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