MOVING ON

One weekend, while I was preparing myself for a shower prior to going out again to meet up with friends in the city, my landlady barged in the kitchen cum dining area in our tiny Chinatown apartment from outside. In her hands was a whole chicken that she soon started chopping finely with a huge kitchen knife, in expertly driven thuds given to the dead bird. I got reminded of my former nasty habit of refusing to eat anything chicken up until I reached high school. When I was still a small boy, I saw a live headless chicken running around the kitchen while our helper was trying to prepare it for boiling before getting it dressed. It was one of the most shocking sights I've seen so far at my young age that time, such that I refused to eat anything chicken based, and I would even cry whenever I'd be forced to eat this flight-less bird. I eventually overcome the habit one party time held at a high school classmate's party, and they had nothing except all chicken-based dishes (...

My roommate, Karen, knocked on the door of my tiny bedroom one late lunch time, and in her broken English, gave me a small bowl of ginataan to eat right away while it's still hot. So that was what she was busily preparing while we were talking earlier about our lives here in NYC as immigrants. I went out of my room, and shared time with her as we both eat ginataan in the tiny space in our apartment where dining, cooking are done in a tenement-fashioned housing here in Chinatown. It's her own version, which reminded me of what we would have back in the Philippines. She's Chinese-Malaysian, and apparently have strong memories of this kind of snack (merienda) fare as well in Malaysia of which she prepared this time. Her ginataan's got the usual coconut milk, with some tapioca, sweet potato (camote) but without sago (that main ingredient that makes up pearl drinks some people rave about during hot summer days!) as she explained that if she put sago, the whole thick desse...