by Pam Pastor
“Your turn next time,” I said.
But that’s a lie, of course. All bill tug-of-war veterans know that the next time the check comes, there will be another fight.
May 14, 2014
Operation Pork Buns
I was in Megamall for a meeting the day Tim Ho Wan opened. The lines were insane but I figured I would drop by and just get two thousand pork buns to go.
I’m kidding, one thousand would have been enough.
But they didn’t allow takeout, I was told. Well, fuck that, I said, but only in my head. And then I went to eat at Kyochon.
Here’s the thing though: those damn pork buns? They’re good. They’re so good that when my friends and I ate at Tim Ho Wan in Hong Kong, I ate five of them. And then I ordered a dozen and brought them with us on the plane back to Manila so the people I love can try them, too.
I have been craving those pork buns for weeks. Weeks and weeks. One night, I even dreamt about them. Tatin and I kept talking about going to Megamall but the idea of waiting in line for three hours killed my appetite every single time. Go on a weekday, I’ve been told. But I’ve been so swamped with work that I haven’t had the chance.
Maybe it’s because I’m delirious from the lack of sleep but I decided that today was going to be pork bun day.
While I was at the seminar getting ready to talk about writing and productivity, I asked the driver to buy pork buns.
There was no line but there was another problem.
He texted: “Pam they dont serve for takeout.”
Damn it. They’ve been open for months and still no takeout.
But I am crazy and I refuse to be defeated by pork bun dictators.
I replied: “what if kakain ka sa loob tapos magpapabalot ka? pwede ba?”
It freaking worked.
When he picked me up from the seminar, there were nine pork buns waiting for me inside the car.
So I guess they do allow takeout—but only if your ass touches one of their chairs.
The driver loved the pork buns. “Ang sarap, grabe, ang lambot,” he said.
He’s right. The pork buns are soft, like sweet baby cheeks—if baby cheeks had a delicious pork filling.
July 11, 2014
How to recover from a disturbing nightmare in four easy steps
Be jolted awake by your own scream as ghosts stalk you in your dreams.
With your heart still pounding, quickly grab your phone.
Text driver to buy you chicharon.
4. Instantly feel better.
In hindsight, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to watch Annabelle immediately after sleeping in a haunted hotel for four nights and then spending hours researching about the spirits that roam its floors. But that’s okay, chicharon will make everything better.
October 13, 2014
Strange
tales
The White Lady of Balete Drive
I flagged down a taxi and said, “Manong, E. Rodriguez, sa may Balete Drive.”
The driver actually looked terrified. “Ma’am, hindi naman kayo white lady, ’no?”
And the crazy thing is this isn’t the first time this has happened to me. Two other drivers have asked me if I am the ghost that’s been haunting that creepy Quezon City street.
It may be time to hit the beach.
May 7, 2010
The Tabo Chronicles
The tabo in Peter’s bathroom had disappeared.
It was too late by the time I discovered it was gone, my pants were already around my ankles.
I was a hundred percent sure Peter had a tabo in the very same bathroom in the very same Jackson Heights apartment two years ago when we last invaded his home. It was white, and it was plastic.
“Peter used to have a tabo in his bathroom, right?” I asked Jill one day, just to make sure I did not make up an imaginary tabo during our last visit.
“Yes!” she said, and I rejoiced in the fact that the tabo did not just exist in my dreams. We wondered out loud about its fate. If it had been thrown out, why hadn’t it been replaced?
We got our answer two weeks later, inside Muji in Soho. Muji’s tabo is supposed to be really good. “It’s ergonomic,” our friend Jason said. In fact, when Muji first opened in Manila, one of the things that first sold out was their white tabo.
Jill and I were buying one for Ver, who was letting us take over her room in Astoria. Peter had accompanied us on the shopping trip. We had a tabo in our shopping basket; clearly, there was no better time to ask. “Peter, what happened to your tabo?”
The tabo wasn’t his. It was JP’s, his Filipino roommate. When he moved out, the tabo moved with him.
Peter’s current roommates—a South American couple and a Japanese psychologist—aren’t big tabo fans. And neither is Peter. We offered to get him a tabo in Muji, too, but he refused. He also seemed amused by our attachment to the old tabo in his bathroom.
Ver, like us, is a big tabo fan. She loved the Muji tabo and immediately replaced the old one in her apartment. I had used that old tabo, too—it was metal, it looked like a small arinola, and it did the job.
That’s the great thing about the tabo. The color, the shape, the brand, the material, the price—none of that matters as long as it does the job. And in its absence, it’s easy to find alternatives. Show me a Pinoy traveler who claims he’s never used a hotel room glass as a tabo and I’ll show you a liar.
A week after we left New York, Jill and I found ourselves with her brother, his girlfriend and her kids in Big Bear Lake, a resort destination a few hours away from Los Angeles. The cabin we were staying in was huge—there were five bedrooms, three bathrooms, two kitchens, a game room and a Jacuzzi but, sadly, no tabo. When we went to Vons to buy essentials, Jill tried to find a tabo substitute and her eyes landed on the tubs of Cool Whip I was adding to our cart. “That will do,” she said.
But they turned out to be too small.
So the next day, when we went to Dollar Tree to find a cheap strainer so we can bake cupcakes, Jill continued her search for a tabo substitute and hit gold. She walked out with a huge white plastic mixing bowl, one that had a nice sturdy handle. I have to admit, it worked really well.
We ended up stranded in Big Bear because of a snowstorm and when we decided to move to another hotel, the mixing bowl slash tabo came with us.
But the life of that tabo substitute was short-lived. The next day, when we moved to another hotel, we forgot to bring it with us. “Where’s the tabo?!” Jill asked. I could hear the panic rising in her voice.
But almost immediately, there was relief. Because her eyes had spotted the ice bucket in the hotel room.
December 1, 2010
Manang Rose won the Spelling Bee
While shopping for the Christmas dinner we were hosting, Jill and I grabbed a large cookie sheet off the supermarket shelves. We needed it for the pizzas we were planning to bake.
Manang Rose, Jill’s trusty cook and her mom’s supermarket partner, took charge of the shopping carts at checkout.
That night, as we prepared the stuff we bought so we could begin cooking, we realized that the cookie sheet was missing.
Jill asked Manang Rose where it was. She said she didn’t know, that it wasn’t in the cart.
The next day, Jill asked Manang Rose to go back to Shopwise to buy the cookie sheet.
A few minutes later, Manang Rose went up to me.
“Ma’am Pam, cookie sheet? Ano ’yun, c-o-o-k-i?”
“May ‘e,’ ’Nang. C-o-o-k-i-e.”
“Tapos ’yung sheet, s-h-i-t?”
I managed to keep a straight face. “Hindi. S-h-e-e-t.”
Manang Rose left for Shopwise as we got busy in the kitchen making meatballs and Korean fried chicken and Mexican corn.
When Manang Rose returned with the big cookie sheet, Jill started making the pizzas. As I bent over pans full of sizzling chicken, I saw her heading for the oven, ready to cook the first big pizza on the brand-new cookie sheet.
The damn cookie sheet was too big for our oven.
What do you know? Manang Rose was right.
The cookie sheet is S-H-I-T.
December 23, 2010
Hoarder
When I first heard about Hoarders, I didn’t get it. A television show about people who can’t get rid of crap in their house? That’s entertaining?
But when we were at Joel’s house in Philadelphia and he started playing episodes of the show, we ended up glued to the couch long after Joel and Ver had gone to sleep. Watching people trying to cling to all kinds of garbage was riveting, it really was.
I found it sad but also kind of funny that one woman went completely hysterical over a Potato Head. She wailed over the plastic spud that was almost thrown out.
But it stopped being funny the next day when my friends told me I was a potential hoarder.
“I am not!” I said defensively, getting ready to give a long speech about the logic behind my mess. But I missed my chance, they were already talking about something else.
A week later, in California, I proved them right. I brandished my hoarding powers at Ross, which, I am not ashamed to admit, is one of my favorite US stores. I love Ross for many reasons—the great bargains, the surprises, the variety of goods, the thrill of looking for a fantastic deal. I can spend hours and hours there. If I had to choose between a day spent at Universal Studios or a few hours at Ross, sorry, Jaws, Ross wins. Every trip to Ross is like a treasure hunt.
And on that trip to Ross, I was focused on something more valuable than precious gems and bars of gold—I hoarded good bras.
I can try to tell you how difficult it is for me to find good bras that fit in Manila but unless we are the same size, you will never understand. Once, I had an officemate who sold Wacoal bras on the side. She said, “Pam, bili ka ng bra sa akin!” I said, “Sige, meron kang size ko?”
I told her my size and she said, “Putang ina, meron bang ganun?”
Case closed.
I buy bras in Manila sometimes—and when I say sometimes, I mean rarely. While a few stores sell good bras in my size, they’re usually expensive—sometimes they cost as much as a good pair of jeans. I’m not willing to shell out that much for a bra—they don’t even have pockets for me to put stuff in.
For a bra to be good, it has to be comfortable, the straps and band must offer great support and, of course, it must be pretty. Like many other people, I grew up being told that I must always wear nice underwear because if I got into an accident, wouldn’t it be embarrassing if I was caught wearing ratty panties?
Ross doesn’t just have bras that meet all my requirements (including being pretty enough to be seen by emergency workers), they are all sold at a discount. And the best part? They have racks and racks of them, all arranged according to size.
I started going through the bras, tossing the ones I liked into my shopping cart. Because the bras in my size were on the bottom rack and my back started to hurt from all the bending, I sat on the floor and continued my bra search.
The bra racks were right by the entrance to the fitting rooms and the girl guarding the entrance was talking to a guy she was clearly into. The girl was both geeky and pretty, the guy was cute.
I made my way to the fitting rooms—and since you can only try on eight items at a time, I had to get completely dressed, leave the fitting room, toss the bras I wanted into my cart, surrender the bras I wasn’t going to buy and get the next batch of bras from the girl before going back to the fitting room. I did this four times. It was exhausting but it was worth it.
Finding a good bra is like finding the perfect wand if you’re a wizard in J.K. Rowling’s world. Try it on and you’ll know immediately if it’s a yes or no. You do not choose a good bra, a good bra chooses you. And that day in Ross, nine out of the thirty bras I tried on chose me.
When I walked out of the dressing room one final time, holding yet another fistful of bras, the conversation between Ms. Fitting Room and Mr. Incredible had progressed immensely.
“What are you doing tonight?” he asked.
“Me? Going home.”
“Wanna go out later?”
“Nah, I’ll probably just go home.”
No! I screamed silently in my head. Don’t go home! Go out with him!
But I couldn’t say that out loud. I was back at the bra racks, checking one last time for good ones I missed, pretending I couldn’t understand what they were saying.
The guy said something I didn’t hear. But whatever he said worked because the girl said, “You and me? Okay, let me give you my number.”
And she grabbed his phone and punched in her number while I resisted the urge to grin like a fool.
It would be a nice tale to tell their grandchildren one day.
Yes, sonny, when grandpa first asked grandma out, there was a weird Asian girl just a few feet away, hauling bras like she had two hundred boobs.
December 3, 2010
How I started my career as a doll killer
As if the holiday season isn’t hectic enough, my friends and I decided to make our Secret Santa even more complicated by turning it into a gift-wrapping contest.
Jill won last year and one of her prizes was the power to choose this year’s theme. And because she’s crazy, she picked zombie apocalypse.
I didn’t complain at first. She made the announcement in November, and I thought I had plenty of time to work on my wrapping. I already had the perfect plan—I was going to make zombie doll versions of ourselves.
Then I woke up one morning and realized that, holy shit, it was the day before our Christmas dinner, and I still hadn’t bought a single present for Coco. And I hadn’t made a single zombie doll.
I looked at Coco’s wish list again. I made a few phone calls, reserved the leather camera case he wanted and headed out to the malls. Two malls later, I had two gifts for Coco and still no idea how to wrap them.
All I knew was I wanted gore, serious gore.
I walked into Toys ‘R’ Us and walked up to one of the salesmen and said, “Excuse me, saan ’yung mga zombie niyo dito?”
“Zombie?” the guy repeated incredulously.
I nodded and he walked up to another salesman. “Saan daw ’yung mga zombie?”
“Zombie, ma’am?” Salesman #2 gave me the same incredulous stare which I ignored.
“Oo, zombie. Kahit anong zombie, figurine, mask …”
“Ma’am wala pong ganun. Kasi po matatakot ’yung mga bata. Baka po may mag-complain.”
“Wala bang nakakatakot na kahit ano dito?”
Obviously, I was really desperate. I ended up walking out of Toys ‘R’ Us empty-handed.
I kept walking around the mall, waiting for inspiration to strike. I visited a hardware shop in hopes of finding materials I could use for building a zombie survival kit. But once again, I found nothing.
Then, inspiration struck. If I found a doll that was big enough, I could rip it open and hide the gifts inside. I went back to Toys ‘R’ Us. No big dolls, nothing I could slice open.
I called Jill who was at Shopwise buying ingredients for the Christmas dinner.
“Can you check if they have big dolls there?”
A few minutes later, she called back and said yes, there were big dolls. And they weren’t just big dolls, they were big creepy dolls.
Bingo.
I went to Shopwise, chose the doll that would be my victim, and, because I wanted gore, I bought red food coloring for fake blood and gulaman so I could make fake intestines.
But I had another problem. Only the Swiss Army knife would fit inside the doll. The leather case for Coco’s camera was too big.
I could submerge the case inside a brain specimen jar. That would be cool. But I couldn’t find jars that were big enough at Shopwise. And it was too late to go to a different store, we had to start baking the cake pops.
That night, I mixed the batter and as Jill started to bake the cakes she and Giff would use to make the snowmen cake pops, I started to wrap Coco’s gift.
I’m pretty sure you’ve never seen a gift wrapped this way before.
I opened the doll box and realized with glee and horror that if you removed its pacifier, it actually started talking and crying. “Mama, Mama, Papa, Papa.”
Creepiness factor doubled.
I put the pacifier back in the doll’s mouth—I didn’t want it crying as I turned it into a zombie baby. I have to admit the doll was growing on me—it was beginning to look cute and not creepy. And so I tried to be as gentle as I could. I used scissors to cut his stomach open. I wrapped the Swiss Army knife with cling film and buried it inside the baby’s body. Then I made leg, arm and face wounds, dabbing them with red food coloring to simulate blood. But I soon realized that the food coloring dried to a pale red that just didn’t look believable.
So I raided Jill’s art box. “Not the Prang, not the Prang,” she kept saying.
Mixing the paint with the food coloring produced better results. I was particularly proud of a foot wound I painted.
I decided to scrap my plan to make fake intestines—it was going to be too messy and I was worried that ants would get to the gulaman.
I wasn’t just going to hand Coco a zombie baby. There had to be a story. So I scrawled a letter to Coco from the baby’s mother, smearing it with fake blood and letting drops of water drip onto it to simulate tears because yes, she was crying when she wrote it. I ended the letter abruptly because that was the moment the zombies got to her.
I found the crate that carried the Villa Del Conte chocolates someone gave me last year, and I decided to recycle it as the baby’s little coffin. It was the perfect size.