Define: walking

  

My current wallpaper, Calle Crisologo in Vigan, Ilocos Sur



The selling point of the Windows phones is networking. It makes it easy for you to log in to your Facebook, Windows Live, Linkedin and Google accounts. As soon as you load your contacts, the phone finds common names across your various accounts and links them all, and it does so intelligently. Once your Facebook is logged in, it even takes your Facebook albums and loads them into the phone. All of a sudden, your whole online life is connected through one small gadget. When it was still new, my Android tablet was left untouched for five, whole days, and I only actually logged onto my computer for work. All my other online needs, including games, went through the Windows phone. It is on this week that I rediscovered the old photo albums on my Facebook account, and for some time now, I've been interchanging my phone's wall paper to show my most favorite pictures of the few travels that I have done.

It's been a while now since I have explored a new place, the last time I did that was in Vigan in January of 2011. After that, my trips had been to places that I have gone to before, and mostly just to spend time with friends and relax from work. Next week, I embark once again on a trip to see something new, Siem Reap in Cambodia. It is a trip that my closest friends and I have been planning to make ever since we saw the first Lara Croft movie, there just never was an opportunity to go, or a cheap plane ticket to buy, until this year, when Cebupacific finally got approval to fly there straight from the Philippines.


Bah Kuh Teh, Noodles & Teh Tariks in KL


What I am most excited about is the food. Even as I write, I feel my mouth salivate a little at the thought of what street food I get to sample once we land. When Ken and I go on trips, food is always a major itinerary item, guided by a simple rule: no McDonald's. It was a rule we came up with on our trip to Malaysia in 2009, no taxi rides, no McDonald's.

Three years later, we still abide by this rule. As much as we can, when in a new place, we go around by local transportation, and eat local food. We steer away from taking the taxi because it robs us of the sweet time we can spend walking around and getting lost in the new environment. In a new place, is getting lost any different from knowing your way? It is with vigor and sunshiny enthusiasm that we weave through each town, armed with any map we can obtain from either the tourist centers, or from his iPhone, all mostly on foot, occasionally by train and bus. We stare curiously at food sold on the streets, oftentimes observing first how the passersby buy and eat them, before trying them out ourselves.

Murtabak with Teh-O-Pengs (Iced Tea)

One of my most memorable moments of getting lost and discovering great food is in the place I called home once, Singapore. Ken was there for a visit, and per his usual trip, we were out one afternoon, just walking around until we get somewhere. On that day, I couldn't really remember if we planned on going to Arab Street, but that's where we ended up. Looking for an afternoon snack, I brought Ken to a "murtabak" place. I can't remember now, but it might have been a place a Singaporean friend recommended. Murtabak is essentially a crepe with meat filling, served with curry. The place boasts to have been making murtabak for almost 70 years. We watched how the expert cook made murtabak by smoothing an elastic dough on a flat pan, and assembling the fillings. To this day, we always laugh at how he cracked an egg right into the middle of the dough and spread the gooey contents with his hand nonchalantly. Anywhere else, this would have been taken as wrong cooking practice, spoons are made for this task. There, it was a treat to see that your food is made by experts who don't care about cooking show techniques. They use tried and tested skill.

I have never been to Europe, have only been to the US once, and have never set foot in big theme parks like Universal Studios, or Disney. I have never done hard-core mountain climbing, nor have jetski-ed, bunjee jumped, scuba-dived, nor gone white-water rafting. My passport does not boast stamp after stamp of immigration offices from different cities. Yet when asked if I consider myself an experienced traveler, I always answer yes, even if the only stories I can tell are recycled and limited, all of the same places that a lot of people have already been to. I think what makes my stories special is that each experience is unique, in that not many would have tried getting lost the way we did. Not many would have ate the way we did. I am no Andrew Zimmern, eating exotic foods from different places, but I'm happy to share that my palate has now been trained to recognize flavors, texture and aroma, and categorize them according to the nearest type of cuisine they resemble. I'm happy to share that each time I'm in a new destination, I am able to walk to and fro places easily because I have somehow memorized my own landmarks for the place, enough to get lost with a mission. I consider myself an experienced traveler because that is what I do. I experience.
 

When you meet someone who can walk as briskly, and as endlessly as you can, stick with that one. You know he's never going to get tired, nor tiring.

Define: damage

For a whole 48 hours, the first level of our house is submerged in waist-deep flood water. Much of our common household items swam and floated, while we camp out in our small room. Today, the rain finally stopped, and the flood water finally subsided. We began sweeping and checking what damages have happened.

Some of my clothes, a few bedsheets that I bought from Singapore, a lot of CDs and kitchen items were wasted. The washing machine was floating. It will be a few days before I can actually plug it in and do anything useful with it. The fridge almost floated, thank goodness it didn't.

Out of all the things that I've had to clean up or throw away, the one thing that disappointed was a pack of Chips-A-Hoy cookies in the fridge. When we defrosted the fridge, the freezer water seeped down to the rest of the food that's on the lower levels, including my cookies. They were soaked with freezer water through and through.

As soon as I saw the soaked cookies, I felt an incredible sadness over it.

A few hours of cleaning later, I felt relieved and glad. Out of all the things that got soaked in the water and rendered unusable, the one thing I was disappointed over was a bag of cookies that I can replace easily from the grocery. I wasn't sad about the soaked clothes, or the imported bed sheets. Not about the prized office papers of old workshop materials.

Either we didn't have a lot of damage, or I can finally tell the real things that matter from the ones that don't.

Define: growing up

Things I eat now but didn't eat when I was a kid:

Squid - My older brother loved "adobong pusit", squid cooked in its own ink with soy sauce and garlic. My grandmother would cook it all the time, but she would cook me something else because I do not eat it. One day in high school or college, I tasted it, and to this day it's one of the dishes that get my mouth watering when I see it in cafeteria selections.

Okra (ladyfingers) - As a child, I was not trained to eat vegetables. My grandparents I guess wanted to be spared from the hassle of training a child to eat greens, so we always had kid-friendly food instead - pork chops, chicken, hotdogs. We would see vegetables on the table, but those had always been for grown-ups. I do not remember the day, neither the dish, but just like the squid, one day, I picked up a cooked okra, and now keep some in stock for steaming so I can eat it with almost anything.

Liver - I guess when you're a kid, a lot of things are just not familiar to you. We not only don't want to spend time with something unfamiliar, we don't want to eat it! And so when the grown-ups told me that what's in that menudo is chicken liver, I reject it. These days, I pick these tiny cubes from menudo and eat them with the potatoes and carrots each time.

Dinuguan - Dinuguan, or pork parts cooked in pig's blood, will definitely sound yucky in any language. Imagine what a child would think upon hearing that she's about to be fed blood. We never cook dinuguan in our household back when my grandmother headed the kitchen. Some time back, my mom took over the cooking and she cooked dinuguan. At first taste, it became one of my automatically favorite dish.

Some things never change:

Inihaw na bangus - I left our family home to live alone when I was 26 years. I lived in Singapore for about 3 years, and when I came back to the Philippines, lived with my long time partner. Since 2006, the time I spend at our family home are more of weekend visits. I never declared grilled milkfish or "bangus" my favorite dish. In fact, when asked what my favorite food is, I often answer spaghetti. But I guess my mom and dad knew better - because ever since I left home, there will always be, always, grilled milkfish on each and every visit. And in the few times there wasn't, my mom would replace it with my other favorite dish, one that I have declared, pork pochero.

Bone marrow - People all over the world love bone marrow. There's something about that gooey, rich fat that you suck out of the bone that makes people's mouth water. Or so they say. I have never eaten bone marrow, and despite the many trips to Tagaytay where the bone marrow is famously cooked in a heartwarming soup that I love, I will never eat bone marrow. As a child, I didn't eat it because it looks weird. As an adult, I won't eat it because I know it will taste good. I don't want to eat it and like it, because I know it's bad cholesterol, plain and simple.

Bagoong - From the day my mom introduced me to diced tomatoes with bagoong as a young child, to this day, bagoong has always been a staple in any fridge I have. In Singapore, I have had to wrap my bagoong jar in layers of newspaper and plastic so it doesn't get detected in the airport. In Makati, I always keep a small container, and get my fill whenever I go home to Tondo. Bagoong is my all-around flavoring - it goes well with my rice, my fish, my tomatoes and my okra.

Fresh tomatoes - I have met some people who don't eat tomatoes, and I find it incredibly bothersome. I don't know how they survive. As a kid, I grew up surrounded by tomatoes. Our home in Tondo is in the middle of the marketplace, and the area I live in especially is the place where tomato storage warehouses are found. Crates and boxes of tomatoes surround me, how can I not grow up liking it? When I cook spaghetti, I put about 5-6 big ones in. When I eat anything fried or grilled, I don't feel complete without it. And between the choice of white sauce or red sauce in pasta when eating out, I often get puzzled why people choose white.