Chiq Boutique » fave books

My Chinese Adventure

Chiqui — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 21:49:34 +0000

O wow! Two weeks ago, this book held me prisoner from 8 PM – 6 AM. I decided to read a few pages while I was sipping my after-dinner coffee. When I had drained my cup, I wanted to go to bed. I had obligations the following day, but something just kept me glued to that dining room chair. I sat with my back straight, feverishly devouring text, attentive like a schoolgirl in Prof. Melanie Padilla’s History 2 class. I’ve always been fascinated with Chinese History. Always been a fan of Zhang Yimou’s “The Curse of the Golden Flower”. What I felt when I watched this movie was exactly the same feeling I had when I was reading Shan Sa’s “Empress”. This book was about Emperor Wu, the only woman in Chinese history to be given the title of emperor. It’s not so much the writing style that gripped me, but the richness of historical and visual information.

After having adequately rested from that all-night reading marathon, I had this urge to visit a Chinese grocery called the 99 Ranch Market. They always have the most interesting things there. In no other place could you find 13 varities of mushrooms. Here, I learned what a squab is. It is pigeon meat and it’s 5X more expensive than chicken. If you find yourself craving for fresh jackfruit, they usually have it. I found a couple of things there that were featured on the “Bizaare Foods” TV show:dark silky chicken meat and a shellfish with a large phallic-looking extension.

I got this box of durian cookies. It was okey. It had just a hint of the smell that freaks Andrew Zimmern out.

This is the only place where I can find fresh bamboo shoots. I never liked those that come frozen or in cans.I’m going to shred this and cook it with coconut milk, corn, saluyot, and some dried fish.

The pineapple/onion combo intrigues me. I was at a Thai restaurant last month. They served fresh fruit with a bowl of sauce on the side. It was honey mixed with crispy fried onions. Surprisingly, it made the pineapple’s tartness a little bit more bearable.

Ooops! This is not Chinese stuff, but the store sells items from different asian countries. This one’s made in Japan. I got it for a friend’s daughter who’s crazy about anime and everything Japanese. For the first time in years I saw this girl smile on her mom’s facebook photo. All it took was this tiny box of treats labeled “Made in Japan”.

Turkey Vultures

Chiqui — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 17:48:37 +0000

While straightening up in my room, I found the book “Sightings” (by Sam Keen, published by Chronicle Books) peeking out from under my bed. Seated on the floor with my back leaning on the side of the bed, I picked up where I had left off. I came upon a section entitled “Turkey Vultures”. It thrilled me to realize that the illustration and the descriptions of the bird were very familiar to me. Two weeks ago, while hiking around the lake at the Santa Fe Dam and Recreation Area, I saw a large black bird perched on top of a tree. It took to the skies as I crept closer with my camera. “O, so it’s not a crow on steroids,” I mused. Crows are smaller and black all over, but this one had a whitish/gray coloring under its outstretched wings, which contrasted dramatically with its black wing linings. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from its powerful white-tipped pinions. Never before had I seen a bird like that in flight. With its wingspan around five feet in length, it looked majestic up in the sky, almost like a haughty monarch surveying his kingdom. When I had reached the other side of the lake, it glided close enough for me to see that it had a red featherless head, reminding me of a turkey, and a white curved beak. I’ve been wondering, for days, what kind of bird it was. Now I know. Thanks to Sam Keen. I did say that I was going to find more gems in his book, didn’t I?

Vultures are undeniably impressive when they’re soaring effortlessly through the skies, but they are ugly when they’re on the ground. The fact that they feast on decay is another turn-off. Many consider them to be low class birds, their prestige level being the same as that of garbage collectors. Through the years they have been looked upon as harbingers of doom and death. They’re not very well-liked. Interestingly, however, you will notice that the first part of its scientific name (cathartes aura) means “purifier”, a word that is heavy with positive connotation. It bestows upon this hideous, janitor of a bird, an almost godlike status. When people are dirty and full of sin, gods purify them, making them fit for life again. In the same manner, when the environment is littered with decaying animals, the vulture disposes of them efficiently and keeps diseases contained, making the surroundings conducive to life.

I must admit that I felt some disappointment when it dawned on me that the awe-inspiring bird I had been admiring was nothing more than a carrion-eating vulture. But as I reflected on the meaning of ”cathartes”, I felt ashamed of myself. I had allowed popular perceptions to diminish my appreciation of this creature. The lowly vulture was called a “purifier” because it provides the earth with a valuable and noble service. I really should give this reviled buzzard all the respect that it deserves.

Sightings:Extaordinary Encounters With Ordinary Birds

Chiqui — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 20:29:38 +0000

Sightings by Sam Keen is a book I found in our local library’s booksale. It’s published by Chronicle Books (a really cool publisher in my opinion) and filled with illustrations by Mary Woodin. I’ve been reading it for several nights now, the last thing I do before i turn off my bedside lamp. It features the birds that the author has had the chance to observe in the wild. Keen has been an avid bird watcher since he was a child. In this work, he talks about his observations of different birds and how each one has lead him to a certain realization in his life. What I read in the introduction struck me so profoundly that I scrambled out of bed, rifled through my desk for a piece of paper, and scribbled away furiously. They were words I didn’t wish to forget. They compelled me to keep on reading.

Here is what got me all excited at half past 12 AM last Wednesday: Our most intimate revelations of the sacred come in odd ways that seem meaningless or trivial to an outsider. In these pivotal moments when we are struck dumb by the simple existence of a flowering tree, we detect faint echoes of an unknowable G____. A brief opening appears in the cloud of ultimate ignorance under which we dwell. Yet the experience is so private, so idiosyncratic, that we don’t know how to talk about it. We stutter in an effort to put into words something that is ineffable.”

Another favorite line is “….we glimpsed the infinite in some finite disguise”. What he means is that sometimes, out of the blue, we see God, who is boundless and limitless, in the tiniest details of his creation. In a very fleeting moment He reveals something to us, communes with us and moves us in a way that others can’t understand. Now finally I get what William Blake meant in this poem that used to irritate me so much:

“To see a world in a grain of sand,

And heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And Eternity in an hour.”

I have not finished this, but, for several more nights, it will definitely be on top of the reading pile on my nightstand. I hope to find more gems in it.

Starting Kindergarten

Chiqui — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 11:35:07 +0000

My daughter seems to be well-adjusted now. A month ago, she didn’t want to go to school. When we were out shopping for uniforms, she refused to try the ones I had picked out for her. She whined that she misses her bestfriend, Catalina. She wanted to stay in preschool with her friends and her beloved teacher, Ms. Ana. No amount of explanation could ease her anxiety.

I started to worry. I had thought that adjusting to kindergarten would be a breeze for her. Afterall, she’s used to the school setting. She’s comfortable with other kids. She’s mastered her alphabet, colors, and shapes. She can count up to 100, write her name, spell and recognize some words. I didn’t understand why, just a few days before the start of classes, she acted skittish whenever I mentioned anything related to kindergarten.

So I hunted all over the house for a book that I had bought two years ago. I didn’t think she’d need it anymore after I saw how excellent she was doing in preschool. How could I have forgotten that it is but natural for anybody to feel anxious whenever there’s a big change coming up? New place. New faces. New routines. I should have prepared her emotionally.

I called her to come sit beside me on the couch. Together we examined “The Night Before Kindergarten” by Julie Durrell and Natasha Wing. I read it aloud. Hmmmm. It rhymed and sounded like the poem “Twas the Night Before Christmas”. That’s a plus. My daughter is a little Dr. Seuss, fond of creating rhyming gibberish. With the help of the book I assured her that, in some ways, kindergarten is just like preschool. I pointed at the pictures that showed what they might do and what she may see in the classroom. What caught her attention the most was the line “visions of school supplies danced in their heads”. One by one she identified them on the page. I seized that spark of interest and declared that we should start gathering the coolest stuff we could find for school. She ran to her pencil holder and pulled out some pink pencils. We sharpened them up until their tips felt like bee stings against our skin. She picked out a pineapple eraser from her eraser collection. She agonized over whether she should get her dad to buy her the sparkly pink backpack or the Disney Princesses one. The princesses won. We went on a trip to the dollar store to get her a pencil box. I kept reminding her that the small box will not hold all her crayons, markers, pencils, and colored pencils. While rummaging through the kitchen cabinets, she explained that she needed to pack some snacks for recess. After she found some crackers, she positioned her backpack the by door, just like in the book, all set for the first day of school.

Poopoo Book

Chiqui — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:54:29 +0000

Bedtime for my three-year old, Athena, is never complete without her poopoo book entitled “Everyone Poops”. That’s on the top of her reading list. With her crude speech she does her best to read along with me. When I turn the page to her favorite line she holds her hand up as a signal for me to stop and then she’d slowly and laboriously recite ”A one hump camel makes a one hump poop. A two hump camel makes a two hump poop.” Burst of laughter. I chuckle along with her.

I saw this at a store last year but I never bothered with it. Its very graphic treatment of bowel movement made me snicker and put it down. It had pictures of butts, genitals, and shit of all kinds. Last February, my aunt, Tita Rory, gave the book as a present to my daughter on her birthday. These days, whenever she sees me lying down on the couch or on the bed,whether it’s bedtime or not, she’d rush to look for her poopoo book so I can read it to her. Eventhough I’m so sick of it and often beg her to get another book, I still do it because I enjoy watching her laugh when I make all sorts poop noises for different animals.

On pages 12 and 13 you will see a big whale and the question “What does a whale poop look like?”. This part always awakens my curiosity. It fills me with a strong desire to see whale excreta. Is it long like that of a gold fish? If whales are as big as a bus, how big could their feces be? Is it well-formed or does it disintegrate the moment it hits the water? Such are the intellectual musings that have occupied my mind of late. Obviously it has done something to me. Whether it’s for the better or for the worse, I really can’t say.

My daughter likes to identify with the human illustrations in the book. If she sees a picture of a child, whether girl or boy, she’ll declare that it’s her. An argument starts everytime we get to page 23. She’d point at the picture and say, “That’s Athena, da baby.” I would correct her that the child on the page has a pitoy (penis) like her brother’s so it couldn’t possibly be her. She’d insist that she also has a putoy. One afternoon, when she saw her brother putting on his pants, she ran toward him asking to get a peek at his putoy. Feeling violated, her brother angrily told her to leave his private parts alone. She merely giggled and answered, “I have a meemew(her term for vagina).” It was at this point when Freud’s psycho sexual theory flashed in my head. Now I understand why Athena loves that book so much. At the age of three, she is in the anal stage of development. It is a period where her most-important task is toilet-training, a time of gender curiosity. I realized I shouldn’t be annoyed even if I have to read the book to her again and again. I should thank Kane/Miller Book Publishers for the hours of fun that they’ve provided us. In fact, I’m thinking of buying two more similar books that they’ve published: “The Gas We Pass” by Shinta Cho, and “The Holes in Your Nose” by Genichiro Yagyu. Just like “Everyone Poops”, I think they’re gonna be a hit with my preschooler.

Honing My Haiku Eye

Chiqui — Fri, 29 May 2009 20:04:42 +0000

At noon time

Morning Glory mirrors

Blue skies above

Tired by sundown

Morning Glory puts on

Purple nightgown

Published by Tuttle Publishing, “HAIKU Asian Arts & Crafts For Creative Kids” by Patricia Donegan is a great book I stumbled upon while scanning the public library shelves for children’s books. I borrowed it not for my kids, but for myself. I’m glad I did. It further strengthened and enriched my knowledge of the Japanese literary form. Who says adults can’t learn much from kidstuff? Sometimes I am amazed when I think of how reading to my second grader has taught me tons of new knowledge. Wish I had read this when I was teaching literature. This is one good tool for teachers. And wannabe writers like me.

There are some fun writing exercises in the book. The haikus you see above are the result of the exercises I did. I enjoyed doing them and I hope to do more in the future. Brace yourselves! You’re about to be bombarded by my poetry, whether you like it or not.