There’s a place in Negros named Siaton. Two years in a row I went to that place to audit, back when I was still an attache case carrying member of a large accounting firm. I liked Siaton for the many stupid jokes we made out of its name, as corny as they may sound (see title for proof). But most of all, I liked to remember that time when I swore off shrimp for months, and Siaton was the culprit.
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See, my client in Siaton was a prawn farm, all 25 hectares of it. In my second year there, it so happened that my audit schedule coincided with the harvest season. Since I had to stay at the farm, I had to eat whatever is put on the table. The first two days was pure delight. I get to eat fresh shrimp everyday. Shrimp that’s prohibitively expensive when they hit the market. They say that you can’t have too much of a good thing, but when taken to excess, a good thing can actually become a really bad thing.
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For the entire week that I was there, I was eating prawn omelette in the morning, sinigang na hipon at lunch, and fried shrimp in the evening. I got fed so much shrimp I felt like feelers were coming out of my ears. For weeks after that, I couldn’t bear to even look at one head of shrimp. Such was my ordeal.
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I wonder what’s with this current fascination of places. Is it a manifestation of a subconscious that wants to get out of Manila? True, I’ve been wanting to move out of Manila for years, but everytime I make a move, something always comes up, and instead of moving out, I find myself sinking deeper and deeper into its clutches.
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This is bad for my soul.
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I couldn’t stop writing today. Maybe it has something to do with my going away for a week. I don’t know. I just feel like I have to make up for the writing time that I surely will lose. I really should buy myself a portable keyboard for that useless Pocket PC.