I like eggs and I like chicken

To be precise I like eggs boiled, poached and scrambled. I'm not particularly enamoured of em fried which, of course, puts me out of step with the mob in the US. But I'll live with that.

I can quite easily break a raw egg into a glass of flavoured milk, swirl it around and drink it with pleasure. The first time I did that in front of Morgan I thought she was going to lose her dinner in a most unpleasant manner. Being somewhat of a bastard I drank egg flips for a week afterward.

I also like chicken; be it poached gently in a mustard sauce, stir fried, fajitaed (is that a word?) or roasted the way my wife does em. I was never much of a fan of roasted chook until it tried it 'Sonya style'. Usually it's much too greasy. But the way my wife cooks it is pure heaven. The skin is done to a crisp; the flesh is moist without being greasy. As the wierd foreigner in the household I get the parsons nose all to myself; all three of em turn up their noses at it. Their loss.

But I really can't stomach the thought of combining the two ideas; that of egg and roast chook[^] in the one mouthful.

My ride from Manila to Baguio today took rather longer than it should have considering it's a Saturday and the weather is good. I rendezvoused (is that how one spells that word?) with the driver at 2 PM and we should, if past precedent is to be relied upon, have arrived in Baguio about 7. In the event we didn't get here until 9.

Our tardiness might have had something to do with Ohmee breaking in a new driver. Usually I'm quite happy to be the guinea pig or the prized specimen; if a doctor is showing an intern the ropes and asks if I mind the new chum being present during my testicular examination I say 'go for it'. We all have to learn somewhere.

But this new driver is even more timid than I am. Perhaps it's that, after doing the trip 9 times, even I know where the road is going to bend suddenly. Whatever, it seemed to me that many many opportunities were lost to overtake trikes and jeepnies where it would have been perfectly safe to overtake. And all the time the minutes were piling up.

In the normal way I wouldn't worry overmuch; I'm perfectly happy to play it safe most of the time. Twenty or thirty seconds either way seems to me a wonderful bargain in exchange for my life. But I'd been travelling somewhat more than 30 hours at the time and the hotel restaurant closes at 10. The way things were going I was looking like missing my dinner!

Impatience at my age forsooth! I made the mistake of expressing my misgivings. Ohmee can be a bit of a bastard at times; a man after my own heart :-) A couple of minutes later we pulled over at a roadside food stand and he ordered food. Burned (to my eyes) corn on the cob and some eggs. I was happy enough to risk the corn and it was quite good; much better than I expected and so far it hasn't caused any unpleasantness of a bathroom nature.

I had deep misgivings about the eggs. Misgivings which proved to be well founded.

It's a cultural thing of course. I imagine if I'd grown up with balut I'd be perfectly happy with it but I didn't and there's an end of it. Ohmee and the new driver laughed at my expression when they broke open their eggs and they happily wolfed down my share.

*shrug*

I got here in time for dinner :-)