Looking forward to eat a 50-peso typhoid laced dinner from some sidewalk while thinking of how to buy a P9,000 pamidronate for a patient I got a text message from Len-Len and ANL inviting us to dinner. Len-Len and ANL are now New Yorkers who occasionally visit us proletariats in this rut, and we are thankful. Smoketh and I were informed that the dinner would be in some posh hotel. For free. Smoketh and I teleported ourselves to the hotel in the blink of an eye. Because the hotel was just a stone’s throw away. Truly Smoketh and I were on the same page about liking to eat some free food. Yes, I have to exercise my cliche figurative speech-wielding skills.

I’ve heard so much about this high-end buffet, but when we saw the huge lines of salads and appetizers and entrees and deserts of the multi-national variety we let out our proletariat, pulubi, patay-gutom selves and gushed. “Oh my God, ANL,” I told ANL, who was smiling at me while wearing her expensive black dress, her expensive smile, and her expensive pearl necklace, “Ooooooh my God, ANL. I feel like I’m in… Wish Ko Lang.”

Smoketh and I feasted on the free, expensive food. Everything is so clean. Everybody looks nice under the subdued yellow light. The floors are shiny the walls are glistening the dude serving the lamb chops is English-speaking and everyone seems so composed in the face of all these expensive cheeses and chocolate fountains and steaks and exotic salads and stuff that I once again felt the urge to ask in my best kanto accent, “Meron ba ditong MECHADO?” and afterwards, “san po ang KUBETA?”

We bade goodbye to ANL and Len-Len and once again forced them to promise that if we ever see ourselves in New York we would require them to feed us, clothe us, shelter us, and indulge our abuses being the impoverished friends that we are. Pyro then texted me that my patient has just died.

Back to reality.
Damn it. To hell.

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