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. 

THE MANILA VISITS AND MEETINGS

For a minute, the chlorine-laced pool froze into a powerpoint presentation as the 8th ASEAN Working Group squinted into the morning sun to etch their commitment on integrating GEDSI into national energy plans, promoting climate justice and mobilizing climate finance, ensuring rights in a digital age, translating the care declaration into action, and addressing the “Missing Middle” of social protection.

Ushering this annual ritual is a platter of multi-colored sapinsapin, sliced and served with an interim midyear report submission from an overcrowded table, a 6-minute walk to a red bento-box of belabored pansit and siopao meal that the week's frst Rizotril dose transformed into elevated karekare, kaldereta, and adobo to send off an old Sandugo flipflop and a buttonless cargo pants into retirement.  

Then came the inihaw na pusit, the grilled tuna belly, roasted liempo, and sizzling bulalo that stirred anticipatory action for the promotion of digital rights in the ASEAN as prophecied during dinner at the Ambassador's Reception in Magallanes Village.

Old Rockport was finally retired, reluctantly, as the Andrologist unlocked the Sleep Disorders Center, finally.

A second Bib Gormand was harvested at Morning Sun before a quickie at the ADB.

Two bottles of pinot noir, a flask of sake, and two glasses of gin tonic lubricated the egress of two visits and a meeting in Manila.

It was a stocktake from there: 

• Session 1 determined project progress under the watchful gaze of the Quezon Memorial Shrine's three mourning angels
• Session 2 looked into spending and burn rates as The Oblation looked 
• Session 3 distilled reflections over lunch at a cocktail table of the Salcedo Saturday Market
• Session 4 evolved action points during the changing of the guards at the Rizal Monument in Luneta

It is finished!

A 2026 ASEAN engagement plan was compiled to retire a fake Stan Smith after one final errand of picking up a prescribed PDE5 inhibitor during St. Paul the Apostle's morning sermon about the church's Millenial Saint.

In Quiapo, the exposed faithful prayed to the Black Nazarene for miracles while at the Golden Mosque, women must be covered with hijab and the skin peeled off the grilled fish. 

A lotto bet was placed somewhere along Calle Sacrista as mass was celebrated in both ends of the street --- at Sta. Cruz and Binondo that once ministered to the gentiles of Parian. 

Soft rain punctured two cups of overrated coffee as marathon weddings occupied the San Agustin Church and pushed back tourists to an ancient restaurant for an early lunch of kangkong with garlic and seafood canton (halal), and classic asado and lumpiang shanghai (haram).  

It's TRYP not Microtel but the heavy yellow luggage is ours... 

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 stopped 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...

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.