Tuesday, May 26, 2009

I ate pork. Damn the Philippines!

On my recent trip to the Philippines, I had my first taste of pork. How fucking awesome. Yey!
What started out as a simple breakfast, quickly turned into a nightmare. As a Muslim, one of the fundamental no-no's is eating pork or any of the variants there of. This means bacon, sausages, ham, pig and whatever other names there are of this 'other white meat'.

Anyway, as you would imagine, breakfast is an experience laid en with land mines of the pork variety, and so my options were quite limited. Even ordering a simple omelet meant that I would risk some Jamie Oliver wannabe chef would still mix in some ham and capsicum in there. So I order a plain sunny-side up egg with some toast. Ok, so at his point what could go wrong? On the table there was a neat little basket of condiments like, salt, pepper, chili sauce, Tabasco sauce, Maggi seasoning, soy sauce, Ketchup AND finally, MANG TOMAS ALL AROUND SARSA.

All-Around Sarsa? Fuyoh! That sounds too exotic to pass up, I had to give that a taste. I then have a brief skim of the ingredients; vinegar, salt, dried tomatoes.... yup, it all sounds good. So give myself a good splash of Mang Tomas. A grey coloured, gooey, fishy smelling sauce, not very appetising if you ask me. But I give a taste anyway. And to my surprise Yum! An almost savoury yet sweet flavour. I continued to finish my Eggs and Toast. I then asked my friend if it comes in any other version, perhaps a spicier one with chillies? Yes there are, Great! lets drop into the super market before I head back home.

Now comes the realization of Mang Tomas. At lunch, in a different restaurant later the next day. There it was, next to the classic Heinz Ketchup, Mang bloody Tomas. I order my food. I ask for the Fish and Chips, explaining situation to the waiter on how I dont eat pork because I'm a Muslim, so please my dear waiter, no pork. My fish and chip comes, I start to splash on my newly found favourite condiment. Just as I'm about to take my first bite. The waiter runs over and says 'No No.. this is pork!'... WHAT!!!! ??? But the bottle says All Purpose Salsa! There is a picture of a fisherman on it for gods sake! I frantically now have a throughral read of the ingredients. And there it was, clear as day, after tomatoes and salt, Liver. Liver of what? I ask the waiter. Liver of god damn Pig! Pig la ....freakin' Winnie the Pooh friend Piglet the Pigs liver. Fuck me.

At this point, I wanted to cry. At this point I wanted to shove my finger in my mouth and puke. At this point I imagined the gates of Hell open up greet me. I don't even eat Cows liver let a alone Pigs liver! You tell me, just look at the bottle, can you see any indication that this is made from Pig? It just says ALL-AROUND SARSA... sarsa, is that a type-po? or is that Filipino for Pigs Liver. Who the hell knows?! Maybe the "IRON RICH" should have tipped me off as salsa has never ever enriched the iron in the body. Only Beef gives you Iron. Well in this case, Pig. In retrospect we all be a little more analytical but for me, hunger blurred my comprehension and reasoning.

At this point the damage is done. I leave the Philippines thinking I can't eat anything without having Pork. Hell, the Coca Cola probably has pig ears in it or something. Who can say... In any case, for a brief moment, a very brief innocent moment, Mang Tomas did taste damn good!

Heh.

2 comments:

flaminglambo said...

LOL! Swine brew!

TheScribe said...

LOL it did taste good,didn't it? By the way,it did not kill you. Neither did the heavens open up. Nothing happened so why so much hue and cry? This is exactly as described in Salman Rushdie's Book.

Blame your own idiocy bcs you should know non-muslim countries don't give a hoot about muslims being unable to eat pork. The only way you could be sure is to FAST throughout your stay in such countries. You could keep reminding them yet they are so used to adding pork to a lot of stuff they can't remember. Few would do it on purpose but they definitely could not be bothered bcs eating pork is second nature to them.

 Does anyone still use this???   Seriously.....