Litsooner

I had a really bad stomach at six in the morning yesterday that I had to get out of bed and get the crap in my intestines out in the toilet. It must have been something I ate from saturday night, I had my usual dinner at home but peter called me up later to join him for some beers because he was with two clients from bacolod city who were getting him to sell their cars, his wife couldn’t join him though because she’s having chicken pox which she got from peter who was sick the week there before. I was first planning to have some beers with ariel but he still hadn’t recovered from his sprained knee he got from kuala lumpur, besides I’d like to see what chicken pox did to peter’s face too.

Anyway the only thing I ate that saturday night with peter was this dish he ordered to go with our beers, I forgot what the hell they call it, it wasn’t sisig but I remember peter telling me it was made from a pig’s mask, a more convenient way of telling you that you’re eating the ears, snout, eyes, lips and everything in between them in a pig, its like the staked carcass totem in the lord of the flies being chopped to bits and served on a plate, and yet they tell you its pork. The whole thing though was served in thick mayonnaise, I don’t enjoy mayonnaise but it also came with bits of chopped pepper that I just ate it and forgot about mayonnaise.

I’m not sure if it was the pig’s mask dish that gave me a bad stomach yesterday morning because I didn’t ask peter if he had a bad stomach too. My stomach ache left me awake and thinking about pork dishes for almost an hour in bed. You’d probably be wondering why here we eat those parts of a pig in the first place, because in pursuit of an identity in this country the people claim that roasted pig is their culinary expertise, I don’t see anything distinctive or a third world touch in it since anybody around the globe can impale a pig and roast and they’d all taste the same. But what is distinctive here is how they make the roasted pig, no part of the pig gets wasted, everything in flesh from entrails, liver, heart to the drops of blood all end up in the dinner table, including the whole stretch of skin on a pig’s face which I still doubt did make me start this post.

By the way a roasted pig in this country is called a litson, traditional celebrations in this country always calls upon a whole liston on the household table as a symbol for the magnitude of the celebration, notwithstanding that their closest neighbors in this country are muslims whom their religion forbade them pork consumption. Litson itself too has become a gerund in the local vocabulary which also means to roast, in particular to roast a human being by accident, because on my way to work in the morning I’d always stop by new stands to glance at the headlines and I always see the local tabloids quoting folks being litsooned in freakfire accidents, less being eaten anyway.

I should have wrote this post a litsooner than a month ago in time for the turnover of the chinese zodiac year of the pig.

Decabiography

The author of this post starts off with ten weird things or habits or little known facts about himself. People who get tagged must write in a blog of their own ten weird things or habits or little known facts as well as state this rule clearly. At the end you must choose six people to be tagged and list their names

1 I was tagged twice

2 I am an alcoholic the words drinking drunk and beer appears very often in this blog if you hadn’t noticed.

3 The novel catcher in the rye had a profound influence in me this is one book that I never got tired of reading, I found myself as the same depressed and sarcastic young man who opposes everything for the sake of opposition. My cynical writing is almost patterned after the novel's modern slang english.

4 I collect coke cans I have a big collection of coke cans from around the world, from japan korea vietnam india nepal lebanon italy france to as far as the islands of maldives.

5 I only drink black coffee I drink at least two cups of black coffee everyday. I don’t put cream or milk to my coffee, it doesn’t tastes like coffee anymore but like mocha and it is for women. I only use a small dash of sugar on my coffee or sometimes none at all. I love arabica and columbian roasts.

6 The words in my sms messages are always or more often spelled with the letters complete I dnt ncrypt my words n my sms msgs by omitng letrs and speling dem dfrently lyk wat m doin ryt nw. though I do cut short the word you to u, in to n, for to 4 and to to 2. This form of english was developed in this country because people here enjoy abbreviating words in their sms messages, using only key letters of a certain word that can convey it phonetically.

7 I have poor literacy in my own national language not only that I am not fond of using my country’s national language as expression of my thoughts, I also have trouble with its grammar and vocabulary, I once even thought bughaw was clouds and talumpati was a kind of bird.

8 I love everything spicy I can stand a lot of strong hot spices: peppers, jalapenos, chili, curry, wasabi. Ariel and jason were once surprised to see me crush five small peppers in my marrow soup when they are sweating to just one piece. That’s why I love eating at street vendors in bangkok.

9 I have a lot of caps because if there was one thing that can hold my hair down it’s by wearing a cap, so I had been buying a lot of ball caps way back when I still sported hair in my head. The last ball cap I bought had dr seuss’ cat in the hat printed up front, but I never got to use that one.

10 I am a star wars fan inasmuch that I am well versed with star wars nomenclature I am also fascinated on the movie’s insane popularity, numerous references and being a phenomenal pop culture.

The Balls of a Brass Monkey

My parents arrived in manila last friday, I was in manila too and I was supposed to pick them up at the airport around eight in the morning but I overslept and I woke up almost eight already, my old man called me up that they were already on their way to my hotel and we should meet someplace near for breakfast instead. I blew that morning up but my old man wasn’t so mad because he knew I could hardly wake up at that hour and I had been dead tired the past few days, I got to the bathroom to fix myself up, I stared at the mirror and I think the only thing I needed was a good shave, my mother always complains about it and she probably will again over breakfast but I could go tell her I forgot my shaving kit at home, I don’t bring them with me when Im traveling to manila because I always pack them inside my backpack in a hurry and those overrated security agents at the airport always takes them away like hell they think I could hijack a whole plane with my goddam shave. Anyway I first spat on the sink before splashing water to my face to wake me up, there was some little red streaks on my spit, it could have been something else but I just woke up and I hadn’t had coffee or anything yet so I had to look closer and it was blood, I spat a second and third time and there was still blood and I was like interested in seeing more come out, after that my spit went clear again and forgot about it. I wasn’t coughing or feeling anything funny and it wasn’t because of my drinking either, I only had four beers from nine to midnight the night before and I had been in worse shape than that.

My old man gave a ring on my mobile phone asking me what wanted for breakfast because they were arriving ahead on the restaurant, I only told them that to have my egg sunny side up, I didn’t have to tell him to get coffee because I know my old man will eat breakfast at a place that serves great brewed coffee, and like me my old man loves coffee in the morning and he loves drinking it alone rather than places like starbucks where you have to be seen drinking coffee in the open. My mother was only having thick soup for breakfast, they were taking a flight going out of the country around noon so I think my mother is trying to fix her hunger with the jetlag by taking in a light meal. I took them back to the airport after that then I went back to my hotel to pack my things up too because I was also catching a flight going back home that night.

There was this poster I saw while walking back to my hotel, its about this concert later this month from this hong kong singer emil chou (周華健), the poster was up at the supermarket window and I don’t usually read them because they usually post crap there like grocery raffles and stuff like that but emil chou’s poster caught my attention because it had his portrait up close on it and you could tell it was him from the side of your eye and even if you weren’t going to read it anyway. I was sort of surprised that he was going to throw a concert in my country and hell the prices of the tickets were even skyrocketing from 3500 to 5000, Emil chou must have made dozens of records during the turn of the 90’s, I have five of his songs in mp3’s back home and if I were to watch this concert I would only end up in the theater waiting for him to sing any of those five songs I know all night long, and if he does sing all of five of them, its like me paying one grand a song so that I could listen to it up real alongside local gooks.

The last time I heard an emil chou song outside from my room was about a year ago, I was sitting in my hotel lobby in beijing around 11pm having some beers and a cigarette, I wanted to try swimming at the pool but the goddam weather was cold enough to freeze the balls of a brass monkey, and the gym was closed too and all they had were a dozen of these immobile bicycles inside the gym room with nothing but cable tv to watch while you peddled, and it wasn’t as distracting too because it was showing some hollywood film dubbed in chinese like the ones we have back home where they dub japanese movies to talk in english that the actor’s mouths kept on moving even after they stopped talking. Anyway I bought my beers from the convenience store outside because I was sure the beers at the lobby are highway robbery, I did tell the concierge I bought beers outside and they didn’t mind me even I looked like a slop with my shorts and sandals down in the lobby where every other guest coming in looked grand with their suits. There was a girl playing the piano in the lobby, she looked like she’s still in school and she’s like just doing a part time night job playing the piano for the hotel. Anyway she played emil chou’s 花心 song and I liked the way she did it, I went up to her with my cigarette trying to look like I wasn’t a slop wearing my shorts and sandals and asked her to play it again, well she did but on the way back to my seat hell she just stopped midway from the song and played something else, sometimes people feel doing something you want them to do if you’d pay more attention when they do it.

Cold enough to freeze the balls of a brass monkey, I’ve always wanted to use that phrase.