The sweet heatstroke

Last Friday, three separate headaches converged in my cranium to form The Perfect Migraine.



First, there was the headache caused by lack of sleep. I had stayed out quite late on Thursday night, and instead of going straight to bed, I started fiddling with my cryptography project (It’s a longish story). Before I knew it, it was 4 a.m. and my mind was wide awake, making anagrams. To compound the problem, I had to be awake earlier than usual the next day (i.e. later), and I kept reminding myself that I had to be up early, which guaranteed that I would not fall asleep with the usual ease. So I got only five hours of sleep, which is what most people subsist on, except that I need the full nine.

When I woke up there was a brownout in my building. This was not surprising given the massive power demand: it’s so hot that every air conditioner and electric fan in Metro Manila is going full-blast. I’ve lived in Manila my entire life, and this is the hottest summer I’ve ever experienced. You can actually see the heat like a thin white sheet flapping in front of you. So lack of sleep plus scorching heat produced headache number one, a dull throbbing just above my left eyebrow. It’s not painful, just annoying.

At noon I proceed to my lunch appointment at Cafe Ysabel. I had not been there in years, but the chef had promised a Chocolate Menu, as in chocolate was an ingredient in every dish. It was like a six-course meal made entirely of desserts, except that the chocolate was not sweet. (Chocolate is naturally bitter. Chef Gene Gonzales had used the sikwate and kalinan varieties grown around Mt. Apo in Davao.)

The lunch was given by Instituto Cervantes in honor of a visiting Spanish journalist. As we dined we were filmed by a Spanish television crew, and then a Filipino TV crew arrived to film the Spanish TV crew filming us. This gave me a meta-headache, which fortunately does not hurt physically, only metaphysically. I felt like I was in a Buñuel movie, except that we could actually eat the food (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie), and we weren’t sitting on potties (The Phantom of Liberty).

There was smoked wonton with dark chocolate on parsley salad, then country onion soup with chocolate foam and anchovy and caper barbajuans d’ete. This was followed by almond-crusted sea bream with cocoa butter sauce and chocolate cannalone. The main courses were chicken with two cherry confit in kalinan demiglace, and crackling cured ribs, spiced apple puree, truffle mashed potato and chocolate demiglace. Yes, chicken and pork with chocolate sauce. (It’s not as bizarre as it sounds: think champorado and tuyo.) For dessert there was chocolate caramel crème brûlée, molten Grenada chocolate cake, and sikwate and glazed tomato ice cream. Agasajo and chocolate black olive truffles were served afterwards. Each course came with wine.

Clearly, no work would be done that afternoon.

After this spectacular lunch, I packed myself into a taxi and headed home. The taxi was shiny and new, and its air conditioner worked perfectly, but its windows were not tinted at all. Blazing 3 p.m. sunlight poured into the windows, searing my eyeballs. Then we were stuck in heavy traffic. This led to headache number two. As headache number one had not subsided, the dull throb now felt like regular whacks from a small hammer.

The atmosphere in my apartment was actually shimmering from the heat. I expected to see a mirage, preferably featuring the cast of Three Kings, or just Mark Wahlberg. No such luck. I know from experience that the only cure for a headache is to stay in a cold, dark room, and wait until it passes. So I took a nap, and when I woke up the third headache had kicked in. It was a slight hangover from all the wine I had consumed at lunch. Headache number three combined with the two previous headaches, and voila! The Perfect Migraine.

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