My sili plants bore me several chillis and after some weeks I managed to harvest the most important part of all — the leaves!

I was saw a young papaya for sale by accident and ting! - a light bulb switched on. It’s proper tinola time.

Please excuse the pictures as I nearly forgot to capture the evidence. Kelvin loves soup-based dishes and hubby was salivating at the thought of tasting what he says is “authentic” Chicken Tinola, actually so was I! Finally I was able to eat my labour of love. (more…

I made it just in time (I hope) for the yummy mummies’s Fam Pic this month. I have been “experimenting” in our small garden and have been attempting to grow edible stuff. So far I have harvested some bok choi (variety of chinese cabbage) and now my chillis are ready for re-planting.

I started growing them in planters that are really meant for border flowering plants. But due to lack of space (and lack of patience and skills), the planters served my purpose to grow the seedlings.

When they were big enough for smaller pots, my 3-year old boy helped in digging them up by hand careful not to damage the roots. We transferred them to pots that fit on the window sill in our kitchen.

Here is a shot of the first chilli fruit I “harvested” two weeks ago. They’re very productive now and soon I’ll have more than I need for a suka’ng maanghang. But what we’re really looking forward to is to cook some proper chicken tinola with fresh sili leaves!

Here are some more “potted” posts from fellow sexy Pinays:
Julie’s flowersRaqgold’s Potted Memory
Cookie’s different kind of pot
KK’s indoor and outdoor pots
Rach’s Flowers and a Smile
Lynn’s Pot Shots
Lady Cess’ The Best Tea
Feng’s Tagaytay Pics
Analyse’s Life isn’t easy being a nomad
Purple Girl’s Coffee Alamid
Mitch’s very edible photos
Noemi’s Ceramic Fondue Pot
Vicky’s Potted Fruits and Vegetables
Dine’s anything potted in Bhutan and Capalonga

I was on a business trip to India last year (August 2006). Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, it was nowhere near Mumbai or Taj Mahal. It was in Southern India called Trivandrum, which apparently was a former communist state. If my colleague is to be believed, he said that on his first visit to the place, the airport was manned by the military & it was quite scary as people pushed & shove their way in & around you.

When I got there, the first thing that came to my mind is Pinas. It was a twilight zone moment. Someone even went in my luggage & pinched my digital camera. I was so homesick hehe Anyway my kindly officemates gave me copies of their shots.

See the airport was similar to our old Domestic Airport. Ours is only better by one shower.
(isang paligo :-)) Outside the Kerala airport, the smell was of a wet market & the sanitation was non-existent. If you’re not careful, there are people who’d take your bags to force you to take their cab. It was reminiscent of the tricycle drivers in Cabanatuan City, Nueva Ecija.

I was adamant we ought to do some shopping & sightseeing. If I didn’t broach the topic, the bossings would have happily made us work from 7am to 10pm everyday for 5 days. At one point we ended up in their market & my officemate took the shot above. That’s me with the motorcycles. Isn’t it like a typical Pinas market? BTW check out those plastic containers at the background. Our hotel rooms and the office toilets all have pails of water & a jug (tabo). My female colleague asked me what I think they were for. When I told her her face was indescribably shocked.
There’s always heavy traffic everywhere we go. And of course they have the 5-in-a-motorcycle scene there, too. The whites (American, New Zealander, German & Scot) with me were all shocked but the only thing I actually did a double take on was the Indian pedicab. I bought my son a model. I asked an officemate to take the picture above.

I told my companions that we can buy cigarettes by piece (per stick) from the store above. They wouldn’t believe me so they asked. They concluded it was the best thing in the world, you know to avoid wastage. Then our driver butted in, he said we can even buy prescription drugs without prescription… hmmm Pinas nga yata ito.

I have always been curious with the garlands that adorn nearly every place and everything we see. When I took a closer look, they were actually Sampaguita but with different colours. The guy told me what it’s called in Indian but I can’t remember anymore. The Scot wanted to buy some & the American girl took some to her hotel room as air freshener.

Of course I wanted proper souvenirs to take home with me. So our Indian friend (pictured above in the red dress) took us to the Tourism Ministry’s craft shop. My God it was dusty. Everything we touched were covered in dust but the prices were okay & they were all polite, save for one saleslady who told me not to haggle as it wasn’t a market. I nearly told her, “mukha mo polite ka sa puting unggoy na yan e kinukuripot ka din”. Instead, I asked her if their staff were being paid by commission. When she said yes, I went to her other colleague & asked her to ring up my items plus more.

Okay this is the first place we went to that I was actually enthralled & was finally made to believe I was in India. Along the entire length of the street leading to the temple were taps with men washing themselves - as in washing their entire body!!! I actually saw a few butts & the sights weren’t pretty. Unfortunately, we couldn’t go inside the temple. Women need to be in skirt & the men, well, they need to wash!

The office we visited was the outsourcing company my ex-firm eventually bought. It brought 1997 memories of my first job in Reposo, Makati in terms of layout & size. But that Indian office was something else. People were so quiet, and most were nervous when you talk to them, even during lunchtime. Apparently they’re not allowed to print. You need admin access to CD-ROM and internet. Their monitors were really small. And yes, their CPUs, I think, are clones.

Since that trip I asked a few friends still based in Pinas whether they get the same deals as those in Indian. Most concurred. Some even went as far as saying their emails & internet usage are monitored! Egad.

Well I hope you enjoyed the few pictures I managed from the trip, well okay begged off my ex-officemates. There’s one picture that I’m still looking for which I will post soon.

I’ve been fidgety all day Friday (20 July 2007). I sent Joel at least three text messages and called him several times, then repeated to him in the car on the way home, that he MUST go back to the supermarket that night or at dawn to get me the book. I’ve seen pictures of snaking queues on almost all the dailies & I cannot bear the thought of not having my own book when it’s released.

I’m a Potter-maniac. It started on an impulse airport-buy (was it 1999? I don’t even remember). And I’ve always been on the edge of my seat every time a new book is to be released. I even pre-ordered HP6 on Amazon. But this year, I was expecting consumers to win on the pricing war for the final “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”!

I’ve never been more glad to live in Britain than this month. HP7 retails at $37 in the United States. It has a suggested retail price of £17.99 in the UK. But since every major supermarket in the UK wants a big share of the audience, it’s been a crazy “beat this” price war since the start of 2007. I thought the lowest offer on HP7 will stay at £8.00+ from Amazon & most bookstores. Still I didn’t pre-order. I was patient as Tesco & ASDA haven’t announced their plans yet (& I lost out on their discounted price for HP6). Then two weeks ago, the super-duper-markets set their prices at £8.16, just a few pence cheaper than the bookstores.

But the day before the release night, ASDA announced they’re selling HP7 at a lose. It was an added attraction for shoppers at £5 a pop!!! I was elated. That is the right time to buy. I thought my plans were scuppered when Joel complained of migraine. I can’t have that! I can’t drive, someone needs to get me the book. I feeding him paracetamol tablets to make him better or at least for him to manage the wheels… I know I was insane, I was unfeeling, I was inconsiderate… but it’s HP7!

Joel called me from the store, he was told the books were gone by 3am. I nearly cried. I told him his migraine’s a big pain. I told him to go to the nearby Tesco branch. I received a text message, again none left, he says. I lost. So I told him he ought to buy me the book at the regular price then. I assume after the first week the stores might revert to the original retail price. But the hubby actually got two copies: one for me and another for my friend in the US. Jerk. He says it was a joke…. grrr.

Anyway, the book is — wow. Really, read it. At the end, Harry was… Voldemort didn’t… you know. hehe Joke joke, no spoilers here.

My post really is about the power of competition & how consumers benefit from it. Isn’t it great? Yes there were tears & cries of “foul” from smaller shops. They’re missing out on the profit, the boom should be shared amongst everyone, they said. Most of the small players ended up buying from the supermarkets just so they can sell the Potter book at the same price level as everyone (between £4.99-£8.90). But still I’m a consumer & I’m happy not to fork out nearly £20 for the book of the year.

Last week on the BBC Breakfast’s business news, they said Bloomsbury did earn a lot from Rowling’s series. But the backlash is that some of their stockholders are jumping ship due to fear of a possible post-Potter slump. It is expected by most quarters that the Bloomsbury share prices will fall in the coming months. So of course the publishing house is quick to dispel the rumours by saying they’ve got more bestsellers ahead. Will it work? Let’s wait and see. I’m sure a lot of market players are eagerly watching.

On that note, did you know that Bloomsbury’s agreement with stores (across the globe) to only sell the HP book a minute after midnight of 20 July 2007 was even rumoured to have been in jeopardy? Apparently Bloomsbury dictated before that if a seller doesn’t comply with their “release policy” they will not be given the succeeding Potter book. Since HP7 is ‘it’, there were talks about Bloomsbury’s lack of control over the sellers. I didn’t hear any problems about it. But still it must be scary to be on the board of the Bloomsbury. It’s an end to a great money-making era… Well, if you don’t count the merchandise, the movies, the games & royalties.

PS
Bewitching read to you all… Thanks for visiting again & again & I’m really, really sorry I haven’t been bloghopping as much. Work & sickness really gets in the way of life.

So far so good in the garden. The plants that threatened to die on their first two weeks are actually looking very healthy. Actually the poppy which was very healthy is now looking frail, darn slugs! I started sprinkling slug repellent but with the constant rain, the pellets are not doing a good job. What seemed to work, albeit still not perfect, is a bowl of beer next to the plants. Last week I saw 4 slugs in the bowl, they died from alcohol consumption hehe That should be a warning to drunkards everywhere.

Another pest I’ve had problems with recently are the neighbourhood cats. They seem to like newly-mowed lawns & sweet smelling gardens. Nakakadiri talaga. I swear when I catch those pussies, I will give them pain hehe Joke lang po. I told Kelvin to kick a cat when he sees one, btu he said it was “naughty bad”. Ok. Cat repellent it is then, it’s worked for a week now.

Here are some more garden pictures I thought of sharing with you.

I love the purple flowers on this one. Kelvin ran towards the plant so he can pose beside it. See where his hands were & the naughty smile? He was going to show his bum to the camera! He’s really cheeky, tamang-tama coz he’s born on the Year of the Monkey.

Above is the Marigold.

These are my lilies - I love them. They smell so nice, too. But I don’t know if they will survive the winter.

That’s Kelvin gently touching the buds. Mabilis matuto ang bata. I told him just once to be gentle with plants when were planting & now he knows.

This is my beloved Money Plant. I have 5 other plants in 2004, this is the only one that survived after hubby forgot to water them for the 2 weeks that I was on holiday. Dinidiligan daw pala yung mga halaman? Hay ewan! Anyway, these are succulent so they’re very easy to care for. So far I have managed to grow 3 separate pots from this big one.

Above is the very small plant stand I got from ebay. And again Kelvin insists on posing.

BTW, I have managed to grow 15 chilli seedlings! YEHEY! I hope they give me many sili leaves soon. I have also replanted 15 pok choi seedlings. I also hope they grow as they’re my primary source of “green leafy vegetables”. Two in a pack costs £1.12 in ASDA aba and we use 4-a-week on average. If my mildly green mind, este fingers, manage to grow this batch I can start seriously growing them in earnest. The parsley and mints have also started to sprout but we’ll have to wait and see. I will only take their pictures if they’re all at least 3 inches tall, para naman siguradong buhay na talaga.

This is Kelvin’s Spaceship drawn in his dad’s Father’s Day card. And yes, that’s my chicken-scratch (kinahig ng manok) handwriting.

My 3-year old loves to doodle but mostly only circles and lines, in fact even his square looks like a circle. Nope he’s no Van Gogh (yet), perhaps he’ll become an abstract painter?

Caution: Photos galore ahead.

Hubby, his aunt and I put up a border and prepared the soil. We probably got rid of half-a-sack worth of stones & pebbles. By the end of the first day, I was aching all over. Hubby had to applied efficascent oil all over my body, it was sooo painful to move.

The following day I worked from 9am til 12 noon. Both hubby & aunt were gone. Thankfully, the day was slightly overcast so it’s not too hot to continue my planting.

This photo was taken right after I finished the last box of seedlings. As you can see the day was beginning to hot up. Kelvin was my lone helper all day, fetching water for me & basically trying not to get in the way too much.

On the second week, the plants started to bloom. I kept the cards of their names but I forgot to take note for this blog. Anyway, the red flower above and the bright yellow below are of the same family. Their like sunflowers in that their petals clam up when the sun goes down. At first hubby didn’t want to buy these but I sneaked them in our trolley anyway - I win!

We bought two of these lavender bush. Buy 1 get 1 free kasi. And I know they’re easy to grow. I am hoping these will last at least a year with minimum care. They do smell great, but since they’re so small, I have to put my nose really close in order to see what the ‘fuss’ is about.

These plants are yet to bloom. Out of maybe 24 seedlings, I think 6 of them will die. They’re wilting right next to their healthy siblings.
So that’s my quickie garden. I’m serious about these lot now. I just bought a plant stand from ebay so I can start with potted plants, too. I’ve got some healthy money plants I’ve managed to grow indoors that I’d like to propagate(?) and I’m really keen on starting a mini-herb garden. We’ll see how it goes.

Taken with my point-and-shoot low-tech digital camera, SONY Cybershot DSC-W30 (6 megapixel).

This year it was hubby who has been pushing to get started on the garden. I wasn’t too keen. But two weekends ago, he woke up early without prompting (!) & when he went downstairs, he said he was ready to go! Amazing. Usually he takes a 1 to 1.5 hour pag-iinin before getting up. He then takes another 1-2 hours to get ready for anything. I kid you not.

Anyway, we went to our local Homebase. I wanted to go a nearby weekly farmer’s market, but hubby insisted it’s not convenient. But I was already thinking the shop will cost us an arm and a leg, it did.

Anyway I wanted to share some pictures I took of Homebase’ garden centre. The place was really nice, I wanted to grab everything in sight, including their garden gnomes!

I will post pictures of the plants in our garden soon. Most are looking healthy & have started to blossom, while some according to hubby are wilting.

The pictures were taken with my Nokia 70.

To follow from my cliff-hanger picture, here are two modern and “famous” buildings in the City of London. I pass them both day in and day out, seeing a flock of tourists any time of the day.

The “gherkin” caused a brouhaha during its conception. Critics said it will ruin the London skyline, a sore-eye amidst the old London architectures seen along the River Thames. Well, they are right. If you go on a cruise along the river, the gherkin does stand out like a sore thumb.

This is the Lloyd’s tower. I didn’t know that’s what it’s called until a job interview brought me to it. Its lift is along those ridges & is made entirely of glass. I have a massive fear of heights & when I came out the elevator, I knew I didn’t want to work there. Well, they felt the same way about me hehe

I have been playing with my point-and-shoot camera the other day. Since I have nothing in the garden but an overgrown lawn & weeds, that’s what you’ll see here.

That’s Kelvin in the background in his ManUtd gear. It’s amazing how he can run around kicking his football when we rarely get the chance to play the game. Could it be England’s football mania’s so addicting kids catch it in the air?