it’s not that i was just dying to go. it was fine with me to miss it but let’s just say a month of waiting for the day of the event with the promise of eating “authentic filipino street food” kind of got me excited. you know what i mean? because, let’s be honest, the first thing i saw on their flyer was the food. second was the name of the festival. the third was the dancing fan lady, but that was only because i took a closer look. like, really fuckin’ studied the printed details as if i was gonna be quizzed on it.

so forgive my hyperactive imagination when i fantasized endless stalls with clouds of barbecue smoke dense enough to make you cry — either from the pain of the smoke stinging your eyes, or from the ecstasy of that wonderfully unique smell of barbecue sauce a true-blue filo has the superhuman ability to sniff from miles away. yep, as far as barbecues are concerned, we’re like freaking sharks!

but reality was so much different from my hopes and dreams. heck, it was even a far cry from what was printed on their ad! sure, there were filo non-food stuff going on there but i went for the food so i’ll base my opinions on that.

to be fair, it wasn’t like they had zero filo food stalls. but to only have three (on my count) can be quite a disappointment too, especially when it seemed as if there were more offerings of vietnamese food than filo ones. not that i don’t love viet cuisine but, you know, if that’s what they had then i could’ve just easily gone to springvale.

i hate to sound whiny and i probably already do as it is so let’s wrap things up with a summary, shall we?

okay, so i had indian food in a philippine festival because the filo food stalls were few and the lines were ridiculously long. and although i was hanging to have barbecue, the fact that it’s not a very healthy choice to begin with, compounded by the possibility of me contracting gastric ulcer from queuing forever wasn’t exactly an appealing combo. add in swollen varicose veins into the mix and you got a trifecta. #bitter

but it wasn’t that bad, really. because after waiting 15 minutes in line, a friend and i got to eat halo-halo, though. nevermind that they charged us $2 more on top of the $8 just so we could have ube ice cream on top instead of the melted vanilla ones they were serving to everyone else.

on the bright side, it was 31 degrees on that sunday so the weather was as tropical as you could get. we hung out with a few friends who were more than happy to look after raven while jenice, jeff, and i went to buy gelato. another one of the day’s irony.

*raven at 6 months old