Grocery is My Therapy

There are a few places that make me happy and grocery stores are one of them. Apart from bookstores, libraries, parks, quirky indie places (like Cubao X — although I’m not sure what it looks like right now with the influx of hipster kids with their funny fashion sense and irony), and beaches, a grocery store is my default place to go whenever I’m depressed and in need of the comfort of edible, perishable consumer goods.

Not the same with department stores. I think department stores are like jungles you don’t go in unless you have a map and a well-thought plan. Whenever I venture into department stores I usually have an item I need to buy, and I rarely go for the sake of window shopping (I say rarely because sometimes, when I feel guilty for not scrutinizing all the merchandise available which means I’m not basing my choices on a carefully-considered study of options, I observe and look at each stock meticulously.)

I don’t enjoy that I feel like I’m fresh meat and all the department store salesladies and salesmen are flies that sense my presence and hover around me. Being a decent member of human society I try to be nice and reply curtly to their offers of help that I am perfectly OK and I will call their attention should I require assistance. However there are moments when I have a nagging urge to swat them and hurl invectives but I stop myself from acting like a crazy cat lady just at the right time.

Going back to grocery stores. I don’t know when my love for grocery stores began but I guess it started when I was a kid and my mom forced me to come with her and be her little slave boy — fetching items on her command as she wheeled through lanes looking for interesting stuff to buy. This eventually became counter-productive for her because I started to pester her to buy me stuff which caught my fancy, like the latest junk food or that new breakfast cereal that comes with a free toy. It didn’t do good for her dignity as well when I started to quiz her, in my irritating high-pitched kid voice, what’s a feminine wash for — in front of all the other shoppers.  (My parents probably noted from then that I mustn’t be around when they purchased condoms.)

As a kid, I was Charlie and a grocery store was my Chocolate Factory. There were a myriad of things to do inside: read product labels, taste food samples, pity the catfishes swimming sadly inside tanks, poke and prod the fresh fruits without getting caught by the grocery attendants, juggle the fresh vegetables and run like crazy when the attendant starts to notice, smell the soaps and watch in awe as the cashier magically scans the products with her laser detector gun fairly reminiscent of those sentai action shows every afternoon.

Before our company transferred to Salcedo Village, our old office used to be quite near Rustan’s Supermarket in Greenbelt 1. Whenever I was stuck in a rut I would walk all the way there to buy soy milk or nuts or an apple — really random stuff. Now if I was feeling a bit daring, I would walk even further to have vegetarian shawarma at Kashmir, which was inside Rustan’s Supermarket in Glorietta 4. Sometimes, if I had enough willpower I’d head to SM where the grocery is bigger and cheaper and there are more choices.

These days, I’d often pass by SM to buy taho after work, at this food store that was sort of an extension of the grocery. Just the other week I went inside SM grocery to buy broccoli, and I was debating inside my head that the cruciferous vegetable was unfairly priced. There were some broccoli that had fairly long stalks and not much of the head. I think they should cut the stalk shorter than they do right now. I think I’m talking to the customer service people the next time I’m there to see if they can do something about it.

Shitty Shitty Bang Bang

I guess you can call my past week a rivetingly fast-paced and excitingly happy week, if you define fun as living a jet-setting spy-on-a-mission life ala-James Bond. Ok, I exaggerate, but then again where’s the fun in telling everyone that I went to Davao overnight without a change of clothes to handle a media event and I had to stay awake for almost the rest of the night because I was wearing contact lenses (and we’ve all heard of horror stories about people sleeping with their contacts on)?

I say ALMOST all night because at the end lack of willpower prevailed and I was just like, fuck it, I’m sleeping. But then I still woke up an hour after because our flight was scheduled at 7 AM and we had to leave the hotel at 5:30 AM.

But I’m skipping the whole story so let’s backtrack a bit. Last Wednesday was the start of Ramadan and one of our clients had their product Halal-certified. So we all flew in to Davao to announce the certification. I wasn’t really supposed to be part of this and everything was sudden — and I don’t say that to complain but to stress the point that I was 67.83% caught unaware (I like making up figures, it makes everything seem so important). To top it all off, I wasn’t informed that it was going to be an overnight thing, so imagine my surprise when I saw the client’s team and my officemates with luggages and all I had with me is my tofu adobo lunch inside my mailman bag. I had every reason to be pissed at that moment because I just came rushing from the office, thinking that we would all congregate there and then head to the airport — only to find out through text that everyone just went straight ahead without informing me.

But I’m Zen and all that so I didn’t really go berserk on the person who conveniently forgot because you know, people make mistakes right? You forgive them (but you don’t forget UNLIKE THEM) plus making a big fuss out of it won’t exactly give me what I needed at the moment. Worrying that I don’t have my medications, spare newly-laundered underwear (at the least), and my contact lens kit wasn’t going to ruin my first time in Davao and Marco Polo Hotel.

It was a good thing the event was successful. So after, we headed out to celebrate at Blugre Coffee just before our boss flew to Manila (she had her flight that same night). She (our boss) ordered durian coffee for everyone, and since I was such a big fan of free stuff I didn’t think of declining even if I thought coffee was the least desirable permutation of liquid caffeine. Now, I want you to carefully remember this story because this is, presumably, where it all headed downhill.

Come Thursday upon arriving at Manila, I was already feeling a bit groggy and delirious from lack of sleep so the moment I got home I had brunch, took a shower, went to bed, and dozed off. The plan was to sleep for an hour or so then head to work so I can finish some pending work stuff I’ve left. However I ended up waking hours later — panicking that it was almost night, and rushing to finish whatever it is I had to do by sending my files through e-mail. I wasn’t feeling extra special and sunshiney but I presumed it was just because I woke up at the wrong side of the bed. So after I’ve finished everything, I headed back to sleep only to wake up with a nasty case of diarrhea-fever-puking triple hit combo.

I never really thought much of it until Friday evening, even if I spent the whole Friday staring blankly into space like a mindless zombie who fell into coma every now and then. Most of my waking moments were spent either pooping or puking or drinking juice (the brand that was Halal-certified by the way). Finally unable to tolerate the pounding migraine which I took as a sign that I was dehydrating very fast, I asked my brother to drive me to Asian Hospital, where they diagnosed me with acute gastroentritis after they took blood samples and made me poop in this little container. I also had to be rehydrated intravenuously for nine hours which I spent dozing by the way.

To digress, I know a lot of people hate them but I love hospitals and doctors. There’s a certain antiseptic quality to them that borders on the holy. Maybe it’s just me, but think about it: they heal the sick, bring the dead back to life (to a degree), and reattach limbs. Heck, as far as miracles go those are nothing short of miraculous.

Anyway, right now I’m just resting at home — quite an anticlimax to my very exciting week. But really, I have the most fun life ever and that everyone who dreams of flying off to some place on one day and shit water on the next must really struggle hard to fight for their dreams because you never know, your dreams might just come true.

You Make Me Fill Brand New + Let the Sprain Remain

I am human so indulge my cognitive biases – I think my misfortune is carpet-bombing me.

If I were a Feng Shui fanatic I might probably fear that the coming Hungry Ghost Month has come earlier than expected. But even if I’m not a believer of superstitious mumbo-jumbo, a sprained ankle and a broken molar all in one week feels suspiciously like a gangbang of bad luck.

Yet, to think of it, if there is any plausible explanation for my current state, it’s not really that the universe is turning me over for a grand whipping — it’s plain human stupidity.

Last week Thursday, I went to Affinity Clinic along Rufino to have the pain between my two molars checked. The attending dentist, after x-raying the area, said I had a periodontal pocket between my molars, but just to be safe she proceeded excavating one of my molars which was filled years back. After discovering that there were no leaks to worry about (obviously — the x-ray didn’t reveal any!), she filled it again. Only this time, she filled it too high. It felt weird but the dentist said it was because the filling was new, which I believed, and then led to a broken molar one fine Tuesday evening during dinner when I was carefully chewing my tomato side dish.

Anyway, I won’t divulge much of the details because the case is currently on file with my health maintenance organization and they’re trying the fix the problem.

Come Wednesday evening, my officemates and I went kickboxing at this bakal gym somewhere in Singalong. (My officemate’s friend owns the place.) While doing my Muay Thai killer kicks I happened to twist my ankle which meant not being able to work the next day because of the jabs of murderous pain in my ankle area.

I asked my dad to drive me all the way to Alabang to see a specialist and when I got there I looked stupid limping at Asian Hospital with my hurt ankle, although I think I wasn’t very convincing as a handicapped person because nobody offered me a wheelchair. What was worse was I had to go to the building across to have my Maxicare card verified, and I had to go back again to the main building.

At first I had a difficult time looking for room 603  since there were no signs (or maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough). I ended up in a patient room and I think they just wheeled someone who died out of there because it looked really sad and there was a nurse cleaning the bed. I eventually got to asking a nurse who directed me to where I should go. So I huddled towards the doctor’s building and waited 4 hours for my check-up (I fell asleep at the hospital lobby so I didn’t end up watching afternoon soap operas which threatened to liquefy my brain) just to have someone tell me to get an x-ray.

To be fair though, the Etoricoxib the rehabilitation doctor prescribed worked wonders since I can walk properly now (I am, once more, a living proof that polio was virtually eradicated years back). I have no words to describe it except it’s miraculous. It’s the stuff of the New Testament, I tell you (you know, blind people seeing, cripples walking, stuff like that.)

I’m not looking forward to running out of our office screaming and on fire but I might as well prepare for the worst. After these incidents, I can’t help but be that boy warily looking behind his back, in paranoia.

(I think this is payback from the universe for being so politically incorrect. LOL. There goes my cognitive bias again…)