How to cook Spaghetti de la pobre con sardinas ala cham

I have here minced carrots, chopped garlic and onion, red bell pepper, and  sliced mushroom (it's a left over from Christmas but I'm sure it is not yet expired. I checked the date.).

No exact measurement, estimates will do. That's why its called a la cham, by the way.

Be sure the oil is very hot. Don't dip your finger or it will be seared and it could fall off. (I mean not instantly, it might get infected and become gangrenous etc.) , 

Test the oil by dropping a piece of garlic and if the oil reacts violently, that's hot enough. 

Put the carrots, garlic, mushroom, bell pepper into the frying pan. In no particular order, just throw them together and saute for about five minutes or so.

This is the sardines. Don't forget to open the tin can first or else you might end up cooking tin cans. Put the sardines in a bowl and then mash with a fork. Add ground pepper, laurel leaves and salt.

Mix well. The pepper is to add spice while the laurel is for aroma and the salt is for saltiness...what else...

Maybe chefs especially the doctors study these stuffs: the chemistry and alchemy of ingredients, the ergonomics of kitchen utensils, kitchen architecture, hygienics of pork and chicken surgery, botany and anatomy of plants and animals, Latin, ethics of food preparation, bacchanalian theology, herbology, food preservation, etc.

I believe cooking and education are the two builders of civilization: nourishment for the body and nourishment  for the mind...

I added some dried oregano for a weirder taste. If you have basil, add basil for a much weirder taste.

Before putting the pasta, add sugar. Here I put about half a cup of brown sugar. I like my spaghetti sweet and in this case, the sweetness needs a little exaggeration to cover up the fishy-metallic taste of canned sardines and to give it the jollibee-ishness.

My wife loves it. She says it tastes like  Jollibee sardines spaghetti.

For dessert, I prepared watermelon float.

By the way, a la cham is French for a la chamba.

Of course, I washed the dishes.

Walking blah, blah, blah...

Taken at highway 2000.We begin at 4:30am and usually
ends at 6:30. We cover about six or eight kilometers
 a day.

I don't know where my wife gets her energy. She's up at four in the morning, takes a bath, prepare instant coffee for us and then wakes me up for our morning walk. She still has the energy to do household chores. I do my part too but she's more energetic. 

We have been doing walking for years now. During school days, we do our walking in the afternoon, and since this is summer, we are taking advantage of the morning sun. It's nice to see the sun rising and feel the radiance... poetic. 

Watermelon season.

She's been trying to help me manage my weight and my high blood pressure. She controls my rice intake which sometimes work but most of the time it doesn't especially if the viand is is irresistible like talong and bagoong, sinigang sa miso, laing, etc..

She encourages me by telling me that I'm not really fat and that my only problem is my protruding belly other wise, especially looking from behind, she tells me that I looked normal. Good thing I married someone who knows my love language: words of affirmation. 

I love watermelons. I can eat one whole in ones sitting.
Of course that means being immobile for an hour or two.

Exercising is good whatever time of the day, but morning is the best time to do it because it jump starts the body and increases metabolism better than any other time of the day.

Diet must compliment exercise. I try my best to control my food intake. It is easier to regulate eating during regular meals, but what is difficult is to control the impulsive-compulsive urge to eat junk foods because most of the time it is done unconsciously or subconsciously. Because of the ads, my mind is already conditioned to respond to every hunger pangs with chips, candies, chocolates, softdrinks etc. I'm trying my best to kill hunger pangs with water, drown em!

She looks younger than me. It must be because she has a
good looking, loving, kind, husband. What other explanation
 is there? he...

I haven't counted the number of times I stood up from the computer chair to buy junk food and soft drink, then sit down again to continue whatever it is I'm doing., It must be a lot. What is troubling is that often this is done without even really thinking about it. I'm conscious of it of course, but there's something automatic
about it.

I think about our only daughter, how it will be better and more fun to have  her join us in our daily walks. My wife and I try our best to encourage her to join and she sometimes says yes, but when it comes to waking her up, it's like trying to revive a corpse.

We can't force her, she's still growing up.

Anyway, it's Wednesday, laundry day, I'm in charge of cooking lunch...

How to beat the heat with limited budget while promoting water conservation and at the same time providing nutrient to my plants.

Showing off my "muscles and abs."

I have been hearing warnings about the dimishing water level in Angat Dam and the possibility of water rationing if the current rate of depletion continues and if no rain comes to replenish the water.

The dam supplies 97 percent of the water here in Metro Manila and also provides irrigation to many provinces in Central Luzon. 

The dam management had reduced the water quota and I noticed that the water pressure in the faucet decreased considerably. The probability of rationing is high and it is only proper to be prepared. So, I took out our old drum and stored water in it just in case there's water disruption at least I saved enough water to wash my butt for a few days.

I thought of inviting my wife inside but with my
"muscles and abs", we would not fit in. 

But it was so hot this afternoon that I could not resist the temptation to baptize myself. I took out a chair snd used it as a ladder and then stepped into the drum.

It was so relaxing but I could not stay for long because I was thinking about the internet 24 hour unlimited prepaid load, time is running and its kind of waste to let go of those internet minutes.

Anyway, of course, I am aware of the government's call to save water. Unlike inflatable rubber pools, drums occupy little space and so it is not necessary throw away the water to deflate to recapture space. 









Afternoon, I watered our plants. I used the water in the drum.This is hitting two birds with one stone:

1.I had relief from the heat and enjoyed myself. 

2. This water contains most of the necessary nutrients for promoting plant growth. 


3. I saved more water by using manual water sprinkler than by hosing the plants.


Hmmmmm...what if the plants die due to water poisoning...

(Grammar is killing me!)

Medicinal plants and other healing stuffs blah, blah, blah, blah

This is sambong. I planted this in our garden about a year ago.
This is boiled and taken as tea. According
to studies sambong is used to treat kidney stones, rheumatism,
hypertension etc. It is  a natural diuretics so its good for
ridding the body of toxins, cholesterol, salt and other bad stuff.
drink a lot of water when taking sambong tea, double
the recommended 8 glasses. Lagundi is a DOH approved
endorsed  herbal medicine.

I am now in my early forties and have now started to feel little pains and aches, old age catching up. I had been unkind to my body during my younger years. I used to smoke and drink a lot, activities that do a lot of damage to the body.

I quit the bad habits when I was in my early 30's and like the preacher always tells us, there will be consequences to everything we do. This I do not think of when I was young (who does that). 

I am now more prone to asthma attacks and rheumatism. Truth to tell I get tired of doctors because most of the time they prescribe the same medicines (sometimes different brands) over and over again and there's also the issue of liver damage with painkillers. 

This is lagundi. Traditionally it is used to
treat coughs and asthma. This is also boiled
and taken as tea. Pharmaceuticals now
process and manufacture lagundi cough
syrups. But why buy when you can get it straight
from your garden.

Anyway, I am now into herbs and leaves. Of course before doing any of these stuffs, I asked the doctors opinion and she said "it's okay." It is important to seek the doctor's advice because herbs and leaves may contain substances that may work against some (maintenance) medicines. 


Doctors have different opinions about herbs and leaves.There are those who are okay with it and there are those who are not enthusiastic with the idea. Many may not know it,  there is a law sponsored by Barrio Doctor Senator Juan Flavier that promotes traditional and alternative medicine known as the alternative medicine act of 199. 

Each to his own, I say. 

The main reason why many Filipinos prefer traditional medicines is because MEDICAL SERVICES HERE IN THE PHILIPPINES IS EXPENSIVE AND THE GOVERNMENT HAS NO COHERENT HEALTH SERVICE PROGRAM FOR IT'S CITIZENS EXCEPT GIVING AWAY ONE-TIME-USE-HEALTH-CARDS THAT ARE PRINTED WITH PICTURES OF POLITICIANS...DAMN IT!

(Sigh) Anyway....  

There are many kinds traditional and alternative medicines and some of them can easily be identified and be dismissed as quacks because they are not scientific and are simply insane. It is easy to identify quacks: they rely on spirits, voodoo and magical incantations and they use supernatural hardwares like stones, booklets, talisman, relics etc. Some of them even call on God and sometimes they even wear priestly robes and expensive polo shirts and sing praise and worship songs and then asks for money and donations. Herbs and leaves or herbology on the other hand, though traditional and alternative, is different.

This is gynura precumbens.  It has many names
like longevity spinach, cholesterol spinach, asitaba in Filipino, etc.
Good for lowering cholesterol and blood pressure etc.

In the past, herbologists used intuition, and observation to identify medicinal plants. One way could be by observing animals.  And through the years, they have identified plants that cure specific illnesses and some have even mastered the art of mixing herbs, barks etc. to make formulas add to that the development of a system for dosages and dispensing of the formulas. They also collated testimonials for references and as the basis for the effectiveness of their medicines.

Though their methods are not as reliable as the modern scientific method, it cannot be denied that there is at least, in principle, a modicum of science in their art.  

Now we have institutes that study traditional medicines (especially herbology) and are now starting to implement programs that will make traditional and alternative medicines complimentary to modern medicine especially in poor like countries like the Philippines. 

Just keep in mind that though some plants may contain anti-cancer properties, herbal medicines cannot cure cancer or AIDS the way they are erroneously being advertised nor can they help in trauma cases like gunshot wounds in the head or being hit by a car. In trauma cases it is best to call 911-11-11 and you'll get a pizza. (Now, tell me what is wrong with this country he...)

This is crap...gotta find something more stimulating to do like...hmmmm...talking about going to the pool!

Faster than Light Travel...sci-fi stuffs...

I am not physicist nor am I a mathematician. Truth to tell, I don't even know what the associative and distributive properties of addition are and I still use my fingers to count when multiplying by odd numbers.

Numbers and symbols give me vertigo.

Anyway, I'm a sci-fi fan and one of sci-fi's staple is faster than light travel (or FTL). FTL makes everything else possible from space travel to time travel to interdimensional travel or crossing multiverses. The science and the math is beyond me and the rest of 99.99% of humanity.

Light travels at 1080 kilometers per hour. This figure may seem fast here on earth but in space travel this is slow, very slow compared to the infinity of outer space. That is why speed in outer space is measured in light years,i.e. the number of kilometers light travels in a year which is 9,50,000,000,000 km. The nearest star is around 4 light years away so it will take 4 years for a ship to travel get there at the speed of light. There also relativistic phenomenons with light speed travel like time slowing down in the ship etc. 

Of course the speed of light limits us and if time comes that we achieve near-speed-of-light-travel, the constant still imprisons us. To get around this problem, inter-galactic ships use warp engines. Warp engines are powerful engines that can bend time and space around them.They are so powerful that they consume energy equivalent to a star like our sun.

Why the warp engine? 

There is one law in physics that most physicist believe cannot be broken the constant: speed of light. (the c in E=Mc2). It is impossible to travel beyond the speed of light. This is stated in Einstein's works and is accepted as true because of the math and the science and Einstein...anyway..(This is beyond me). 

Another thing is that in breaking or disproving the constancy of the speed of light, our ( at least the physicists') understanding of reality and cosmology would change and all the theories and maths from which "c" is present would become worthless. It's like removing the foundation of Eiffel Tower, it cannot be expected that tower will stand. Anyway, if the constancy and inviolability of the speed of light is violated, things will have to be worked out from scratch. That's why an experiment that showed that the speed of light was violated by a neutrino created a lot of stir and was later proved to be wrong.

How does a warp engine of a spaceship work?

According to a physicist, since it is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light, what can be done is to bend time and space. So what happens is that technically, the ship did not move, but time and space did.

Still not making sense, okay, imagine this:

I have a super fast car that could travel at 1000 kilometers per hour so that I could go to Baguio in a minute or so. But unfortunately there's a law that says I cannot travel beyond 80 kilometer per hour. To beat the law, I created an engine so powerful that it could bend the roads and mountains etc. literally folding the surface of the planet earth. It was so powerful that when I turned the car engine on, Baguio was pulled under the wheel and I'm in Baguio in a jiffy. Of course to those outside the car noticed nothing unusual.. It's just a car suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Technically, I did not travel beyond the speed limit but I did bend earth.

Imagine the power and the energy requirement of this engine. Imagine bending time-space...

Alagaw Stump and some plant talk about plants...

I have been into bonsai for almost two years now. Most of my trees are still developing and many are still stumps, but there are some that now looked or resembles a bonsai. 

I have a new material. This is an alagaw tree stump that obviously was a slash and burn survivor. It survived the fire and grew back sprouts. 

It looked ugly and for some this maybe considered worthless, but to a hobbyist this has potential to become a beautiful work of art.

Slash and burn survivors are good bonsai materials because, personally speaking, it is metaphorical and it symbolizes survival through most difficult trials and circumstances. The charred parts and the deadwood tell stories and may even give encouragement to the more hhmmm...literary and philosophically inclined observer.

How to create beauty out of this ugly stump?

Working with a good material is enjoyable and relatively easy because the hobbyist only has to follow the materials' shape; there is already a pattern to follow. The main trunk and the cut branches are already there what needs to be done is to guide or train the branches by wiring and to shape shape the foliage etc..

This stump is both easy and difficult. This is easy because I'm literally starting from scratch; this is like a blank canvass. I can start by looking for a branch or branches that will later become main trunk or the secondary or tertiary trunks. 

There a lot of possibilities like maybe a twin or three-trunked bonsai etc. And also there is the deadwood that is an essential feature of the material and adds a lot to the style of the tree. 

This is also difficult because it will take longer to develop. Patience is one virtue that the hobbyist must possess or else he may end up killing the tree either by over-caring or by unnecessary tweaking due to impatience.

I like bonsai because it is one of the few things that becomes more beautiful and more precious with time.

Kamuning Reduction

This is a Kamuning (double) trunk. It's too straight and does not have any movement. I don't know what to do with this. It's difficult to decide what to cut or where to reduce.

I decided to reduce the trunks. 

I am done cutting the first trunk now I am reducing the second trunk much lower than the first one.

It's hard to cut branches because it takes time to grow them but this one has to go.

I cut the branch and trimmed the rest.

It's done. Now I just have to let the main branches which later will become part of the trunks to grow and develop foliage that are layered canopy.

Anyway...I covered the cut end with plastic cover to prevent drying.

The Legal Wife: Soap Opera or Sardine Opera...

Thank heavens for sardines.

I was not rally paying any attention when I heard a TV station doing a promotional ad on its top rating show "The Legal Wife."  

Upon third or fourth hearing, I turned around from the computer and paid attention to the TV and there it was again: Join the promo and win a daily supply of sardines.

Three things violently entered my mind there and then:

1. Is this for real?

2. Is this sane?

3. Isn't this insulting?

Obviously, this is for real.

This promo is different from the others not because of its mechanics, I mean, I have seen them all, but what made this promo different is because of its prize: the lucky winner will get a daily supply of two pieces of canned sardines. The promo did not mention if the supply is for eternity, for a lifetime,  or for as long as the show is being shown on TV. There is no mention of the duration of the supply. 

Soap operas are sponsored by soap brands.

This is product placing. The soap opera has some of its protagonists working in a canned sardine manufacturer. I don't know if the management thought of this to attract sardine manufacturers to sponsor the program or if there was a prior product placing agreement, but it easy enough to think who the sponsors would be. "Soap operas" are called soap operas because their main sponsors are soap manufacturers, so its only logical--and ground breaking at that--to call the Legal Wife a "Sardine Opera". 

Is this sane?

Anyway...

Canned sardine together with rice are the backbone of
relief goods.

I have nothing against canned sardines. It is food and I'm not even going to demean or degrade the food as cheap or whatever. Keep in mind that canned sardines saved a lot of lives and is still saving lives in times of disasters and other emergencies.

But there's something about it, there's a psychological stigma attached to canned sardines.

The Philippines is one of the most typhoon hit countries in the world and from the recent super typhoons and abnormal monsoon rains that have created large scale floods, water and wind surges that caused huge losses in lives and properties in the country, canned sardines have become the staple of relief food operations along with instant noodles and other "instant" products. Add to natural disasters are the insurgency problem in the south that have displaced a lot of communities.

How may ways to cook canned sardines?
From the TV specals i have seen on TV,
I believe it is safe to assume the the Filipinos
are the only people in the world who have
created hundreds of ways to prepare and
cook food with canned sardines as the main
ingredient.

After typhoon Yolanda wrecked havoc in the Visayas, canned sardines become the primary ingredients of everything the typhoon victims cook. 

The Filipinos creativity was tested to its limit when faced with the situaton of eating the same food over and over again. They have invented many ways of cooking and preparing food to beat the monotony and at the same time aiming at getting the balanced daily nutrition they need. 

But still,  I could only imagine the pervading fishy and metallic aroma of the canned sardines that permeated the air almost everywhere and for weeks in the affected areas especially evacuation sites that volunteers, journalists and even the victims themselves said it's already sickening.  

Whether we like it or don't, through experience and media exposure our minds are conditioned into connecting canned sardines with disasters and relief operations.

Consciously or unconsciously we don't like to be reminded of our helplessness of being victims. 

Isn't this insulting?

I don't know what's in the mind of the people who thought of this gimmick but giving away sardines as a prize?

I have only two hypothesis:

1. Somebody up there an employee, an executive, someone connected to the station is writing a masteral thesis or a doctoral dissertation on "the application of simian intelligence in advertising" from some veterinary college.

2. Somebody up there must have an abnormal predilection for eating sardines.

 Anyway...gonna have my lunch..."tortang sardinas na maanghang". See, I love the stuff but I don't like it being given to me as a prize...a motorcycle or an internet TV is more like it.

I can't fix a thing...

I give up. I don't have my father's patience and knack for
engines. Maybe I'll change the cable later this week. Or maybe,
I'll just bring it to  the shop...

Motorcycle

I am having difficulty changing gears.  I can hear a grinding sound as I change from low to high gear. I am not a motorcycle mechanic but my father has taught me enough about motorcycles to know that the problem is with the clutch.

This motorcycle has manual transmission and the mechanism uses cables that runs from the hand lever to the engine clutch. The cable is not broken but the tension is loose.  I suspect that the one I had installed about six months ago is not a genuine clutch cable. I don't travel much maybe a few meters a day to school and then home every other day or so, and from Highway 2000 to home and I seldom go  beyond 40 kmh ( don't see the need to rush) so I don't expect anything to go wrong this early.

But, anyway...I think it's Murphy's law that says: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." It did.  Whatever...

Personal Amps

I am not sure that this is SHURE.
All our models looked like these but
some have different brand names like SONY,
Piooner, but they all looked the same.
Of course, I am still gratefull for this. This is still
Gov Issued and did not cost me anything.

I was happy that I received this personal voice amplifier last school year, but I noticed that after using it for the field day and graduation practices it started to crackle and hiss. Aside from the crackling and hissing, I also had problem controlling the volume. It was now  broke and useless.

I opened it up and checked if it had some loose connections or something else, but finding there was nothing visibly loose or had short circuited, or burned, my suspicion was the speaker was broken.

Being nearsighted has its advantage, I can work
on little things without my  eyeglasses on.

I checked again and the speaker sounded terrible, maybe the fiber was torn or the coil was busted.


I disconnected the speaker and brought it to the electronics store so that the storekeeper could check the specifications for a new one.

I need a new camera. The lens is already cloudy.
Maybe its becuase I wipe it with my shirt every
now and then.

To help me remember what is what and where is where, I took a lot of photo for reference. I used to take apart things when I was small, but the problem, I was never able to put them back together. At least, now I had a digicam, an external memory device.

Being nearsighted had its advantage, I could see more clearly without my glasses, less interference. Anyway, I re-connected then  soldered the new speaker in place and then put all the parts back together.

I checked the photograph if I had the polarities correct and then I screwed back the cover. I charged the batteries for a few minutes to make sure there was proper power supply.

I was looking at the control and I noticed
the word PALY. Now, I supposed it meant
 Play but somehow the quality control or the graphic
designer did not know his/her Dolch
sightwords. I am sure that this is not
SHURE. Shure is an American Company
so I'm pretty sure that they know
their spelling. Guess, that's why it
broke easily. I am sure.)

I was excited for the result of my handiwork. I turned the dial on, connected the lapel microphone, and tested the amplifier.

My wife, who was a few feet away cooking, was looking at me while I was saying "mic test, mic test..."

I turned the volume up, "mic test, mic test, mic test..."

Finally my wife told me "I can't hear you..."

I shouted,"mic test, mic test..."

"That's loud enough," my wife said.

Well, at least I learned how to solder wires properly.

Fusing Trunks, Sexy Tree Trunk blah, blah, blah...

I have here a couple of young ficus microcarpa
or Chinese banyans
that I have grown from cuttings. 

It is not only the flowers and the leaves that make a plant especially a tree interesting, there is also the trunk.

Tree trunks are wonderful work of art. It just require a little bit of training the eye to see their beauty.

The mind is the real organ of seeing. And for the eye to see better, it is necessary to educate the mind. Did I just say that above? redundancy again! Anyway...all I'm saying is this. The mind seeks pattern and in this manner it fills in the blank of what we see to form patterns. This is intuitive thinking or heuristics whatever the professionals calls this. 

As you can see, I bundled them together
and tied with a plastic straw. The idea is to
strangle them into fusing. Ficuses
are ideal for fusing, it happens to them all the 
time in the wild. As to other species, caveat,
do research or you may kill the trees.
Ordinary ropes or threads will not do for
the trunks will grow on them
embedding them and creating ugly grooves.
You can fuse them at the bottom, upper,
 or middle part. Here I fused them
at the bottom part to give it the tapered
"sexy" form that I aim for.

For example, a deeply religious person may see the face of Jesus or Mary in a splotch of mold, fungi or urine, but a normal and sane person may see something else, like a splotch of mold, fungi or urine. 

This is the same with backward masking in music: the religious might hear satanic messages in music being played backward while the normal, sane human being may hear a sound like that of a , well, music being played backward. 

It would be cool if they could backward mask farts...hmmm...what could be the hidden messages...anyway.. .I'm saying is that you don't need to backward mask anything at all, it's all out there blatantly being broadcast and played.  

So, the meaning of the object as perceived by the mind is determined by the hmmm...sanity and the training, prejudices,DNA, diet...of the subject (or the one seeing the stuffs).

Anyway, all I'm saying is tree trunks are interesting if you think about it.

Anyway, again, lets talk sexy...

Sexy! This is not my tree.
This is achieved by reduction plus
decades of training.

Sexy form. Of course for men a sexy female form is one that is wide on the hips, tapered waistline, and a little wide (not as wide as the hips) upper body. Chest depends on preferences but generally a straight and flat chested body is not as attractive as the one I have described.

I fused this Ficus Benjamina
(weeping fig)  about six
 months ago. The trunks are
already biting into the plastic
straw,so I removed it and
retied again. Of course
the idea is really to strangle them
 into fusing, but I was a little
 worried about wounding or
disfiguring them. As can be
 seen, the fusion has begun
and it will take a year or
 two before
it is completed.

Generally a sexy male body form has a small waistline tapering to broad chest and shoulders with no stomach fats. This is the ideal for men. 

There is also such thing as a sexy tree. A sexy tree has a tapering trunk. The tree can have a straight trunk, meandering trunk, cascading trunk, bent trunk, the shape doesn't matter what is important is that they tapered. Proportion and age are emphasized. 

There are methods in creating tapered trunks for bonsai and also in landscaping and the fastest and easiest is fusing.

Another ficus, a red goliath or balete.
 I am fusing this at the and then
 I will spread the upper branches to
 create an umbrella structure.
Will take years...

It will take years for a plant to have a thick and tapered trunk. A normal tree planted on the ground averages about six to twelve inches of vertical growth but in terms of trunk 
diameter this would be from half an inch to an inch depending on the species and environmental factors like nutrients, moisture and sunlight. 

Early Filipinos have great respects for nature and
especially trees.  They believed that old ones (nuno) lived in
them and that they deserve as much respect as any
visible human neighbor hence they asked permission
when passing through it, or if they would do
anything that could disturb the residents of the tree.
But with the introduction of western religion and the
doctrine that humanity is the center of creation
and that all of nature is there for humanity to lord over and
to use, things changed. But of course, lesson has
been learned...

And this growth rate is slowed further if the plant or tree is potted. This is rough estimate but it does give an idea of the growth rate of trees. That is why we should not kill or cut trees; the rate they are destroyed is not equal to the rate they multiply and grow.                                                                                            

Fusing trunks is one way of cheating time. Remember it's not all about "actual age"  its all about the "appearance of age." 

What's interesting about tree trunks?

If you have read Harper Lees' "To Kill a Mocking Bird" one of the interesting scenes was Scout finding stuffs inside a tree. She didn't know who was putting it there. It was one of the mysteries that reveals itself quite surprisingly in the story. The tree became integral part of the novel. Anyway...

Better take an aspirin for that head ache....