[Harkoliar]

i got this from the email but so true (in a way) and im a filipino .. pls make and take your time in reading this because this is my (and bahamuts) culture. [img]smile.gif[/img]

>> UNIQUELY FILIPINO and please take the time to read it... Its
>>funny
>>
>> UNIQUELY FILIPINO
>>
>>
>>
>> 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, pica-pica, pulutan, dinner, 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 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, cholesterholic frenzy of a
>>good old-fashioned LECHON de leche 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 blue ice cream. I have never
>>been able to get my brain around eating blue 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, door-bells. ! 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 door-bell 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
>>unbelieveably-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.