the view that greeted us every morning

back then, el nido was a small, quiet town whose streets were filled with friendly locals. there were a smattering of resorts and restaurants in the town proper but tourists who found their way to el nido mostly stayed at the expensive resorts offshore. the few foreigners we ran into were either backpackers or those who were married to locals and actually lived there.

the place has always been special to me; it was there where i first grieved freely and deeply, where i realized that the future wasn’t as desolate as it seemed, where i had gotten my tattoo and with it the start of my recovery.

our last night in el nido, circa 2006

six years later, i was back, the circumstances of my life as different as it could be from my initial visit. i was excited to show alvin the streets i had walked on, the mountains i had stared at, the quiet i had reveled in. to my surprise, el nido town’s transformation rivaled my own: the once-lazy streets were now filled with people of various races, resorts, restaurants, kayak rentals, travel and tourist centers; anything to help and amuse your everyday visitor, basically.

i felt a bit sad to see the el nido town of old gone, but i guess in the name of progress this was a good thing. after all, all these tourist activities should contribute a lot to the town’s economic development. what bothered me though was that most of the ‘local’ businesses seemed to be owned by foreigners. some would argue that without these establishments, locals wouldn’t have jobs at all, but, naive as it sounds, it would be nice to actually have filipinos own businesses on philippine soil.

while the town changed, the islands surrounding it remained as gorgeous as i remembered. the waters as deep blue, the sands as powder fine, the mountains as majestic.

around town

yellow dog!

ron & alvin: reunited

island hopping!

do you see the submerged muscle man?

there were caves!

alvin got stung by a jellyfish. contrary to how it looked, no amputation was necessary.

after-breakfast coffee at artcafe

latte and buko pie

lower left: the uruguay consulate, i kid you not.

dry docked

the local cemetery

the town proper's shoreline

our front yard for a few days

the making of the mosquito basketball team

palawan mangoes!

i’m starting to tire of the endless round and round, of the compromises and uncertainties, of the waiting for signs. people keep telling me that there will never be a ‘right time’ and there are days when i do want to just be done with it; just take a deep courageous breath and go ahead and get pregnant and worry about everything else after, just have faith that it will all work out. after all, the universe’s track record has been really good so far. but wouldn’t that be an irresponsible thing to do?

but then what if we waited until we’re fairly sure we have enough to feed and clothe a human being and discovered it was already physically impossible by then? i really don’t need that whole fertility drugs and scheduled sex experience, thank you. i guess technically we can adopt (pro: it’s like rtw shopping, you can pick and choose!), but i know for a fact that alvin wants a child ‘of his own blood’. (i actually hear this sentiment more often from men than women. makes one think, huh?)

so we’re right back where we started. to add to the fun, babies and pregnant women have been popping up everywhere! bulging tummies and cute, little faces all over the place. i’ve seen them at the mrt and along grocery aisles, crossing streets and snacking on bread, appearing as if on cue.

tell me, do all couples go through this frustrating process? are we overthinking this?

see what alvin and i recently came back from palawan with!

there's a pregnant lady in the house!

i’ve been to various souvenir stores in various provinces around the country and i’ve never seen a hand-carved wooden pregnant lady before, which, of course, instantly made me want to buy it. or maybe it’s the universe’s not-so-subtle way of reminding me of my ticking biological clock, haha!

oh, and about a month ago, alvin and i had a day bed made to replace the red sofa we sold last year. it arrived yesterday.

the main reason for selling the sofa was because it felt too big in our 40-sqm unit. the idea was to get a smaller sofa; one that was more to scale. so, of course, we went ahead and bought a day bed which measured roughly a couple of inches smaller all around.

so pretty! the one month wait was worth it!

the frame is philippine mango wood, which, as we learned, is a sustainable kind of wood. mango trees are grown mainly for their fruit and growers used to just throw away or burn the trees when their fruit-bearing years were over. fortunately, someone somewhere discovered that mango wood would make beautiful, sturdy, affordable pieces of furniture. it’s actually referred to as the new bamboo and is all the rage in the UK!

now, to find some funky pillows!

*day bed made-to-order from kakami design. 2nd floor lifestyle center, greenhills shopping center.

karel and mila brouwers: kakami_design@yahoo.com

the reason people found this fascinating was because alvin is almost 6 feet tall, i am a quarter of an inch shy of being 5 feet 6 inches tall, and a standard single bed measures 36 inches by 75 inches. while not impossible, most people found it hard to come to terms with the idea of the two of us fitting comfortably on 36 inches of bed space night after night. but for the past three years, that’s exactly what we did.

for two years before we were married, we shared a house with friends, and with six people divided into two rooms, bodies had to double up. when we got married, we spoke about getting a wider bed but given the fact that, though narrow, we already did own one, we had to prioritize buying stuff we actually didn’t have, like a refrigerator and  a washing machine.

also, we really didn’t mind sharing a single bed. i laughingly responded to the countless variations of people’s always incredulous ‘how can the two of you fit on a single bed?!’ with ‘we’re very sweet!’

a week ago, after a year of marriage, we took a deep breath and finally bought ourselves a wider bed. we debated over the merits of a double versus a queen sized but decided we really didn’t need the latter’s extra 6 inches over the former; the double’s additional 18 inches over what we’ve had for three years was plenty.

the new bed arrived yesterday afternoon and you can guess the first thing we did with all that space — rolled around and around!

36 inches + 18 inches = so much happiness it made me look slightly deranged

it felt a bit strange to have been able to shift in the night without alvin needing to automatically shift with me, and getting used to not instinctively catching myself from falling off the bed after rolling over twice would take some time, but for the most part, having all that space to play with feels ridiculously good!

diy post-nup photos. hihi!

dear binbin,

after one year of marriage, the traditional gift to give your spouse is paper. and so i thought i’d gift you with words written on virtual paper.

we’ve been married one year, and have known each other for five. while this might not seem like a long time, more and more i struggle to remember a time when you weren’t a part of my life; a time when i did not wake up beside you, when i did not hurry home to you, a time when i did not have you to laugh with.

all wives claim they have the best husbands, and i am no different.

thank you for always giving me the best fried egg (runny yolk and crispy white edges!), for the funniest lip syncs to air supply songs (among others), for being patient with me when i’m at my paranoid-worst.

thank you for taking my weird questions seriously, for helping me with my projects (remember the curtains we sealed the edges of by scorching?), for always looking at me like i’m the best wife in the world.

diy post-nup photos part 2.

when i think about the future, the thing that scares me the most is not having enough of it to share with you.

i love you.

nuna.

i find all my worrying ironic because i grew up seeing and hearing a-ko worry about *everything* -somebody coming home late. somebody who has not yet eaten. somebody’s petty quarrel with somebody else- and i would repeatedly, exasperatedly, tell her to stop. just please stop worrying about everythingeverytinylittlething.

i remember she would get so worked up worrying about somebody else’s problems and i would get so frustrated because i could not understand why she would do that. why she would spend all that energy on something that wasn’t even hers to begin with.

on herself she is the most flexible. her time, her meals, her feelings. these are things she doesn’t put as much weight on as she would others’ — another thing i would not -and still could not- understand.

somehow somewhere, i seem to have picked up the habit as well. not worrying about other people’s problems, but worrying, still.

i worry about not being able to go on all the trips i want to go on, to not see the parts of the world i want to see. i worry about not being able to take care of a-ko, not in the way that she deserves to be taken cared of. i worry about not being good enough -at friendships, at work, at life.

i worry about not having the time to squeeze in the weekly laundry. i worry about not remembering to buy a new tube of toothpaste before the old one gets all squeezed out. i worry about suddenly losing alvin, because i know it can happen.

i worry, it’s what i do.

i never had to watch what i ate and i rarely exercised, yet ready-to-wear clothes still fit, so i figured everything was fine; for all my moaning and groaning about the various sections of my body, it and i were friends.

then came my thirties. people warned me of impending doom: of slowed metabolism. of bloated body parts. of sagging flesh. thirty came and went with not much change. same with thirty-one. i began to relax, thought everyone was just exaggerating.

i think it began at thirty-two and worsened at thirty-three, with me barely making it through thirty-four. suddenly the roll of flesh i’ve been complaining about doubled in size, i started to have period cravings and my tummy regularly ballooned to a size i’ve never seen it reach before roughly the same time every month. oh, and don’t get me started about the bits of flesh that overnight seemed to have collectively developed the desire to touch the floor.

more and more often, i’ve been seized with panic attacks about my aging, changing body, calmed only by the same two-parts laziness that has sustained me thus far.

i’ve often read that having a full breakfast everyday actually helps a person lose weight, something about the feeling of fullness firing off synapses and releasing good chemicals so you don’t overeat the rest of the day. so today i decided to set aside my breakfast-skipper self and give it a try.

alvin and i woke up extra early this morning so we would have time for a proper breakfast and it really seems to be working! it’s been more or less six hours since i finished stuffing my face with a giant bowl of corned beef rice and dried fish and i have yet to feel hunger pangs.

maybe this *is* the way to go!

all-day breakfast!

you get one peso in agahan bucks back for every one hundred you spend.

i love their interiors! the food -- so-so.

agahan: 1012 metropolitan avenue, san antonio village, makati

http://www.myagahan.com/menu

it was february and alvin and i were wandering inside the homeworld section of sm makati with brian and nerri, flitting from sofa to sofa, when i saw it. it was red. it was soft. it was *red*.

it was a whirlwind romance; thirty minutes later we were paying at the cashier and arranging delivery schedules.

so pretty!

this morning, two men came over and carried our lovely red sofa out the door. yes, we sold it. we had ten months together but we sadly couldn’t continue to deny the fact that it was too big for our place.

before we let its plushy redness disappear from our lives forever though, alvin and i made sure we had a souvenir of our love affair.

we spent many lovely hours together.

Filed under: bnuna Tagged: makati terraces, married life ]]> http://thejonastory.wordpress.com/2011/12/30/ode-to-the-red-sofa/feed/ 1 thejonastory sofa 01 sofa 02 http://thejonastory.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/super-sunday/ http://thejonastory.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/super-sunday/#comments Mon, 19 Dec 2011 01:58:44 +0000 jona. http://thejonastory.wordpress.com/?p=643 ]]> i’ve been craving for bulalo the past few weeks and have been looking for an excuse to go to tagaytay for some. daniel needed an out-of-town trip because he had a very important question to ask rt. together, we worked really hard to make it all happen, which means that my bulalo craving has been satisfied and RT AND DANIEL ARE NOW ENGAGED! !

mabuhay ang bagong, um, engaged! yup, that's an engagement piano key on a chain, friends and neighbors. the actual piano is sitting in daniel's house's living room.

because we were so, so efficient, we also managed to sneak in some bawai and ilog maria in between the proposal and the bulalo-fest!

(oh, and also some gourmet cafe, but that place was a disappointment so i try not to think about that part of the day.)

all we could manage were sounds of ecstasy. everything tasted *so* good! a revisit is definitely in order.

after-lunch authentic vietnamese coffee

a very happy (and very full) binbin

i <3 the bird house

we've been wanting to go to ilog maria for years! the whole place smelled wonderful. good work, bees!

giant bee on a chopping board!

cross-section of a beehive

the bee boxes looked eerie among the trees.

more eerie bee boxes

guess which two convinced everyone else to pose for the group shot.

oh, gourmet farms cafe, you were so pretty and held so much promise!

those cookies were, to be blunt, really bad.

mar ben canteen, home of the best tagaytay bulalo! how i've missed you and your good friend crunchy tawilis!