January 20, 2006
Culinary joys
I have been making some tentative forays into the kitchen, a move met with loud hurrays by other members of the household, including my nine-year-old nephew. In truth, their reaction sounded more like relief (that I’m finally venturing into that part of the house) than encouragement.
So get a grip of this: I have been cooking. I call it an experiment. I am happy to report that so far I haven’t burned down the house and in those times I have served lunch, no one choked on their food. Yesterday afternoon, my nephew happily wolfed down his share of Chicken Estofado. I took that as a good sign, especially that it was coming from someone whose food preferences are limited to chocolates and Koko Krunch.
Chop suey! The hard part is remembering how to do this all over again!
Besides the so-called joys of cooking, I am discovering something new about my family – that they don’t trust me holding a frying pan. Or frying anything! (Oh yeah, in this part of the world, we fry a lot food.) The first time I volunteered to cook, my father was looking over my shoulder at every stage of the cooking process. My mother thought watching me slice the vegetables was a slow and excruciating moment. I almost expected her to grab the knife from me and slice away everything in 10 seconds!
But like I said, the overall sentiment is relief. In the middle of my cooking endeavor, and almost on cue, my father would warn me about the chances of being returned by my husband upon discovery that I am useless in the kitchen. I suppose you can’t order a Happy Meal for the husband every single day. (Hmm… what about finding a husband who can cook? This brilliant idea was immediately shot down by my father, mind you.)
My friends are shocked. I am shocked that I am actually enjoying it. I guess I better start writing down recipes. And then I can hand them over to the husband so he could practice. Hey, that could work! Or not.
Nocturnal, neurotic
There’s this unexplained bliss in being underslept. Your mind curiously turns sharper and you become, well… hyper. Strange how the mind works when you’ve wrung it dry. Note how when you’ve exceeded its limits, after you have repeatedly ignored those flashing red lights your brain has desperately been sending for hours, the mind sort of recharges on its own. I believe we can actually confuse its signals.
There’s some sort of comfort in knowing this disorder has been diagnosed as quite common among young professionals today. While I do not have an exact accounting of the insomniacs who roam the streets, some of my friends would put security guards on patrol duty to shame. I share in this blanket relief that in this tiny island of 3.5 million people, hundreds and hundreds of pairs of eyes are trying their darnedest to lapse into REM.
So when did my hours get twisted? When did the screws of my body clock turn loose? I do not know for sure. What I do know is that I haven’t been sleeping like the rest of the normal homo sapiens on this side of the world since leaving college. That would be nine years ago. Strangely – or not, an insomniac inevitably finds a fellow insomniac, and they end up sharing the neurotic wonders of wakefulness in dreary coffee shops dissecting life. The braver ones soldier on their own, watching the clock tick away or putting to test the varied positions of almost-sleep. Some can be more creative. I prefer searching a comrade in the Sleep Shortage division over twisting and turning in my bed.
One of my friends sleeps at 4 a.m., I crash at varied times of the day and believe me, there’s an infinity of us out there. Our mornings are sacred and murder is justified when anyone dares interrupt our trip to dreamland. That’s hard work right there – sleeping in the day while your neighbors are suddenly struck by gusto to sing Ocho-ocho over karaoke.
So are we missing out a lot on how the world spins? Perhaps. A bomb would have exploded downtown and I’d be in a trance. But there’s bizarre sense of freedom in obliterating the line that divides day and night and letting your life flow with the hours as they come.
Come to think of it, maybe insomniacs are here for a reason. When I finally emerge from my room at night, the rest of the labor force would have already dragged battered bodies home, their energies zapped to the bone. And then we, the sleep-deprived lot, take over. In our most ungodly hours, we help maintain the balance.