I’m sure that the recipients of this year’s Gusi Peace Prize – the greatest by-god WHOO holy freaking awesome award for peace on the face of this planet – deserve it, but the unheralded champion of peace and harmony has always been the neighborhood panciteria.
On those nights where I go home very late from work, I head off to the panciteria for a very late dinner. There’s always the sight of the hurried, harrassed-looking man with his shirt collars up trying to hide a hickie, almost always with the same order. “Miss, pabili pancit. Paki-balot na lang.” Pancit has saved the Filipino family yet again from the ravages brought about by cheating husbands everywhere: failed marriages, crying children, and the possibility of institutionalizing divorce in this predominantly Catholic country populated by Sunday Christians and lovers on Simbang Gabi.
The family, that basic unit of society that it is, is saved by a literal thread of pancit.
