A few thoughts on dreams

Parang kailan lang, ang mga pangarap ko'y kay hirap abutin...

These lyrics from Florante's Handog leaped out at me from a video posted by Will, from the current Glee Club, on my Facebook wall this evening.

Bigla kong naalala na noong kaedad ko sina Will, pangarap kong tumira sa Europa. Hindi ko alam kung paano ko gagawin, pero lagi kong iniisip na sana, balang araw, makabalik ako at makatira dito.

So ang ibig sabihin, dahil nandito ako ngayon, nagkatotoo ang pangarap ko.

Kiddies in Prague, 2001. Slight digression: why did I think I was fat?

I sometimes lose sight of the fact that I'm living a dream fulfilled: when it's cold, rainy and gray for what seems like the umpteenth day in a row; when I see other people living in fantastic locations; or when I'm slogging through a ten-page immigration document written entirely in Dutch.

How easy it is to forget that my dream came true. So when I do remember, the realization can hit so hard it sometimes brings tears to my eyes.

Though it may seem like it to people who don't know me or Marlon very well, it may seem like I got to Europe by latching on to a jet-setting expat type (or an expat-to-be) with a career that would take him around the world. But I'll tell you something not a lot of people know.

When Marlon and I first started dating, the plan was very different. I was dead set on living in Europe (how, neither of us knew... but I was going to do it!) and Marlon needed to follow me, somehow. That was why he took his overseas job with a multinational company in the first place: because he thought it would give him the best chance of following me wherever I decided to end up.

This is the first step that the man of my dreams took in making my dreams come true. He believed in me. He saw me as a person who could, and would, achieve some whacked-out dream like that. Never mind that I had zero plans. Never mind that every time I thought about what I wanted, I wanted it so bad and felt so far from having it that I easily wound up bawling every time. He simply believed in me.

Over the course of the next four years, he took another simple but very difficult step. I can sum it up in four words: he stuck it out. I mostly mean the long-distance thing, but there are other, bigger things that nearly blew us both in separate directions. But he just hung in there. And because he did, so did I.

Then, last year, when I started getting itchy feet and questioning our life in Singapore, he did one last thing that bridged the gap from there to here. He listened. It wasn't easy for him to consider such a big change, with the career he had built and the comfort we enjoyed. But he listened, and that single act encompasses so wonderful things. Being someone I felt I could talk to about anything, enough for me to open up in the first place, is one. Sharing my sense of adventure and love for travel, valuing what we agreed our marriage would be, and not being bound to money or comfort, were others.

And this is why I—why we—are here.

Thanks to PKF for the photo!

There are as many dreams as there are ways of making them come true. All I'm saying, really is that this life, and the man I'm living it with, has been one of mine.

A world of our own

Part two of Marlon's birthday bonanza was something I knew he'd always wanted, but would never buy for himself: a globe!

Google led me to Stanley & Livingstone, a small store selling a wide variety of globes, maps and travel guides in Den Haag. So I arranged to meet my German friend Robert, who lives there, for a quick coffee and a trip to the center of town to check out the store. "I'm meeting Robert for coffee," I told Marlon the day before his birthday. What he didn't know was that I was meeting Robert in Den Haag!

And what I didn't know was that Robert had his own ideas for my little visit. "We can bike to the beach, then back to town, then to the center of town for coffee," he suggested. "Er... maybe not," I replied, thinking of my fledgling repertoire of biking skills, which mostly consist of huffing, puffing and wobbling. "I'm a beginner! I've never biked here before!" 

Aba, di patatalo ang Aleman. "This is Holland," he replied. "You have to get on the horse—by that I mean the bike—sooner or later." So get on the bike I did, said bike being Robert's folding bike from Dutch mega chain store Hema... which, I might add, is not the easiest thing for beginners to practice on. 

Robert was pretty tough on me, I must say (must be the German influence). Even after witnessing my red-faced struggle to mount his bike and get it moving in a straight line, he didn't cave in when I wheedled, "I don't think this is going to work." (Marlon probably would have, though!) 

Instead, he wisely decided to not ride through city traffic and took me on a quick spin through the Haagse Bos (a nearby woods/park) to the Queen's Palace. And by quick, I mean 20-30 minutes... just about enough time for my legs to cramp, for my butt to become sore, and for me to wonder why I was pedaling frantically through the woods after an athletic, whip-cracking German tenor when all I really came here to do was buy a fracking globe! 

I did end up buying the globe that afternoon, and Robert gallantly carried it for me all the way back to the train station. (Maybe he noticed me hobbling and felt sorry for me!) At home, I hid the globe among the pile of moving boxes in the guest room, and tried to sit as normally as I could on my aching bum to keep the trip (and gift) a secret from Marlon... who was so puzzled as to why I seemed so tired that evening.

I went for a vintage-looking globe called the Renaissance globe, and chose a Dutch version because it was just so much prettier than the English one. I figured if we ever leave the Netherlands, it would be a nice reminder of our time here. I also chose a globe that lights up, because as my sister so wisely pointed out: "At least you can use it as a lamp, because are you really going to sit around in your spare time looking at a globe?" She has a point!

This globe has a soft warm glow that I like... and that Marlon does too!

The countries are up-to-date, but the globe is full of little details that hark back to the golden age of seafaring and exploration, such as sea monsters, nautical icons, and even the routes of famous explorers such as Drake and Magellan.

The secrecy, the sore legs and even the aching bum was all worth it when Marlon came home from his dinner at De Kas to see the globe lit up in the darkness of our living room. He loves his gift and I love it too!

Dinner at De Kas

Every year, whenever I ask Marlon what he wants for his birthday, he simply looks at me with a smile and says, "I have everything I want." (Cue melting heart.) This year, I decided to pour my entire month's (meager) freelance earnings into celebrating his Big 3-0 with a three-part gift. 

Part one was the birthday dinner. I took charge of choosing and booking a restaurant. After running through a shortlist of choices from my trusty Time Out Amsterdam, I chose Restaurant De Kas, which sits in the Frankendael Park in the Oost (East). 

De Kas is located in an old greenhouse that dates back to the 1920s, and used to belong to the Amsterdam Municipal Nursery. Slated for demolition, it was rescued in 2001 by Michelin-starred Dutch chef Gert Jan Hageman and converted into a restaurant. 

It also still houses a small nursery, where herbs, vegetables and flowers are grown for the restaurant. The owner now heads the nursery, and together with a team of chefs, cooks up a weekly set menu of three starters, a main course and a dessert that is based on the produce harvested that week. I was hooked by the concept and the location, and thought it would be great to try seasonal food, something completely new to us. Luckily, I was right and Marlon loved it!

Whenever Marlon and I go to a restaurant here, the first thing the server asks is if we'd like something to drink. This always throws us off, and we normally end up going blink blink at each other... before ordering water! And that always throws the server off, because it seems the appropriate response is to order an aperitif... something absent from our food culture, and thus something we know nothing about. 

I was determined to be prepared for this restaurant visit, and thanks to a very informative thread in Fodors' forums, now I know! The Fodors foodies suggest a number of liquors such as champagne (the most common aperitif), grappa (which I've tried and hate), port and sherry, but the suggestion I liked most was to ask if they have a house aperitif and try it.

At De Kas, the house aperitif is champagne with an herb from the garden, which that night was the lemon geranium flower. Ordering an aperitif is the kind of thing that makes me feel like a grown-up!

I enjoyed the seasonal meal, which came with white wine for the starter and a red for the mains. Everything was so fresh, so light and so... so spring! I always hear the judges on Top Chef judges food with words like "bright" and "clean", and for the first time I understood what that meant. 

The not-so-bright part of our evening was when Marlon found a piece of steel wire at the bottom of his dessert. Yup... steel wire. I'm not talking about steel wool na pangkuskos, I'm talking alambre here. Though it was only about 2-3 millimeters, Marlon called the attention of the server.

The response of the staff was admirable. Three different members of the staff came over to apologize. The last was the manager, who waived the bill on dessert and immediately investigated the kitchen. She brought over a large mesh strainer and explained to us that it had most likely come from that. As we were leaving, we passed by the kitchen and saw her chewing out a pair of chefs. I thought the staff handled it well and it wouldn't stop me from coming back. I'm just glad nothing bad happened and that Marlon managed to enjoy every last bite of his dessert!

Before we stepped out, we stopped by the herb garden for photos. Our server gave us a little tour and pointed out the most interesting plant in the garden: oyster leaf from Iceland, so called because... they taste like oysters. Seeing our skeptical expressions, she plucked two fat, fleshy leaves and gave them to us to chew on. And you know what? They really did taste like oysters!

Nights like these are what make me extra thankful to have freelance work. If not for my rakets, I wouldn't be able to treat him and make him feel happy and special, like he always does for me. And I'm even more thankful to have a husband who enjoys such simple pleasures and shows so much appreciation for every little thing. It may be his birthday, but I think I got the best gift of all. 

Do it yourself

Today's post is brought to you by the letters D-I-Y!

It's no accident that the word tipidity contains those letters, lol. Marlon and I were forewarned by Europe-based friends that we would have to get very handy around the house very fast if we wanted to save money, and it's true. Nothing makes you realize how spoiled we Asians are like furnishing a European house on a, well, Asian budget. 

There was no way we were carting these Ikea Pax closet elements home with us on the train (taxi? what taxi? We're in Europe, remember?), so we splurged on delivery for less than €50. But when we were told that hiring someone to assemble them would cost at least €250, Marlon decided to take things into his own hands... literally.

He bought his first power drill and spent the better part of a Sunday assembling our closets. We had door-less closets for about a week and a half, because attaching the doors would require the three closets to be screwed together into one large unit. And that would make it hard for us to move the closet around when we painted the bedroom.

Assembling the closets brought out Marlon's inner handyman. He would do simple things before like change bulbs and hang frames, but often left anything more complicated to hired help—which is no longer an option here. He's gotten a lot more confident using power tools and gets really enthusiastic about my ideas for DIY projects.

What a revelation this whole process has been. Suddenly it's like all of life's questions can be resolved with a power drill. Now we can look at a piece of furniture or fixture that we like and go, "Madali lang yan! Kailangan lang natin mag-drill." Which is how two ladders and a few wooden planks almost became a bookshelf... almost. But that's another story.

One of his mini-projects was installing a bar with S-hooks (again, thank you Ikea) for our kitchen utensils, right beside the stove. I love this because it frees up so much drawer space and makes everything easy to grab. 

Our biggest DIY project to date has been the repainting of the bedroom. Both of us had decided early on that we were done with living in white boxes, a fate that most renters are doomed to endure. Luckily, our landlord agreed to let us paint the walls, provided that we return them to white if he should so decide at the end of our lease.

At €45 per hour for a professional painter, for a job that would take at least eight hours, it was easy for Marlon and I to decide to go DIY. He did some research on painting equipment and techniques online, then bought everything we needed at Gamma, Holland's version of Home Depot.

Having saved on labor, we then decided we could splurge on paint. Well, I decided. My obsessive online research had led me to Farrow & Ball paints, and somewhere between their poetic product names and and rich hues, I fell in love. I've always, always wanted an intense color on my bedroom walls, so I was immediately drawn to Drawing Room Blue. Marlon was totally on board with it; I think he was just glad I didn't want anything too girly.

At €119 per 5L can (one would cover our 30 sqm walls), plus another €109 for the recommended primer and undercoat, we could definitely have gotten something a lot cheaper, but you can't fight love.

The actual painting took up an entire weekend, starting with an hour on Thursday evening to move out all the furniture and mask the ceiling, floor and windows with tape. Friday night was spent slathering on the primer, which took about three hours.

Teka, puro si Marlon pala ang nasa pictures. Baka isipin ninyo na sitting pretty lang ako. Ako kasi ang taga-document at tagaluto. Pero nagtatrabaho ako, promise.

Using the rollers was super fun and made our job easier than expected. We got shaggy lambswool rollers for €2 each; if not for the Interwebz, we probably would have gotten cheapo foam rollers na parang pangkulot, lol.

We left the primer to dry all of Saturday and returned to do the first and second coats of paint on Sunday morning. Halfway through the first coat, Marlon and I found ourselves thoroughly pleased with our choice of paint. The best thing about Farrow & Ball paints are that they are water-based. No thinner, no awful fumes, and so easy to clean up paint splatters! Just a damp rag and a little elbow grease, perfect for DIY newbies like us.

And the color... the color!!! Deeply pigmented, with a soft sheen... *colorgasm* I suggested diluting the second coat slightly, which made it even faster to paint on. The second coat totally smoothed out the slight imperfections and uneven-ness of our first coat. 

By the time we were done on Sunday night, Marlon and I were grinning like idiots. We had spent a total of 12 hours, shelled out €263 (for the primer, paint and delivery), and saved €540 on labor for a paint job that was on track to make our bedroom look and feel like a million bucks. And we had just gotten our first taste of the DIY euphoria that money just can't buy.

Next up: the new and improved bedroom... revealed!

Love & a bunch of nylon string

Marlon and I just don't do Valentine's Day. When we were still dating long-distance, it was rare for us to be in the same country on the 14th of February. Then when we were married, we celebrated our first day of hearts as husband and wife by waltzing into the Singapore Valentine trap: an overpriced set dinner. All the nice-ish restaurants do this, so you have very little choice in the matter.

Singapore seems to have only one major flower supplier, so everyone and her mother carries the exact same bouquet of roses wrapped in pastel tissue. Marlon ingeniously found something that wasn't a cloned bouquet and got me a single gerbera. Carrying it around and seeing all the identically dressed girls with their identical dates and identical bouquets, I felt both horrified and extremely lucky.

Because of the mind-numbing sameness that surrounded us that first Valentine's, Marlon and I gave up on the whole idea entirely. I don't remember what we did last year, or the year before.

But since this year, everything has changed, we decided to give Valentine's Day the old college try. We toyed briefly with the idea of a canal cruise, but opted to stay in. Marlon volunteered to be our chef for the evening and plan a special menu.

As for me, I had a doctor's appointment in the morning, dilly-dallied until 2pm then got my butt racing. Inspired by the heart garlands from this awesome Valentine fort on Design*Sponge, I dug into the moving boxes still scattered around the house and turned up some red art paper, magazine pages, double-sided tape and A4 typing paper. I found nylon string in my sewing kit, selected 75 photos of Marlon and me, and set up the printer in the bedroom.

Four hours, five paper jams and countless snarls of nylon string (the.worst.idea.ever!) later, I managed to transform our kitchen into a romantic restaurant for two.

I mixed paper hearts with photos of us. I had to cut the photos really oddly to make sure I got our faces in. Every single one of them has a congenital heart defect, lol.

At 6.30pm Marlon called me from the supermarket to ask if we had red wine vinegar at home. Thank goodness for the transport union strike today that kept him from coming home early! I even had time to paint him a 5-minute Valentine, which I blow-dried and stuck on the kitchen door.

 Pardon the cheese!

At 7pm Marlon came home with the ingredients for dinner and flowers for me! 

When I finally brought him into the kitchen, to see his joy and wonder made the four hours of desperate nylon-untangling and frenzied paper-cutting so worth it. Then I left the happy chef to get started on our Valentine's Day dinner. 

We started with a surf and turf salad of prawns, spiced sausage, parsley and rocket...

Mediterranean-inspired cod and couscous for our mains...

And for dessert, a sinful, oven-warmed apple and almond tart from Le Fournil, the excellent French bakery on the corner.

By the end of the meal, both my stomach and heart were full to bursting with contentment. 

And the best thing was, I knew my Valentine felt the exact same way.

Decisions, decisions

The other evening, Marlon called in to his company's headquarters in the States for his exit interview with HR. Occasionally bits and pieces of his conversation would drift over to me, and this is one of the bits I'll always remember.

Actually, no. Compensation was not a factor in this decision... Ultimately I decided on what kind of life I wanted and let the job follow that decision, rather than decide on a job and mold my life around it.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the many, many reasons why marrying this man was the best decision I ever made.

Wifely steps

Today marks my first stint as a guest blogger! When the sunny and inspiring Toni of Wifely Steps asked me to write a guest post to celebrate the 7th anniversary of her marriage (and by extension, her blog), I leapt at the opportunity.

The theme was, naturally, "Wifely Steps." There were so many things I could have written about, but one thing I was sure about was that nobody needed to hear marriage advice from a newlywed 28 year-old. So I wrote about the first wifely step I ever took. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to reflect on the journey and remind myself of my choice. Sharing what I wrote with Marlon got me a googly-eyed look, a big bear hug and a whispered "Thank you" - all of which were nice too.

Reposting from Toni's blog (different pics there)!

Deepa's Wifely Steps

I’ll let you in on a secret. The biggest wifely step I ever took was precisely two months and twenty-five days before I became my husband’s wife.

The diamond ring was on my finger, the wedding date was set, the honeymoon flights had been booked – and so had my one-way ticket to Singapore. Marlon, who had gotten a kick-ass job in Singapore, had been based there for the entire four years we’d been dating. Since we both agreed that the Singapore dollar would give us a better financial head start in our shared life, the moment we had gotten engaged, moving there became a foregone conclusion.

The thing was, I didn’t want to move. I loved my life. I had a career that made me creatively fulfilled, ecstatically happy and financially rewarded, a tight-knit family of females with whom I shared everything, and a large, loving and irreplaceable network of friends (a choir, actually) made my life sparkling and vibrant.

Unlike many Filipinos who would leap at the chance to live and work abroad, I was staunchly in love with life in the Philippines – with our people, our beaches, our Salcedo markets and Cubao Expos and cheap finds at Landmark, and damned if I was going to give it up to start from scratch, jobless and friendless, in a country about the size of Quezon City.

Marlon and I with the Singapore skyline

But when I said yes to Marlon’s proposal, I – by default, almost – also said yes to Singapore. We were overjoyed at the prospect that we were finally going to be together after four years of physical separation, but there were trepidations underneath the happy surface. I was not too excited about being lonely and financially dependent (at least until I got a job). Marlon was worried that I was someday going to resent him for being the reason for the disappearance of my wonderful life.

After a while, I realized I had said yes without really making a choice. And that beyond putting on a brave face, what I really had to do to start our new life together with no fears, no doubts, was simply… choose.

So on October 4th, 2007, only two months and twenty-five days before our wedding date, I really, truly and freely chose to move to Singapore. I wrote Marlon this letter, excerpts of which I will share with you.

Dear Marlon,
This is what I see. I didn’t choose Singapore. 
I chose you. I chose to be with you… no matter what that looks like.
Starting out, that was all I really wanted. I realized now, I’m finally getting what I really want. 
Coming into this marriage, you are my biggest commitment. I’m not committed to where we’re going to live, what we’re going to do, how much we’re going to earn, what we’re going to do with it. I’m committed to you – my best friend, my partner, my husband, the one true love of my life. And I’m committed to being with you – finally, forever. With that commitment in place, the rest just follows. It’s just details. It’s just circumstances. So I can rattle around and drive myself nuts about circumstances. Or I can see that I’m finally getting something I want with all my heart. Something I said I’d have no matter what, damn the torpedoes. You. You in front of me on December 29, and by my side for the rest of my life.
So there’s nothing there for me to do, or be, just yet. That only means I haven’t created it yet – and that I still can. Thank you for giving me the space to do just that in our relationship. Thank you that my life as me, Deepa, doesn’t end when our marriage begins. Thank you, because I know creating my life and sharing it with you will be so much fun. Thank you, because whatever game I choose to play, having you on my team will enable to me to kick some serious ass.
Thank you, because who you are to me is someone who is worth it. Thank you for being such a beautiful person, in the face of whom a beautiful life is almost relatively easy to give up. Thank you for being the beautiful person who is the beginning of a beautiful life where I am moving to.
I love you. And I choose you.

Making a real choice freed me to be truly happy on our big day

To date, that has been my biggest wifely step, from which all my wifely steps have followed. Some of those subsequent steps have flowed with grace and ease while others have been taken in awkward fits and shaky starts. 

Some have been fun – like learning to cook, assisted by my husband the kitchen god, or buying him a Playstation 3 for Christmas (to the horror of many wife friends), or simply allowing myself the joy of saying “Yes” when my husband says to me, “Let me take care of you”, or easing into the role of obsessive-compulsive itinerary planner for every trip and holiday (and both of us being peripatetic travelers, believe me there have been a lot). 

Sharing childhood memories with Marlon at the Grand Place in Brussels

Others have been challenging and difficult – like this past weekend, when Marlon and I found ourselves having a “who-would-have-thought-we’d-ever-be-here?” moment at the Great Wall of China. I, the sleep-till-noon-sloth, pushed myself to complete the entire trek up the mountainside, climbing hundreds of steps on a stone staircase with practically a vertical incline in a dress and Chucks, because I knew there was nothing more my adrenaline junkie husband wanted than to reach the top of the Great Wall.

At the summit of last weekend's trek up the Great Wall of China

Starting my life as a wife began with a choice. And each wifely step I take every single day is just that, too – a choice. Even if the choice is inspired by my husband, or by our shared goals, or by my love for him or his love for me, the choice is always mine to make.

And I know I – and my wonderful husband – wouldn’t have it any other way.

Restless

Remember il ya from Philo 101? Metaphysical unease: I find myself in that state these days.

It's manifesting as a form of the Seven-Year Itch. It's got nothing to do with my marriage (which is what the Seven-Year Itch supposedly is), but with an itch to move on from Singapore. A Three-Year Itch, maybe?

I'm starting my third year here, and our friend Tinus (who lived here for six years before moving to New York, and just moved back) told me that it was about his third year that he seriously started rattling the bars of his cushy, manicured, tropical cage.

Or it could just be wanderlust. I find myself raring to move on to the next phase of my life, which not only means leaving Singapore but also starting a family. Yet I feel the compulsion to have one big adventure, a "last hurrah" before I have a baby and am thus unable (and from what I hear about parenting, unwilling) to travel for a long time. So, I spend an inordinate amount of time looking up hotels and flights and hostels and travel guides. I find myself increasingly unsatisfied at the thought of mini-breaks and weekend getaways, and am hankering for some long-term immersive travel.

Unfortunately, Marlon and I are at different stages in our lives. I've just quit my job and am free as a bird, crazed with the prospect of freedom and time, while he just started a new role at work and has yet to make his mark. So while both of us love the idea of long-term travel, the reality is that we're stuck here for a while. And those mini-breaks and weekend getaways, which don't appeal to me as much as they used to, will have to hold me in stead for at least six months to a year.

In the meantime, it's fun to plan. So here I am looking up ryokan in Kyoto, hostels in Istanbul, day trips to Abu Simbel. As they say, libre ang mangarap.

Pasalubong

Marlon arrived last night from Manila! Happiness :)

I surprised him at the door with a big, cheery bunch of blush-colored gerberas from the Tanjong Pagar market. As I was arranging the flowers in the recycled wine bottles we use as vases, he turned to me all pleased and googly-eyed and said: "This is the first time a girl has ever given me flowers! I love it! Thank you!"

I replied: "Well, this is the first time a guy has ever given me a box of Century Tuna Spanish Style, Lucky Me Pancit Canton Chilimansi, Purefoods Sisig, half a dozen Pan de Manila, a gallon tin of home-baked chocolate chip cookies, half a kilo of coffee beans and mini cinnamon rolls from Bag of Beans. So I guess we're even!"

Two years

Two can be such a beautiful number.

How has the second year been different from the first? In many little insignificant-yet-significant ways.

We have more things, more clothes, a new bookshelf by the entryway and new upholstery in the dining room. We color our hair less. Marlon weighs less (and dresses better, if you ask me). We switched bed sides. We fight much, much less than we did in our first year, despite me being somewhat less eager to please and prove myself as a wife. In fact, I don't remember a single fight we had this year.

We are beginning to see our dreams slowly being fleshed out into reality. We have savings (!) and earn more as a unit. We've rented out our spare room. We don't spend a bomb on groceries anymore. We do Iyengar yoga for beginners on Monday evenings. Actually, we exercise together, period. (Although we swim less often.) We cook together less often, but we still do sometimes, which I find extremely therapeutic and enjoyable. We are supposed to be closer to having a baby, but we keep moving the "deadline."

I would like to be trite and cutesy and say that the only things that haven't changed are the love and happiness of being married to my husband. But that wouldn't be true, because they have -- they've grown greater and deeper, and have simply become, in a word, more.

Happy second anniversary, sweetie. I love you!

Loved

I had to go to the office yesterday. It was a sunny, blue-skied Saturday afternoon, and while I'm not the outdoorsy type, I still would have preferred to spend such an afternoon elsewhere. It was to do something that I thought was wasteful and dumb: print, manually collate back-to-back, and ring-bind five sets of an 80-page, full-color Powerpoint presentation as requested by a client for a meeting on Monday morning. Bleh.

The printer was fucking up big time, and I had to print more than one set several times over. I was feeling short-tempered and stressed and utterly disgruntled at having to spend a perfectly lovely weekend afternoon in the office.

Then I looked over behind my Mac monitor to see my husband sitting in one of the office chairs, engrossed in a game on his phone. He looked up and smiled at me.

Then I remembered that I was blessed with a best friend and wonderful partner who willingly, without complaint, kept me company in the dull, stressful, even pointless moments of my day-to-day life.

Then I felt loved -- and Saturday afternoon at the office was transformed.

The clock is ticking

marlon's colleague paula is this spunky, hilarious colombian woman who was married for ten years before she and her husband decided to have kids. she was swimming along happily, childless and carefree, until one day she turned thirty and "boom!" as she puts it, "it was like an time bomb went off and i suddenly HAD to have a baby. i just HAD to."

last i checked, nothing in me has gone ka-BLAM quite yet, but i do feel the clock ticking. marlon and i have been talking about having a baby for a while now. as i write this i feel like i've just slipped into a crack in the twilight zone. me? a mother? kids? am i really saying this? aren't i really just sixteen years old? where did the time go and what happened to me?

(oh, in case this post seems totally out of the blue, i was actually thinking of blogging about work but i realized work is the last thing that i need to be dwelling on at the end of a long day.)

but seriously, i find that almost in spite of myself, yes i do want to have a baby soon. suddenly i find that the two-year post-wedding moratorium marlon and i agreed upon is up, and along with buying property back home and moving somewhere other than singapore, that's the next big thing that i'm really, really looking forward to. in fact, one of the reasons that inspired me to begin losing weight is to make it to an ideal bmi for pregnancy, which is, oh, about 30 lbs away.

how soon is soon? maybe late next year or early 2011. the only things that are really pushing back the date are the lure of travel and the fat little bundle of cash (well, not so little) that we will need to give little marlon/little deepa an easy entry into the world -- and hopefully a nice head start in life.

my ultimate baby fantasy is to have fraternal twins like atasha and andres muhlach, or, sige na nga vivienne and knox jolie-pitt para mas sosyal, para isahang labas lang, one of each na. marlon always jokes about the six boys (!!!!!!!) we will have, but i sure hope it's just a joke and not his ultimate baby fantasy.

tick-tock, tick-tock...

28

i turned 28 last monday! and here are 28 things i loved about my birthday!

1. checking into the fullerton hotel with marlon on saturday. finally, all the clues revealed! (mad props to cris for figuring out the photo!)

2. the super duper high bed in our courtyard room. i want one now!

3. the high ceilings in the room!

4. the view of the river from town, the fullerton's main restaurant. with the pretty white trellises twined with bougainvillea, it just felt so colonial and fresh and precious! hahaha. it was nice to finally be on the other side of the river and seeing the view.

5. just lazing around with a copy of eldest, the second book in the inheritance trilogy. i had been hankering for a long stretch of time to just burn through the book and i finally got it!

6. getting to wear my hot pink maison martin margiela sandal boots! i got them at the barney's warehouse sale in new york and have only worn them once. these shoes make me feel like a million bucks!

7. the beautiful fullerton all lit up in the evening!

8. just having the esplanade across the road :)

9. a surprising sight from home... an ifugao dance at the esplanade lobby! it turned out to be a dance troupe from a university in tarlac, flown in for the singapore dance festival.

10. fantastic orchestra seats to dunas, a performance by flamenca maria pages and contemporary dance artist sidi larbi cherkaoui, to music by composer szymon brzoska. again, care of my hubby!

11. MARIA PAGES. OMG. the goddess of flamenco. powerful, regal, passionate and completely committed. there were really no words to describe her dancing. i must have cried at least 3 or 4 times during the performance. i really had no idea i could be moved to such an extent by a dancer.

11. SIDI LARBI CHERKAOUI. beautiful, inventive, honest and just so totally free. this artist can do amazing things with staging and production, surpassed only by the things he can do with his body. one of the most jaw-dropping parts of the dance was when he literally became like flowing sand dunes, rippling and tumbling and shifting all over the desert. yung tipong sinabihan siya ng "okay. you are sand. blow around the desert. go." then he just goes "okay!" and completely transforms.

12. the music of dunas, by szymon brzoska and ruben labaniegos. a combination of western music, moroccan and arabic motifs, and flamenco... even with some early music thrown in for good measure. the perfect complement to a stunning performance. please if you ever find yourself in a city where dunas is showing, watch it.

13. the post-show dialogue with the artists, describing their journey and their creation. i loved seeing maria's personality in particular, since she can just seem so godlike and imposing when she dances. she was completely endeared to me when she described how one part of the dance was conceptualized. she clapped her hands together gleefully and cried, "i want to be a tree! can i be a tree?"

14. two words. chocolate. buffet.

15. after all that sweetness, we suddenly craved for salt. so although we agreed to forego dinner, we ordered up a big plate of fries from room service and spent the last few hours of saturday reading in bed and satisfying the munchies. mmm.

16. waking up to my wonderful hubby. :)

17. spending pretty much all of sunday at the poolside like a pair of old white rich folks, baking in the sun in lounge chairs, reading and snacking on bar food.

18. speaking of ang moh tourists, there was an old white-haired french couple i loved sneaking peeks at. when she thought no one was looking, the old lady would pinch her husband's butt. hahaha. sana maging ganun kami ni marlon.

19. speaking of marlon. his company all weekend was the cherry on my sundae, the icing on my birthday cake. :) more than once, he remarked, "i feel like it's my birthday!"

20. buffet dinner at town. did we really need another buffet? not really. it was yummy though.

21. birthday breakfast at town on monday morning, my actual birthday! where marlon presented me with my birthday presents...

22. my new braun hair iron! bad hair days begone!

23. my new set of bobbi brown makeup brushes! this will stanch my craving for makeup classes for at least a few months. good thing there's youtube!

24. mostly skiving work on my birthday. hehe.

25. the sumptuous dark chocolate opera cake the office got me for my birthday. there are so few people in the office now that everyone got to have a nice big slice and i still got to bring a full third of the cake home!

26. a tiny slice of birthday cake every day! not good for my waistline but it has certainly made me feel like the whole week was my birthday!

27. opening facebook to a flood of greetings on my wall!

28. feeling loved and happy all week! i couldn't have asked for a better way to turn another year older!

Hubby's home

... and he comes bearing gifts. 

i couldn't possibly imagine what there was to buy in cincinnati, ohio, but he succeeded. he brought me a deep purple wheelie suitcase that's perfect as a carry-on for the new york trip. we had been stressing out on our close-cut transfers and decided to do away with check-in luggage. it's certified and approved by all US domestic airlines as carry-on baggage, so it's perfect. he also got himself a matching one in black. 

marlon also bought me a bag of reese's peanut butter cups, which are impossible to find here. in keeping with tradition, he bought me a box of godiva truffles, which was his standard pasalubong for me every time he'd visit me in manila. he started buying it for me because i used to tell him how uncle david would bring godiva from brussels for me and my sister when we were younger, and how much i loved it.

the best pasalubong was rolled up and tucked into one of the wheelie's many pockets: a wad of hundred dollar bills that singapore airlines gave him as compensation for bumping him off an overbooked flight, plus a $100 inflight shopping voucher!

poor dear was so out of it. strangely enough, i was too. we spent the remainder of sunday afternoon cuddling on the couch, planning the new york itinerary and just being domestic together. then we went out for window shopping and a surprisingly pricey but comfortingly yummy fondue dinner at cafe swiss in city hall. 

with him back home and my flu all gone, life is back to normal :)

A long week(end) ahead

i've been so relaxed at work, i didn't even realize a long weekend was coming up! unlike several times in the past where work was so hectic that i felt long weekends couldn't come fast and often enough. sunday is singapore's national day, and thus monday is a public holiday.

this time, i'm just kinda *mehhhhh* about it. what's really looming over me is marlon's long business trip. he's leaving this sunday afternoon for cincinnati, OH and will only be back the following monday! eight whole days! waaah!

when his company slashed travel budgets early this year, i was ecstatic. i had marlon all to myself! i always have the most horrible insomnia whenever he goes away. it got so bad that i reached a point where only an irrational paranoia about dying like heath ledger kept me from popping sleeping pills. seriously.

*moment of silence for his departed hotness*

apart from the insomnia, things just seem less fun when he's not around.

and this time, we're not going to be able to talk as often because of the 12-hour time difference. i guess now we get to know what it's like to be in a "real" long distance relationship. i always thought we were so lucky to be living in the same time zone and just a 3-hour plane ride away during the four years we spent apart.

so much time to fill... i actually made a list of things to do while marlon is away.

• clean closet and fold clothes (a monthly task that i always put off. you would too if you saw my closet)
• get my pinoy indie movie fix by watching ang pagdadalaga ni maximo oliveros and serbis (freshly downloaded torrents) - the files have no audio! grrrr!!!
• catch up on my blogging (mimi's wedding! my espn shoot!)
• finish reading the alchemy of mirrormask (i've been into behind-the-scenes books lately, care of the national library)
• return books and renew library card
• scout for carry-on luggage and new undies at takashimaya
• preliminary shopping for something to wear to tor's wedding! (i say preliminary because i only plan to buy clothes the weekend before i go -- to maximize weight loss)
• give myself a pedicure
• do yoga and muay thai
  
• swim and sunbathe (most likely i will just end up sleeping in)
• watch bruno with my TA gays
• pay a visit to my ob-gyne, or O&G as they say here
  
• do the groceries (boreroo)

not the most exciting list huh? especially when i'm just going to doing everything by myself. by some strange magic, even the most mundane activities always seem like so much fun when marlon's around. and that's what i'll really miss when he's away this week.

*cue "all by myself" by celine dion*

Give me that remote

you know you spend too much time watching trashy tv shows when your husband (husband!!!) starts quoting tyra.

this was a yahoo messenger exchange i had with marlon this afternoon while he was on hold with a customer service rep from orbitz, trying to get a refund.

marlon: wow- i'm really using whatever flirting skills i have with this operator. "yes ma'am, I'll wait as long as you need me to, and thank you for the assistance."
me: i'm jealous.
marlon: don't worry. tyra says, "my man can flirt all he wants so long as he comes home and does ME."
me: *FREAKS OUT* OMG WHAT!? WHY DO YOU KNOW THAT?? i've never heard that until this very moment. hahahahaha!
marlon: it was on america's next top model. some girl was crying because her boyfriend had been flirting while she was away doing the show. and tyra was like, "in this business you gotta be STRONG, girl." hahahaha!
me: haha.
marlon: are you scared?
me: my husband is quoting tyra.
marlon: let me join white collar boxing na kasi, i need more testosterone in my life.

he has quoted heidi klum on several notable occasions ("your outfit looks cheap... and uninspired", "...a sad... brown... dress"), but i must say tyra is a new low. time to start watching more bbc...

7-month roundup, part 2

the first and probably the last time that i will ever do this in my life: hop on a plane to attend a birthday party in europe. i can never forget the night my sister called me to say that uncle david had generously offered to have us at his big 70th birthday bash in brussels. i was jumping up and down and shrieking like a madwoman. i can't even begin to describe all the visa drama, all the knuckle-biting will-we-make-it-or-won't we. but we did make it.

and it was wonderful being with family again. i'll say that again: family. even though i'm sure half the guests was wondering who the heck these two asian chicks were. it means as much to me that marlon met the hargitts as he did my family in india, mostly because i had never thought it could really happen. 

a birthday toast to the man himself

i met kathy, davey and patrick's kids for the first time! meeting marie, nathanael, ayla and dimitris was like meeting characters in a book. i had grown up hearing all about them as they grew up (with the exception of dimitris, who was born just last year). i almost couldn't believe i had never met them. it was like meeting anne of green gables or meg murry!

with gorgeous marie

nutty nathanael

patrick with dimitris and ayla

more dimitris! *squee*

i had my first taste of belgian beer. now i know what i was missing during all those childhood visits to brussels!

for the first time ever, i attacked the mind-boggling fresh seafood platter at brasserie georges with gusto. it had always completely repulsed me when i was a child and mcdonald's was the pinnacle of my culinary desires. again, now i know what i was missing!

i ran all the way through brussels airport. don't ask. it was right out of the amazing race. i'm just glad we made it to the flight on time, because otherwise these next few firsts wouldn't have happened at all...

i visited the beautiful spanish town of malaga, on the costa del sol...

view from the castillo de gibralfaro, one of malaga's moorish legacies

outside the museo picasso (he was born in malaga)

one of the chiringuitos a.k.a. grilled seafood shacks along the beach

... and ronda, in my beloved andalucia, for the first time.

ronda's famous puente nuevo. i once saw this in a nick bantock book, but i had no idea it was going to be this massive or this breathtaking!

crossing the puente nuevo with marlon

truly one of the most beautiful towns in one of the most beautiful regions in the world

in malaga, i saw my first flamenco concerts -- as in all singing, no dancing. photography was forbidden in the theater where marina heredia performed, but in the little neighborhood pena (club) where i saw luis perdiguero, i was free to take all the pictures i wanted. 

in ronda, i stepped into my first bullring. 

and it was my first time to be in a location once featured in a madonna video! lol!

i got stuck in a foreign country for the first time, getting my first ever airline-sponsored overnight stay in amsterdam, where i just about had enough time for lunch at maoz (brilliant but cheap falafel chain i discovered in barcelona a few years ago) and a visit to the van gogh museum... which is still more than i ever saw during my week-long visit with the glee club many years ago.

queuing for almost an hour outside the van gogh museum

the requisite canal photo

i love maoz! pwede kayang i-franchise sa manila?

hmmm. is that it? it seems my life ground to a halt after i came back from europe in april. how sad...

oh! i started yoga.

and OMG!!! how could i forget?!?!?! i bought my first designer bag! my beautiful, beloved miu miu gray coffer!!! and i now know why some women call their bags their 'babies'. miu miu is love :)

now suddenly more than half the year is over. and there are new dreams afoot, new adventures on the horizon. time flies, indeed...