Before I left Manila — and school — for good, home was an apartment on Vito Cruz Street.1 I had hopped my way there from three previous addresses in the same area (Malate) and from such diverse points as Makati, Quezon City, Las Piñas, and my friend Bubbles’ place in Parañaque. I was constantly on the move that my mother had stopped keeping track of my whereabouts; she made up for it by refusing to send my allowance unless I cabled first.
Vito Cruz, if you don’t know, intersects with Taft Avenue where Manila meets Pasay City. Coming from our place, you turn right at the LRT line and there’s La Salle up ahead. That was where I was supposed to get my education. And I did, after a fashion. Let’s just say most of it wasn’t the kind Ma had in mind.
But I’m not here to incriminate myself, so let’s go back to that apartment. It was one of two units on the top floor of a three-story building. Access was through an iron gate next to a karaoke bar on the ground floor. It was always locked, that gate; I don’t remember if there was a buzzer, but if there was one then I wouldn’t have had to holler from the sidewalk to whoever happened to be on the upper floors, hoping my cries were heard above the din of the traffic as it whizzed past. “Carlooo! Looo! Ano baaa, buksan mo na gaaate!”
Carlo was my flatmate and fellow Bisaya. He was from Cebu; I was from Leyte. We shared the apartment with two schoolmates, Marlon and Joel. Marlon was from Batangas. He he was broad, big-boned, and all sharp angles. He looked tough, acted tough, and that was all there was to it. Joel was Ilocano, from La Union. He was swarthy and portly, with a perpetual five o’clock shadow. We called him Bomber because he bore an uncanny resemblance to the character actor Bomber Moran2 — if you can imagine Bomber Moran as sweet and cuddly. He was our baby, Boom-boom was, and we treated him the way all big brothers were supposed to, i.e., we bossed him around (“Boom, maghugas ka na ng pinggan!” “Boom, bili ka nga ng yosi sa baba!”).
Carlo? He was… well, he was tubby. Or at least chubby. He had slits for eyes and a hyena’s laugh. A cocky bastard, too, which was fine by us; he took to running the household as a matter of course. It didn’t hurt that he was an early riser, did the marketing, and scrubbed the floors without having to be asked. Plus he could always be counted on to get things done. “Bay, tamad na naman maghugas ni Bomber.” Carlo: “Boom…” Bomber: “Ukinam naman, o. Maghuhugas na po!”
I was the odd man out — a sulky, moody, chain-smoking bag of bones who also happened to be more than a little bit queer. They knew what they were getting; we used to live in the same boarding-house, and when it closed down they had asked me to join them. Why me, instead of the others? Let’s see if I remember correctly: Of our ex-boardmates, two were due to graduate, two had already found someplace else to stay,3 one never much cared for the general company (and vice-versa), two were hopelessly addicted to gambling and up to their necks in debt, and the last two were brothers who had so exasperated our landlord with their drug habit that he had had the police raid the place (after warning the rest of us, of course).
That, by default, left me. I wasn’t exactly flattered. Thankful, yes; at that point everybody in my gang had graduated and I was running out of places to crash. Besides, I did not look forward to making acquaintances of strangers in yet another back-alley dorm. Better the devils I knew.
To be honest, I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to share living space with. I wouldn’t have survived the shock of the transition otherwise. Our old boarding-house was essentially a residence, with live-in landlords, including their kid and the landlady’s two sisters (good people, I should add). The house itself looked to have been built after WWII — old but well-kept, with hardwood floors and walls, big rooms, high ceilings. Very comfortable. Homey.
The apartment? Open the front door and there was the kitchen sink. Beyond that, the bathroom. A tiled counter on the left held a single-burner stove. No refrigerator; we had a Coleman jug instead. To the right was the kitchen table, which also doubled as our work/study space, often at the same time.
A dim, narrow hallway bisected the kitchen and the bedroom, culminating at the farthest end in a stairwell (all of two steps, really) that led to a storage space — or attic, if you will. We bunked there, because although it was closest to the roof and we couldn’t make our way in it without stooping, at least we were shielded from the direct glare of the sun. No such luck in the bedroom proper, whose window faced the street (of course we couldn’t afford curtains). Besides, there was only one electric fan, so it made sense to stick together. It was the closest I came to living in a kiln.
Then there was the matter of sustenance. We were used to being served three meals a day. By a Kapampangan cook, no less.4 We might have groused about Ate Helen’s cooking on occasion, but at least we always had something to look forward to come mealtime. We never thought that a luxury until we moved out and had to actually feed ourselves. After several days of liempo, lechon manok, and Red Horse Beer, we had to acknowledge the void in our pockets and sit down to do the math.
Rent. Electricity. Water. We had agreed to split those expenses equally. Food? We dealt with it on a meal-to-meal basis, which was to say that it was pretty much a hand-to-mouth affair. If we had just received our stipends, we splurged at KFC, Wendy’s, or the Japanese restaurant at the University Mall. If Carlo’s mother was in town (work often took her to Manila), we had dried fish to feast on for a few days. Marlon went home weekends and always brought back lambanog, cheap coconut vodka that peeled the lining off your stomach and guaranteed a deep, dreamless sleep. That was food, too.
The rest of the time we subsisted on Lucky Me instant pancit canton. I would have liked to say that we made do with it, but the fact was that it was a novelty in those days. Did you know that it was first introduced in 1991? It is so ubiquitous nowadays that it’s easy to assume it has been around forever, like balut, Chiz Curls, or Juan Ponce Enrile. But back then it was big news indeed.
And why not? It was a godsend, requiring only that you knew how to boil water and count to three minutes. Who cared if it was nothing like the pancit canton we ate back home? What could be, at three pesos a pack? We were practical when times called for it. If we could only scrounge up bits of change among ourselves on some days, no problem — that was more than enough for Lucky Me, rice, Coke, and the postprandial Tanduay.5 (Of course we always factored alcohol into the budget; that’s the thing about living with other people — you have to agree on priorities.)
That said, I don’t blame you for thinking that I’m building Lucky Me up for a fall. If anything, it’s more dumbed-down than Titang and Terê’s pancit from grade school, garnished as that was with desultory bits of mystery meat and vegetable shavings in a feeble bid at legitimacy. Lucky Me doesn’t even try. At least it doesn’t seem to. Open a pack and there’s dried noodles, a sachet of flavored powder, and another of soy sauce and oil. No frills. No fuss. And yet it tastes like nothing else in this world — real pancit canton included, ridiculous as that may sound. Let’s just say that both Lucky Me (don’t even mention it in the same breath as Quick Chow or Payless) and authentic pancit canton bring their own unique pleasures to the table, and I would never choose one over (much less mistake it for) the other.
In case you’ve ever wondered about Lucky Me’s “special seasoning”, Jaden Hair of Steamy Kitchen has a recipe which comes pretty close. To make (this is a tweaked version, by the way), heat three tablespoons of margarine (I use garlic-flavored Star, but salted butter is okay). Throw in three cloves of minced garlic and a handful of chopped spring onion, wait until the garlic has browned a bit, then add four tablespoons of oyster sauce, two tablespoons of light soy sauce (I use Knorr seasoning), two tablespoons of brown sugar, and some dried pepper flakes. Stir well. Finish off with the juice of one (or two) kalamansi. The sauce should be good for 250 grams of precooked egg noodles.
If you’ve read this far and been paying attention, chances are you’ve noticed the carrots — that is, they’re in the photo but not in the recipe. I confess that I belatedly added some to the dish to make for a more colorful photo. Of course you could add carrots — plus whatever vegetable, meat, or fungi you fancy — it’s your call. But I don’t recommend it. I’ve tried it and it just didn’t feel right. There’s something about the distinctive taste of Lucky Me (or, in this case, an imitation of it)6 that doesn’t lend itself to over-elaboration. Anything extra only gets in the way between your taste buds and the unctuous, salty-sweet noodles. So why bother? Why fix it if it ain’t broke?
I have one more confession to make. I had help. Remembering, that is. Do you really think I came up with all those details by myself? I can’t even recall what I had for lunch, much less what happened nearly two decades ago.
Therese has no trouble in that department. “Remember that time the laundrywoman’s house burned down?”
“We, um, lost our clothes?”
“That was crazy, wasn’t it?”
I bet it was. See, Wewe came to live with us a few months before I left. She had been looking to rent her own place but we prevailed upon her to stay. We had a bedroom to spare, after all. And she was best friends with Carlo’s older sister.
Besides, it was hard to not like her. Or be immune to her enthusiasm. Nothing was ever so-so with her; it was either “million-million” or “makabuang” (maddening). And even as she wore her born-again heart on her sleeve, peppering her sentences with “praise Jesus!” and “hallelujah!”, she never gave us sermons or sass. She made us pray before meals, though. And massaged us out of more than a few hangovers. And generally cleaned up after us. “What a mess! Million-million! Lord help me put this pigsty in order!” Then she would roar in laughter and get down to work. She was that kind of person.
She still is. A little thicker around the waist these days, for sure, but I’m no spring chicken myself. Twenty years! Had it been that long since we last saw each other? That gave us plenty to talk about. Or rather, her. She’s a sponge, I’m a sieve — what else was new? She talked and I listened, amazed at the things I had managed to forget. Oh? Did I really? You don’t say! We were so into it that we forgot our order of pork something-or-other hadn’t arrived, perfectly content as we were with the memories and the chop suey.
Pancit canton? It was on the menu. We never even thought about it.
1 Now Pablo Ocampo, Sr.; I didn’t know about the name change until I consulted Google Maps. I also learned that Vito isn’t Mr. Cruz’s first name — it’s Hermogenes. Vito Cruz is, in fact, a double-barrelled surname. «
2 Real name: Arturo Moran (1944-2004). According to his obituary, he appeared in over 400 movies. He was almost always cast as a bad guy (in action films) or a clueless bad guy (in comedies). (Of interest: a tribute from a “bear” lover.) «
3 One of them was my roommate, Vincent, who nearly burned the house down with his penchant for smoking in bed — and falling asleep while at it. «
4 The province of Pampanga prides itself as the country’s culinary capital. The landlords were also Kapampangan, from Guagua, birthplace of the famed Razon’s halo-halo. «
5 Let’s get our liquors straight. Red Horse Beer was our drink of choice. It was cheaper and stronger than San Miguel, and if you’ve ever tried it, you should have an idea why people fondly call it traidor. Tanduay, the local rum, was much cheaper. And way more potent; it was good for when we were in a pinch. Tequila? See you when I get my allowance. «
6 Actually, this recipe is an imitation of an imitation. Lucky Me has, indeed, come a long way. «
0 comments:
Post a Comment