HIGHLY RECOMMENDED TO RELEASE STRESS…..
This is so funny…take time to read all the way to the end.
The following is from a British journalist stationed in the
Philippines.
His observations are so hilarious!!!! This was written
in 1999.
Matter of Taste
By Matthew Sutherland
I have now been in this country for over six years, and consider
myself in most respects well assimilated. However, there is one key
step
on
the road to full assimilation, which I have yet to take, and that’s
to eat BALUT.
The day any of you sees me eating balut, please call immigration
and ask
them
to issue me a Filipino passport. Because at that point there will be no
turning back.
BALUT, for those still blissfully ignorant non-Pinoys out there, is a
fertilized duck egg.
It is commonly sold with salt in a piece of newspaper, much like
English
fish and chips,
by street vendors usually after dark, presumably so you can’t see how
gross
it is.
It’s meant to be an aphrodisiac, although I can’t imagine anything more
likely
to dispel sexual desire than crunching on a partially formed baby duck
swimming
in noxious fluid. The embryo in the egg comes in varying stages of
development,
but basically it is not considered macho to eat one without fully
discernable feathers,
beak, and claws. Some say these crunchy bits are the best. Others
prefer
just to drink the so-called ’soup’, the vile, pungent liquid that
surrounds
the aforementioned feathery fetus…excuse me;
I have to go and throw up now. I’ll be back in a minute.
Food dominates the life of the Filipino. People here just love to eat.
They eat at least eight times a day. These eight official meals are
called, in order: breakfast, snacks, lunch, merienda, merienda ceyna,
dinner, bedtime snacks and no-one-saw-me-take-that-cookie-from-the-
fridge-so-it-doesn’t-count.
The short gaps in between these mealtimes are spent eating Sky Flakes
from the open packet that sits on every desktop. You’re never far
from food in the Philippines. If you doubt this, next time you’re
driving
home from work, try this game. See how long you can drive without
seeing food and I don’t mean a distant restaurant, or a picture of
food. I mean a man on the sidewalk frying fish balls, or a man
walking through the traffic selling nuts or candy. I bet it’s less than
one
minute.
Here are some other things I’ve noticed about food in the Philippines:
Firstly, a meal is not a meal without rice – even breakfast. In the UK,
I could go a whole year without eating rice. Second, it’s impossible
to drink without eating. A bottle of San Miguel just isn’t the same
without gambas or beef tapa. Third, no one ventures more than two paces
from their house without baon (food in small container) and a container
of something cold to drink. You might as well ask a Filipino to leave
home without his pants on. And lastly, where I come from, you eat with
a knife and fork. Here, you eat with a spoon and fork. You try eating
rice swimming in fish sauce with a knife.
One really nice thing about Filipino food culture is that people always
ask
you
to SHARE their food. In my office, if you catch anyone attacking their
baon,
they will always go, "Sir! KAIN TAYO!" ("Let’s eat!"). This confused
me,
until
I realized that they didn’t actually expect me to sit down and start
munching on their boneless bangus. In fact, the polite response is
something like, "No thanks, I just ate." But the principle is sound –
if you have food on your plate, you are expected to share it, however
hungry you are, with those who may be even hungrier. I think that’s
great!
In fact, this is frequently even taken one step further.
Many Filipinos use "Have you eaten yet?" ("KUMAIN KA NA?") as a general
greeting, irrespective of time of day or location.
Some foreigners think Filipino food is fairly dull compared to
other Asian
cuisines.
Actually lots of it is very good: Spicy dishes like Bicol Express
(strange,
a dish
named after a train); anything cooked with coconut milk; anything
KINILAW;
and anything ADOBO. And it’s hard to beat the sheer wanton,
cholesterolic
frenzy
of a good old-fashioned LECHON de leche (roast pig) feast. Dig a pit,
light a fire,
add 50 pounds of animal fat on a stick, and cook until crisp. Mmm,
mmm…
you can actually feel your arteries constricting with each successive
mouthful.
I also share one key Pinoy trait —a sweet tooth. I am thus the only
foreigner
I know who does not complain about sweet bread, sweet burgers, sweet
spaghetti,
sweet banana ketchup, and so on. I am a man who likes to put jam on his
pizza. Try it!
It’s the weird food you want to avoid. In addition to duck fetus in
the
half-shell, items to
avoid in the Philippines include pig’s blood soup (DINUGUAN); bull’s
testicle soup, the
strangely-named "SOUP NUMBER FIVE" (I dread to think what numbers one
through four are);
and the ubiquitous, stinky shrimp paste, BAGOONG, and it’s equally
stinky
sister, PATIS.
Filipinos are so addicted to these latter items that they will
even risk
arrest or
deportation trying to smuggle them into countries like Australia and
the
USA,
which wisely ban the importation of items you can smell from more than
100
paces.
Then there’s the small matter of the purple ice cream. I have never
been
able to get my brain
around eating purple food; the ubiquitous UBE leaves me cold.
And lastly on the subject of weird food, beware: that
KALDERETANG KAMBING
(goat)
could well be KALDERETANG ASO (dog)…
The Filipino, of course, has a well-developed sense of food. Here’s a
typical Pinoy
food joke: "I’m on a seafood diet. "What’s a seafood diet?" "When I
see food, I eat it!"
Filipinos also eat strange bits of animals — the feet, the head,
the guts, etc., usually barbecued on a stick. These have been given
witty names,
like "ADIDAS" (chicken’s feet); "KURBATA" (either just chicken’s neck,
or
"neck and thigh" as in "neck-tie"); "WALKMAN" (pigs ears); "PAL"
(chicken
wings);
"HELMET" (chicken head); "IUD" (chicken intestines), and BETAMAX"
(video-cassette-like
blocks of animal blood). Yum, yum. Bon appetit.
"A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches"– (Proverbs
22:1)
WHEN I arrived in the Philippines from the UK six years ago, one of the
first cultural differences to strike me was names. The subject has
provided a continuing source of amazement and amusement ever since.
The first unusual thing, from an English perspective, is that everyone
here has a nickname. In the staid and boring United Kingdom, we have
nicknames in kindergarten, but when we move into adulthood we tend, I
am glad to say, to lose them.
The second thing that struck me is that Philippine names for both
girls and boys tend to be what we in the UK would regard as
overbearingly
cutesy for anyone over about five. Fifty-five-year-olds colleague put
it.
Where I come from, a boy with a nickname like Boy Blue or Honey Boy
would be beaten to death at school by pre-adolescent bullies, and never
make it to adulthood. So, probably, would girls with names like Babes,
Lovely, Precious, Peachy or Apples. Yuk, ech ech.
Here, however, no one bats an eyelid.
Then I noticed how many people have what I have come to call "door-bell
names".
These are nicknames that sound like -well, doorbells. There are
millions of
them.
Bing, Bong, Ding, and Dong are some of the more common. They can be,
and
frequently are, used in even more door-bell-like combinations such as
Bing-Bong, Ding-Dong, Ting-Ting, and so on. Even our newly appointed
chief of police has a doorbell name Ping. None of these doorbell names
exist where I come from, and hence sound unusually amusing to my
untutored foreign ear.
Someone once told me that one of the Bings, when asked why he was
called Bing, replied, "because my brother is called Bong". Faultless
logic.
Dong, of course, is a particularly funny one for me, as where I come
from
"dong"
is a slang word for well; perhaps "talong" is the best Tagalog
equivalent.
Repeating names was another novelty to me, having never before
encountered people with names like Len-Len, Let-Let, Mai-Mai, or
Ning-Ning.
The secretary I inherited on my arrival had an unusual one: Leck-Leck.
Such names are then frequently further refined by using the "squared"
symbol,
as in Len2 or Mai2. This had me very confused for a while.
Then there is the trend for parents to stick to a theme when naming
their children. This can be as simple as making them all begin with
the same letter, as in Jun, Jimmy, Janice, and Joy.
More imaginative parents shoot for more sophisticated forms of
assonance
or rhyme, as in Biboy, Boboy, Buboy, Baboy (notice the names get worse
the
more kids
there are-best to be born early or you could end up being a Baboy).
Even better, parents can create whole families of, say, desserts
(Apple Pie, Cherry Pie, Honey Pie) or flowers (Rose, Daffodil, Tulip).
The main
advantage of such combinations is that they look great painted across
your
trunk
if you’re a cab driver.
That’s another thing I’d never seen before coming to Manila — taxis
with
the
driver’s kids’ names on the trunk.
Another whole eye-opening field for the foreign visitor is
the phenomenon
of the
"composite" name. This includes names like Jejomar (for Jesus, Joseph
and
Mary), and
the remarkable Luzviminda (for Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, believe it
or
not).
That’s a bit like me being called something like "Engscowani" (for
England,
Scotland, Wales and
Northern Ireland). Between you and me, I’m glad I’m not.
And how could I forget to mention the fabulous concept of the randomly
inserted
letter ’h’. Quite what this device is supposed to achieve, I have
not yet
figured out,
but I think it is designed to give a touch of class to an otherwise
only
averagely weird name.
It results in creations like Jhun, Lhenn, Ghemma, and Jhimmy. Or how
about
Jhun-Jhun (Jhun2)?
How boring to come from a country like the UK full of people with
names like John Smith.
How wonderful to come from a country where imagination and exoticism
rule
the world of names.
Even the towns here have weird names; my favorite is the unbelievably
named
town of Sexmoan
(ironically close to Olongapo and Angeles). Where else in the
world could
that really be true?
Where else in the world could the head of the Church really be called
Cardinal Sin?
Where else but the Philippines!
Note: Philippines has a senator named Joker, and it is his legal
name.
What do you think ?
July 4, 2006
Walang Hanggang Pag-ibig
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED TO RELEASE STRESS…..
This is so funny…take time to read all the way to the end.
The following is from a British journalist stationed in the
Philippines.
His observations are so hilarious!!!! This was written
in 1999.
Matter of Taste
By Matthew Sutherland
I have now been in this country for over six years, and consider
myself in most respects well assimilated. However, there is one key
step
on
the road to full assimilation, which I have yet to take, and that’s
to eat BALUT.
The day any of you sees me eating balut, please call immigration
and ask
them
to issue me a Filipino passport. Because at that point there will be no
turning back.
BALUT, for those still blissfully ignorant non-Pinoys out there, is a
fertilized duck egg.
It is commonly sold with salt in a piece of newspaper, much like
English
fish and chips,
by street vendors usually after dark, presumably so you can’t see how
gross
it is.
It’s meant to be an aphrodisiac, although I can’t imagine anything more
likely
to dispel sexual desire than crunching on a partially formed baby duck
swimming
in noxious fluid. The embryo in the egg comes in varying stages of
development,
but basically it is not considered macho to eat one without fully
discernable feathers,
beak, and claws. Some say these crunchy bits are the best. Others
prefer
just to drink the so-called ’soup’, the vile, pungent liquid that
surrounds
the aforementioned feathery fetus…excuse me;
I have to go and throw up now. I’ll be back in a minute.
Food dominates the life of the Filipino. People here just love to eat.
They eat at least eight times a day. These eight official meals are
called, in order: breakfast, snacks, lunch, merienda, merienda ceyna,
dinner, bedtime snacks and no-one-saw-me-take-that-cookie-from-the-
fridge-so-it-doesn’t-count.
The short gaps in between these mealtimes are spent eating Sky Flakes
from the open packet that sits on every desktop. You’re never far
from food in the Philippines. If you doubt this, next time you’re
driving
home from work, try this game. See how long you can drive without
seeing food and I don’t mean a distant restaurant, or a picture of
food. I mean a man on the sidewalk frying fish balls, or a man
walking through the traffic selling nuts or candy. I bet it’s less than
one
minute.
Here are some other things I’ve noticed about food in the Philippines:
Firstly, a meal is not a meal without rice – even breakfast. In the UK,
I could go a whole year without eating rice. Second, it’s impossible
to drink without eating. A bottle of San Miguel just isn’t the same
without gambas or beef tapa. Third, no one ventures more than two paces
from their house without baon (food in small container) and a container
of something cold to drink. You might as well ask a Filipino to leave
home without his pants on. And lastly, where I come from, you eat with
a knife and fork. Here, you eat with a spoon and fork. You try eating
rice swimming in fish sauce with a knife.
One really nice thing about Filipino food culture is that people always
ask
you
to SHARE their food. In my office, if you catch anyone attacking their
baon,
they will always go, "Sir! KAIN TAYO!" ("Let’s eat!"). This confused
me,
until
I realized that they didn’t actually expect me to sit down and start
munching on their boneless bangus. In fact, the polite response is
something like, "No thanks, I just ate." But the principle is sound –
if you have food on your plate, you are expected to share it, however
hungry you are, with those who may be even hungrier. I think that’s
great!
In fact, this is frequently even taken one step further.
Many Filipinos use "Have you eaten yet?" ("KUMAIN KA NA?") as a general
greeting, irrespective of time of day or location.
Some foreigners think Filipino food is fairly dull compared to
other Asian
cuisines.
Actually lots of it is very good: Spicy dishes like Bicol Express
(strange,
a dish
named after a train); anything cooked with coconut milk; anything
KINILAW;
and anything ADOBO. And it’s hard to beat the sheer wanton,
cholesterolic
frenzy
of a good old-fashioned LECHON de leche (roast pig) feast. Dig a pit,
light a fire,
add 50 pounds of animal fat on a stick, and cook until crisp. Mmm,
mmm…
you can actually feel your arteries constricting with each successive
mouthful.
I also share one key Pinoy trait —a sweet tooth. I am thus the only
foreigner
I know who does not complain about sweet bread, sweet burgers, sweet
spaghetti,
sweet banana ketchup, and so on. I am a man who likes to put jam on his
pizza. Try it!
It’s the weird food you want to avoid. In addition to duck fetus in
the
half-shell, items to
avoid in the Philippines include pig’s blood soup (DINUGUAN); bull’s
testicle soup, the
strangely-named "SOUP NUMBER FIVE" (I dread to think what numbers one
through four are);
and the ubiquitous, stinky shrimp paste, BAGOONG, and it’s equally
stinky
sister, PATIS.
Filipinos are so addicted to these latter items that they will
even risk
arrest or
deportation trying to smuggle them into countries like Australia and
the
USA,
which wisely ban the importation of items you can smell from more than
100
paces.
Then there’s the small matter of the purple ice cream. I have never
been
able to get my brain
around eating purple food; the ubiquitous UBE leaves me cold.
And lastly on the subject of weird food, beware: that
KALDERETANG KAMBING
(goat)
could well be KALDERETANG ASO (dog)…
The Filipino, of course, has a well-developed sense of food. Here’s a
typical Pinoy
food joke: "I’m on a seafood diet. "What’s a seafood diet?" "When I
see food, I eat it!"
Filipinos also eat strange bits of animals — the feet, the head,
the guts, etc., usually barbecued on a stick. These have been given
witty names,
like "ADIDAS" (chicken’s feet); "KURBATA" (either just chicken’s neck,
or
"neck and thigh" as in "neck-tie"); "WALKMAN" (pigs ears); "PAL"
(chicken
wings);
"HELMET" (chicken head); "IUD" (chicken intestines), and BETAMAX"
(video-cassette-like
blocks of animal blood). Yum, yum. Bon appetit.
"A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches"– (Proverbs
22:1)
WHEN I arrived in the Philippines from the UK six years ago, one of the
first cultural differences to strike me was names. The subject has
provided a continuing source of amazement and amusement ever since.
The first unusual thing, from an English perspective, is that everyone
here has a nickname. In the staid and boring United Kingdom, we have
nicknames in kindergarten, but when we move into adulthood we tend, I
am glad to say, to lose them.
The second thing that struck me is that Philippine names for both
girls and boys tend to be what we in the UK would regard as
overbearingly
cutesy for anyone over about five. Fifty-five-year-olds colleague put
it.
Where I come from, a boy with a nickname like Boy Blue or Honey Boy
would be beaten to death at school by pre-adolescent bullies, and never
make it to adulthood. So, probably, would girls with names like Babes,
Lovely, Precious, Peachy or Apples. Yuk, ech ech.
Here, however, no one bats an eyelid.
Then I noticed how many people have what I have come to call "door-bell
names".
These are nicknames that sound like -well, doorbells. There are
millions of
them.
Bing, Bong, Ding, and Dong are some of the more common. They can be,
and
frequently are, used in even more door-bell-like combinations such as
Bing-Bong, Ding-Dong, Ting-Ting, and so on. Even our newly appointed
chief of police has a doorbell name Ping. None of these doorbell names
exist where I come from, and hence sound unusually amusing to my
untutored foreign ear.
Someone once told me that one of the Bings, when asked why he was
called Bing, replied, "because my brother is called Bong". Faultless
logic.
Dong, of course, is a particularly funny one for me, as where I come
from
"dong"
is a slang word for well; perhaps "talong" is the best Tagalog
equivalent.
Repeating names was another novelty to me, having never before
encountered people with names like Len-Len, Let-Let, Mai-Mai, or
Ning-Ning.
The secretary I inherited on my arrival had an unusual one: Leck-Leck.
Such names are then frequently further refined by using the "squared"
symbol,
as in Len2 or Mai2. This had me very confused for a while.
Then there is the trend for parents to stick to a theme when naming
their children. This can be as simple as making them all begin with
the same letter, as in Jun, Jimmy, Janice, and Joy.
More imaginative parents shoot for more sophisticated forms of
assonance
or rhyme, as in Biboy, Boboy, Buboy, Baboy (notice the names get worse
the
more kids
there are-best to be born early or you could end up being a Baboy).
Even better, parents can create whole families of, say, desserts
(Apple Pie, Cherry Pie, Honey Pie) or flowers (Rose, Daffodil, Tulip).
The main
advantage of such combinations is that they look great painted across
your
trunk
if you’re a cab driver.
That’s another thing I’d never seen before coming to Manila — taxis
with
the
driver’s kids’ names on the trunk.
Another whole eye-opening field for the foreign visitor is
the phenomenon
of the
"composite" name. This includes names like Jejomar (for Jesus, Joseph
and
Mary), and
the remarkable Luzviminda (for Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, believe it
or
not).
That’s a bit like me being called something like "Engscowani" (for
England,
Scotland, Wales and
Northern Ireland). Between you and me, I’m glad I’m not.
And how could I forget to mention the fabulous concept of the randomly
inserted
letter ’h’. Quite what this device is supposed to achieve, I have
not yet
figured out,
but I think it is designed to give a touch of class to an otherwise
only
averagely weird name.
It results in creations like Jhun, Lhenn, Ghemma, and Jhimmy. Or how
about
Jhun-Jhun (Jhun2)?
How boring to come from a country like the UK full of people with
names like John Smith.
How wonderful to come from a country where imagination and exoticism
rule
the world of names.
Even the towns here have weird names; my favorite is the unbelievably
named
town of Sexmoan
(ironically close to Olongapo and Angeles). Where else in the
world could
that really be true?
Where else in the world could the head of the Church really be called
Cardinal Sin?
Where else but the Philippines!
Note: Philippines has a senator named Joker, and it is his legal
name.
What do you think ?
Related