valentine's weekend
Written on a cloudy Tuesday afternoon after the third weekend of the month of February, in the year 2025, somewhere in Manila.
Me and r put off going to a fine dining restaurant1 until this upcoming week. We opted not to go out on Friday The 14th because we anticipated the rush and volume of people in the malls and restaurants would be something akin to a valentine armageddon.
Thursday night, I took the ride out the city and attended my tita’s 60th birthday celebration. The night was alright and the food was good as always. I had sotanghon guisado. I said hello to everybody in my family and they caught me up with recent happenings back home. It was still a weekday and some of my cousins were surprised I could make it, but I’m very glad I showed up even if I had to travel back to the city again tomorrow.
Come morning, I woke up early and went back to the office to pick up my laptop. I didn’t have to work at the office that day, so I also got the matcha Kit-Kats I bought for r then headed to the flower shop. On my first bus, I kept thinking about my plan on how I’ll go about my clandestine errands because all she knew was that I’ll be dropping by the office then head home to the apartment right after. It was such a relief I was early and arrived at the city just before the morning rush hour.
Apparently, I was not early enough for flowers-buying time, and so many people had been there with me trying to pick out their arrangements and preferred colored papers and additional bouquet fixtures. I’ve honestly never bought r flowers on the 14th exactly, so this was a relatively new experience of me being among lovers with complete disregard of how the flowers are priced on that day. I remembered that this is something I looked forward to doing before having a job. So I had a big fat smile on my face when I came home that morning, the years just collapsing in on itself and I was sixteen again, giving flowers to the girl I like. I don’t know how to explain simultaneously feeling like nothing and everything had changed between us. It didn’t even have to be Valentine's day. It could be any day of the year.
We spent the next several hours working until dinner. r discovered a hole in the wall comfort food restaurant near our apartment so we went over there to order chicken tenders, baked mac with chicken and fries, then chicken with fries. It felt like being in an oven while we waited for our order but the food and portion sizes were great. The chicken had a spicy kick to it as well as their original sauce. I enjoyed it despite not being a fan of spicy food2.
Saturday came and I paid my sleep debt off. We didn’t have much to do then and just got coffee (for me) and a matcha tea latte (for r) after dinner at this new food court near our place. I got a loyalty card since it was my first purchase and the barista said, “thank you, see you tomorrow!”, and I thought this was the kind of marketing that would work on me.
(I didn’t actually go the next day because I am trying to be conscious of my sugar intake. I really like my coffee with sweet condensed milk.)
Sunday was a cooking day (!!) I titled this valentine’s weekend because I still had some plans on surprising r and getting all her favorites for her. It might as well be a valentine’s year at how I've been keeping this streak of doing nice things for her.
It didn’t even have to be Valentine's day.
It could be any day of the year.
So I went to the market with plans to cook sinigang na bangus at hipon (sinigang with milkfish and shrimp). I bought my veggies, picked a good size of fish and shrimp, which I didn’t buy a lot because I’m mildly allergic and could not eat its meat. Historically, for some reason, I could still eat sinigang/drink its broth even if it has shrimp. r loves shrimp, though, and I wanted it to be a surprise but she invaded the kitchen prematurely.
I learned by watching my mom years ago how to clean the shrimp by cutting out some parts then getting the vein thingy out from Youtube. But I have never cooked shrimp in my life so I may have overdone it, so when I was finished and we had lunch, I asked r maybe a million times if she liked the food or if it was good. For a million times, she reassured me it was and now that I thought of it, I didn’t actually know what I was expecting just asking and asking if she liked it then not believing her answer when she, in fact, did like it and it was good. I may just have trust issues when it comes to getting feedback on my cooking but I believe this is warranted because I could not actually eat the shrimp... and it still was my first time cooking this dish with fish and the second time cooking sinigang on my own. In the end, I felt pretty proud of myself.
The rest of Sunday was quiet. I played chess and r worked on a project until after dinner. I found it strangely endearing she had a tape measure on her desk. I’ve noticed it before but it has never been a topic of conversation, I just know she uses it for drafting work. I realized it made perfect sense because you can never know how truly long a meter is until you pull the tape measure. This is just something that left me in awe, considering the stark difference in our work, where I could probably have every answer I could ever need on the Internet but not the answer to how long a meter is from where I am exactly. My thoughts wander about how our choices of industry both concern highly technical stuff with so many rules and protocols but they converge on user experience. So when it comes to anticipating human behavior, it’s not that different after all. Or maybe I'm just saying things now. Nevertheless, I got curious and r indulged me with a game of guess-how-long-this-measurement-is on the tape measure.
This concludes my valentine’s weekend <3 I didn’t mean for it to get this long... It is always easier to write when it’s about things that (just) happened and woah, I did it. This is the second post about my #weekends. I can’t make promises but the probability for a third installment is high.
Thanks everyone for coming and reading my posts ^^
18 Feb, 2025
We're not actually going to a fine dining restaurant this week. It's actually a steak restaurant we've been wanting to go to since last year. I had to say this because this was the meme r referenced to two weeks ago I mentioned here. I don't know if there's any use to linking it but. I could never hear the words fine dining restaurant in a serious way ever again...↩
I used to avoid spicy food all the time. r loves spicy food, though, and when I told her I liked the sauce, she claims that I've been “learning”.↩