THE MEANING OF M

M ain't the Chief of M16's Secret Intelligence Service but a reluctant caregiver somewhere in London.

M stands for Maligaya where 50 (or Roman numeral L) birth years were celebrated with a thousand shots of Scotch whiskey and American bourbon.

M was the meeting in Hogwarts where lobbyists were rewarded with bags of eggs, and the men in aprons who converged in Baloc on the 8th of March. 

M is the enigmatic Specialist of terse one-liners that almost compromised the Kuala Lumpur Forum, an escalation required to finally link a project ID to a grant number.

M is the impact story that will be narrated in Manila, the main agenda of a biweekly task force huddle, and the other matters discussed in the other meetings.    

M are the morning rides that punched through pay windows for a second booster shot before the Bali Assembly was registered for the ASEAN Gender Week.   

M can be the litsong manok, a musky pinangat na hito, or a tray of itlog maalat that compensated The Ironman of Bakal 2 for his services.

M is mass at the historic Barasoain Church and a GRO named Margareth who was treated to her first ever birthday cake during the homily.   

M is a moustached Plaridel enshrined and celebrated in Bulakan, and a Requiem Mass for a misogynist congressman at the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy in Marilao.

Finally, M stands for the Michellin Bib Gourmand emblem that adorned Chie-Chie's Batil Patung like tubs of lechon karahay, chibul, and dinakdakan floating in a sea of egg drop soup.  

TWO MONTHS TO JAPAN

I first came to Japan on November 2006, many years before the Kuala Lumpur Forum got mired in a grant number generation process as the Bali Assembly is being assembled for procurement. 

I remember being ushered to a taxi with self-operating doors that brought me from Kansai International Airort to the JICA International Center in Osaka, a memory harvested from a pensieve of mourners and eavesdropping Monday callers that a death in the Kingdom of Pee convened.

In two months time, there will be beer-tasting in Osaka in memory of a 4-hour chartered bus trip to Nagoya, a full two decades  before the introduction of the ASEAN Gender Week in Manila as the impact story of Business Development's second session to punctuate a rote email exchange with Melbourne.

The Nagoya Castle will be revisited, perhaps Atsuta Shrine too, but Mt. Fuji will have to give way for the confirmation of a budget reallocation as reported to The Line Manager 3 days before Hogwarts huddled with The Congressman from Tulat. 

Nagoya was the base of the 2006 intrusion to Kyoto before the advent of the Ironman whose box clean-up inspired fair finance advocates to book a reservation for the Kyoto Imperial Palace where the Phantom Biker can cook buridibod for a haircut and trade kare-kare for a monthly power usage after the usual "tapon basura" rides.

For the 2026 episode in Japan, a day in Nara and sake-tasting in Kobe were inserted as a way of soliciting a fresh interpretation if it is indeed a case of Severe Obstructive Sleep Apnea.  

Maybe, the sleep doctor just wants a commission from the sale of a continuous positive airway pressure machine.

Maybe I'll buy once advance payments to the hotels in Kyoto and Nagoya are settled.

The monhtly phone bills were paid instead which is why the fried tilapia tasted like kwek-kwek, the sisig overpowered Bikol Express, and inihaw na hito made the black cat bite a finger that resembled a piece of litsong manok.

THE YEAR OF THE RED HORSE

The Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operational Repair Squadron Engineers, collectively, is the Red Horseman of the Apocalypse who with a Lakota Chief waged war in the Battle of the Greasy Grass amidst the din of Philippine rock music. 

All are associated with the Fire or Red Horse who at 6.9% alcohol by volume will make 2026 a year of Tadalafil-induced vitality and passion, and Rivotril-tempered nocturnal dynamism and radiant energy. 

But in lieu of the Happy Horse's extinction, a faction of the Thursday Group opted for Barreto, Roxas, and Kiene's tamer pale pilsen brew to welcome the Year of the Fire/Re Horse.  

Whereas a pale lager dinakdakan evolved an agenda for the Bali Assemby and moved money for the Kuala Lumpur Forum vis-a-vis an extra-strong lager adobo that telephatically inserted the Ironman of Bakal 2 into the dreams of the Night Hag during Witching Hours for a sinuglaw.

Actually, the Phantom Biker is a Red Horse on a blue bike, the central character of a developing impact story, the first session of a business development marathon, and the first hour of a boring training on project closures that will be featured in the Footprint Report app of a task force's biweekly meeting about the Santa Marta Conference.   

For his sake, the bike trails opens at daybreak depsite the absence of fresh sayote shoots and a headlamp as provided by two reviewed papers from Phnom Penh that were emailed to the Senate of the 20th Congress and to ASEAN Watchers as Docusigned requests for payment.

There was a concern about low burn rates that screamed of headlines from the Manila Convening, preliminaries to a line manager's induction to the new Cigna Health Benefits+ app that the Phantom Biker QR-coded for someone's aspiration in New Zealand.

Then there's Bacolor, an old town buried in lahar.

There is a half-buried ancient church dedicated to San Guillermo, the faithful's safeguard from calamities, and host to the Shrine of the Nuestra Señora del Santisimo Rosario – La Naval de Bacolor.   

 

There's the contemporary Sunken Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes whose image arrived in Cabetican in 1906, also buried in lahar and partially excavated.

We came to pray, to plead for divine intercession.

And there's lunch.

Plain hot rice with kilayin, tidtad, and fried hito and buro rolled in fresh lettuce leaves would have been perfect because Bale Kampampangan's adobong balot exudes a stong feathery taste, the sisig has the texture of coagulated oil, and the pindang damulag glistens with the hue of a Red Horse.