We have gained a stationary stalker. I don’t know if he’s Japanese or Chinese but this stalker has so endeared himself to us that passing by his restaurant every night has become something for us to look forward to.

We are running on our 27th day here and yet he never fails to greet us every night except on those times when we would go home ridiculously late.

It all started when Randy, one of our colleagues, asked us if we have already come across the “parrot”.

“Parrot?” we chorused.

“You’ll see.” He smiled mischievously.

Randy was the one who introduced us to the shorter, along the river, route going to our apartment.

I think it was on our 3rd day in the country when he told us about the “parrot”.

We were traversing the suggested Boat Quay route, admiring the many restaurants dotting both sides of the river, hassled by the many waiters pitching their cuisine, enticing us to try their specialty at a discount when above the din of voices came a distinct shout;

“KABAYAN!”

I almost jumped out of my skin. I feverishly searched the crowd, trying to check who shouted when I came across a smiling chinky guy who was staring back at me.

“Kumain na kayo?” He asked.

I was about to answer when he continued, “Pogi ako!”

My colleagues, who also stopped at the first greeting, were doing their best to conceal their smiles although some girls couldn’t help but giggle. I tried hard not to appear nonplussed, smiled at him in appreciation of his effort, and along with my colleagues continued on our merry way.

“Parrot?” I asked my colleagues
“Parrot!” and we all burst out laughing.

He became our nightly fixture. Our night won’t be complete without his happy greeting. Every night, on our way home he would call out to us;

“Kabayan!”

“Kumain na kayo?”

“Pogi ako!”

He gets us everytime.

We would brace ourselves whenever we’re nearing his restaurant, prepared for his nightly greeting but we couldn’t help but laugh and sometimes, answer him. He seemed to really enjoy calling out to us.

We became so fond of him that we were already planning to have dinner at his restaurant and have our photo taken with him and we were gonna call it a parrotshoot. Blech.

Anyway, a week ago, the parrot was not in his post. We were so used to seeing him there that his absence was conspicuous, at least to us. After a few more nights without the familiar greeting, we asked one of the waiters in the restaurant we imagined was his.

The waiter was silent for a while and then he told us that the the guy we were looking for had an accident almost a week ago. Apparently the parrot got drunk and fell down the river. Since there was nobody to help him at that time they only found his bloated body the following morning.

We had difficulty digesting the waiter’s story. The parrot’s greeting is still too freshly embedded in our minds that to think of him as gone was hard. We thanked the waiter and left. We continued walking home in silence. Each of us lost in our individual thoughts.

What happened was nothing short of a tragedy. Although we’ve only known the parrot for a short time, he affected us with his eager smile and his “Kabayan!”, “Kumain na kayo?”, and his “Pogi ako!”. Phrases that I’m not even sure if he understood. Phrases that never fail to make us smile. Phrases that he greet us with anyway. As if he has an inkling that his stay along the river wont be for much longer so he tries to solicit as much smile as he can, knowing that his life will be shortlived.

Rest in peace, Kabayan.

If there was one thing that I was looking forward to in this brief SG stint, it’s food. There’s just too many to choose from. in one restaurant lane near my apartment was a veritable United Nations, each restaurant boasting of the cuisine of their native countries. I was thinking that perhaps in one of these restaurants one of the chefs may be a Filipino. That was the only consolation in my mind as none of the many, many restaurants there was Filipino.

I have long ago given up on Filipino cuisine. For lack of a better phrase, our food, while somewhat respectable at best, leaves much to be desired in the imagination department. With the exception of a few, we are not very supportive of experimentation, especially when it comes to food. We are already happy with our basic tastes, and we are happy with the very limited spices we use.

Take the ubiquitous chicken inasal, for example. What is so special about it? Some would slightly fry their chicken beforehand and then grill it. Some would use a special marinade sauce and then describe their chicken as the best. This is then paired with either plain rice or garlic rice. In most stores garlic rice is just plain rice topped with fried garlic.

For years no one has ever made any significant stride in enhancing the chicken inasal. Before, other chicken houses would offer chicken fat to go with the plain rice but even that has been discontinued. Nobody has bothered to create a special sauce to complement the chicken or do something about the rice. I’m not sure if its lack of imagination or simply laziness that leaves the chicken inasal in a grill of stagnation, but surely, something has to be done.

Anyway, here, I have been accumulating poundage because of the variety of food that’s on display. Since SG boasts of a large number of Indian residents, it goes without saying that they also have a lot of excellent Indian restaurants. Muthu Curry is one of my favorite haunts here. I was introduced to their kind of food 4 years ago when an old friend treated me to lunch. Muthu didn’t have the kind of restaurant that they have today. My experience with them started with a banana leaf, lots of briyani rice, and softened lamb curry carelessly splattered. I didn’t know where the briyani started and where the curry ended. I was assaulted by the flavor and the smell of what I was eating. It was completely different from the kind of bland food that I grew up on. I guess that was the turning point for me. My black experience took the form of an Indian meal. I never looked back ever since.

Last weekend I was again staring at a banana leaf with some tandoori chicken on it and in the middle of my table was the notoriously delicious fish head curry. I cannot fully describe how much I enjoyed it; let me just say that midway through the meal, I wished that I was bigger so I can enjoy the food longer. I was already bursting at the seams but I didn’t want to stop eating.

I heard myself groan, as I looked at the pile of soiled clothes conspicuously lumped in the corner of my room. I haven’t touched a detergent bar or powder for more than 5 years now, much less come close to a laundry area. These days however, it seems like I have no choice; I have to reacquaint myself with the inner workings of a washing machine or else pay the most exorbitant laundering fee this side of the planet. At P180 per shirt the choice on whether to do it myself, or have it done professionally is a no-brainer. I mean are you nucking futs? That’s half a case of San Mig Light already!

Still the thought of getting my hands sudsy with detergent weighs heavily on my mind. And of course I had to do the ironing as well. Oh lord, this is the pits! I can already see myself lying prostrate on the floor under mountains of detergent suds after hours of non-stop washing; it wasn’t until another hour has passed until somebody finds my lifeless body and brings it to the nearest hospital for autopsy.

The cause of death; drowning in detergent. Yargh!

Ok fine, OA na.

To some washing is an exercise in remembrance. You hold one of your dirty shirts and remember that you were wearing it when you mustered enough courage to ask somebody out, and how two weeks later, wearing the same shirt, her scent stuck to your shirt’s fabric when she leaned back and laid her head on your left shoulder, while you wrapped your hands around her from behind.

My fondest memory of washing involved two other people furiously scrubbing their own jeans in the middle of the night. It was our monthly laundry activity back in college. The sloth that we were, we would only wash our clothes once a month, despite the indications that our clothes may already have lives of their own with the amount of grime they’ve accumulated. Those were the tibak days and looking grimy was actually cool, makes you appear closer to the “masa”.

The memory also included a chase scene with a roomie carrying a “tabo” filled with the by-product of the rinsing process (although later on he would confess that it actually contained toilet bowl water). Come to think of it when I got doused with it, it had a musky urinal smell. That bastard. I also remember with a splat, a soaked soapy che guevarra shirt suddenly clinging to the back of my head as another roomie expressed his displeasure in no uncertain terms. Earlier, he munched on my soggy socks when I got him flush on the face. Naturally his thirst for revenge was overwhelming. Haay, good times.

Sometimes I wonder if the difficult experiences that men go through are absorbed by their clothes. I wonder if these hard experiences are responsible for the clothes washer’s cut and wounded hand when all is soaped and rinsed.

My usual skittishness when it comes to early morning flights demand that I don’t dare sleep a wink the night before for fear of being late. The stigma of actually being left behind by the plane is a lesson that’s too painful to be easily forgotten. So until the wee hours of the morning I amused myself with various animes and the occasional Ally Mcbeal while repeatedly cursing the travel agent during breaks.

I boarded the plane with a raging headache. The sleeplessness was taking its toll; coupled with that was a fresh memory of a thick faced taxi driver who shamelessly asked for a specific amount instead of letting his taxi meter run its course. I usually argue in those specific instances but that morning I was feeling specially vicious. So I agreed to his terms. With that agreement, he has joined the ranks of the bottom feeders and the patay-gutoms. It was one of those rare instances when I looked down on a man; an act I consider abominable but with his actuation, he has forfeited any dignity that might be given to a person; out of his own volition, he acquitted himself quite appropriately as a scum.

My headache did not abate even as I was walking down the carpeted Changi Airport after getting off the plane. I broke away from the group that’s heading towards immigration. I had to find a pharmacy. The first shop I saw resembling a pharmacy was a store selling Chinese medicine. I was near fainting so I asked the slightly understandable lady to give me something for my headache. She gave me an entire box of capsules that smelled like the stuff dentists use for filling cavities. She told me to take two capsules. It was pungent as hell. I felt really woozy after a couple of minutes. It was the closest I could think of to being high on some groovy substance. I felt high, but still my head was about to explode. The medicine I took, aside from being pungent was as useless as a castrated dick.

I took a cab to my service apartment and in more than one occasion I felt like throwing up. My ordeal was extended cruelly by the frontdesk concierge who just had to quiz me despite my tacit explanation that I may faint any second. I found myself in bed fifteen minutes later. I thought that if I just remain motionless and slept, the pain would go away. It did not. The pain was pushing against my skull as if trying to scratch an itch. I sleepwalked through Clarke Quay looking for a pharmacy. I found a 7-11 like store almost an hour later. The man behind the counter gave me Panadol, extra-strong version. I no longer asked for water. I burst open a tablet and chewed it like it’s the most delicious chocolate candy.

The pain was gone after 5 minutes but the bitter taste of the tablet remained in my mouth for the rest of the day.