Fats, Vitamins and Minerals

So, I can imagine that she experiences my remarks as being very “negative” and damaging…. I suspect that this is made worse because this “negativity” resonates with damaging negative remarks made by others -and so she emotionally explodes -as part of a healthy defense mechanism. Unfortunately, she still cannot see that my reactions, which upset her so much, are probably fueled by similar mechanisms in myself.

I saw that, and that empathy that I afforded you is the reason why I wholeheartedly accepted you in the first place - no matter how many “clumsy” incidents or how much it hurt my family, I accepted you. What is eventually unbearable is how you never managed to move beyond your “healthy defense mechanism” thus rendering it as an excuse for hurting others. When will you learn to take responsibility for your “defense mechanisms”? How many “defense mechanisms” from you did it take to finally drive me to depression?

I am afraid that you are still incapable of creating and nurturing a safe space for even one person other than yourself. Not even for me. In that old email “loving people”, I have asked for that safe space. I’m afriad you never listened. You continually project your frustration and anger with the world upon every single space within and around you. Have you been able to care for or talk to small Maria, or is she gathering dust somewhere in a corner? In my experience with you, you don’t have the capacity for an unconditional love that could withhold that frustration and anger even for one small safe space, for one single person. You don’t have the capacity for an unconditional love that could suspend disbelief in a dangerous world for a moment of a child’s love for what is good in this world. These are matters beyond your known logics. For me it is spirituality, something that you call “religious language.”

I have always spoken in this “religious language” in personal and work terms. My (very crucial) research in 1998 and my thesis in 2002 were all written in this “religious language.” It was through this spirituality that my spirit could see through you, see your frustrations and pains as they are mine. But you don’t share this “religious language” or this spirituality in any form, in any of your worldviews, unfortunately. Being with you for many months, my body and spirit collapsed. It is not my “internal contraditions” that push me to “self-destructive mode.” It is you and your “defense mechanisms” that did it - the emotionally and spiritually empty space that you made for me. In any of your writing or anything you have said, I have not seen you take any responsibility for that.

I told my doctor that I know that you have a goodness within you that simply does not get externalized appropriately. Now the question is, if because of your age and experience you are truly unable to make the effort to change that, will I be able to bear it? As I start crying for days in a relationship, the answer is clearly “no, I cannot bear it.”

Unfortunately, these remarks can’t be checked because everything has been removed from the relevant web-site (in a Stalin like purge) and history has been once again been successfully re-written.

This blog is my personal space. It is my history. Have you ever considered your remarks in my website as a Stalinist invasion of my space? I know that you have been victimized by a cruel society in your life, as we all eventually are - but your defense mechanisms are healthy only for yourself: can you consider how it victimizes and invades others? Surely I made you very very happy. But you made life unbearable for me.

It is all up to you now, if you are unselfish enough to ask why you made life unbearable for me, and courageous enough to change.

One of my favorites in Burma is the lethok or the raw salad mixed by hand. The first time I tried it I thought that it was vegetable sautee and thus I was eating it with rice. When I learned that it was actually “salad” (which is a term used to refer to what is actually “lethok” which in Burma means “mixed with the hands”), I was still eating it with rice because the wonderful flavor really made eating with rice so good.

Lethok is vegetable salad and mixing is always done by hand (as in really mixing and mashing everything together with the hands). I tried mixing with utensils but it was really different - mixing by hand does make a difference in terms of texture and therefore taste.

Basic ingredients for the lethok are the following:

Salty taste: fish sauce, salt or soy sauce
Heavier taste: shrimp paste or soybean powder
Sour taste: lime, tamarind, vinegar, tomato or sour fruit or vegetable (shredded)
For moistness: the above flovors in liquid form
For filling and counter-acting moistness: shrimp powder, gram flour, peanuts, soybean, sesame seeds
For blending: oil, cooked and raw; sesame and peanut oil.
Fragrance, color and finish: chili oil, fried onion, fried garlic, roasted chilli, raw sliced onin, raw pounded garlic, coriander, mint, citron leaf, lemon grass.

Below is a recipe for simple raw cabbage salad taken from Mi Mi Khaing’s “Cook and Entertain the Burmese Way.”

Raw Cabbage Salad
3 cups finely cut cabbage
1 large onion, sliced
3 green chillies
2 tablespoons shrimp powder
1 tablespoon cooked oil
Salt to taste
1 large lime

Cabbage should be cut ahead of time and soaked in water for about two hours.
Just before serving, drain cabbage well. Put in salad bowl with sliced onion, green chillies cut finely, shrimp powder, oil, and a little salt.
Squeeze lime over this and mix well. Crush cabbage slightly in mixing. Taste and add more salt and lime as needed.

What Ma Cho prepares for us in Burma is my favorite which also uses raw cabbage. However, Ma Cho uses peanuts - roasted skinned and powdered. The peanuts are just great in the salad especially when powdered (just pound them in a mortar and pestle). Ma cho also puts lots of garlic in the salad which I really love - the garlic must be pounded too which brings out its wonderful flavor much better than slicing.

My oil of preference is peanut oil which was a bit difficult to find locally. When I arrived from Burma I immediately bought a bottle of peanut oil at the Duty Free Shop, however in the grocery near our home, good peanut oil is rarely available.

I also love the sour taste that is added in the salad. What was quite special with Ma Cho’s salad was citrus leaves cut into very fine pieces. I have a 1-year old citrus (calamansi) plant here where I could get the leaves. Lime juice is also added in the salad.

And then of course, the spicy flavors - the green chillies cut finely. I love to have lots of these in the salad!

Burmese shrimp and fish paste (I bought several varieties) are quite different, so the salads I prepare at home are not exactly like those that I had in Burma. I have tried putting fillet featherback (ngape) in salad which was so good - as well other pressed fish types from Burma such as ngape aung, ngabut, ngakhonman, ngahpama. I tied the local tuyo (salted fish) which I filleted and fried in oil when I ran out of ngape.

Now I’m getting hungry.

Paeng’s the name of the new typhoon that made itself felt yesterday morning. Until now, Monday morning, it’s been raining and the wind could get pretty strong. Thinking about the name Paeng, previously, local typhoon names were women’s names but now they are no longer limited to women. Some gender advocates supposely didn’t like the reference to women being fickle-minded thus weathermen have problems predicting the weather.

Early evening yesterday, I was a bit worried about Edward not drying properly because of the rains so I took him into my room and pointed the electric fan on him. Now Edward is dry and smells of Downy Fabric Softener. Alwin is going to be very happy when he wakes up and sees Edward. Actually yesterday, Alwin already wanted to get Edward, “pwede na ‘to!” he tells me. When my mom saw Edward in my room drying, she said the same thing! Anyway, here’s a photo of Edward now dry and clean.

I also have the oregano back in my room. I brought it out in the garden early morning yesterday to get a bit of sun but then Paeng came. The oregano’s doing okay, I guess. My pepper plant too, last I looked there were already three peppers, and I’m so excited to see them turn red! Anyway here’s a photo of my oregano:

Now if I don’t get too lazy maybe I could write the first chapter of my research on CultureComputingEcology. I’ve been reading the Turbo Pascal book and it is probably the first book on programming where I’ve seen a discussion (with exercises) on problem solving methodology without reference to any specific programming language. Most other books I’ve seen just talk about the programming language, the structures and features of programs, and writing code. I think the emphasis on the design of a solution methodology is important not only in learning programming but in any non-IT course as basic introduction to computers and programming. I’d like to write more on this shortly, especially that it touches on one of the more interesting topics I’ve had to deal with in my college major, Industrial Design.

Prepared myself a good breakfast this morning - mostly leftover from last night (which means not much cooking but only heating up! ) but not bad at all: rellenong bangus, burong hipon, bagoong rice with egg, chopped stringbeans and fresh onions.

Rellenong bangus is milkfish that had all its flesh and bones taken out, then the flesh marinated and mixed with sauteed onions, tomatoes, carrots, raisins, egg, flour and all stuffed back into the skin.

Burong hipon is shrimp fermented in soft white rice. It’s a specialty from Pampanga, and I really love it.

The bagoong I used for the rice is bagoong alamang which is fermented shrimp (tiny shrimps). There are three types of bagoong alamang here, there’s the pale and salty one (called Ipon) which I got from Vigan; there’s the Chinese style which is brown and sweet; and there’s the sauteed spicy style. Quite popular in the markets is the red and salty one which is often eaten with unripe (sour!) mangoes.

I used some bagoong alamang for fried rice (with egg), but what really made it taste fresh is the stringbeans which I sliced into tiny bits and sauteed in oil (instead of sauteing garlic for the fried rice), and fresh red onions with calamansi (Philippine limes) juice to top the rice. The mix of flavors were just wonderful!

By the way, Edward got his second bath yesterday and now is still hanging to dry.

My mom woke me up yesterday morning to take Edward to Nery to wash. Edward was soaked in soap the whole morning and by noon was hanging by the ears outside to dry.

When Alwin woke up late morning I told him about Edward and showed him. Alwin was so happy, he thought it was quite funny. He was also very excited with the thought of having Edward back again clean and fresh.

I found a really nice old pot at the back of the house and decided to plant oregano in it and keep it in my room. I sometimes think about my plants at night and have the feeling that I’d like to go out and see them. So now I have one in my room that I can look at as often as I want.

My mom likes the idea, since she got oregano in the first place to drive away mosquitoes rather than as culinary herb! When my brother saw lots of oregano in pots in the garden he said they were good for treating coughs (6tbsp (2 tbsp for 7-12 year olds and 1 tbsp for 2-6 year old) chopped fresh leaves boiled in 2 glasses of water for 15 minutes or until 1 glass of liquid is left. Cool and strain. Divide into 3 parts, take 1 part 3 times a day). The juice of oregano can also be used to relieve superficial burns.

It’s a fairly recent phenomenon - this hair and shampoo craze. When the stiff hair of the 80s crumbled under the anti-cfc campaign affecting hairsprays, and plastic curlers and curling irons wore out shortly after, the trend being pushed in the early 90s was black controlled hair via the import of mousse and new local formulations of hair gels that didn’t stick or clump. A few more years later, the grip on hair control loosened a little bit with the marketing of a new hair product that gave gloss and a straigthening effect without oil. These products came with descriptives such as hair lotion, hair gloss or hair shine providing the cheaper or the everyday alternative to the more expensive new offer of that period, the cellophane.

Less than five years ago, that unnegotiated divide between control and bounce found a name that caught on: relax. When I went to the hair salon some two years ago, the hairdresser offered “ma’am baka gusto nyo magpa-relax” and I asked “what?” I thought he was referring to a spa or a massage (of course now they call it “hair spa” after the “relax” craze wore out).

Interesting. Fifteen years ago they were offering perm, and if you had curly hair they were offering straight. One time the hairdresser offered me a tattoo. I asked if they could tattoo my back, but they said they only do eyebrows. Ten years ago they were offering highlights and then the highlights came with cellophane. Now there’s rebond, relax and hair spa.

All these expensive offers have always had their cheaper versions in various hair products ranging from gels to sprays, from caps to zigzag irons. And the most enduring and ever-changing is the shampoo. The last I’ve used (four months ago) is Sunsilk Relax and Control. Yes, this product just wanted to do everything.

Day in and day out we are bombarded by shampoo and conditioner advertisements, and the models all look the same - jet black straight hair that gets blown away and magically sets back to arrow straight shiny smoothness with just a pat of the hand. There has got to be a video editing plug-in especially for hair called “relax and control” and more recently “shine.” The promise is healthy beautiful shiny hair.

But what really makes for healthy beautiful shiny hair? Let’s look at the ingredients. My old shampoo bottle says: water, sodium laureth sulfate, cocoamidopropyl betaine, dimethicone, ethylene glycol distearate, beeswax, perfume, sodium chloride, carbomer, panthenol, guar hydroxypropyltrimonium chloride, sodium hydroxide, formaldehyde, tretrasodium EDTA, lysine, hydrolyzed silk.

Doesn’t sound very appetizing. If your shampoo bottle won’t say what’s in it, I’m sure it’s being advertised and marketed as “natural.” I also noticeed that shampoo brands that have warning labels (i.e. avoid eye contact) and have hair blackening or crystal shine effects, won’t put on the bottle what their ingredients are. But no matter how many “natural” stuff shampoo makers claim to put in it - like cocomilk, honey, green tea - all commercially made shampoos have the same chemical ingredients necessary to do all the same things shampoos do: something to make it foam and bubble, something to make it smell nice, something to give it color, something to make it thick, and something to preserve the whole thing.

Foam and bubble chemicals include sodium laureth sulfate and use DEA, MEA, TEA (diethanolamine, monoethanolamine, and triethanolmine) as base, and these chemicals are known to cause eye irritations, allergic reactions and DEA-based products are known to increase cancer risks, especially liver and kidney. Fragance in shampoos are compounds most if not all synthetic, and these compounds are carcinogens or otherwise toxic. Color in shampoos are all synthetic, often labeled FD C or D C followed by a number, and almost all are carcinogenic. Base and thickening agents in shampoos include PEGs (PolyEthylene Glycol) and Propylene Glycol which penetrate the skin. Preservatives in shampoos include Formaldehyde, Methyl, Propyl, Butyl, and Ethyl Paraben. Formaldehyde releasing ingredients can damage respiratory health, weaken the immune system and increase risk of cancer. Alkyl hydroxy parabens and alpha hydroxy benzoate are weakly estrogenic.

If you know how to read the label on your shampoo product and not simply listen to what the advertising barrage says, you probably wouldn’t be using shampoos anymore - that’s why quite a number of them now don’t bother to label their products properly (something to report to the Department of Trade and Industry). Well at least, knowing what the harmful ingredients are, you can at least avoid contact in high concentrations, although it is going to be impossible to avoid them completely if you are using commercial cosmetic products. It’s also useful to know these chemicals and what they do for commercial products and what their side effects are (especially if you have children around) which could explain small nagging problems like: skin rashes, eye irritations, headaches, asthma, dizziness and other irritations. That’s why I stick to just plain Perla soap: to clean my hair, wash my face, my body and my clothes!