[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balut_(egg)
Special Filipino delicacy last night - Balut, Irvin said I'm half Filipino now.The 16 day old fertilized duck embryo is quite different the 19 day old. Considering they hatch at day 21, you may imagine what type of delicious treats await you just below the vieny interior of the shell. I thought the best ways to take this to the extreme are as follows: (1) First you get a table full of 21 day old eggs spread across it. Gather a group of fellow immorals, and make a game of it. As soon as the egg starts moving, grab it, crack it open, and gabble it down. Of course for the less daring, care should be takin' of beak and feet bones. This could be a fun drinking game, maybe with whiskey or Absinthe. (2) The second and which is still in development, is to some how have the embryo already in your mouth right before it begins to hatch...
Yesterday, toke it quite easy. Stayed mostly in V&G, which seems just to be a label for a certain grouping of houses, of which is ours. Us, consisting of: Adam, Syril, Glenda(32), Olive(2), Elyse(4), Aaron(11), Jessica (23?) (or Roberto is you wish) and me.
The girls are really funny - and all the time, and I think the language barrier works well, it's pretty fun trying to repeat what they say and add strange sounds of my own here and there. They don't seem to even miss a beat, or really even care that we can't entirely communicate by words. They've taken to me Adam easily and like to crawl all over us, it's quite normal to be sitting on the couch with monkey babies climbing the lattice barred windows behind your head, or on your head for that matter. Elyse and I trade up being each others hair stylists, while Olive seems to be having a deeply involved conversation with me. As for Aaron, he is my main translating assistant, and he sometimes takes it apon himself to want to teach me random new words whenever I'm in one of my Cebuano comprehension modes. Compared to the girls, he is rather quiet; although, he does help to translate some of what the girls are saying, or anyone if I ask.
As for Cyril, father of the household, he works the graveyard shift at an IT customer service company, as has been for I believe three years now. I haven't gotten quite to the heart of it, but I think if you have some type of trouble with some software and you call a tech person, you get him; I'll have to get back on specifics. Cyril is a very accommodating host, and has made me feel very welcomed in his home.
As for Jessica, or Roberto if you wish. Jessica is the families resident transvestite house keeper. It took me a little while to learn that she (as I've settled on this pronoun, although I've heard Glenda and Irvin use opposing ones) is paid for her services. She lives in a spare room, stays all week, leaves for the day to go back to her village and then returns the same. She seems to perform, or help in all the house hold duties, but mostly Cyril and Glenda prepare the meals. As much as I try to engage her, and while Glenda says she is very shy, she sometimes seems to ignore me. Nonetheless, I continue to try to loosen her up a bit.
Glenda, I feel is our saint here. She really looks out for us, and is very open and genuine. She likes to be joking, and trys hard to make us feel comfortable. One joke that I especially was fond of was when we she took us to the Barber. The shop was a small room packed with 6 swivel chairs, with just as many barbers, and just as many patrons. After a gaggle of Filipino chatter with much laughing at our expense she explains how she had just arranged for Adam and I to be sold, and how tomorrow we would be dead.
In other news... went SCUBA diving for the first time last Thursday. Always thought I maintained a residual fear of claustrophobia from growing up, so I was wondering how this was really going to go. Had some initial trouble re-pressurizing my brain, but was able to figure it out after a bit... The city streets of Cebu are very populated and polluted: noise pollution, exhaust pollution, excretion pollution; its hot, steaming, and a full onslaught on your senses. You can't drink the water out of the tap; one the reasons being because the local politicians decided it was a good idea to put a dump at the mouth of the local tributaried watershed system; thus, up sucking all matter of shit up stream and into local reserves... Despite having the ability to scrap pollution sludge of your front teeth after a bike ride down the main strip, it not hard to escape it all. Some of the waters I've seen off the shores in more remote areas are aqua clear, and once on the bottom: corals, vivid fluorescent colors, strange sea creatures. Sea horse looking like snakes about 8 inches long, pulsating plants, upside down fish. I soon realize I haven't looked up in awhile. When I did I was about 35 feet down. A sudden surge cycled through the system, My vitality is really starting to be dependent on the whim of this equipment, and on my own state of calmness. Scary thought, as I look ahead to the our guide followed by Adam. They start to descend over the edge into the dark abyss, over a ridge that spans the peripheral far past my lines of sight. Another surge as I try to re-immerse myself in the floor of coral and calmness...
Can't wait to go again.
About one more week in Cebu and then one to Malaysia via Singapore. Tonight I believe Irvin's friend Lino is taking us out to eat in Lapu-Lapu City, and then maybe hang out with some local Filipino girls from the market place that we kind of met when we bought yellow tail tuna the other morning. Glenda subsequentely went bact and got one of their phone numbers. We see how this one plays out, might be highly dependent on the level of English they know...there's always Karaoke.
Interested note: Lapu-Lapu is the Filipino warrior that is said to have laid Ferdinand Magellan on his spear at the battle of Mactan. One of the boats that was in Magellan's fleet (Maria?) later returned to Spain, and thus chalking up the first circumnaviation of the globe.
No comments:
Post a Comment