Puerto Princesa City is as straightforward as it can get. So much like haggling for south sea pearls.
My brother and I are not twins, but we were born on the same day. This makes for one unique, ultra-special birthday celebration come September each year. This year, we spent our forever-shared birthday on a short vacation in Palawan.
My grandmother is a baker by profession. She’s tried to teach me to bake cakes since I was in grade school. But I cursed baking ever since my first (flop) pineapple upside down cake, and the rest of the flop cakes and flop cookies that followed.
For reasons I could not explain, Turo and I find ourselves with much more free time now than when we’d lived in the city. We’ve started to enjoy lazy weekends even when we have more housework now than when we lived in my parent’s house. Before we had a laundrywoman and an ironing lady, now I am both. It used to be my parents who took over house repairs and garden work, but in our tiny apartment, this was Turo’s domain. In addition to the usual cooking and cleaning and looking after the kids, now we also take turns fetching Ari to and from school.
Running a household on our own certainly means a lot of work. But it’s the kind of work we lovingly attend to however physically exhausting it gets. Still, at the end of the day we get to sit down with a cup of coffee or a couple bottles of beer before getting some real rest. And in the morning we are woken by our hungry little monsters clamoring for breakfast that we all enjoy without the rush.
I also found myself accessing the internet less, reading more, bonding with my kids more, even cooking more. Proof of this is my recent reunion with la germania. After years of enjoying my lola’s perfect pastries without ever having to learn to make them myself, I realized I still wanted to learn how to bake—bread in particular. I love bread, I love herbs in my bread, but gourmet bread is not as easy to find here. No Rustan’s, no delicatessen anywhere close. If you can’t buy them, why not bake them yourself.
After some serious consideration and more second thoughts, I signed up for Italian Bread, Pizza and Pasta lessons in Sylvia Reynoso-Gala’s Culinary Studio. Up until the first day of my cooking classes I felt reluctant to go. What if I start baking perfect flops again?
But my hands found themselves kneading dough for the first time that day. I felt liberated and satisfied.
And so we live a stone’s throw from a forest reserve. We are forever in awe each time we roll down our car windows and see through the tall trees outside and breathe the fresh forest-y air. And all these happen each time we try to avoid traffic and take the PCARRD shortcut. We may have the worst traffic this side of Laguna, but, we have the best shortcut in the world.
UPLB sits at the foothills of the Mt. Makiling Forest Reserves. It is a science community that is up in arms when conservation and preservation is concerned. The environmental consciousness of the UPLB community is one of the many things that has been very exciting for me.
