Priorities and
‘new pasalubongs’

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

There was a time when traveling outside of the country meant bringing home the obligatory tee that proclaimed “I was there” or “I left my heart in…” or perhaps the ubiquitous key chain or ball pen. Or for the adventurous and daring, fresh food, and let’s see if it passes through customs.

It is interesting how, from those sinful delicacies like foie gras and preserved meats, our food pasalubongs have, as we picked up the years, also evolved to fresh fruits, especially those unbelievably sweet and unbelievably sweet tropicals from our national neighbors. Somebody once brought home fresh aromatic coconuts, handcarried, and it passed customs.

These days however, I have noticed a significant number of my circle bringing home, guess what, liniments and ointments especially when they go to Asian places. Another hot pasalubong are wellness knick-knacks like sprays and socks and sniffers. Good Friend P is more practical: he brings home medicines to give away, especially to his close friends whose maintenance medicines he knows. I knew the earth has shifted when, aside from her de riguer visits to Loewe and Louis Vuitton in HK, Good Friend L also had to drop by Manning’s and Watson’s to pick up the Yoko-Yoko.

I guess this comes with age. I remember how, a few years back, Good Friend B would disappear from the night shops in Canton that were selling fake watches and clothes and plumbed the streets for shops that were selling ointments. A devotee of these potions whose brands we could not even read, B would apply these to his feet before bedtime, and wear socks to bed.

I had laughed at this practice but here I am, years later, also wearing my Ebenes regularly and believing that putting these ointments, on the feet and wrapping them in bio-whatever socks promote sound and deep sleep. I don’t know if science will back us up on this, but more and more of my friends are doing the same. I know – where before we talked about the latest food in the latest restaurant, we now talk about the latest potions we have discovered, the more exotic and incomprehensible the title, the more interesting.

Thus did Good Friend A discover Berroca capsules in Singapore, and Good Friend F find a bottle of roots steeped in oils in the Senado square, and another Friend A pick up a canister of some hot sticky substance that erases headaches in Pratunam. P buys his diabetic meds in Bangkok where they cost sometimes just a tenth or 20th of the prices here. He goes generic of course.

I don’t know the rules here, but somebody had once warned P he might end up being suspected as a drug mule, to which he retorted that cannot be; nobody gets high on metformin.

Of course many of us, no matter at what age, have been receiving and giving those huge jars of Vitamin A or shark’s or garlic capsules that we find very cheap in other countries.

Most often, it's the price that attracts us to buy these liniments and meds abroad to bring home as pasalubong; the savings can be huge. But it is also age, and how our priorities evolve as we get older. *

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