The Internet Taught Me to Min-Max My Lunches
Going into high school in the early aughts, we were one of the first teenagers (possibly) to start hanging out in internet cafes to “surf” the net in the tail end of the glorious (not) days of dial-up. But to a student who is on a daily allowance, which was really just lunch money, and is only given forty-five minutes to an hour for lunch, decisions have to be made. Will you stand in line for fifteen to twenty minutes to buy food, then sit down for maybe ten to eat it, or spend as much of that time (and a good chunk of your daily allowance) in an internet cafe? Thankfully, I went to school where the street food culture was able to come to the rescue.
Every school in the Philippines grows a crop of food places outside its gates—from cafes and carenderias to food stalls and carts to Styrofoam coolers containing everything from buko juice to rice cakes or banana cue. To a person like me—who was raised without the mindset that a meal with no rice is not a meal at all—these places were a treasure trove, especially when you have just fifty pesos to cover lunch.
Tokneneng is one of the many common street foods you see in cities of the Philippines.
I could walk out the gates of my school for lunch and get ten pieces of siomai for twenty pesos. Or, for the same amount, get eight pieces of tokneneng, quail eggs coated in neon orange batter and deep-fried (and before you ask, kwek-kwek is the duck egg version, not the quail egg). If I was in a splurging mood, I could get a glass of sago’t gulaman for an extra ten. If it was a really good day, and I have some loose change from previous days, I would cross the street and get a bacon cheeseburger from Minute Burger.
Sago’t gulaman
Now with food in one hand, drink in the other, and maybe twenty pesos unspent in my pocket, I can take a quick walk to the internet café and log on for around an hour.
The principle was very much like what prompted the invention of the sandwich, that is, get food that will allow you to maximize your time with what you actually wanted to do. I didn’t starve myself—far from it—but I found ways to either not waste time standing in line or spend as little as I can while still getting reasonably filling food. Was it the healthiest diet? Lord, no. It was salty and sugary, oily and greasy. But we were young enough to get away with it. (I probably couldn’t do that kind of diet these days for more than a month without my doctor finding out.) And enough of that habit of minimum spend/maximum food stayed with me as an adult to help me negotiate those awkward right-before-payday times when you have to stretch whatever money you have. So I guess, all’s well that ends well?
