21 Days Before Christmas

1. I’ve just been busy the last two weeks that I didn’t notice that all I was eating was protein, which lately, is so easy when it’s everywhere. Protein wraps, protein water, protein canned soup and my favourite, protein-dense coconut yoghurt which has the consistency and flavour of really soft cheesecake, yum! And then one day, boom! You’re on the toilet doing a dump and you can feel it- your shit is as dense and heavy as a damned brick!

2. So many treats popping up but at this point, I’ve gone far beyond the initial plateau, the constant, irksome cravings. It’s a feeling of triumph tinged with a bit of sadness to stroll through a Dutch deli on Black Friday and leave with NOTHING (pistachio stollen bites, tres leches stroopwafels and Gouda cheese half-price).

3. Finished my test packing, and it came in at 14kgs, 16 kgs more stuff to possibly put in. Now how am I going to fill it up on my return? Clothes aren’t necessarily cheap in the Philippines (the good kind anyway) and there’s nothing I hate more than going to the mall during the holidays looking for stuff. Maybe I’ll get canned tuyo or bangus or something and tons of dried mangoes.

4. We found a drowned wax-eye bird in the pail of water on the deck. I read somewhere that curing the browned tips of my indoor never never plants involved only watering them with distilled water. So we’ve placed a couple of buckets around the house to capture rain-water. Our hypothesis is that the wax-eye flew onto the glass sliding door, got knocked out and fell into the pail which sits just in front of the door. Poor bird. Don’t know which is a worse fate, drowning or being eaten by the cat.

27 Days Before Christmas

When I was in my teens and knowing that a long Christmas break was at hand, I would take the opportunity to make a list of stuff I wanted to do or change for the new year ahead. I didn’t really wait until the stroke of midnight when the 1st day of the new year rolled in to make some spontaneous resolution. I knew even that it took effort, planning and dedication to make stuff happen. And the things I wanted to do and change were small, stupid teenage stuff like working out and building muscle (which didn't really happen until I was in my late 20s), learning French (got a 2.5 for it as a university elective which pulled down my average) and to succeed at literally everything whatever that meant.

I found this book you see, at my dad’s ancestral house, an old hardbound copy of Napoleon Hill’s The Law of Success and I was amazed that there could even be a blue-print for that, and explained clearly and painstakingly which was so unlike my mom’s unhelpful rebukes (after I had failed and then what?) or my dad’s silence (he was always busy).

But it’s a habit I’ve carried ever since and while I’m not rich, muscled or spectacularly successful, I am here and I am happy, and I am content, and I am still making lists, so…

Those hot days

R and K parked at the front of the building and came down the disability ramp as if they were in a fashion show, and they looked it too with their long, tanned torsos and bare arms swathed in off-white asymmetrically cut and tightly wound-up linen. They were also holding aloft a box of Dunkin Donuts. Oh no, Lord.

But it was, and I told S later that to my (delayed) horror, I had become that annoying person who refused or declined, or gave away gifts because they were dieting, were lactose-intolerant, had coeliac, or were ridiculously triggered by anything that was not a fair-trade product. In my case, I had not had any form of sugar or carbs for the last 72 hours and I wasn’t about to surrender over what, Dunkin??

But thankfully, like all attractive, physically-perfect people R and K understood these things. ‘Well that’s good, keep it up’ R said, flashing perfect, white teeth and she also meant it. Hmmm

Did you know that if you get your coffee at Starbucks, you’d be hard-pressed to get a Keto-friendly drink? I asked ChatGPT about this and this it what it spit out:

A simple, solid choice is a Tall (12 oz) Hot Americano (espresso + hot water) with a splash of heavy cream (or full-fat milk) and no added sugar or syrups.

The basic hot brewed coffee/americano from Starbucks has very low carbs. 

By skipping syrups, flavour shots, whips, etc., you minimise hidden sugars and carbs.

🛠 Customisation Tips to Keep It Keto

• Given your low-carb goals (and your focus on protein and energy), here are some tweaks:

• Ask for heavy cream instead of 2% or skim — this gives you fat (good for keto) and very few carbs.

• Or use unsweetened almond milk or coconut milk (some Starbucks locations offer these) to keep carbs lower.

• Skip the flavoured syrups, sweet sauces, whipped cream, drip toppings — all of those typically add sugar and carbs.

• If you like a bit of flavour: ask for a single pump of sugar-free vanilla syrup (if available in NZ) or a sprinkle of cinnamon.

• Check portion size: stick with “Tall” or “Short” sizes where you’re less likely to get huge milk volume which increases carbs.

Hmmmm.

Is ignorance really bliss? Is there a downside to knowing a lot of things especially, when you can’t do anything about it? It seems that everywhere you look, and putting the man-made disasters aside, destruction and death is just around the corner.

And look at me- I can’t even function at temperatures that would be considered ideal in some countries. Lemme do the house-work later, or better still, let me do the housework at night when the temperature drops.

It doesn’t bother the cat though. Lily follows the sun along its path around the house; 10am on the deck, 2pm on the short couch; 3pm in the outside deck; 5pm and onwards on the stairs.

Let’s breed a billion cats and have them absorb the heat of the blistering sun.

(last working) weekend

I thought I was going to get sick. I had this scratchy, niggle in my throat and I’ve lived long enough to know what that meant, so I got ahead of it by buying over a hundred dollar’s worth of (anti-bacterial) lozenges, throat-drops, paracetamol drinks and immune-shots.

I was describing it to my colleague and I told her to picture the illness just outside your door trying to get in, but you’ve barricaded it. But it’s there, waiting, this heavy, slightly stifling and itchy presence inside your head, right behind your eyes and nose.

I think it was Sunday- pack-up day- when I woke up and it was gone. I looked under the door just to make sure and there was no shadow, just the glare of the bright Taupo sun as it reflected off the lake. But it left a parting gift; I felt a congestion in my throat and nose as if I had eaten marshmallows in my sleep but didn't manage to keep it down.

I tried to hawk it up and didn’t really care if people in the other rooms heard me (I was doing it in the privacy of my own room anyway), and after a few tries when I thought I was going to throw up, it was expelled, a golem of a phlegm, green and grim. Bye!

57 days before Christmas

We booked really early for our Christmas trip to the Philippines and got dirt-cheap economy flights. We also got I thought - well, I did anyway- plenty of time to prepare for it. But having the time you think you have is vastly different from having the actually energy and will power to use it wisely.

Well, I wouldn't say I have not used my time wisely, but rather, things take a different direction than you intended- and that’s okay.

We’re suddenly at the tail end of October and looking back, I can say that I’m mostly happy. But let me start with ticking off the things I wanted to do but wasn’t able to do:

1. Organise a balikbayan box for more of my shoes and clothes. I also wanted to have had included in the box, gifts for family. Shipping to New Zealand is expensive, and the few companies that ship boxes to the Philippines have short time-frames which I couldn’t meet as I wasn’t convinced that the gifts I wanted, were really suitable. The box would have to wait for next year as I still need to off-load my stuff, most of which have not even been worn.

2. Work out because with only one checked luggage, the only clothes I wanted to pack are shorts and singlets. And I need to look good in them. But then a scan showed that I had an asymptomatic torn shoulder, so I couldn’t really go all out in the gym. I tried focusing on just my legs and then realised my thighs wouldn’t fit into my pants. We never win the body-improvement game, regardless of what social media wants you to believe.

3. Finish some major work-stuff. Not even using AI could make things faster- ironically, one of my work projects is on AI.

But there’s a whole bunch of good stuff that I’ve been able to tick off:

1. Finalise Christmas gifts for everyone

2. Pre-ordered our favourite Christmas cake and ham (to have when I get back).

3. Finalised my work-project schedule for 1st quarter 2026

4. Finished 12 books.

5. Organised my desk

6. Organised an art piece (it’s not done yet, but confident I will finish it).

7. Had my sister-in-law buy new towels and to make sure to pre-order two cakes for Noche Buena; Black-Forest cake and Sans Rival from Red Ribbon.

8. Convinced my mother to have a whole Lechon for Noche Buena (my cholesterol is uhm, perfect).

9. Organised catch-ups with the only friends I want to see (you know who you are!).

10. Did a test packing of my single luggage (ugh, can’t really get more shoes in).

Thursday

Worked from home today for no other reason than that the weather was terrible—wild, heavy rain hammering most of the country, except for Auckland. And even when Auckland does get hit with a weather event, it’s usually somewhere else. We’ve lucked out, I guess, in the weather sweeps. God knows our clapboard house would take a beating if we ever copped the brunt of it.

Still, it’s awful to admit, but I miss a good old nasty storm.

“I miss a good old typhoon,” I once said out loud—and immediately got a scolding from my mother.

“What if you got your wish and it was Signal No. 4?” she shot back. Fair enough.

One of my earliest memories of a typhoon is walking the five meters from our old house to my aunt’s in the middle of the night, rain and raging wind on our backs, because there was a real danger our house might be blown away. I have fond memories of that old place—it was little more than a large nipa hut with bamboo slats for flooring, held up by thick hardwood logs embedded in concrete.

Even then, though, people knew it wouldn’t stand up to the seasonal storms that grow stronger every year. (Not long after, my parents took out a loan to build our current house.) The last time I was home, I don’t think there was a single house left in Naguilayan that wasn’t made of concrete and cement.

But as a child, the danger never really registered. What I remember most was the cozy kinship of being safe inside a solid house—drinking coffee (at night! a treat!) and listening to the hushed, slightly worried voices of the adults, tut-tutting at every whip and howl of the storm outside.

Of course, danger is always present with a typhoon. But as my dad always said, at least you’re given time to prepare—and you just need to make logical, sensible decisions.

Still, you never really know, do you? For some people, the odds are stacked unfairly against them, no matter how careful they are.

I just hope and pray that I’ll always find myself on the other side—warmly huddled in bed, with a cup of decaf in hand.

Today’s lunch: scrambled eggs with furikake and chilli oil.

Separation anxiety

We had to go away for a couple of days so we had to leave Lily at a cattery. She had been there before with no issue, but we still requested daily reports on how she was doing.

Friday’s one was funny; we brought in her specialist food, but being in a space shared with other cats presented an opportunity. She was probably sick of her own food that she gently pushed the other cats away and sampled their meals.

When we picked her up Sunday, all the other cats came to the screen partition at the first sign of human visitors. But not Lily; she was sitting inside one of the hutches up until we called out her name and she let out this cry that broke my heart before running to where we were.

Mondays

1. Did you know that a size 14 chicken only takes an hour and a half to cook in the oven?? So why not a roast chicken on a Monday? I usually do a whole clove of garlic mashed into olive oil flavoured with Old Bay seasoning, pepper and garlic-herb salt. Two hefty wedges of butter are inserted into each breast, just under the skin. I don’t normally do gravy, but since I’m having rice for this one, I’ve kept the juices and spiked it with a few lashings of Maggi seasoning.

2. Ugh, the gym is starting to smell (uhm, from the people working out) because the temperature is a bit warmer.

3. Spring is in full swing.

4. Rice and chicken take-away meals at the supermarket! (we live a part of Auckland where the ethnicity is partial to rice).

The (working) Weekend

1. Over-salted margarita glass

2. HATE manual labour

3. Do cleaners look at your stuff and judge you?

4. Cambridge is a great town

5. Indian without much of the omnipresent curry flavour is refreshing

This week

I must admit that I’ve always felt a little miffed when someone asks me how my weekend went because:

1. Equally good stuff also happens on the weekdays

2. A failure of imagination about how else to greet a co-worker

3. I’m not really inclined to share how my weekend went (it has never, ever been my greeting on a Monday or Tuesday at work).

4. I’ve never been curious as to how people spent their weekend.

But now, I’ve fallen into the habit lately of just highlighting my weekend (and sharing it to the world lol) because admittedly, we’ve been planning it a bit better which makes all the difference in feeling that not only have you accomplished something, but that you somehow triumphed over time itself and its ever fleeting nature (more so it seems when you’re absolutely doing nothing).

But I still wallow in not caring about time at all- I normally sleep past midnight on Fridays and Saturdays, I wake up just before 9am, I take leisurely naps.

But weekdays are also a goldmine of pockets of time where you can move things along and not be stuck in the cycle of your 9 to 5 or 8 to 4:30 in my case. If you’re fortunate that you’re in charge of your own time, then get as much out of it as you can.

It's never too early

The Weekend

We’ve been a bit ‘remiss’ with our respective dieting regimens so we figured that ugh, before we went back to it again, we’ll have a great weekend eating anything we fancied which ended up more or less, actually still being healthy anyway.

1. Cafe Koko is our go-to local for home-made Japanese food. Run by an actual Japanese couple whose relationship status we’re still trying to figure out as tactly as we could, the space looks like a typical Japanese neighbourhood eating place. You can’t fault the food for price, presentation or flavour.

2. Restaurant Month 2025 has wrapped up (runs all through the month of August), and I won’t being doing another round of I could haves and should haves. But we did manage to get a good five-course meal on the last day at Hello Beasty; I dithered between their famous Prawn toast and sashimi, but I ended up picking the latter.

3. There’s a shop called Martha’s Backyard that sells American food stuff and it’s funny how in a different lifetime, Cheerios, Hostess Twinkies, Lays, Kraft Mac N’ Cheese singles and Candy Corn were stuff you thought you’d be eating the rest of your life. I got a Butterfinger bar and a popular Chik-fil-A sauce which fulfilled its promise of being great on everything.

4. Found a bag of glutinous rice flour after my pantry clean-up; so had to make mochi.

5. Goodbye to winter, hello spring.

How are you?

I have an acquaintance who’s asked me regularly for years how I was- it was always, hey how are you? And for years, I replied every time with, I’m fine and just so busy. And that was that which is really so stupid if you think about how regular it is (once a month at least).

I could blame myself for reciprocating with such a lack of enthusiasm, but it was actually always the truth. I guess I could tell them of milestones or big events, but there are no such things in my life. I don’t have a family of my own for one thing, where a child’s achievement (or failure!) or a spouse’s adventure (or misadventure) could be passed off as my own doing. I could make things up- I’m good at this when I need to be - but elaborate fictions are probably better written down instead. I could say something about my day, how it’s almost always okay; how I look forward to dinner because it’s something I had planned for a week in advance; about how maybe I should try sleeping earlier, or reading a book instead of perusing what’s on offer on all the streaming channels as if I was on a night in town, hunting for a hook-up to waste two hours of my time on (and inevitably, predictably logging off because nothing caught my eye).

But that takes a lot of energy that I honestly, simply don’t want to spend. Sorry D, you could always read my blog you know.

But I am willing to spend energy for the precious few friends that I have, so…

1. Yes Lei, I have been truly busy..

2. With work (before end of financial year housekeeping stuff), and with pre-spring cleaning stuff. Had to sort the burgeoning pantry and found a) duplicates of condiments; b) unopened condiments more than two years old; c) strange condiments such as blue-berry and orange liqueur sauce and creme de menthe flavoured miso.

3. Have you ever tried ‘tricking’ your body by having meals that you would normally have for breakfast or lunch as dinner, such as French toast and granola with plain Greek yoghurt? The trick there is that you feel less guilty because you had the naughty food earlier in the day and would have had a chance to burn it off.

4. I have spent enough on glasses to buy a 2nd-hand shitty car.

5. Apparently, there’s such a thing as sustainable cycling. There’s a local place run by cycling enthusiasts where you can bring your bicycle to get serviced, as well as sell it if you don’t have any use for it. The bikes are nothing fancy, but we could tell after testing them that they’ve been soundly fixed and have a few more good years left. As someone who’s had really good (read:$$$) bikes, I feel a bit ambivalent about hopping onto a $65 beauty. They also sell helmets for just $40 if you feel like cycling home with whatever bike caught your fancy. That’s just over $100 for the whole lot. In contrast, the sneakers I was wearing that day were over $400. So am I a bike snob?? Is it fair to equate its quality to its price?? Probably, but does it really matter when you’re just using it around the damned neighbourhood??

The Weekend

1. We had to drive over 30kms to get to this food truck that sold pork-belly slices. It was great. It was deceptively hefty, well-seasoned and warm as if it had only come out of the deep-fryer minutes ago. I’m done trying to fry pork-belly. I’ve boiled it first, kept it in the fridge overnight, to disappointing results. And a pot full of oil ends up sitting on top of the stove until I eventually throw it out because I rarely deep fry anything.

2. Made marmalade for the first time. The experience is akin to that of diving over a cliff, surviving it as you would, only to realise that you could have done it correctly, a hundred million ways. Well, FUCK THAT. It tastes great - I like the rind and the slight bitterness- and I will only ever try to eat it once or twice anyway because it has too much sugar (10 CUPS) and we rarely ever eat bread.

Life is so hard

Tsunamis (in Parker Posey’s voice now permanently in my head), some new war somewhere, family stuff (related to our December visit), the entire front page of the New York Times..what else?

I just want to eat my dinner in peace (back to full-on Keto with steak and avocados)- is that too much to ask?

The Weekend

1. Funny that we can stick with dodgy friends literally for life and yet totally disown something like white bread. Ruth’s up for a couple of days so the pantry and the fridge have been stocked up with her ‘essentials’ such as white (toast) bread, full-cream milk and spreadable butter; items we’ve put on the black-list because of a combination of second-hand information, possibly bogus ‘scientific evidence’ from social media and snobbery.

2. I miss white bread. My go-to sandwiches are either a cucumber one with the crusts cut off, or toasted with mayo and a thick slice of cheese. Yum.

3. When will we ever learn that lists don’t work at Costco.

4. Wagyu beef ribs redux. I picked the wrong SKU- whole ribs- and there was no way I could cut them unless we had a band-saw or something. So they were seared on the George Foreman grill which worked quite well.

5. Yes you can brulee a cheese-cake, recipe here

Asar

1. Why would you leave your teaspoon on the sink?? Will it stand up and make its way to the dishwasher?

2. No, I don’t want to hear about how bratty you kid is first thing in the morning.

3. Blocked sinuses don’t really warrant calling in sick.

4. How hard is it to fill up the water container in the coffee machine after you’ve used it?

5. Injury (a full tear) and possible surgery.

6. Well at least when you shift your exercise work to your lower body, you get a six pack and great legs

7. You can’t fucking have everything can you??

8. You have that face? Go home

9. Auckland rain (coz I’m pretty sure it’s fine everywhere else) has the worst timing

10. When people smell in winter

11. Sad cat reels and videos. Don’t want to see that.

The week that was

1. I’ve been mulling a four-day work week, convinced that it will dramatically change the way I work and live. I’m already envisioning Fridays when I can finish chores (leaving the weekends free), bake (but then I have to eat the darned things), cook (more eating!), write (more staring at an empty screen), draw (why is Procreate so hard??). The possibilities are endless, or I could possibly end up in bed the whole day, exhausted from the previous four days.

2. Speaking of Procreate, tackling it is the same as going into an Indian supermarket. I want to buy a little bit of everything, attempt to do something, but then realise that I have little to zero knowledge of the ingredients, the culture and the history. Knowing how to cook (or draw), is simply not enough. Where to begin though?

3. I hurt my shoulder and I don’t know how or where. I thought it was the same shoulder that I injured nearly two years ago but at the physio, it turns out that now it’s the other shoulder (my right). How do I even forget something like this? There’s a sliver of pain with such actions as raising and fluffing the (heavy) winter duvet blanket, or soaping my back with the $2 back-scrubber that I got from Temu. I could’ve ignored it. I could’ve brushed it away as something part of aging (and not necessarily an injury). It could have gone or it could it have gotten worse. But I didn’t let the chips fall where they may, which I used to do a lot in the past. I’m at a point in my life where I marvel at my capacity to be responsible for myself (because who else would??), to know that an intervention is the logical choice. Have an appointment this week for an ultrasound to see what’s up.

4. I used fresh pasta the other day and didn’t realise how delicious it is. It’s something I normally shy away from. I would rarely ever pick an Italian restaurant - if I wanted to fill myself with carbs, I’d just get a double Quarter Pounder from McDonald’s or get a pizza from Pizza Hut (with two sides of chicken wings). But fresh is something else isn’t it?

5. I love winter. It makes spending $7 for a coffee every morning at the petrol station justified and necessary.

Friday

The weather in Auckland is the weirdest. While you’re out and about enjoying window shopping in deserted shops with just a light rain outside this happens.

My sister does her hobbies on her days off work. On mine, I go to the city and enjoy its pleasures. The train is pleasantly warm even if we had to stand up the rest of the quick (it was an express route) 25 minute ride into the CBD.

Another weird thing about Auckland; people are not really keen on public transport. They’d rather drive and moan the rest of the day about how horrendous the traffic and the weather was.

Sam and I have coffees and a nice danish (tomatillo with passion fruit and cream) at our current favourite Daily Bread. I had my Surface with me so what do you do when you have one of your work devices with you? You just have to check your emails.

I take the train back to Newmarket; my go-to local label just dropped some more active wear. The trains are empty, the shops deserted which is perfect. The rain is falling heavily now and I realise that the shop opens at 10am, not nine.

I duck into the once bustling Rialto Centre where there are seats in the lobby. It’s nearly deserted of shops which is another weird thing about Auckland; retail shops struggle in a city that no one wants to visit either by car or by public transport! (how stupid is that?). I’m facing this shop that sells candles, postcards and kitschy decor and I wonder, do people buy enough of this crap to allow you to pay the lease?

I read a longish New Yorker article on my phone about the 33-year old wannabe mayor of New York Zohran Mamdani and by the time I’m done, it’s 10:20.

I’m an efficient shopper; I know what I want and I’ve already picked the stuff out from the website. I don’t try anything else which prevents me from buying more. I’m done in about 15 minutes. The rain has stopped a bit and someone is lingering at Aesop which is just next door. I could smell black pepper and cedar. Damn it.

I go in and buy a pottle of body cleanser, a hand cream and a lips salve.

The Weekend