Braising my Beef

apart from being surrounded by bagels and kosher delis and restaurants, i really dont know much about the jewish culture. among the few things i know are:

1. a lot of jewish men wear little inverted saucer like thingies on top of their head held with a bobby pin that is called a yammaka (spellcheck?)

2. traditional jewish men wear a long coat during the summer (and boy some of them smell weird)

3. some girls wear wigs and wear fashion from the 50’s.

these and a few other things i know. i read somewhere that true new yorkers incorporate some yiddish words into their day to day conversations. little did i know that i have been using one very important word way before i schlepped myself over.

schmuck.

pauline told me once that schmuck was a jewish word. for the most part, i havent heard our jewish clients use the word so i was a bit skeptic.

today, i asked one of our friendlier jewish neighbors about it. he told me that it is a yiddish word, and it does not literally mean stupid. it was something worse.

schmuck is the byproduct of circumcision. (hahaha, i just realized that it is the yiddish equivalent of the word kupal. hahahahahahaha)

to be called schmuck is really bad. it is a lot like the word coño in the way  manileños use it.

"why do we have to schlep ourselves back?"

ive heard a new yorker say this on the amtrak train station in rhode island. and he kept saying schlepping schlepping schlepping that i had to know what it meant (of course i didnt ask him)

in the same conversation, i asked the friendly neighbor what schlep meant. he said it meant "messenger."

and i said, ooh. that’s me. im a schlep.

in agreement, he said. me too. (nah, his family owns the diamond dealer in front of us)

oh for crying out loud.

i just spend half my grocery budget on a pedicure in a nail salon round my block and i feel good.. tananana nan…

actually, i dont even feel that it was a waste. foot spa, foot scrub and the great massage chair?

its all worth the 15 bucks and 2 for tip. lemme do it again in a couple of weeks.

most of the time, when im complimented for being resourceful, i shrug it off. its not because i am uncomfy with compliments, its just something that i do out of instinct.

i didnt realize that my resourcefulness stems out of the fact that i grew up in a third world country. a country that constantly contradicts itself with its huge malls, starbucks and mcdonalds with the lack of a flushing toilet and a hot shower.

i didnt grow up with a flushing toilet (somehow, our landlord never bothered to repair the tank for 30 years) and i had a shortlived stint with a cold runnning shower (the water pressure was low). i have, with much pride, flushed my crap with a bucket of water and cleaned myself with a pail and a dipper.

in a city with neighborhoods sans running water, my dipper always saves the day.

(hey, i have my dipper here in new york. its not a pinoy bathroom without one, you know.)

at my old brooklyn apartment, cathy, my then landlord, came into the house to check on the boiler. she drained the water out of the boiler and before she knew it, she had a huge bucket full of water that she couldnt carry out. even if i helped her, the bucket would just spill off its sides and carrying it onto the sink would pose another problem.

a lightbulb over my head lights up.

armed with my faitful dipper (tabo) and another bucket, i scooped some of the water out of the big bucket into the other one. threw this one out and repeated it until the big bucket was half full, light enough for her to heave over the sink.

as i was scooping the water out, she stared at my tabo in amazement. she was saying how amazing my tabo was. and she’s never seen one in her life. i explained to her its how we took "showers" and cleaned our behinds with soap and water after takin a crap.

she was stunned.

by my wonderful tabo.

today, my perfectly flushing toilet stopped being perfectly flushing. thanks to my fantastic bucket heaving ability, i didnt have to call carlos to inspect it.

i can just imagine how my landlord would like to take a look at my shit.

after finally figuring out how typelists worked, ive finally put up my reading recommendations…

however, i find that some of these books, even if i have cut and pasted the isbn, doesnt have the picture of the cover. ultimately, this makes me feel that the book does not exist.

either that, or the stuff i read isnt too mainstream.

am i that weird? (i can hear a loud and resounding yes.)

"i keep getting an update announcement from lee’s blog. do you ever get that in your mailbox?"

jerome has been asking me that question for the longest time, and the weird part about it is the fact that i have NEVER ever gotten that kind of email, until now.

on most days, i get the "(insert name here) has made his/her blog" announcement. much to my dismay, is just a blank page with their picture on it. after 5 straight disappointments, i have stopped clicking on the new blog announcement emails. pointless anyway.

and after my first update announcement email, i had this urgent feeling to update my blog. (truth is, i just want an update announcement getting into your mailbox. hahahaha ksp.)

so here i am again, trying desperately to win the war against the blank monitor. actually, one of the reasons why i havent been blogging is the scarcity of stuff to blog about — is this because im on the phone with pauline so much? so much so that cingular and tmobile wants to strangle us with the nonexistent mobile telephone wire during free nights and weekends?

for the most part, pauline and i have this moan and groanfest about life in general. actually, our ticking biological clock just made this perfect trajectory onto our heads. the reality of my madder’s reassurance of "there’s nothing wrong about being an old maid" just gets all to surreally real.

on our hour long almost daily telethons, we would nitpick on our batchmate’s overall fare on the love and life department. for the married ones, we would feel sorry for ourselves — hey, our ticktock hit us on the head! but in the end of it all, we always refuse to settle to a compromise that makes us give up our independence.

we also like discussing about FOBs. on how they think that museums are boring, on how fabulous they look sporting their fake louis… aZn hairstyle and manners of dressing…

and deep down, we are FOBs. really. i think we are the snob fobs.

as much as we like criticizing the fobness of the fobs, we are the ones who would have chimay picture poses, eat porkchops from the doggybag with our fingers AT THE ROCKEFELLER PLAZA CHRISTMAS TREE.

she would be the one packing her suitcase full of siopao for juglee.

and i would be the one in search of the tapsilog breakfast in the middle of downtown washington dc. to which she said "stella, you are such a FOOOOOOOOOOOB!!!!"

to which i quip "pag nahanap ko yung tapsilog, wag ka kakain ha?"

true to her fobbyness and in a small voice "sama akooo.."

hahaha. fob to the bone.

one of the few things i hate about living here in new york is the lack of good authentic filipino food.

store bought karekare is either too pale, too bland, too oily or what not. (i still eat it though, but its always pale in comparison to mine. mwahaha)

the ensaymada and taisan not too fluffy and moist, and more importantly, crema de fruta does not exist.

having lived here for two years and a half, i have, to the best of my abilities scoured for good pinoy food or ended up making it myself in my own kitchen. hah.

and with my wailing and complaining, i have, discovered the art of making my own crema de fruta.

i have once again, made my stomach proud.

if you had enough money to spend for a whole year, where would you go?

i would go everywhere my feet would take me and gather up as many frequent flier miles as i can.

but the real question is, can you take 365 days off your life?

i read this article in men’s journal (i have a photocopy of it, hehehe) about real people who went on a year long sabbattical to live a life away from their own hustle and bustle. they travelled, helped save some whales and found themselves to be better in their jobs from the new skillset they acquired from taking the plunge.

the article even gives you tips on how to do it. save up, set a budget and DONT HAVE A PLAN. kids? not a problem. one of them took BOTH his children on trips. Married? there are married couples who take one year off every 4 years (they say that there’s no better bond) and everyone took off from the comforts of being tourists. off beaten track, in a nutshell.

and i ask myself, can i take 365 days off my life?

maybe not now, but i will conquer that travelling one long weekend at a time. soon enough, i will take one month off… then two…

and just have the best 365 days of my life doing everything i want.

trans-siberian train, here i come.

there is an old hungarian lady who stops by our office to buy stones on occassion. her name is judy. true to the old new yorker fashion, she comes in with nice tasteful pieces of jewelry (she is a jeweler) and dons stuff that your old rich all american grandmother would wear… fur and stuff.

she’s the only person i know who wears lace gloves for the sheer heck of it. i like her. she’s grown with her sense of humor and her total love of laughing at herself.

jewelry, fur linings and long skirts. if you were in your right mind, you would wear leather pumps with them. if you were judy running errands around in manhattan, you would be in black sneakers.

i, the silly girl that i am, always checks judy’s footwear. of course there are days when her shoes are not her famed black sneakers, but its fun to see her in those.

once she told me that her daughter made her throw away those sneakers because they were really old and had a hole in them. she refused. if i remember correctly, it took her two years before she followed her daughter’s advice. she is now the proud owner of a new pair of black sneakers.

one day, i was telling her that i wanted a pair of sneakers from the internet and that i wanted to buy them after showing her my baby sneaker hole. she got all worked up and said:

"you are such a lazy generation. all you do is be on your computer, naked, and click click click. you should go to tj maxx and get your sneakers."

of course i tried arguing my case that i havent seen the sneakers in any store, and ive been forever in the hunt for a new pair that was about 10 bucks. after all, ive got 3 pairs of sneakers that i got for that price — one of them is a vans. i didnt win, mostly because joe (our famous "everyday client" otherwise known as employee of the month every month) argued that all i needed to do was go to foot locker and buy myself a new sneaky.

hah. im not going to budge.

on the day that i finally decided to take the sneakers, the website didnt have the size and color that i wanted. so i left my email address for their notice service.

lo and behold. http://www.zappos.com/n/p/p/7140969.html

they have it in my size. im getting them next week! (its the brown and orange color. im sure it would look better dirty)

oh yeah. lee, dont tell rich about this site… pauline already hates me for it.

and i dream about http://www.zappos.com/n/p/dp/1561311/c/29053.html (autumn blonde/zinc bumble fudge)