Chicken Adobo

I'm not exactly Suzy homemaker but I really want to be able to make home-cooked meals for my son. Growing up, Madz rarely cooked my sisters and I Filipino dishes. Americanized me only got to learn how to make meatloaf and mashed potatoes. I was only was able to enjoy and taste the Philippines cuisine at family parties or at Filipino restaurants. Pretty sad, huh? A few of my faves are sinigang, menudo, caldereta, and of course adobo. I also recently discovered lechon kawali thanks to my girls, Joyce and Rho. I totally love it with that brown sauce. I think a dude named Thomas invented it or something. Anyway, a few times in the past I've attempted to cook adobo. Basic ingredients consisted of chicken, garlic, soy sauce, and vinegar. Sadly, all previous attempts failed. Initially, it seemed like an easy recipe to start off with, right? I'd always thought, I can never go wrong with this dish. Yeah right. Every single time, the taste of my wannabe adobo became more distant to the real flavor like how my mama used to cook it back in my grade school days. You wonder why? Well first of all, I don't really like cooking animals with bones so I pretty much go for the chicken breasts. I later realized that is so not the way to go. I also recently realized that you can't use Heinz vinegar nor Kikkoman terriyaki soy sauce. It's gotta be Datu Puti brand! If I don't have it then I might as well not even bother. So today, I went to Safeway to buy some Foster Farms chicken with bones. Yes, I was in an adventurous mode. I guess there's a first time for everything. My plan was to make it for the family tomorrow. Guess what I made today though? Yup...Meatloaf! LOL! So after I cooked my famous meatloaf, I decided to go online and look up the good old fashioned recipe of chicken adobo. I found a YouTube video. Yay! I viewed it and was like, if this non-Filipino dude can cook it, then so can I damnit! p.s. He puts me and MA to shame with his Tagalog speaking. =/ Way to go Travis!

Safety Comes First

Eureka! I got it! I'm not necessarily lazy as many people I know tell me (repetitively). I realized this while attempting to iron my eggplant Banana Republic silk blouse this glorious, warm, sunny morning. Yup! I ironed. But the awareness set in when I burned the top of my hand while ironing. It still hurts. =( Conclusion: Although, I can't put my silk blouse in the dryer. I will start utilizing the dryer AGAIN for other allowed clothing particles to release the evil wrinkles. Irons just burn you. Safety comes first! Laziness second!

Tweety Bird

I've been boycotting Twitter for a while now. I refuse to drown myself further in the Internet world. All of us over overly consumed and reliable on this form of technology. Am I right? Here I am, joining one application after the next. So when there was so much buzz going on with Twitter everywhere, I decided I would stop at that and not go through with it. Strangely this morning I clicked on a link that took me to some one's Twitter page. It asked me to log in. I wanted to double check that I did not blindly join these lame-o club so I logged in. Ummm...then....I saw my account! WTF? When did I sign up?! LOL! Was I sleep-browsing the web? I swear I don't' remember. So I go to my friend to vent away:

share-bare: ok this is funny....remember how i refused to join twitter?

rolsbee: ok

share-bare: ummm, why do i have an acct? LMAO

rolsbee: u told me already. cuz u didn't want anyone to take ur name

share-bare: oooooooooooh!thx!

rolsbee: u just remembered? u had one

share-bare: short term memory strikes again!!! dun dun DUN!

OK, well maybe that's the case but I really have this theory that the Internet is slowly ruining my memory trail. It's destructing the neurons of my brain which in turn is making me dumb and frequently forgetful. How else would the Internet world get business from me? Isn't that what googling is all about. Maybe aliens are really slowly taking over the entire universe. Yup - that must be it. Their secret weapon is the Internet. I'm telling you people. Be careful! I'm a victim and you're NEXT! I swear, one day we all will become the Truman Show (<-- A WHOLE OTHER STORY. Let's not talk about my concerns with that right now)! [getting goose bumps]. In the meantime, I'll keep my Twitter account active because I do not want anyone to take my user name! I'll stick to being a Blogger frog. I will just not utilize Twitter. I'll be the loner tweety bird of Twitter. I will not follow nor will have anyone follow me nor chirp/tweet (or whatever you wanna call it). I want to be recognized as the only Twitter member that does not tweet. How's that? Am I still considered a boy cotter of Twitter? =/ http://twitter.com/sharebare

Men in Black

Remember this movie? Remember how the flashing pen-like thingy erased certain memories out of peoples brains? Would you want access to that thingy like Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jone's character? My peoples - you'll might never have to experience the "Walk of Shame" the morning after any longer. Because, apparently the Men in Black crew is taking time off from saving our Planet Earth from invasion of aliens (or filming another sequel) and trying to make it available in the non-movie/real life world. Are you ready to find out how you can erase your most traumatic memories? I personally would like to erase any visions of the alien species out of my brain (special thanks to Unsolved Mysteries for introducing that fear to me when I was a young child). Who wants to be the guinea pig and give a shot?

Yes, I'm interested in learning more about this

No, thank you. I'm NOT interested. I'm fine with how my oh so perfect life is going.

The Gift by Jochen Gerz

What did I get myself into? Obviously, I had no idea. A couple months ago, my friend from New Jersey, Richie Rich calls me for a favor. He wanted me to go to SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts) the following day to pick a couple framed photographs of him and his girlfriend. He wanted to surprise his girlfriend with the photographs. Well, I agreed and said I'd do it for him because I thought it was really sweet what he was trying to do. Anything for love, at least I thought. The exhibition called Art of Participation: 1950 to Now debuted on November 8, 2008. February 8, 2009 was the closing day of this exhibition. One of the exhibits I was there for was The Gift by Jochen Gerz. So, at the beginning of the exhibition, guests of the museum were invited to have their photographs taken which were later displayed as part of the exhibit. They took photos of exactly 2,000 people. Pretty interesting, right? So as the last day of the exhibition, Jochen Gerz invited all those that participated to come to the closing event and retrieve their black and white portrait. So...I get to SFMOMA at approximately 1pm. I was surround by strangers. I was people watching (my favorite hobby by the way). I was ear hustling, too. My envision of this art exhibit was far from. There were no portraits hung up on a wall like any museum would most likely do. All I saw was a bunch of random non-celebrity looking people standing in a line that wrapped around The Schwab room. I felt like I was in 2 hour line for a roller coaster ride. The line was extremely long but it wasn't more than a half hour wait. So, as I approach closer and closer to the start of the line, I caught myself listening in on a few conversations. First, I was listening in on a conversation between two young females employees of The Gift exhibit. Female #1 explains to Female #2 how exciting this is for her. Female #2 replies to Female #1 and adds in how it would be nice if she witnessed two people finding love. I'm like, WTF?!' Umm, aren't we just picking up framed photographs? Did they not receive the memo? Minutes later, there was a cameraman taking footage of everyone in line. I notice that everyone who already received their free portrait, wasn't even their portrait. For a second, I thought, hmmm...they must be just like me: picking it up for a friend. But, I only witnessed one, yes ONE young man coming out of the crowd with his own portrait. I started getting suspicious. Is there something that I'm not aware of? Should I call Richie Rich? Then there was another interview of an older man and older woman. At first, I thought they were friends. Then later, as I listened in more...they were just two people whom stood next to each other while in line. When they got to receive their individual portrait, the man received the woman's and not his. The older man was sharing his thoughts about the exhibit to the cameraman stating it felt like "serendipity". Then he tells the cameraman that him and the woman made plans for dinner. I'm like, 'Huh? You mean like a date??' I accidentally said aloud (but thought I said it in my head), "I'm lost" to myself and my neighbor looked at me and laughed. She said, "You don't get it?". Then she explained to me that the artist purposely gave the older man a portrait other than his which turned out to be the portrait of the woman he was standing next to. "Aaaah..", I said. But in reality, I still didn't get it and I did not want to admit it to the person that was trying to explain it to me. Why would Gerz do that? I was finally up front claiming the frame pictures of my friend and his girlfriend. I gave Richie Rich's name to the worker. She drew a line to cross him out. I gave another name (Richie Rich's girlfriend) and she did the same. The strange thing was she didn't even tell the other employee to look for those two names. In my head, I'm like umm, don't you need that information to get to the right portrait? The line moved fast and the next thing I knew I was standing right beside Jochen Gerz, himself. He looked at me and he looked at my paper which only contained a handwritten 'x2'. I'm assuming that meant, I get two portraits. He turned over a random frame face up and it was so not my friend's picture nor his girlfriend. It was a Caucasian lady! Sorry, to break it to you, Mr. Gerz but my friend and his girlfriend are Asian. Filipino to be exact. I was speechless and still lost!! He says..."Look at her. She looks scared doesn't she?". "Ummm...I guess so", I said. "It seems as though she's hiding some kind of secret. I guess you have to try and figure it out, huh." I took the framed portrait from him thinking that maybe I got this my mistake. "OK...thanks", I said. He goes on and says "OK...let's see the next". He turns over another framed portrait and once again it's another Caucasian lady. "Oh look at that! You get two women!". I smiled, took it from his hands. With the two huge portraits in hand, I walked away grinning with no hesitation. This must be some type of art fad. A practical joke for normal sane people. A joke that only true artists will understand and appreciate. I'm out of here, I thought. I quickly avoided the cameraman fearing that he would corner me and asked what I thought of this entire exhibit. Then a Light bulb moment flashes before my eyes!! I finally got it!! It wasn't until I was about to claim my friend's framed pictured that I realized - The 2,000 pictures weren't the exhibit. It was all the people that were standing in line!!!! For as long it it took me to finally get it, that certainly was the BIG twist to this art exhibit. Good thing about this entire ordeal was that I was not the only one who had the impression that people would get back recognizable photographs.

So here is my completed assignment as promised, Mr. Jochen Gerz. I've took home your "gift" and now have published it for the whole world to see world to see. You asked me to figure out what's their story was. You told me to read into them and figure out their thoughts. That I did. Both of the pictures I received seemed very lonely and displaced in this world. My guess is that they were unhappy and waiting for someone to cheer them up. I attempted to do so by taking them outdoors to enjoy the sun with my god daughter/niece. I hope they cheered up after our little outing. If not, I tried. Check out other photos from the "THE GIFT" gallery on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/the_gift_sfmoma/ p.s. Richie Rich, maybe you'll find your photos here one day. That's if everyone else did their homework like me!