as soon as i woke up ... i just felt ... happy.
laughed my ass of at everything they said.
mama asked scarlet to buy 10 kilos of rice ... I LOLed
mama asked me to go the market ... I LOLed (i hate going to the market if it's a bad bipolar day today ... no one could've talked to me all morning) she even asked me to buy fish ... no one could ever (on normal circumstances) make me buy fish ... not on that market anyway. ... i don't mind the smell or something like that ...it's just that it's so slippery in there. one wrong move ... just one wrong freaking step and you're doomed. ... it's like when i'm there i feel like .... (no offense, LOVE YOU JEN LAB LAB LAB LAB LAB!!!!!) umm, yeah jen (LAB LAB LAB)
anyway,
surprisingly, i just asked for the money and go ...
so ... getting to the real story ...
i went down on the fish section of commonwealth market, careful with every step.
i looked two specific kinds of fish -- tilapia and galunggong. ... just that then i'll be outta there in no time. one more thing i hate about buying fish is that ... i don't know what's fresh or what isn't, so when i saw live tilapia i felt like my problem is solved. ... no way that fish isn't fresh ... it's jumping right in front of me.
so i told the manong i wanted to buy the live ones ... i couldn't get myself to touch them so the manong did it for me. when he'd put them on the weighing scale one jumped out and almost landed on my face ... for a second or two i swear to god it was looking at me. OH MY GOD!!! i shrieked.
it landed on the silver table and the manong got a hold of it. then he asked me. lilinisin ba?(should i clean it?) i was speechless, i can feel the fish's wrath. i guess i nodded because he started chopping it's tail and fins off.
it's like murder happening in front of me, my heart began to pound crazily in my chest. i flinch every time the butcher's knife dropped on the chopping board.
then my eyes, i don't know why but, they involuntarily glanced at the fish who jumped ... he was the last to be cleaned. ...
he was lying there on his side breathing heavily, looking at me.
for a second it seems like he's crying in anger ... i know that's crazy talk but ... it just ... seemed that way. ...
it's like in his mind it's saying "oh you sadist BITCH!!! you just wanna watch him chop us off do you? you're just so entertained watching him pull all our guts out! ... "
but i wasn't, i swear to god i wasn't entertained at all.
i felt bad ... almost like crying ... but i sucked it up ... I've been cooking fish for a long time and I've never been bothered by the way their eyes seem to have that accusatory look.
the manong handed me the plastic and fish was still moving wildly inside. it's impossible, it has to be dead. it was skinned, fins and tail were chopped off, guts all taken out. it has to be dead. ... postmortem twitch perhaps?
i've never been so uncomfortable in a market before ... suddenly it seemed like they're all looking at me ... all of them, millions of eyes with that accusatory look. ... blaming me for buying that fish ... for letting that manong kill them brutally ...
then i remembered that clip where the chefs have to cook the fish alive, fry them, cut them open and stuff like that ... then i remembered what i said to my shocked classmates ...
"they dont even remember the pain ... they only have 10 seconds of memory ... so really it's not that brutal"
i tried telling that to myself .. but it didn't work ... nothing worked ...
except the look on people's faces when they ate my fish lumpia ...
i secretly wished that i can have my classmates taste it. ... no one had ever been as apprecayive as they were about my cooking ... and it made me happy ...
... for a while there, i thought i'd never be able to eat fish ever! ... but then i realized how stupid that was ... guess i just won't buy the live ones ... or at least turn my back when they're getting cleaned.
No comments:
Post a Comment