Life is like a box of lumpia

People call it the Filipino egg-roll. I call it the Filipino pocket of suprises. You go to a party and try Tita Baby’s lumpia; it has peas, corn, onions, green beans, and chicken. Good shit. But then the next weekend it’s Ate Ay-Ay’s birthday and you find a different batch of lumpia by Tito Tak-Tak filled with spiced ground pig: lumpiang shanghai.

From fried lumpia to fresh lumpia, different families use different ingredients. And even though you can’t predict what’s inside, true Filipinos never ask; we just grab the damn things and take a bite, knowing that the Filipino who made it, no matter what they put inside, has a good idea of what decent lumpia is all about. Except for Kuya Bong’s lumpia… or that fob kuya in a typical Filipino family who messes around too much and likes to scare people as they walk down the hallway.