Unfortunately, the old house had equally old electric sockets and my charger did not work in any of them. We had no choice but to wake Lyn and ask if I could borrow her mobile phone. Lyn’s network was Talk n’ Text but it had no signal inside the house, too. Lyn told me I can use her phone for as long as I want while her SIM was unuseable.
Mama’s message to her brother: She has a budget of P1,000 for the beach lunch, to celebrate my sister Shers’ birthday. Can he facilitate lunch preparations, with a menu that includes, preferably, chicken adobo (Cebu style), lechon, and whatever else is edible for all of us, including Tita Yorn and Tito Arne who are such health buffs?
I sent the message. Tatay Gody answered shortly after: He has already asked some of his “servant” boys to buy 2 kilos of lechon, 2 chickens for adobo, and a kilo of fish for grilling. He also suggested chicken nilaga (stew), but my mother said it might be difficult to bring dishes with soup to the beach, as we would need bowls. So he removed the chicken stew from the menu, but he said he will still kill a chicken and have the blood drip from the neck, as part of a birthday tradition that my grandmother (their mother) used to do.
Each time somebody from the family/clan celebrates his/her birthday, my lola would have a chicken killed and have its blood drip to the ground, and she would whisper a prayer of protection and guidance for the birthday celebrant. The old folks believe that the dying chicken will absorb the illnesses and badluck of the celebrant. Looking back at how my mother’s family has progressed—from a poor family of five children with two school teachers as parents to a now growing brood of journalists, artists, medical practitioners, engineers etc. here and abroad—I guess there is nothing to lose in following this tradition.
We were lucky that Kuya Tony has his own cottage in Uwak. When we arrived at exactly 
water. For the entire time I was applying sunblock on her, she kept on egging me to swim, swim, swim. When we did, the sun was in its meanest. But thanks to SPF 50 sunblock lotions, you can never tell that we stayed in the beach during the most taboo period: 12:00 to 1:00. It would have been longer had Tita Yorn not called us for lunch, as Marthe is threatening to go home if I don't let her swim some more. We practically half-dragged half-carried her out of the water , fearing the effect of the sun on her skin.
Lunch was great: lechon, grilled fish, native chicken adobo, fish kinilaw, omelette consisting of small fishes, seaweeds with a nice vinegar dressing, makopa fruit, and many other stuff we don't often see in Manila. Of course, we again had puso rice. I forgot all about my half-rice diet at lunch; this is more nutritious anyway.
The rest of the afternoon was spent chatting lazily in the cottage. Nobody dared go back to the water, except for the boys and girls that Tatay Gody seems to have "adopted" and given shelter in my Lola's house. If I don't know my uncle, I'd think he was running an orphanage. All these young boys and girls living in the house are supposed to be "helping out" with household chores but Mama said she didn't see a dirtier house than theirs. You would think that the people living there were handicapped instead of 10 able-bodied, energetic individuals (or was it 15?).
Anyway, they had a heyday in the water and in partaking of the lunch. Seeing them dress up and go in the late afternoon made us guilty. This once-in-a-while privilege is rare to these children....and to many children in Balamban who have never set foot outside of their own community. My mother and her siblings were lucky that they had Tatay Gody as the eldest. He was the one who had grand plans for his siblings, who fought that they would study in UP instead of just in schools in Cebu City. He strived to bring them all to Manila and find their destinies, have satisfying careers, and learn life in the capital -- away from the comforts of their little house in Sto. Niño St.
We went back to the house in Nangka for shower and rest. Then we capped the day with a mass at 7pm in the poblacion (the lungsod, as the refer to it), the main business area of Balamban. Tito Arne and Tita Yorn didn't join mass (they were not churchgoers and didn't put much trust on the higher Being for survival). We left them at my Lola's house, where they will meet their lawyer to discuss some things about the lot they purchased in Nangka, and they hiked back to the church in time to meet us after the mass.
We all went back for dinner in Nangka, which was again cruelly interrupted by brownout. We all forgot our flashlights in the room and we fumbled for matches to light the candles. It was raining outside too, and the spectators of a basketball game that was on its peak in a nearby court succumbed to silence. It was a perfect setting for a horror movie. And what do you know? As if on cue, Kuya Tony launched into a series of "horror" stories, that consisted mainly of the kapre as its main character. Hehehe. Tita Yorn and Tito Arne were chuckling and trying to act as devil's advocate (because Kuya Tony clearly believes 100% in his story). I smiled. Although I believe in elementals and other beings outside of our human dimension, the stories began to sound less scary as his narration went on. At the end of the storytellling, everyone was ready for Turkish coffee, which we sipped in the sala with doors open in the patio.
We all retired long before the lights went back. Marthe went into a monologue of Mickey Mouse Show conversations (to lullaby herself to sleep, I realized later), using her fingers as characters, and then she just went silent. When I looked, she was fast asleep.
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