Things I did today:

 Applied for two jobs
Bought local kale and honey
Cried for an hour
Recovered
Ate rhubarb coffeecake
Wandered around a used bookstore for an hour before buying a $2 collection of James Woods' essays
Started cold press coffee (life without an electric kettle, my friends!)

 Not in that order.

bonjour

William can be a hard person to be a tourist with... sample quotes from a visit to the Tower of London:

"Well, that's a lot of rocks." (That would be referring to the castle itself)
"They're big and shiny, I guess" (That would be the crown jewels)
"It's really cold."  (Well, yes, it was, I'll give him that)

Oh, and here was his remark on Harrods:

"You know, this all seems excessive."

And Big Ben:

"It's not as big as I thought it would be."

I'm not making these up!  He is just plain hard to impress!

[William would like to interject here and say that it is not that he is hard to impress, but that he just says the first thing that comes to his mind.  Also, that he thinks "that's a lot of rocks" is the only reasonable reaction to the sight of a large castle.  He would also like to reassure my reading audience of 5 people that he is happy to be in London.  But if he wants to tell his side of the story he can start his own blog, so I'll be maintaining that he is a difficult man to impress]

Even William, however, has been wowed by Paris.  We visited the Notre Dame last night, after breathing a sigh of relief for having reached Paris at last (for the Eurostar was brought to its knees by a few inches of snow), so we saw the massive, massively creepy cathedral at its best - on a dark, cloudy and eerie night.  William was flabbergasted.  I will grant you that his reaction was more along the lines of "that must have taken so incredibly long to make!  Why would they do that?  Oh my gosh," than "Oh my, how ethereally beautiful," but at least he was awed, which is rare indeed.

And when we approached the Eiffel Tower, he said - and I quote - "This is so exciting!"  CONGRATULATIONS PARIS!  You have awed the unaweable.

(speaking of the eiffel tower - 704 stairs, people.  I am going to be so sore tomorrow)

In other news: why doesn't Hums have a field trip to Europe?  It should totally be part of the course.  Today I was in the Musee d'Orsay looking at Courbet's painting of himself in his studio - and needless to say I saw oodles of enormous French history paintings throughout our speedy tour of the Louvre - and suddenly I said, "OHH!"  Seriously, out loud in the middle of the museum, and I must have sounded like a prime idiot.  It all clicked and I dragged William over to say "Dr Smith was RIGHT, this IS an important painting - see, he's making this statement-- even the size is a challenge to the old institutions and conventions of art--"

A field trip.  Definitely called for.  Maybe it would also increase enrollment?

Also, I ate 4 meals today and all of them consisted primarily of butter, except for one that was all chocolate.  Ahhhhh paris!

borough market

Next week, if it's nice, I'll go back and take pictures... but for now, I'll just say three things:

- While I thought we lived in a nice place, I now realize that we should have located ourselves south of the river to shorten our commute to this freaking amazing food market;

- My noble self-restraint in the cheese department has been broken... I did restrain myself to only 4 types of cheese, but I won't tell you how much I spent for them.  And while for the past two and a half weeks we managed to buy barely any alcohol at all - seriously, aside from the requisite pint at the occasional pub, nothing! - that noble chain has now been broken, too.  but the wine shop in Borough has refillable bottles, and you come back each week and fill them straight out of the barrels, and it's eco-friendly, and it's cheap, and it's so cool!

anyway, we just had crisp white wine with some margherita pizzas - yes, I managed to make pizzas with a marginally-functional stove and no measuring cups or spoons; my second-greatest achievement of the day* - featuring amazing fresh mozzarella and I have NO REGRETS.

Furthermore, I think I displayed equally admirable self-control when I didn't buy ANY wild mushrooms.  Not any!  And there were endless basketfuls;

- and finally, I am generally firmly behind the local foods movement.  Very firmly!  Local foods are amazing and you should most definitely support your local farmers.  And there is an impressive amount of British-grown produce available here, and I buy it!  I do!  

But if you are thinking that a trip to the Borough market carries the moral weight of a trip to the local farmer's market, I must caution you that you will find yourself falling in love with olives and oils from "our small organic farm on Sparta" (said in a charming Greek accent) and cheese shipped in massive wheels from the south of France, and a thousand different bottles and cans of ingredients from a hundred countries and every populated continent.  And when you try to persuade yourself that Spain is 'practically local," just stop.  Because you're not there for virtue, you're there for cheese, herbs, kangaroo burgers and Turkish candy.

oh man, maybe I'll go back tomorrow...

*My greatest achievement today was solving this puzzle:



I was stuck on it for two whole days.  Drove me crazy.  But I got it!

yumz

get ready for adobo and sisig to hit the big time!

Filipino food's new wave

palawan

is gorgeous.  i wish i was here for more than four days... but the group I'm interviewing is making sure that I'm getting to see most of puerto princesa, so that's something.

despite the loads of natural beauty, i'm in an awful mood.  i haven't calculated how long it's been since I've seen eight straight hours of sleep, but even without exact numbers i'm gonna go ahead and lay the blame for my grumpiness there.  and instead of writing a post, i'm going to do some laundry and then read david sedaris in bed.  my life is a party, friends.

p.s. crocodile meat is definitely not exciting.

and now, a brief interlude about food

okay, so my last post might not have quite followed Tom's request, but i'll start on Dolores'.  because if there's one thing I'm learning in the Philippines, it's the importance of obeying your parents.

Maybe not a lesson that will stick, but while it lasts!

So:  FOOD.  A few random notes on food:

- I still have to repress some repulsion and moral qualms every time I eat meat... because it's weird, you know?  It's gross!  I don't like it!  It came from an animal!  that died so I could eat it!  But I feel way worse if I order it and don't eat it, and as long as I'm eating it I might as well enjoy it, so I do my best to quash those objections.

There's really only one exception to this ew-gross-animal-flesh reaction, and that's with the fresh fish.  Oh my goodness, the fresh fish.  The first few times, when I faced an entire animal sitting on my plate, head on, eyes clouded, mouth open in what I personified as a death groan... I'll confess, I freaked out a bit.

But then I started to eat, and oh my gosh.  Fresh bangus or tilapia flaking off the bone, dressed with garlic, calamansi and soy sauce, grilled and served hot with plain rice - OH MY GOSH.  So good.  So good that it has overcome not only my repulsion (I now eat everything except the eyeballs.  And soon maybe I will eat that too.  Because as I grow braver and eat more and more of the fish - and get better at picking out bones - it is all AMAZING.) but pretty near overcome my moral objections. So I understand, factory-farmed-steak lovers.  I understand.  Because I am almost willing to declare it a-ok for a sentient being to be tortured as long as I get to eat delicious, delicious fish.

- jackfruit!

This is jackfruit.  It seems to be part of a strange class of fruits here where a really hard, spiky exterior surrounds fruit that consists of clumps, each being one big seed surrounded by a bunch of fruit.  That was a terrible description.  Anyway, they're kind of a challenge to eat at first.

And jackfruit is extra strange because it tastes like BUBBLEGUM.  seriously, like bubblegum!  google it, other people have made the same observation (i checked to make sure I wasn't crazy!)   it is a really bizarre experience.

- I previously mentioned buko halo-halo... were you wondering what it looks like?  wonder no more.

And in case you were doubting my hypothesis that halo halo was the invention of stoners, here is more evidence: the other day I ate halo-halo with queso ice cream.  CHEESE FLAVORED ICE CREAM.

QED

- and I still haven't tried balut... less than 2 weeks left!  I don't know if I can work up the nerve.

What's balut?  Oh, you know.  Just a duck egg.  A fertilized duck egg.  A fertilized duck egg allowed to mature.  So that there's a fetus inside.   Yup, just a duck fetus, that's all.

Yeah, I'm not quite ready for that yet.

yet another post about food...

i know i know i know.  but the thing is i like food, like, a LOT.  so i think about it a lot.  seriously, sometimes I stop and think about how much of my brainspace is spent thinking about food, and I despair, and then I remember that it could be full of trivia about 80s cartoons or something, and I recover a little bit... but only a little bit.  anyway what I'm saying is I'm sorry that I think so much about food that even my blog about travel is mostly about food.

but anyway, TODAY, at a classy little japanese seafood place, while I floundered (ha!) my way around the massive menu, I was thinking about how great it is that food here is so cheap.  (Note: when I say cheap, I mean for me, with my American dollars.  on a semi-regular basis food prices in the Philippines rise to a point that puts serious pressure on the poorer classes of society, so even though the Philippines produces enough food to feed its own population, and foreigners find food prices extremely low, i'm not comfortable calling food cheap without this qualifying note.  i mean even with the qualifying note i'm kind of uncomfortable talking about how cheap things are for me here but... well... here i go.)

so there's the obvious benefit, which is the same as the housing being relatively cheap, which is - duh - that my trip is way cheaper than if I were, say, traveling around Australia interviewing activists or something.  but there is an unexpected benefit to food being cheap - I don't have to decide what to eat on my own!

Because here's the thing.  In my normal life, I am a vegetarian, which usually makes it way easier to pick what to eat at restaurants - find the three or four vegetarian options, choose the least-lame-sounding, done!  But here, since I am eating all manner of animals, it's completely overwhelming.  The menus are pages and pages of possibilities, half of them completely unknown to me, and I don't know what to do.  But I figured it out!  I have a strategy!  I ask the waiter, "What's best?"  And I order that!

Novel, right?  Completely astonishing?   for me... yes!  And totally liberating!  Especially since they almost always pick things I would never have chosen myself.  Sometimes they pick things not even listed on menus or specialty boards.

Of course, they also almost always pick one of the more expensive items the restaurant serves.  But (and i get back to my point) food here is so cheap that, after hemming and hawing, I stop and tell myself, "You know, Camila, you can probably afford to spend $7 on dinner instead of $2."  (And yes, I have had really amazing meals here for $2.  Not just good - amazing).  And while I love me some greasy, grungy low-budget restaurants - and have had some great dinners at those places - I don't just have to stick to the obviously cheap locations, because an expensive meal - i'll say it again - seven dollars.  Seriously, as long as I avoid the restaurants catering to foreigners and go where the locals say to eat, I can buy anything on the menu and not even blink.

what I'm saying is that, because food here is absurdly cheap, I can afford to eat out every night.  I can afford to eat out every night at the best restaurants in town.  I can afford to go to the best restaurants in town and order whatever my waiter identifies as the best dish they make - every. single.  night.  and despite those pages of menus, i don't have to decide a dang thing, and i always get something amazing.

is... is this what life is like for the filthy rich?  because let me tell you what, my life right now is DELICIOUS.

(oh, and at the japanese place?  i got some kind of sushi... couldn't tell you what it was except that part of it was purple and the sushimaster dude said something about a shell and that it was "so fresh, ma'am, so fresh."  and daaaaang was it good.  and then local-catch sashimi.  life by the sea!)

further culinary adventures 3

Also, I ate shark fin.  I'M SORRY!  I know it was wrong!  But we ordered a dimsum platter, and I didn't realize one of the items on the platter was shark fin, until it was right there in front of me... and by that point if we didn't eat the thing it would have been thrown away, and the shark had died anyway... so I might at least try it, right?

ahh i'm such a terrible person.

How do all you permanent carnivores handle this sense of guilt?

further culinary adventures 2

I have finally experienced halo-halo - or, more specifically, buko halo halo, which is halo halo served in a hollowed-out (HA!  ha!  halo is pronounced "HAH-loh" so it sounds like hollow so that's a pun!) coconut.

My immediate conclusion was that halo-halo was the invention of a Filipino stoner.  Are you dubious?  Tell me, who other than a pothead would sit around and think,

"You know what would be tasty?  Ice cream.  Yeah, some bright-purple ube (yam) ice cream.  But not JUST ube ice cream - no, I'm thinking ice cream mixed with jello.  ooh, and tapioca pearls.  and caramelized bananas.  and some sweetened jackfruit.  and strips of coconut. and beans... kidney beans, or garbanzo beans, or maybe bean sprouts.  and then I'll pour milk over the whole thing.  No, wait, it needs more ice... let's add crushed ice.  and hey, flan!  yeah, chunks of flan de leche would be great!  and maybe pinipig, aka rice krispies... or better yet, CORN FLAKES!  yes, for a little bit of crunch, let's mix in some corn flakes!  but wait...

something's still missing... what could it be?

CORN KERNELS!  Yes, that's it, kernels of sweetcorn would be the perfect addition to my ice cream/jello/tapioca/banana/jackfruit/beans/coconut/milk/ice/flan/corn flake combination!  God, I'm a genius."

Totally high.

I rest my case.

The result, however, is weirdly delicious.  Emphasis on "weirdly," but even as I was thinking, "damn this is a bizarre taste experience," I couldn't stop eating.  So... good job, stoners of the Philippines?


p.s. did you know that in the Philippines, until the death penalty was repealed a few years ago, possession of over 500g of pot was punishable by death?  truth!

p.p.s. i don't smoke pot.  just sayin'.

p.p.p.s. postscripts are awesome.  especially on things that aren't letters and don't have signatures.

further culinary adventures

Here in Davao, it is pretty much mandatory that visitors try durian fruit. It's kind of a hazing ceremony.

What is durian?

Any spike-covered object that can only be opened with a machete was probably never meant to be eaten. 

Durian is a fruit rather infamous for its smell - said to be so powerful that people will refuse to allow it in their homes, places of business, airplanes, etc.  

It is also one of the least-appetizing fruits I've ever seen.  The smell is, honestly, not that bad - but texture-wise, it looks like a spiky bowl full of giant, yellow slugs.  Slugs with great big seeds inside.

Supposedly, durian "smells like hell, tastes like heaven."  In my experience, however, durian smells faintly unpleasant, has a distinctly unpleasant texture, and a taste...

how to describe the taste?  It really is unique.  i have never tasted anything like it in my life.  I asked my durian-eating companion, Rod, who was kind enough to eat 90% of the fruit, how he would describe it, and he paused and said, "like milk?"  And yes, it does taste a bit, just a little bit, like milk.  Sour milk.  With the texture of a slug.  And if a sour-milk-flavored, slug-textured fruit sounds absolutely terrible, well,

It is. Absolutely terrible. No two ways around it.  Sorry, Davao, but I gotta keep it real.

civet coffee, aka kopi luwak, aka cat shit

what?  that's what it is!

I am, even as I type, savoring a small pot of civet coffee.

the delicacy - passed through the digestive track of civets (which aren't exactly cats... but they're kinda like tree-cats, close enough) before being cleaned, ground, brewed and consumed by yours truly - can cost as much as $50 a cup if you're getting horrifically ripped off in fancy restaurants.  Here in the Philippines, a civet-coffee-exporting country, my little pot cost about five bucks, so how could I resist?

Tasting notes:  Nutty.  Delicate.  Very mild.  It's true what they say - it's really not bitter, although it does still taste acidic to me.

All in all?  Definitely not worth $500/pound.   Maybe worth $5/cup, if you like a light coffee.  But I still prefer coffee that kicks me in the face.

attempt three: baguio, aso, masarap.

To add to the list of kindnesses:  a personal tour of Baguio.

After interviewing J, a perfectly wonderful and absolutely fascinating activist (says the neutral researcher, haha), she offered to show me around town.  Baguio is the mountain escape of Luzon, where the wealthy of Manila flee the heat of the summer for the cool shade of pine trees and the attractions of hot springs - but it's more than just a resort town, and seems like a great city on its own terms.  It felt - not quite familiar, that would be going too far, but almost.  Almost familiar.  Nestled in the mountains (and that's a comfortable feeling, for sure), a small city, with a park and a lake in the center and a main street rising up a hill to overlook the town - it's a walkable size, full of small shops and artists and gardens.  also, a bright-pink cathedral.   I guess when I say that it felt almost familiar, I mean that besides being warmly in the arms of mountains, it was a town where I could imagine living.  I have tried to imagine living in Manila (because millions of people do, you know?) but I really just can't quite do it.  It's too... everything!  I guess I'm just not a megalopolis kind of girl, you know?

Baguio was really rather nice, though.  J. introduced me to a hip, vegetarian, artist-owned cafe where we talked and had lunch, then she showed me around - first to the mall (I have been to SO many malls - they are like the official Filipino hangouts.  I'm not making this up.  I know it sounds like I'm trying to justify cultural laziness but seriously, malls are big deals here) and then to the cathedral, where we joined the long line to light candles, then to the park, where we paddled a boat around and tried not to run into all the families out for their own sunday paddle. We talked the whole time - she asked questions about life in America - what college is like, how the public school system works, what the malls are like, whether my family knows I have a boyfriend, what it's like living with so many freedoms (and that was a hard question to answer!)  and I tried to explain American race relations, and asked about her college life and her relationship - and she talked about her ex, who never once bought her roses, and I laughed at how some things really are the same.  And then she asked what I wanted to do next, before my bus back to Manila, and I said it was probably dinner time, and she said there's a greasy American diner nearby, and I pulled a face, and she laughed, and said okay, filipino food... and she grinned and asked, "Do you want to eat dog?"  I took a deep breath and thought, go hard or go home...

And that's how I ended up following my new friend on a winding path through town, as she explained that they raise dogs just for eating, they don't just use street dogs - for better quality, you know - and she said we were headed to "the best dog meat in Baguio." J held my elbow to guide me through through hordes of people, between street vendors, in front of jeepneys, across the walkways over roads, through malls and restaurants, down a dark street to a darker alley through a gate to a smaller alley up an unmarked set of stairs and finally into a room full of booths and flourescent light.

As we stepped into the room, everybody - and I mean everybody - turned to stare, and J laughed.  We grabbed a seat as she ordered for us.  It wasn't hard - the restaurant sold exactly four items.  Dog meat, rice, soda and booze.  To be fair, there were different kinds of dog meat... the head (very expensive, based on the prices painted on the wall), the liver, the intestines - but we got a normal plate of - well, miscelleny, I suppose.  "What part of the dog is this?" I asked J, as the plate of brown chunks and green onions arrived, and she paused and shrugged.  So who knows?

The whole time we waited, people didn't stop staring- and when my plate arrived, there was a collective pause as I took my first bite.  The waitresses loitered nearby as I braced myself, took a bite of aso, and chewed... and chewed... and chewed... "How is it?" J asked, laughing, and I managed to swallow and blurt out - "Chewy," and everyone in hearing range laughed at me.  After I had proclaimed the meal to be, in fact, masarap - delicious, several intoxicated men came over to confirm that I was, in fact, American.  "From Canada, maybe?"  No sirree, I said, picking bones and gristle out of my teeth.  "But - but you really like it?"

Really, though, dog meat - should you ever get the chance to try it - isn't half bad.  If you're ever in the Philippines and you happen to be into eating animal carcasses, you should check it out.  You'll get a good meal for dirt cheap, impress your traveling companions, and astound the neighborhood drunks.  All in a good dinner's work.

lunchtime and language barriers

OK, so the first tagalog words I'm going to learn will most definitely be FOOD WORDS.  I was originally planning on starting with the courtesy phrases (my current repertoire is kumasta ka/po (how are you), mabuti (fine), and salamat po (thank you)  as you can see, it could do with some expansion).  But plans have changed.  Buying lunch yesterday, from the bevy of food stands in the mall, was a downright harrowing experience.

Pancit - I know what that is, though I had no idea it came in fifty thousand variations that look completely different.  And I can visually distinguish the grilled squid from the pork kebobs, the fried chicken from the whole fish.  And the white rice, that I can spot.  But those recognizable items are drowned out by a mass of balls and clumps and soups and stir-fries and wraps and slices and cubes and bowls and plates of... of what?  white and brown and green and red... what?

and I stand there - the only white woman in the entire mall, as far as I can tell, calling plenty of attention to myself as it is - staring cluelessly at the signs.  Kare-kare... I know what that is, I KNOW i know it, I just can't remember!  lumpia... that sounds familiar... whatever it is.  but pochero?  longganisa?  ginisang monggo? I for sure have never heard these words before in my life.  Pro tip: make flashcards for the airplane of the major dishes of your destination country... even if everybody there speaks English, too.

concluding that a fast food market full of people in a hurry was not the optimal time to ask strangers to explain an entire country's cuisine to me, I rolled all my strength into one ball (of unknown ingredients and dubious sweetness), and ordered... kare-kare, grilled squid, something green and squishy, white rice, and something on a skewer.

there goes six years of vegetarianism... departing with lots of tentacles and peanut sauce.

Seriously, though, I need to learn these names.  Call me unadventurous, but yes, I'd like to avoid tripe and chicken intestines (did i mention six years of vegetarianism?  any kind of meat is about as appetizing as... well... chicken intestines!)  and I would very much like to know what I am eating, at the least.  So, tagalog, here I come... from afritada to wansoy, one way or another, i'm going to learn what I'm eating.

P.S.  Sweet tea in the Philippines is EVEN SWEETER than it is in the South.  I didn't even know that was possible.
P.P.S.  Okay, I could have gotten pizza or spaghetti.  But that would have been SUCH a cop-out.
P.P.P.S.  Fruit.  Delicious, delicious fruit.  Maybe i'll write about the fruit later but if I can't learn my monggo from my morcon, at least I can eat mangos!!