Tag: holy week

Binignit: Holy Week Comfort Food

I’m still enjoying the third day of my long weekend. This time of the year, the majority of the Philippines commemorate the sacrifices and death of Jesus Christ which is why there’s Holy Thursday and Good Friday both of which are regular holidays. It’s time off for Catholics and the rest of the working class. No bosses, no cares about bad call flow except for those left behind to keep the production running or churning.

I really didn’t do much of the rituals expected during this holy week. Sorry mother but don’t worry I did my own sacrifices. Food were in small(er) portions and working out and running were skipped for two days. No fuel, no go. And yes, I made my own silent prayers. Erm.

The past two days were meatless. So over brown rice and steamed veggies, yesterday I had binignit. I discovered that what I’ve known for the longest time as ginataan is also called binignit. A match on my favorite app confirms my entry. For the nth time MyFitnessPal recognizes my kind of comfort food.

Wifey and my in-laws prepared the binignit like some sort of holy week tradition. I woke up seeing them busy chopping the ingredients right outside our house. They cooked everything in one big pan that was then shared among every household. We got a lot which I thought at first I won’t eat as it’s normally cooked too sweet for my taste but thankfully it wasn’t this time. The Under Armor app says one serving equals two hundred calories. Not bad.

MyFitnessPal is always heaven sent. Until a timely bad news struck. Several news on social media report this morning that the app got hacked. What else is safe way nowadays anyway? The reports say that personal information were exposed, not quite sure if credit card credentials are among them. I’m spared, however. For one I don’t subscribe to premium service and I don’t have a credit card anymore. What only hackers could see on my account are how much eggs, and bananas with Skippy, Nutella, and Speculoos in between I have eaten. Then for two meals already, the binignit.

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I must be a hermit in my past life. I could stay indoors the whole time and won’t make a fuss about it. So that’s how I spent two extra days, just at home and played games with Marcus. Man, he’s already beating me on driving games.

Marcus taking a break from the hot sun and Forza 6 game.

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Mood: 1/10 Honks! (Now away from home and Marcus’ XBox today.)

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Slow Down and Stop

Most of us would agree that we hate being stopped. It is the reason we strain our necks to investigate what keeps traffic from moving, often times it is what causes us to blare our horns madly to coax that unsuspecting guy in front of us to step on it.

When sickness strikes, we desperately try to fight it off. We question the heavens why us, when will we recover. And we want that damn recovery fast.

At work, we get impatient when that dream job we have been applying for just doesn’t come so soon.

And in our family, our children or spouses bear the brunt whenever things don’t go our way.

Any sign of stopping we just immediately hate.  When something breaks our momentum and keeps us indefinitely stationary we become impatient, frustrated, and irrational.

But what we must realize is that there are always reasons, important ones, that we are stopped on our tracks. For one, it is the time we are given the opportunity to reflect, to analyze, and to reconsider. Being on the go makes us feel invincible, too proud, too detached from reality, and worse, from the very people who are supposed to be the main recipients of why we want to keep on moving.

On that note, this holy week, whether too pious or not, let us allow ourselves to slow down or come to a full halt and appreciate what we currently have, what we have achieved so far. Let us stop and remember to thank the divine power who in the first place has kept us going throughout the whole year.

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Mood: 1/10 Honks! (My last work day for this week.)