Wednesday and walking go together like a foot in a shoe, so I put them on and headed out.
We discussed options under the threatening skies and opted to do the Matain-Calapacuan-San Isidro street walk.
For the evening out, I had planned to kick things off at Red Bar. Alas, a biker club had the same plan and beat me to it. All the outdoor seats were filled, so we just continued up the highway and popped into John’s place for the dinner we missed on Sunday.
I was surprised to see several dart players in the second-floor dining area, then I remembered that John’s now has a team in the dart league. They had just finished winning their match against Sloppy Joe’s and were enjoying some post-game beverages. It was nice chatting with some of my old darts buddies.
Then a group of several young non-Filipino people (early thirties, I’d judge, including one hot female) came in. I suspect they are crewmembers from one of the merchant ships I’ve seen anchored in the harbor. Seeing the crowd filling the dining area, they started to turn around to leave. One of the dart players said, “You should stay, this is the best food in town.” I added that the upstairs area had lots of seating, and so they all headed up. I watched the solitary waitress carrying trays of drinks and plates of food, so it was a big night for John’s customer-wise.
John’s daughter came in and took over serving the downstairs folks, which was just me and Swan after the darters departed.
With dinner out of the way, I suggested we give Red Bar another try. As we exited John’s, the rain was coming down hard, so we dashed into the bar next door, Dempsey’s. They don’t serve wine by the glass there, so we don’t stop by often, but otherwise, it has a nice, relaxed vibe. I had a beer and then the rain let up, so we hit the highway again. The Red Bar patio was still full of bikers, so we kept moving and went to Jumpin’ Jacks instead.
We once again enjoyed the vibe and music at Jumpin’ Jacks, then made our way back home.
We’ve hired a new house helper, and she arrived from the province last night. She is the aunt of our neighbor’s helper, so at least it isn’t a blind hire. She’s been busy all morning with the chores, so, so far, so good.
It’s now October 2012 in the LTG archives. I’m back for another few months of my Korean retirement life, and in this post, I share the adventure of a visit to Naksan. It was a good life while it lasted.
I’ll be heading out tomorrow for a weekend in Angeles City with my neighbors, Jeff and Davina. Today’s YouTube video is from a new (to me) vlogger sharing his four-day experience in AC. Like me, he’s not a big fan of the nightlife scene there, but the video will give you a good taste of what’s in store for us. At the end of the video, he’s on a bus for Subic, so I’ll need to look to see if he enjoyed that more.
On to the funny business:
And so it went. Let’s keep it going!
I get that “Bilboing on the bags” is a Baggins pun, but what does the verb “bilboing” even mean?
Swan’s birria tacos looked more deeply colored this time, as if they’d finally been dipped in the fatty consommé. I’m glad the restaurant made the change.
I suppose this is a Filipino tradition, but these plates of food were left behind the bar in memory of the recently deceased bartender, Vangie. We added the lollipop.
Food offerings (or whatever they are) sound more like an old, native Asian tradition that lingers on in the culture and less like Catholicism.
We’ve hired a new house helper, and she arrived from the province last night. She is the aunt of our neighbor’s helper, so at least it isn’t a blind hire. She’s been busy all morning with the chores, so, so far, so good.
Congrats on finding someone.
Yes those tacos are looking better,
Gary….”Yes those tacos are looking better”
Wait ’til matey sees the state of the tacos in Angeles this weekend, ay Gaz?
Kevin, “Bilboing” is the art of hopping from bag to bag. A rarely heard term because I just made it up.
Funny, I noticed that the shells were darker, too. Oddly enough, Swan complained that the shells were “too soft.” I guess the old way spoiled her. It didn’t stop her from eating them, though.
I’m not familiar with Catholic or Filipino religious rituals, but I’d never seen food left for a dead person. At some of the makeshift shrines in Thailand, I noticed people would leave cans of soda and the like for the deity.
The helper’s name is Gina, and so far, so good.
Thanks for editing my post, John. Always suspected you were a fascist, you old warty cunt!
Yeah, I’d been wondering whether “bilboing” (Bilboing—capital B? seems odd for a verb) meant something like “taking a long walk across the land in the manner of Bilbo Baggins.” So, trekking, basically. But you’re saying it’s specifically “hopping from bag to bag”—presumably because Bilbo is a Baggins. Well, it’s your word, and I don’t think anyone else is using it, so I hope to see more of it in future blog entries. My only humble suggestion would be to make the verb’s spelling all lower case since most verbs aren’t normally capitalized. You are, of course, free to do what you want. Google AI suggests that capitalization of “verbified” proper nouns depends on how widely recognized the original noun is, e.g., “to MacGyver” something (an expression I’ve used a few times, capitalized, on my own blog) or “to Google” something. And since Bilbo is a widely recognized character, I guess you can retain the capital letter. At the same time, a lot of verbified proper nouns are now lower case: bowdlerize, pasteurize, mesmerize, sandwich, lynch. So it’s up to you. You’ll also need to develop present-tense, simple-past, and perfect-tense spellings for your neologism:
I Bilbo, She Bilbo(e)s
I Bilboed (Bilbo’ed? Bilbo’d?)
You already have the present participle “Bilboing.” And it has no apostrophe, so I guess the preterite and the past participle would be “Bilboed,” no apostrophe.
re: Swan’s birria problem
Swan can request that the tacos be fried on the skillet a little longer to crisp them up. If that is beef consommé coating the tacos, then it’s partly grease, anyway, so it should be like pan-frying the tortilla after the consommé’s water content steams off. However, there’s the matter of the filling: you don’t want to overcook the filling because of extra cooking time, so Swan might have to further request that the filling be put in the taco after the extra frying.
Kevin, you’ve put a lot more thought into “bilboing” than I did. I was honestly just trying to make a pun about the bag hopping, but I couldn’t find a way to make “bag ins” work. Gary has a bit of a Hobbit look about him, so Bilbo it was. Probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to use a verbified proper noun.
Hmm, how about: “I got raped last night by a female hobbit pretending to be a man. I got Bilboed.”
We’ll see how those tacos turn out next week. I suspect they were unprepared in the kitchen for such a busy night and might not have cooked them as long as they usually would.
Sorry, Gary. No offense intended. I just don’t want my comments filled with people attacking each other instead of me. Your comment today is just fine.