Badminton/Seafood Sunday Escapade/Kite Flying!

Talaba-arusip-lato salad

Interestingly, I find badminton a great exercise and a great reason to spend time with during weekends. I just played yesterday with my housemates outside the apartment. Since we got nothing to do upon waking up at 10 am, we decided to play badminton as our plan of  jogging did not happen on Saturday. It's good I have my own pair of Yonex badminton rackets and a shuttlecock. We thought of playing in a court to fully enjoy the "tournament" yet due to our laziness, we just played by the road. Stop whenever there are incoming vehicles and then resume as the road goes clear.  There are times the shuttlecock got stuck in between the crossroads of the electric wires and the mango tree beside that we need to use our slippers to get it. But even our slippers sometimes are stucked! Speaking of slippers, Pat's penshoppe slippers got broke!

Tahong shells (ubos n bago pa napicturan)

After having spent two hours of the tournament, we decided to proceed to Farmer's Market in Cubao to buy something for lunch as we are already starving (just to exaggerate)! It was decided to have a seafood escapade. The recipe will be Filipino Mussel Soup and Oyster and Seagrass Ensalada. We bought two kilos of "tahong"(mussels) and a kilo of "talaba"(oyster), together with "lato" and "arusip", which are seagrass species. To spice up the seafood we also bought pepper tops, spring onions, citrus, and tomatoes. As we head our way home, we dropped by the bazaar and bought a set of Christmas lights to lighten up the unit once it gets dark and for decoration purposes(as our unit is the only one with no Christmas lights) too. It was a steady lighting set but was made to flicker by the two other small bulbs called the "flicker"! We forgot to buy "Sprite" to make a tasteful "tahong" so we just bought one from the store at the apartment's entrance.

The blinking lights at the background!

Since I am the designated "Resident Chef" of the house, I do all the cooking except when I am not available and some other housemates request that they cook which is good for I can take a break. One more thing is that I am exempted from washing the dishes! Some sort of a privelege being the head of the gang, oops I mean of the household ;). And so the cooking started at around 1pm.

Our very unique superkalan has ups and downs. Sometimes it flames profiously and sometimes it just got abnormal as the flames flicker that heating a cup of water takes an hour! We always experience this one that we think there are no more gas particles inside it so we call for a delivery for refill. But to our surprise, the gas tank is still half full. What a foolish burner! We just have to clean the burner to have a great time cooking!  Ryan, one of our housemates were able to cook rice while the three of us, Pat, Errol and me are away in the market. But the abnormality of the burner struck again!  I was in the middle of cooking when the flame flickered which interrupted the show. Sherwin, the great burner fixer to the rescue! At last cooking resumed at 2.30. Since the fire burns profiously, the cooking show ended at 3pm which signaled the noise of the plates, spoons and forks and the silence of our stomach. What a nice epic!

And so everyones hunger was satisfied! I remember a blooper told by Allan, a call center agent housemate that goes this way: "Did we satisfy your satisfaction?" :D

Kite flying 

Kite launch

Some of the people went up the rooftop and enjoyed the cool wind. Some slept while I took my time washing a pair of clothes and bedsheets as well as took a bath later on. All chores done at around 4.30pm while most of the housemates are in the rooftop making kites! Pat, the leader of the commotion made a kite out of a plastic bag but to no avail it was a total failure! It did not fly! Errol soon destroyed the failed kite. Since, I have nothing else to do, I also made one. We had a kite flying contest therefore. Due to the failure for the first kite, Pat made another one made of newspaper. They say, practice makes perfect! I had a little trouble at flying my kite due to imbalance and so on and so forth. But the more I try, the more I learn of the possible adjustments to make. I was grateful as the kite I made finally took off to greater heights after a series of bumps.

The plastic (away) and paper (near) kite

Then soon followed the newspaper kite. Both flew while the sky gets dim. We enjoyed the kite flying that it was surprisingly the first time of Renz, a city brat with less expereinces on early childhood to hold and fly a real kite! It was a sort of fulfillment for him as he shouts and screams while flying the kite. We are like children once more as we are teasing other's ability to fly kite. Of course during the initial launch we fail as the kite twirls. Sometimes we wait for a strong wind blow. There are irregularities in the kite itself that we need to fix such as the weight balance. The tail should be this and that and so on. Everything that we encountered proved that learning is made through the mistakes we did. The deeper we drop, the  higher we soar.

The night eventually crept as we can no longer see the image of our kites distant from us. That made us decide to cook again for dinner! We have to continue the seafood sunday escapade so we shopped for maya-maya slices at the famous Molave Garden in Anonas. We searched for firecrackers but there are none as of the moment. The pyrotechnique plan was posponed until further notice.haha I mean until firecrackers are seen in the market! Since there are no firecrackers bought, we dropped by the Ice cream House to have some pizza! haha We had ice cream too of course!

Ice cream and pizza time!

It was a fun-filled and exciting sunday for the people of Unit 24, ES IV Apartments at Illinois, Cubao. Things really come random. Things might be the first time to undertake. The next gameplan...a Christmas party this coming wekend! Keep posted! :D