Divine Providence

Up until now since God has created everything including us, humankind, all of existing evidences that are circumstantial in nature are by far leading up to one point that seem to suggest that His intervention is a continuous event even in the aftermath of the creation.

If you think about it, it’s very hard not to cogitate a notion that someone out there is keeping the whole universe in natural order. Someone who has the capacity to provide us with a billion-year assurance that everything we need to remain in existence in our lifetime like sunlight, rain and food for example are being equally provided to us all no matter how good or bad we may have behaved in the last Christmas.

In Koki Fish Market, one can learn from looking at the fishes being sold there about how impressive God’s entities can be. If you observe them closely, you may probably notice that all fishes are like diversities of cloned creatures. While majorities of the fish in the market are moderate in sizes, some are really enormous and may require several people to reel out of the water. Yet they all share a common trait that makes them a mouth-watering delicacy, and that is the idea that aside from being a healthy treat, they are yummy.

But one can be forgiven for oversimplifying that fishes are just foods in general; perhaps it is due to how widely they are viewed as part of most culinary practices.

In Papua New Guinea, it’s a common thing to see Tunas of various fin colours being ended as goods in fish markets. Tuna is my favourite fish to buy because of how it looks. They always have a solid appearance that make them look good when grilled over.

I’ve been meaning to grill one but I haven’t got around to that yet.

If you can imagine a world without fish, do you think that we could substitute rats for the fish? My mental picture-processing unit is refusing to visualize a dead rat being grilled at the moment. Luckily, we haven’t arrived to that point yet. Fishes have an astonishing reproductive strategy in that some of them lay eggs in thousands, which externally fertilise leaving more room for the parents to party around without giving much attention to the surviving hatchlings.  

I don’t think we can out-eat their ability to reproduce yet.

Speaking of party, our parties in Papua New Guinea are held mostly in the house and may involve a round of a few drinks. 

How much does a typical bundle of fish cost in Port Moresby? At the time of this writing, it’s about K20 to K30 a bundle and that still depends on the kind of fish. 

A typical strategy that one can use for rating out a fish’s freshness is by scrutinizing the fishes’ gills. Fresh fishes have red gills and don’t have a red and cloudy eyes.  Our friend Jay-ar here is gingerly inspecting a bundle of fish for any sign of being stale. 

The seas of Papua New Guinea account for the major source of the fishes sold in the market, the other sources include tropical rivers and man-made lakes. In the open seas, there is always a bigger fish capable of eating other smaller fishes. It’s an uncomfortable truth but that’s how life is going on in the seas.

In one occasion, we have chanced upon a group of either Japanese or Korean nationals doing a documentary of something. There’s our friend Ryan on the left trying to have a conversation with one of the camera person on the right.

That begs a question; did Ryan initially say Ohayo gozaimasu or Anneyonghaseyo? I’ll have to ask him about it.

I’m not a fan of octopus but at one point in time, I bought one or two just to try it out.

My culinary skills haven’t evolved to chef level yet and I don’t know if it will ever be, but I have a never-ending fascination to learn from observing other people's work. These octopi are rather getting a good boiling from Raffy. Raffy is another IT manager in the company that I’m working with and one of the things that we have in common is an unwavering interest in cooking.

These green-looking bags are an interesting sight to see in Koki and are usually placed at the entrance of the market. They contain big clams in them and are sold for K10 to K15 each bag at the time of this writing.

If you like to try and increase the amount of iodine in your body naturally, try cooking out these clams.  It’s a known source of iron and iodine, which is good for our thyroid health. Every once in a while, it is available at Koki Fish Market. Clams are known to ingest dirt in them so it is best to have them submerged in the water first for a whole day.

Crabs are also found in both Port Moresby and in Daru Island but the latter has more of it. These decapod crusaceans in Papua New Guinea are capable of reaching to the size of a regular table plate. They can grow that much that even four people can share a piece among themselves.  I took this in Daru Island when I went there sometime around September this year.

Here’s me way back in 2011 with a really big crab that was sent to me by my cousin Marlon from Daru Island. Three of us had shared this crab on that day. You can see that the pincers are almost as big as my hands.

And here are the crabs that I brought from Daru last September, 2017. I gave them away to my co-managers as pasalubong. I don’t fully understand the whole meaning of that word but it probably has something to do with an old phrase, “Share your blessings.”

Tropical fishes raised in captivity for commercial purposes are also abundant in Papua New Guinea. Here’s me frying Tilapia with my hand fully enclosed in a custom-built boiling oil deflector shield.

You see, no matter how difficult life gets, there is always a clear indication that God’s grace is working in silence. All that one needs to do is act on it. The fishes are all swimming freely somewhere out there and one just needs to try and catch them.

Happy weekend everyone!

Holiday Rest in The Philippines

After three years of working straight from Papua New Guinea, I finally found the time to rest in the heart of my hometown. But the word “rest” was kind of a misnomer, because I didn’t spend much of the time resting on a bed. I was instead, constantly on the move, trying to cover as much land that I had kind of missed going into.

This house that is currently under construction belongs to my cousin kuya Jun. He is also working in Papua New Guinea and has been an OFW for over 8 years. I went to visit this house to see how things are going so far and to check if the proportions are in the right places. You see, my cousin is 6’2” and for him, having a house with a low ceiling is kind of disheartening. So for him to have some close-to-reality kind of measurement, I had to go there and actually measured the distance between the floor and the ceiling using my height as the primeval tool of choice.

I’m kind of a tall-person myself, but not as tall as kuya Jun. But I guess that my findings will be equally indispensable.

This photo is next to the front view of his house, and from where I was taking this photo is exactly where I was playing when I was just 6 years old. When I was at that age, I would collect as much fallen leaves that you could see here and used them to build a small makeshift house where I could sit the whole time daydreaming.

Here’s a panoramic view of an open field next to our old house. Our house is no longer there and an aunt had used the lot for their house instead.  During our childhood, me and my friends would spend the entire day playing around this area until my father would call us over with his unique whistling ability. Such whistling comes with an unquestionable authority and the only tolerable response is an absolute obedience. 

Those are the days when parents are allowed to scare their kids off with sticks. 

On the left is my cousin Embong, whose parents have taken the responsibility of adopting me. In the middle is Robert, my classmate in College and who I considered to be my best friend. And that is me on the right. We usually spend most of the nights sitting under this kubo (hut) discussing the complexities of life and the intricacies of relationships in general.

Embong was kind enough to let me use their motorcycle (the white one) while I was there. The black one on the left side belongs to Robert. Robert and I have many similarities in life and among the things we share in common is the dislike to go out in daytime. So we usually go around at night, spending time in some lugawan (porridge houses).

Here’s a typical porridge house in Palayan City. That’s Robert over there. The way you buy things here is simple, you just look at the menu on the board and say your order aloud. It’s not considered rude unless one is already shouting on top of his lungs. The philosophical view behind is that saying your orders out loud cuts the waiter some slacks.

There is more time for the waiter to catch a quick nap.

On some nights, Robert and I would go over to kuya Jun’s computer shop. In other countries, this is called a gaming shop, or a net café, or one can call it whatever one wants to call it as long as it can let you play games or browse through the internet. Several years ago, computer shops are the epitome of gaming events but such title has come to a decline when smart phones are introduced to the masses.

Nowadays, it’s very hard to keep those computers occupied even with an existing promotional discounts.

And here’s Ivan, my niece. He’s in charge of running this computer shop. That mammoth PC is his work of art. He had personally built it piece by piece with pieces that were hard to come by. While at work, he likes to play an online game with his friends and he would usually wear a headset with a mouthpiece so he could communicate with them. 

I kind of imagine him like the SCV character in the Starcraft game. 

This is Robert’s brother’s house and it’s a bit close to that computer shop. Sometimes, before we proceed to play in that shop, we would stay here in the afternoon. The house is not finished yet but by some standards, it’s already livable. 

In Palayan City, there is no McDonald’s or Jollibee yet. But people eating in barbecue houses is a thriving scene since the big bang theory. Here’s Robert and I trying out a sweet-pork meal. 

Are we excited to eat it? Please refer to Robert’s face for that.

This is the house where I grew up into. It belongs to Embong’s parents. These laptops are of Ivy’s, and she’s Embong’s sister. I think I was checking for viruses and was trying to make the mouse work on the Vaio. I’m not usually a fan of Vaio or Mac but I find them nice and sturdy. 

Ivy gave me a pair of new shoes which she bought from SM in Manila. It’s nice and light and I’m actually wearing it at the office every day. 

Thanks Ivy.

These are pork meat and fried chicken. One thing I like in tita Sunny’s (Embong’s mom) house is that there’s always something edible on the table to eat. Sometimes there’s not much, but most of the time, one can find something delicious over there.

Now, who wants to go with me over tita’s house?

One of the perks of staying in tita Sunny’s house is a free access to an enormous source of information from the cluster of encyclopedias sitting near the dining area.  They have the Britannica, the Britannica Junior and the New Standard Encyclopedia. They also have the Funk and Wagnalls version of Encyclopedia and a complete volume of How Things work. 

During those years that I lived with them, I could not count the times that I had read these books in my free time. 

Here’s another cousin, kuya Alvin, who came to visit us on All Saint’s Day. We spent some time reading some of the books together while we’re waiting for the rain to stop. For the record, he’s my smartest cousin around. Off the record, he’s the one who taught me how to smoke. But luckily, I already quit smoking in 1998 and has since ignored the occasional pleas to try.

While on vacation, problems would arise sometimes in the workplace in Papua New Guinea. This is the Bread Booking Entry module in CinchPro Payroll System that I created. I was told that they couldn’t make an entry to the module so I tried and connected to a computer in the workplace with Teamviewer. 

My iPad mini was a quintessential tool that I had to have by my side every time. 

These are the books that I like to read nowadays. I bought these from National Bookstore. The things that I am into now that I’m 40 years old, includes arming myself with the knowledge in financial literacy. This is the part where I think has the least of my attention when I was younger. But it’s been almost a year now since I started learning about saving and investing. In a future blog post, I will try to write and share some of my strategies with you.

Hopefully, I can impart some knowledge that can put someone on the right track. 

And these are the sweets that I thought I really missed so much. It’s called merengue in our place. These are actually icing that have cooled down to harden.  When I was in my high school days, I used to consume a lot of these. Nowadays, I don’t find these enticing to eat anymore. I only ate two and laid the rest on the table.

My vacation went well and although it was brief, I could truly say that it was a holiday well spent. Until next time.