Watashi Bento ~desu (my first in school)

Being an otaku, it's not strange for me to crave for Japanese cuisine and wanting to get the feeling of an anime school student.

Preparing a bento lunch is very exhausting, the steps are listed below:

1. Research and Planning

2. Buying the ingredients and stuff from the grocery

3. Food Preparation

4. Cooking

5. Packing

It's a very complicated matter for a student like me who lives in a country where general groceries open at 10 am and the school starts at 12 o'clock, school ends at 7 pm and groceries closes at 9pm.

The heavy traffic after school won't give me anymore time for grocery shopping.

I was just actually waiting for the right timing when there's a whole day event. I failed twice before, but just today I did it! and ate my first bento in the school.

The first attempt was when I've done the grocery but failed to have the time to prepare and cook the bento and decided to make tuna sandwiches instead. The second attempt was when I failed everything else except for the packing, that's when I just bought the lunch from 7-11 and just wrap it with furoshiki.

Today's a lucky day indeed, I did it and ate it all in less than 5 minutes without water, it's a medium sized meal with a 1:1 ratio of rice and side dishes, unfortunately I wasn't able to fit in the vegies that I've also prepared.

How I did it is the question. Well, it really needed a lot of research from the internet, and I'm very grateful for About.com and Wikipedia.org.

So I had to decide what dishes I want to eat and list them down. First thing that came in my mind was the octodogs! then onigiri, gyudon, chicken nuggets, veggie salad and stir fried bean sprouts.

So I still needed to buy them and the bento box. It so happened that there are several Japanese thrift shops in our area, selling all item in 66 php to 88 php!

Yesterday, I got out of school earlier because nobody wants to mess with me and the guard is such a sucker, nah it was legit. I had the time to go shopping and did so. Today, I woke up at 4 and started preparing and cooking and ended around 6:30. This day was not one my regular school days but it was a whole day and had to attend in the morning so a bento was necessary.

What's in it are the following,

- 4 onigiri cubes

- 5 octodogs

- Gyudon topped with pickled relish

- stir-fried bean sprouts or togue

After the lunchbreak had started, butterflies also started to appear in my stomach helped with a slight hunger. I really wanted to eat alone but decided to eat in the school cafeteria anyway.

As I gobbled up my food with silver chopsticks, I can sense these weird stares on me from others. Finally, I finished my food and went out the cafeteria and heard somebody yell at me from inside, "Konichiwa!".

What a weaboo, I am.

Living a School Life Genre

School just started, or another way to say it is "Here comes our 10 months of hell".

Most people would think it's ordinary, but for me it's
more than ordinary. Having watched a bunch of Anime series with school life themes makes me think, "this could be interesting".

Am I going to copy those anime characters when I get in situations as what happened to them? Who should I copy? Sakuragi Hanamichi, Tomoya Okazaki, Ryuji Takasu (I'm pretty similar to his lifestyle), Kyon or Sunohara?

Well, I was actually designated to sit in the front row according to the alphabetized orders of our names. All of us in the class don't actually sit on our assigned seats, unless during our adviser's time. I sit at the very back of the classroom so I could sleep without getting caught, though I got caught twice, I believe. But the possibility rate is far more lower than sleeping in the middle or in front.

For high schools in the Philippines, at least in our high school, boys and girls are separated in 2 groups in the class. But some "delinquents" which includes me don't sit in either side, because we have our own row. The unofficial 6th row, I call the delinquents' row, exempted from cleaning duties. Since there are only 5 school days in a week from Monday to Friday, only the first 5 rows will do the job and we the intimidating thugs don't have to.

The x in there is where I sit.

Why Filipino?

To tell you the truth, I myself am not good at the Filipino subject. I struggle pronouncing endless tongue twisting words when reciting and I keep on asking questions on what's the meaning of this or that, etc.

Lots of American students hate the English subject though they're still good at it; different from me, I'm not good at Filipino at all. Being ridiculed by my classmates when answering in Filipino with a weird accent (not bisaya), I always feel a little embarrassed.

But still, I don't hate the Filipino subject. I got this Filipino blood that runs through my veins which I will never take for granted.

Now in this modern age, our language has evolved for many centuries, adapting lots of foreign words mostly from Spanish and English. It has grown worse that a teenager today with a person a hundred years ago won’t be able to understand each other. It doesn't matter now, they're all dead.

Well, having been able to speak the "Universal Language", that is English is a nice trait for a country and reaps a lot of benefits. But, it does not make a country great for making a foreign language as an official language. It's not that I oppose it but the thing is, our own culture is deteriorating, our own Filipino language is being considered as a commoners' language for today's society. We tend to look down on our own culture and praise foreign stuff.

Like our national hero once said,

“Ang hindi magmahal sa sariling wika,

Mahigit sa hayop at malansang isda…”^[2]

-Meaning to say, those who don’t love their own native language is far worse than animals and smelly fish.

Have you ever heard the phrase “Something smells fishy”? It means something seems not right; hating your own language is the same, it’s damn wrong!

We know how a dead fish smells, it’s hideous. Just go inside a wet market and you’ll know what it means.

He may not be aware of it much but Dr. Jose Rizal’s quote doesn’t just apply to humans. But, to the creature which he mentioned too.

As far as I know there is a biblical evidence that fishes of the seas were the first living creatures to use their own distinct language, at least before humans.^[3] Since most fishes are social creatures,^[4] they use a certain form of communication that is the “body language”.

If you’ve seen a live fish out of the water and it’s wiggling its tail, it could be translated into “help me!”. If the fish stops doing so, it’ll die and slowly rot, thus producing a foul stench.

And there comes “Pilosopo Tacio” saying, “Duh, I’d just use some deodorant”.

The point is we should make good use of what we have and be proud of it. The Japanese have their Nihongo, the Koreans have their Hangungmal, the Germans have their Deutsch, the French have their français and we Filipinos have our Tagalog.

References

^[2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sa_aking_mga_Kababata

^{[3] -} Genesis 1:21

^{[4] -} http://www.fishlore.com/fishforum/freshwater-beginners-archive/16832-fish-social-creatures.html