my sister’s business with selling shakes is doing pretty good. she’s already expanded her usual fare of flavors from just mango to cantaloupe, watermelon and avocado. im particularly excited about the avocado shake. as i explained to maam yen, my sister’s business partner, avocado shakes bring me back to my childhood. you see, my dad used to buy lots of avocados when we were younger and in the evenings before he headed off to sleep he’d be whipping up shakes. and we’d be there watching him do it while in our pajamas. the avocados would be light green and all creamy and cool and all so wonderful. my first glass this morning this summer this year was also light green and creamy and cool and all so very wonderful it brought me back to my childhood. drink up!
Monthly Archives: April 2002
laya upcoming
it’s almost the end of the month. by the 2nd it’s gonna be my niece laya’s birthday. hurray! she’s really big now and she calls me ben and she always looks for her stuffed doggie, a-aw. it’s fun she’s still grown up and you could talk her and it’s great on the other hand that she’s still such a baby that you just cant stop taking her in your arms and hug her and kiss her and all. 🙂
batangas trip
i wasnt able to share that during this year’s holy week i went to batangas. true im kinda guilty for not staying at home and going to the week’s services but, well, i cant justify that. anyhow i enjoyed the short vacation in batangas. i was with ronnie, gemini, macb, jeh, viejay and we all stayed with ken and his sister may at their batangas hideaway. may’s friends were also with us. while they had fun playing volleyball i had fun swimming. it was then that i realized i loved the ocean. i would snorkel and skin dive and from the depths id look up and see the surface all blue and bright. it’s a really spectacular view from way down there and it enriched the whole experience for me and i couldnt thank God enough. we’d all swim way up to moonrise and we’d have this really fantastic view of the moon, full and bright, above the silhouetted tree line and its light, brightly reflected on the waters. on the other side of the scene is the sky still washed with the sun setting and our shadowed forms would be framed with orange and purple and red. it was a great so-called kodak moment but i was more thrilled to be involved in the whole production of God’s greatness than be detached from it and play the photographer’s role. and somehow, it really didnt matter to me that i just missed one great photo opportunity because the image captured in my memory and the experience at hand is far better than on printed 4Rs.
last note on the batangas trip, it was one of those missed photo opportunities. macb and i were swimming early that black saturday morning and all the fish were out to feed on planktons. it was very exciting to be there, the sea was so alive and so real and to realize that we were practically living out a page of national geographic magazine! anyhow the medium suddenly changed to television and i was on discovery’s shark week for indeed, that very morning i saw my first shark up close and personal! it wasnt that big, about 2 or 3 feet long but it was a shark and it was real. i was really thrilled by that, i knew it wouldnt hurt me because sharks are territorial animals but their first instinct was to stay out of trouble. anyway, it was about 2 or 3 meters away from me before i lost sight of it. later on it was about 10 meters far from me. when i saw it the first we were still in waist deep waters. imagine that! i named him ramon (spanish exaggerated, you have to roll the Rs amd close on the n, like Rrrrrrramonne, kinda like in romy and michelle’s high school reunion). 🙂
i had a grand time in bohol. for 6 and a half nights, we would sleep in our cozy sleeping bags under the stars. in the morning we’d wake up drenched in the morning dew and being trampled on my early students wanting to raise h*** before the vcs actually started. just kidding, im exaggerating.
i was sick today, probably because i overworked my systems for 4 long months. i was a never-ending working machine, incapable of neither real rest nor emotions. i was haley joel osment! joke. i havent recovered yet from all the work i did during the sem up to the time we put in when i went to bohol. then again, every time i come home here in cagayan i almost always get sick. when i got here in cagayan, trabaho na pud. i helped my mom in the small eatery we have and i am presently the counter-person. it doesnt require much from me but my math skills were kinda necessary as i had to deal with money numbers. thank God my grade school arithmetic didnt failed me. tomorrow i might declare a day-off to fully recover from whatever im having right now.
benjamin padero 