Happy is what we make it

If you’ve walked through a door that has a sign like our title, you’ve been to a place at Oleai where they serve you a decent piece of crepes with fillings of your choice. Unless one goes to the upscale hotels in Shenyang, crepe is not normal fare on the menu. You can tell that I seldom walk into those upscale places since my last crepe was gazzilion years ago in Montmarte when I thought I could survive August in Paris for only the foreigners are in the city and the rest of the natives head out to the coast. I was on my way to three months of curry in Maharashtra so the flat thin pancake went down well.
It was on Saipan’s Friday night that I moseyed over to a newly opened eating place run by an acquaintance and his Russian bride. I was there early so I did not get the soon-to-be spirited crowd who normally try to arrest a hangover in the morning. The place is obviously for the dining crowd only as it closes its doors after 9pm, I was told.

There, I ran into someone who I had met a long time ago but follows us on this page. He is a former PCV in the Philippines so his Ilocano is impeccable, and with his Ilongga-Ilocana wife with him, I once again heard the language of my youth spoken. I actually lived in Ilokandia (the Honolulu neighborhood with denizens from the region is called Ilokoslovakia) for only four years, leaving when I was 14 but the language was spoken by my parents at home. Along with English, it was the language I grew up with, though I no longer heard it on a regular basis since I graduated from the Ilocos Norte High School in 1960.

I thought yesterday’s column was going to be the last on Saipan but I came back singing (to the tune of Tomorrow belongs to me from the film Cabaret):

The flame tree in Saipan is greeting the sun
The rainbow in Tinian stands tall
All races together, we live as one
The earth belongs to all.

I was evidently still in the spirit of the OT psalmist reminded as a former cleric on Saipan, in the poetry of Walt Whitman, and in the mood of the Jubilate singers. Saipan as a microcosm of the earth was a suggestion I made last week. I was not too far off. Of the watering holes and the little shack along Beach Road that flamed my crepe, the signage included Russian, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and English. At the crepe’s place, French music was played in the sound system.

In the watering hole next door, I ran into one of the female members of the Legislature who I greeted warmly, recognizing her from the district I last voted in. She must have remembered me in my previous incarnation ’cause she asked that I “pray” for her and her legislative task; perhaps, also her fate in the coming election. That’s how the flame tree image, some already in bloom along the pathway, got stuck in my memory. The red flowers aflame and images of past Arts Festivals held in its name in April, came rushing back to me and got stuck as I faced the cold winds of Dong Bei.

In the movie Cabaret, one of the songs claims that money that makes the world go round, and since I neither have the intense impulse to make some, and hardly have any I can hold on long enough to make it worth the count, I am obviously not contributing much to the spin of the planet. That was probably what caught our attention on the little shack’s door that greeted its customers with “happy” as what the place and its customers make.

Money is the preoccupation of a large segment of the main continent of Asia, surrounding islands, peninsulas and archipelagos. In China, “how much?” is the first line of query in almost anything—one’s labor, commodity, goods, services, etc. Value goes with numbers, attached usually with signs of ¥, $, £, et al. “Happy” is not a quantifiable term, since anything quantifiable is really never enough. I shall not tire repeating Rockefeller’s oft-quoted claim that there is never enough money for anyone, and he had lots of it.

I have nothing against money, the symbol of our accumulated selfhood. It’s just that too many folks get too many stomach ulcers trying to chase the paper trail. The health care industry does not mind since it increases their revenue. Pharmaceuticals do not mind either since it adds up to the demand for their products. It is hoped that the ethos of staying healthy and keeping fit, rather than the false security of insurance, the original intent of the health reform program that grossly came out as Obamacare, will prevail.

One of the proprietors of the snack shack I visited Friday last week used to sell sugar-flavored carbonated water, and being the glib one, I was loose with the tongue to ask him if he was happy with it. He obviously wasn’t. Happy is what his crepes are made of, and we have no complaints. By the looks of his bode, he does not appear to have any qualms either. It appears that neither did the customers who were seated outside its shaded wide awning. To be sure, the WiFi was an added attraction but I did not pull out my laptop. It was the crepe that made my day. J’aime le crepe!

Jaime Vergara previously taught at SVES in the CNMI. A peripatetic pedagogue, he last taught in China but makes Honolulu, Shenyang, and Saipan home. He can be reached at pinoypanda2031@aol.com.