MY FAMILY & RELATIVES

Notre Dame of Jolo High School Homecoming Reunion. My Family
Day 03 –Sunday, 27 September 2009


Few of my paternal cousins took me to Jimmy’s ‘sati’ again for breakfast & by this time I started to get used to the hot sauce again. Like Malaysian ‘satay’, ‘sati’ is a skewered meat cooked over a charcoal to give it a burnt taste & eaten with ‘puso’ (rice cooked inside a woven coconut leaves) then doused with hot peppery sauce (more like stew). Complemented with home-brewed coffee, it’s an excellent wake-me-up food which could last till lunch time. I noticed a few ordered Coke or Sprite to go with their ‘sati’ as cool sensation from these sodas equalized the hotness of the sauce. For those who opted for a bigger chunk of chicken, there were few choices from legs to breast even chicken livers & gizzards.
The ‘towkey’ must be earning a lot with the number of customers going in and out of the shop. Just before we asked for our bill, there were already customers waiting to jump at our table. Anyway we made our exit before the owner would ‘throw’ us out to the street.

Next stop was another cousin’s house before we headed towards the central market to get our food for the beach. Caragasan beach lies some 10km away from the city proper with basic amenities of picnic tables & benches. There are also separate shower rooms for both genders and ample parking space. Our table was right to the shore line of the beach and even at 10 in the morning it was already crowded with people. Along the main street of the beach, there are Kara-OK joints with singing enthusiasts blasting thru’ the sound system each to its own noise level. Well Filipinos are known to have penchant for singing, let alone dancing & drinking.
What’s beach party without ‘lechon’, booze & dancing that every nook of the beach has its own music. “Nobody But You” a K-pop song seemed to be the most popular song with everyone seemed to dancing to its beat. In fact one group had a well-choreographed movement to the song. Well it reminded me of the dance performed at our hi-school reunion.

Among the food prepared by my Aunt were the famous Tausug delicacies of b-b-q ‘piasak’ (chicken cooked in coconut milk & garnished with native herbs), ‘pugut’ or trigger fish with succulent meat that taste just like chicken. We had sea-weed salad topped with raw sea urchin and tossed with a combination of vinegar, lemon, lime, soya sauce, tomatoes, garlic, minced ginger & onions. The spread included squids (ink still cooked intact), clam soup with corn, steamed curacha (half crab, half lobster) and Valenciana rice (more like paella minus the saffron) not forgetting the ‘bianban, piutu & sianglag’. Of course ‘sotanghon’ & chicken salad are permanent picnic food for our family.

Yes, it’s true with heavy breakfast earlier, who could think of eating again? Well not necessarily eating, I just picked here & there and before I realized I was having more than I bargained for, I was already in my 2nd glass of Coke & felt little bit bloated with ‘piutu’ in my tummy starting to swell to an uncomfortable level. But again there are toilets around!

The beach was not as beautiful as our beach in Jolo especially the Quezon beach. However with the frolicking young girls around, it was just natural for us ‘seniors’ to be captivated by their infectious giggles. From time to time my aunt would shout from the bench to focus our eyes on our wives we left at home or if we are already immersed in conversation with anyone of these beautiful specimens, she would gently pull us away from the crowd. Ah, my aunt, just like my mother, every daughter-in-law is happy to have her around, where she would march straight to any woman whom she felt was starting to be comfortable with any of his boys. To the delight of her daughter-in-law, my mom too would bring my sister-in-law to confront any woman who would show special interest in any of his married sons.

My aunt still treats us like we were teenagers and wouldn’t care to show her matriarchal dominance. Instead of our eyes ogling on the other equally tantalizing sight, she would offer us our favorite food. I don’t know why until now these mothers still remember the food we craved most, the food we quarreled for or even sneaked from. I love this aunt for remembering all these wonderful things that glued us cousins together. In a big family like ours, we are still close even to 4th degree cousins and knew each one of them by name including their own respective families.

Later Albert Wu another friend called to check where I was. I still have a lot of things to catch up with another cousin who was stationed in Nigeria as a Commanding Officer under UN Peace-Keeping troupe. So I didn’t joined Albert to hang out with his gang which later I found out they ended up at Latitude disco.

We have siblings & cousins working all around the world from all continents; in fact one cousin is working as Research Scientist with Russian government in Antartica. For those who married Muslim became Muslim or Christian depending which country they made their homes. In our family religion is not an issue, it’s the person’s perspective which threatens to destabilize the family that all of us are concern of. Like in my family alone I’m a Christian and so are our eldest brother John & youngest brother Rusward. My eldest sister who married someone from the north is a Christian while one is non-committed. All the rest are Muslims, but during ‘Chim Bing’ (Chinese day of the dead) everyone will make an effort to go back home & pay homage to our Chinese grandparents regardless of beliefs. Of course for Christian we have All Souls Day and for Muslims it’s ‘Taiti’ the day before the start of fasting month.

There are lot of things to talk about even among cousins and pause for a while when we remember the plight of another cousin or the death & birth in the family. While our coffee and beer continued to be replenished, we tell stories like it happen just a week ago. Now we can laugh at our mistakes like the time we went to another uncle’s house and not knowing their nasty dog Sputnik was not on leash. We ran like mad and climbed onto whatever higher place we thought we were safe only to find out Sputnik could also climb. We were terrified by its growling and howling but actually Sputnik was also happy to be off the leash and pranced around. Our presence made him even more excited and started licking each one of us instead of biting us to the amazement of our uncle. From that time on, we always had biscuits for him whenever we visited our uncle.

Growing up in the island town of Simbahan, Pangutaran, Sulu, my granduncle & grandaunt had this massive house which the local called it ‘rumah batu” or stone house. Like a typical Chinese house, the front of the house was the shop selling everything from cloth to basic necessities, including medicine both Chinese and Western. My granny had this young billy and a hoard of ewes and every Saturday when there’s no class, we usually take them out to a pasture. Not knowing the neighbor’s big billy-goat with beard that almost covered its face got out from the fence and started attacking our billy which was only half its size. We tried to shoo it away, instead it started to cower its head with its foot-long horn in an attack position then ran towards us. All of scrambled to climb even to the smallest guava tree and started ramming its horns at tree where my cousin Sam hanged on. Our scream caught the attention of few passers-by, but they were too scared to be attacked by that crazy goat. I could see the tree swayed vigorously with every ram then my younger cousin Fred took out his slippers and throw at the billy and the billy turned his attention on him. By that time, Sam had a chance to slip from the billy’s attention and when the big billy saw our billy ran towards our house, he also chased him and the whole shop was turned upside down. Of course my uncle took out his shotgun, but granny stopped him from killing the beast instead enticed it with the ewe which was on heat at that time. Uhmm, now we know what calm down the angry men. Scared as we are, it was nevertheless a joke our lifetime that we still talked about it again and again when we meet each other. There were few more incidents that glued our relationship together and our childhood was just as wonderful as our lives now.

I still believe blood is thicker than water. “No matter what; family first!”, was my father’s remark to us.