“No one ever comes on time. In fact, if you actually come on time, you’re too early. No one really shows up until one or two hours later”
I was rummaging online for a list of preferred Philippine party dishes when I came across this post by the blogger El Santo–who, I must note, has a nice banner pic. Written from a grinningly bemused Fil-Am perspective, I think even Pinoys in the Old Country will quite agree with many of the indicia stated there. Here are some of El Santo’s clues:
- No one ever comes on time. In fact, if you actually come on time, you’re too early. No one really shows up until one or two hours later. [My comment: Guilty as charged!]
- If you wrap a paper towel around any of the food, it becomes transluscent. This is because Filipino food is made of pure oil.
- If some stranger shows up at the party that you don’t recognize yet looks Filipino, everyone assumes that he or she is a relative.
- If you are thirty or over, conversation will always be about what high-paying jobs your kids have. And if your kid does not have a high paying job, it’s about what high paying job their spouse has. That’s because, among Filipinos, “conversation” is really a thinly-disguised game of clannish oneupmanship.
- There will always be tiny children running around the room, or crying. That is because Filipinos do not believe in baby-sitters.
- Due to the sheer amount of food served, no one leaves unless they take three or four plates of left-overs.
- The paper plates containing the left-overs will turn transluscent.
Read more clues (here). Some of the clues are, ethnically speaking, rather embarrassingly funny; and I admit the list is now, in my personal hierarchy of truths, right up there with the Clues You’re at a Filipino House–e.g., it has a version of the Last Supper in the dining area:)
