Tuesday 25 December 2012

Monday 24 December 2012

Christmas Eve 2012

To start the day, I got three pieces of Oiliebollen which I thought could only be purchased on Sylvester but everything seems to be available from strawberries to baby corns. No stress, we promised ourselves so we spent the early part of the day reading and eating in between these oily but delicious Oiliebollen.

What to eat on the holiest night of the year? Got excited looking at the huge crabs
at the weekend market and got this piece looking so unfriendly. I thought  I would make this recipe of
crabs with black beans, crabs cooked in coconut milk or just steamed. Rushed again to the village supermarket to get last minute ready to grill stuffs for a Plan B Noche Buena. 
Merry Christmas!

Tuesday 18 December 2012

I am a Migrant Woman: December 18, International Migrants Day

(Photo Source:unmultimedi.org)
Wishes of Migrant Women (Photo: Pinay von Alemanya)
I am a migrant woman. I am a culture bringer and mediator. I bring the best of myself to this land of my destination and take back the virtues of my host country to the land of my birth. I have the privilege to work for the causes of other migrants who might not have the same privileges and rights I am now enjoying. I believe I live in the best of both worlds I have now and for this I am very grateful and appreciative. It's International Migrants Day. Let's celebrate!

Monday 17 December 2012

RH (Reproductive Health) Bill now a law

Photo Source: philstar.com

right to life

a woman is not a pear tree
thrusting her fruit into mindless fecundity
into the world. Even pear trees bear
heavily one year and rest and grow the next.
An orchard gone wild drops few warm rotting
fruit in the grass but the trees stretch
high and wiry gifting the birds forty
feet up among inch long thorns.
Broken atavistically from the smooth wood.
A woman is not a basket you place
your buns in to keep them warm. Not a brood
hen you can slip duck eggs under.
Not the purse holding the coins of
your descendants till you spend them in wars.
Not a bank where your genes collect interest
and interesting mutations in the tainted
rain, anymore than you are.
You plant your corn and harvest
it to eat or sell. You put the lamb
in the pasture to fatten and haul it in
to butcher for chops. You slice
the mountain in two for a road and gouge
the high plains for coal and the waters
run muddy for miles and years.
Fish die but you do not call them yours
unless you wished to eat them.
Now you legislate mineral rights in a woman.
You lay claim to her pastures for grazing,
fields for growing babies likes iceburg
lettuce. You value children so dearly
that none ever go hungry, none weep
with no one to tend them when mothers
work, none lack fresh fruit,
none chew lead or cought to death and your
orphanages are empty. Every noon the best
restaurants serve poor children steaks.
At this moment at nine o'clock a partera
is performing a table top abortion on an
unwed mother in texas who can't get medicaid
any longer. In five days she will die
of tetanus and her little daughter will cry
and be taken away. Next door a husband
and wife are sticking pins in the son
they did not want. They will explain
for hours how wicked he is,
how he wants disipline.
We are all born of woman, in the rose
of the womb we suckled our mother's blood
and every baby born has a right to love
like a seedling to the sun. Every baby born
unloved, unwanted, is a bill that will come
due in twenty years with interest, an anger
that must find a target, a pain that will
beget pain. A decade downstream a child
screams, a woman falls, a synagogue is torched,
a firing squad summoned, a button
is pushed and the world burns.
I will choose what enters me, what becomes,
flesh of my flesh. Without choice, no politics,
no ethics lives. I am not your cornfield,
not your uranium mine, not your calf
for fattening, not your cow for milking.
You may not use me as your factory.
Priests and legislators do not hold
shares in my womb or my mind.
This is my body. If I give it to you
i want it back. My life
is a non-negotiable demand.

-marge piercy 
(Source: ehealthforum.com)

 (Source: Facebook cross-postings)

Wednesday 12 December 2012

12.12.12

Yesterday is gone and its tale told.
Today new seeds are growing.
Rumi
(Source: Facebook: Rumi Quotes)