The Woman Who Had Two Kidneys

I'm so glad I struck up a conversation on the metro (MRT) with a woman who was reading the novel I'm now reading. I was on the MRT EDSA line going from Makati to Quezon City to teach my weekly pair of classes at the studio there, it was crowded as usual and I was standing holding the rail. I noticed that the woman sitting in front of me was absolutely rapt with attention reading this novel, which I could see from the title heading at the top of the pages was called The Woman Who Had Two Navels. Intriguing title - what's that about, I thought? Books that allow people to escape into them from the hustle and bustle of the subway I often find are worth reading. I greatly enjoyed the Harry Potter books and Memoirs of a Geisha after seeing people wrapped up in them on the T in Boston, and the Twilight series is on my "to read" list for the same reason. So when the woman looked up to readjust when the person next to her got off the train, I asked her about it. She informed me that not only was it a terrific read but the author was Nick Joaquin, one of the great Philippine national authors and I wrote that down so I could pick it up at the bookstore. What a great book ... love stories intertwining against a backdrop of Manila from the early 1900s through the post-WWII era, from the anti-US resistance in the early 1900s through the exile of some in Hong Kong and the general warming of most to US occupation pre-WWII and the post-WWII rebuilding. I wish Lola were here so I could talk with her about it - she was born in Cebu just a few years after the plot began.

So I've been reading this book for a few days ... reading before I go to sleep, carrying it in my purse, I'll stop in a coffee shop and read some, I brought it in with me to read while soaking in the hot tub when I treated myself to a Thai massage at The Spa on Bonifacio High St. (the Santa Monica-like promenade near Market! Market!), and I'm about halfway through.

Yesterday after teaching the 6:30am and 9:00am classes I decided to act on the realization that's been becoming clear to me over the past week that I've lately been doing too much yoga and not enough other physical activity for my body. For some people, the more yoga the better, but for me, I need a balance. Bikram says that yoga is like flushing the toilet, the rest of the things you do in your life fill your body with waste and yoga flushes it out. I find that if I do too much yoga without mixing it up with running, cycling, rollerblading, hiking, swimming, vinyasa (which I enjoy but which feels more like a straight workout to me than the healing workout of Bikram), etc. it can feel a little like I'm a toilet that's stuck on, continuously flushing, wasting energy like a stuck toilet wasting water. So I decided to go for a long walk. At the awesome bookstore on High St., Fully Booked, where I picked up The Woman Who Had Two Navels, I had also picked up Silvia's Book: An Expat's Guide to Living in Manila, which a student told me about when I asked her how she heard about Bikram Yoga Manila (we're featured in the book). One of the tips in there is that at the top of the Shangri-La Mall, there's an aromatherapy/essential oil kiosk that sells this stuff called Citrimint, which is great for repelling ants and other bugs. I've noticed a growing population of little tiny ants in my apartment over the couple of weeks I've been here, and when I'd gotten home from teaching in the morning my bathroom sink had a half-dozen little ants wandering around in it, crawling in and out of the drain.

So I decided to make the trek to the mall. I put on my hiking boots and some sunscreen, grabbed my sunbrella and headed out on a six-kilometer walk up Makati Ave, over the bridge to Mandaluyong City, through Barangka Ibaba (the southeast corner of Mandaluyong City), over to EDSA and up to the mall. It reminded me of walking around Lahug, Lola's neighborhood in Cebu - in Makati there are foreigners everywhere, but Barangka Ibaba is a much quieter, middle-class (is my guess, though there was a range of housing types from quite extravagant to quite modest) neighborhood that is pretty much exclusively Filipino.

When I got to the mall area, by the Shaw Boulevard station of the MRT, I was looking at my map and, having noted where the mall was a week or so prior, I'd forgotten that it was the Shangri-La mall I was looking for, I thought it was the SM Megamall. I'm still getting used to the crazy abundance of malls here, though I hear I have to check out Hong Kong, where the whole city is like one enormous interconnected mall where you can end up not going outside for weeks at a time. So I went up to the top of SM Megamall and there weren't any kiosks there. Then I double-checked the note I'd written myself about it the previous week and, oops, I was supposed to be looking in Shangri-La Mall. Duh. I was standing in front of an ultrasound clinic. It occurred to me that in the Philippines, it probably wouldn't cost hundreds of dollars to have an ultrasound done to see if I have both of my kidneys. I have wondered about this for a long time because my mother only has one. Riding a motorcycle, fun as it is, is risky I know, and if you only have one kidney it's pretty darn stupid. (So is riding a motorcycle in Manila, don't worry, I'm not that crazy. Motorcycling in the USA where right-of-way is determined by traffic laws, not intimidation, is enough for me!) So I've been meaning to find out about the kidney thing. I went in to the clinic and they told me that they only do prenatal ultrasounds, but the SM Megaclinic a few doors down would do a kidney ultrasound, probably for about P1000. And sure enough, I was able to have one done for P1089 ($22.50)! So now I know that I have two healthy-looking kidneys with no stones or cysts.

I did get the Citrimint at Shangri-La Mall (P200 for the oil and P180 for an oil diffuser candle lamp set), and today as I write this after diffusing some Citrimint yesterday evening before heading out to dinner with some yoga friends, there is not an ant to be seen in my apartment.

Warmly,
Carol