bizzovercoffee

environmental, social, political commentaries and clairvoyantiques

The SONA

Surprisingly, I would like to be silent about the SONA. Perhaps, as mild mannered gentlemen do, they would like to give the credit to the President for a tough job indeed.

Something is abuzz in the grapevine about some of our friends in the political spectrum wanting, itching to cajole the americans to reject, with finality, the government of Mrs. Arroyo.  Accordingly, they would do so just because of the fat man beside, behind or at times, ahead of her.

Daft!

posted by: ezky at 19:40 | link | comments (2) |

For your health

Chocolate for cough and bad heart. Is it true? For one day, it was for me - the one they attribute chocolate's healing power to cough. I have therefore been able to experience a claim. For one day at least, the claim was no longer in the realm of theory and near-truth.

Please don't get me wrong, dear friend, I only said it was good having worked for me for one day and one alone, because I ate a bar of chocolate with three other people on that day only and it was never followed by any other choco chumping act later.

Satisfied?

Ah basta, dito pa rin ako sa kape, kahit ano pa ang sabihin nila. I can even justify that: when you catch cold and probably along with it get the cough as a bonus, you need lots of liquid in your body. Plus, if you have the bonus (coughing), you'll need warm liquid.

So what do I do? I drinks se let ef werm keffeey until I get extremely ngenge. Eh he, eh he, eh he.  (But for heavens' sake, Stop thinking about the other warm yellow porous material, stupid!)

Caveat to the uninitiated:  Do not attempt to undertake the acts mentioned above without professional advice.

posted by: ezky at 18:03 | link | comments |

and he said it was good

let there be light, and there was light.

let there be coffee, and there was coffee.

let then there be BLOG! and was there Blog!  and Bloggers!

and he said it was good.

ayayay!   amen!

posted by: ezky at 17:44 | link | comments |

Pictures from the Coffee dregs

posted by: ezky at 00:16 | link | comments |

The Pain of War

I cannot pretend to know how and why the Israeli Army invaded Lebanon, but certainly the acts of the Hizbollah have something to do with it.  Certainly the entire brotherhood of nations had taken deep interest and have all acted with dispatch to stop a full-scale mideast war from erupting.  (With Pres. Bush using the cuss word to describe Hizbollah's acts or at least, their effect.)

The misery I am in stems from transposed feelings, sufferings of my fellow pinoys who are trapped in the middle of carnage in that place.

Considering that my associates are leaving for the country just adjacent to Israel, and possibly my having to be present at some point in the future in that place as well, gives me shivers in my spine.  But a job, is a job, is a job.  It would be assuming too much to say that Iran, the sponsor of Hizbollah in Lebanon, should have taken matters to the negotiating table.  That would be taxing their intelligence too much? Perhaps, just perhaps.  To all those who are there now who are wanting to go back to the philippines, my prayers go with them and the hopes that they could return home safely.

Amb. Roy Cimatu is a capable crisis manager, so I have observed. Maybe he can pull this off.  I have nothing to offer by way of suggestion, nor recommendation.  That would be too pretentious of me. However, their idea of using a chartered ship instead of using airlift is, one would think, a more prudent but effective solution.

On the other hand, the appeal of the President for the two countries not to harm our beloved pinoys in that area could also be construed as giving safe passage for our kababayans in Lebanon through Israel as well, and not only Syria and farther away, Greece.

As it is, there is danger wherever you turn in war and that is the cause of the pain of being therefore trapped in it and wanting to get out of the terrible mess but no viable paths are possible.  What makes it even more difficult to fathom, is that for a number of years and even decades, some slightly insane local prophets have been trumpeting that pinoys are going to be the new chosen people.  Ergo, is that the reason why we have been chosen to both slave and manage the affairs of people in the very place where the chosen ones have lived at and still live in up to this time?  That is truly not for my little mosquito brain to answer.

posted by: ezky at 15:25 | link | comments |

Having coffee darkly

I was having coffee with a business associate yesterday who was helping to finance a friend in the cloak and dagger business put up a retirement company, a security guard and detective agency.  My friend introduced me to cloak and dagger, and told him I would be minding his share in the company when he leaves for abroad.

My friend kept referring to my days in school and I kept avoiding it. Then Mr. Cloak and Dagger man turned to me after his business with my associate was over and asked Tibak ka pala?

And i said, my mood darkening, very much, very much. When we all left the cafe, my mood turned to worse.  I wonder why? Maybe it's the fraction of a meter thick file they have about one.  That doesn't matter now, anyhow.  If I didn't leave the movement, I must be some sort of Kruschev there, dumb but efficient.  As far as it goes, what matters is you're either an advocate of the correct cause or the wrong one.  With my background, I can run any company in the world.  Even a guard and detective agency.  After all, it's being formed just to secure a building my associate is buying in Makati and guard a construction project in Jordan a few months from now.

A mother of a lovely girl kept looking at me, pestered her daughter with the question about what would her daughter do if mom introduced me to her.  As if my hearing was not sufficient.  That elderly mom was a really brave mother. Was she thinking of doing it with me or letting me make it with daughter?  Idle chat I presume.

Back to cloak and dagger's surprise, I guess I was unprepared to be confronted just like that.  Darn, it made my intake of coffee and cream seem like a bad combination after. Hmmm.

posted by: ezky at 04:43 | link | comments |

Coffee With Somebody

It would have been nice if the late Ferdinand Marcos offered coffee in his Study Room (with Imee, Irene and Junior standing at his back left) when a handful of young wide eyed coeds like us went for a tete-a-tete with him.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Before that happened, Imee and I sat together at Ramon Magsaysay High School as fellow leaders of youth groups. She the KB and mine was a campus based group.  We were eating rice, Max's chicken meat and pasta for dinner with juice on tetra packs.  No one bothered to ask for coffee, nor asked if I needed one.  I was 15 turning 16.  Imee was adamant that I join the KB with her.  I was equally adamant that I remain with my group, with my fellow students.  On hindsight, I wish there really was coffee.  My stomach turned turtle after that editors' conference.  And I couldn't locate the Quesadas of Ramon Mag High that I befriended so there was no one to console me with nearly exchanging barbs with the daughter of the most powerful Filipino.

I've shaken hands with her and she was shocked to find me very early in the morning at the airport in our city wearing a KB shirt  (I needed coffee then again.)  Only to have me summoned and ask me about a month or two later in the vernacular --

IMEE:  Marami na raw communists sa school mo?

ME:   I really don't know Imee.

And she looked at me in a meaningful way.  I ran for coffee and happily managed a gallon.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Mrs. Cory passed by me several times at Club Filipino on her inauguration there after EDSA 1. There sure was a lot of coffee, but I never had a chance to drink with her.  She was too pre-occupied with games and amusements in Pasig I am told, except when she had guests at the Palace.  Tough schedule!  My dad worked with her though for a time in that place by the river.  I wonder if he had coffee with her?  My dad was a caffeine addict.  Maybe that's why he's dead now, I sometimes think.  But of course, no.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

I've shaken hands with Pres. Arroyo, my brother's teacher in college.  It seems the occasions we happen to be in one place are just too many.  But I've never had coffee with her like Misses. Dinky Soliman, Qing Deles, Mely Nicholas and all the rest of what they derogate as the maglulupa and magsasaka lovers crowd now going by the name of New Civil Society (NCS), or black and white movement used to do in Malacañang or wherever the top girls of the government were suddenly in each other's company. In many meetings during EDSA II however, I've shared coffee not with Madame Arroyo but with the maglulupa, magsasaka lovers.  Now that I have other things to do besides conferencing, eating, partying, coffee drinking, listening, talking and notes taking and call-texting with them on occasion, I would tend to remember them whenever I drink coffee with a powerful tang.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

I used to drink coffee with Roland, Dinky's friend and sometime nemesis.  He is in London now with another NGO.  Most of the time though, we drank something stronger than coffee in Cubao and got dead drunk all of the time.  We had to get up early nevertheless, we were serving the masses because they allowed us to drink, Roland used to say.

posted by: ezky at 04:24 | link | comments |

A Little Business Over Coffee

I've drank lots of kinds of coffee.  There is a humongous number of flavors.  Before the advent of Starbucks, Gloria Jeans, The Coffee Bean and many other coffee houses, there was Taza de Oro in Malate, Club 365 at the InterCon, Paraiso of Sulo Hotel, and so forth and so on. McDonalds and Mr. Donuts later crept into the scene, with Jollibee, Dunkin Donuts, and other fast food chains as well as fine dining restos also offering coffee of various persuasions.

Coffee outside home was an instant hit to me.  Unwittingly, of course, I have been like many of you, conditioned by coffee drinking away from the house because it skillfully advertises to me in movies, on television, over radio and in print.  So I have been sampling it from one joint to the other.  I do like the flavor in Peninsula and have tolerance for the brew in Intercon as well as in Sulo.  The taste of Mandarin Oriental cafe brew is not so admirable however.

Recently I sampled and became too interested and at the same time intrigued by the protesty flavors.  This business of brewing protest flavored coffees, gives the beverage something of an exoticity uncommon to the otherwise drab coffees served in jails, dorms, (my own included, way, way back when my lips still had coffee's best mate, what they call la creme in France or in simple terms, milk, stupid. That era long ago, is not a subject of our blog, scuze moi sil vous plait) office cafeterias and other so-so establishments.

There is Asian protesty cofee -- not Java --- the HongKong flavor, brew of the month of December 2005.  Protest rally coffee was served abundantly at the time in HongKong. Some of the coffee money came from Holland, England, some from Asian or West-side counterpart funding institutions.  Fellow Filipino, Mary Lou Malig of the NGO called Focus on the Global South even had the gumption to invite everone from around the world who happened to be in HK at the time, to join in the protests against the World Trade Organization conference in HongKong, saying that:

"Protests are just one way of voicing our concerns, our issues, our demands... We are inviting everyone in the local public to come join us.  It is really a lot of fun..."

It was not as if Mary Lou was trivializing the significance of their anti-WTO protest that cost so much for coffee money for the international funding agencies to finally get them together in one big coffee (and tea) drinking assembly, of course not.  Mary Lou and her compatriots from the Philippines (some of our good Congressmen from the far Left sectoral parties even took advantage of that ASEAN junket), from South Korea, HK-China, etc. indeed spent much moolah in that sojourn.  How the HK protests ended up (including the mass arrest of Korean protesters and the swift evasive manuevers of our Filipino brothers and sisters, Indian and HK counterparts through the streets of HK to elude arrest) is only for the Focus on the Global South and other similar NGOs that planed in, stayed in hotels, held press conferences left and right, ate chinese and intercontinental cuisine, drank the HK brew of the month, to say with finality.  All in all, the December flavor of the month of HK had a fun tang to it, as comadre Mary Lou avers.  With a little trace of sourness both in the tongue and the tummy, as in when one drinks cold coffee insde the steels bars of a jail.

My favorite is the flavor of the month of March -- French cafe.  At the time up to the month of April 2006, Labor protests was making brisk business in the streets.  (It almost mixed up with the American flavor of the month described below.) Coffee makers in France must have businesslikely brewed good strong, Frenchy (not Vichy tasting, mind you) cafe at the time. To make the protests taste good in the mouth for both the protesters and government persons dealing with the labor issues, alike. It is brewing with passion, like the French normally are (when they don't like ignoring you on the street on the ordinary days).

Then there is the West-Side Immigration flavor of the US of A brew in the month of April!  Ugh, the ugly acidic taste best exemplifies the rising bile in the lips of immigrants, Filipinos included, that are disgusted by the increasingly stringent rules governing aliens in America, the melting pot of no other than, aliens themselves.  Not the interplanetary kind, mind, Virginia.  At least not yet.  That is however, forthcoming.

Then South Korean flavor was in, just recently, during the month of June, that has a similar kick to the Nepalese and Thai coffee Flavor of the Month for February and a little while henceforth.  This flavor makes a Nepalese or Thai insane enough to bang the head of a cop, or a rallyist, as the case may be.

Ex-exilee Mari Alkatiri, Primordial Minister of East Timour, was drinking nearly an almost identically brewed flavor liberally in May 2006.  I suspect that Xanana Gusman and Jose Ramos Horta, refused to drink the brew.  As a result, Alkatiri's eyes somewhat reached the point of tirik that he caused the spate of killings in his own home country by supposedly removing 600 battle-trained guerillas from armed service.
 
Gladly, compatriots Xanana and Jose, who hardly knew what it is to be an ex-exilee like Alkatiri, preferred the tribal brews and deigned to touch the Flavor of the Month.

Now, coming to the Flavor of the Month of July, is the Manila Savory Flavor.

There is a tinge of bittersweet in the brew, the bitter coming from the desperation of certain coffee junkies to remove the chief lady executive, GMA, from Malacañang.

The sweet part on the other hand, is not Turkish coffee inspired; neither Arabic influenced. It is Libyan, therefore African in inspiration.  While of course, we know that GMA is in Libya now, it should be remembered that the man GMA is meeting in his military fief ascended to his post through a coup d'etat of very, very young, low-ranking officers.  Ghaddafy himself, who led the coup at the time, was an officer.

Although the Ghaddafy coup d'etat brew at the time of the great overthrow had undertones of an aged, wizened, exotique Egyptian and Jordanian tang to it, the Savory de Manila flavor of the month of July in turn copies from the final Libyan brew.

Therefore, the July Month Protesty Flavor from the Philippines that coffee drinkers would recall sampling, will be a major upper, not a downer --- a highly stimulating brew.  It will be the bitter and sweet working hand in hand, these two elements dancing in an artful tandem.  Young soldiers claiming to be the heroes of the people, with bitter old men and women behind them (Egyptians and Jordanian nobles and royalties in our own setting), with the young unarmed marchers providing the distraction for the cops in Batasan will have been drinking this brew.  Ditto with the paid protesters, for hire by any camp desiring to advertise its own protesty flavor for the month.

Such a brew would not be unlike the Nepalese and the Thai flavors of the month neither the Korean nor the Timourese flavors.  I suspect that only a few will drink the brew very liberally at that, and so let's get on with gulping down the regular Java brew, the Colombian classic or else the Latino Espresso and the ever durable Nescafe, Cafe Puro and other brews.  Of course I cannot ask you not to sample the thick Turkish and Arabic brews as well, that neither Ruffa Gutierrez nor the Turks in Batasan might endorse themselves. Happy coffee drinking dear friends and fiends!  Ha ha ha ha ha!!!  Oy vey!!!  Life is good!!!

posted by: ezky at 18:07 | link | comments |