Right now, I’m hungry. It’s almost 7pm and I still haven’t shoved anything into my esophagus in the past five hours — which reminds me of the moment I arrived at my mother’s house in Batangas last weekend. And the first thing that got my attention? The two sacks of rice lying on the floor. Hmmm. Someone did some panic buying, I thought. My mum said it would last for four months, which means we won’t be worrying about the “rice price rise.”
When I came back to the city, I dined at my favourite carinderia near my apartment. It didn’t come as a surprise to me when the waitress told me that a cup of rice costs 10 pesos. That’s PhP4 higher than the last time I was there.
It’s really sad that we experience rice shortage. I mean, I don’t know, it’s just sad that a country as agriculture-based as the Philippines has to import something as staple as rice. RICE. RICE. RICE. Something that a Filipino meal isn’t without.