Tuesday, April 9, 2019

April 9th, 2019


Calle Brewery
April 8th, 2019:

  This day was a good day! Right now I’m trying to write poems for the New Tandem’s poetry book ‘LAYAP’. It stands for something but I’m not sure what. I do know that the theme and having people actually respond to my poems in a one to one conversation helps me improve my writing immensely.

  My brother asked me to go to a brewery in town. I hadn’t gone because most of my friends don’t like to drink or they think that they’re too young but most of them are eighteen going on nineteen. (Yes, most of them are born in 2000 if not 1999.) Imagine, I try to make myself stand out but the fact is that I come from a different culture and age group than most of the people around me.
  Luckily, through the New Tandem I was able to find someone who was willing to go with me to this brewery. There’s another bar that I would like to go to and I hope that he will be willing to go with me. If not, I’ll have to venture out and make more friends.

  About the bar: This place had a very nice atmosphere. It wasn’t a place that had this ‘rowdy’ feeling to it. It was very calm and spacious. I met my friend there and I was so happy to go drinking with someone without getting hit on! In the U.S that’s the main reason why I don’t go to bars because I get hit on constantly.

  This was our first subject and he was amazed. Really? He asked. I told him, yea. In the states, I’m a cute Asian so I’m the first one people see when I walk in. He brought something to my attention that amused me. “Isn’t it funny that Westerners think that Asians are so unique and ‘sexy’ but over here in the Philippines it’s the westerns that we think are unique and ‘sexy,?”

  It didn’t occur to me that this was how the Philippines viewed the world that I came from. To an extent, I did but I wasn’t living that life so it was interesting to see laid out in front of me. In both cultures, I’m hit on, regardless because I look young even for a Filipino. Due to that, I didn’t exactly pay attention to who was this idea of ‘sexy’ or ‘lusted over’.

  He shared with me how he doesn’t always have a drinking buddy and was happy that I was willing to go out with him and drink and talk in public. This is a cultural thing that’s not usually acceptable. I had to explain that to most people, going out to drink is limited to ‘women don’t drink in public’, ‘men are the only one who can drink in public’, ‘men and women don’t drink together’. If men drink with women it’s because they’re considered ‘gay’.

  When I told him this he shared that some people that we interact with don’t like to drink with him. He always drank with the same person if the group went out for drinks but he had never drank with the others. I knew discrimination was present but it didn’t occur to me that he was included in this discrimination.

  The reason why we could drink together was because we didn’t mind drinking without someone at the same intellectual level. To us, the bias of who was drinking with us wasn’t weird. All we cared about was going out to drink with someone for the good of company. Now that I think about it we compared our drinking experiences.

  Through preference, I didn’t enjoy drinking in public because most of the time I would be flirted with. Or, I would get looks of disgust because I’m a woman in the Philippines so customs say ‘I can’t drink’. Or, if I’m drinking anything other than wine what I’m drinking isn’t a ‘woman’s drink’. Since when did society label whether a drink was feminine or masculine?

  His drinking experiences usually surfaced as getting drunk to the point of no return. He said he liked to drink and it was sort of like a competition. He had never experienced sitting with someone, eating, and drinking, while having a good time or not flirting.

  Even though the interactions with this friend are few moments that I can grab with him each time that I’m with him I can sync with him really well on an intellectual level. He’s funny and he understands my humor. I don’t always get his due to the language barrier but I’m happy enough that he understands my humor at the least.

  He never belittles me and seems to always have the best interest for the people he’s friends with. At first when I met him I didn’t understand why he was in New Tandem but as time went by I realized that he’s in New Tandem because of his ideas and output. He gives energy to the New Tandem that is similar to mine. We’re idealist.

  Apparently, I like bitter beer while he likes fruiter tasting beer. It was funny because the first two beers we got, I got the Diego and he got the Espada. We had small glasses that we could poor each other’s drink in so that we could try both drinks. The Espada was fruity while the Diego was bitter. The second round of beers we got were the Canyon and the Bigote. I think he ended up with the Canyon because it was fruity and I ended up with the Bigote because it was bitter. The waiter had given him the Bigote at first and me the Canyon and we ended up disliking the tall glass we had so we ended up switching glasses.

  I’ll be uploading pictures this week. For now, I will leave this here for all of you to read over. I have to say, if any of you find yourself in Vigan City I recommend going to the Calle Brewery. My brother wanted a beer label but they didn’t have any so I ended up buying him a mug but he wasn’t disappoint!

Thank you for reading, everyone. Tune in next week to hear about another adventure in my life!
DJ/Cho/Nar




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