VALENTINE’S & THE MORNING AFTER

The Philippines was the first place I ever had to face Valentine’s Day without having to manage a restaurant. That nightmare night fraught with emotions that no mere restaurant should have to handle.

The Philippine Valentine’s Day is a particularly mixed blessing. Much looked forward to, but an one compromised with the difficulty of finding the right day for taking out one’s wife when one’s number one mistress and perhaps two lesser ones expect that day to be theirs as well.  

Definitely a day for some to see red.

I prefer Chinese New Year when everyone gets little red envelopes stuffed with cash.  My mother always received a huge box of chocolates (at least five pounds) that was heart-shaped and covered in red fuzz trying to be velvet. Perhaps the size was meant to be a diversion from my father’s Filippino inclinations. I always loved the long-stem red roses. The greenhouse variety look good only in vast and luxurious hotel suites of the old kind, like the Crillon or Dorchester. But hop…