEW the other, through and through. but we are too human to be ideal.

to those i love, i do what i do, i hope for reasons you would understand. but i cannot always guarantee that.

i do for love. i do in love.

i have fallen. but i have not lost. no one has ever lost me. take my hand and lead me away.

TV Dining

2009-05-02T00:54:00.000-07:00

I've never made a secret to anyone I know of how much of a couch potato I am. It's the curse of my generation to be brainwashed by the pulsing lights of the boob tube. In the recent decades, the tube's seen more than its fair share of reality and lifestyle that potatoes everywhere have dispersed to just about every deserted island in the world like modern day bikini-clad backpackers eating just about every disgusting thing, edible or otherwise, thinking they were simply invincible. Either that or they've suddenly developed an inner sense of style for just about anything from clothes and furniture, to greeting cards! Along with this upsurge of fantastical 'reality' and lifestyle (can you even imagine the offspring of these two?) sprung a new breed of shows on food. Cooking food, eating food, styling them, categorizing them, breaking them down and building them up, changing them, and everything else that you can think of that involves such gastronomy. And so, isn't it fitting to just now blog about them?

This is, by no means, the first among blogs to discuss the phenomena of food programming. But, in the interest of giving some guidance to festering potatoes out there feeding on a generally confusing grey slush of television hodgepodge, I've come to recommend a few of my favorite shows and hosts.

One of my earliest favorites was most definitely the irrepressible Mario Batali and his famous orange clogs. I was first introduced to Mario in his show Molto Mario. And the thing that really drew me to him and inevitably stopped my thumb from flipping the channel was how he cooked -- which was a lot like how most people cooked. He was messy, and noisy, and sweaty over the stove. He improvised, but at the same time, was quite incredibly aware of every single detail he did or didn't do and how it would affect the food. He spoke of what he knew, which is Italian, and told everybody a story. He made me fall in love with Italian food, I tell you.

And proceeding down the Italian way, how can I not mention Giada De Laurentiis? If the name sounds familiar, you're probably a movie freak. But I won't get into the history of her family anymore, so go do your own research about them.

I first saw Giada in Everyday Italian which is how it would look like if Mario was a woman. She'd be comfortable and casual, full of stories about Italy and Italian customs, but with a cleaner counter and a prettier and more svelte frame -- without the clunky orange clogs (although I'm only guessing this as Giada has never shown her feet on this show). She loved her food and loved eating it and sharing it with friends, and it made me want to break into the tube and eat along with them!

Both Italians have since become more successful and multiplied their shows.

As you can probably follow from the pattern, I generally enjoy relaxed, home-style cooking. Which is why I also enjoy Ina Garten. In her show, Barefoot Contessa, she reminds me so much of this great mother cooking up a storm in her cozy and crisp white kitchen for an entire army of relatives. Her style is never haughty or academic. Her approach to food is something like a mother hen to her little chicks. She cares for it and watches over it until it comes out of the fire a masterpiece. And, her food is always, always rich and delicious and utterly irresistable. Just watching is enough to satiate my hunger pangs. And she doesn't just cook in the 30 minutes of her show, she goes to the market, sets up the table and arranges a beautiful centerpiece as well.

But, if you weren't the classic mama's little boy but a guy's guy, Bobby Flay's right up your alley.

It took a while for me to warm up to Bobby. I wasn't the grill and barbeque type. He'd been doing the round of cooking shows already before he eventually grew on me on Iron Chef America. I'd been a fan of the original show from Japan, so I followed it to the other side of the world. Plus, Mario Batali was there, too. When Bobby kept on winning, I figured there must be something to this guy. Now I keep track of him in his new show Throwdown With Bobby Flay. When he cooks, he's straightforward, no frills, and never pulls any punches. Which is what makes him a guy's guy. Plus, he's pretty funny, too. And that's all just the tip of the iceberg. I haven't even gotten to the cooking contests yet.

These should be great to start with. For more good shows and good food, I suggest you follow the chef.

Love for the Half-Blood Prince

2009-04-18T04:50:00.000-07:00

Watch out for this, set to release on July 15.

Moment of Truth

2009-04-12T23:28:00.000-07:00

I am not good at this.

I actually know that. Knew that. But I had to insist. What's that they say about the meaning of insanity? Doing the same thing expecting different results, or something like that.

It isn't the first time I've tried to pawn off my 'talents' - if you even can call it that. I remember seventh-grade when we tried baking some brownies and selling them for a project. The brownies were bad, and we were even worse at selling them. My sister bought one out of pity for our group. In high school, a classmate offered to pay me if I'd do her Home Ec project for her. My starting price was fifty bucks, but it eventually rose to a couple of hundred as soon as word got around. But I wouldn't have started it in the first place had my classmate not shown me I could profit from it. I probably would've kept charging a measly fifty bucks for all my work. In college, we'd have these fund raising movie premiere nights where we had to sell at least two tickets each. I'd always end up buying one of them and selling off the other one for a tenth of the original price just to get it off my hands.

I'm lousy with selling. And this here, is another testament to that. I thought that talking about things that I love would make the whole thing easier, but it doesn't. Or maybe I just don't love them that much, or just that I don't really love that much.

In the following posts I hope to change the format of this here. I don't know what's to become of it but I do know that I want to keep it. I might continue talking about things I love. Maybe. We'll see. But I just can't keep on chugging out posts regularly like in a production line. I have to think about it, make sense, let it stew, before serving it to the general public. Until then, until when.

You Are What You Eat: How To Attract Buzz

2009-01-24T21:13:00.000-08:00

It's been said that the quickest way to get to a man's heart is through his stomach.

It's been said enough times that I don't really know why I've never taken advantage of that holy truth and started cooking up a stew storm the moment I caught awareness of the fascinating male species.

And so since I really was biding my time thinking that letting my pasty personality just hang would eventually attract notice from men, a friend, dear friend that she is, finally took pity on my "single" cause and bestowed me with a veritable love potion for the senses. A simple brown bottle of Hot Cocoa.

At first sight, I thought to myself, "Gad, this bottle's not nearly enough to last me a lonely, tired Friday." That was until a second look -- and a far longer one this time -- actually made me realize that I was holding in my hand a bottle of a long coveted Philosophy product, Double Rich Hot Cocoa Shampoo, Shower, and Bath Gel. Ooooooooooohh. I don't know why, but I honestly felt myself melting into my shorts. I couldn't wait to get absolutely dirty and run to the bathroom to slather myself with rich, luscious, double rich chocolate. It was complete decadence... I was at peace with myself, relishing my deliciousness. Gad, I wanted so much to lick the soap off my arm that I had to shake myself and remember that this was soap, you idiot. Unless you want to end up frothing over the mouth like a crazy, rabid dog you best remember FOR EXTERNAL USE ONLY. Even after the rinse off, my head was still heady and I couldn't stop from sniffing myself like an overgrown wet cat. I felt rich and sooo absolutely sexy...

Not wanting to give up that fantasy that -- yes, I AM SEXY, dammit -- I indulged myself with The Body Shop's luscious line of body butter. I've previously had the pleasure of using their Mango Butter which was, even then, creamy and exotic and fresh and tantalizing all at the same time. But to match my wonderful new hot cocoa dipped body, I had to look for something earthier and less fruity. Good thing The Body Shop covered an entire line of rich organic butter perfect to moisturize my dreadfully dry personality. They've now sixteen different butters. I found Shea Butter and Cocoa Butter for very dry skin a wonderfully scrumptious match to Philosophy's Double Rich Hot Cocoa Shampoo, Shower, and Bath Gel. But I'm betting that their Vanilla Spice and Warm Amber would be just as wonderful for all skin types. Wonderful! I can't stop saying wonderful.

For my hands, my hands my hands... That get into everything and deliver the world by my playful little fingertips, I let shimmer with Victoria's Secret Sweet Sugar Shimmer Lotion. And for a while it makes me truly believe that the world is a magical place.

And before stepping out into the wide, wide world where millions of fish are just swimming around in the sea waiting for bait I had to offer, I top all of my gooey richness with a few spritzes of Bath & Body Works Sensual Amber. It smells so good, kids started hanging around sniffing me like caramel candy. It was sweet and musky, better for warm weather to allow the scent to emanate, vibrating from the dark corners of myself. But if I wanted to be fresher, more French vanilla sweet innocence, I spray a little of Amorito Eau de Toilette.

All this effort, to inspire men to want to... Er, well... Buzz around me.

Hypocritical Oath: "I can't, so I did."

2009-01-10T19:53:00.000-08:00

I am Lingling and I am a coffee-holic.

I had my first sip back in sixth grade, but I've been sober now for about 4 weeks. It's a struggle, but I take it one day at a time.

It was great at first. The thrill of the holidays helped me forget about how much I missed my daily caffeine high. But as the holidays passed, there was nothing left to occupy my mind except the misery of shivering in the cold without a warm cup in my hands. I couldn't stand the shivers. I can't remember the last time my hands trembled for any reason other than caffeine-sloshed nerves.

In the kitchen, I tried mixing up a cup of hot chocolate to fool my nerves. It almost did. I guess I got too cocky. Stayed up a little bit too late. Woke up a little too early. Before I knew it, I was a disgruntled zombie. The caffeine-thirst was overpowering, yet I knew I couldn't succumb to it. The moment I do, there would be no looking back for me.

I was looking at an entire Saturday afternoon full of mind-work, groggy and caffeine-deprived. Worse, the only place to do my work in peace was in my favorite, obscure little coffee den where I used to get high. How am I to survive this?

My zombie feet led me instinctively to the coffee shop, to my dingy little spot under an umbrella. Before I knew it, I was facing the counter where the barista seemed to me like the devil in a dark brown apron and funny sun visor. Zombie that I was, I stood on the brink of falling off the damn wagon. There was only one thing I could do to save my soul from caffeine damnation. I ordered designer coffee. Short cafe mocha, to be exact.

Oh, the shame. Cafe mocha was safe. It was perky, and sweet, and chocolatey. It straddled the line between real coffee, in the form of espresso, and pop cocoa. It was a sell out, for those who weren't man enough to take coffee in its purest form and who were looking for that cheap thrill they couldn't find in hot chocolate. And amongst the three espresso-based designer coffees, I favored cafe mocha the most. Precisely because it was right smack in the middle of coffee and chocolate. It was mediocrity in a cup, so to speak. Ah, the shame.

Cafe mocha is made by first preparing the espresso. Then, you put the mocha powder directly into the cup and pour the coffee directly to mix in with the mocha. Add your favorite type of milk (skimmed is always the best) and stir well.

Cafe latte, on the other hand, is much stronger than cafe mocha. It is literally "coffee with milk" and is prepared by mixing espresso with both a generous amount of steamed milk and milk foam.

Cafe Americano is a single shot of espresso with 6 to 8 ounces of hot water added to it. It is a little sweeter tasting because hot water is added to the shot, not run through the coffee grounds.

There's a lot more you can do, and if you have nothing better to do than to screw around with a good bag of beans and a coffee maker you can check out WholeLatteLove.com for some ideas. But why would you?

Ah, but that's right. Because we are now what we like to call recovering coffe-holics. Or maybe just sell-outs. You pick whatever works for you.

Alien Growing Pains

2009-01-02T18:57:00.000-08:00

I remember being thirteen, being awkward, angsty, and my head so full of my entirely-too-confused-self. I was suffering the full brunt of the deadly onslaught of hormones which no teenager has ever known to have survived. Which is why we have so many adults either running around with no heads trying to relive the past by acting like brats, or tilting their noses up in the air along with their certifications of whatever professions that only mask the fact that they are more confused about themselves than the brats looking for someone to clean up after them.

Yes, I too changed. It would be difficult for me to identify whether I belong to the first or the second category. Probably the first since I still refuse to see myself as old. But the proof is undeniable. I look at myself in the mirror and I see this alien scowling back at me.

Gone were the days when smiling was the norm and my smooth skin seemed to go on forever. I remember this one momentous day when I took our usual white anti-bacterial family soap in my hand, and lathered my face with it -- and then feeling the itch. And the burn. I was an alien.

Apparently, aliens have quite the traitorous dermatology. I have never been able to use that same soap on my face again and I have since been hard put to find one that does not eat my face off nor turn it into a veritable greenhouse for acne.

I finally settled on the non-comedogenic (Did I spell that right?) Cetaphil which barely makes a mark on my skin therefore making me doubt as to its effectivity at all. But it is, it is. It's nothing like Zonrox that can basically wipe out any type of germ or stain ever to survive a nuclear armageddon or even Armor All for that matter. It's very mild and you probably can't rely on it when you've got twelve years' grime on your face. But why WOULD you have twelve years' grime on your face? It's a lot like cold cream actually. But not at all THAT greasy or even creamy.

But if you are looking for a little something more heavy-duty without so much the HEAVY as the duty, if you get what I mean, then I could probably recommend the Dove white cream bar. It's a fourth moisturizing cream and the rest is...soap? Hehe. But it works, dammit! Igor, it works!

Dove cleanses the skin without drying it like normal soap does, owing to the amount of moisturizing cleanser added. Though, I would imagine that that much more moisturizer would end up irritating the skin, it in fact doesn't. I don't really know what kind of moisturizers they put and I am no authority on the chemical make-up of anything, but I read somewhere that it had something to do with 'alkaline' something. Anyway, who am I to say and I certainly am not one you should quote. If skeptical (as any intelligent being would be reading this blog) why not try it for yourself which is what I did. Nothing beats the old and reliable tried-and-tested way of trial-and-error.

And if it doesn't work; if your skin ends up all red and disgusting, well, consider it a lesson learned and hypothesis not likely. And afterwards, you can spot me your Dove bar. Hehe.

The Greatest Love Story

2008-12-30T20:26:00.000-08:00

Welcome to theloveblug.

Theloveblug chronicles the many love affairs of my quite long-winded short life of twenty-six years (to date) with those of the animate and inanimate objects of my inexhaustible and yet unspent affections on the heterosexual male species of human. And yes, I am unabashedly and inescapably single.

And what better way to start the annals of love than to tell of a greatest love story that ended in the most tremendous tragedy? This is the story of coffee.

I can hardly remember the day I had my first taste of coffee. I can only remember always being the designated coffee-maker for both my parents who drank about three cups each, each day. It was the generic powdered version for them way back when brewed coffee was a thing for the fairy tale books in our country. My mom always took hers with a double hit of cream and two sugars. My dad took his black with two sugars.

I remember having first tasted my mom's coffee, under the pretense of wanting to see whether it was too hot yet to the delicate tongue, but really it was because I was intrigued by the warm and cozy fragrance emanating from that one small cup in my hands. And from then on, I was hooked. I started drinking coffee regularly in the sixth grade -- two creams, two sugars. Yes, I do take it black as well but as they say, first love never dies.

My tongue has also now been graced with the incredible flavors and textures of brewed coffee from around the world and a variety of pseudo-caffeine designer coffee beverages so popular with hypocrites nowadays. I'm sorry, but coffee isn't coffee if it has more than cream and sugar in it. No exceptions. The rest are just fluff. Which is why I have the utmost respect for those who take espresso straight up. No frills, no BS. Just coffee gone straight to the gluts.

Some of the best brews I've tasted are mountain blend, this we got right out of an unbranded bag from the gourmet corner of our local supermarket. Very deep and strong. My first cup kept me awake til dawn of the next morning. Don't get me wrong, this is not the Jamaican Blue that'll cost you an arm encrusted with diamonds from Tiffany's. I guessed it was a cheaper kind (if there was one -- I have to research on that).

I also love The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf's Viennese Coffee. Another knockout. This one has a somewhat creamier taste, but still packs a very manly punch.

Of course, I can't go on without singing the praises of our local king of coffees, the kapeng barako, the pride of the Batanguenos. It has a rich, smooth texture, deep yet deceptively creamy to the taste. Deceptively so, because like all premium beans this also hits you like a right-hook out of thin air.

But when talking about cafe's, the best house that has ever raised and nurtured coffee to wise and quiet maturity would have to be Bo's Coffee Club plucked right out of Davao, Philippines. Since sipping my first cup, I have fallen head over heels for their world coffee. They have six (6) world coffee blends:

*Kenyan - (one of my personal favorites) strong flavor, good aroma and acidity;
*Guatemalan - (another one of my personal favorites) full-bodied;
*Colombian Decaf (not my cup of coffee)
*Colombian Supremo - (and another one of my personal favorites) creamy and full-bodied, with a powerful aroma;
*Ethiopian Sidamo - fruity, rich, and winy;
*Panaman - smooth, light-bodied with a gentle acidity.

And as in all great love stories of old, Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra, Charles and Diana, it all must necessarily come falling down. The tragedy of this story of passion and drama is that my damned habits and traitorous physiology has recently decided that coffee is not at all good for me and, alas, I have sipped my last cup not more than three weeks past. And my grief here gave birth to the greatest love story every told...the chronicles of theloveblug. The end.