his article discusses a cultural event I attended with Malaya, in June 2003.  With photos.

I suppose we might attend it in 2004 as well, though I wouldn't swear on it. If we do, I'll tack the blog about it on this page, below the 2003 entry. And so on for 2005, 2006, etc.  Hypothetically, anyway.

June 17, 2003

Sunday's fun was a trip into the city (which always means San Francisco, rather than Oakland, since no one goes into Oakland on purpose) to attend the Fiesta Filipina cultural event.  Malaya is Filipino, and I am white, as should be immediately obvious with a glance at any of the several hundred photos of me posted on this site.  I am such a whore.

So yes, we're a "mixed" couple, if you hadn't figured that out already.

I don't really consider Asian/Hispanic/White to be that different.  I mean sure, culturally and appearance-wise they are somewhat, but I don't really bat an eye at a white guy/girl and a brown or yellow-skinned guy/girl.  (Stack up the guy/girl mixture anyway you like to, and in fact one of the few mixed couples we saw at the Fiesta was a gay male grouping.)  As I was saying, I don't bat an eye, and I wouldn't even notice if not for my new girlfriend being brown-skinned.  As it is I've noticed a number of mixed couples lately (mostly white guy/Asian girl) that I wouldn't have previously.

I do notice black/white couples, since they are very different in coloration and I figure that with all of the shit (racism/bigotry) black people are subjected to in our society that they must have some obstacles to overcome in their relationship.  Obviously I don't have any problem with it personally, but then I'm not a racist or bigot, despite my unfortunate enjoyment of stereotype jokes.  But since I make them as or more often about whites than about any other race/culture, it's all good, dawg.

That being said, other people do notice mixed couples somewhat, as I've come to notice lately, since on occasion Malaya will point out that someone is giving us an evil eye.  And we got a couple at the Fiesta, if you were wondering.

I'm not going to do this in infinite detail, so I'll just hit a few high points.

BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit; the subway, basically) is a fun ride into the city, and it's relatively affordable.  The whole system and the fares are clever; it's more money the farther you're going (about $3 one way from our stop to the city) and you need a ticket to get into and out of each station.  So if you bought a $1 ticket and rode to the end of the line, you'd be unable to leave, since you got $5 or so worth of travel, and you'd have to actually buy another ticket to get out of the station. In theory, anyway.

The opposite applies also though.  You can buy a $5 ticket if you don't have change and if you only ride $2.50 worth, your account is kept on some central computer with $2.50 worth of credit, so the next time you buy a ticket you stick in your old ticket and get that much credit and it goes towards whatever fare you owe for the new ticket. Since driving into "the city" is a traffic and parking nightmare most of the time, it's probably cheaper to just ride BART in, if you know where you're going and don't need to make a bunch of stops once you are there.

Malaya hates to drive into the city, so BART it was.  The ride is a lot faster than the drive would be also, plus no toll bridges, etc.  I didn't mind it, and the trains are nice, comfy seats, relatively quiet, etc.  The only real objection I had was the amount of tunnels you go through.  I wanted to see the bay going over it, but we were underground underwater on the way in, and then once in the city you are almost entirely underground.  When I move up here we're planning other trips into the city, and one time I want to drive so we can go over the Golden Gate Bridge.  Which is utterly touristy, of course, but I sorta have to do it.

The Fiesta Filipino was held in the heart of downtown, on a big grassy park area directly in front of the San Francisco City Hall, in Civic Center Plaza.  It wasn't a real impressive affair, consisting mostly of a bunch of swap meet-like booths with various Filipino-related stuff for sale.  We did get a cool bamboo plant for $5, which is very cheap for those "becoming horribly trendy" things.  They had medium sized ones for $10 and big ones for $20 and we considered it, but the medium ones weren't that great, and the big ones we thought would be too heavy to carry back, since we were going to walk over a dozen blocks and see several other downtown sites before we returned home.

The best attractions at the Fiesta were the food stands, where they were doing tons of authentic Filipino food.  Malaya has been worried if I'd ever like her cooking, since I'm not much of a carnivore, but judging by the food we saw/ate there, I don't see what her concern is.  We got chicken, rice with veggies, stir fry noodles with veggies, and a couple of lumpia rolls, which are egg-roll type things, sort of flour tortillas in which they wrap veggies like peas, corn, carrots, cabbage, etc, and then deep fry briefly.  They do them with every sort of meat as well, of course, but we went veggie in deference to my fragile taste buds. Anyway, all of the food was fine, though the chicken was a bit fatty, and while we were eating I asked Malaya, "So what of this did you think I wouldn't enjoy?"

She's going to go through a Filipino cookbook today or tomorrow and pick out some recipes she likes, and I'll read them and see if I'd like them or not.  I suspect it'll all be fine.  One very nice thing about our tastes in food is that we both like hot stuff.  I love hot peppers and chili powder and such, and she does as well, even more than me in most cases.  We've had nachos with piles of japalenos, very hot shrimp quesadillas, mushroom stir fry and pizza with nuclear hot sauce on them, etc.  I love to be able to season something to how I like it (spicy) and have my girlfriend enjoy it as well.

In addition to the 100 or so booths with various stuff for sale there were corporate ones from local businesses.  SouthWest Airlines, the cable companies, phone services, all sorts of long distance calling plans, and so on.  There were booths of the swap meet type selling everything: house plants, Filipino magazines and newspapers, Filipino videos, money exchanging services, tons of jewelry (I got a nice bracelet for $4), foreign shipping services, clothing of every sort, Filipino hot chick calendars, car detailing services, underwear (sexy shiny thongs!), radio stations promoting themselves, police and military recruiters, and more. One odd thing were the two chiropractic booths, both of which had human skeletons on display and massage tables for people to get a quick evaluation and treatment and massage.  I didn't try either one out, so I can't comment on their expertise. There was also a small carnival with a little train that went around, kid-sized rides, ice cream and cotton candy for sale, and so on.

Malaya says that in past years there were far more booths, and a lot more community-oriented stuff, but this year was rather a down year, probably due to the economic climate being so depressed.

We still had a good time and I enjoyed poking into the book and magazine and jewelry booths, since I never go and do that sort of thing on my own.  The lunch was good too, and hopefully helped to allay some of Malaya's fears that I'll never want to eat anything she could cook for me.

It was also interesting to be about the tallest person in an area, since normally I'm about average male height.  I am pretty sure I was the only redhead there at all, if that counts for anything.  Certainly the only natural redhead.

The crowd was at least 98% Filipino, so obviously I stood out with my white skin and red hair and height.  No one was nasty or anything, but we got a few long stares, and one time we turned a corner past some guys and Malaya said a couple of them were really giving me looks, and that one actually hissed at me.  I didn't hear it, but cracked up when she said it a moment later.

As I said above, I never really notice when someone is giving her or me a look, probably since I don't really look at other people all that often.  I just don't really care about anyone else, I guess.  *cough*  Or maybe I'm just not real observant of other humans, in terms of the attitudes they are expressing via their behavior.

I definitely don't look at women that closely, since Malaya is constantly saying that other women are checking me/us out.  In her view it's because I'm so handsome and attractive, and she's short and not beautiful, so the women are 1) interested in me, and 2) wondering what I'm doing with her.  I repeat, this is her take on it, and I don't agree with either point, but I am willing to admit that I really don't have a clue one way or the other. I am trying to be more observant though, and feeling like I have more license to look over women now than I did in the past, since I'm walking hand in hand with a woman I love.  Especially since the woman I love is encouraging me to look them over and tell her what I think.  An odd state of affairs.

One last thing, the environmental superiority of additional skin pigmentation was well-demonstrated during the day's events, or at least in their aftermath, when I noticed a very bright red strip along the back of my neck, basically in a perfect curve along my collar, and then more red on my forehead and nose.  Malaya boasted a small darker brown line along her biceps where her shirt sleeves ended; one that she wouldn't even have noticed if she hadn't looked for it after seeing the state of the back of my neck.

Just another reason that our inevitable bastard children are destined to rule the future ozone layer-depleted earth.  Start practicing your bowing and scraping now, if you want my advice. Our offspring will be less forgiving.

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