Once a Binibini, Always a Binibini: Aida Margarita Gaerlan - Tomassini

Six months ago, I watched the introduction of the 2024 Binibining Pilipinas (video below) when I noticed a familiar face in a photo they used in the video. I screenshotted that part and scrutinized it. It was Margarita!😆  

                               

Our dear 'Margarita' was Aida Gaerlan, a contestant at the 1964 Binibining Pilipinas, representing Baguio City. That was the first ever Binibining Pilipinas beauty pageant. It was won by Ms. Myrna Panlilio Borromeo. Margarita told me she was named Miss Luzon. 

And thanks to Ms. Irene of the Binibining Pilipinas Charities for sharing with me a digital copy of that year's souvenir memorabilia (above), we have the photographs of the beautiful contestants of 1964.

According to the video, the original coronation night was July 3, 1964, but a very strong Typhoon Dading  caused damages in Manila and Central Luzon that day and pushed the coronation night to July 5, 1964, a Sunday. I highlighted in pink Margarita's photograph below.  

I met Margarita and her husband, Maurizio, here in Seoul, Korea, and were the among the most wonderful, thoughtful and caring couples I have known. With our other dear friends in Seoul, we were one big family! After Maurizio retired in 2010, they went back home to Rome and invited me to visit them. I did and I stayed at their home in the quiet Monte Sacro neighborhood, which was a bus and a tram away from the Vatican City. 

During our parties and get-togethers in Seoul, I was always the one taking photographs, and Margarita was the best in posing! I guess, once a binibini, always a binibini!

Sadly, our dear Margarita passed years ago, but today, December 22, her family and friends remember her on her birthday. 🙏

Happy birthday in Heaven, our dearest Margarita!💗

(Binibining Pilipinas 1964 Miss Luzon - 

Aida Margarita Gaerlan-Tomassini)

#binibiningpilipinas #missphilippines

A Pinoy @ The Movies: CONCLAVE

Being a Catholic, I am always fascinated by what goes on inside the Vatican City. The movie Angels and Demons gave us a glimpse into what transpires when a pope dies, but that movie was about conspiracy and murder. Conclave, on the other hand, is about the politics within the College of Cardinals, a group of the most senior priests in the Roman Catholic Church that will elect a pope among themselves.

Starting with a death of a pope, Conclave brings to life brilliant writing delivered by brilliant actors. The movie runs during sede vacante, Latin for 'the chair is empty. It is the time between the death of a pope and the election of a new one, and the election is called a conclave, which was derived from Latin 'con', meaning with, and 'clavis', meaning, key. Translated, it means 'a locked room' because the cardinals are locked inside the Sistine Chapel until they elect a pope (of course, they get to eat and go back to sleep at their quarters to rest at the end of the day (read blog here).

Ralph Fiennes, as the dean of the College, was more like an investigator than a Comelec commissioner. He had to organize an election that would elect the leader of 1.3 billion Catholics but had to ensure that the one they would elect was the right one. 

Although at first, it was weird watching Stanley Tucci as a cardinal with a zucchetto (red cap) covering his bald head, he transformed himself from Runway Magazine's artistic director (in The Devil Wears Prada) to Cardinal Aldo Bellini, an American cardinal who allied with Ralph Fiennes' character. 

John Lithgow, also playing a cardinal, is as brilliant in drama as he is in comedy (his 3rd Rock from the Sun character gave him three Emmy awards!). When Lithgow shows up on screen, he always makes you feel his presence even in a crowd, or in this case, even if it is a room full of cardinals. When he delivers his lines, he makes you feel he has an agenda, one that you, at times, are not prepared to handle.

The beautiful Isabella Rossellini, playing Sister Agnes, holds her own against the cardinals, even though she is relegated to being a head housekeeper of sorts of Domus Sanctae Marthae, the building that serves as a hotel for cardinals where they were sequestered during the conclave. This building is where Pope Francis now lives, choosing to stay away from the papal apartments.

The scenes of the conclave inside the Sistine Chapel should be a treat for any Catholic who dreams of visiting the Vatican and Saint Peter's Basilica one day. Those scenes brought back memories for me when, years ago, I took the tour of the Musei Vaticani that included a stop inside the Sistine Chapel where I spent an hour looking up the paintings of Michaelangelo and praying the rosary while seated on a bench. That day, I also realized the spot where I sat could have seated a cardinal who eventually became pope (read blog here).

Conclave shows us that, even how virtuous cardinals, bishops, or priests may look from where we stand, they are also men, ㅡ humans ㅡ who are also vulnerable to temptation and greed.

There is a scene shot from above showing the cardinals moving forward and carrying white umbrellas. This was a visual spectacle for the audience: the whole screen, TV screen in my case, filled with moving humans immaculately dressed and covering their heads with umbrellas as if shielding themselves from difficulties and challenges but still walking slowly yet forward to whatever lies ahead. 

You have to watch Conclave to let yourself ponder that the leaders of the Church are imperfect and they try to lead through His teachings, and that, as times change, those who lead do, too, making decisions that are required by the changing times.

There are very good lines delivered in the movie, and words like "Judas" and "traitor" were hurled at a cardinal. But there is one quote that really stood out, one that practically sums up our Church:

"Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand-in-hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery. And therefore no need for faith. Let us pray that God will grand us a Pope who doubts. And let him grant us a Pope who sins and asks for forgiveness and who carries on."

#conclave #conclavemovie #vatican #movies #moviereview #ralphfiennes #stanleytucci #johnlithgow #isabellarossellini

Coming Home for My Mother's Tablea Tsokolate and Popped Pinipig

Like all Filipino migrant workers, I always count the days before I fly home for my Christmas vacation. 

Coming home is always the highlight of my year.

For me, being home in the Philippines is not only a way to escape the freezing temperatures of a gloomy winter in Korea, but also a way to forget work and the challenges of being a migrant worker. And when I am finally home excitedly awaiting the arrival of Christmas Day, my mother always made sure she has tablea tsokolate and evaporated milk on hand so that we would all be able to enjoy the family tradition of enjoying this hot beverage together.

Since we were kids, the family would wake up to a Christmas Day breakfast of my mother’s tablea tsokolate, ensaimadas, and at times, pinipig that I would soak into a warm cup of the tsokolate. Tablea tsokolate is a chocolate beverage made from cacao beans that had been dried under the sun, then roasted and grounded. For measured consumption and easy storage, the grounded beans are molded into tablet form, thus tablea, the Spanish word for ‘tablet’. According to food historians, the cacao beans and the chocolate beverage were introduced to the Philippines from Mexico during the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade that started in 1565 and ended in 1815. Although there are now fewer cacao farmers selling unsweetened tablea tsokolate at local traditional markets here in the Negros Island, commercial manufacturers make it available at supermarkets in sweetened tablets.

My mother has her own way of preparing tablea tsokolate. 

She starts by grinding into powder form all the tablets from a whole pack. Since the tablets are already sweetened, she does not need to add sugar. My mother says grinding them will make it faster for the powdered chocolate to melt. She then pours five 350ml cans of evaporated milk into a sauce pan, mixes in the grounded tablea tsokolate, and stirs the mixture over low heat to make them espeso, the term she uses to describe the mix when it becomes thicker and its aroma starts to waft all over the kitchen – an aroma of the blend of the chocolatiness of the tsokolate and the creaminess of the milk that, when I take a whiff of it, always brings back memories of past Christmases when we used to enjoy this with our grandparents. My mother does not add water to the brew because it would make it aguado or watery.

While espeso is the Spanish word for thick, it is caring hands and patience that are needed when making tablea tsokolate as the slow, continuous stirring could last for about half an hour, depending on the quantity of evaporated milk used. My mother was still very young when she was taught how to make tablea tsokolate by her elders who have long passed, and other than the recipe and the skill, she also inherited the old copper pitcher called chocolatera, and the batirol, the whisk that was made from the wood of a guava tree.

When the hot beverage has finally achieved espeso quality, my mother pours a portion into the chocolatera and uses the batirol to whisk the hot liquid. This procedure not only produces the foam on the drink but also adds a good stir to the tsokolate before it is transferred into a porcelain cup to be enjoyed.

It has been centuries since the first cacao beans crossed the Pacific Ocean from Mexico, and although the Aztecs called it Xocolātl, the original Nahuatl word for chocolate, Filipinos have called it sukwate or sikuwate in the Visayas, sikulate in Mindanao, suklati in Pampanga, and of course, tablea or tabliya in our own Hiligaynon language. And although tablea tsokolate may have a foreign origin, we have made it our own, even pairing it with rice as our elders would simply pour tsokolate over it, or in my case, with pinipig. But be it with rice or pinipig, it is an original Filipino experience.

The popped pinipig, on the other hand, is a much easier task, something that I can probably manage on my own. Pinipig is flattened glutinous rice that was harvested two weeks before maturity. It is then roasted over low fire using a kalahâ or large wok, and then transferred into a wooden mortar called lusong in order to be flattened using a hal-ong or wooden pestle. The chaff is then separated from the pinipig using a winnowing basket or bilao. Pinipig is sold by the kilo, or fractions of it, in traditional markets.

In order to make popped pinipig, my mother brings to a boil the cooking oil in the saucepan and when it does, she throws in a handful of pinipig that quickly pops in the heat. The popped pinipig is immediately scooped out with a strainer to avoid overfrying. And since we only need a bowl of popped pinipig, only a few handfuls were enough. After popping, the pinipig has become crunchier and softer to eat (read blog here).

And as we now sit down together for our Christmas breakfast tradition and are gathered around a table full of blessings, our family is always grateful. To others, the ensaimadas, tablea tsokolate, and popped pinipig may just be another type of bread, hot beverage, and flattened rice, respectively, but for us, they represent the taste and flavors handed down to us by our grandparents and elders, all of whom we continue to remember and honor when we enjoy these ourselves.

Soon, I would leave home again, and how I wish the flavor from each sip of my mother’s warm tablea tsokolate would forever remain in my palate. 

But however long a time I have to endure until my next Christmas vacation, all the anticipation and yearning are always forgotten whenever I am once more surrounded by my family and enjoying my mother’s tablea tsokolate and popped pinipig on Christmas Day.😍

#OFW #migrantworker #tableatsokolate #christmas #christmasholidays #essay #pinoyofw