This is a slightly more expanded version of a comment I made in According To Hoyt.

The Noodle Incident, as I like to call it, happened some years ago, probably 2005 or 2006. It was an otherwise unremarkable weekend evening, where I was taking it easy after a week of work and had been enjoying game-play grind session in Lineage II. We’d been playing for a while and decided to take a break for food. We parked our characters outside of the room we’d been hunting in and I went downstairs to cook myself a double batch of Lucky Me! Pancit Canton (the calamansi flavored one.) (These are a brand and type of instant noodles.) My mom and the maid were eating dinner at the time and my mom commented about the double batch, which was a little unusual for me. I said I was craving the flavor. The noodles take about 3 minutes to cook, and you make a paste of the other ingredients – seasoning, flavor powder, a bit of oil and soy sauce included in the packet. You then drain the noodles of almost all the water, leaving behind roughly a spoon’s worth, and then toss the noodles with the resultant sauce. I took myself, my big bowl of pancit, and a fork back upstairs when I was done.

I was holding the big bowl of noodles in my left hand, sat back on the foot of my bed (my computer was at the end of my bed back then) and typed, “I’m back” with my right. There were still other people not back at their keyboards, so I took a forkful of my noodles, and stuck it in my mouth. I one-handed typed out a reply to something said in party, then removed the fork from my mouth to jam it back into the pile of noodles while I chewed, without looking at the bowl I still held in my left hand. Instead of noodles, my fork encountered the hard plastic bottom of the bowl. Thinking I’d spilled the noodles, I looked. Except, I hadn’t, and the bowl was completely empty.

I sighed, typed “BRB after buff” into the channel, rebuffed the party, and went back downstairs to ask for another batch of pancit canton. My mom looked at me funny and said that I shouldn’t eat so much instant noodles, and didn’t I just go upstairs? I said I hadn’t eaten more than a forkful of noodles, and that the rest had disappeared. She asked me if I was sure I hadn’t eaten them all, and I said, “C’mon, Mom. My mouth isn’t that big. That was a LOT of pancit.”

My mom laughed, remarked that the dwende* must be hungry, and asked the maid, who had finished eating and was listening to the exchange with wide eyes, to make me another batch.

And yes, the blasé response we have is because my family is used to weird shit happening. And no, I was alone in my room at the time.

*Dwende is/are the catch-all term we use for fairies, brownies, dwarves. Filipino folklore classifies them as ‘good’ or ‘white’ (Some people describe their encounters with them with the dwende manifesting with an aura of light); neutral or nature type (‘gray’) or black (malicious, wicked; bad spirits that aren’t demons or ghosts.)

I really should write about dwende sometime; it’ll be useful for some of my friends.

Let me start off by saying outright: I’m no Fox Mulder, though I enjoy the X-Files as a show. I didn’t want to believe; but I’ve found, over the years, it doesn’t matter if someone doesn’t believe. That doesn’t stop the ‘other things’ in existing or, worse, believing in your existence. If I were to be compared to a character, I’m closer to Dana Scully.

I’ve actually wrestled with the decision to start describing various odd supernatural events that my family, friends and I have encountered over the years, largely because, well, I don’t want to sound utterly bonkers; plus I’m a fiction writer to boot. I don’t want to be derided as a fantasist who can’t tell reality from fantasy, or ‘looking for attention’ so I have to ‘make up’ stories about myself ‘to make myself seem more interesting’. Please. I’ve lived in the tail end of the Philippine dictatorship and caught the end of the Cold War, living in East Berlin. Our first apartment was a building set aside for the families of the Stazi and the second one was right across the street from the North Korean Embassy, and just a few streets away from Checkpoint Charlie. While at a diplomatic function with my parents I got hauled to do an impromptu stint as a model in Paris (what I remember the most of that night? Trying not to trip and fall in shoes that were too big for my feet, and worrying about the fact I didn’t have my glasses.) Life is plenty interesting without the supernatural having gotten mixed in; and I’d have been happier if it’d been nothing more than a fascinating thing I’d read or write fiction about.

That’s not what happened, and frankly, at some point I have to just shrug. I’m rather used to people thinking badly of me, spreading rumors, or wishing me ill. That would be nothing new. The thing that kept me from writing things like these down and sharing them is my reluctance to be seen badly by those whose opinions I do care about.

But I’ve been getting the urge to write these down; to the point that I sometimes can’t sleep. And even then, I’m unsure what is ‘safe’ to tell. Nevertheless, if you’re going to be the sort who’ll just heap negative commentary as opposed to discussion, don’t be surprised if I decide to ignore your comment or delete it if you’re especially offensive. Continue reading →