2021-04-30 Yesterday, I…

Yesterday, I...

ate my second halo-halo of this season—a cornocupia of ice, dominated by pinipig, and occassionally disrupted by the transiently sweet taste of pink sago. Crushing the ice was easier than I expected. The ice of this street halo-halo was interestingly softer than those I used to bulldozed in Pangasinan. Yup, I used to shovel those halo-halo up before I could mix them. And unless they're mixed, you can’t really eat them. Or, I mean, you can. Leche flan first. Then the ube. Then the melon. But, that's not halo-halo anymore. That's isa-isa.

When I visited Malaysia, about four years ago, I remember praising our halo-halo over their local cendol. For me, it was a no-brainer. And this was despite all the things I praised about Malaysia over the Philippines: their transportation system, their publishing industry, their sanitation. None of those could justify me picking the cendol over the halo-halo. Our halo-halo—whether street or Chowking’s or Razon’s—was too unique a symbol and a taste to put below the cendol, which is by the way also found in almost all other Southeast Asian countries, not just Malaysia. So, why did we ended up calling ours halo-halo while everyone around us called theirs cendol? Because history. While cendol traces its roots way back to ancient Java, the halo-halo can only make claims of its existence as far back as pre-WWII, among the Japanese who brought it here to us.

Like a lot of things I see around my visual periphery, the halo-halo is foreign too.

Like I am to Los Baños. Like the language I am using to write this now.

But fuck “foreign” and “local” and all the emotional baggages that come with this dichotomy. I am a citizen of the world.

These are all mine now. I own them as much as their original owners.

This is “my” halo-halo and not even a history lesson will change that.