Woke up to the Facebook post of a former colleague, Drucilla Helga, comparing BBM to Jesus Christ, because both were supposedly persecuted for tax-evasion charges. Come to think of it, I didn’t really wake up to it as if I’ve just turned on my phone and saw it there. I have unfollowed her eons ago, so it was more like I actively went to her page, in an act of self-flagellation. Of course, I quickly screencapped it and sent it to my Christian friends to share the aggravation, who could only sigh. More than anything I am wondering if Drucilla Helga is still holding clinics, and if yes, how, seeing that she posts rabid political stuff every 30 minutes.

Was able to have a bit of down time, so I resumed writing a story that I’m supposed to turn in in two weeks for a workshop. Since I’ve mostly been subsisting on Spam sandwich for lunch on weekdays, I decided that I should eat something calorrific this time, and nothing looked more calorrific on the menu that this beef brisket omurice. I had no idea what an omurice was, so just when I thought that the gigantic gunky egg would be calorrific enough, the waitress explained that it’s merely the wrapping of a solid mass of dense curry rice. It tastes okay, if a bit too expensive and too voluminous. I’ve gotten so used to eating a thin slice of Spam that my stomach must have pathologically contracted.

In the early 2000’s, when I was in med school, I would return to my dorm in Nakpil Street on Sundays and we would pass by Glorietta for an early dinner. My father loved Hot Shots, a tiny burger joint along one of the corridors of the old Glorietta 2. Each burger was only P55, and even then it was considered relatively cheap. But after a while my siblings and I got tired of it, and asked my dad if we could eat somewhere else. My father was a creature of habit, and it was difficult to change his mind. My sister suggested this new fast food in Glorietta, called Spam Jam, where everything in the menu had spam in it. So obviously they had spam sandwiches, spam fries, spam sandwich with cheese, rice with spam, and so on. Why anyone thought an entire restaurant based on Spam was a good idea was beyond me, but we ate there for a change. My father hated it. We all hated it, and my sister never heard the end of it. We ridiculed her, berated her, shamed her, and looked down on her for years for having suggested Spam Jam.

Out of curiosity I Googled if there is still a Spam Jam in existence, and a menu of Spam Jam appeared on Zomato. Apparently there had been a branch in Greenbelt, but Zomato marks it as “Closed Permanently”. Deservedly so!

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