TheFranciscos.Net

Memorial Day Weekend 2002

It’s another start of the workweek for me after the nice, long and very restful weekend. It’s SO depressing to have to come back to work after having a lazy respite like that, but I’ve got bills to pay…. so I just need to suck it up!

It was a very uneventful weekend (since Aileen was on-call for part of it), unlike our Niagara Falls trip last year. One interesting thing we did do was attend the Pittsburgh Folk Festival at Heinz Field, where the Philippines was represented by a small, but popular food booth manned by the FAAP people. The food stall’s most popular dish was the delicious barbecue and the lumpiang shanghai (too bad there was no lechon or pritchon). Other represented countries in the festival were Germany, Ukraine, China, India, and others.

As a newcomer to the Steel City, it was pretty refreshing to see some Filipino faces and to talk to other people (besides Aileen) in the Filipino language. I’ve lived in this beautiful city for a couple of months now, and Aileen’s been here for almost a year, but we hardly get to meet any Pinoys in the area. The only one I’ve actually formally met is an attending physician at Aileen’s hospital (who happens to be a classmate of my mom at UST). It’s really quite a change from our environment in the Philadelphia area (King Of Prussia to be exact), where you can find dozens of Pinoys, and that’s only in the circles we’re in. I find it strange that Pittsburgh, which is very culturally diverse (judging from the large amount of interracial relationships we see), has a small number of Filipinos – around 200 in all from the estimates of the FAAP folks.

I guess if there’s something that I miss about King of Prussia (besides the awesome mall and Cheesecake Factory), it’s the Filipino friends that I have over there. I just don’t get to hang out with anybody in Pitt the way I did before. Not that I’m a racist and will only mingle with my own kind. I’d hang out with almost anyone as long as you’re not a bore, but there’s just something about the way you relate to each other if you’re both Filipino. You laugh at the same “babaw” jokes, discuss the same Philippine showbiz news and crave for the same kare-kare and lechon. There’s also a certain satisfaction I get when talking with a Pinoy in Tagalog – especially when you’re talking about somebody. Tsismis, in other words. The great thing about doing that here is that nobody else understands you and you’re free to criticize anyone, even if they’re sitting right next to you. In other words, masarap mamintas (Aileen’s a champ at this) dito sa States!

Anyway, it was fun to attend that festival even if just to meet and talk with some other Pinoys. We hope to get more involved with the community here and make new friends.