Elizabeth's English Lectures (and other matters)

  Sometimes, things just fall into the right place even when we least expect them to. The other day, I woke up in a messy room, for I was too exhausted to tidy up the room the night before. I was so disoriented that I did not know what to do first after I got up. Sitting on the bed, I had to rake through my brain to look for some reason and logic that would help me arrive at a grand decision, for the tasks before me seemed insurmountable. After brushing my teeth, I wondered what to do next. Take a cold shower?   Brew some coffee? Turn on my laptop and watch YouTube? Brush my long, long hair? To make matters worse, even my own hunger was not enough to motivate me to prepare even the simplest breakfast.  I really couldn’t decide what to do first so I went back to bed and stared at the ceiling.   That’s when the familiar voice   and tone of my landlady came as a surprise, calling my name. I wondered what the matter was, so I jumped out of bed and, with disheveled hair, I opened the do

  the picturesque Burger King,  the handsome Grab Riders on their motorcycles, a car passing by, blue skies, fluffy clouds, sunshine, shadows, trees, PERFECTION Circa 2003. I was a wide-eyed young hopeful (in colloquial Tagalog, shushunga-shunga ) learning my way in Holy Spirit Drive, Barangay Holy Spirit, Quezon City. Holy Spirit Drive, more popularly known as Don Antonio Street, was quite bare. The only tall building at that time was Plaza Andrea, a four-storey building with peeling off pink/light orange paint. Fast forward to 2022, and there are a lot of restaurants along Don Antonio now. I will be describing them in my future posts, but for now, I would like to write about the latest addition to the many restaurants and stores in my beloved Don Antonio--- drumrolls, please--- BURGER KING!!! I love Burger King burgers because of the aroma of the   grilled patty, not to mention that it’s super juicy! Thanks for adding color and great taste to our lives, Burger King!  

  a gift from Wakayama, Kansai area Japan More than a decade before takoyaki became a big thing in the Philippines, I was already cooking and eating authentic Kansai takoyaki. My students were from Kansai area—Nara, Osaka, and Wakayama—and in Japan, the place Kansai is synomymous to takoyaki and okonomiyaki. Even the Japanese people who are not from Kansai region are not confident to cook takoyaki in the presence of someone form Kansai. Anyway, one of my students, a gentleman from Wakayama, gifted me this with this takoyaki plate. Sadly, I can’t get the right ingredients to make   authentic takoyaki, and I have forgotten the exact measurements of each ingredient. Some people might say that I just have to estimate the amount of the   ingredients, but NO, this is a big no. Just a bit too much or a bit too little of any ingredient can drastically change the taste and texture of the takoyaki. Takoyaki stores have mushroomed in the city and even in nearby provinces, and I have tasted

  Payless with moringa leaves and an egg Imagine my surprise when, finally, I could take hold of Payless Instant Mami again after so many years. I had been looking for this instant chicken noodle soup for longer than I can recall. I got four packs of these noodles, among many other groceries, from our Local Government Unit when I completed the second dose of my vaccine. The sight instantly brought me back to the memories of yesteryears when my brother and I were high schoolers, struggling financially.   The nearest high school was almost eight kilometers away, and there was no regular transportation system at that time. We had to stay in a boarding house. On Sunday afternoons, we, along with other students from our far-flung farming village, would go to the población carrying our week’s supply of foods—the kind that would not go bad immediately, the kind that would last five days, for we had no refrigerator to keep them in. We would be carrying two gantas of rice, some bottle gourd

It was not even 6:00 in the morning yet. I was on my way to the small garden outside our gated house to enjoy my steaming black coffee. I was pleasantly surprised with the beauty that greeted me. It had always been there, at the corner, planted in an old brown flower pot. I did not pay attention to it that much, because well---it was just another lovely green thing among the other lovely green things growing in our fenced-in yard…until that morning, when it surprised me with its overpowering beauty. All the while, it was working silently, preparing to surprise us mortals with its  immense beauty. There, in the early morning light, was the Gumamela plant with its breathtakingly beautiful yellow flower.  Thank you, beautiful Gumamela, for sharing your beauty to the world. You were truly a sight to behold. You are fleeting, for such is the nature of anything beautiful… but with this blog post, you shall be immortalized.