ON THE WAGON IN JAKARTA

In the Tsukemen style, chilled ramen noodles are supposed to be dipped in a hot soup, like pushing back Melbourne before conceding to submit a revised annual development plan, one dish but served separately, like a stack of plates in a Nasi Padang dinner at Garuda and Sederhana Satrio, separate plates for an ayam pop (lightly fried chicken), beef rendang, gulai kepala ikan (fish head curry), gulai kikil (beef tendon curry), gulai ayam (chicken curry), and sambal cabe ijo (green chilli sambal) for one big meal.    

These festive hidang meals are like an express laundry service procured with borrowed Transjakarta service cards that somewhat moderated the enthusiasm of last week's bender as transcribed in a communique by a quintet of feather pens from the 19th floor of Jalan Marga Satwa Raya where a lame lunch of mie goreng ayam (stir-fried noodles with chicken) was cursed. 

Then it rained with acronyms --- a sober ANCP, abstinent MEAL, teetotaling PRISMA --- to catalyze two days of induction into a knowlege hub after two dry days of riding a thinking tank that got stop by the green light for Option 2 --  freshly cooked and mildly spicy mie Aceh (Aceh noodles) that was tempered with a heated afternoon meeting and 10 skewers of sate kambing --- as printed in a boarding pass at the check-in counter of PR 536.

Temperance held for 4 days before succumbing with the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon to Friday the 13th's temptous pritong tilapia at bangus in Bakal 2 where an angelic cashier worked out in Nueva Vista warehouse gym during the mass for a Sunday of the Forefathers...

THE CONVENINGS (From Kuala Lumpur to Bakal 2 to Rizal)

There was a 2-hour sleep on PR 530 and another 2 hours on the bus to Cabanatuan.

Several drams of blended whiskey from the Lodge in Baloc induced another 2-3 hours of slumber before the blood of Christ was poured from bottled malbec into canned brytos to celebrate the convening of Almaguer in Bakal 2.  

Five days earlier, the first convening finally arrived in Kuala Lumpur to chase emails at the lobby of the Berjaya Times Square where Ah Hei concocted its Michellin Bib Gourmand-listed meat bone tea (bak kut teh) from 16 Chinese herbs to lead an ingress to an egress.

That was enough to salvage Session 1 and fuel the briefings of Session 2 despite the distracting perfume of what is said to be the best grilled chicken wings in all of Kuala Lumpur but definitely not the case for a spur-of-the-moment nasi lemak at Jalan Alor.

Indeed, the sight, sound, and smell of Jalan Alor is a proper sequel for The Clash of the Titans who hijacked the wifi signal of Manhattan V to enable the notetakers until they were smitten by a podcast and have to be revived with grilled lamb chops and the Malaysian version of Oysters Rockefeller.

That is probably why The Facilitator took control of D-Day to ensure that the ensuing work plan will publish a communique that will nudge the Lao Initiative into concluding the first convening as listed in the agenda of a PMU meeting on [1] how to properly queue for a crispy beef roti, [2] explain the dried prawns in a sauteed pork intestines, and [3] understand why Chinese fried pork ribs have a pink hue.

There were tall beeers too --- Danish Carlsberg, Singaporean Tiger, Dutch Heineken, Irish Guinness --- and high buildings --- the Petronas Twin Towers and Merdeka 118 --- to celebrate Sek Yuen's Bib Gourmand-listed roasted pipa duck and coming to terms with a golden pulp of Musang King Durian as a result of exceeding expectations and confirming three goals for FY 2025-26.

And so it was that grilled SNR steak was offered at the second convening in Bakal 2 and left-over Bicol Express for the third convening in Rizal where two $50 bills were lost, found, and married...

GREEN IN TARLAC

It was like the last 5 kilometers of a Giro d'Italia mountain stage.

Two teams from Phnom Penh were bunched together in the peloton while the the team from Manila was hampered by a puncture from the 4th credit card to be shredded and was behind.  

They caught up eventually by drafting behind the lead-out of a support vehicle from Singapore that just delivered a consolidated annual development plan to Melbbourne who can't get over a midterm assessment report and has not responded to a request for reallocation.

Into the flamme rouge, the chatter from a weekly meeting clustered around an agenda and its list of partcipants that were being flashed in digital signages as a risk register and a logistics note. 

PLDT was unBoxed and NEECO 2 got unplugged in the last 500 meters as bills got paid and things were procured. 

The Jakarta induction was almost outsprinted by a research project on financing coal phase-out but came back strong on Sunday morning. 

Thus was how Kuala Lumpur got dressed in a green jersey, a homage to emails chased and inboxes exorcised of draft recommendations on social protection and 5-month old timesheets from a wedding cocktail in Tarlac that also held review classes for a sales representative and a student driver.

The goals for 2025-26 were set in a private resort where it was announced that the Phantom Biker is also Boy Ramen, the vagabond of MOA, connoiseur of sinampalukang ulo ng kambing, and a sucker for makunat na salami and maalat na pistachio nuts...

KHMER BEER, BULALO, LOMI, atbp

Prologue

"The volcano is the lake and the island is its crater!" screamed the town crier as he threw his bike into a maze of last payments made and pending as per a booking list and the required procurement for a couple of annual plan reviews about the siren song of an inihaw na bangus who took out the garbage and swept the yard before jumping into a 6-hour bus ride to an integrated terminal exchange for a late lunch of Hokkaido ramen because the airport premium lounge is a dud.

Chapter 1

The piyaya safely arrived in Phnom Penh, landing on a pavement of coordination meetings shattered by an unexpected budget constraint in Manila that a couple of reimbursement tried to glue together with a paste of Khmer lager and craft beer, boiled bovine offal, fried chicken knees, and dry schnitzel...

...from the kitchen of the widower's girlfriend whose fondness for Dutch seasoning is marked in bottles of SAP/Adobe, Pastel, CORE, PRISMA, and YOSAS to match three greenish amulets that were abandoned in strange outhouses as barriers against the floodwaters of a late afternoon cloudburst of ADP reviews... 

...for the selection of a venue in Jakarta where a bowl of Vietnamese beef noodles, a tray of Cambodian fish cake, and a plate of fried Greek feta cheese were exhibited and will be consolidated for delayed submission to Melbourne as the PMU regrouped to mitigate Kuala Lumpur and talk about HR matters. 

Chapter 2

It was Saturday morning when PR 2622 taxied to the spot where a fisherman netted an image, a less-than-a-foot tall sculpted wood that kept disappearing from its ornate encasement at a widow's home until it was enshrined as Our Lady of Caysasay at where it keeps reappearing near Santa Lucia's well where the music of a wedding ceremony at the cavernous Minor Basilica of St. Martin of Tours can be heard, where it can be seen from the capiz windows of the Apacible Heritage House, where it is venerated by the waving flags of the Agoncillo Museum... 

...and offerings of Leslie's delicate Tagaytay bulalo, lomi from Lipa for a parking slot, and dimsum and mami from Binondo that marked Plaza San Lorenzo Ruiz with a heartburn all the way to the Seng Guan Buddhist temple where Tomas Pinpin might have played mahjong with Voltes 5 and a Chinese pastry chef.   

Epilogue

It was later announced that the Kenny Rogers Roasters chicken chain went bankrupt in the US and that its Asia franchise is obtained by the Berjaya Group of Malaysia who might have sold LED fog lights in Banawe and Easytrip RFID tags in Balintawak, at least according to the Thursday Group who convened for fried Spam on Sunday night. 

AFTERMATH

The lovely doorkeeper of Precint 43A is an augur.

By sucking at the faint electoral stain on my forefinger, she foresaw the fall of three provincial dynasties, the triumph of my favorite party-list representation, and he-who-is-expected-to-lose snatching the second congressional district.

She did not mind that I mistakenly shaded an aging boxer as the 11th senator because he lost anyway. 

I called her Mrs. Cho, guardian of the peloton and boarding house owner who had Ladies Dorm 7 burned down because the market vendor displayed juvenile hypomastia that stretched from Kalzadah to Sisig Point before the first rain of May fell.

Phnom Penh was marked in a One Program Report after a sedate Monday meeting.

Kuala Lumpur is being chased like a condensed communique and will be caught soon, hopefully. 

Jakarta is on a 360-degrees breakaway mode.

In the week of annual development plans, the Cambodian blueprint was accepted through a Royal Ploughing Ceremony while that from the Malaysians, Indonesians, and Filipinos were returned for a second round.    

It seems that I went beyond expections so I carried on, walking with a funeral cortege and to finally redeem a box of spaghetti that smelled like dinakdakan, crunchy as a day-old crispy pata but without the bittermess of pinapaitan and burnt catfish, fresh llike the litsong paksiw salvaged from a graduation ball...

 

THE WEEK BEFORE AN ELECTION

Ariel Guieb Tangilig (aka AGT) was locked down by a flat front ire.

Lupo Domingo Quilban (aka LDQ) can substitute but is dressed for city riding.

Another Novo Vizcayano (aka Joshua Pascual) soared as the Eagle of the Mountain in Baguio. 

And what was once a carinderia was retrofitted into a garage so Bulan's Hiace Commuter Deluxe van can finally come home.

The world is ablaze, not Ladies Dorm 7&8 in CLSU but the I-JET PMU, an intense bonfire of burn rates and spending forecast submission to close a midterm assessment and break the glass for the annual plans that ignited the fuse for a regional convening.

Brussels' EU Academy was totally consumed and the X Files is gone for good, fire hazards that imperil Siem Reap it has to be moved to  Phnom Penh to secure the the Jakarta induction. 

Bits of toolkit updating and and a page on social protection were fished from a bowl of tonkotsu ramen in Manila.

"Let's Talk!" sang the A&C while miming a 360 degrees feedback.

The Trestleboard was resurrected to chronicle the 108th Giro d'Italia.

Stewed salmon head and boiled peanuts were stuffed into a rellenong bangus to garnish a platter of penne pomodoro that was stuffed into a litsong manok to confuse a liqour ban.

That was because Dire Straits sang about Akbayan's walk of life from a church pulpit in Munoz... 

THE VANISHING

It just disappeared. 

Not into French egg-shaped capsules but somewhere between Bangkok and Manila.

Perhaps the X Files slipped through Jakarta unaware that the multistakeholder consultation has been delegated in lieu of a 22nd birthday dinner in Bakal 2.    

In the ensuing confusion, the midyear assessment was condensed into a report replete with delusional images of abbreviated Monday meetings to ensure a nexus of not leaving anyone behind in catching up on social protection from a burning stack of emails that escalated preparations for the regional convening in Kuala Lumpur as agreed in a huddle on what to do with a footprint report about a security survey for the reinstallation of a vanished work profile.

Credit card and insurance payments were spammed and paid with reheated menudo, pansit Malabon, chicharon, and monthly phone bills.

Hogwarts was locked down amidst the market raids, cash machine dispensations, two sessions with the vulcanizer, and a haicut.        

But the X Files is vanished and has to be recreated from two buried coins.

So were the demarcation lines and a part time chauffeur until the prospective garage is retrofitted with 87 years of a complete Jollibee meal in Baloc...