Going Back Home (Part 1)

To some OFWs, vacation means being with loved ones and bonding with long lost friends. To others, a chance to relax and go sightseeing places they'd dreamed to visit. But one thing is for sure, vacationing means an ample sum of our savings is spent. For me, it’s a mixture of what I mentioned.

I promised my Dad I’ll repair the fence surrounding our family compound destroyed by flood when “Frank” visited our town last year. So that’s what I did. While my “mag-ina” was visiting relatives around town, I was supervising the construction of a portion of our back fence; a 6 foot high, 15 meter long concrete wall.

Actually I’m not really needed since my Dad was doing the supervision. It‘s just a pretext not to accompany my wife on her rounds. The “playoffs” is more important than meeting some balik-bayan uncles and aunties-in-law whose conversation revolves around comparing the situation in the Philippines and the US of A. Like that ad commercial "walang ganyan sa states..." ba.

I’m glad my loss wasn’t as bad as I expected from that recent deluge. Nobody lives in my house and only on some occasion does someone check it out. When “Frank” struck and everything went under water, it took two months before somebody entered and cleaned it up. But to my delight, except for my mid-range speakers and sub-woofer, all our appliances are okay. Of course there’s the issue of our clothes and linens smelling like rags. It took several washing and lots of Downy to removed the stench.

One thing nice about vacationing is your no longer obliges to do what you usually do when you’re abroad. Eat, sleep and watched TV is my daily agenda. My sister-in-law was even kind to lend us her cook so I can taste my favorite dishes (any thing with “gata”) and of course pork. Not a single day that we don’t have pork on the table, from adobo to lechon-kawali. She (the cook) was even perplexed when we asked her to boil “kamote” for meryenda (kamote is expensive in the Middle East). We spread it with margarine and down it up with kalamansi juice… ahhh sarap. It’s a respite from my wife’s cooking whose menu consists of only 6 dishes; one for each day of the week. And just like God, we rest our palate and eat out on the 7th day.

We always timed our vacation to coincide with summer but I never anticipated that it will be this hot. Sweats are dripping down my elbow even when I’m doing nothing but standing outside the veranda to catch some breeze. I have to shower thrice a day to minimize my discomfort. Luckily, the AC in our bedroom works fine or my daughter would have a hard time sleeping at night. Using an electric fan isn’t sufficient to cool a hot summer evening.

Enough of my grumbling, next time I’ll tell about our “lamyerda” with matching pictures.