Random thoughts on the eve of mom's arrival

So finally my mom is coming to visit. After all the preparations which started six months ago, she will fly in tomorrow from Frankfurt, Germany. I will pick her up at the airport in the afternoon, and from there we will proceed to her flat on Plaza del Hospital Civil where she will stay for the next one month with a Spanish family.

If there's one thing I've learned about myself from organizing this trip, it's that I must have inherited my mom's being overprotective. You cannot imagine the slew of trivial reminders I bugged her with on the phone. One day, I will make for a sweet, nagging parent.

Tomorrow, I have to restrain myself. I'm all excited to see her, but I should suppress my overwhelming anticipation of what's inside her baggage. She has taken with her the CDs of Eric Santos, Sheryn Regis and Christian Bautista (yes, I'm a fan of Star in a Million!). The highlight of her arrival would be when she hands out to me the mechado-flavor Century Tuna and Argentina corned beef (you can't buy them here).

Lately I've been missing a lot my childhood friends from Landcom, the place where I live in Manila, so I'm planning to cook my barkada's favorite fare. Fried rice, corned beef-flavor. Back home, on weekends, I'd usually invite them to a drinking spree at my house (our favorite was Gin Pomelo, Gin Grape, Gin Orange and other variations of it), and towards the end, everybody would suddenly crave this dish; it's our way to cap off the night.

You can't exactly call it fried rice, since there's no need to fry the rice. You simply have to mix newly cooked rice with corned beef and oil, then shower it generously with soy sauce. Mix hard, and that's it. It's my friend May-may's (an HRM graduate) recipe. The outcome isn't visually appetizing, since it's black from too much soy sauce and looks gross, but my, how we all loved it! It's one of those things which binds together a barkada and only they themselves understand.

Hmm...I'm craving it bad right now. I will have it tomorrow for dinner, and my mom won't get even the tiniest share.