Trick Or Treating At The Marsdens

Mama really loves kids, costumes and giving candy away. So Marivic decided it was a perfect excuse to have Mama and her siblings come over to her house on Halloween night and let Mama be the one to answer the door and give candy away to trick-or-treaters. They don't get that many trick-or-treaters at the apartment complex. Last year Mama bought a bag of candy and they got ONE trick-or-treater. One! Apartments are lame. Pretty disappointing. Well, our mother has simple joys in life, and why not let her enjoy Halloween? So that was the main motivation for having a Halloween "party" at the Marsdens. We get so many trick-or-treaters every year it's insane. And it worked! Mama had a lot of fun answering the door. I'm sure the kids had a kick, too, having an old Filipino lady wearing an Indian head dress (she borrowed Jessin's) answer the door, ooh-ing and ahh-ing in Filipino accent and giving candy away. She got tired soon though (after effects of radiation treatment), so Jessin, Alan, and Marivic took turns taking over candy duty.

In between answering the door, we had dinner. Filipino barbecued pork ribs and beef ribs with rice to humor the Filipinos. And grated potatoes and chicken rolls (Alan's big sister Lesley's recipe) to humor Alan the lone white man :-) The rest of the Marsdens were out: Tara dropped by after work on her way to a Halloween party, but AJ was out all night partying with friends.

Just in case everybody starts saying what a good daughter Marivic is for letting Mama enjoy Halloween, think again. She made Halloween punch and filled it with gummy worms (!!!) knowing how creeped out her mother is by snakes and worms. Everyone but especially the rascally Marivic thought it pretty funny except Mama, of course. But we knew not to push it. Mama absolutely is appalled when we watch scary horror-thriller movies. She calls them "devil movies". So guess what we watched on Halloween night to our mother's boundless delight? "Beverly Hills Chihuahua". Aii-yaii-yaii!

Anyway, here are some of the photos from the night. Jerome, Tina, Kyrsten and Jett---wish you were here!

Kyrsten_Linggo Ng Wika

Our little Kyrsten, of the next generation of cute Cuyos girls :-), participating in her school's Linggo Ng Wika (National Language Week) celebration'

Some News...

Mama has been diagnosed with breast cancer. The doctor says it has been detected early enough, and the lump is still rather small. Mama is having a lumpectomy on Monday, August 24th. She will be released from the hospital on the same day, so it sounds like it's nothing major. But we would still appreciate prayers. Thanks everyone.

posted by Marivic

Happy Birthday, Mama!

Mama and her darling baby Marle

The family celebrated Mama's 77th Birthday by going out to dinner. Mama's choice: Outback. She had the Lobster and Mushroom Topped Tilapia. We're still not very sure why she picked Outback. It was pretty random for Mama. Maybe it's because Outback is the closest she gets to Australia which is the closest she gets to the Philippines? Whatever. The birthday girl gets what she wants. We had fun as usual. Grandson AJ joined us. He was a pretty good sport sitting there eating his steak surrounded by what must seem like the tower of Babel going on around him. We tried to speak English so he'd understand, but you know how that goes :-). But it was appreciated. If his Filipino grandmother was rich he'd have a big chunk of an inheritance written in the will :-) too bad she is poe!

Mama's Boys minus Jerome who is in the Philippines:

Mama's Girls minus Vicvic who is taking the picture:

AJ (in the yellow shirt) patiently humoring the Filipino-speaking people around him with his courteous presence :-)

Two Beaches On Opposite Sides of The Ocean

Posted by Marivic Marsden:

One of my earliest memories as a kid was spending almost every weekend at the beach. That just seems like the natural thing to do when you grow up on a tropical island and when your maternal grandparents' home was walking distance to the beach. I remember swimming with my siblings and cousins in the placid waters of the sea. Not quite like the violent, adrenalin pumping surf of the waters on this side of the globe. My parents watched us, of course, but for the most part we splashed around uninhibited. I played my heart out during the day. I ate a lot, too. Somehow I always associate going to the beach with grilled fish and steaks. On the ride home my brothers and sisters and I would fall asleep and next thing we knew we were in bed. It was a carefree, fun and happy time in my life. Somehow that sense of well-being is partly recreated for me when I go to the beach now that I am an adult. I'm sure it is for my brothers and sisters, too.

This summer I was able to spend time on a beach in San Clemente with my kids and husband and his extended family. I didn't splash around in the surfy waters, because I'm just not that carefree anymore, but I still had a blast.

Meanwhile, my brother and his family also spent their vacation on a beach eight thousand miles across from me on the Pacific Ocean. Here are pictures of my brother, my ister-in-law Tina and their kids in Moalboal, a resort on the island of Cebu in the Philippines.

Here are photos of me and my family in San Clemente in Southern California.

One day soon, we hope, our families will be able to spend time together on the same beach on the same hemisphere. He probably will not like the surfy waters on this part of the globe :-) but he'll get used to it and learn to like it like I did. If he doesn't, well, I'll just tell him to because I'm the boss. I'm firstborn and he's the baby, and what I say goes :-) (Just kidding, Bro!)

Maries Has A New Bebeh! :-)

Maries is now a bona fide American.  She owns a car and owes money :-) Welcome to America, Maries!

Ate Vicvic accompanied her to the car dealerships to shop, but Maries did all the hard work.  She researched, she comparison-shopped, she saved the down payment, and she will be the one making the monthly payments (Owie!).  Ate Vicvic was just along to drive her around, and for moral support and to make sure the car salesmen did not bamboozle her sister.  And, yes, they tried to sell her stuff she doesn't need, but overall it was a fun though exhausting experience.

Here's Maries and her Toyota Matrix in front of the Marsdens:

Maries is excited. But also a little freaked out to owe that much money and to have monthly payments.  But she'll be okay.  She just got a job with the Fire Council of California.

Maries really wanted a Mazda3, but she couldn't afford it. That's alright.  I think she did really well getting a Toyota.  It's still going to zoom, zoom, zoom her around :-)

 Congratulations Maries! A new car is a big milestone in your American saga.

Pele-pino! Pele-pino! Color Confusion.

When I was a kid, Filipinos wanted to be WHITE. I knew girls who bleached their hair with hydrogen peroxide to get the "blond" look (honest!) and walked around with umbrellas to protect their skin from being burned by the Philippine sun.   Filipino artists (singers/actors) were mostly western mestizas/half-breds who copied white entertainers from the U.S.   To be called "negro/negra" or Aeta (Philippine aborigine) because of your dark skin was among the worst insult you could level at a young Filipino.  (I'm sorry for using the N word, but that's the word Filipinos used during my youth). 

Fortunately (I guess), I was lighter skinned than a typical Filipino so despite my naturally curly hair I avoided the trauma of being called a "negra" or Aeta.   I actually was often complimented for being light skinned, sometimes even called a Vilma Santos look-alike (a light skinned movie star).  That was dumb but good for my young ego.  And although misguided, I owe a lot of my sass and confidence from the stupid notion that I was of the RIGHT color.

Then in my early 20's I came to America and realized that WHITE people actually wanted to be dark.  Since I was darker than white people I was still the right color after all.  In my pursuit to emphasize my right color, the sun that used to be shunned became my friend. Just a few minutes out in the sun, and I got what white people covet, a golden tan.  I wasn't alone in this insanity.  I knew a lot of Filipinos who went tanning. Except when they go home to the Philippines, of course, then they spend days away from the sun to get the pale-look back so the Filipinos back home don't tell them in characteristic tactlessness that they are "Negro".  So ironic. Tsk! Tsk!

However, as I got older and became more American, I noticed a change in the mentality in the younger Pilipino generation.  First of all,  they're not Filipinos or Flips. They're not even Pilipinos.  They're now Pele-pinos.  It seems to me, Filipinos no longer think it's great to be WHITE.  It appears now a days they'd rather be BLACK.  Ghetto became high-fashion.  Even my adult brothers who lived in the Philippines until two years ago, came to America looking like they just stepped out of some hip-hop/rap publication.  They were gang-stah! You should see the bling on Jessin (my second to the youngest bro.  I mean, BROTHER as in boy sibling not Yo, Bro!) He wears diamond (cubic zirconia, wanna bet?) on his ears bigger than all the real diamonds I own combined.  (What the eff, Dawg?)

What was even more perplexing, a young relative who has been in the States less than a couple of years and doesn't even know how the U.S. government works, and probably doesn't know the name of her congressman is in love with Obama and joined the Obama bandwagon with fervor. Don't get me wrong, I see nothing wrong with liking President Obama, but plezzzz just have a better foundation for liking his politics and swallowing it hook line and sinker than he is a cool black dude.  Seriously. 

The following Black Eyed Peas 2006 video I believe speed-dialed today's young Filipinos' obsession with BLACK pop culture.   Probably in the same way Farrah Fawcett's hair-do made Filipino girls of my generation wished they were WHITE and blonde.   (By the way, how come Filipino mothers are always portrayed as caricatures?)

White. Black. Pale. Tanned. The young Filipinos obsession with the color spectrum is sometimes confusing to me.  What the heck is wrong with just being brown? Regardless, no matter what the current popular skin color is, I think Filipino artists are hecka talented :-) and it makes me proud to be Pele-pino! Or Filipino! Or Pilipino! Whatever!  (Although it seems the mothers of the girls in this video, did not teach their daughters about the fashion modesty of Maria Clara. Oh, wait never mind. She's a Spanish meztisa, and she is so 18th century. A white Filipina and not a black Pele-pina!)

POSTED BY MARIVIC

Mother's Day Dinner 2009

Mama and 5 of her 6 children (Jerome and his family are in the Philippines but we love you!) went out to dinner Saturday, May 9th to celebrate Mother's Day. It's technically on Sunday, but that's church day. Here are some pictures. Not very flattering most of them but we were tired :-) and we had a crappy camera :-) Yeah--- that's what we want to believe.... Anyway, we went to a dim-sum place. Of course. At a casino. Hey, we're Pinoys! What can we say. :-)
We had mango pudding for dessert. Jessin liked it, but it didn't really taste that mango-y...
3 of Mama's kids were comfortable using chopsticks (Maries, Marivic, and Jessor), but Mama, Marle and Jessin preferred silverware :-)
Mama with 2 of her 3 Mama's boys :-)
Of course, Consorcia had to pose. Are you kidding me? She was very delighted with Bambi's Dad :-)

Jerome's Family

Jerome, Tina, Kyrsten and Jett