THE GREAT MIGRATION

That's some 6 million emancipated slaves moving from the American South to elsewhere across the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem in search of better lives and greener pastures, like folders and boxes jumping from Oxford to The Hague through a virtual procurement briefing in Phnom Penh where a midterm review was renamed as an assessment during a team huddle before the all-Asia caucus and after a tete-a-tete that nmorphed into a conversation with associates.

Succor from a mobile wallet app.   

Duds, lamentably for Oplan GSIS but  luckily for an ER scare.

The second 10 percent for the first of 5 credit card debts.

Phallic, like an obelisk in Bongabon and a tryst in Binondo.

Evenings of leftover dinakdakan melting in old cheese and aged menudo, stewed as hock, then air fried into an estofado.

Of the 17 Aurelianos, one survived and migrated to Baloc where he was employed as a live cook, the mark on his forehead concealed by a gay Aglipayan priest with ashes from the burnt vegetables at the Munoz market, visible only to the Phantom Biker as markers of the dead ends in Malayantoc and Bakal 1 that guided the tribe of Pugad Baboy in prowling the golden grains of Bakal 2 where bottles of whiskey, beer, and brandy were distilled to celebrate three birthdays with a cheesecake whose candles were blown by the Amihan...   

MY LUANG PRABANG DICTIONARY

bi-ker [bahy-ker] 

noun 

1. Passenger 49D of PR 730 to Bangkok anxiously rushing to  catch a meeting near the Krung Thonburi Station where the fragrance of grilled pork neck and spicy salmon salad almost vaporized an evening meeting. 
2. Passenger 9D puking on lukewarm 7-11 coffee, or munching on fried pork and sticky rice at the escalators of the Payathai Station, or editing a concept note amidst the loud chatter in PG 941 to Luang Prabang that is now operated by an airline called Amelia. 

food-ie [foo-dee] 

noun, slang 

1. Resident 213 of Mekong Moon Hotel 3 relishing sai oua done 3-ways but was too early for the morning alms of a 2-day national dialogue in a Mekong River Cruise where the aging fried pork ribs refused to be tenderized even by an hour of a traditional Lao massage.
2. A passive participant to a conversation foraging for khao piak sen at the morning market while wrestling with an OPA in a crowded night bazaar of barbecued calf and beer towers.
3. An enabler garnishing a tub of or lam with crusts of  Le Banneton croissant and strands of carabo jerky from the Luang Prabang Bio Bamboo Restaurant.

lay-o-ver [lay-ow-vr]
noun

1. A 1-hour procedure of laying over a narrow table to be scanned for metabolic images that were thankfully not there; the gestation time it took for OPlan GSIS and Oplan DOH to deliver results. 
2. Passenger 44H of PR 733 to Manila witnessing Isaac Reed's marriage to Sarah Holloway and Doron's Season 3 at the Suvarnabhumi Airport that was celebrated with a  feast of dinakdakan and tokwa't baboy in Bakal 2.   

INVOCATIONS

They were healers and leaders.

Perhaps it was through their intercession that Cigna debunked the myth of the "pre-existing" rider by guaranteeing to cover an expensive radioactive tracing procedure.

We are grateful and we continue to plead for the babaylans' intervention --- for Our Ina ng Biglang Awa to always quickly step in for us, for La Pilarica to support our aspirations, and for the La Naval to unleash her spirit guides to protect us.

And with the throng gathered at Plaza Miranda, we stormed the celestial kingdom of Jesus Nazareno with our eternal gratitude for a healing along with our prayers for long life and good health.

Eat, pray, love.

We ate --- nibbled on Goodah's fried pork ribs before the scan, high protein with low carb and sugar, picked on Max's fried chicken afterwards, a revenge lunch of sorts, before indulging on Rue Bourbon's all-meat pizza and what it touted as a Big Ass Caramel Beer (whoever thought of it should be hanged!), and a barrage of Manmaru Izakaya's sashimi with two servings of sake (we will be back!).

We prayed --- at the Binondo Church and a supplication of  braised beef tendon and black chicken soup, at Sta. Cruz Chruch and a petition for Lord Stow's egg tart, at the Quiapo Church after an invocation of an Excelente ham sandwich and Dada's palabok at the Quinta Market, and at the Sto. Domingo Church where the bus dropped us and the Grab picked us.

All that in the name of love. 

Work.

Cigna was pre-meditated, a battle plan tucked between rote Monday meetings while chasing ASEAN 2025 and "The Lao Big Event" in Luang Prabang in between huddles on safe programming and a partnership platform while catching up with tegional and global conversations on just energy transition and a concept note review.

There were matters arising, a potential donor meeting, an annual planning, hotel bookings, a requested ASEAN briefing, and an exchange that finally got me moving (from OGB to ONL).

Interspersed is a dentist pulling a tooth from the money changer who paid the cobbler with US dollars for mending the legal assistant's sneakers after notarizing the Almaguer Papers to authorize a bank deposit after the morning street sweeps so the Solid North bus will cease promoting a party list of poisoned brown grasses.

Ride a bike, drink a beer.

I did disposed the trash, took out breakfast, got a haircut, restocked our prescriptions, and went to the market.

I did drink too but a sparkling non-alcoholic wine first before giving in to our regular Red Horse sessions with bopis, tokwa't baboy, and inihaw na baboy on the side. 

THE MARRIAGE OF WILLIAM FAULKNER AND e.e. cummings

the Hack responded to the Melbourne Assessment through a TeamViewer portkey probing into the case of the missing emails, the mystery of the Monday meetings overlap, why the line to Kuala Lumpur is in Rio De Janeiro when a reallocation was approved to develop content for Jakarta with an OPA amendment as the aborted rumble in Phnom Penh was reenacted in a condensed appraisal report, the flight to Luang Prabang imperiled by an intense electronic exchange inscribed in a project charter and a memorandum about an MCP review on why the Phantom Biker was enrolled in both MSH International and Cigna Healthcare     

'twas pooping cat and dogs

and a vegetable medley wrapped in tripe

warm and airy, short and gamey like salt bread 

a delicate curtain of soft college rain

St. Peter's milkfish, dressed in mud then fried in bottles of extra strong lager, stood between two nights of pure libationism, a wall of bottled amber for the advance nights of a fatback on a crisp February evening, plated and skewered, as the pool filled up with exceptional blended Scotch whiskey to celebrate St. Valentine's abstinence in a week when a "prose of complex and unconventional sentence structure" was fused with "modernist free-form poetry"

a benediction, a warm morning feed, a wet market

a party of saints and kings at a Lakers ballpark

ripe fishwife carved  in a plump green plastic mesh

a homily, a bike wash, pickled tank goby

LYRICS FOR A SONG (The Guerilla Ride Anthem)

trash, breakfast, lunch

quick rides between a report submission and a seccesion
Let's Talk! of guidelines, of a big event in Luang Prabang

credit cards, Compass 2,  and a JET network conversation  

breakfast, lunch, dinner

mornings that smelled of smoked fish, phone bills and a ToR
Linked boosted, like climate to social security and the Sequoia slides

ACE delivered, enveloped in a virtual world, a policy retreat

lunch, dinner, breadfruit

old nuts in scraps of umeshu, I-Phone 13 in a retail warehouse
a community mall, a crime scene, a ghost load spewed  

stale tofu, fried shumai, and a half tank of l'eau de vie

dinner, sweet bulbs, green gram

burning sweepings smoke a swath of bone-dry road verge
a free bird in the market, a man confused by church lauds 

the Almaguer Account signed with ink from charred muscles   

A POEM (sort of)

Once

the internet died in Yangon

"save to survive" it hummed

harsh verses for Vientiane

Twice 

partners spent and tell

a line spoken and heard

KL and Jakarta acceded 

Thrice

poked, probed, crossed

eager Melbourne reformed

civil and secured as a Sequoia

Frice

square as a Lenovo ThinkPad

boxy like the bike from Manila

that's me safely programmed

-o0o-

Rides and vice rhyme

like peddlers and bakers, servers and menders

remittances and riddances

debits for a hermit

not cantaloupes, groundnuts, or a fritata  

nor handy men beating the clock

but routine meetings gone sour...

WORK, WALK, DRINK (Phnom Penh 2025)

"Death is a black cat and a pet dog

uncharitable omens of a culling

spectral noises from VTE, PNH, KUL.

Fraudulent, like two bogus NBA tickets

novel, like guerilla rides and Windows 25  

tarty, like airport merlots and a cab sav."

o0o

And so it was that defiance was sheperded at 245 Mao Tse Tung Avenue where the MCPs converge on JET to nullify arbitrary fiscal restraints that ushered the onboarding of Dili, Phnom Penh's presumed concurrence, and the rescheduling of Yangon --- reassurances of social protection and a reiteration of responsible finance as reimagined from the smog that repositioned a PMU to be able to seize the day with the aid of a Dutch-compliant computer.

The Point Community Mall meetings were celebrated with elaborately prepared traditional Khmer royal cuisine --- a huge fried freshwater fish on Day 1, everyday vegetable soups and salads, and ancient and delicate amok rei in Day 3 --- the daily fare of the Houses of Sisowath and Norodom until they were deposed by the Khmer Republic who was deposed by the Khmer Rouge who was deposed in the Christmas Day invasion of Vietnam in 1978 who withdrew in 1989 but left the pho bo to nurture Day 2 of the 2025 meetings that concluded with a disappointing Bassac Lane version of pork served charcuterie style.

We worked and ate.

We walked and drank. 

The long late afternoon strolls along the adjacent parks of the Independence Monument led us to a streetside grilled carabao jerky and cans of Dragon premium dark beer, a restaurant version of beef barbecue and bottles of Cambodia lager, a box of Anchor light lager beer to commemorate the reunion of the middle and younger brothers, and a night cap of amazing rice porridge and cold Angkor lager --- Cambodia's national and most popular beer. 

o0o

"Touchdown to a brunch in Baloc

to a vigil and padaya dinner in Sto. Rosario

fused like cheese, fish crackers, and an embutido."

CONFESSIONS OF A 55-YEARS OLD

It's not certain when the Age of Aquarius began but if Grace McGrade is correct, it crept like a thief on November 2024, an omen to the later submission of an updated proposal and the reaping of the Phnom Penh meeting arrangements.

It was supposed to be the age of "progress, innovation, individual freedom, and equality", of  everything egalitarian in fact except the regret expressed in withdrawing from a learning event in Colombo and a conditional sign off.

To us however, it seemed more like the onset of the Age of Dying as manifested in a hairline fracture, adenocarcinoma, hypotension, and the early morning interment of dead puppies that further justified the strengthening of social protection. 

"So much worries that months before the advent of the 55th year, our second generation were included as guardians of our deposits and named as heirs apparent to our piece of the Cojuangco estate .

Days before the 55th year, a dozen sacks of trash were disposed to officially claim Bulan's house for two nights of the sinadag amidst the specter of an ancient meter tampering case as the Almaguer Settlement was notarized, de-annotated, and gated."  

It took two nights for the kalderetang kambing and adobong pusit, the sweet and sour red snapper and grilled tuna, and the inihaw na bangus at baboy to be indulged; enough time for the Guerilla Rides to evolve into a birthday transport that almost crashed into a tomato vendor before aiding a thankful dame who foretold the arrival of two MILFs seprately representing the face and the body after a balot at penoy night.

What HR was not aware during the onboarding is the week's virtual meetings was the menu for a birthday brunch at the Salcedo Saturday Market --- black coffee garnished with a huge croissant and sweetened with the last slice of French pecan pie, a shared European sausage sandwich and a delayed Taiwanese cuapao that accompanied a chewy pork barbecue, what is said to be a Mediterranen nacho with what is certainly a Greek pizza, and an Italian gelato made from carabao's milk --- all paid through a December 2024 invoice and included in the final submission of Oplan GSIS. 

"On the 55th year, candle smoke from the Archdiocesian Shrine of Sto. Nino de Tondo carried prayers for good health and more good years to the heavens, including a sincere gratitude for a two-year contract that was signed mainly for an HMO coverage."

The pay is good and reassuring too, perhaps more than what the sea lions earned pereforming at the Manila Ocean Park or the cost of creating an imitation aurora borealis at The Philippine Biodome, enough to cover a bottle of Malbec and a US-certified Angus beef steak dinner at Melo's.

The symptoms of stomach flu manifested the day after the 55th year, most probably induced by a half-cooked steak the doctor would later opine, so cetrtainly not from from the grainy puto and thick dinuguan, gamy goto and sweet tokwa't baboy, and crisp orange empanadas at the SIDCOR Sunday Market since Balong actually opted for a freshly cooked pho ga. 

"Sunday's prize was actually the Taal Heritage Town with Tagaytay as a decoy but what was seen from the Hall of the Sinners is the chalkboard menu of the Hidden Tapsihan that was taken from the grand hall of the Emilio Aguinaldo Shrine where it was declared that from then on, everyday counts and every birthday will be a family day..."