Day 4 of the World Cup. We meet up with the Pals at Rock’s, where they had taken refuge from the (scheduled) eight-hour brownout that more or less regularly winds down Dumaguete’s Sundays. The area around campus seems sleepier and (if this is possible) cooler, as a result.
GJ shows us a photo of the big Robinson’s Place mall, which – huge as it was – is crammed with people also escaping the citywide power failure. So that’s where everyone went.
The Pals – bless them – are a fabulous source of knowledge about Dumaguete, Negros and the Visayas, as you, the reader of this newspaper, probably well know because you’ve been partaking of that source.
We would go so far as to say, at the risk of embarrassing this very astute yet unassuming family, that our stay in Dumaguete would be nowhere as fulfilling without their mediation. They were ever pointing us towards many of the innumerable charms of this wonderful city.
One of these is Café Mamia, relatively new and owned coincidentally by the family of my wife’s former classmate in high school. If KRI is our dinner base, then Mamia is our breakfast home, where they serve a perfect breakfast of danggit, fried egg and garlic rice (for me), and Spanish chorizo with the same sides for my wife.
When my wife posted a photo of the danggit breakfast on her Facebook page, she received dozens of likes, mostly from our Fil-Am friends, who have fond memories of this delectable wafer-thin dried fish, but who rarely get the chance to eat it because it’s hard to come by in the States and even more challenging to fry, as it tends to fill up one’s home with its singular aroma.
So I have it every time I’m at Mamia’s, which happens to be this Monday morning after my tournament pick France had thumped Honduras 3-0.
Real Madrid striker Karim Benzema had a hand in all three goals, scoring one from the spot and another off a rebound, and forced the Honduran keeper to commit an error after his shot hit the cross bar and the keeper cleared the ball right into his goal. This own-goal was historic because it was the first time slow-motion camera technology had been used to allow a goal that the referee had failed to call.
I’m somewhat conflicted about the use of technology to augment the referee’s goal-line capability. On the one hand, goals are so precious, especially in World Cup play, that when a goal is truly a goal, as in the France-Honduras match, then it’s only fair that it is counted as such.
On the other hand, the sport is more stimulating when human error is factored in – the controversies are never forgotten and the discussions run long into the night.
If the technology remains limited to the allowing and disallowing of goals, then I’m for it, but it could be a slippery slope that leads to camera-determined off-sides and hand balls and penalty fouls – fairly common match events that when mechanically arbitrated would interrupt the continuity of the match and hurt the sport more than it would help.
I resist the urge to pass by the public viewing screen on the boulevard after breakfast, knowing that Argentina-Bosnia Herzegovina (BH) were still playing and fearful that the city might not be showing it, though it was advertised, because of the problematic logistics of projecting video images in daylight.
I also did not want the pain of watching football on a washed-out screen, so we go back to our room to watch a listless Argentina barely get by BH. It took some late wizardry by Lionel Messi to win it, when he flashed past several defenders after a nice one-two with Pipita Higuain and smashed a low shot past the keeper. So today’s continental scoreboard reads Europe 2 — the Americas 1 (Switzerland won the midnight match over Ecuador).
Day 5. If you’ve never had laswa, I suggest you hurry to KRI Restaurant for the heartiest, healthiest and tastiest vegetable soup-stew you’ll ever slurp. Hearty, healthy and tasty seldom go together, yet in laswa, they go as excellently as do the okra, squash, string beans, alugbati (Malabar spinach), kangkong sometimes, malunggay sometimes, in the clear broth undoubtedly teeming with antioxidants. I love stirring chopped sili labuyo into my soup, adding vitamin C to the mix, not to mention flames in my mouth. Thank goodness for the brown rice and the guyabano (soursop) juice.
By the way, we were told that the Ilonggo original of laswa has shrimp, which would make it quite yummy indeed, but for those cholesterol-averse or vegetarian, Ritchie Armogenia’s KRI (or Negros Oriental) version is heaven enough.
The laswa helped me stomach the day’s World Cup results (is this beginning to be the pattern – medicating my football disappointments with food?): Portugal destroyed by Germany and the United States “avenging” Ghana. Like Neymar for Brazil, Portugal will go only as far as their talisman Cristiano Ronaldo will take them; alas, Cristiano is injured, and however often his team deny it, the fact is he cannot finish a training session without being rushed off with his left leg wrapped in ice. It did not help that Pepe, his Real Madrid and Portuguese teammate, went on one of his periodic unthinking jags and touched heads with Thomas Mí¼ller, who made a meal of it and got Pepe sent off. Another Real Madrid player Fabio Coentrí£o left the game early because of a thigh injury. All in all, not a happy night for madridistas or, for that matter, the Portuguese.
The U.S. got their revenge on Ghana, who had knocked them out of the previous World Cup. While I am happy for their players and their true fans, who must constantly struggle against football’s status in the U.S. as a fifth-rate sport, I can never root for the U.S. in soccer – I mean, football.
Americans have such contempt for this beautiful global sport, which is rather inexplicable until one goes to a football match in the U.S., or even just to a sports bar screening a football game, and finds that most of the fans there are people of color, Latinos and recent immigrants. It’s clear that there’s a xenophobic element in Americans’ disdain for football.
There is also, I think, a lot of envy: Americans love those sports where they can be or have been champions, and as latecomers to football, they have (as yet) no chance to win the World Cup. So they rationalize by claiming they never want to be champions anyway in such a rubbish sport. (Never mind that American women have had fantastic success and have even won the World Cup! For some unfathomable reason, women’s sports hardly register in the U.S.)
The one good result is the 0-0 tie between Iran and Nigeria because I always cheer for the Asian and African teams, the true World Cup underdogs, and the tie means they get a point each.
Would have been better if it had been 2-2, because the number of goals scored is the second tie-breaker, after goal differential, when determining who progresses from the group stage.
Day 6. Lunch at Mifune with Alex and Irma Pal, upon their recommendation, of course. We tell them our favorite Japanese restaurant in San Francisco is also called Mifune, where we’d go after an afternoon of sauna and soaking in the Kabuki public baths. We have soba in Dumaguete’s Mifune – soba is some kind of miracle noodle that can be eaten hot, in soup, or cold, with wasabi-soy dipping sauce. Soba is made from buckwheat, which is not wheat but something ridiculously better, with twice the protein of rice and apparently loaded with antioxidants.
Plus, even though it is a starch, it packs a pretty low glycemic load. Tokyoites consumed soba to prevent beri-beri because soba contains thiamin, which is not found in white rice.
Perhaps we should have had Korean instead of Japanese, out of consideration for Korea’s exemplary effort against Russia in their 1-1 draw.
Hooray for the Asian teams –much of Russia is in Asia – perhaps we could have had borscht? I’m sure Dumaguete has a version.
But the big football story today is Mexico holding the hosts Brazil to a scoreless draw: Viva Ochoa! The Mexican keeper played the game of his life, diving acrobatically to stop goals. We saw a lot of Ochoa when we lived in Puebla, Mexico for two months, not just in matches for the seleccion and Club América but also in TV ads. But his performance in the Brazil match should canonize him in his home country and they’ll be calling him “San Memo.”
As for us, we’ll do him homage of a sort by going to Mooon Café for lunch tomorrow. (To be continued)
