ABE

Netnet Camomot

ONE perk of out-of-town trips is the food. Spicy Sisig Pampanga, Gising-Gising, and Binukadkad na Pla Pla at Abe. Lorenzo’s Truffle Cream Pasta at Mamou. Sushi and tempura at Yakimix. The Whopper at Burger King. The yummiest moist choco cake at the grandniece’s debut.

Still, I missed breakfast at home. Sipping herbal concentrate tea and protein shake while staring at the trees and listening to chirping birds. Sigh. That’s when I usually start writing the first few parts of the column and I truly missed that morning ritual.

Another perk of being away from home is you gain a new way of looking at the big picture. Thus, you’re now more relaxed, more understanding, more committed to your goals. Bahala’g walay reply to all your texts and calls, OK lang ‘yon! You can take it na. Complete with this contented-cow grin on your face. After all, you’ve already made choices based on what you’ve learned and discerned, bahala na si Batman on what’s gonna happen from now on.

Basta here’s the goal: your real friends can always rely on you, that you will always be there for them. Always. Yon lang. Make it simple and make it happen.

But once the tummy is used to less food intake, it’s shocked when fed with too much. Starting the day with a breakfast buffet instead of aloe, tea, and shake, can shake up your fats, make them confused: What’s this? Tocino? Haven’t tasted that in a while.

Hmmm. Confused daw o.

But it’s when you’re back home and back to your morning ritual of aloe, tea, and shake that the tummy complains more. It’s now used to the eat-all-you-can breakfast buffet, it goes berserk when fed with much less: What’s these, liquids? I want solids! Soooooliiiiids!

And when it happens to be the day when you can’t waste even a single second so you can meet all these deadlines hovering overhead, the more the body gets confused.

It’s definitely looking forward to the near future when it will have a day or two of eat, sleep, read, repeat, it even bought a bookmark that has this: “Eat. Sleep. Read.”

Zzzzz.

But not now. Not yet. Today, even the fats have to work. No time to eat. No time to sleep. No time to read. Eating and sleeping, though, are basic needs, so eat and sleep they must.

One thing the fats have learned is to never flaunt busy-ness–you’re busy, get over it. In other words, that’s life. Don’t go around announcing it to everyone otherwise even you will get bored listening to yourself focus on busy-ness as the main ingredient that keeps life going.

Work until your eye luggage is falling off the overhead bins, work until the whole room starts to resemble Albert Einstein’s desk, work until the world forgets you exist. But be silent, keep quiet, hush. You’re not busy; you’re, hmmm, working.

If no one’s looking, you can even tell people who care to ask that all you’re doing now is eat, sleep, read. That way, you’re using the Law of Attraction in welcoming Relaxation 101 into your life. Thus, you’re at peace with yourself and the world despite the million and one things you have to finish in one day.

Wish ko lang: for a genie to add 24 more hours to the 24 hours that a day has. Hey, make that one week while the gods are at it!

Twenty-four hours in one day. That’s all you have. If you can’t finish everything in one day, text the people who matter that you can’t: don’t be a hero. Sa Bisaya pa, don’t be magpaka-hero. You’re a human being, not Batman. Wait, Batman is also a human being in a Batsuit, so…

The people who matter also have their own delayed reactions and beyond-deadline submissions, but you can’t tell them that: Ikaw gani, o, dugay kaayo nagpadala ug, hmmm, brochure ba ang tawag ani? Haskang nipisa man oi! Six months delayed and all you can do is this?!

Yup, six months. A woman who’s delayed by six months would have given birth by now.

No, you can’t tell the most powerful person in your world that he should be lenient with deadlines because he has also not met deadlines. There’s no excuse for the weary, especially the absolutely-no-powers you.

Thus, you have no other choice but to follow the rules. To the letter. To the max. To a T. Dot the i’s, cross the t’s, put that curve above the “enye.”

And when the most powerful guy in your world tells you to meet the deadline, now na, you say, F@#k yeah! You’re now Madonna: Hear me roar.

There are people who love to complicate things, make them hard for you. Nope, I don’t mean the hard thing in between a guy’s…

Hard as in they’re laughing behind your back as you try to convince them that this is a good goal, a great goal, the best goal ever! It will be the greatest choice we’ll ever make! It will be the best for everyone! We’ll conquer the world!

But in their eyes, you’re merely aiming for your own glory, fame, power. Only for yourself and no one else. How can your heart convince them that all these are not for you? That it’s for them? You’ve already shared so much of your limited resources, and yet they continue to believe that you’re only after your own personal gains. If only you can be Madonna even for a second, enough to yell, Motherf@#kers!

Sigh.

Let them be. You can’t control their s@#t from hitting the ceiling fan.

But you can control your own thoughts. And for now, it’s thinking of Abe: Spicy Sisig Pampanga, Gising-Gising, and Binukadkad na Pla Pla. The yummiest dinner ever!