Dear Miko

Dear Miko,

I dug through the bread and cereal drawer for breakfast, and came upon an almost empty box of Kellog's Frosted Flakes. It made me think of you because...

1.  I don't buy "branded" cereals for myself. I eat the off-the-beaten-path brands that you might say "tastes like cardboard!" Or, as you would have announced so unabashedly when you were seven years old: "YUCK! That's not cereal!"

We were in  Canada, visiting the Lewis family; there were the most delicious home-made cinnamon rolls at the breakfast table, and you exclaimed "This isn't cinnamon! I want the real one, like at the store [in Truk]!"

And 2. Only you, so well-meaning, would leave just a little bit for the next person to eat, even if the leftover is barely enough for a full meal. Is it because you don't want to be labeled "The One Who Ate It All!"? The seven-year old Miko would not have eaten a whole bowl of cereal, but not because of the reasons above. You ate so excruciatingly slow - slower than molasses growing in January! - that I ended up taking your food away from you because we had to be somewhere already. We missed the ferry once, because you took almost forty-five minutes to eat a bowl of cereal. You piled the food in one cheek, closed your eyes, and let your hands play out a fight scene, slashing and punching the air. Your imagination was so real to you!

You wouldn't complain about me taking away your food though. You never did complain. Except one day, in the heat of a July afternoon, strapped in on your booster seat at the back of the car, you suddenly exclaimed "MAN, IT IS FREAKING HOT!" Uncle 5-Star and I burst out laughing because you sounded just like him.

You used to ask to be placed inside the shopping cart at the store, or to be carried on my back when we hiked through Yost Park, or to be supported by your feet so that you could hold on to the playground monkey bar without actually hanging on yourself. 

 2006

 2001

I used to call you Sunshine because you were a ray of sunshine, so infectiously happy, anyone who met you couldn't help but smile, as if a ray of sunlight just warmed them. Now you go by "Miks", you have a more grown-up sense of humor, you have a teenager's freedom, and yet you know your limits. You're a gentleman: you open doors for me, you offer to carry the groceries for me, you compliment me on my most dramatic haircut by saying "It's boyish, but you still look good!" You tell me "You tried, Tita Netty..." when I couldn't make it over the A-frame wall of the Mud Factor Race, "You did good!" That's right, you now surpass me by physical strength.

So when I ate that less-than-one-bowl's worth of cereal this morning, I couldn't help but miss you so very much. You will always be my sunshine, no matter how much bigger and stronger than me you become.

But next time, just eat it all. Don't leave a teasingly small amount of cereal for me to find when I'm starving!

 Love,

Tita Netty

Thinking of Tito Pete On Veteran's Day

 With Tito Pete on Easter Sunday 2000 

I'm told that I met Tito Pete for the first time when I was a toddler. Tita V brought me to Guam, where I stayed with them for a couple of weeks. I actually remember parts of that visit, particularly watching Arthur, an older boy, eating olives that he poked onto the tips of his fingers. Tita V and Tito Pete lived in an apartment, and I remember climbing the stairs outside to get to the second floor. One story that Tita V tells me, of which I have absolutely no recollection, was this: they put me down for a nap, and thinking they had the afternoon to themselves, started fooling around on their bed. But I wandered into the bedroom! Tita V quickly put me back down for that nap. Later that evening I supposedly asked her what were you and that old man doing on the bed? She answered "I was picking lice out of his head". And that was that.

It is Veterans Day, and I especially thought of Tito Pete today. He was not enlisted in the US Military [I stand corrected; see post script below], but I think he served the military as a sailor in the United States Merchant Marine. In fact, he was a crane operator on his ship. According to Wikipedia, ...the Merchant Marine is responsible for transporting cargo and passengers during peace time. In time of war, the Merchant Marine is capable of being an auxiliary to the Navy, and can be called upon to deliver troops and supplies for the military. He was so proud of his job, and the privilege to shop in the Commissary and the Navy Exchange on Guam.

My fondest memories of Tito Pete are:

1. Receiving gifts from him every time he came home (to Guam, while I was living with Tita V). 
2. His hearty laughter.
3. His calm demeanor despite being in the midst of chaos. 
4. Chivas Regal. 
5. His love of cooking. His specialty was Everything Stew. No special ingredients; just everything he could take out of the fridge. Hah!
6. His stories of adventures wherever his ship took him... Japan, Korea, the Philippines, the Mainland West Coast, Australia.
7. Budweiser. 
8. His childhood stories, especially the one about him being teacher's pet because he was her best student ever! (This was my favorite because it seemed most unlikely! Hah!)
9. His boat, on which he took Papa V and Aris on the most adventurous fishing expeditions. Once, they ran out of fuel waaaaaay out there! Thank goodness his compadre Angel happened to sail buy, and give them a tow back to shore. Accoring to Aris, Tito Pete was the living epitomy of cool ice. He never panicked! (See no. 3.)
10. His fearlessness behind the wheel of his Trooper. "Because this car is invincible", he said. In fact, one late night, on our way home from a party at the other end of the island, he plowed right into the thicket of a tangan-tangan grove as we rounded the last curve of the road back to Agat. Without so much as a jerk of the wheel, he eased the car back onto Marine Drive, and proceeded as though the off-road incident was just a sightseeing detour, and not an over-compensation maneuver for taking that curve too fast in pitch black darkness. All the passengers who were asleep didn't wake up. That's how cool and collected he was. (Again, see no. 3.)
11. His milk. (See no. 4.)
12. He drank it everyday! (See no. 7.)
13. He also loved doing laundry. More than once, he washed my basket of freshly laundered clothes twice! 
14. His sense of humor. There was a husband and wife and their young girl who lived with us for some time. The wife conducted herself as always being correct, above triviality, pious, and extensively educated. Tito Pete was in the middle of a conversation with the husband about false teeth. The wife interrupted, "You mean prosthetics," in a corrective tone. Tito Pete let out a sudden guffaw (see no. 2), managing to say between peals of laughter, "Prostitutes?!... har-har-har-har... PROSTITUTES?!... heheheheheh... Where do you get prostitutes from false teeth?... hahahahahah...You should mind your own business, and leave us alone to our conversations!" The more she corrected "I said pros-THETICS, not prostitutes," the more Tito Pete laughed. It was the most contagious laugh, because even us kids laughed about that for days!
15. He always said "Yes" when we asked to go the beach. "Just mind the cars when you cross the street."

Ah, I could go on forever! But I'll stop here because I'd like to leave a bit of mystery for the next time I write about him.

Today I paid Tito Pete a visit to bid him greetings on this Veteran's Day.

P.s. Tito Pete was indeed enlisted in the United States of America Military. 

Juice-Ko! (Dios Ko, Oh My God in Filipino)

Tonight Five-Star and I took out the juicer for the first time in almost two years. It is actually his juicer. Therefore, he offered his expertise on how to do it. Before I continue with how this juicing experience played out, let me tell you how I came to this decision to use the juicer for the first time.

My cousin-in-law, Mrs. H, has been posting on Facebook about her new approach to a healthy diet. She included pictures of the fruits and vegetables that she eats, and the juices that she concocts from the same fruits and vegetables. She always refers to her dishes and juices as a "goodness".

Mrs. H's Banana, Avocado, Kiwi, Persimon and Coconut Juice Goodness...

Photo by Mrs. H's on her FB page.

Mrs. H's Vegetable Salad Goodness...

Photo by Mrs. H's on her FB page.

Mrs. H's Pear, Cucumber, Lemon, Ginger Goodness...

 Photo by Mrs. H's on her FB page.

Before she moved to her new home, which requires a ferry ride to get there, we saw each other almost every week. Now, we see each other via the Internet. And although it's a digital representation of her, she has the healthiest glow about her in her photos! And I attribute it to her healthy diet. 

So two weeks ago I decided to try the diet – the proper food combination diet – she's been posting about on her FB page. I was on it for only two days, and already I felt grrrreat! I ate only fruits for breakfast, vegetables and protein for lunch, and starches and vegetables for dinner. Without going into details, suffice it to say that I suddenly became leery of the commercial advocation of fiber supplements, laxatives, and heartburn medications. Because only two days' worth of this diet made everything work just fine! The only part of Mrs. H's diet that I hadn't tried was juicing.

And now to this evening's interaction with Five-Star. 

"What do you have to juice?" he asked.

I took out three leaves of kale, one beet and its leaves, and a half inch piece of ginger. Thinking I didn't need a recipe, that vegetables are vegetables, and when juiced, make no difference as far as following a recipe goes.

"Oh, that isn't going to be enough!" he advised. "You need waaaaay more than that!" Sure enough, all the ingredients above yielded maybe only four ounces of juice. "What else do you have?" he asked.

I held up a cucumber.

"That'll work," he said, reaching for it. 

I wanted to peel it first.

"No, no, no!" he admonished. "This is a juicer. It juices everything, skin and all!" At that, he took the cucumber from me and shoved it into the juicer. Presto! there was suddenly enough juice to fill a coffee mug. 

And I drank it...

My husband looked at me with amusement. "Well?"

I took another gulp, thinking it would get better. Every gulp was just as bad as the first. 

"What does it taste like?" he asked between guffaws of laughter. 

Dirt...

Harharharharharharharharhar! Heheheheheheheheheh! Hohohohohohohohohoh! He laughed.

I used to take sips of the juice he used to make, and they were nowhere as foul as this stuff.

Then I realized what that bitter, dirty taste was. The cucumber peel!

Feeling a tad remorseful about laughing at me, Five-Star said apologetically "I never juiced cucumber before..."

From now on I'm following recipes!

Time Flies

Remember this?

That little baby was Sheazie Bear. He was only one and a half years old.

Fast forward three years... He's now a little boy giving his mommy kisses.

And there's a new baby... 'Cept, she's not so much a baby. Jaida Bug is two and a half years old.

My, how time flies!

Coming to America

We had a great summer this year. Better than most summers I remember, which was a very good thing because my cousin Loy and his family came to Seattle for the first time, and what a good impression the weather made on them. In fact, summer in Seattle, in my opinion, is the best weather to be in any place in America! And so, Loy, his lovely wife Imax, and their lively boy Jeimax came to America at the right time and the right place.

It is every islander's (this includes the islands of the southern Asia) dream to come to America. So of course, the travelers were excited beyond belief that they were finally going to the United States of America, where, as cousin Inday so well put it, they would "meet Mickey Mouse". The journey is long. Amonunu, weary. They started out from Truk Island to Guam, the first stepping stone to the States.

 

But Truk to Guam is only the shortest leg of the journey! Guam to Hawaii, in seven hours, is the longest flight. And during these long stretches of sky cruising, one of the best things to do is sleep. Because when you wake up, in a new time zone, one day earlier, the very first state of these United States welcomes you!

Us Micronesians refer to Hawaii as "Ewe fonuen kuchu", the land of clouds. For here, even with the same trees and sea creatures, but unlike home, the clouds blanket the mountains. 

Then the five hours from Hawaii to San Francisco. By this time, you just want to crawl into a bed and sleep for the next three years.

Loy and his family stayed with his brother, Jo, about thirty minute's drive south of Seattle. Jeimax met his cousins Nat and Sparky for the first time there, and they all got along right off the bat!

One of the first sights they visited was Owens Beach, aka "Sewer Beach". I think every place on God's green earth has a "Sewer Beach". We had our own such beach in Truk; it was called that because of the sewer treatment plant right there. But we swam and fished right on that beach nonetheless. I attribute our iron guts to our childhood immune boosting excursions.

Jeimax felt right at home, so much so that the runner in his genetic make-up came bursting out when a group of runners passed them on the promenade.

You see, Jeimax comes from a line of runners on Imax's side of the family. My ma knew Imax's mom. "She ran like the wind!" Ma used to tell me. Many, many years ago, when I was even younger than Jeimax, Moen Island hosted an inter-island track meet where teams from all the islands of Truk Lagoon came to compete on Anderson Field, the kuranto. I remember listening to replays of the events on the radio; the announcer would bark ra ngo, ra ngo, ra ngo!, literally "they speed, they speed, they speed!" And Ma said "even coming from the back of the pack, Imax's mom caught up to the front of the line like a typhoon sweeping through coconut trees, taking the win. Always!"

They visited Mount Rainer, where they were glad to frolic in snow, albeit compact and "leftover" from the last snowfall, perhaps from as late back as April. But it was snow, natural, from the sky, and not ice made in a freezer or ice machine.

They went on the Northwest Trek, where they saw animals that are native to the Pacific Northwest.

What's the difference between bison and buffalo? And are they indeed native to the PNW? I think this is a subject Jeimax ought to find out. 

Seattle. The Emerald City. Home of Starbucks Coffee, the Mariners, and Boeing.

As if coming to America wasn't an adventure in itself already, Jo sent Loy and his family on another adventure. They took the bus from Tacoma to Seattle, and they had to figure out on their own how to do it! It's not like Truk, where you hail a pick-up truck taxi and mere minutes later you're dropped off at your destination's front door. Loy had to figure out bus numbers, bus stops, and bus schedules. On this excursion, they happened to run into a fellow Trukese, in fact a relative of Imax's! At any rate, their destination was the front doors of Safeco Field, where they took in a baseball game between our Mariners and Canada's Cardinals.

And as if they hadn't already flown an excess of fifteen hours from Truk to Seattle (not including layover time!), Loy took his family to the Museum of Flight. But at least here they were the pilots of their own airplanes, in simulated gravity defying flights that lasted only three minutes.

But you can't really appreciate the air crafts that bring you across the Pacific Ocean until you see how they are built. So we went to the Boeing plant in Everett, where the Dream Liner was born.

Now that we've covered air travel, let's see about water travel. We went on the Seattle Duck Tour. "Duck" is actually derived from the official model naming terminology DUKW:

• "D" indicated a vehicle designed in 1942,
• "U" meant "utility",
• "K" indicated driven front wheels,
• "W" indicated two powered rear axles.

It is a six-wheel-drive amphibious truck for transporting goods and troops over land and water. By this Duck, we cruised the streets of downtown and Lake Union, where the famous floating home in the movie "Sleepless in Seattle" floats.

Here's a piece of trivia: What is the difference between a floating home and a house boat?

Answer: A house boat is just that, a BOAT which has a motor to propel it. A floating home on the other hand does not have motors. It cannot move under its own power. It is tied to a dock, with metered utilities.

An altogether different structure is a boat house, which is neither a house boat nor a floating home. It is a structure in which boats are kept, or sheltered.

Bodies of water in the Pacific Northwest are cold. One, because lakes are fed by snow melt, and two because the sound is in the north. "The sea is as cold as chilled water from the fridge!" exclaimed Imax.

Only on the warmest of summer days, and if you're wearing a wetsuit and actively moving in the water, are any body of water tolerable to swim in. Oh, and you have to be crazy about swimming too, like Imax's family in Oregon.

Back to Washington... This state has the most extensive ferry transportation system in the nation! It is a must for a first-timer to take a ride on one, and what better destination than Kingston, where French crêpes satisfy our craving for either sweet or savory hankerings.

Food. Imax said that their vacations in the Philippines revolved around food, especially if my Pa were involved. It's not much different here.

Teriyaki in Tacoma

  Mexican in Lynnwood

Barbecue in Portland, OR

Dungeness crab in Edmonds

 Blue C Sushi at the mall

 Battered cod in West Seattle

 

All you can eat buffets in Las Vegas, NV

Take-out food in Honolulu, HI

 Southern barbecue in Tacoma, WA

"When you go to Las Vegas," I told Loy, "you must look up Tita M." Tita M is my Pa's baby sister. Loy and Imax stayed with her in Guam while waiting for the birth of Jeimax. "She will insist on having youover to her house, and she will feed you a feast fit for royals!" 

The day after visiting her, Loy sent me a text. "You were right!" it said. But because the visit was impromptu, Tita M had to have the meal catered because she didn't have enough notice to make it herself.

Still talking about Seattle... We went to the zoo, which was a tad on the slow side perhaps because the weather had been cooler the last few days. We saw the boats and fish ladder at Ballard Locks. And we took in the breath taking skyline of downtown Seattle from Alki Beach in West Seattle. 

This time, it was my turn to give Loy a little adventure. I made him drive.

I don't know who was more scared, Loy or Jeimax. This was Loy's first time to drive in America. The only other place in which he'd driven with complicated traffic rules was the Philippines. At first, he was a bit choppy, merging lanes with sudden jerks of the wheel. It didn't help that Jeimax made himself back-seat driver. "WAIT, WAIT, WAIT! THERE'S A CAR! NO! OKAY, GO NOW! NO NOT YET! THERE'S A BIG TRUCK COMING! AAAAAAACK!" he screamed. 

Thank goodness it was a full day's worth of activities, because Jeimax soon fell asleep. And after this, Jeimax slept as soon as the drives began. "This is what he normally does," explained Imax. "He sleeps on long drives." Whewh!

 

Who wouldn't be exhausted after doing all this!

 Doing a jig after seeing Pacific Rim at the theater

Being our tour guide at the Woodland Park Zoo

Climbing rock walls at the local fair

 

After climbing the rock wall, spinning himself dizzy in an inflated ball on water

  Documenting his visit at the Ballard fish ladders

 Racing trikes with his cousins in Portland

Drinking beers with his Pa.

JUST KIDDING!

Chugging caffeinated water.

(If you think the last sentence is a 

fact, then you're kidding yourself.)

Before they took off for Oregon, Hawaii, Nevada and California, we had one last frolic in the Seattle summer weather. We went to the water park. This was just a taste of what the amusement parks would be like in California...

 L-R: Jeimax, Loy, Yours Truly, Nat, Niña, Jo w/ Sparky, Imax

Imax has family in Oregon, California, and Hawaii. Her brother Karl and his family live in Portland. It must have been such a comfort for Imax to have a little part of Truk on the Mainland.

 Chanticleer Point, OR

The Grotto, OR

Do you notice anything different about Jeimax in this photo? I'll give you a hint...

Jeimax "Beiber" (for he is a big Justin Beiber fan) cut his locks!

This reminds of a similar event in Truk the last time I was there. I had gone to Xavier High School with Cousin Inday and her kids to visit Miko, and Jeimax did not join us as planned. It turned out, Imax gave Jeimax a haircut earlier that day, and he was horrified by the cut, so much so that he didn't leave his room the rest of the day! He finally went outside only because he had to go to school, and even then, he wore a bandana over his new haircut to hide it.

I wonder if this time was different because he had it done in America... Hmm?

The drive from WA to OR was Loy's, Imax's, and Jeimax's first road trip. "It was a long drive", Loy texted. Then they drove to northern California. "It took twelve hours!" Loy texted. But well worth it, because they visited Imax's aunt, who she hadn't seen in about six years.

As if they hadn't traveled enough, they took the five-hour flight to Hawaii to visit another aunt! Hawaii was almost like home, with all the Micronesians there, it was like Little Truk in the city.

Waikiki Beach, Honolulu

Coming to America was probably more hectic than it was relaxing. The traveling in itself was exhausting!

Thank goodness for massage chairs!

Because as soon as they got back to the Mainland, they got on another plane to Las Vegas, and then drove to southern California a few days later. This was perhaps the most EXCITING part of coming to America.

Las Vegas, the mecca where your luck is tested...

 

Hollywood, what movies are made of!

Disneyland, the icon of fantasy worldwide!

But now, as far as Loy meeting Mickey Mouse... What I heard was that he and Jeimax were too busy riding the coasters to meet him. But Imax did!

What Yours Truly really appreciated about Loy and his family coming to America was that I got to see, at the same time and place, my two boy cousins that I grew up with, that I got into trouble, that I ordered around (because I was the older one –  wait, I still am the oldest, hah!), that I saw get married, that I'm now proud of for their accomplishments, that I missed so very, very, very much.

Loy, Imax, and Jeimax were in America for forty-five days, and I was very fortunate to have them with me for a week.