AN ODE TO HOME (Part I)

If I remembered it right, it was the popular humorist/travel writer Bill Bryson who mentioned that one of the surest things in life is this: You can never go home again. I never found out the person who authored this line or what she really meant by it but as I thought about it deeply, I figured there must be as many meanings to it as there are searchers for its meaning. And I, despite my limited ability to find meanings, have developed my own.

Once somebody leaves home, she becomes different. Ask any expat of the most significant thing they gained while being away from home (positively or otherwise) and they'll most probably tell you this: a different attitude, a different vision, a different personality, a different soul - or in all, a different person. Wherefore, that somebody can never go home again as the same somebody who left it.

My home is the Philippines. Where I live now is my adopted home (grander than saying "I am adopted by the country I am living in now", aside from being more accurate. The latter quote, I can never really be sure of). This adopted home is an ocean away from home and the distance alone assures me that I can never go home again within the context of my developed meaning. The place I live in does not even have many Filipinos, and carrying Filipino culture even as a sub is an act of a balancing nature.

One time I was in this department store, trying a pair of pants in the fitting room. From the cubicle next to mine came this dialogue, in Filipino:

Husband (must be): Mommy, dito ka lang, susukatin ko muna itong shirt. (Mommy, just stay here, I'll try this shirt first.)

Wife (gotta be): Pero daddy taeng-tae na ako. (But daddy I gotta go.)

Of course the couple did not even realize for one sec that somebody in the department store, let alone in that isolated fitting room, could speak their language. Being me, I made sure they will have to realize it from then on:

cbs: ambaho, sino kaya umetats? (hmmm, the air smells so fresh, woweee!)

The moral of the story? I don't know.

And so I really miss home, having been gone for a hundred years or so. Of course we have Oriental stores to instantly gratify our Oriental tastebuds, but Sinead O' Connor will tell you. Nothing Compares. I visited the produce section this afternoon and still could not believe there were no kangkongs (the Department of Agri cracked the whip!); the squid were as white as snow (the people here think ink is only for writing); the shrimps have no heads (before I left home, the last thing I could have imagined was that this country is teeming with shrimp head-hunters); and the daing na bangus (vinegar-soaked milkfish) have sore eyes and carry a million grams of sodium per horrible serving (the exporters tried to protect the perishable merchandise by exterminating the consumer in a series which CSI may call "Murder by Salt"). Wherefore, we have to make do with what's fresh, what's available: produce from Costa Rica and Guatemala, fish from Ecuador, nuts from Brazil (and I don't mean Brazilian peoples).

Gosh, I miss home!