The choice of using quality ingredients initiates the making of the breakfast of champions for Examinee No. 5469: potato, two small ripe tomatoes, clove of garlic, half of one large white onion and a can of Purefoods corned beef.

She enjoys it soupy so I add little amounts of water while everything is being sauteed on my pet frying pan, a good buy from a highway peddler in San Pablo, Laguna a couple of years back.

The mysterious ingredient, however, is a dash of prayer that I mumble before the first ingredient goes under my favorite Japanese kitchen knife.

And so, this will be her sunup feast for the next four Sundays of the month - corned beef - and OJ to assuage the AM tension.

For her lunch, she will have the homemade ham and cheese with sliced apples sandwich as requested. This food will spawn all the essential positive energy she'll need to seize the rest of the day.

Tomorrow when I wake up, it will be like attending the Simbang Gabi. I will have to come around with the poultry, cram all the edible provisions in a paper bag and hop to her hotel.

Wow. I feel like a parent. Let me accentuate a bit. I experience the confidence of a parent who senses that his kid will be one of the first pass the post.

Yes, I've heard the cliche: Passing is 99% perspiration and 1% luck. But to me, there is no luck, only prayer. And for the past weeks, I've been supersizing my "amen."

Call it bar ops to the heavens.