Special Chicken Mami (not)

I was jumping for joy when I saw a fellow blogger from Baguio surfaced, just as I jumped for joy when I first learned I could now interact with other Pinoys all over the world. What was even exciting was we both graduated from the same university. My husband and I both graduated from the same school but he was 2 years ahead of me.

There are nights when we’re in bed that we spend hours and hours remembering our childhood. Just to name some odd things between him and me: he was my older sister’s classmate in high school but he could not recall having my sister for a classmate. There was a time when we were still dating that he mentioned to me his classmates and those names rang a bell. They were my sister’s. My husband is a low maintenance person. When you go to a party and leave him in the corner for 3 hours, you will still find him there. That explains why he couldn't remember my sister.

While in university, it must be in my third year that his name was written all over the bulletin boards around the campus..he was a national board placer, a third placer (**wink,wink**). Yes, that’s how our school pays tribute to deserving students. I do remember reading his name but it has never crossed my mind that he will be my husband someday. I never knew him at all.

I met him at work 3 years after and my story about us begins and ends here. Back to the nights we remember our school, for some reason we seem to remember a funny thing about the cafeteria at Diego Silang, a central building in our campus. Chicken Mami as I recall was the cheapest we could buy with our meager allowance, for me anyway. For the chicken mami though, there were 2 choices, the regular and the special. Funny how my husband and my observations about the chicken mami differed.

My friends loved listening to the lady who would normally shout our orders to the people in the kitchen preparing the food. She would shout “isang chickin mami, ispicial” or "flying suser, isa". Our group actually got reprimanded by our dean for laughing at the lady. She was our friend though and Manang remembered me when I went to the university last year to get a copy of my credentials..a little older now but she remembered me!

However, my husband remembers this in a different way. If it was an ordinary mami, all you got was the stock, a few shredded chicken meat and the noodles. If it was a special mami, it came with a few slices of green onions and boiled eggs. I bet you, you could never order that for Php 4 now. Phew, how we've aged!

When I visited Watson’s blog, I promised to tell him about this story, so here it is WATSKY! Cheers! My kids said it was so unlike me to serve them plain mami like that. I usually throw in vegetables. Well, the legend of chicken mami at Diego Silang was retold for the nnth time when we had this.