AFTER going back to Jack's Halo Halo far too many times at its Big Bite stall at Ayala Malls Centrio in Cagayan de Oro, I suddenly remembered 10,000 Maniacs’ “Hey Jack Kerouac”:
“Hey Jack Kerouac/I think of your mother/And the tears she cried, they were cried for none other/Than her little boy lost in our little world that hated/And that dared to drag him down/Her little boy, courageous.”
Oops. It's not the most appropriate song for the best halo-halo in CDO. Their only common denominator is Jack.
What a coincidence, though, since I’ve been reading Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” since forever.
I’m always reading at least two books. Not at the same time, of course, but I guess other bookworms get the drift: if you need a breather from one book, you switch to the next, and if that next book becomes too much to bear, you’re having another TOA — transfer of affection — to a third book, and so on, until you’re reading about five books.
“On the Road” is my bedtime book supposed to be read before sleeping, hoping it would help me drift off. But I now watch YouTube videos about the carnivore diet late at night, which keeps me awake.
“Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise,” as the idiom goes. Why wealthy? Because health is wealth. Why wise? Because a good sleep helps in banishing the brain fog to Siberia.
It’s not only the late nights that have contributed to the brain fog. The carbo-loading at Big Bite was the most major factor. And I taste-tested them all: pasta, rice, pizza, siopao, halo-halo, pistachio cake.
I thought my last Big Bite carbo-loading would be on Thursday. But then I was there on Friday and ended up ordering more carbs: two kinds of pasta, paella, sushi, MiMo Cafe’s espresso canele, and, hmmm, Jack's Halo Halo’s ube overload again.
Jack's is located in Tablon, CDO. An uptowner like me would have to cross a river and survive through two-hour traffic during rush hour before reaching it, thus, my daily goal is to order the ube overload while it’s at Big Bite.
The yummiest espresso canele was worth the carbs. Puera buyag. That’s one of MiMo’s Big Bite specials, meaning, not on the cafe’s menu. It was always sold out, so, I was one of the luckiest ones to have taste-tested it.
The most pleasant surprises at Big Bite were Manoink’s grilled pork and Stibs House’s ribeye. The carnivore will always go back to eating meat after experiencing its perks.
I have to start sleeping early now that Election Day is ilang tulog na, so I can vote wisely. The brain fog definitely doesn’t help in choosing the best candidate. That’s the candidate who’s aiming for genuine public service instead of private interest. How to distinguish one from the other? Will I end up voting for the lesser evil again? Or for the one with the cutest videos? Tsk tsk.
As CDO’s political candidates are busy shaking the hands of potential voters, they’re also busy spreading bad press against their opponents.
Some of these candidates also went to Big Bite where they ingested nutrients that could help them formulate thought-provoking soundbites.
