DRINKING WEIRDNESS
Culture is practiced that is correct; this is what I’ve learned in drinking with my acquaintances and my family. Now, a surprise, it seems that one of the bases for one to truly know what it is to be a Subanun, is knowing 'how' to drink!
The quoted 'how' above can be further explained through the term ‘ethnography’. What is ethnography? - It is a specification of what kinds of things to say in what message forms to what kinds of people, the message being an alternative. Now to continue with, the quoted 'how' can also be explained by the following ideas...
Let us analyze the differences in ‘our’ and ‘their’ 'culture' of drinking, if there is any. Now, what are my reactions to the Subanun ways? The way they drink exactly depicts the way ‘how’ me and my friends/family drink. This is because their ‘sabaw’ and ‘tubig’ are exactly the same with our ‘sabaw’ and ‘tubig’. That was a joke. If you'd imagine the way I look while I’m reading this, you'd expect a smiling face. This is because almost everything stated is not as foreign as it may seem. The terms used like 'sebug', 'tebaq' are the only ones that seem foreign because of the way those things sound, but aside from that the ceremony, the feast, the details of drinking, they all look familiar to me because I have been in provinces where there are similar feasts like the Subanun's, not to mention ‘experienced’ also how to drink in the provinces.
But of course, not everything is already exactly what I expected. I see differences with the common whole or let us say, the more ‘popular’ culture of drinking. But all in all we see the slight variation between subcultures of the general Filipino population.
Beer as a requirement in some festivities is not new to me, except the fact that they drink it from bamboo straws; maybe we can say that the more modern way of looking it is a bottle of SMB on the family table. The Invitation of the drinkers, the queries about the strength of the beer, the taste of the drink and other non-physical aspects of drinking are all common concepts or topics in any drink. I also have experienced game drinking with acquaintances. The term ‘turn’ is also not new, the functions of Subanun drinking talk by the way, for example: the assignment of role distances, allocation of encounter resources, establishment of euphoria, are expected, and most of the time implicit within any type of drinking may it be Filipino or any other culture (in my opinion). The segments of drinking talk like utterance, exchange, and discourse stage are also not new to me, they aren’t new but I just didn’t realize those stages really existed at first. I have also seen competitive drinking in some provinces. The only general difference, in my opinion, is the formality of the event of drinking, in my ‘barkada’ or family, it's not like there's a specific rule or law for drinking, 'religious offerings' are not new to me too, we also do that in our casual drinks where we offer some wine to the ground or the surroundings. What I am trying to say here is that formal (Subanun feast drinking) and non-formal types of drinking do not vary that much from each other.
Actually, we can generalize that Subanun drinking is not really that different from Isabela drinking, Los Baños drinking, Russian drinking, British drinking or just about any ‘culture’ of drinking, the only really noticeable differences are the physical aspects of the drinking event like bottles that are replaced with bamboo straws, quality and quantity of the beverage drank, the language used (which is the building block of Subanun culture like all other cultures) but all in all, the interactions, the processes, the attitudes, the restoration of good feelings in the end, the tasting of the drink at the start, the stages, or in short the non-physical aspects of the drinking event like what we have mentioned earlier are really quite similar to most, if not all, types or let us say ‘cultures’ of drinking. But since the language and the ‘feeling’ of the event are different, of course they differ from other types of drinking. I said earlier in my intro that culture is practiced-> People mainly practice things differently, that’s why cultures are cultures. That's my reaction.
The quoted 'how' above can be further explained through the term ‘ethnography’. What is ethnography? - It is a specification of what kinds of things to say in what message forms to what kinds of people, the message being an alternative. Now to continue with, the quoted 'how' can also be explained by the following ideas...
Let us analyze the differences in ‘our’ and ‘their’ 'culture' of drinking, if there is any. Now, what are my reactions to the Subanun ways? The way they drink exactly depicts the way ‘how’ me and my friends/family drink. This is because their ‘sabaw’ and ‘tubig’ are exactly the same with our ‘sabaw’ and ‘tubig’. That was a joke. If you'd imagine the way I look while I’m reading this, you'd expect a smiling face. This is because almost everything stated is not as foreign as it may seem. The terms used like 'sebug', 'tebaq' are the only ones that seem foreign because of the way those things sound, but aside from that the ceremony, the feast, the details of drinking, they all look familiar to me because I have been in provinces where there are similar feasts like the Subanun's, not to mention ‘experienced’ also how to drink in the provinces.
But of course, not everything is already exactly what I expected. I see differences with the common whole or let us say, the more ‘popular’ culture of drinking. But all in all we see the slight variation between subcultures of the general Filipino population.
Beer as a requirement in some festivities is not new to me, except the fact that they drink it from bamboo straws; maybe we can say that the more modern way of looking it is a bottle of SMB on the family table. The Invitation of the drinkers, the queries about the strength of the beer, the taste of the drink and other non-physical aspects of drinking are all common concepts or topics in any drink. I also have experienced game drinking with acquaintances. The term ‘turn’ is also not new, the functions of Subanun drinking talk by the way, for example: the assignment of role distances, allocation of encounter resources, establishment of euphoria, are expected, and most of the time implicit within any type of drinking may it be Filipino or any other culture (in my opinion). The segments of drinking talk like utterance, exchange, and discourse stage are also not new to me, they aren’t new but I just didn’t realize those stages really existed at first. I have also seen competitive drinking in some provinces. The only general difference, in my opinion, is the formality of the event of drinking, in my ‘barkada’ or family, it's not like there's a specific rule or law for drinking, 'religious offerings' are not new to me too, we also do that in our casual drinks where we offer some wine to the ground or the surroundings. What I am trying to say here is that formal (Subanun feast drinking) and non-formal types of drinking do not vary that much from each other.
Actually, we can generalize that Subanun drinking is not really that different from Isabela drinking, Los Baños drinking, Russian drinking, British drinking or just about any ‘culture’ of drinking, the only really noticeable differences are the physical aspects of the drinking event like bottles that are replaced with bamboo straws, quality and quantity of the beverage drank, the language used (which is the building block of Subanun culture like all other cultures) but all in all, the interactions, the processes, the attitudes, the restoration of good feelings in the end, the tasting of the drink at the start, the stages, or in short the non-physical aspects of the drinking event like what we have mentioned earlier are really quite similar to most, if not all, types or let us say ‘cultures’ of drinking. But since the language and the ‘feeling’ of the event are different, of course they differ from other types of drinking. I said earlier in my intro that culture is practiced-> People mainly practice things differently, that’s why cultures are cultures. That's my reaction.
Comments