I know you guys are probably sick of my long essays... but I can't help but write them... They're nice... you can learn something from them... why not give them a shot? Converse with me. Tell me what you think. We can improve ourselves... in the pop culture sense... by conversing. Anyway... more pop culture criticism...
I had a sudden craving for kwek kwek today. It had been more than a year since I had taken a bite of the heart attack inducing treat, and today seemed the perfect day to break the quail egg fast. Daydreaming of quail eggs covered in batter, fried until golden brown, and made to swim in what seems like a truckload of sweet and spicy sauce, I realized that I had arrived at the street food store that I used to frequent. My mouth began to water as I neared the mountain of fried goodies that gleamed like gold behind it's glass case. I just had to have some. As I savored the cholesterol balls, I watched around at the dozens of other people who were sharing my kwek-kwek moment with me. Students, workers, old men who seemed to all wear brown caps, they were all so fascinating to watch. I felt so strangely euphoric as I slurped the sauce and bit bits off the kwek-kwek. I even supplemented my kwek-kwek with a glass of sago gulaman, to go with the "working class snack" feel of the experience. What a wonderful way to spend merienda time right? I used to think so, but not anymore.
I looked around and noticed a sign hanging under the kwek-kwek store's ceiling. "We use only farm fresh eggs and purified drinking water." This although seemingly only a health precaution, struck me hard. My eating those fried eggs is a hypocrisy. It is true that It was I myself who felt the quail egg craving, and it is also true that as long as I want to eat it, I have every right to do so. No one can really stop me from eating kwek-kwek, and it is hunger, a primal, universal, transcendent feeling that caused me to eat those eggs. The problem lay though in the fact that while I was eating the treat closely associated to students on a budget, I was too busy thinking of how I fit in with the other kwek-kwek eating people. It isn't about the eggs anymore. I was too busy thinking about looking like one of the working class to truly say that I was there for hunger's sake alone, vis-a-vis acting like someone I am not. All this for simple amusement. It wasn't about the universal aspect of hunger; it was the case of a middle class boy treating life like a theatre class. The paradigm is offensive. I am as Jane Goodall to chimps, instead of me truly feeling what it is to be a chimp. The arguments for this point are vague. One can say I sympathise, or I was there to observe. Observation is merely detachment from the feeling of true living. Sympathy is simply saying "I can understand how you feel." We were given the innate trait to feel what others feel. It would be a waste not to use it.
We take the kwek-kwek culture for granted. I remember that in my high school, a group of students began selling gourmet kwek-kwek, using only fresh, and high class ingredients. Fresh quail eggs in sweet batter, rolled in Japanese bread crumbs, and fried to a golden brown in olive oil. They used chinese style sweet and sour sauce as the sarsa, and they served it with stylized bamboo skewers as to mimic the original apparatus with which you eat the delicacy. Kwek-kwek has then become a luxury product. It has become a mockery of the very essence of kwek-kwek's popularity. It's affordability is it's strongest point. It is also kwek-kwek's richness, that allows you to be full even after just a few pieces. Kwek-kwek is about utility. It symbolises all that is held to virtue in the third world archipelago we call home. It symbolizes the struggle of the working class, and all we do is make expensive versions of it to sell to our fellows in the higher classes so we can boast that we have had a taste of the daily life of the working class.
We have become surveyors of society. We are detached from the daily livings of the majority. We have been taught to observe and learn. What better way is there to learn that a solution is acidic than to dip your finger into the beaker, feeling the protein degradation in your finger for yourself. At least sincerely feel for those we observe. They are not merely monkeys. In truth, we are the monkeys trapped in glass cages, observing the people who pass us by. The next time you eat those orange colored treats, remember to feel. Our knowledge isn't simply a storehouse to be filled. You fill containers in order to use their contents. It's time we broke free of our cages, and evolved to humanity as well. It's all about splagchnizomai.
I said to myself that this post, as it sounded in my head, would end up like a critique of pop culture in a Saturday morning paper. So, as to indulge my fantasies, and to make an even bigger fool of myself, I made a header, complete with a very disguising Photoshop edited head shot, just like my favorite pop culture columnists from the Philippine Star's SUPREME. Now, let me begin.