For the first time in her life, my neighbor said she spent a weekend in Baguio without having to wear a sweater. (I should have asked her if the temperature was at least like Tagaytay’s.)

If the nightly weather forecast is to be believed, the heat wave hitting the archipelago is being felt the same in Luzon as it is in Mindanao. Let’s hope that the monsoon rains come soon, and that when they do, the result won’t be killer floods.

We live in a climate of extremes, but better year-long summers than seasonal winters.

With temperatures reaching 39 to 40C (sometimes, somewhere between 41 and 43 up North), I can imagine hearing mothers telling, sometimes yelling at their kids: Drink water, lots of water! Water is good for you!

In the olden days when we were young, the commandment was “seven glasses of water a day” or else, not that anybody was counting. (In those days, we didn’t have any of those colorful thermos jugs that today’s kids pack into their schoolbags.)

Water has no taste, no calories but how sweet it is on your tongue, in your mouth when you’re hot and sweating. The only substitute I can think of is the juice of fruits like watermelon, orange, melon, guava, duhat, none of which needs any additional ingredient to be enjoyed (except perhaps a cube of ice). On the other hand, meat like beef and pork needs water to be digested.

Almost as appealing as fruits is the sight of veggies, yes, as in a fresh green salad accentuated with tomatoes, for color. According to Cook, who does her marketing two to three times a month, tomatoes are now at an all-time low at the “palengke” (public market). Compared to ₱280 last November and December, tomatoes are a steal at ₱40-45 a kilo this summer, and that’s how she’s been drowning me in tomato soup, served ice-cold or hot, and tomato sauce poured over seafood pasta, and fish of all kinds cooked with tomato. All that vitamin C, why should I complain?

If tomato juice is a good aperitif, how about a tomato dessert? After all, and as teetotalers know, tomato juice served with Tabasco is the cure for a hangover.