simple joys

The other day I woke up a lilttle bit earlier than usual to watch the 2004 Tour Pilipinas cyclists ride through the narrow streets of our laidback town. The cyclists reached this near-tip northern municipality with welcoming cheers from the local townspeople who waited about an hour on the streets to be a part of this media-covered hullabaloo. Thus ended the 11th stage of the Tour Pilipinas course. In the evening, a show was set up at the local elementary school but I did not care to watch. I was too tired (and maybe too full) to. I dozed off at around eight thirty in the evening and woke up an hour later when my relatives came back from the show. I was still full.

The afternoon was really the highlight of the day. After mass, my cousin angie, my brother kevin, and I went to the perya near the municipal park to sample street-foods. It was street-food stall hopping for the three of us and boy were we so excited. We devoured skewers of isaw baboy, fishball, squidball, chickenball, kikiam with sago't gulaman. Not yet satisfied, we bought tokneneng, spicy-sweet dilis and brought them home for our other cousins. We nearly even bought hotcakes. Pity though, our 100 pesos could only buy too much. It was a blast. I missed isaw and tokneneng and I missed those days when my friends and i would go to UP to satisfy our street-food cravings. I missed unripe mangoes with bagoong. I missed kwek kwek and sweet corn. Haaay! I'm sure that wherever I am and whenever, I could never ever cut off my love affair with these Pinoy treats.

perils on east asian children
Did you see BBC's feature on fake baby milk formula in China? It's so sickening that ill-minded poeple can even go as far as making fake food-- and for baby's at that. These milk formula are sold in the provinces of China which are mostly populated by uneducated peasants who wouldn't know how to determine a fake from an authentic package. God, even I wouldn't if I were not vigilant about it for crying out loud. The babies' teeth wont grow, their skin were peeling like month-old poatatoes. Their health were totally destroyed and since growth is at its peak from birth to around three years of age, there has been tremendous amount of irreparable damage to thousands of these babies.

Speaking of babies and children, I'm growing more and more curious about that horrifying railway blast in Ryongchang North Korea which killed about 160 and injured 1600 others half of which are children. Of course we don't see footages of the said incident. I don't even expect that figures of deaths and injuries are correct. Trust the North Korean government to try to control information from leaking to the outside world so that they may save face. All I want to hear at this point is for them to finally accept aid from South Korea which the latter is very much willing to provide. North Korea should check the logistics of aid transfer through the border if they must but they can not dally. I presume the victims must be treated immediately and North Korean hospitals can not handle the sitution all by themselves. Food and shelter must also be provided for those whose homes were ravaged by the blast.