the balut virgin and the cigarette virgin: a reflection on the roots of addiction

two people lost their virginity last tuesday: me, the balut virgin, and ms. jp, the cigarette virgin... virgins no longer.

we both lost it during the despedida drinking session held in honor of mr. tugak, who resigned to take a better paying job in manila. not wanting to miss a free drink, i dragged myself from the office looking for the watering hole where it was now ongoing. the place was, literally, a hole in the wall. the owners of the place were airsoft devotees, so they called it 'fire in the hole'.

when i got there i found that mr. tugak, ms. jp, ms. k, and ms. s had already started 2 hours earlier. apparently i had some catching up to do.

*******

after a few bottles, the balut man came. believe it or not, in all my 24 years of existence, i have not yet partaken of these eggs, eggs so magical people believe they granted the partaker certain powers, ranging from stronger knees to increased sexual abilities.

the thing is, i am not very adventurous when it comes to food, and my sensibilities found the idea of eating 'duck abortions' a bit too exotic. as a child, i was also afraid eating balut would give me nightmares: imagine my horror when breaking the shell open, the unborn chick inside would suddenly wake up and beg for its life, telling me in a shrill voice: "please boy! don't eat me!"

"want some?", they ask me. with the unborn chick in mind, i kindly declined. but then, it occurred to me that if i did that, i would look like a sissy in front of everybody else. so the nightmares be damned. i took it back and said, what the heck, sure, i'll have one. tugak was paying for it anyway.

to give myself more courage, i recited mr. tugak's mantra: "sa sugod ra nang luod."

they ordered the 13 day old balut. after a brief discussion on the correct procedure for cracking the egg open (you crack the end marked with a pen), i proceed with my initiation into the mysterious world of balut eating.

first the 'sabaw'. i've heard a lot of stories of pregnant women pestering their husbands in the middle of the night to look for balut just so they could taste its 'sabaw'. but fortunately for the husbands of the world, balut sellers tend to work in the night shift.

so how to describe it... it was... ok, i guess. more or less, it was like an oily version of the tinolang manok's broth. so far so good.

and then came the hard part, the rest of the balut. i broke the shell apart slowly, apprehensive of the possibility of seeing the chick's face. but heaven be praised, the egg had not yet developed enough to a discernable form of a chick. no nightmares this time, thank goodness.

in a nutshell, the balut was like a hard boiled chicken egg that got exposed to gamma rays, with an uneven consistency. there was the tough chewy part, another part that tasted like the ordinary yolk of a hard boiled chicken egg, and another part that had the consistency of phlegm. the last one my mouth had difficulty swallowing. i had to wash it down with a glass of beer to prevent from any further embarassment.

now that i've successfully hurdled my first encounter with balut, i have come to the following conclusion: balut is overrated.

*******

the night wore on, and tugak and ms. k eventually ran out of cigarettes, so they buy themselves another pack. suddenly, ms. jp asks if she could try one. she also says that this would be her first time to smoke. ms. k gives her a stick, and guides her in the technicalities of smoking her first cigarette (i.e. how to breathe in the smoke, the correct way of holding the cigarette between your fingers, etc.). it was weird, after 20 something years, there we were laying witness as ms. jp's pink lung's got devirginized by her first (and hopefully, for her health's sake, her last) cigarette.

ms. k also offered me a stick. i considered it for a moment, then thought: balut and cigarettes are 2 very different things, and i no longer care if i look like a sissy. the farthest i could go was 3 puffs, and i didn't even breathe.

after some clumsy puffing, ms. jp soon finished her stick. it is curious, but not until i sat there staring at the dying embers of ms. jp's first stick in the ashtray did the significance of the event hit me: i just witnessed first hand one of the origins of addiction. people take up their first cigarette, their first bottle of beer, or their first joint of marijuana, for the same reason that i ate my first balut: we just don't want to look like sissies in front of everybody else.

which is not to say, of course, that ms. jp is now getting addicted to cigarettes. ms. jp, you're not getting addicted now, are you?

the carrot and stick approach

talk about the carrot and stick approach:

Boom Boom's village loses road project after boxer's loss

CEBU CITY -- The shocking defeat of Rey "Boom-boom" Bautista by Mexico's Daniel Ponce de Leon did not only sadden his fellow Boholanos. It also cost his village a cemented road.

A dismayed Bohol Gov. Erico Aumentado said that the plan to cement the provincial road going to Barangay Can-uling, Bautista's home village in the town of Candijay, would not push through -- for now.

Aumentado admitted that before the fight, he promised the young Boholano boxer that the road would be cemented but only if he won.

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if we could only find a truly effective way of motivating our athletes, then maybe our basketball team wouldn't have to apologize to us after failing in the fiba asia olympic qualifier. maybe we'd even get that elusive gold in the olympics! we can rule the world!

i remember something i read in time magazine years ago. as a way of 'encouraging' the iraq national football team, saddam's son uday hussein would beat the soles of their feet with a cane everytime they lost. unlike the good governor of bohol, uday did not believe in the power of the carrot, only the stick. it had to take the fall of saddam for iraq's soccer team to finally win big, a testament to the validity of uday's motivational approach.

i can imagine gma placing a call to manny pacquiao before his rematch with marco antonio barrera:

gma: hello manny?

manny: yis ma'am! gud ibning ma'am!

gma: my husband just bet 100 million on your coming fight with barrera. if you win this fight, i promise you, on the next election, you will have the hordes of garci and lintang bedol in your disposal! you will finally get that seat in congress! or like migz, even become senator, if you like!

manny: and... uh... if i lose?

gma: i'll just issue an executive order sparing the rest of the country from your singing career [mike arroyo sniggers in the background]

manny: oh, is that all madam president?

gma: yes manny, have a good fight then! bye!

gma hangs up. mike arroyo is later taken to the hospital for laughing too hard. and manny pacquiao regains his focus, forgets about ara mina, goes back to LA, spends his remaining time training hard, and clobbers marco antonio barrera on fight night.

measures of maturity

these are the questions my barkada asks each other...

4 years ago:
unsa na ka nga stage sa max payne?

now:
kumusta na mo sa imong girlfriend?

20 years from now:
kumusta na imong blood pressure?