The Road to 40 Day 122/365: Clingy Tuesday

Spent a good chunk of the day listening to PH politicians try desperately to clean up their image and hold on to their positions while trying to be busy with other stuff.

I couldn’t sleep much the day before because I kept thinking I was going to cook the quick fried beef similar to Tropical Hut in the PH. This morning, I decided I was going to do it so I got up a bit earlier than usual.

I had Vino try it when we were in the PH and he said he liked it. It was good because I can insert veggies to his diet by cooking that. I felt that it was a simple recipe, so I tried looking up several variations of it in the internet.

I decided that my best combination would be light soy sauce, oyster sauce, mirin, and sesame oil as the sauce.

I feel that it went well. I had Vino try out a spoonful of it and I got his approval, at least.

We got ready for school and Che got ready to go to work as well because she wanted to get an early start to backlogs and stuff.

After Vino’s goalkeeper session the day before, Che and I agreed that we should get him something to protect his knees. She checked out Decathlon and found that the goalkeeper pants for kids was back on the shelves.

I planned on walking around Orchard while passing time, but Che said she left her work phone in the house so I had to get back. While I was home already, I decided to just pop some clothes in the washer and clean up the kitchen to make myself productive.

I left after I transferred the clothes to the dryer, which was just around 11am.

Upon reaching Che’s office, I assumed she would be in a meeting since she was not replying to my messages anymore. I left her phone with reception and set off to Orchard.

There was a basketball contraption I wanted to get from Decathlon for shooting drills. Unfortunately, it requires me to install it like a net to a ring, so I decided against getting one.

I checked out some things I could get for Vino and I ended up with a pair of gloves and the goalkeeper pants.

It is during these moments when I get to enjoy eating food that I like without considering Che or Vino’s preferences, which means I get to eat something they usually wouldn’t like. I thought Song Fa’s bah kut teh would be nice, but I figured I can have that with Che.

Monster Curry came to mind, but somehow I felt it would be too much for me. Besides, I’ve had plenty of Indian curry over the past couple of weeks already.

I then decided to go back to this small Vietnamese place I passed by while heading to Decathlon. I believe it was new, and the prices were not all that bad considering SG standards.

The place had Bun Bo, which is not common, but I’m more of a pho guy really, so I stuck to what I knew and got beef pho, a side of spring rolls, Viet coffee with milk, and Viet tea.

The scent was there, and I had high hopes, but once I tasted the food, its what I would expect from SG pho. It’s always the noodles here that disappoint me. The broth is nice and clean, but not too special. There were whole cracked peppers which can be a bit enroaching when you bite the meat.

Spring rolls were ok. I guess they made it big so that they can price it as 7sgd when there are better, smaller ones that are priced half of that. The Viet coffee was strong, but it’s not the experience that it was in Vietnam.

See, the iced coffee with milk in Vietnam is served on a tall glass full of ice. You let the ice melt as you enjoy your coffee and I always say that it’s like drinking 3 different types of drink – the strong one when the ice hasn’t melted, the mild one when it’s half melted, and the neutral one when it’s fully melted and the milk has blended. This one was mainly black coffee.

During this time, I wanted to write the blog while eating, but I was hooked on what was going on in the House of Representatives in the PH.

A video of Cezarah Discaya, who lost her bid for mayor of Pasig City last elections, and her husband recently surfaced with them flaunting their luxurious lifestyle to a couple of notable reporters. These were features that came out before the elections.

The videos resurfaced recently, as they said most of their good fortune was thanks to their won projects for the Department of Public Works and Highways. This was met with a lot of scrutiny because there were a lot of floods around the metro during this rainy season, and the DPWH was supposed to have done flood control projects.

As Filipinos, we are not blind to the fact that politicians steal money. But hearing the extent of stealing and the effects on common people is sickening. At the same time, it is kind of amusing to watch these politicians squirm and try to wash their hands from any anomaly during these investigations.

Thieves investigating thieves, complete with theatrics and the usual bad grammar and pronounciations of our elected officials. It’s like watching a reality show that’s so bad but you can’t take your eyes off it.

The only problem is that it’s real life, and the fate of our country is at stake.

There were a lot of suspensions, probably because they have to know what kind of questions they could ask that would not implicate them.

Anyway, after I finished my food and yet another suspension of the hearing, I took the train to head over to Vino. The timing was just right for me to reach at around 2:45pm. It was raining a bit, so we broke out Vino’s umbrella.

Che had dinner with officemates, so it was just going to be Vino and me later that day. I told him we still had tinola and the beef that he had for lunch. He asked for the beef for dinner but I told him he was going to have that for lunch next day. Instead, we agreed that he would have tinola for dinner if it rained, but we can have delivery if it doesn’t.

Upon reaching home, I asked him to take a bath so that I can fold some of the clothes I left on the bed. He asked me to play a game with him on Roblox, Theme Park Tycoon, but I said I had to finish folding first.

He was showing me things in his game while resting his back on my knee as I folded clothes. After I got done folding, he got food, so he stopped playing for a bit. I laid down on the bed to rest, and he decided to sit on my back.

When he was a baby, he would often do this as well. I’m not sure if he realized it or if it was just muscle memory, but we soon found ourselves just being us from all those years back. He even chose to watch the movie (we are at Black Panther now) instead of letting it play in the background while playing a game on his iPad.

Since I wasn’t going to cook, I had a lot of time to play with him. These were the moments that I looked forward to when I decided to leave my freelance gig.

He made sure to let me know that it wasn’t raining anymore, so we can order food. We got a hotdog sandwich and a burger from Nosh, which was the first time we tried it.

It was a fairly easy night for us, and I asked him to sleep right before 10pm. Che came home close to 11pm and brought some food from the party. She was super tired, so at least she had some quiet time before hitting the sack.

I experienced different levels of clingy this day, as I watched politicians cling to power and played with a suddenly clingy Vino. Between the two, I’d take the latter everyday and twice on Sundays.

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