Oh boy. The old "F" word vs. "P" word debate. I won't even go there. Much has already been said. Suffice it to say, nothing is worse than pronouncing "Pilipino" with an American accent (or for the pedant, an American English accent), that is, with an aspirated "P" so that it sounds like "pill-lipino." That's all I'll say for now.
Not that that really had anything to do with last Saturday. We had planned to checkout a Filipino restaurant in Chicago, but the one we picked no longer existed, and our backup was closed, so we ended up eating Greek food. My longing for sinigang is unfulfilled. Where the hell are all the Filipino restaurants?
But I realize that I miss talking about things other than med school. Things like culture and history and philosophy. So that's what we ended up doing, touching upon the whole panolpy of topics regarding the continent of Asia, from the substrate culture of Southeast Asia, now obfuscated by Western imperialists but still quite vibrant underneath all the trappings, to our parents' immigration experience, to the experience of the contemporary Asian American, complete with the differences between the West Coast, the East Coast, and the Midwest. Quite a wild ride.
Unfortunately, the reality of my situation sunk in on Monday. It's all about drugs and bugs for now. The wider world will have to wait.
e-mail: aswang@earthlink.net
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