A house and a home

By

Anabell Tapang

"A house is just a place where people live. Home is truly where the heart is. It's where you go after a long trip and are happy to be there! It's where all your memories are, the good and the bad! You may live in house, but you truly love being home." - Anonymous

I have two houses one in Laguna and the other is on Batangas. These two words home and house are the best way to described on how I chose my hometown.  "It's where you go after a long trip and are happy to be there! It's where all your memories are, the good and the bad." Upon reading this statement the first thing that popped into my mind was Calatagan Batangas and as I further define home it is where you can be just yourself, relaxed, calm and most specially happy. I classify Calatagan Batangas as my hometown and our house here in Laguna was just a semi-home.

At first I am thinking of specific things what to compare and contrast but when I overviewed my work I think that it would be better if I somehow introduce generally why I chose Calatagan as my hometown.

Growing up into places was my basis to compare the two towns namely Biñan Laguna and Calatagan Batangas. I will differentiate the two in terms, of the place itself, the people with in the place and by how the people cope up from their everyday lives.

 I've been living in Laguna ever since my parents decided that I would have a better life here in Laguna than in the province. Laguna is an ideal place to raise your children, to be exact at Avida housing in Biñan Laguna. For the fact that it is not quite polluted, not crowded (way back before the big establishments were built), in short safe place. But the thing is the whole environment is different from what I am used to. What I miss back in our province was the scenery, greens everywhere and flowers over the greens, the ever so delicious meals that we have together with my extended family and our pets that can freely run through our land without worrying that they might get squished by vehicles.

(Scenery that made me fell in love with Calatagan)

Photo taken last November 1, 2011 (Calatagan, Batangas)

(Our house in Calatagan from 2 perspectives)

Another point that made me chose Calatagan as my hometown was the space. Our house there was spacious unlike here in Laguna there is only an allotted space for your property though you can enjoy the rest of your village premises but you do not own it. Back in my hometown the extent of our property was based on our desired space provided that we can pay for that piece of land. In terms of the hospitality of the people from Calatagan and comparing it to Laguna, in my opinion I prefer the townspeople of Calatagan than here in Laguna. The townspeople of Calatagan are the happy-go-lucky type, the type of people that you can get easily with though here in Laguna people are friendly but they value their priorities much to the extent that they have only little time for fun. Well I guess this applies to all the provinces and I can say that from another point of view I draw comparison from the way of life in a province versus the life in a semi-city.

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Farm Animals

By Anabell Tapang

Ala e pinakain mo na ba yung mga alaga natin sa baba?

 Batanguenos are known for their unusual accent and sweet personality. This is one of the reasons why they can take care lot of animals and for the fact that they are literally surrounded by farmlands.

 Batanguenos categorized their animals into three parts. First from their classification are animals for helping they are popularly known as farm animals. They are the ones who helped their owners for their livelihood examples of these animals’ carabao and goat. 

  

 Another category for is the animals that is made for eating. It may sound wrong but we have to face it were in the top of the food chain. Examples of this category are pig and chicken, they are the most common cuisine in a banquet for a feast in Batangas. 

  

Lastly are the animals for companionship, most commonly known as the pet animals. They give accompaniment with their owners, gives joy and at the same time protection to their owners. Examples of which are dog, cat, dove and a bird called Martinez 

  

Martinez bird. (Whenever I am bored I talk to our grandmother's pet Martinez bird, I told Rony (pet bird's name) every single detail about my swelling tooth. Rony was fascinating he was the doorbell of ancestral house. Whenever someone will pop on our gate he will squeak, May tao, May tao! or Aida, May nabile.(Aida was the name of my grandmother) )

 To sum everything up Batanguenos are lovable with their animals they can take care of them and at the same time treat them as a family whether in what category they belong to.  

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Espinely

 is-pi-ne-li

Named after the wife of a Judge, one of the prominent people in Calatagan Batangas

Every Christmas eve we always find time to visit my hometown, to have a family get together, update each other and specially share new knowledge with each other. Age brackets became the separator after dinner, adult male in the terrace drinking cold beers and munching finger foods, middle aged women were in the nipa hut or sometimes in the kitchen sharing never ending stories about how they discipline their children and lecture them how life was back then. While we, the teenagers held our sessions on the master’s bedroom. We chat with each other, watched movies together, play card games and sometimes teach each other new skills. Every time we talked there was one word that was always present in a particular topic. Espinely.“Before our school Christmas party we bought new clothing from Espinely, We bought a blouse from Espinely for Lola’s birthday.” Upon hearing those words I came up with the thinking that Espinely was a clothing store, a dress shop. The description of how Espinely looked like as told by my cousins and friends that it was a huge store of pure clothing in cheap prices. First time I visited Espinely was last May, it was not like what I have expected from there stories. I’ve expected a huge building filled with clothing, different colors, fitting rooms, and lastly the scent of new clothes. When I saw the place, I quickly thought that inside would be spacious; it was about half size of a regular of house you can find in Avida housing, dust surrounded the place. As I went in, all I can see was dark colors really far from what I have imagined. Above the shelves were few hanged clothes and the rest was piled all over the ledge. I asked how are you going to pick your desired clothing. My slightly annoyed companion answered me "you will tell them what particular clothing you want (eg. shirt, blouse etc.) then they will give you samples and you are to pick in that samples." It was far like buying clothing in a department store, it was probably the old fashioned way. But as I recall the stories of my cousins they were more than contented from what they bought. People are contented from what they have, one of the reasons why I chose Calatagan, Batangas as my hometown. *

As I questioned the sales lady on how the store name Espinely was derived, she told me that Espinely was not the name of the store. Espinely was the owner of the store the real name of the store was Boutique Habiller, a French term for dress shop. It was hard hard to pronounce and hard to spell so the townspeople end up calling the store Espinely. 

Educator, Mermaid and Sailor

Every time I think about my hometown, Calatagan Batangas, there were some particular things that registers to my mind, the smell of wooden furniture mixed together with chicken feeds and the never ending smoke coming from the cooking pots. Back then we used to call the house in which we lived for a couple of years as our ancestral house before it was handed down by my late grandfather to my late uncle. All I can remember are blissful thoughts. Starting from having my first ambition of being a teacher where I used to write on wooden cabinets of my grandmother using stones which I picked outside the house and imagined that my students were pillows dressed in school uniforms. To the dusty, rocky street roads which I used to play in what I so called intense biking that cause me a lot of marks. Till to the flavor that my tummy really loved back then was a seafood called “Sikad” It is a seashell with a soft body inside and the only way to get the body out is to get a “panungkit” and on our case we use safety pins, it takes a lot of effort to get the body out of its shell but trust me it is all worth it! I barely new anyone from our neighborhood not because the people there are not welcoming it is because our land was quite big enough for me to get entertained. It was a sight consist of greens everywhere, flowers all over the greens and a nice nipa hut right across our concrete house. My favorite spot where I used to play with was a rubber swing tied on a sturdy Mango tree surrounded by rocks, before I used to pretend like I am a mermaid sitting on top of a rock with my hair swaying through the wind and some sailor would see my unusual feature and would get amazed by how wonderful I was. The only people that I have connected with who are completely strangers are those people uttering this words  "Tao po, Pabili po ng ________". 

My grandmother owned a sari-sari store and I used to be the one who entertain strangers, I used to be wise in terms of money handling and giving the right amount of change to my grandmother’s customers but that was before I discovered that I sucked in Mathematics, that all I believed was right before was completely wrong. Another ambition that occurred to me when I was back there was to be a sailor. I used to play on a long sofa in our living room, pretending that we (my cousins and I) were on a boat and we are sailing through the storm with sharks surrounding us. Imagining a wooden stick as a paddle and scratching it through our red tiled floor as if we are paddling extremely hard.   Our area was surrounded by large body of water where we used to swim every summer and get fried under the sun that was before the open beach was turned into a fancy resort. (Stories from townspeople stated that Calatagan, Batangas will be the next city.) Apart from that I remembered how we used to celebrate feast of Calatagan during the last days of April. Back to the feast days our wake up call was a loud cry from a pig, chicken and sometimes goat as a curious child I looked to our windowpane and saw some of my relatives particularly males from around their thirties slaughtering the poor and helpless animals. It was quite a scene to watch, I remember saying, “I won’t eat anything, especially not Goaty” (Goaty was my pet name for our goat.) But I ate Goaty because he was one of the main attractions in our banquet for the feast, Goaty was transformed into a Goat Kaldereta, though I didn’t really like the taste of it I ate it because my dad told that if I love Goaty I must respect what he is made for. Guests kept coming to celebrate the feast of Calatagan with us, some were close relatives but most of them, I have no clue who they are but that is the essence of our fiesta people just walk in your house and celebrate with you.

One thing that separates my hometown from the others were the blissful memories that I spent there and how I grew up together with the place that took care of me.

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Random the header says it all!

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I am a highly imaginative person, I could to childish things and not even worrying what other people think. I am the typical person who says what ever is running in my mind, I am expressive of my emotions and I am not afraid of showing it. I do believe that humans are capable of creating new things at a time. 

I love reading books, it really fascinates me how magical our imagination can be by just flipping the pages, plus it is the fastest way to travel to places. 

Well I don't usually dwell to one thing, I am easily bored in doing repetitive actions, I want new things, thrills, challenges or maybe the harder way around. 

I need to find something else to keep me busy, well there are three hobbies that I do repetitively, first watching television shows. The idea of changing the channels whenever I am bored of what ever I am watching really suits me. Well the truth is whenever I am watching something and the show that I am watching is in commercial break, I will switch to another channel and I will completely forget what am I watching before!

Second , I like surfing the internet, with the same principle with my interest of watching television, while surfing the internet I can surf with multiple tabs, windows and well the point is I don't get bored easily.

and the third is running well as i have said I am easily bored upon doing repetitive motions, running on the other hand is simply being care free, and the cheapest sport that I could think of, plus a breath of fresh air and good scenery! (If I am really in an "upset mood" I tend to run and run, for me it feels like I am escaping the pain that I am experiencing!)
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Filipino cuisines are the best, well for me it is the best!, it brings out the taste of every ingredient in whatever you are cooking! plus it has the an unusual taste (well in a good way!) My favorite Filipino cuisine is called Adobong Pusit and Adobong Baboy

There are many variations of adobo in the Philippines in which soy sauce is used like Adobong Baboy in which pork is used, Adobong Manok in which chicken is used, etc. There is also the Adobong Pusit, a squid based dish which uses the squids ink as the broth together with vinegar. (wikipedia.com)

Typically this is what an Adobong Pusit looks like! if haven't tasted it yet! Your missing  big part of your life! LOL! So if you want to prepare this dish I've found a good website that offers the cooking recipe of Adobong Pusit at PinoyRecipe.net
If you are interested then click this link and enjoy preparing and eating it!
http://www.pinoyrecipe.net/adobong-pusit-recipe-squid-cooked-in-vinegar/





This is an Adobong Baboy! same with Adobong Pusit if you haven't tasted it yet! YOU ARE MISSING A BIG PART OF YOUR LIFE! hahaha then again if you want to prepare this dish here is the recipe I got from pinoyrecipe.net
http://www.pinoyrecipe.net/chicken-pork-adobo-recipe/ 
Well this link shows the recipe of chicken pork adobo but same goes with the taste it only has an additional ingredient which is the chicken!

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I have a sweet tooth, I fell in love with him he is the best companion whenever I am feeling down and even if it is an ordinary day he makes my day extra ordinary!! Oh how I love him. chocolate mousse ♥


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RANDOM FACT: 

I usually put a small amount of sauce in everything that I eat, I hate the feeling of having the sauce overpowering the taste of the food that I am eating.

Example:

Well I don't have fries right now so I will just show you what it looks like,

<- the photo explains what am I trying to explain, well as you can see the yellow sticks are the fries and the red thing on top will be the sauce/ ketchup in that case. Some people create rivers out of their sauce and dip their food there. I hate it when the sauce is the only thing that I can taste, so why don't you drink the sauce instead of buying fries/etc If you will only drown your food into such sauce? (heheh! LOL) (Gravy counts here too!)

 

I've seen this photo in tumblr.com well this photo just explains what I want Fries vs Ketchup! hehe LOL. Random.

 P.S. comments and suggestions are very much appreciated! Thank you guys, hope you enjoy reading my blogs! and if you want to chat with me Follow me on twitter! http://twitter.com/anabellbrave

adios amigos!

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