Kuwento ang anak, kuwenta ng ama

Kuwento ng anak mula doodles11006@yahoo.com:

BEEN very busy lately, I had a hard time trying to understand which pipes are critical for making the plant work and which one needs to be inspected. I nearly lost my Aramco ID card somewhere in Tanajib plants, I could not remember if I dropped it somewhere over at the exchangers on the top of the platform... this is equivalent to 6 stories, or if I left it somewhere over at the desalters. Luckily somebody found it... penalty for losing it is 500 Saudi riyals...can afford but I don’t want to afford…kuripot ‘ko talaga.

I have sidelines here left and right, this time pertaining to architecture; I was blessed enough to acquire design jobs when they found out I know design (they saw my resume and tried me out, they liked my work), I gained a Filipino client who wants his house in Batangas to be renovated; served as a design consultant for my supervisor’s mansion that he is building for his family, he has again asked for my services for an entire interior design package. If everything goes well with another client I would regularly be acquiring design jobs related to architectural and structural works...problem is, I have to also address my job as the inspection coordinator for my unit.

I decided to bring in help from my fellow expats working over as draftsmen at the Design and Engineering unit where I was originally assigned prior to being promoted to this position. Unfortunately... they don’t know that much about design; I am not a very patient teacher to be frank, but for the sake of raking in extra money for them and me, I have to teach them what they need to know about designing...so I am officially serving as a design architect, they submit sketches, I discuss it, they encode it... I also get to do design myself too.

I may be busy again for quite a while because of these new commitments...but I find it fun and a whole new adventure… especially with what I love, hopefully it would boost my chances of gaining more knowledge and become at least one of the best in my field.

How is my Bonyat doing? I saw your pictures. You’re very dark...you should really watch your health there.. Especially your nicotine intake. You’re not as youthful anymore. Mama too. I'll have some vitamins for you be sent there one of these days.

Kuwenta ng ama sa noqualmasabomb@yahoo.com:

YOUR great, great grandmother on my mom’s side, one Fernanda Diaz Liwag who’s a next of kin to the late educator and senator Juan Liwag, why, she did Sulipeña cooking about five times a day using fuel wood which emits tons of dioxins and carbon dioxide that’s murderous to one’s health. Every cooking episode equals an intake, as 1990 World Health Organization figures have it, of 20 packs of cigarettes. That’s 100 packs of cigarettes a day for her. And all such cooking must have mummified her sturdy body; she breathed her last in myocardial infarction nearly breaching the 120-year lifespan of healthy human cells kept under laboratory conditions. How she did that beats me pero natitiyak kong naambunan niya ako ng hilig sa pagluluto’t paninigarilyo—and I’ve got more than half a century to go.

Uh-oh, must be the gun-smoke and cordite of skirmishes in us—she was in the armed resistance against the Japanese during WWII so much like a katoto Willy Baun—that affords us to go through the perils of smoking. Or it’s all in that passion for slow cookery with fuel-wood in communion with the gods of hearth, there’s not much lethal homespun cooking done these days of fastfood.

The snapshot I sent you was taken after a four-hour trudge through the innermost bucolic parts of Montalban, Rizal while getting broiled under a summer sun. Metro Manila and suburban areas sizzle at a few points below the 37-degree Celsius human body temperature while it’s typical typhoid feverish up Cagayan Valley at upwards 40 degrees C. So I turned up well-done over. Tall, dark, and loath-some. Takip-silim na’t nagbabarog pa nga ng palay sa lusong para may maisaing kami sa hapunan noon.

I’ve done something new throughout that trudge, allowed my heart and an energy center at the base of the spine to do chanting of Islamic and Buddhist orisons. Nagagawa pala ang ganoon. Kaibang ginhawa ang pakiramdam sa katawan—kahit na nagkalintos-lintos sa init ng buhangin ang aking kaliwang talampakan sa napakahabang lakad.

I remember that you packed an entire auditorium in defense of your thesis-design for an international airport—and you had to borrow and wear my calf leather Polo for the confident feel of stepping into my shoes for such a learning/teaching session. As the masters would have it, one has to learn going through the 108 movements of taijiquan before proceeding to do hours of walking meditation, or being keenly aware of the entire movement of body parts as one walks. Ah, to really feel and be at home with one’s body no matter the twists and turns of iremi. Sa ganoon napupudpod ang mga sapatos ko, and you have to step into them at times.

Marami namang masusulatan at mahahagip ding kayod sa pagsusulat dito sa Pilipinas—pero they’re pretty scared of someone who packs I.Q. 160 in him that’s merely twice the brain capacity of most rapist convicts and idiots. Pero natutuwa ako’t natutulungan mo ang kapwa Pilipino para madagdagan ang kita’t maipakita rin ang kanilang kakayahan.

Cool Auslander cat Bonyat’s as ever blessed as we are, Godspeed!