Baker's Dozen Parasceve in Oktoberfest

I’ve been waiting for a friday the 13th to fall on an october and what makes this day certain interesting is that one thousand years ago the remaining templars of the crusades were burned at stake on october 13th a friday after inquisitors and priests accused them of worshipping the baphomet, the idol bipod of human torso and a goat’s head.

Anyway I had my dose of crap early on a friday the 13th morning. My grandaunt from my chinese lineage is having problems with her blood pressure and yet with popular western medicine, she is still pretty much convinced of remedies prescribed by our ancient ancestors: traditional chinese medicine, which is taking random botany and an occasional dried critter as medicine. I was in manila so she asked me to buy her medicine her shaman told her to take, she faxed me the formula for her medicine to my hotel and it sure did look like the theory of relativity written in chinese. My grandaunt also told me it’ll take a day whole for them to finish cooking up her medicine, so I had to go to a herb bazaar first thing this morning.

I found one shop and there was a witchdoctor, a small old lady I think somewhere past her eighties, standing by her little counter surrounded by her collection of strange dried oddments which made her little depot smell like strong twisted mint. She wasn’t saying much and I approached her and gave her the formula, she glanced at the note and suddenly she snapped and blew herself to a fury, hell she did surprise me, as if what were written on that paper were instructions for her to get mad at me. She called me with remarks at her age and she pulled her telephone and yelled at me to call whoever sent me the formula and ask what the hell it was. I could have told her it was the theory of relativity and gone away with it, I looked at the phone because I know I will be making an expensive long distance phone call to my grandaunt back home if she insisted on me calling, my awkward silence triggered the mad witchdoctor’s wrath higher and yelled at me if I know how to use the phone or not.

A piece of history, ancient chinese medicine was evolved from another ancient wild goose chase, the chinese alchemy which attempted to come up with the elixir of life. You know what? I doubt these witchdoctors do have the recipe to the elixir of life, else not have a hwitchdoctor this old in front of me yet blows the roof like a person twice less her age.

I controlled my own temperament and went out of her shop instead and called my father on my mobile phone, I saw her telephone number from outside her shop and told my father that he should go talk to the old witchdoctor himself because I think she is having menopausal cramps or something. I took some deep breath outside to calm myself and watched ordinary people scuffle about their miserable lives that early morning before facing the mad witchdoctor again. I got inside and I reckon she was already talking to my father on her telephone, I stood by her depository of oddities and I swear I could have found dried testicles of a tiger in one of the jars there. She called to me in a now better tone and passed the telephone to me, it was my father and he told me she just misunderstood the formula and he thinks the witchdoctor went haywire because I didn’t look chinese to her, like some other race is trying to pull out the secrets of their alchemy, racism her tiger testicles I run a bigger business empire than her subterranean voodoo lounge.

The witchdoctor told me that she’ll have the medicine ready by around four in the afternoon, I thanked her anyway, its just going to be a bunch of placebo drug though.

Going back to the templars being burned at stake a thousand years ago, if kramer and sprenger were still around, she’d get top honors for witchcraft and be roasted at stake on a same friday the 13th in october.

Neverwhere

I can’t find anything amusing to write about for two weeks now, nothing like last month there was this wayward planet’s quest for earth recognition, the pope reviving quotes from constantinople, 2,000 leaks under the sea and one sting ray’s success over the reptile kingdom proving that one sting can do the trick than fifty sharp teeth combined. It must have been the weather or something, it had been raining like hell and it brought my depression to overdrive again.

Anyway I took the flight to manila this morning because I was getting too bored back home, my brother wanted to tag along to my trip but I was too keen on taking him with me, I wanted to be alone for a while.

I got myself another book by neil gaiman earlier this week and I wasn’t reading it that much because I was saving it for my flight today and perhaps any occasion thereon that will require patience in waiting which I am not fond of. Funny I wasn’t reading gaiman’s masterpiece “the sandman” but I fell asleep after reading for only about fifty pages up in the plane. The book is good but I was just too sleepy because I had to pack my things in a rush last night yet still found time for beer past midnight, must have slept for only around 3 hours this morning at bed.

I was planning on finishing some business affairs first thing when I got to manila this morning, but from the time I got a cab from the airport it was only a couple of minutes after eight, and its way too early. So I decided to get myself a room first and hit the sack for maybe an hour and work later, the taxi driver didn’t complain much when I told him to change our route midway from where he was driving to, there wasn’t much traffic on the road anyway. There was some really really big storm that hit manila a week ago and I think it blew every away motorist on the road that traffic today was so open. That storm didn’t like trees too and I saw it did a good job uprooting a lot of trees in open parks, though most of the downed trees are now tilting stumps while the rest of its bark already chopped to pieces, it was like firewood is being sold all over the streets. It figures, the driver told me that the storm screwed electricity all over the city for a couple of days, the storm took down a lot of electric post too, probably mistook them as trees.

I found my turn in cursing this storm when I got to my hotel, I found out that this storm got the hotel’s elevator to stop working. Either the storm was clever enough to screw an elevator from inside out of a building or it was a good excuse to boost tips to room service as they carry your luggage up from the stairs. I’ve stayed in this hotel a couple of times and the reception knows I never asked help from room service, I always carry my own trash to my room, well this time it was damn hard using the stairs.

Halfway to the second floor I crossed the stairs with some old geezer who was slowly making his way down clamping beside the banister, I was looking at how feeble he took each step by step and suddenly adrenaline rushed into me going up the stairs while I heard his thoughts saying:

damn this storm for screwing the elevator, my days are already numbered and it’s eating too much of my little time left going down these stairs