Local Street Food Nostalgia

Every year I come home during the Christmas or the Lent season to visit relatives and friends. The anticipation of the thought of home keeps me occupied even two weeks before I actually take the flight back home. I think about the friends that I've missed hanging around with, the barkadas I've lost touch for a whole year, and the relatives that I spent my childhood with. Its the sight and sound of the jeeps and buses that race randomly across the highways and pedestrians who are crazy enough to attempt crossing it while speeding cars exceed speed limits. Its the food that you eat, the nostalgic thought of your favorite high school carinderia and that staple diet of filipino style fish balls, cornicks soaked in white vinegar, bbq-ed pork chops, and salted egg and tomato combination with your rice. Its the traffic, its the noise, Its the chance of hearing that familiar language that you know so well. There's really no place like home.

I happen to have the fortunate chance of passing by the State University when I took a vacation trip back home to the Philippines last week. Who could pass up the local street foods everyone (one way of the other) fondly remembers and loves as a kid?

You realize things that you've taken for granted when you were home... Despite the fact that I was eating street foods that would probably count as a cheap alternative to the fancy yuppie establishments like Starbucks and California Pizza Kitchen, I was having the time of my life. Here I am, along the streets of the State University at UP Diliman, beside a push cart filled with orange colored arrays of bbq food stuffs complimented with a BBQ grill that spits out smoke that clings stubbornly to your shirt even after a generous spray of your favorite cologne, and I was enjoying my time. You see students that have most likely gotten off from their afternoon class (or probably have decided to even cut off the class) taking their merienda breaks for 20 pesos. Some others would've come off from their late night midnight oil burning thesis sessions to take their breaks, wearing something close to what anybody would probably consider home clothes - tattered, worn out shirts and barely passable shorts and fashioning some slippers from the time of Rizal. Cars parked on a street across that would probably range from 2nd hand 1980's models to the latest releases of car brands all mixed together in a moltley of odd assortments. I myself was looking like a korean bred foreigner with my latest style of HK-cut hair and a weird combination of HK fashion, eating chicken intestines, kidneys and pork intestines and fishballs coupled with buko juice, and yet I still mix in.

Nothing beats the State University when it comes to different kinds of people, but the same thing will probably exist anywhere within a walking radius of a university belt. Despite coming from what some people consider as an elitist and snobish university, the same thing happens when you drop by the local canteen serving local foods like turon, pancit bihon and mongo (a definite personal favorite!). People in Porches or monster style Ford SUVs mix together with the more down to earth and/or low key people who take the jeep to school to enjoy a meal at the local college canteen or that great place beside the basketball courts - Manangs. You'll probably see the same people outside the university sharing a space around the local fishball stand and drinking it down with the typical buko juice or sago-at-gulaman.

Ahhhh... Nothing beats the simplest of things. Street foods in the university? In my opinion, its definitely the great equalizer and the closest thing to comfort.