I like table tennis, or ping-pong, as it is widely known, but it’s been a long time since I’ve played it. I assembled a paddle in Japan some years back, with an FL blade, and red and black Butterfly D-13 Shriver rubbers. The rubbers have hardened since, so I shopped around for replacements. I found one department store in the city selling them, along with some Nittaku three-star balls. I’ll be going back to buy them soon. After I’ve replaced the rubbers, I’d ask some friends if they’d care for some ping-pong.
I got reminded of ping-pong now because of white squid balls, which look like ping-pong balls from a distance.
A few nights ago, we were walking along the boulevard, all the way to the northern end of it, right across where Silliman Avenue’s eastern end meets it. I guess anyone from Dumaguete would know what I’m talking about here. It was already dark and so the tables have been laid out at the tempurahan. We’ve always just driven past it, and this was our first time there, where the smell of cooking oil, used over and over, was strongest. There were rows of white plastic tables and chairs.
It looked to me like a nice place to spend a carefree evening with friends, where how loud you were didn’t really matter much. In fact, the racket of nearby traffic encourages people to talk loudly just to hear each other.
I was anxious to try their fare, being a bit hungry and thirsty. We picked a table, and asked the young man what he had to offer. He told me I could have my choice of squid balls or fish tempura or both. I thought for a moment. I never had fish tempura because anywhere I’ve been to, even though tempura could be any seafood or vegetable fried in batter, it’s always been shrimp and veggies. I was afraid it would taste like fish balls, which I hate. The squid balls, well, I thought that in order to ball up squid, you’d have to mash it. I love squid a lot, but what I like about it is its chewiness. I’d like to bite into them and then chew them. The idea of squid balls sounded like I’d be biting into squid that’s already been chewed. I asked the young man if he had something else. He gave me a very definite No answer.
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I went to the next stall and, to my surprise, the lady told me what the young man neglected to: all the stalls serve the same thing–squid balls and fish tempura. It sounded ridiculous but when I saw they all wore the same aprons, was there any chance that she was b———ng me? None.
I started to look around me. Each row of three tables that occupied the length of the street shoulder was capped by a stall, complete with a deep fryer. That’s 25 food vendors, all selling the same kind of food. Seventy-five tables, and anywhere from 150 to 200 people all eating the same two things. Well, maybe not entirely because there’s balut, too.
To me, that’s just a waste of an awful lot of space. Clearly, the tempurahan is primarily a place to mingle, where maybe gossips are spun, embellished, retold, but certainly, not where one would go to eat two, three times a week.
It is the only place in the City where as many people can eat under the night sky while listening to the loud and annoying sound of traffic, and the very faint, soothing sound of the waves. I had to know why.
I asked the lady if they were restricted somehow by some regulation into limiting what they could offer. She said there were no regulations–it is simply a matter of space. Serving anything else other than squid balls and fish tempura would require a bigger table which would require more space than available to them.
But what about meat balls, right?
While there, I couldn’t help but see that the tempurahan sits on a street shoulder. It may be wide, but it is still a shoulder. While the patrons are comfortably seated there, eating, talking, and laughing, motorists experience difficulties driving through because of the congestion that the tempurahan creates.
Of course, this is only obvious to any person seated in the driver’s seat of a car or truck. Motorcyclists will have a totally different experience, and may not even find it a nuisance.
A good 15 or 20 tables lie in the path of eastbound traffic coming down Silliman Avenue. If a driver of a vehicle larger than a motorcycle was to lose control, say, due to a heart attack or sudden drop in sugar, the vehicle could come barreling down the street, and plow right into the patrons peacefully eating their fish tempura and squid balls. For those lucky ones who may see it coming, there may be ample time to escape by running away from it and jumping into the water. There, they’d survive the collision, but they’d have to endure the stench of the filthy waste-polluted sea, which I’m sure would cling to their clothing and skin.
Walking along the boulevard at night, one gets assaulted by the terrible odor of what seems to be human waste. It’s as if a thousand people are defecating all at once just beyond the darkness there, the ocean breeze carrying the stench to shore.
If there were any health gains in walking there at night, I’m sure they would easily be lost by simply inhaling that nasty pong in the air. The water there must be teeming with bacteria to smell like that.
So then, for those who jumped into the water to avoid being hit by the runaway vehicle, would it have been better to have been hit and survived, rather than possibly being diagnosed with septicemia from getting that boulevard water in their mouths and swallowing it? That’s like being caught between a rock and hard place–the kinds of choices that could get you thinking.
Sometime ago, I remember having read something about a proposal to move the tempurahan to the southern end of the boulevard because of safety concerns. I have not heard anything about that since, but whoever made that proposal had commendable foresight.
The fact that there has not been such an accident at the present location yet, does not mean that it could never happen. All it would take would be one accident, one fatality, to cast a very ugly image on the tempurahan that would last for a long time. And then there would be more than enough blame to go around, while for some, regret to last a lifetime.
Talking about relocating it, one might even think that the City would consider securing a spot for it at its 1.7-hectare reclamation project that is now well on its way to completion. It would be a perfect spot for a tempurahan–safe and away from traffic and noise.
Of course, this is just one idea. No one really knows what the City plans to do with that reclaimed land when completed.
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To those who give the tempurahan great reviews, I hope you’d see through that seemingly-festive air that it creates. Think of it as a catastrophe waiting to happen. Would you like to be there when it happens?
Do you think you would enjoy the tempurahan experience just the same if it were somewhere else? Do you think that their food selection could expand if they had more space, and wouldn’t you like that? Do you like the idea that an accident such as the one described above would not have a snowball’s chance in hell of happening if it were somewhere else?
A truly concerned citizen would enjoy the tempurahan, too, while at the same time, being aware of the possible implications of it being where it is. Be aware, be concerned.
Just sharing it with you, the way it is.
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Author’s email: [email protected]
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