Mrs Rosero. Regina Rosero. Regina Layug-Rosero. I suppose this change has been en route for the past 6 years, but it’s still a little jarring to see sometimes.

A few months ago I received an invitation to a press conference, something I had to attend for work. The letter was addressed to “Ms. Regina Rosero”.

Back in June, I requested copies of our marriage certificate from the NSO. Naturally, I used my maiden name when I filed the request. A week later, Air 21 delivered the documents to our house. The village guard called our house and asked, “Meron po ba diya’ng Layug, Regina? May Air 21 delivery po kasi,” said Bernadette, our security guard.

“Ako yun,” I said, laughing. It’s funny, but sometimes it stings a little that there are people who will not know me by my own name.

It isn’t a new story, or a new feeling. For decades women have had to struggle with the question, “Why must I take my husband’s name?” If it isn’t your husband’s, it’s your father’s name. What name is really your own anyway?

For decades, women have tried to solve the problem. Many have accepted their multiple roles as independent women, as wives, as daughters, as sisters, as mothers, and they have chosen to embody this multitude of roles by hyphenating. Many are hyphenated women.

I think I first encountered the term in college. As a Literature major, I studied various texts about identity, gender, culture, and so on, and you can’t read all that literature without having to read all sorts of critique and analysis and crap. I never enjoyed literary theory, but (naturally, I suppose) I enjoyed women’s studies. Women’s identities as they transformed from one form to another, as they shifted from daughter and sister to lover and wife, then to the all-encompassing role of mother. But though we grow and move from one role to another, we never really shed our old skins. They cling to us throughout our lives, and that multiplicity is encompassed in that tiny hyphen, the one that bridges our old identities with the new.

I’ve been surrounded by hyphenated women all my life. My mother, also a writer, raised me in the company of her friends from college, collectively known as the Sisterhood. The Sisterhood is composed of writers, strong women who had strong feelings and opinions about women’s lib, women’s health, women’s rights, everything women. And three of them who were married chose to hyphenate their professional names, such that all who read their work knew that they had identities and personalities of their own before they married.

So it’s funny how, eight years after college, here I am, a Hyphenated Woman myself.

There’s no point in hyphenating my last name legally, as that will just cause confusion when my given name is already so kilometric. So I decided to change my name in all my legal papers to my married name.

As I consulted various friends, it’s funny how so many of them said, “But you don’t have to do that.” It seems more of my friends are pro-Independent Woman than I realized. And I had to say to them, “I know, but when we have kids they’ll carry my husband’s name anyway, and if I use a different name there will be confusion legally, and I’d like to avoid all that.”

But I did consider keeping my name. For a brief moment before I applied for a new postal ID, I saw my name written out with my husband’s last name, and there was a little stab at my heart. Is this how it feels to shed an old life and start anew? How many other women have felt this sense of loss as they bid their father’s name goodbye and accepted their husband’s as their own? I am not the first, and I certainly won’t be the last, but that didn’t make the shock of my new name any less startling.

Then I went ahead and filled up the form, and presented the marriage certificate, and the clerk at the post office banged away at her typewriter, the typebar emphatically spelling out my new name: Regina Teresita Magdalena L. Rosero. A week later I claimed my new ID, and I stared at it with fascination as I contemplated my new identity. I joked to my neighbor and college friend, Mary Ann, “Look, I no longer exist! A new person has taken my place!”

Though legally Regina Teresita Magdalena Layug no longer exists, all my bylines now use Regina Layug-Rosero. I insist on this, because despite my hullaballoo about shedding the identity I had established over my 28 years, I am actually proud to carry my husband’s name. Like many women before me, I embrace my new identity, my new family, my new name. My in-laws are wonderful people who accept me not as a daughter-in-law, but as their own daughter, and my brother-in-law is as close to me as my own blood brother. No longer am I simply the daughter of Marian and Fer, but also of Baby and Boy; no longer am I simply sister to Victor, but now also to Ron; no longer am I simply myself, Regina, but now I am also wife to Oneal.

I’m proud to be this new person, even if it does still take some getting used to. But it’s all me.

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When I was younger, I wasn’t very fond of Filipino food. Maybe it was because there were no places like Max’s and Red Ribbon, Goldilocks and Aristocrat, Kamay Kainan and other restaurants, where our parents could bring us. Mom and Dad are awesome cooks, but there was quite a limitation to the Filipino ingredients you could acquire when we were in Riyadh. So instead they learned to make do with whatever could be found in the local markets. Mom learned to bake, and she made wonderful things: pineapple upside-down cake, prune cake, apple pie, chicken pastel. Dad made excellent tempura, and everyone loved his tempura sauce. One year, for my birthday, they stayed up till the wee hours of the morning working on my birthday cake. It had a gingerbread house made of biscuits, Smarties, cookies, wafers, and I don’t know what anymore.

So anyway, since moving back to the Philippines in 1996, my brother and I have been discovering Filipino foods and awakening in our palate a love for the cuisine of our homeland. All sorts of pancit, kakanin, inihaw, seafood, seaweed: you name it, we’ll try it. The results are not always spectacular, but we’re always willing to stuff new things in our mouths!

It’s said that Kapampangans cook so well because they eat so well. Being the daughter of a Kapampangan who loved to cook, I guess I took up the spatula and the ladle as well. I started cooking when I moved to Yale in 2004, and I haven’t stopped since.

Cooking Filipino foods—especially the ones my brother and I love to eat—has become something of a mini-quest of mine. I love nilaga and tinola, and those are some of the things I tried learning to cook. Despite protestations from Paul regarding the necessity of saging na saba in nilagang baka, I’ve heard many approving sighs and happy moans from masticating mouths when it comes to my cooking.

So one day I tried caldereta, and it wasn’t half-bad!

The problem now is not how to cook caldereta, but how to cook just enough of it. I seem unable to cook for two, having gotten used to cooking larger batches of food for the transients and refugees that Yale always housed. So here’s my recipe for caldereta! Ingredients listed should be good enough to serve 2 people.

• ¼ kilo beef
• 2 bell peppers – red and/or green, chopped in squares
• 1 small carrot – peeled and chopped
• 1 piece chorizo – chopped and sautéed in olive oil with chopped garlic and onions till brown
• green olives – optional, they add a salty flavor
• 1 small can liver spread – use only half, otherwise the sauce will be too thick
• 3-5 medium sized potatoes – or you can use 1/4 kilo baby potatoes so you don’t need to chop
• 1 pack tomato sauce

Procedure:
1. Put beef in pot, fill with just enough water to cover meat. Boil over medium heat to tenderize. Once water is boiling, reduce heat. If you want to reduce fat, throw out water after boiling and add fresh water, then boil again. You’ll know the beef is tender enough when you can cut it easily with a spoon and a fork.

2. Once beef is ready, add potatoes and carrots to broth. Let it simmer till potatoes and carrots are tender.

3. Add tomato sauce, chorizo (with garlic and onions) and liver spread. Season with salt and pepper. Let it simmer, stir occasionally.

4. Once flavor is to your liking, add the olives. You can add the peppers just before serving if you want them crunchy, or let them simmer if you want them soft.

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Sandwiches are easy. Two halves of bread, some meat or fish, a toaster and you’re done. Unfortunately, many people fail to appreciate the potential of the sandwich to be a truly great meal. Most places will put tuna and mayo between two pieces of white bread and call it a tuna sandwich. Others will put Kraft or Eden cheese—thin slices at that!—or plain Cheez Whiz in the middle of boring white bread and call it a cheese sandwich. Blasphemy!

Simple sandwiches are not a bad thing. But simple need never be boring! A cheese sandwich, for instance, can have two kinds of cheese and a dash of something to liven it up: cayenne, chopped basil, a slice of tomato or cucumber. That isn’t so difficult.

The other day I discovered how to make my perfect cheese sandwich:

- 1 hamburger bun, sliced in half
- Edam cheese
- 3-4 slices of cucumber
- Olives, chopped in half
- Lady’s choice ham or chicken spread

• Arrange slices of Edam cheese on one half of burger bun. Option: Bury olive slices under the cheese.
• Toast for 5 minutes or until cheese melts. Remove bun.
• Spread Lady’s Choice on the other side. Add cucumber slices.
• Close up and enjoy!

If you need meat, try adding sliced chorizo (sautéed in garlic, if you wish), liver spread, or Purefoods Ham Selections (any variant, they’re all good). Another option is to use cream cheese or Cheez Whiz instead of Lady’s Choice. You can also add sliced tomatoes. The possibilities are endless, and your appetite saved!

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MERALCO, why oh why?

Nearly two months of wedded bliss, and everything’s fine. New house, new life, and many other new things, most of which use power. We’re people of many gadgets–who isn’t nowadays? My work requires me to be online almost all day, and Oneal and I have many interests online. In fact, we rely on the Internet for so many things: news, photos, communication with friends and family, even much of our charity work and 501st activity happens online. So you can understand the need for the multiple laptops, the phones, and the requisite power consumption.

Still, that’s not unusual. Neither are the aircon units (only used at night, but if during the day, only when we’re both home), the washing machine (chosen because it’s energy and water efficient), the lightbulbs (all CFL, mind you), the electric fans, and the kitchen appliances. So when we got our first electric bill in March, it was P2,082.40, and that seemed reasonable. After all, there’s two of us, and a three-bedroom townhouse.

Then just a few days ago, we got our new bill: P7,062.70

Granted, the first bill had been for 6 February to 6 March. Our lease on the townhouse started late January, and we moved in only after the wedding, so for about half of that billing period, we weren’t actually living here. But we were here at least every other day, and many of the days were spent installing various fixtures (aircon, water heater) and fixing the electrical wiring here and there. And when we moved in, we were pretty extravagant with the aircon use.

We expected a high electricity bill, but the P5,000 increase was preposterous! When we got the bill, my husband and I were looking over it, scrutinizing each charge, each item, each detail. Sure, our consumption had gone up from 201 kwh in February to 533 kwh in March. But it was ridiculous! We were thinking about power-saving strategies, like turning off the light in the hallway at night; getting those adapters with switches to make sure there’s no phantom power drain; reducing the use of the turbo roaster and the electric grill and the toaster; using the timer more religiously when we use the aircon; and reducing the usage of our secondary computers.

Then Oneal pointed out the distribution charge.

What was a charge of only P0.9953/kwh in February became P2.1998/kwh in March. What was a charge of only P200.06 in February became P1,172.49 in March. The generation charge also increased from 11.19% to 11.42%.

This is preposterous. Even when we were living in Cubao, where the house had 4 occupants and we had a total of 7 computers (1 desktop and 6 laptops/netbooks) and 2 aircons, our bill didn’t spike that high.

I hope Meralco realizes this atrocity isn’t going unnoticed, and that paying customers won’t take this lying down. Price hikes are understandable, but keep them reasonable! This is ridiculous! Join the protest on Facebook.

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We found our new home

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