IT'S Christmas week and if you live in the Philippines, this week is the busiest. Traffic is at its worst this week and in Metro Manila, Edsa traffic would be moving in a way that would put a snail’s pace to shame.
I spent Christmas in Quezon City two years ago and one morning, I did a quick trip to a 7/11 store that faced Edsa. I noticed a bright orange Cruiser among the cars as I entered the small store.
After buying a few things, I decided to get a cup of coffee and a pack of biscuits while I read the day’s Inquirer. I was already doing the puzzles and when I gazed outside at Edsa, the bright orange Cruiser was still there. It might have moved a few inches or so but it was still there.
Then my phone rang and it was one of those calls from a friend with a philandering husband. She was telling me about attending the husband’s company Christmas party and saw, for the second time, the alleged kabit.
She detailed how the kadidang was dressed and poked fun at kadidang’s ill-fitting party clothes. I was carefully crafting a way to tell her how ill-fitting and passé her printed leggings also were but found myself staring at the bright orange Cruiser again.
My friend’s yapping provided the perfect complement for that bright thing stuck in Edsa. I imagined her sitting in a cushioned settee in her well-appointed room. She would be dressed in colorful leggings that always -reminded me of Madonna singing Like A Virgin; cellphone stuck to her ear and yammering endlessly about her husband and their marriage while fixing his clothes and lining up his shoes.
Soon, I had to tell my friend I’d cut short her call before I drain my battery as I also had to walk "home." I finished my coffee and saw that the orange Cruiser has moved a bit further along Edsa but was still there -- a brightly colored thing stuck in traffic, stuck in the route that everyone takes probably hoping that today would be a different EDSA but was not.
In other Christmas pasts, this week would be when our household would be busy taking out the best silverware and china. My father would also take out and clean a huge caldero. At the crack of dawn on the 24th he would take it to the dirty kitchen and start boiling chunks of beef bones. That past would be Papa’s balbacua days.
It was a carefully planned ritual that meant choosing the best beef cuts from the Toril public market and carefully placing the uling in the stove so that it won’t quickly burn out. It wasn’t the boiling that was fun for me but stacking the curved uling pieces and watching the black shells turn orange and then grey. He would boil the bones almost the whole day and dinner would mean having heaps of boiled beef balbacua.
Papa would ask if it tasted good and of course, we would chorus a "yes" as his was the only balbacua we have ever tasted then.
Later in life, a friend and I went to Pampanga on a food trip. We chanced upon a balbacuahan. There were several immensely huge calderos lined up on a long stove.
Along with others who were nursing hangovers, I had my first balbacua that wasn’t cooked by my father only on Christmas day. It tasted a lot better but I was more interested at the iron-cast stove lined up along a concrete wall, hoping to see if someone also carefully stacked the uling to be mesmerized how the hard, ebony pieces of charcoal would slowly turn orange, burst into dancing yellow flames with edges quickly turning grey then white.
It will be 2017 soon. I hope no one I know is still wearing Madonna-leggings or stuck in a relationship heading south. Or just in traffic on Christmas day.