Day 44: Community Quarantine
  FROG-  I was removing garden soil from a plastic bag when eyes popped out from the bottom. There was a frog. Good thing I was using my hands and not a trowel else I could have wounded or killed it.
   It was a big bellied frog commonly found in moist areas buried under ground or in mulch.
   I remember doing bisection to frogs during our biology class decades ago. I didn't feel any remorse torturing the animal then.
  Now, older, I don't feel like I can intentionally harm animals. I guess when one gets older one gets more emphatic.
   I picked up the frog and put it in a moist and shaded area without ants. I have seen frogs like this killed by ants. 

    POWDER- There are fine powders under of the bamboo sofas and one look I knew what it was.
   I brought the sofa out to check. One leg was infested with dry wood termites (bukbok).
    I had a left over general insecticides that I applied, but it did not work. The wood needs to be immersed for the poison to seep through the tunnels where the insects live. I will need a lot of poison.
   I had an idea. I boiled water and poured it into the affected node. The node was filled to the brim with scalding hot water, sure enough I saw termites floating to the top.
   I will be repeating the process three times every morning.
   MALUNGGAY- I planted five malunggay cuttings near the papayas. This I should have done long ago. The thing is, I am running out of space and there's no more "social distancing" between the trees. I will have to regularly trim them to give each trees their equal share of the sun.

PARES and condiments and franchise

    Yesterday, I got out of the house to buy grilled boneless milkfish in Cainta (seedless bangus). On my way there, I passed by the sidewalk lined with street food carts and mobile stalls, the pares mami, siomai, barbecue, kwek-kwek and fishballs. All of them emitted that unmistakable fused aroma of grease, condiments, and kerosene. All were beckoning me.

    I have been into "healthy" diet lately, but then again, what the heck.  I had a bit of struggle but its been a long time since I had some of these hepa foods, as they are called.

 

       I caved in.

    I tried was the pares mami without the fried rice. The chef, I mean what else should I call the guy, got a plastic bowl wrapped in plastic bag (or plastic labo). He tied the open end to secure the bowl, used the dripping ladle to push the air out of the bulging plastic wrap, scooped up few bits of beef chunks (from what part of the cow, who knows?) from the strainer on top of the boiling cauldron, and then ladled a cup of steaming, dark, murky thick soup onto the plastic wrapped plastic bowl. 

   

     I guess the plastic wrap is a hygienic improvement from the dip and then rinse in a pail of heaven-knows-how-many-times used water of the past, also its more convenient for the vendors for they don't have to lug bulky water containers, pails and basins needed to wash and rinse. But it's a one use plastic warp, which I thought was banned in Cainta. It's bad for the environment. 

    One thing about eating pares is the assortment of condiments added on top of it: spring onion, calamansi juice, hot sauce, chili garlic, etc. You can create your own formula to suit your taste and state of your mind. Its like the soup and the noodles are the blank canvass and the rice, eggs, chicharon and condiments are the paints from which you can create your own epicurean dish. 

   

    There are many street foods that are now being served in restaurants and in the malls. They have gone mainstream and some chefs even experimented with them,  spiced them up, decorated and artsified them with expensive leaves, spices, served in fancy containers arranged with other whatchamacallits to give that illusion of class to the poorman's food, which to my opinion is an effing waste of time.

   In the case of the pares, I don't think the rich will get into eating slaughter house by-products and the common pinoys are not going to pay twice or quadruple the price for a cosmetically enhanced street food that most of the time lacks the grit and the flavor of the ones served in street carts and pedicabs.

 . 

TOO many CHOICES, just MOVIES and STUFFS

 I am checking my Netflix account (paid by my daughter) and I notice that I have accumulated scores of series and movie  titles in the "continue watching" panel. These are titles that I clicked, watched, a few seconds later got bored with, then clicked another title, got bored and so on.

  

This is frustrating because it seems that my attention span has dwindled to a few seconds, and I can not get to the point where the interest builds up.

I miss the days when I could focus on one movie, one book, one task. Now, I can't decide on a choice whether it be a movie, a book, and musical piece to study and learn because there's just too many of them available online now.

There must be name for this condition. I mean, everything has a name now.

I Googled "I cant decide disorder" and there it was:

 Aboulomania (from Greek a– 'without', and boulē 'will') is a mental disorder in which the patient displays pathological indecisiveness. It is typically associated with anxiety, stress, depression, and mental anguish, and can severely affect one's ability to function socially. 

Well, maybe not that bad. Its just that.

I don't want to waste my time watching  a bad show. The Last movie I saw in full in weeks was "I Care a Lot" with Rosamund Pike and Tyrrion Lannister (yup, he is Tyrrion to me now), and I had to fast forward it by 10 seconds every time the scenes became dragging. This is not good. Just like in music, silence is important, it builds up anticipation that leads to the climax. 

I have lost appreciation in the art of anticipating, of waiting for the denouma, the revelation, whatever it is called,  because the power to fast forward movies, music and even books has been granted to me by technology.

REMINISCING:

I grew up in the 80's and 90's before ICT era. We had a cabinet type Zenith vacuum tube TV which was later replaced by the transistor type NIVICO 12 inch TV. This was the boob tube that I had spent my teen age and adulting years with until it conked out in 2000s. It served the family for almost two decades.

There were only five channels then BBC 2, Maharlika TV 4, IBC 13, RPN 9 and GMA 7. Almost all of them had limited airing time with the exception of RPN that screened midnight movies. I was an insomniac, so I had the TV by myself and since there were no other channels that aired on graveyard shift, I had no choice but to watch what's being shown. 

I saw eclectic collection of movies from Mel Brooks classic Young Frankenstein, The Last Time I saw Paris with Elizabeth Taylor, Bertollucci's The Last Emperor, to Richard Attenborough's Life on Earth. 

I also devoured paperbacks like there's no tomorrow, I could finish a James Michener novel in a day but now I could hardly get through a 2 minute Esquire article.

Anyway, I think most people have indecisive moments and get by normally. Its just that this is made worse by the fact that there too many options now especially with the internet. So unlike 20 years ago when it was so boring in the afternoons that one can learn and play a musical instrument within a week, or read a tome in a day, or got to have a lot of good and unforgettable time with friends chatting in street corners just wasting time hanging around, looking at the surroundings, observing people, listening to music, singing along to the accompaniment of a badly tuned guitar, being in the moment, things move so fast now. 

People still hang around now but they are trapped, mesmerized by a small screen. Like me.

Boredom is important, the right one, that is. The time to think about nothing for ithout it, we cannot declutter the mind. Boredom is the space and playground where the mind gets creative.