"Hey! Pat! Listen to your teacher!" my older sister furiously whispered as she sat on the chair at a corner, eating rice cake while dipping it into pork blood stew soup and staring at me with disapproval at the same time.
"Yes! I know!" I irritably replied with one reddish eye open.
After a few minutes, our online class teacher called for a five-minute break. I muted my microphone immediately, then begged for some food from my sister.
"No! No! No! I will never give you Dinuguan!" my older sister said selfishly.
"Hey! But you know Dinuguan is my favorite food, right?!" I replied to her with teary eyes.
Well, Dinuguan, or Pork Blood Stew in English, is a famous cultural Filipino food, a savory stew. It usually consists of pork offal and meat simmered in a rich, spicy dark gravy of pig blood, garlic, chili, and vinegar.
"You must focus on your class, Pat," said my older sister.
"But it is break time!" I confusedly replied.
"I do not care, and I will not tell you where I hid the remaining Dinuguan!" she insisted.
"Ah, okay..." I sadly replied to her in a super low voice. After that, I picked up my headphones and started listening to my favorite song, "In Bloom" by Nirvana. A few moments later, my older sister approached me and said, "Hey, you are going emo mode again, I am sorry. Just wait here, I will be right back with your favorite Dinuguan, okay?"
She said emo because when she was still in college way back in the early year of 2004, emo, goth, punk, and post-hardcore music was overly mainstream. People dressed like emo or punk rockers and acted like them too. It was a social norm at those times. She also mentioned that she used to dress like a gothic punk rocker. By the way, Nirvana is grunge music, never misunderstand that.
The moment she came back with my favorite food, our class had just resumed so I could not eat anymore. She put it on the table beside me instead. Besides, I like it more when it is just mildly hot.
Hours had passed, and our online class was successfully done. My older sister suddenly asked me, "What did you do? Have you not slept again?"
"I finished playing my crypto games at dawn and lost track of time. Then, when I started to lay down on my bed, I noticed that one of my graphics cards in my GPU crypto miner was having some problems, so I tried to fix it quickly. But when I checked the time, it said 5:30 AM." I replied to her while having a spoonful of Dinuguan.
"Yes, you are earning your crypto but you are attracting diseases too! Why? How much have you already earned? Why are you risking your life like that? Huh?!" said my older sister, without any idea of the results of what I had been working for.
Without a word, I just made a hand sign language for her to look at my computer screen, and after a few clicks, I showed her my entire crypto assets portfolio.
At her surprise, she screamed!
"Waaaaaaaaah! What?! Pat? Is that true? You have already got that amount of money? Oh my grass! You can now already afford all your expenses through college with that kind of amount! You can even buy a house! If you want!" she said in shock.
"Yeah! That is right, but getting married? There is no real happiness in marriage.
It will only multiply your suffering. Look at you. You are already an old hag now, but still single." I replied to her like a grown-up woman.