Day 02 (Back to Work)

A photo of something you ate today.

It feels so good to be back in the office after being stuck at home for a week. I missed my desk, my chair, the office couch, lunch with the boss, lunch with co-workers, talking to a random student in the hallway, making my students' lives harder, and laughing with my more insane kiddies (our meetings end up longer than usual because of all the non-sense). This week started out great, and I hope the good vibes will last until Friday.

Today's lunch - Breaded Fish Fillet, two pieces of longganisa, and 1 cup of rice from the cafeteria downstairs. I was supposed to get something else but the "Tartar" sauce got my attention. It's not your usual tartar; the sauce was made of hard-boiled eggs, mayo, onions, and something else I can't quite place, but it tasted so much like what you would put in an egg sandwich. Interesting twist to a fish fillet sauce, but it didn't quite do anything for the overall flavor. The longganisa wasn't that good too, but since I didn't eat breakfast and I had to drink medicine, I ate them all anyway.

I remember back in college when the cafeteria was the most popular place to avoid. I didn't really understand why people didn't like eating the food there until I tried their tortang talong one fateful day. Now I don't eat eggplants but I love tortang talong (yes, I know it's weird) so I was very much dismayed when I took that first bite. It was so oily and bland, not even huge blobs of banana ketchup can fix it. I swore off cafeteria food ever since. I mean, how could they botch something as simple as tortang talong?

On my first year of teaching, they changed concessionaires. The cafeteria looked cleaner and the food looked and smelled edible. They were the ones who introduced the "mutant" fried chicken (as in really big portions of chicken) swimming in gravy, which I ate every single day for one semester until I started sprouting feathers. I also absolutely loved their cassava cake, sopas and sisig. But eventually, the school had to change again because the food wasn't worth the price anymore, and the menu wasn't as diverse as it once was. Bye-bye, nyamy cassava cake and sopas. :(

The new concessionaire, the ones that served my lunch, is from the neighboring foreign university. They offer Culinary Arts there, so I guess it makes sense that they cook food for the entire school. The cafeteria has become their training ground and they made a few interesting changes. The walls are painted with drawings of food and kitchen appliances, music can be heard through small speakers mounted on some of the posts, and I don't have to go to the far side of the cafeteria to buy drinks. Their menu is diverse too - they have sandwiches and pasta now. Unfortunately, it's a tad bit more expensive than the last concessionaire, and though they do have good food sometimes, the rest is somewhat...blah. I'm sure they could do better, but until then, it's fish fillet a la egg sandwich for me.