Three little pumpkins all in a row

So I got me some butternut pumpkins. Murderously expensive pumpkins in actual fact…but more on that later.

Aren’t they cute?

WTF? Why is she blogging about this I hear you cry.

Well let me enlighten you.

In this neck of the woods (the Manila woods) butternut pumpkin is rare…like really rare…like rare like hens teeth rare. And I truly love pumpkin. I love it not only for me and how much I love the taste, but also because it is one of only a handful of vegetables I can feed my fussy vegetable-hating husband.

And the pumpkin here is monotonous…always the same boring jap. Now don’t get me wrong, the jap pumpkin is a fine vegetable, but it is boring. And doesn’t have tham same nutty sweetness of the butternut variety.

Plus, variety is the spice of life, and there is precious little variety to be found here in the comforting vegetables of home. There is only one kind of potato, only one (maybe two) kinds of onions, certainly only one carrot (the large and misshapen kind). I like choice! So when choice is offered to me, I go mental. Mental to the tune of 15 Aussie dollars for three small pumpkins.

So I need you to tell me…what can I do with my murderously expensive pumpkins?

What would you do with three beautiful butternut pumpkins? What is your favourite pumpkin recipe?

Help me O internet friends.

And for those non-pumpkin lovers out there…what vegetables do you like choice in? And what would you miss if you lived away from home?

An update, and a genuinely baffling commercial

Who’s been a bad little blogger? Well that would be me. One post a week is terrible – especially when it is just  blog fodder as was pointed out last week 😉 !

I could say I am going to do better, but it’s an outright lie. My mum is here at the moment (and mightily impressed by the cushions I must say) and we’ve been doing lots of lovely mother-daughter bonding things, like pedicures, shopping, massages, markets and lying on idyllic beaches trying to get as tanned as possible!

If only life was really like this all the time...

Currently I am a member of ANZA, an association of Aussie and Kiwi expats, and have managed to wrangle my way onto the committee in the form of Communications Co-ordinator, basically responsible for the website and weekly update. The AGM is in May, the 20th, and I have no idea how this committee thing works…if someone else wants my job how is it decided? Do we duel in HTML to prove who’s website worth is superior? All I can say is that if I lose my position I’ll be genuinely crushed, being on a committee rocks! (Come back to me in 6 months and see if I am still singing that tune.)

Of course with the AGM approaching, anyone is welcome to throw their hats into the ring and nominate themselves, but total ANZA domination is out of the question for me as the current President is the wife of Reece’s boss, and I hear that ousting the boss’ wife could be considered a career limiting move in some circles.

I’m also doing some writing for the ANZA Magazine, when I get my arse into gear I’ll scan my stories and post them here.

I realise that I haven’t told any stories about the Philippines of late, and the skin whitening market over here truly baffles me.

Its ironic that I spent the last 4 days lying in the direct sun praying for a tan, when so many girls over here are obsessed with taking their skin in the opposite direction. We always want what we can’t have I guess!

One of the more hilarious treatments includes placental protein…mmm placenta on my face…but the commercial that really takes the cake basically insinuates that if you spend 7 days whitening your skin with Ponds, then you will be proposed to! Because only women with white skin deserve a wedding!!!

So for now, I leave you with this gem of a commercial from Ponds. It’s currently being shown all the time on Filipino TV, though I know it has done the rounds in Asia and India.

The transformative power of cushions

Oh dear…I’ve been rather neglectful haven’t I. I have no excuse, just that life has been busy and I haven’t really had anything interesting to say.

My mum arrives tomorrow and I’m super excited about it. I can’t wait to show her around the city and do lots of girly things like manicures, pedicures, massages and lots of shopping!

As you do with any impending visitors, I’ve been making the house look much better than it usually looks…hoping to trick my mother into believing that I’ve suddenly acquired the ability to be tidy.

Poor Reece has been copping it too…we’ve had all sorts of odd conversations in the last week…particularly about the transformative power of cushions.

When people feel comfortable calling you chubby…what do you have left?

There are many things I have had to adjust to over here in the Philippines…but forthright personal commentary is something that I never expected from a country that is so deferent and polite.

Never before have I simultaneously felt so beautiful and so chubby all at the same time, and never before have I been told those things in front of 25 other people…so it makes for an interesting mental rollercoaster ride.

Death and social media

Something really sad and strange happened yesterday.

One of the guys I trained in Cultural Immersion sadly passed away, and I found out through facebook status updates.

I don’t speak tagalog, so at first I couldn’t really figure out what was happening. I realised that some of his classmates were posting messages that spoke about him leaving and about losing him, so stupidly I thought he had left the company and thought nothing of it.

But the messages kept rolling in and something didn’t feel right, so I checked out his profile and realised that seemingly he had indeed passed away.

Trouble with taxi drivers

Never do I feel like more of a guest in this country than when I have a run in with a taxi driver and need to have someone else speak for me.

Taxi drivers are the bane of my existence.  I could list for you the multitude of reasons why I usually hate them, but I won’t.

Instead I will tell you the most recent reason that I hate them…and how I ended up an indignant, quivering and slightly ashamed mess.