Categories
GRAMMAR PULIS

You Ask. Grammar Pulis Answers.

You asked:
When do you use “somebody” and “someone”? How about “everybody” and “everyone”?

Grammar Pulis answered:
To make sure I give you the right answer, I consulted 3 sources:

Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B.White
Usage & Abusage by Eric Partridge for Penguin Reference Books
Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary

All of them agree that:
somebody is synonymous with someone;
everybody, with everyone;
anybody, with anyone;
and nobody, with no one.

Somebody and someone both mean “some person of unspecified or indefinite identity.”
Everybody and everyone both mean “every person.”
Anybody and anyone mean “any person.”
Nobody and no one mean “no person.”

Take note that except for no one, all are spelled as one word. There are instances when you have to spell these in two words: some body, every body, any body, no body. That is when the word body means a corpse, a human form, or a group.

Let’s try out some sentences:

Somebody/ someone/some person has to bring a body to class.
Some body will be used for the anatomy class.

Everybody/ everyone/ every person will eventually die.
Every body in the morgue has been embalmed.

Anybody/ any one/ any person can replace our bikini ad model.
Any body of water would do for the beach scene backdrop.

Nobody/ no one/ no person claimed the confiscated car.
No body was found in the trunk.

Somebody may also mean “a person of position or importance” as in:
He thinks he is a somebody just because he’s been promoted.
Nobody means “a person of no influence or consequence” as in:
She only dates nobodies to have a sense of superiority over her men.

I hope this was helpful to you. Keep on asking your questions, and I will do my best to answer.

Categories
NO RHYME

Shift Key

Clustering the jumble of my thoughts

Long held captive

In a heart afraid to tell

By a mind too judgmental

Of the writer who just was not good enough

Feeling the shift

In my head

In my gut

Through my pen

Moving, sliding, traveling in circles

Along the once blank paper

Finding myself

Hesitantly, tentatively

Then courageously

Extricating what’s hidden

Exposing what is forbidden

And the words spill out

My mind speaks up

My heart gushes

And there on paper is me

Categories
NO RHYME

In Sonya’s Garden

by Gege Sugue

(Or maybe I should call this: The Unbearable Lightness of Doing Nothing)


Finding myself

In this garden wonderland

Where the smells and sights

Flavors and textures accost the senses

Leaving me breathless

Yet filled with life

The scent of tarragon

Of eucalyptus, mint and basil

Invading, tickling my nostrils

Relaxing my mind

Once strained and stressed

Oceans of green

Refreshing my eyes

Bursts of purples and pinks

Of yellows, blues, and crimson

Awakening my spirit

Against the pitch dark night

The dancing, flickering white of flirting fireflies

Arousing wonder

Giving delight

The chirping of cicadas

The croaks of frogs

The distant mooing of the cows

Amusing my soul

Teaching me that music

Need not come out of an electronic box

And my tone deaf ears

Do not mean the song within me

Cannot be sung

At Sonya’s dining room

I cleansed my palate

Off the city’s fast food junk and gunk

And my tongue discovered

Feasts of flavors

Of fresh herbs and organic leaves

Of virgin oils and buttery bread

Of slow cooked dishes

Of meats of animals free to roam the range

Of food that comfort

And also surprise

With twists and secret recipes

I discovered the novel experience

Of plucking leaves from the plant

Instantly popping them into my mouth

I discovered flowers that looked good

And tasted even better

I discovered a unique and splendid use for mint

That has forever changed my reaction to yams

At Sonya’s Garden I tasted

I savored a million wonderful healthy flavors

I found myself in Sonya’s Garden

In slow, solitary walks

The space around me

Bathed in the deep dark blue of dusk

I floated along meandering paths

Of bricks and dust

Strewn with muted lights

Diffused by color stained glass

The lightness of my steps

The stillness that soothed frayed nerves

The silence embracing me

All these hushing my noisy mind

Illuminating the yearnings of my heart

The way the sunlight spilled

Into the room told me

I was no longer in that urban jungle called home.

Instead, I was a visitor in a jungle I couldn’t call mine

Where a bug on the dining table

And a caterpillar on my chest

Which in the city would bring about manic screams

But in here seemed natural

Something to giggle about

I was, after all, the one invading these insects’ territory

And I discovered that home need not be in just one place

Finding myself

Doing nothing

Yet learning

And growing

Resting without guilt

Slowing down

Yes, I had time to smell the roses

And arrange them

I discovered, awakened creativity long lay latent

Finding myself

Munching English tea sandwiches

Sipping rosebud tea

Engaging in useless banter

Talking without agenda

Discovering that the art of conversation

Can sometimes be in not having one at all

Finding myself ensconced in my gorgeous brass bed

Draped in crisp, white linen

Reading Borges and Sartre

When my brain felt like mush

After an hour of sheer ecstasy

As Joy, my masseuse, kneaded my muscles

Unknotting knots

Destressing the stress

Of a body battered by the business of daily living

Discovering I can sleep before midnight

Finding peace and bliss in a pillow scented with ylang-ylang

I found myself in Sonya’s Garden

Showering in the wild

With nature as my curtain

Invisible, imagined voyeurs forgotten

I found within me

The courage to bare

In Sonya’s Garden

There were no keyboards to pound

And I found myself writing

The old fashioned way

Right brain dominating

Taking over left brain’s control

Murano pen scribbling and drawing

Leaving a trail of ink

Scented jasmine

Across the paper’s surface

And I discovered that writing

Need not be a painful practice

Of squeezing thoughts and smithing words

That I can write from the gut

And have the courage to bare my soul

I found myself in Sonya’s Garden

In this garden wonderland I had a glimpse

A vision of what I want to be

In the frenzy of doing nothing

I experienced a sampler of the life I want to live

In the dry, lifeless silence of the couples in the dining room

I saw the life of the marriage I did not want

As I missed the people not here

I learned what and whom I value

I found myself in Sonya’s garden

I am that caterpillar

Precariously balancing on the edge of the leaf

Imperfect outside

The beauty inside ready to burst forth

Plodding through life

Knowing something great is about to happen

Not quite sure what

Just knowing it’s going to be beautiful

I’m going to come out of my cocoon

Soon

Flying

Celebrating myself

Celebrating my discoveries

Celebrating the journey I’ve had

And the journey ahead

I found myself in Sonya’s garden

And I liked what I discovered

Categories
ISLANDHOPPER

A Rest From the Moving,

I have been busy transferring reviews from my multiply site. And now, I just want to rest a bit and say something from the present.

A blog visitor led me to the sites of scrapbookers here at blogspot and elsewhere. And I was amazed at the talent of Pinay scrapbookers. That was something I tried to get into many years ago. Bought the books and scissors and bag, the whole shebang, but so far I’ve produced very little. The only time I get to complete a project is when it has to be used for a special event and usually the thing goes to somebody else, which means I have nothing to show for it.

My top 3 excuses:
– No working space
– No time
– Expensive photo printing costs

Real reasons:
– Procrastination
– Laziness
– Fear of the mess
– Fear of coming up with ugly stuff
– Expensive photo printing costs

But the creative journaling workshop got me in the mood. And that may be a slow start to eventually get into something bigger like scrapbooking. I need to conquer my fears too. And I will. And I need to solve my procrastination habit. I will. Tomorrow.

Categories
GRAMMAR PULIS

Forget About the Passed

In the last post, we talked about the past tense. Here are some sentences that I spotted in email exchanges among business colleagues.

A few years ago, I am responsible for our corporate responsibility projects.
I was task by my boss to coordinate all the activities.
We meet in a conference a few years ago.

These sentences are better written as:

A few years ago, I was responsible for our corporate responsibility projects.
I was tasked by my boss to coordinate all the activities.
We met in a conference a few years ago.

What is worse, however, is when words are converted to past tense when they should not be as in:

Your support will helped me realized my dream.
Let me asked the store manager a couple of questions.
I usually gave generous tips to waiters who served me well.

The first sentence refers to a future event. The clue is the word “will.” This should then be written as: Your support will help me realize my dream.

The second sentence is asking permission to ask questions. Thus, this is also considered a future event. It would be better to say: “Let me ask you a couple of questions.”

The third sentence describes a habitual action, and should then be expressed in the present tense: “I usually give generous tips to waiters who serve me well.

Here are more common mistakes:

I did not recalled anything about the last Christmas party.
Did Mr. Roxas cancelled his order?
Yes, he did cancelled it at the last minute.

Can you tell what’s wrong with these sentences?

Whenever you use the auxiliary verb do or did, the following main verb should be in neutral form. In all these sentences, the word did carry the tense so the past tense has shifted from the verbs recall and cancel. Thus, these sentences should read:

I did not recall anything about the last Christmas party.
Did Mr. Roxas cancel his order?
Yes, he did cancel it at the last minute.

There you have it. It is important to use the past tense when talking about events in the past. Normally, you add an –ed to the verb. But there are irregular verbs to consider as well. It is also important when to leave the –ed home.

Sources:
Understanding English Grammar by Martha Kolln
English for Business by Charles Chandler Parkhurst

Categories
ISLANDHOPPER

Dayrit’s

Maga Center, Paseo de Magallanes and Fort

We enter a crowded resto. We sit on the no-nonsense chairs, more comfortable than aesthetic, around an old skool formicaesque table. We almost do not have to look at the menu, as our orders will be the no-brainer, “the usual.” For me, it is binagoongang liempo. For my husband, the crispy beef ribs. We add a tall glass of maiz con hielo that reminds me of summers when my mom would hoard cans of creme style corn and our yayas would work out their bicep muscles churning crushed ice on demand. All time favorites. No surprises. No nouveau twists. No pretensions. In an ambiance that does not require prettying up. Just food that tells you that there are places you can run to when you want the world to be familiar, simple, and real.

Now, THAT is comfort food!

Categories
ISLANDHOPPER

Basilio’s

Unit 1512 Forbeswood Heights, Rizal Drive corner Burgos Circle, Fort Bonifacio Global City, Taguig

If your restaurant or culinary repertoire has no clear, cohesive concept, do not be tempted to label it as comfort food. You will just give yourself a standard that will be too difficult to meet. You’re setting yourself up for failure if you take on the responsibility to relax frazzled nerves, mend broken psyches, and warm up cold hearts. Your adobo has to taste exactly like how Lola Pacing or Yaya Sabel cooked it. And you better have blizzard-consistency champorado with a can of Alaska evaporated milk by the side so I can use the milk to write my name on the porridge.

From the outside, in the dining spaces done in posh but generic zen, to the ultra uncomfortable chairs, there is nothing about Basilio’s that says, Come to mama and have some comfort food. What clues you in on the all-too-subtle concept is the 500-page essay on the menu that describes comfort food as “not fusion,” no pretensions, but with just a little twist from the usual. Okay, that confuses, not comforts me.

Then you look at the dishes on the list and you think, these look like fusion, but you’re not sure exactly what categories and cultures are being fused.

So anyway, never mind the concept. Let’s just eat.

I like the bite size foccacia bread. The butter was delicious, reminding me of a Geneva breakfast where I tasted the freshest, best butter I’ve ever had. My husband shattered the mystery and delusions of exotic when he pointed out one of the butter packets marked by a price sticker from Price Mart.

Then, appetizers. Always searching the best buffalo wings in the metro, we ordered the wings. (Sorry, I didn’t take notes so I won’t be using the official menu names.) Don’t believe the menu photo; the real servings are more generous. It was underwhelmingly okay. Not bad. Mildly spicy. Effective in staving hunger pangs as we waited for our friend to arrive. The blue cheese dressing was in portion controlled quantity though, but you can always request for more.

I ordered what the waiter referred to as the bestseller – the beef and mushroom pot pie. Imagining that a comfort food rendition of this dish would have thick, gooey, creamy beef stew inside. And the dish comes and it looks fabulous, with the pastry top crust nicely puffed up ala souffle. The fun ends there because inside, the sauce was rather sad and thin – imagine a can of Campbell soup diluted with 3 cans of water. The best thing going for it was it was steaming hot, leaving a burn that numbed my tongue for 3 days. Generous on the mushroom, which I loved, but hello, where’s the beef? Isn’t it that the rule of first mention is that in a dish called beef and mushroom, there should be more beef than mushroom? Okay, I made up that rule, but the price seemed to warrant more cow carcass than fungi, no matter how good tasthing the fungus variety is.

My friend’s 50 or was it 30-clove garlic chicken is comfortingly tasty, but it was just a couple of notches above SM’s rotisserie chicken. Okay, 3 notches. At twice the price.

My husband’s comfort food was fish and chips. Not very memorable, except that it was too oily.

I hesitated to order the macaroni and cheese, another bestseller, because I just had baked mac at a workshop catered by the BSP canteen, and I would hate it if the cafeteria edition is better than this 300+peso version. But I couldn’t resist so we ordered it, center served it, and shared it among the 3 of us. Now, that was good macaroni and cheese. Most mac & cheese versions use fake cheese of the quickmelt family, but this had sharp cheddar and it was several notches above the cafeteria variety. No regrets ordering this.

The saving grace of the meal was the dessert. The molten chocolate cake was exquisite – dark and just the right balance of sweet and bitter. Delish!

All in all, not a bad meal. None of the dishes were awful, with the molten chocolate cake and the mac & cheese as winners. But any little comfort derived from the food was immediately wiped out by the bill — when we subtract the price of the bottle of merlot, there was still more than 2 grand to settle among the 3 of us. Gosh, I needed comforting after that.

Categories
ISLANDHOPPER

Abe’s

Serendra

I thought I would never get to eat at Abe’s. For some reason, every attempt to eat there has always been thwarted by uncontrollable circumstances, by difficulty to reserve, or by being outvoted for other resto choices.

What rice shortage? Abe lets you forget about the food crisis as servers go around with pretty native wicker baskets lined with banana leaves as they serve all you can eat rice for everyone. The height of summer noon, however, is not the most conducive for carbo-loading. What is perfect for a hot, steamy day is the lato salad in a light vinaigrette topped with salted egg. Perfectly refreshing. The squid tactics is just as scrumptious as I remember it back in the Bistro Lorenzo days. Tender squid in a light batter sprinkled with a spicy sweet sauce. The crispy tadyang is good, but nothing we could not replicate at home.

It took all these months, or years, for me to finally check out one of Serendra’s more popular restaurant. Pretty good food. I really wanted to give it a 3.5 stars, but the lato salad helped me round it up to a 4.

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ISLANDHOPPER

Reyes Barbecue

I almost dismissed this ubiquitous restaurant because I thought it was owned by the same people who ran the just as ubiquitous Reyes beauty parlors of 35 peso haircut fame. It was a good thing that my friend, Raymund, corrected my silly impression and invited me to lunch there. I’ve been back many times since.

Franchisers, it seems, have the liberty not to offer the full menu. The King’s Court branch did not have the butterscotch banana, and The Fort’s did not serve the salmon belly because the owner found it too fatty. Both of these dishes are good. The banana dessert may taste almost like the ordinary banana cue, but if you close your eyes and focus your energies on your tastebuds, you will sense the hint of butterscotch and a somewhat creme bruleeish quality to it. The Julia Vargas branch carries the whole range, and even offers you the option of slowly baking inside their lukewarm air-conditioned area, or being grilled in their inuman semi-open air section.

Of course, all the branches have to serve the pork and chicken barbecue, served with peanut sauce, java rice, and achara. If that sounds and tastes to you strangely like Aristocrat’s, that’s because the Reyeses aristocracy rules this resto chain. Good, lip-smacking barbecue, even if you skip like I do the condiments. Other satisfying choices are the tuna belly and the grilled squid, albeit it being smallish.

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ISLANDHOPPER

Zao

Serendra

In the location, location, location slogan for resto success, Zao hit the jackpot being beside Conti’s since it is the most convenient detour for Conti’s spillover.

I do believe, however, that it can stand on its own merits.

It was 9PM and our last meal was many hours ago, so my brain and my stomach were too hungry to wade through the menu. So in typical Icebreaker thick-faced fashion, I just asked the people on the table beside us what was good to eat. And they highly recommended the short ribs and the spring rolls. Thank you, people on other table, we had a good meal.

The seafood spring roll is the best item among our orders. Mainly because it was the only one that vaguely reminded me of Vietnamese cuisine. My bro in law said it tasted like fresh Oishi prawn crackers, but he means that in a good way. If you run out of leaves for rolling, the waiter will gladly refill.

The ribs were succulent, good to the bone, juicy, fight-for-the last piece goodness with that lovely carcinogenic charcoal flavor. But there was nothing that suggested Vietnamese gustatory delight about it. Nothing that my husband, the backyard grill king, cannot do.

If squids would ever become endangered, my sister would be one of the prime culprits. So, we had to order the calamari-type dish. At best, it was okay.

And of course, I had to have cafe da – cold Vietnamese drip coffee with condensed milk. Yum!

So, if you’re looking for Vietnam in a bowl, Hanoi in a plate, Saigon this is probably not the best place to go. But if you’re looking for flavorful, filling meal, friendly service, with a not-too-pricey bill, when you’re famished and Conti’s is full, or even when it’s not, come to Zao’s.