My Tinola

I dragged myself out of bed with the intention of going to the gym and working out. It's been a month since I last visited the gym and I didn't want my membership card to go to waste. I have my whole day planned. In fact, I even made a list last night. 1. work out. 2. LongShou Market to have my DVD player fixed. It's supposed to have a one-year warranty but then again, this is China so I'm hoping that that's true. 3. Since I'll be in LongShou Market, which is something like Divisoria's 168, I might as well look around at the interesting things they have for sale. 4. check out the phones Joyce was asking me about. 5. buy bluetooth, again an errand from Joyce. 6. hang out at Karen Coffee and do some writing.

I called up Wendy to see what time she could go to LongShou with me. I do not know how to say "warranty" in Chinese and I figured I should have someone Chinese beside me when I go to the store where I bought the player from. Her mom picked up the phone and since they sound the same, I started talking to her in English. I thought it was Wendy! Of course she didn't understand a word. It turned out that Wendy left her phone at home. And because this was totally unexpected, I panicked and all my Chinese flew out the window. Thankfully, she realized who I was and perhaps thinking how futile it was to have a conversation with me, she hung up in midsentence. 

Fifteen minutes later, Wendy called. I was all dressed up ready to leave the house when she told me that LongShou is closed because of the holiday. Wow, when they said that Spring Festival is big, I didn't realize it was this big. Shops are closed for days! So basically, everything's closed except for XingLong, the biggest and newest department store in TieLing. I suppose I could do some grocery shopping at XingLong. I hadn't left the house for days and I was beginning to run out of food too. But then I remembered I still haven't cooked my tinola. It was the perfect time to do it.

Let it be put on record that I had never cooked tinola in all my life. I was/am terrified of actually cooking anything because I'd always been afraid that I'd just be wasting the food if it turned out inedible. But I had to conquer my fear sometime so I got all the ingredients out of the ref and started chopping garlic, ginger and onions. Should there be onions in tinola?

I swear to god, my tinola turned out great! It tasted like tinola! Even without papaya! It did not start out promising. As I was looking at all the ingredients swimming around the pot, I must admit it did not look like tinola at all.  It just looked like, well, a mess all swirling about. I was actually ready to stop referring to it as tinola. I was thinking of a new name to call it, something less assuming. Something like, um, chicken soup. So I let it boil and boil and boil, until it actually started smelling like tinola. There was hope! It was time for the taste test. Something was missing. No patis! Uh oh, there was absolutely no way I could find patis in China so I put salt and tasted it again. Better. More salt. Just a tiny bit more until yes, it finally was tinola. I could not believe I was actually successful! Of course I will have to cook hundreds of tinolas more to rival Akoh's tinola, but hey, there is still hope for me! I can cook!!!

And as most of you know, after a good meal I have to go to the bathroom. My digestive system is very efficient. I promise to post pictures. Not of the digested tinola, of course. I am so gross! Hahahaha!