I got it into my head yesterday that I should walk from Bethesda to Adams Morgan, to see what interesting things turned up along the way, and so I did it, and there were many interesting things, including a teeny tiny Filipino grocery store in Tenleytown.

I went inside the store and got all teary because it was filled with the foods that I used to see everywhere in Saipan - the liver ketchup and the hopia and the tiny dried fish snacks and lumpia and even balut eggs - and the owner of the shop, Danny from Manila, told me that his clientele is mostly Japanese students but he’s got some Filipino customers, and every once in a while an American will come in looking for balut because they’ve seen it on the tv show Fear Factor and they want to try it themselves.

Do you eat balut? I asked Danny, and he shrugged and said of course he eats it, it’s no big deal, then he asked me if I eat balut and I said no, I don’t, because I’m vegetarian.

It’s not meat, Danny said, it’s baby duck.

Duck is meat to me, I told Danny, and suddenly I realized: here I am trying to convince yet another proprietor of yet another Filipino food store that duck (and pork and beef and chicken) is meat and I don’t eat it, and how funny is that, that I’m now seeking out the most frustrating aspect of the life I left behind, feeling nostalgic about food I never ate.

And then Danny said that he didn’t see what the big deal was with Michael Vick and the whole dog fighting thing, either, since dog fighting is a normal sort of a thing to do in the Philippines, and with that I really had the feeling of being on the road again, half-way between Adams Morgan and Manila.

posted by Arin at 4:35 am & filed under DC-type stuff, Uncategorized, bloggy stuff, saipan, travel |