A Walmart/Meijer plastic bag in the bath?  Why not?  This is what I discovered this snowy and cold, cold week when I decided to put a temporary end to my daily hair bath: plastic bags from grocery stores make good shower caps.  They’re everywhere, they’re as effective as those shower caps in waterproofing your hair, and they’re free.  Not only that, reusing them in the shower is an innovative way at recycling.  You can try it, it’s a lot of fun! And when you do, don’t forget to take a good look at yourself in the mirror before you hit the shower.

Yes, these are some of the people behind those adrenalin-coffee-inspired R,D&E papers/articles/reports/campaign materials/budget plans/trainings, those wild, wacky and riotous RDE parties that our organization is known for, those memorable team-building activities that other units in the university envied of, and one of the most creative & unique Christmas trees that you’re looking at.

These are the people I worked with in the past five years–the ones I laughed with, went to field with, confided with, argued with and, at the end of the day, made up with.  These are the people who never run out of ideas.  And no matter how crazy they seem at first, or how difficult to execute they seemed to us, how short we are of budget, those ideas almost always come out way beyond expectations.

Like this Christmas tree below–inspired by their advocacy to elevate the issue of global warming and environmental protection within the RDE complex, within the university.  Recently, much has been written about the “bottling up” of our culture and the emergence of a bottled class due to affluence, fair trade and the eccentricity of man, a mania that is catching up with people in the office.  Trashcans are full of them and yet, these are non-biodegradable materials which are not only eye sores but destroy the environment most of all.  What better way to re-use these bottles than to make them into a Christmas tree!   This way would bid about a month before these bottles hit the dumps and create problems.  But when one takes this initiative beyond symbolism and looks at it in a wider perspective, all things non-biodegradable can be recycled, all it takes is creativity and a team spirit.

Not only that, for years, we had problems how to dispose those (MR’d hmp!) non-functional CDs and ink cartridges.  We just actually threw them into the wastebasket (a practice I didn’t do for CDs because I signed the Memorandum Receipts for them and I might not be able to retire smoothly 35 years from now all for one lost, un-accounted CD).  But my friends found a way of using ‘em!

Wreaths. Wall decors. Name them.  Old decors which should have been discarded now even found themselves in entirely new light!

Team spirit–yes, that’s something we do not lack.  What was it they say?  Synaesthesia?  The combination of different ways of feeling and looking and being creates one thunderous, gigantic output that stuns and pleases the senses?  When the call of duty to produce an output that would bear the name of the organization rings, we do not know ranks or names, we are one and the same, a bunch of young people with its sub-culture and burning creativity (we actually exclude problematic ones from participating in complex tasks, hehe).  Besides, it’s when we do things together that life is actually fun.  I might sit hunched in my chair concentrating about that R&D management paper that I am asked to draft, but hell, who shares my thoughts and my agonies?  Would anyone see that I bleed?  Whereas, when we plan for and create, say a ‘tree someone could see how clumsy I am…I could see how spatial my officemate is…or I would find out how bright the ideas are of that new RA whom I only greeted with a nod every morning.

And what more, people who do not actually like their photos taken would acquiesce if it’s in the name of teamwork.

When I think about them, I could not help but remember those other Christmases where I was very much a part of the making of a ‘tree and the exhilarating experience that comes with it.

(Our Christmas trees for the last two years–so much love, so much effort, so much argument and emotions went with them.)

But no matter how emotionally draining the project could get, everyone never forgets to have fun (wrinkle conscious!).

Which brings me back to that hell of a weaving job I never learned!  And the times we made a fool of ourselves.

We are a team…

in the office and outside of it!

Do not ever underestimate the power of the couch in times when the night could get very arctic.  This is what I found after spending a few nights in a couch. Sigmund Freud was a real genius.  He understood that a warm and comfortable couch could induce a sedate state among humans desperate to sort out the jumbled pieces of their lives and sent them flying back through countless seasons, peoples and experiences in a vortex called hypnosis right in his infamous couch.  (Although I would forever wonder how one could get comfortable at first lying in that couch with a formidable figure in psychology peering at you from his chair.  Must be pretty intimidating.  I would prefer to sit before Freud while he process me–very adversarial indeed!) More than 50 years after, one fellow in desperate need of quieting those countless voices and thoughts that hampered her sleep finds that the couch still offers precious moments of deep and peaceful slumber however cold the night is.

There are places and people in our lives that we can never do without.  Like brushing our teeth, or taking a daily bath, they are very much a part of ourselves that we are not who we are without them.  The attachment is so strong that it pains us to be away from these people and those places.  And sometimes, this pain can be paralyzing that even when you want to move somewhere, spread your wings, see new faces and experience new things, you just can’t because moving out would take you far from the people and things that defined, used to define, your comfort zone.  Without the people you are familiar with, you cannot risk living the ‘unknown.’

When I was a 15 year old college freshman living home for the first time my greatest fear was not college algebra which I really waged a bloody battle with, but missing my mother especially at night.  I remember when I was a kid, although I was never the type to cry and cling to my mother’s slacks every time she leaves for work, I would be right there by the door past 5PM to wait for her return.  Sometimes my mother would arrive at 7PM because she had to finish what she was writing and my face could hardly be drawn.  Every time she would be away on a seminar, conference or personal business, my father would instruct the help not to wash my mother’s clothes so I could wear them and smell her in my sleep.  In those times that she was away, 7PM was my hour of agony as I would start missing her then and would not stop crying until my father take me out for a walk and buy me a bottle of Sprite, or take me to our favorite restaurant, the one where I used to eat with my mom, then to the local movie house.

When my older sister moved to Manila, I cried a bucket of tears–something I did not expect because when I was small, she was this looming, constricting presence in my life who forced me to take afternoon siestas when all I wanted was to play, cut my nails close to the flesh, combed and yanked my hair to its sleek perfection, forced me to eat all my food when I was already full, forbade me to scratch my head and my legs, among all the things I hated.  But when she was gone, all those juvenile irritation faded as one memory of us walking together one summer afternoon she was home from med school kept popping into my head.

Missing my older brother was another kind.  We were playmates.  I was tagging along with him for years.  We were conspirators, I was on his side when he ran into trouble, he was on my side during my own troubles.

Technically, I had never been far from my parents until now.  After college I went straight to grad school but as always, I would go home every weekend.  When I got myself a job, I got my own place but almost every weekend I would go home to check on my parents.    Sometimes, they would come to my place and have dinner with me.  So, it seemed like I was never really far from them.  Must be the reason why when some of our friends knew about my going away, they expressed concerns about how I would cope far from my parents.  Some of my officemates thought so too, especially the senior ones who thought I had adjustment problems (they just didn’t know).

I also thought of that too–What if I would miss them so much that I could no longer concentrate with my studies?  What if missing is even stronger and pronounced in a foreign land than the kind of missing that you feel when you are just an hour drive away from home?  What if I would miss our dogs and cats?  Would I also miss our place and our neighbors?  The last time I was away job hunting in Manila I was surprised to discover I even missed our neighbor’s dogs.  And this time, it would not be as easy as flying home the moment I feel I can’t bear being far from home anymore–but not too much, to be honest.  Deep inside me I was longing to get away from my job before I would start having ambivalent feelings about it.  I longed for the challenge of learning new ideas.  I longed to be somewhere far to test my resilience, to test the strength and sense of independence I knew I have in me.  And for all what I would learn from being far from my own land, I was willing to embrace the experience of living the unknown and missing people and places.

To my realization, missing is only strong and painful when you are still contemplating of going beyond the boundaries of your ‘known.’  But when you are already on the other side, you will feel the pain of missing for sure but not as chronic as you imagined it to be–nothing that you can’t handle, really.  In fact, as long as you have already established a routine in your new life, you will start feeling comfortable.  And who knows, when all these must come to an end, I would find myself missing this place and the people who, at present, are becoming a part of my world.

When I left home, my mother told me how my father cried inside my room.  Somehow I had the feeling that my father would–he is the epitome of the feminised male who is not ashamed to shed tears of joy and sadness–but still it was new to me.  I miss my father too which is strange knowing how I loved to pick on him and argue with him whenever I am home.  I miss my mother, that competitive woman who would not let me win any of our scrabble matches and debates.  I miss our place especially the way the flowers light up in the golden showers of the sun.  I miss my mother’s dogs, the way they jumped and reached up their paws to touch me as soon as I closed the gate.  I miss my cats, those aristocratic, snobbish cats who always managed to sneak into my bed and sleep with me at nighttime.  I miss my neighbors and our Saturday morning exchanges.  I miss my desk in the office and my job, surprisingly.  I miss making critical decisions, I miss asking critical questions to my boss, I miss giving lectures to co-workers, I miss playing adult, I miss my friends from the office and the trust they had in me.  I miss home every time I ride the bus at night and pass by brightly lit houses that reminds me of another brightly lit house ocean’s away from here.

At the same time, there’s exhilaration in being away.

Food is a function of culture–the processes involved from preparation to presentation is a part of the ritual that defines the life and identity of a group.  As such, the experience of food is cultural.  Thus, so big was my shock when in my first venture to eat outside, a service staff of one campus pizzeria served me a slice of greasy pizza that covered my whole plate!  I was wondering how am I gonna eat it all as I walked my way to a table.  But the size wasn’t the only problem for me–the oil (from the melting cheeze perhaps) which looked like puddles of water on an empty street after the rain turned my appetite into a low gear and suddenly I wasn’t feeling hungry anymore.  I forced myself to take a bite from my slice, passing the chunks from the left side to the right side of my mouth while chewing to savor the taste but there was nothing in it except the taste of a pizza crust which did not even come as close to the old reliable pan de sal back home.  I took my second bite and closed my eyes hoping this time something would excite my taste buds, trigger synaptic reactions in my neurons, activate my brain and bring me to a heightened gustatory experience which, as other people would describe, is almost like orgasm but my sense of taste was disappointed.  Three bites into my pizza, I gave up and just stared at it for 20 minutes.   I looked around and saw other people seemed to be enjoying theirs and I told myself, “This is unfair.”

I have never had problems with food before.  In fact, compared to my older siblings, my taste is eclectic–my father’s preference for Spanish and Chinese dishes, my mother’s taste for anything and everything native, my neighbors’ taste (as I used to eat a lot in my neighbors’ dinner table as a kid), and the taste of those farmers I was in contact with in the course of my job.  But nothing prepared me for the pizza that tasted like s–d–t in my mouth.

The problem with me was I had my own expectations of how a pizza should look, smell and taste like–lots of green, red and yellow, less grease, thin crust, spicy and sweet and just enough to satisfy your craving.  I came to the pizzeria as a Filipino and was disappointed.  Then it dawned on me that the first time I came to our dinner table as a baby with the rest of my family, and all those countless dinners that followed after, programmed me to be receptive to a particular taste and aroma which defined the way I am going to experience food, many years later, as a foreigner in another country.  Now, I was the one being unfair.  Since then, every time I eat outside, I try not to give in to the vicious temptation of comparison and enjoy the food as they are enjoyed by a culture as distinct and unique as my own.  There!

(Filipino favorites: Greenwich, top, and Shakey’s, bottom, pizza)

Photos from: http://www.chartherct.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/greenwich-barkada-delivery-specials-1-double-greenwich-special-classic-pizza-dsc_4762.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_aEQLNTFH_iU/SQ5miaxCoZI/AAAAAAAADPA/quu7fUq5Fyc/s320/shakeys.jpg