Fried of Dubai

Where else in the world can you get a job that pays you bigtime yet you won’t do anything but sit your ass from sunup to sundown? Well, I am one less lucky to get one here in Dubai, the city of gold and of golden opportunities. Sadly, Dubai is not a place you can call home, it is bare of any warmth and hospitality, a salient antithesis to its soul- grabbing and fun-stealing summer temperature. It Is not where you can dress up anyway you want or stay in the comforts of the bathroom for as long as you want. It is not where you can watch TV until your eyes get sore or afford to eat the food that you have come to love back home. Time and resources in Dubai are not boundless. Convenience is a necessity. Life revolves almost in an instant. Life circles usually, in a frying pan!

Aside from time which is mostly pooped commuting and battling out relentless road congestion, the impracticality to rent your own room or cook your favorite traditional dishes makes life here partly communal, restricted in some sense and rather dry and droning. Just enough to leave you musing about life back home. How sweet it is to be penniless yet happy and close to your loved ones. How nice it is to eat your favorite foods at its freshest state and at its cheapest cost. Fried food is making me sick here, canned goods and instant noodles too. If only I have more time and the tolerance to stand besides the burner while crooning my heart’s anthem, then maybe, I would find something else better on our dining table instead of just fried egg, fried hotdog, fried fish, friend pork, fried chicken, friend meatloaf, etc. Name it, we have almost fried everything!

For many Filipinos, culinary activities aren’t that much of priority here in Dubai. Said before, though food is a necessity, it also equates to practicality and convenience. In simple language, we cook and eat not because it’s a passion, but because we need to make it through. Save for weekends where we get the chance to cook our choice, normally the weekdays menu are those quick and instant.

But last night, damned all the odds and literally against time and space, I cooked my favorite sinigang na baboy for a change. It took me more than two hours to have it all prepared and ready for dinner. At past ten in the evening, I was all alone in our flat’s veranda snubbing all the sweat coming out of my pores. I was having a steamy diner of rice soaked in sour soup of pork and vegetables. Sinigang na baboy with a twist, instead of tamarind powder, I used calamansi powder and instead of kangkong, I topped it with green lettuce. Gabi made the soup a little viscous and the string beans added some tender bites to chew. I was full in minutes and was ready to be knocked off. Suddenly. I remembered my mother, she cooks the best sinigang in our house. If only she’s here, then probably I won’t have to deal with fried foods more often.

Dubai is rich with oil, petrol that is. it is where Dubai is getting all the money to built all those superlatives infrastructure, it runs the economy. But for us ordinary residents, cooking oil matters more. It aids cooking our usual food that runs our stomach. If I will compare Dubai and the Philippines to a food, obviously I will say Dubai is a fried stuff, quick, dry, hot, oily and less tasting. The Philippines, of course, smells like kare-kare, “syet ang daming sangkap, masarap, malaman, malasa, magulay, masarsa, may sawsawan pa”. However, “mas makakaipon ka kung prito lang prito, hindi ganung magastos at mas malaki ang savings”. So for now, tiis muna sa pagpriprito, tiis muna sa Dubai.