compostela, cebu, may 2010
Showing posts with label beer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beer. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Monday, August 20, 2007
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?
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?
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
beer and the meaning of existence
published 04/21/07 in the blog plug section of sunstar cebu's weekend magazine
#################################
my soul may just have died, i think, and it's all because of beer.
it happened like this. after months of unbroken sobriety, i finally had my first drink of beer last weekend. an officemate, marlon, was holding his despidida because he found another job in singapore, joining an already numerous group of former officemates working in the city state.
i actually had reservations on going. i knew alcohol would be involved (it always is on all of my officemates' despididas), and i just had a surgery 2 months ago. but my doctor did say that i could now go back to my old lifestyle, and my old lifestyle did include a measure of beer every now and then, especially on special occasions. so if he says it's ok, then nothing should go wrong with me (i hope). so off i went.
i didn't really drink that much in the party. the beer wasn't enough to make me puke on the street and turn my brain to mush, just enough to loosen us all up and make the party a jolly occasion. but i used to have a low regard for people who drink alcohol. the resulting euphoria was not real in the sense that it wasn't derived from thought and experience, but chemically induced. and following that, i saw no difference between beer drinkers and drug addicts. but discovering the joys of drinking later on, let's just say i've changed my position on that matter.
so the night wore on, and eventually the discussion reached the topic of the weird effects of alcohol.
alcohol has different, sometimes weird, sometimes funny effects on people. some become so jolly that when sufficiently soused they will laugh for no reason at all (that's me). some suddenly become all quiet. some start speaking gibberish like it was a foreign language. some get violent (w/c in bisaya is called 'mauy'). we have this office mate who is a quiet and mild mannered guy. but when he gets drunk, he's like bruce banner suddenly transforming to the incredible hulk, a green imposing mass of pure rage. some can even take a piss anywhere they feel the urge to do so (i remember another officemate...). it's like in that song by the eraserheads that goes: 'CR mo ang buong mundo'. thinking about all that, that's when it hit me.
it's a strange thing no, when your mood, and by extension, your outlook in life and your way of thinking, can so easily be altered by some substance or drug. it somehow runs against the proposition of man being a spiritual creature. how can there be a spirit, or a soul, or whatever you call it, that is supposed to be separate from the one's physical nature when it can be influenced by one chemical or other?
there are actually some religious groups, like the rastafarians, who commune with their deity by smoking marijuana. the oracles of ancient greece were known to be exposed to mind altering fumes, and the resulting gibberish from their mouths the priests interpreted to be messages from the gods, like in the movie 300.
we already have pills like uppers (to make us happy) and downers (to make us sad, or at least less happy), both easily prescribed by our friendly neighborhood psychiatrist. but imagine having a pill for, say, passion, or excitement, or romance, or contentment, or even peace of mind. do you feel depressed? take a pill! you've lost passion for your job? take a pill! you no longer love your wife of 40 years? take a pill! you feel that your life is a hassle and you want to end it all by jumping off a bridge? take a pill!
scientists are now beginning to understand the workings of the brain, albeit slowly. they've already mapped which parts of the brain function for emotion, and behavior, and sensation, and basic motion. and using an MRI to scan the brain, they can even read (sort of) what thoughts are going on in your head by measuring the blood flow in your brain. once science has fully understood the brain, the possibilities of what we can do scares me.
and when that time comes, the essence of humanity, of what it means to exist, is reduced to that of being a machine. we will be nothing more than living, breathing, thinking machines, no better than robots. it somehow robs us of a reason, of meaning, in our existence. we just happen to be here because we are here, period.
even sentience has a price, and it isn't cheap. my thoughts are beginning to scare me.
that must be why i get so envious of my cat miming every time i see her get her siesta. all she does is eat, sleep, and hunt for mice and roaches. and she doesn't have the facility to torture herself with thought. i'm starting to think we humans actually got the raw end of the deal.
but what do we do about it? do we despair over it and ruin our day?
i say, let's just swallow the possibility, believe whatever you want to believe, and get back to the business of living. we happen to be here, we might as well enjoy the ride.
some of you philosopher types may now be punching wholes in my line of thinking. but either way the debate ends up, soul or no soul, doesn't make our time here less precious. and the prospect of having no soul actually makes it even more so. if we have no soul, and it follows, no afterlife, then our time here is the only one we've got.
now, if they only had a pill for hangovers, then that would be really great...
#################################
my soul may just have died, i think, and it's all because of beer.
it happened like this. after months of unbroken sobriety, i finally had my first drink of beer last weekend. an officemate, marlon, was holding his despidida because he found another job in singapore, joining an already numerous group of former officemates working in the city state.
i actually had reservations on going. i knew alcohol would be involved (it always is on all of my officemates' despididas), and i just had a surgery 2 months ago. but my doctor did say that i could now go back to my old lifestyle, and my old lifestyle did include a measure of beer every now and then, especially on special occasions. so if he says it's ok, then nothing should go wrong with me (i hope). so off i went.
i didn't really drink that much in the party. the beer wasn't enough to make me puke on the street and turn my brain to mush, just enough to loosen us all up and make the party a jolly occasion. but i used to have a low regard for people who drink alcohol. the resulting euphoria was not real in the sense that it wasn't derived from thought and experience, but chemically induced. and following that, i saw no difference between beer drinkers and drug addicts. but discovering the joys of drinking later on, let's just say i've changed my position on that matter.
so the night wore on, and eventually the discussion reached the topic of the weird effects of alcohol.
alcohol has different, sometimes weird, sometimes funny effects on people. some become so jolly that when sufficiently soused they will laugh for no reason at all (that's me). some suddenly become all quiet. some start speaking gibberish like it was a foreign language. some get violent (w/c in bisaya is called 'mauy'). we have this office mate who is a quiet and mild mannered guy. but when he gets drunk, he's like bruce banner suddenly transforming to the incredible hulk, a green imposing mass of pure rage. some can even take a piss anywhere they feel the urge to do so (i remember another officemate...). it's like in that song by the eraserheads that goes: 'CR mo ang buong mundo'. thinking about all that, that's when it hit me.
it's a strange thing no, when your mood, and by extension, your outlook in life and your way of thinking, can so easily be altered by some substance or drug. it somehow runs against the proposition of man being a spiritual creature. how can there be a spirit, or a soul, or whatever you call it, that is supposed to be separate from the one's physical nature when it can be influenced by one chemical or other?
there are actually some religious groups, like the rastafarians, who commune with their deity by smoking marijuana. the oracles of ancient greece were known to be exposed to mind altering fumes, and the resulting gibberish from their mouths the priests interpreted to be messages from the gods, like in the movie 300.
we already have pills like uppers (to make us happy) and downers (to make us sad, or at least less happy), both easily prescribed by our friendly neighborhood psychiatrist. but imagine having a pill for, say, passion, or excitement, or romance, or contentment, or even peace of mind. do you feel depressed? take a pill! you've lost passion for your job? take a pill! you no longer love your wife of 40 years? take a pill! you feel that your life is a hassle and you want to end it all by jumping off a bridge? take a pill!
scientists are now beginning to understand the workings of the brain, albeit slowly. they've already mapped which parts of the brain function for emotion, and behavior, and sensation, and basic motion. and using an MRI to scan the brain, they can even read (sort of) what thoughts are going on in your head by measuring the blood flow in your brain. once science has fully understood the brain, the possibilities of what we can do scares me.
and when that time comes, the essence of humanity, of what it means to exist, is reduced to that of being a machine. we will be nothing more than living, breathing, thinking machines, no better than robots. it somehow robs us of a reason, of meaning, in our existence. we just happen to be here because we are here, period.
even sentience has a price, and it isn't cheap. my thoughts are beginning to scare me.
that must be why i get so envious of my cat miming every time i see her get her siesta. all she does is eat, sleep, and hunt for mice and roaches. and she doesn't have the facility to torture herself with thought. i'm starting to think we humans actually got the raw end of the deal.
but what do we do about it? do we despair over it and ruin our day?
i say, let's just swallow the possibility, believe whatever you want to believe, and get back to the business of living. we happen to be here, we might as well enjoy the ride.
some of you philosopher types may now be punching wholes in my line of thinking. but either way the debate ends up, soul or no soul, doesn't make our time here less precious. and the prospect of having no soul actually makes it even more so. if we have no soul, and it follows, no afterlife, then our time here is the only one we've got.
now, if they only had a pill for hangovers, then that would be really great...
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