Life in the East of England

I will be writing a blog entry about this later but since I am extremely excited to share this with you, I am posting this so you know that A Filipina, Madonna Decena, made it to the semi-finals of Britain’s Got Talent! Check it out by clicking here.

It was snowing here in March!

Isn’t it lovely?

Don’t you just love spring? I do!

Not too long ago, I was exchanging text messages with Ysabel, the youngest daughter of a good friend of mine who’s based in the Philippines.  She’s about 8 years old if my memory serves me right.  From the top of my head, the text conversation went like this:

Ysabel:  Tita Len, how are you! We miss you!

Me:  Hello Rysabella, I’m doing well.  I’m homesick. How are you?

Ysabel:  I’m OK.  What do you mean homesick?

Me:  I miss home.

Ysabel: You miss home? How would you miss home when you are already home?  Isn’t that your home where you are?

I laughed hysterically.  With tears in my eyes, I looked out the window and thought, Ysabel is right. I am home.  Although I am away from my old home…I am exactly where I want to be, where I am building my family.  This is home.

Children don’t make life too complicated like us grown-ups.  Being homesick was too confusing for Ysabel.  To her I have moved home and it was my choice so why would I be homesick then if I have just moved home? Why can’t I be like her? Why do I have to make life too complicated and wallow in misery when I want to be with my husband?  I miss my family.  But I have grown to love England and its people.  After reading the history of the United Kingdom and passing the Life in the UK Test last Saturday, I realised that my husband’s home has now also become mine.  I am at peace where I am.  No, this is not to say that I am turning away from my home country or that I am forgetting my ancestry.  I still love the Philippines and will always do.  I love the Filipino culture.  I miss the smiling faces of Filipinos all around me.  I miss dirty ice cream, taho (soy curd), tinapa (steamed fish) and bagoong (shrimp paste).  I will always be a Filipino.  My skin will always be light brown.  The colour of my hair and eyes will never change.  My blood will stay the same.  I am a Filipino who has just started a life and is building a family away from my old home.

Yes, Ysabel dear, I miss home but you are right, I am home.

Yes I know, it’s too confusing.  That’s how grown-ups are.

In the first few months that James and I were communicating by text messaging in the year 2004, there were instances when we couldn’t understand each other.  It was because I was using American English and he was using British English.  I remember one funny day when I was texting him something about a ‘guy’ that I met in the past and he thought I meant the ‘guy’ that’s an effigy of Guy Fawkes that is burned on a bonfire on Guy Fawkes Day. In other words, he was thinking I was talking about some sort of a ritual in the Philippines whereby we burn ‘guys’ like them.  It was hilarious!  Little did I know about the Guy Fawlkes Night in England. 

So this is to share with you that last month, I finally discovered what they do on a night like this - bonfire, fireworks and food!.  I am sharing with you some photographs.    If you want to know more about Guy Fawkes Night, please click here.

Everyday in Britain is a school day for me.

This is a barn where we all had dinner.

Fireworks display right after dinner.

Apologies, dear friends…I think I may have deleted some photos from my camera.  I remember taking photos of Jim and I with the ‘guy’ that looked like a ’scarecrow.’  I know the photos above don’t suffice…but I hope the link on Wikipedia will allow you to learn something from this blog entry. 

So whilst my friends in the Philippines were commemorating All Saint’s and All Soul’s Day and my friends in America are celebrating Thanksgiving Day in November…here I was in Britain, burning ‘guys’ and celebrating Guy Fawkes Night!

We would like to share with you photos of Cromer (taken the last couple of weeks). 

The Cromer Pier

Cromer Pier from afar

Hotel de Paris (where I had my weekend job if you remember!)

The Post Office

The Red Lion Hotel

Benches right in front of Hotel de Paris.  This is my favourite place.

We will be sharing more photos with you soon.  I hope you enjoy these first ones.  If you would like to read more about Cromer, please click here.

I have always been a hopeless romantic. I love love songs. I love love stories. I love romantic films. If there is something that I like that my husband doesn’t, this is it. We like most things. Except for a few things like, for example, Italian food (pizza, pasta) which I love to bits but he doesn’t and love songs.

About 3 months before our wedding in 2005, I phoned him and asked him what songs he wants to be played at our wedding. There was only one song that he wanted. It was a song by Elvis Presley. He said to me the song describes me perfectly. I got excited and looked all over for the song. I found a copy eventually, after many weeks of searching. I was kind of disappointed to hear that it was not the romantic type of song. It was, to be honest, somekind of moaning about a woman that a man loves. It’s complaining about her complicated personality and the difficulty he is in but loving her anyway.

Here it is:

Moody Blue
by Elvis Presley

Well, it’s hard to be a gambler
Bettin’ on the number
That changes every time
Well, you think you’re gonna win
Think she’s givin’ in
A stranger’s all you find
Yeah, it’s hard to figure out
What she’s all about
That she’s a woman through and through
She’s a complicated lady, so color my baby moody blue,
Oh, moody blue
Tell me am I gettin’ through
I keep hangin’ on
Try to learn the song
But I never do
Oh, moody blue,
Tell me who
Im talkin’ to
You’re like the night and day
And it’s hard to say
Which one is you.
Well, when Monday comes she’s Tuesday,
When Tuesday comes she’s Wednesday,
Into another day again
Her personality unwinds
Just like a ball of twine
On a spool that never ends
Just when I think I know her well
Her emotions reveal,
She’s not the person that I thought I knew
She’s a complicated lady, so color my baby moody blue,
Oh, moody blue
Tell me am I gettin’ through
I keep hangin’ on
Try to learn the song
But I never do
Oh, moody blue,
Tell me who
Im talkin’ to
You’re like the night and day
And it’s hard to say
Which one is you.

Okay, so it doesn’t say there if the man still loves the woman, does it? It’s just a song of a whiner. Oh, well. So was it played at the wedding? Surely! After two years, he still says the same thing about me and even sings the song to me from time to time - and keeps milking how complicated I am - now with more conviction than ever before. Do you think I like the song? You bet.

James and I have been going around Norfolk these days.  One of the places we frequent is Great Yarmouth.  I am sharing with you some photographs that I’ve taken a few days ago.  Great Yarmouth is a place I love, most probably because I associate the place with a dear friend of mine, Cynthia.

This is the Pier Tavern.

The Cinema - at least the only Cinema I know at Great Yarmouth.

The New Beach Hotel.

People close their shops early this season.

The Market Place - a long stretch of shops!

The Marine Lodge.

Will be sharing with you more photos soon!  I hope you are all enjoying Autumn!!!!

I am no Picasso or Monet.  But I love art.  I used to think I was an artist.  Or should I say, I believed I was. When I was younger, I was so creative.  When I was in the 6^th Grade, my Adviser would ask me to draw animals, people and things on her test papers for her kindergarten class.  I enjoyed it.  She offered to pay me for the effort but I never accepted it.  I just liked doing it.  There was always an adrenalin rush.  Seeing the smile on my Adviser’s face each time I’d hand her my work would instantly take me to Cloud 9.

In High School, I made money out of designing bookmarks and birthday cards.  In college, other students in our neighbourhood asked me to design covers of terms papers or prepare visual aids for their class reports.  I remember carefully outlining the human anatomy on a large piece of ‘cartolina.’  I hold dear the memory of choosing the colours and the shades and making sure it was an excellent job I was doing. The feeling inside was extraordinary.  It felt liberating.  I cannot explain to you exactly how it felt but it was beautiful.  I wanted to take Fine Arts but didn’t.  My father said there was no money in it.  He may be right.  So I travelled a completely different road.  Years passed.  I’d still draw from time to time.  I’d use charcoal to draw a face.  I’d use ordinary pens when I’d try caricature.  But the feeling was alarmingly diminishing.  Slowly.  The inspiration was going.  I think it was dying. 

A few years ago, I still had the inspiration to paint.  In fact, I painted a garden in oil on canvas and I left it hanging on the wall at the entrance to my bedroom back home.  That was the last time I ever did it.  Then years after that, I realised that I have completely lost it.  The artist in me has gone.  It felt like I lost a part of myself.  It dawned on me one night whilst James had gone to work.  I took my pencils and my drawing pad.  I took a beautiful postcard with a photograph of the NorwichCastle.  I started to outline the castle on my pad.  It all went wrong.  My hand felt completely different, it wasn’t the hand that used to love to draw.  The lines all went to the wrong directions making the drawing look absolutely awful.  I crossed it out.  Tried doing it again on another page.  Then another.  And another one.  Then I just stopped.  I looked up the ceiling.  The phone rang.  It was James.  ‘Are you okay?’ He asked.  ‘Yes, Love, I’m fine.  I’m trying to draw something.’ I said.  ‘But I couldn’t.  I think I cannot do it again.’ I continued.  James just chuckled.  He didn’t take me seriously.  Why would he?  He never saw the artist in me.  When I met him, I had already stopped painting.  Although he saw the old painting I did a few years ago, it wasn’t very impressive.  My husband never met that side of me.  The side of me that rejoices inside just looking at the strokes of a painting or the child in me that admires the ingenuity of miniatures and dolls or how the artists created the smoke by use of cotton, colours and light to devise a realistic representation in museums.  I don’t think he ever notices the glitter in my eyes as I study the structure of dollhouses and the tiny little things inside them or my excitement to look at the beauty of the colours of sunset.  These all make me imagine myself capturing the shapes and colours on paper or canvas.  That side of me that used to give me a lift, a certain ‘high.’

I left most of my stuff in the Philippines so when I came here last year, I didn’t have my art books with me.  Somehow I miss them.  I miss looking at those pictures.  So I started buying art books again.  I wanted it to come back.  I wanted to look at the trees again and see their outline and imagine what shades of green to use if I use watercolour or oil or pastels…I want that adrenalin rush again.  I want the inspiration again.  I want it so badly that the books are piling up. 

And I am still waiting for the artist to come back.

Do you remember the song ‘Ikaw lang ang Mamahalin’ by Joey Albert?  I do remember that song.  It was one of my favourites when I was in my early 20’s.  In fact, it still is my favourite now.  I think I even stopped listening to new music when I reached 25.  Most of the Filipino songs that I appreciate are songs of Joey Albert, Kuh Ledesma, Apo Hiking Society…okay, okay, let’s go further down - Hagibis, Didith Reyes, Claire Delafuente, and many others that maybe I cannot remember at the moment - most probably due to my brain shrinking because of ageing, hihihihihi.  Anyway, last week I went down memory lane listening to the songs of some of these artists - yes, here in England, yes on the radio and yes again, live!  I find it surprising and exciting that halfway across the globe, there is - suddenly - a Filipino Radio Talk Show where I am! 

So, today, I would like to share with you this new frenzy in my Norfolk life.  The show is called ‘Usapang Pinoy’ (Pinoy Talk). If you want to listen to last Saturday’s show, please click here.  Usapang Pinoy is aired on 96.9 FM in Norfolk, England.  It is aired at 3pm over here in the UK, it is aired at 11pm in the Philippines and Western Australia, 10am in the East Coast and 7am in the West Coast (USA), and at 4pm in Western Europe.  The presenter if Dr Joy Barredo.  Joy is someone with an interesting personality, very bubbly and articulate.  What’s more exciting is that I will be guesting in her show on Saturday, 10 November 2007 (which, incidentally, is my brother’s birthday - Happy Birthday, Let!).  So for an hour, I will re-living my life as a radio presenter…and in England!!!  Woo-hoo!!!!  Thank you very much, Joy!!!

If you wish to know more about Dr Joy Barredo, here are the links to her websites:

The Goddess In You
Your Love Coach