23? POST

January 19, 2008

If my condition/health does not improve, either one of these will have to go,
my cold/fever or ME!
Presently munching on "ampaw" [sticky puffed rice] very cheap yet delicious 'junk' food
It's "addictive". Do they put something in food to make it addictive so that the first taste
is followed by the compulsion to keep consuming it?
"Sultan Usman" of Quiapo told me last new year's eve he believed for every gallon or drum of toyo/soy sauce anti-Muslim manufacturers mix in one kilo of ground pork & that's why it is so delicious!!! HAR HAR!] Am reminded of my late father who told me a story about one ampaw vendor in their place in Tondo whom he recognized as a robber/thief masquerading - ampaw ampaw yun pala magnanakaw! This is an excellent "fart food" better than kamote!

News items about Batangas... Zambales... Hmmm... why the choice of places... There are lots of 'reportable/newsworthy" events/incidents everyday any/everywhere.... but whichever get chosen for the MEDIA? According to CONSTHEO neWs are made and presented to MASSES with a particular objective/target audience state/frame of mind to elicit/trigger (to alarm/shock people, keep them pleasantly informed or agitated or vexed.... The decision ultimately falls on those "manipulators"...

CALAUAG, Quezon province late 1930's
My late aunt when her father died in 1935? due to pneumonia was forced to stop schooling
& became the family bread winner. Her father (my maternal grandfather) was a SORBETERo
who made & vended ice cream just like the ones we see with bright "Mexican" style "karo" or cart. He travelled to distant places like BACOLOD, towns in Quezon, even Zambales? to do business... I had been told even the first ice cream vendors in UP Diliman campus in the 1950's were from Batangas... My late aunt used to relate to me how good/nice her father was - that he never/seldom showed negative emotions like anger or irritation (Definitely UNLIKE any of us descendants... "Saints or Heroes" do not necessarily sire saints/heroes.) More about saints & Heroes later...

I believe he was bed-ridden before dying (Pneumonia can still kill... I've been stricken by it several times When I was in Saudi I also fell ill but was lucky the cure/medicine (was available... I just asked my good friends to buy it for me & I recovered quickly... Her father told her to just act as father/big brother over her two younger sisters (My mother is the youngest). It must have been a very sad "DRAMATIC" event - to be told by your dying father to take his place and take good care of the rest of your family! Thus she was "FORCED by circumstances" to seek a well-paying job in MANILA... [But still a less noble motivation she told me once was that she also wanted to "eat delicious food" Kumain ng masarap... that's why she sought the good fortune in the metropolis]
She ended up with the PMC or Procter & Gamble... [Her uncle was also a dealer of SINGER sewing machines... I'm relating this to show that these originally American companies must have known us since the 1930's I'm quite sure they already had dossiers of their employees...]
My aunt was tasked to promote P&G's products in different provinces. She covered Pampanga
When WW2 broke out she was covering Quezon province & was about to proceed to Bicol & Visayas...

I'm not sure when this event happened but my estimate is that it was sometime 1936-1939...
She was in Calauag Quezon & staying in a house as boarder or transient... One bright moonlit night it was around 9:00 in the evening... She just arrived with a heavy sack of P&G products.
Her house was a walking distance from the train station... So she paid a young boy or binatilyo
to carry her merchandise. When she was at the gate of the house the dog was barking angrily
at the boy. So she paid the boy & told him to just leave the sack which she pulled by herself to the house that was located a few meters from the gate... Unknown to her, her landlady was in the veranda (BATANGAN TAGALOG: "SULAMBI") watching her arrival & approach... When she got close her landlady asked her: SINO YUNG KASAMA MONG LALAKI?... NI HINDI MAN LANG KINAHULAN NG ASO?... She replied it was a kargador boy whom she just paid at the gate. But her landlady insisted, "Hindi... Yung naka BALANGGOT (A native hat)... giving a complete physical description of the "man who accompanied her some distance"... She immediately realized: ANG TATAY KO HO! (That was my father!) But her father had long been dead! The landlady could not have known him since my aunt never related anything to her about him!...
[I'm allowing now the possibility that she could have been 'Set Up' but this is TOO REMOTE a possibility given the other ghost stories she told me... I'm "theorizing" now: Can it be that the spirit or subtle essence of a dead person remain on the earth's surface for some time??? But do clothing matter have also spirit?
But according to ISLAAM spirits of dead people do not roam around - that we go straight to the BARZAKH...
But this is in ISLAAM. What about those from other religions who believe in roaming spirits?
My aunt could have created & projected a protective ultimately mental image of her guarding father that was seen by another person... [READ Gurdjieff & Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous]
THOSE WHO ARE TRULY IN THE KNOW SHOULD BE ABLE TO EXPLAIN THIS INCIDENT...
But really I have not met MUSLIMS with GENUINE knowledge of the OCCULT/MYSTICAL I believe these people are the TRUE BELIEVERS.
NOTE OF ADVICE TO MUSLIM MORO READERS: YUNG MGA NAKAKAALAM NG ACTUAL STEP-BY=STEP RELIGIOUS PROCEDURE NG PARRANG SABBIL - SILA ANG MGA TUNAY NA MUJAHIDEEN... MERON TALAGA NITO. Instituted/Institutionalized
in such places as ACHEH, SUMATRA & SULU... ANG HINDI KO LANG ALAM EH KUNG NA-ITAGO O NA-PRESERVE PA NG MGA SULUANOS - NOT NECESSARILY TAUSUGS...

ADDENDUM:
THE NAME of the lady friend was "MISS FILETEO". My aunt narrowly escaped the Kempeitai were it not for her father's 'dream whisper" to her mother!

THE READER SHOULD REALIZE BY NOW WHY I SIMPLY CANNOT BE A MATERIALIST-ATHEIST...
NEXT: Few more tales before change of topic