The Princess and The Horny Toad

Watching the last few episodes. Series ends soon.

***

Eleven eggs in the fridge. Frying an egg takes 3 minutes, 4 minutes if you're in Nueva Vizcaya (I can tell you why, bribe me with Chocnut). Tofu takes 15 minutes to travel from the vegetable bin to my plate. I nicely ask Princess, our domestic assistant (Joie, it's easier to type "maid") to fry me some tofu instead. She's better at frying tofu than coming up with decent eggs. This is how she does eggs - she takes one, taps the narrower tip, in balut fashion, and lets the contents pour into what would then be a smoking pan. She makes sure that nobody sees her while she prepares eggs this way. I think she intends to have this cooking method patented.

When she first came to our home, her name was Mylene. Now only my mother calls her Mylene now, when needing a massage whilst watching Showbiz News Ngayon. My sisters and I, the cats, yes, they, too, call her "Princess."

She claims to be from a remote island in Quezon. I'd like to believe that she's not dyslexic. She couldn't be iodine-deficient either, she's from a coastal community, seafood should be daily fare. But her knowledge of domestic tasks, I think I surpass. She doesn't know how to wax floors. She doesn't know how to use Joy dishwashing fluid. By the looks of it, chopping boards are an alien concept to her. First week with us, she did the laundry, and 72% of our clothes had crimson stains.

Over one dinner, I presented my theory to Kat. The new maid (there, I said it) is not a commoner. Her ineptness in household chores indicates one thing - she is royalty. She is a princess of some tribe in that remote island in Quezon. She doesn't talk. Aside from remote-island-in-Quezonese, the only language she knows is French. She came back from a boarding school in France, she was forcibly betrothed to a man 3.7 times her age, who fathered more than half the children in their tribe, possibly including her. She escapes. This is how she ends up in our home, tie-dyeing our clothes red. She will start her own fashion line.

And this is the story of why we now call her Princess.

***

Ooh, you'll wait a long time for me

Ooh, you'll wait a long time

***

"I want a new pet. I'm thinking in the reptile lines."

"Cold and scaly."

"Did you know that the horny toad is a lizard? I want one for me birthday."

Silence.