My new favorite commercial:

Opening scene: A long table, filled with many family members, some cooking, some setting places, all clearly enjoying themselves. The audience notices that every single food on the table is fried. Fried fish, squid, pig, moose, rat, beetle, goat, blood, ad nauseum.

Second scene: A daughter, home from abroad, gives her mother a hug and proceeds to open a huge jar of beautiful, glistening, gelatinous Lady’s Choice mayonnaise! Mother dips a chubby brown finger deep in the jar and inserts a dollop of mayo onto her tongue, leaving a little drop for the erstwhile daughter to clean up.

Third scene: Everyone in the family grabs the various fried foods, dipping them into huge bowls of mayonnaise, and chomping away to heart attack city. Much laughter and dripping mayo from various family member chins.

Forth scene: A mother/daughter/father hug while daughter dips a fried chicken leg into a bowl of mayonnaise, proceeding to take a large bite. Everyone laughs and seems beyond happy.

Closing frame: Giant jar of Lady’s Choice Mayo, the words “It’s Friedelicious!” writ large under the jar.

Dear God. I love this country.

Dinner for New Year’s Eve: Chicken Cacciatore and…rice. While people are eager, pushy even, for you to try the local style of cooking (regardless of how often you’ve “tried” them) they are quite reluctant to return the favor. In the end my rendition of the dish was deemed edible, if not salty enough (as there was no MSG present). After dinner, for a treat, we ate pig fat (wat wat) and fried chicken blood and intestines (dinadaraan); these were salty enough.

As the countdown began and reports of lost fingers and shattered ears came in, the air above Bayombong proper exploded with fireworks. The main purpose of Philippine fireworks is to make as much noise as possible; even from 1.5 km away voices needed to be raised to be heard above the din. Via T.V. we watched the Sexbomb dancers perform their tired routines to an unimpressed Roxas Boulevard crowd, ate some fried noodles, and called it a year.

For a moment there I sensed the passing of time as though standing at the edge of an unfathomable depth, and then it too passed. The experience reminded me that while Christmas and New Year’s celebrations may positively focus our energies inwardly and toward one another, to relegate such thought to “special” times is a mistake, or at least misguided. We are every moment presented with opportunities for kindness, compassion, improvement, resolution – and then they pass, making room for the next such moment. Grand and sweeping changes such as those professed, and perhaps intended, in the archetypical New Year’s resolutions are at times appropriate and desirable. But they should not be adopted to exclude, nor replace, the small and myriad ways by which we become better people each day. If we can manage to remember the smallness, the opportunity, of each moment the cumulative effect makes the year brighter.

As such, rather than wishing you the best in the coming year, here’s to the best in each day. Live it up.