My first Blog

2nd May 2011..Mama's birthday...its a beautiful sunny day here in Brunei Darussalam.  Mama and Papa usually have a great dinner with their very close friends, Tito Maning and wife Tita Pela and Tito Teddy and wife Tita Pina.  Every fiesta in Bignay 2 Tito Maning and Tita Pela will throw a big celebration its a day long affair in their home.  Papa and Mama together with Tito Teddy and Tita Pina will drive to Bignay late int he afternoon.  They spend their dinner till late night in there.  Its the best time for the 3 couples to bond and share their stories.  I really admire their friendship Tito Maning, Tito Teddy and Papa have been classmate in St Joseph's Academy Boys Dept (now St. Francis Highschool)  way back in Highschool.  And when they got married the wives became a part of their cirlce too.  Tito and Maning and Tito Teddy got married first so Papa and Mama became the ninong and ninang of their firsborn child.  Bojeck and Alexis.  

I can remember when I was young that Mama will always be up in the early morning...around 4.30am-5am she will be seated in the dining room ( now the tv area) she have her notebook or expenses journal...and then by 5.30 she will prepare our breakfast.  When we wake up at 6 am its time for us to prepare for school...as we need to take turns its four of us ...me, my brothers jaybee, cj and bons (liit). Its a choice if we want to take breakfast or take a bath first.  I am always the last one to wake up and Mama will always tell me that looks like that I am not hurrying to prepare myself sabi nga nya "walang gulat".  Our baon is on the table and it is side by side...nakahanay na ang apat na baon namin na pera.  I cannot imagine how much money Mama and Papa has to earn just to send 4 kids to school... and yet I cannot remember a time that Mama will show us that the money has never been enough.  All throughout my younger years I thought that we were rich...lol!

Every Sunday Mama will do the marketing in the local wet market.  She will bring her basket and I do tag along...I have my own small basket too.  I will follow her from alley to alley.  Sometimes I complain that it takes her too much time making kwento. She have a lot of friends in the market stalls.  She will buy mangos or any other fruit for my small basket..and then she will decorate it with some stalks of kinchay or celery.  And some market goers will compliment on how cute my basket was.  Mama will buy our food supplies for a good 1 week so everytime we come home from the market its like parang may binyagan  the table will be full ...so after the marketing we need to clean up and prepare all the veges, meats and fish.  Some of them Mama will pre cook while on top of that she is also cooking for our hearty lunch.  Most of our Sunday lunch is a very nakakabusog one as there are so plenty of food on the table. And Mama's cooking is the best!  After the lunch Mama and Papa will take a nap. Those times the weather was so cool and the wind gives a very nice breeze from the" tubigan/palayan"  in front of our house.  And around our house was trees of macopa, guava and mangoes.  

One of the funniet moments with Mama is everytime we halwat the cabinet she will always discover baby mice which are just newly born its so eeeeeew and she will start to jump around and scream...and yet she will never stop to make halwat!  It was so fun whenever she do that.  

I miss so muCh Mama esp when I come to her bedroom and we tell stories about everything.  Happy Birthday Mama!