HOW TO WASH YOUR DIRTY LAUNDRY

Well… well… well… there you are my happy, guilty, very opinionated and gossipy audience and expectators of mine. I know everyone is expecting me to say something about the weather lately… well its very humid, sweatfullness and uncertain… that is why I opted not to say something about the sun and moon I might get misunderstood again. I think I just have to write it in allegory if you know what I mean.

We are all stars according to Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess from STARDUST. And you know what stars do? They SHINE… yeah they shine most when things are dark and vague… they shed light to things that are confusing and uncertain… they shed light to the real issues and things that make everyone’s world bleak and gloomy… When people starts to be honest with themselves, and stop covering up the issues they made, when people stop blaming other people of their mistakes and be responsible for their actions then the world would be a better place to live in… When people starts to accept that they screw up and take charge of everything then in the end one will SHINE… Life is a constant checking of oneself if we already grow-up… nobody said it was easy but we have that intuition in our hearts if we did something wrong or right… and so far you will know you did something wrong when you feel a bad aftertaste with everything you did… but me I don’t feel any bad aftertaste because I know I did something right… my only mistake is that I’m caught in the spotlight… spotlight that is not meant for me…

After all what’s been said and done the past week, in the end it always comes back to the beginning and the real issues… I don’t want to say anything about these anymore because am just the best supporting actress… let the main characters show their part now… The main characters should be the one on the spotlight more than those whom you thought are just mere extra but in the end they steal the show... But moving on with life... what’s more beautiful now is that everyone learns a lesson or two in their part, and I saw who really are the stars that is worth looking up to…

Anyway our topic for today is how to wash your laundry. (I’m speaking in allegorical mode now) LAUNDRY IS LIKE LIFE, It might be a daunting task and sometimes messy that is why washing machine is invented. Our laundries always consist of clothes we like to wear but don’t want to wear because it’s dirty and smelly already so we dumped it in our laundry bin. Dumped… dumped… dumped… out of sight… out of mind… but it always comes back to us when we need it because its our favorite… we feel bad when our favorite white shirt is stained, we even get to great lengths, mountains and valleys just to get rid of that stain… and when its free of stain it doesn’t feel the same anymore because you know what happened before… and you start to take care that you don’t stain your white shirt anymore… you get it right little dummies… hay… buhay parang labada… Anyway here we go get your pen and paper and copy everything from the board…

How to wash your dirty laundry

This is only for those who wash their clothes in washing machine without dryer.

Check… Check everything that is in your laundry bin. from socks to gowns, to underwear and caps; the reason here is to make you calculate how much of soap powder you need or if the weather is good enough to hang clothes, or which one should be hand- washed.

Separate… Separate all the dark colored from the colored shirts and clothes; The jeans from the slacks and shorts , The smelly white from the heavily soiled white shirts… also separate the domestic fabrics and clothes like the bedsheets and curtains… and lastly separate the ones that are delicate and need to be hand-washed. Undies should be hand-washed and sock should be separated from everything as our feet tend to catch more bacteria than the ones we wear on top. (see I told you laundry is like life… complicated?)

Wash… Wash first the smelly white and follow the instructions from the washing machine or from the packaging of your soap powder. The purpose here is you can still recycle the soapy water for heavy fabrics like jeans and washable bags. After the smelly white take it out and had it drained in the drainer. Add some more water from the previous setting and add a little soap… here you can wash the heavy fabrics or even the curtains then after these cycle had it drained in the drainer. Drain the now dirty water and put another clean water and powder to clean the heavily soiled white, you can add bleach if you want… drain... then do the same procedure for the colored shirts… from these point you can’t recycle the water anymore.

Rinse… after you’re through with the all laundry… then its time to rinse… rinse everything in the order as you wash them and you’ll never go wrong… if you want you can add fabric softener to everything.

Hang… if you don’t have a dryer then hang everything under the sun. Hang the whites under direct sunlight together with the heavy fabrics and hang the colored ones not directly under the sun. The reason for these is that the colored fabrics easily fade under the sun but be sure that it has enough air to let your clothes breathe as fabric tends to smell if not dried well.

Hand-washing… In hand-washing soak all those delicate things in a soapy water before you hand-wash them. But wash it in the manner as you wash normal laundry… separate everything especially that it is delicate… and follow the instructions in the tag labels that is sewn in those things.

Well… well… well… there you go my little dummies… now go around and let those clean clothes be soiled again… Sometimes it is nice to go down from the pedestal and let your feet feel the earth and its wonderful to see the hemline of your gown dirty…

Okay everyone say… SUPERNOVA ….. villa!!!

HOW TO TASTE COFFEE WITH YOUR NEIGHBOR'S DRIVER

Well… well… well… there you are my little pupils and students. Last Saturday I woke up very early like 6:00 am, I usually wake up at 7:00 or 7:25 am yeah and that’s accurate. I was so very happy to find a bag of Doi tung coffee in my fridge and wondered how I got it, then I remember that’s it’s a gift from my friend who went to Thailand’s highland --- Doi tung last week. So I had it brewed with my expensive coffee maker which I called “Marla”… Nothing… it just that I talk to it whenever I brew my coffee and it always mumbles when the water boils.

I live in a three storey building in San Tour Mok area of Phnom Penh, and I love my neighborhood its very quite. I love the fact that my place is far away from the city’s center it makes me more disciplined, you know… in terms of rampa. The people that lives in that building are very fabulous, in the 3rd floor a gay friend of mine lives --- Mr. Gush, and of course my floor where a diva resides, then the first floor where an Indian doctor whose preference is unclear lives and to top it all on the ground floor it’s a bunk house of mormon missionaries… so just imagine me shaswaying my way in the middle of those mormons with their bikes in the morning… but what makes it interesting is that the Indian doctor’s driver is quite badampamp!!! Oi… oi… oi…

So I took my coffee in the terrace and I almost choke not with the hotness of my coffee but because of the neighbor’s driver is washing the car wearing only a Kroma ( it’s a thin scarf cotton cloth Khmer people used as towel and for everything ) And hmmmm…. His skin is like dark coffee, His abs is like cinnamon roll… his arms and muscle is like the Ethiopian desert dunes, his legs is like two French bread and that thing in the middle of his legs well its looks look like a larger French bread…. Hmmmm… and the water makes him glistens like a toffee éclair…god I’m so soooo lonely… so lonely… out of loneliness I started to sip my coffee and say ahhhhhh… I love coffee and dui tong coffee is very good.

So I veered away from the terrace and started to fumble on my bookshelves and found a book about coffee which I also forgot where I got it. Well anyway… I always wonder why a lot of people goes to coffeeshops especially Starbucks, Does they really know about coffee or Do they really know where it stared or do they really know how to taste coffee…

Well before I begin teaching you we should know the history of coffee. The history of coffee begins with a legend. The legend begins in c850 Ethiopia with a goat herder named Kaldi. The legend says that Kaldi was watching his goats as usual when he noticed they were acting strange, dashing around the fields and seeming “friskier”and they look like on drugs. This behavior went on for some time. Kaldi began to speculate that it might be something they had eaten, so he followed them. Kaldi noticed that the goats had eaten some red berries from a shrub. He ate them himself and was soon frolicking with the goats like on drugs also. After this part of the story, the legend has some variation. Either: Kaldi reported his findings to a local monk who ate the beans, or a monk walked by and saw Kaldi with the goats. The monk then took some of the berries to show to his brothers. They all ate the beans and found divine inspiration in short nagiging bangag sila… And there coffee was born…

But in real history it was the Arabs who really cultivated the coffee which they found in the Ethiopian wilderness and started to grow on their land as the coffee shrub is perfect for the Arabian climate..

While there are several different coffee species, two main species TWO not once are cultivated today. Coffea arabica, known as Arabica coffee and Coffea canephora, known as Robusta coffee, Robusta coffee beans are more robust that is why its called Robusta Coffee then the Arabica plants because it was first cultivated in Arabian hills. Charing… hehehehe…

In the past blog I taught all of you my little dummies the art of wine tasting, coffee-tasting doesn’t much differ with wine tasting. CUPPING is the term called for the art of coffee tasting. ( Not the cupping you little devels know… its not the totoy, dede or the breast cupping we know ) Coffee beans have up to 800 flavor characteristics that our senses can detect. Red wine, by comparison, only has 400. Most coffee connoisseurs prefer mild roasts because the longer a coffee bean is roasted the more characteristics that are burned off.

Okay now here I will tell you…

How to taste coffee ( with your neigbor’s driver if you ever had a neighbor with a driver )

Choose the beans that you want to taste.

Take a quarter ounce of coarse ground roasted coffee.

Heat 5 ounces of water to just below the boiling point.

Pour the water over the coffee in a circular motion.

Dip a spoon into the cup (with your nose close to the cup) so that it breaks the top layer where the grounded coffee floated to the top.

Take approximately half a spoonful of the liquid from the cup.

Quaff it with a loud slurping noise ( Imumog mo ). The noise is made so that you can mix the liquid with the air, spraying it directly over your tongue.

Savor, swish once, and spit the liquid out. By these time your tongue should be able to discriminate among the many subtle flavors of coffee. Different parts of the tongue detect different flavors. The back of the tongue discerns the bitterness. The sides of the tongue discern the staleness. The tip of the tongue discerns specific flavors.

Here are the particular term when tasting a coffee.

Aroma: the smell of the coffee.
Fragrance: the smell of the coffee grinds.
Body: the way the coffee feels in your mouth. This is the feeling of weight and texture.
Rich: the coffee has more than body and aroma. The coffee is buttery and satisfying
Mellow: the coffee has a fully-developed body; not harsh.
Acidity: The verve (for lack of a better word) of the coffee. Arabica beans are famous for having this characteristic.

Note: Acidity is a highly desirable characteristic in coffee. Water that is used in brewing can affect it. If alkaline water is used to brew coffee, it will counter the acidity in the coffee. Purified or filtered water is recommended to get the best and truest taste from coffee.

Okay there you go my little social climbers who frequent Starbucks and doesn’t know anything about what they’re drinking. These is very good for those who would just order one ounce of coffee and have it refill the whole day… Hmppp… tsurang mga bakla …

Heneway thanks to Mr. Graham Bella me Mucho ( he does’nt want to be mention, his dog just died, he’s grieving ) for the very good teaching he taught me. Now I can’t sleep because of tasting coffee… I love robusta better….