THE PHNOM PENH DINNERS

There was a a monk who bestowed a cowl upon a shivering worker, a hooligan shaped by hip-hop culture as a symbol of isolation, an emblem of the Unabomber and Mark Zuckerberg.

The Hoodie is in the hood to power a future shaped by people, to protect them from intense solar radiation amidst a challenge against an evaluation that required adjudication as published in recycled notebooks.  

Blue is indeed a warm color, almost a grilled fish and gut salad, nutty like the Russian Market on a mid-afternoon that ignited a bonfire of frogs and pork belly in the streets of Phnom Penh on the night when a climate initiative was finally grasped.

From a fire drill emerged barbecued offal and an updated charter, the evolution of a staffing covenant that was reviewed with a supervisor before the day's finale of grilled beef and pork ribs.

With the announcement of the annual plan's approval and the arrival of the business development counsel, cigarettes were sold by the stick at Hotel Cambodiana for the price of a Khmer steak, steamed fish, and fried corn in a cosmos of skyscrappers and monuments. 

Craft beer and cheeseburgers were tucked between royal Khmer lunches of the Phnom Penh Workshop where Scenario B was signed-off with a Tim Tam prize and a condensed policy brief on financing coal phase-out, enough wins to justify another dinner between heaven and earth a few hours before a half-full plane took off for Manila.

The banks were on mute, the scent of a woman from PR 2622 lingered in the bus to Bakal 2, a flat tire responded to a fire alarm in Munoz... 

GOOD MORNING GMAIL!

A Babyonian greeting clay tablet was sent to St. Joseph on his death anniversay since no one was picking the phones in Bakal 2.

The front desk at the Manila airport lounge explained that they only have altar wine from the Sunday eulogy for the dead miners.

Outside the Techo airport, a chauffer flashed a signage announcing the sequestration of the 3rd Sunday of June.

On Father's Day, the lady cashier of a Khmer carinderia in Phnom Penh overcharged a solo lunch of grilled pork belly and boiled egg by $0.50.

An early morning Gmail ritual has preceded the daily basura rides but the dreaded bank notices did not come through, not yet, perhaps because the father-at-hand (AKA the Phantom Biker) had a door jamb updated through a payroll withdrawal that also paid for provisions of a renewed internship, not at the newly opened minimarket but for the replacement vehicle that was received with a housewarming and a sinadag.

Notebooks and jackets were prepared for inpress as the last visa was secured for the Phnom Penh Workshop, but what wil be the contract type, how will the confrontation conclude?

Daily Gmail checks punctuated catch-ups, a quickie from the Bali Workshop aborted project grants closure but spawned the Jakarta Assembly.

The bus driver serenaded Bulan with a birthday song from Munoz up to the Manila airport where 28 pairs of ice cream,  yogurt, beer, and wine were served. 

Gmail remained opened for the hawkers of the Chaktomuk Walk Street where fathers were treated with sweet meats, grilled fish, toasted bread, and lots of cold beer.

HOGWARTS RELIVED

This is the story of 6 angels and a mischievous imp, of dead cats marinated in formalin, beaus that came and went, and a frayed toothbrush in the back pocket that smelled of the BPI Enigma being escalated for mediation --- moments reminisced during a lunch of kare-kare, tiim na manok, and lumpiang sariwa at Lingap Kalikasan where once upon a time, a memory vomited Tanduay Rhum through his nose.   

It was unfortunate that the enthusiasm for a full reunion was hostaged by a petty domestic tiff whose intensity was measured by indicators of tinumis, kaldereta, and reheated lechon --- the prologue and epilogue for a compendium of impact stories and the procurements in Phnom Penh in response to the inquiries from Melbourne.

 

The acacia tree still stands, a Zen garden has sprouted from the seismic fractures of Room 305 where tilapia and carabaos are now raised for an aberrant ice cream that is sold at the Old Market --- a brand that will stay despite its relocation, an upgrade, and a post-evaluation angst that echoed from the walls of a diner in Munoz where the Water Boy from Bakal 2 supped on 3 cans of beer.   

 

Our Hogwarts predated Harry Potter by 6 years --- the Pensieve where memory strands from the last 36 years were revisited including the Phantom Biker's daily morning ritual of disposing trash on the way to the bazaar, to the Siever that now stands guard at the Main Gate near the place called Marketing where the ageless Polly Jacob holds court prior to the reenactment of a 1990 moment at the Admin that was celebrated with an ice cream-topped banana cake in Talavera. 

We are D'JARMMS and reliving us in Hogwarts concluded with Episode 5 in the shadows of a subterranean garage  where commuters traversing a cutoff road by-passed the community shopping mall for a direct route to a nature park and a legal counselling of the 3rd Degree.

THE BPI ENIGMA

Dear Bank of the Philippine Islands,

You should take down your slogan of "Building a better Philippines --- one family, one community at a time" because it does not reflect what your people actually do.

Pressuring me to pay 342,270.65 pesos of disputed credit card charges that I did not authorize, execute, and gained from despite plausible explanations, and premised on "archaic, and legally untenable adhesion clause" within your Terms and Conditions is a misanthropic, uncompassionate, and callous manisfesttion of your corporate parasitism that only reinforces the prevailing impression of banks being heartless corporate beasts.

I dispute, I depose, and I protest such inequity in the presence of Craftsmen and the Thursday Group.

This is gross injustice, a Strava glitch running over empty egg trays, an erronous water bill snatching a purple bag of provisions from the streets of Bakal 1 and Bakal 2 to evolve a final workshop and procurement in Phnom Penh into flavors of a reheated lumpiang shanghai, sweet pork barbecue, fried tilapia, and three interpretations of the pata.  

The evil shadow of thhis monstrous adversity stole the alleviating sense of relief from succesfully petitioning for reinforced concrete design, the approval of Year 5 goals, the resolution of a persistent reimbursement, and the confirmation of a hybrid work arrangement that got the inbox purged through the initiation of a consultancy extension and the clarification of indiators that will measure Swiss and Nordic donors.

I pray that the other bank will be easier and reassuring like a recent ultrasound result diagnosis that justified Friday's sinadag for a straightforward medical reimbursement submission to avoid the infamy of BPI,  a memory best forgotten and glossed with a surreal afternoon in the park one rainy Sunday afternoon in Zaragoza where the first episode was casted.

REPLACEMENT CARDS

A House of Cards shuffled 6 times was dealt through 8 seasons of the Outlander.

Thus was how the plastic replacement cards were activated --- through the conveyance of a final blueprint for the conceptualization of the future after a performance assessment and the definition of targets for the next 12 months under the patronage of San Geronimo.

Bills were settled partially and fully, bikes --- both motor and mechanical --- got fixed, accummulated  garbage disposed, the week's lotto bets placed in Baloc, but the stench of fraudulent transactions still linger at least for the next 10 or 45 banking days whatever is the case. 

Impact stories will be published in recycled notebooks and emblazoned in UV jackets.

Such will be the final procurement and disbursement of the last month, without the social protection of a confirmed budget, with the application of a couple of reactions, and the assistance of a shoe cobbler.

Leftover beer was paired with inihaw na hito, bones of adobong bibe and pinatisan piled after a visit to the dead, bingo cards were served in a nonagenarian birthday buffet on the day octogenarian music was played for the last time...