THE CONJURING (The Seers of Baguio)

"When life gives you lemons, make lemonade".

A lot of lemons were thrown at us lately so I made lemonade by taking only airconditioned buses when [1] we received the order for a CT scan-guided biopsy from a conjurer in San Jose City that I tried chasing away with a Monday night adobong tofu, [2] retrieved scanned images from the  conjurers of Cabanatuan City that I marked with a Tuesday beer, and [3] upgraded my Pay Maya app while having a meeting in an airconditioned bus to finally seal the dates for the Vang Vieng National Dialogue and subsequent flight bookings to Bangkok and Vientiane. 

We took the first Solid North trip to Baguio on Wednesday for a breakfast of Balajadia Kitchenette's classic sinanglao and pork tinuno overload (Sobresaliente!) that helped us endure an 8-hour wait for a private room in the company of a gangrenous man, a pale woman and what must be her concerned husband, a hysterical woman who apparently works in a bank, a white man who the next bed said was given preferential treatment on room assignments, and a baby with a possible gatroenteritis at the Notre Dame De Chartres Hospital's Emergency Room which is a paradox since it does not seem to operate in an emergency sitiuation.

We stayed in Room 1 for a succession of CT scan conjurings that revealed benign cysts but what-we-must-know will only be disclosed after 10 days and for that I pleaded to Our Lady of the Atonement for mercy, in my bare feet and knees, and received holy communion after a long while before charging into the soft rain of Session Road for a recovery take-out dinner of mami and siopao from Luisa's Cafe (Bien but not in the level of Ma Mon Luk) and getting discharged the next day to the haunted halls of Casa Vallejo, a thanksgiving visit to the Baguio Cathderal, and a dinner at Hill Station (Notable alto but pricey).

The ghosts of Casa Vallejo were apparently absent because we almost did not make it there due to an Agoda debacle and broke a glass jar of bath gel too so we searched for Baguio Masonic Lodge No. 67 before enduring breakfast at a Cafe by the Ruins (Insuficiente, ruinuous, disappointing and overrated!) that was somehow mitigated by a criterium and sparring boxers in Burnham Park, and three approved Fridays off in lieu of my first meeting with CANSEA and a weekly I-JET PMU catch up on why Jonas Vingegaard outsprinted Tadej Pogacar in Stage 11.

After 3 days of conjuring and a day of recovering, I finally snatched a smoke in the toilet of a vegetable stall along Kennon Road, almost 3 hours before entreating Apo Baket Manaoag for her divine intervention.

The kinigtot, pigar-pigar and grilled boneless bangus at the Kainan sa Kubo Ningnangan Ed Manaoag rocks but their dinakdakan, sinigang na salmon belly and pinakbet Ilocano sucks.

That is my conjuring back in Bakal 2 where the beer freezeth over a weekend of birthday sessions...

LEGENDS OF THE FALL (Bakal 2 Edition)

After The Fall, I paid my annual dues, I gave my thanks, I expressed my loathing to those who wronged me, and drank whiskey and beer.

The 5th generation of Fr. Juan Severino Mallari now drives an XLT in Nueva Ecija while Lucas Alarcon is actually a caregiver in London but not in Italy and France were Romain Bardet, Richard Carapaz, Biniam Girmay, Kevin Vauquelin and Mark Cavendish made history as I segued into my para-PM role to finalize the National Dialogue in Vang Vieng and escalate preparations for the Regional Convening in Phnom Penh.

Before The Fall, I scored 3 lotto 4-digit wins, invested another P160,000 in MP2, paid the bills except SSS premiums, and followed-through my missing remittance.

A flourescein angiography report led to an optical coherence tomography imaging of the left eye's optic nerve because of a worrisome malignancy that was somehow assuaged by Bulan's reassuring interpretation of CA125, CEA and LDH test results to prelude and conclude The Fall of Thursday afternoon perhaps because I traded a slam party in San Fernando for a birthday dinner in Maligaya.

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At the hospital, I paid for a cranial CT scan and a wrist and shoulder x-ray, bought medical supplies then had a bottle of cold Red Horse to calm the nerves.

I finally have a Hard Rock Cafe shirt from London, traded Thursday night with Friday's fried liempo and Sunday's pritong bangus to conclude a hard week and four short stages of the Tour de Don Francisco Munoz of Sitio Papaya with a prayer that the coming week will be kind, that Bulan would work from home or find another job near Bakal 2 so we can build his house, that Balong would reconsider his "I choose to remain single" dogma and find himself a worthy partner...     

THE 3rd INDUCTION: 6 Days in Phnom Penh, a Reunion in Almaguer

I don't like wearing propaganda and I have a set of rarely worn fraternity jerseys that will grow molds if not washed for another year of storage.

So I packed these for a week in Phnom Penh where there will be less curiosity on the strange printed emblems that adorned 5 breakfast moments at the 10th floor Rooftop Pool and Skybar of the Phnom Penh 51 Hotel.  

Yes, I wore these for 5 days of what can be my 3rd induction with Oxfam where I recently signed a consultancy/freelance agreement from 01 May until 31 October 2024. 

These dri-FIT shirts were on me during a lunch of herby sinigang na isda and papaitan and salty giniling Khmer style, and a lovely dish of bean sprouts and pork with an all-male Cambodian group; pita bread with feta cheese and Greek keftedes with the Executive Team of Fair Finance Asia; and subequent solo meals of vietnamese pho and Thai pad kra phao.

Oskar said something about a cult as we jumped from Vietnamese craft beer and chips near Wat Botum to frozen margarita and tacos  at Bassac Lane...  

...but Sakara and the masked attendants who served grilled beef, salmon and pork at Koi Pich Riverside and the BBW who brought beef offal to our table somewhere in the Historic District did not care...  

 ...nor did the beer maids who gorged us with huge steins of German beer, baked pork knuckle, sausages, cold cuts and hot pretzel from the kitchen of Hops Craft Beer...  

...even after peeing in my pants after a deluge of Khmer beer, fried chicken knees, more grilled beef and Munich fresh beer in God Knows where.

5 days, 13 meetings, 10 bars, two doses of virtual earthy cyprine juice.

That is what I brought to the Phnom Penh International Airport Premium Lounge where all things I-JET were crammed in a gin tonic cocktail, FFA was mixed as as Cuba Libre, and everything else (OiC, SP, IP2, OiL, PSE) were poured in a tall glass of  Angkor beer. 

In Bakal 2, a sputum culture test turned out negative that led to a chest CT scan with contrast as I tried to fix a broken account number in Phnom Penh where I executed my first PMU-lead actions, received a $650 reimbursement, and submitted a flight booking request to Vientiane and Bangkok.

We are officially twice a millionaire so I opened a decanted pinot noir on Saturday night.

That's also because I next travelled 1,913 kilometers from 17 Pasteur Street to Almaguer South where the coffee is as fresh as the air in Dalton Pass and the igado in Aritao as ancient as the St. Vincent Ferrer Church of Dupax Del Sur.

Me, my brother and my sister were raised in Almaguer where what can be our ancestral house that I first built still stands; where childhood friends are either still alive or dead; where my second girlfriend is now in partial paralysis; and where our next generation gathered to fete our two new college graduates.

There I got drunk over Irish whiskey and woke up just in time for a sinigang na bangus dinner in Puncan...