Chasing bitterness

I am a coffeephile. I can’t have enough of that bitter taste, whether from instant black coffee, 3-in-1, homebrewed, or the stuff in the coffee shops. I don’t even mind having stained teeth for it is like being marked by what I truly love.

Drinking different kinds of coffee makes me realize how my life has been so diverse, like the brew I have been drinking my entire life. And the variety of the bitterness defines the experiences I have had.

It all started in my grade school days, when I first stirred my own instant coffee-and-sugar mixture. In my provincial life where every day was routine, an instant-coffee mixture was the only thing needed to kick-start the day. It was as simple as that.

I grew up with my grandparents in a small town north of Puerto Princesa in Palawan. Every summer vacation, my grandmother brought me to our small farm where there was neither running water nor electricity. She taught me, together with my cousins, how to plant and harvest rice from our mini rice field, to get to the river safely for a bath, to do the laundry and fetch water for the kitchen, to walk kilometers on the unpaved highway to buy salt for our lunch of stewed vegetables.

She showed us how simple life was—no complications, no need to pay utility bills or keep a tight budget for food and other essentials.

Thus, I viewed life as if it were as simple as waking up in the morning, surrounded by thick fog, then having a cup of coffee and doing exactly what was done the day before.

But it was not. From mere instant black coffee came a twist—a creamer.

I grew older. And life became not just running around the backyard every day and sleeping before the fuel in the lamp dried up every night. Certain things were introduced to me that made me forget how my happy, simple life with my family was all that mattered. I was, like most adolescents, beginning to attach my life to other people and things for happiness and self-fulfillment.

My grandmother died when I was in high school, after struggling for two years with paralysis brought on by a stroke. She died without me having to take care of her in the best way I could.

But life had to move on.

It was a struggle in the new stage of my academic life in the city, with a different kind of brew by my side: 3-in-1 coffee, whatever brand it was, was the silent witness to how I labored nights just so I could pass my mathematics, physics and chemistry undergraduate subjects. I thought it would be my life for the next five years. Later I would know how unexpected my five years in college were.

As the years progressed, my taste buds were introduced to another kind of bitterness—freshly brewed coffee from a local café. Heavens, it was good; the bitterness was good. I roamed the city to sample the different tastes of brewed coffee until I found the ones in some of the fast-food chains. They were cheap, and fast, but did not offer the taste I was looking for. So I bought a coffee maker and brewed my own.

College life was so hard for me, not just in academic but also in extracurricular matters. Studying engineering and at the same time being a staff member, then later the editor in chief, of our university student paper made me fall down a number of times. I failed some engineering subjects, but I learned how to manage people and to stand on principle. It was a complicated life. It was full of sleepless nights and being torn between what I wanted and what I needed.

Or should I say, between society’s needs and my own.

I became a member of a progressive youth organization of college editors. I was at the forefront of mobilizations from our university and into the streets of the city. I was agitated for change and full of ideology. I was like black coffee that was necessary for other youth to wake up and fight for our rights.

But came graduation. I bid farewell to my college life and said hello to the corporate world.

I immediately plunged into office work in the metro as an associate of an oil and gas company. A few months later, I was in the midst of longing. I felt like there was something lacking, like sipping a kind of coffee that could not indulge my taste buds. For weeks I felt like I was doing nothing for myself and for the ones I love; I was doing nothing for the ideology I once fought for. So I decided to work on a master’s degree at UP Diliman.

I again found something worthwhile—found new friends, professors, experiences, and, of course, knowledge. But it didn’t last long.

In the last month of the semester, I got accepted as a petroleum well drilling engineer in an Australian company based in Manila. The job is daring. I have to extensively study several petroleum wells that are decades-old and confirm their integrity for a possible workover. At first I found the work exciting; I mean it surely is. But I came to a point where I was thinking: “I am helping another country in its need for oil and gas, but doing nothing for my own country.”

I quit work on my master’s degree for a while, completing only 10 units. (My professor in my other 3-unit course is still undecided whether to flunk me or just label me “INC”—for incomplete—because I did not go to class for a month.) I am now dedicating all my time to work.

And again, here I am, in the vast vacuum of my thoughts. I still feel that there is something lacking. I still keep looking for the best role to play. I am still chasing after that perfect cup, that perfect brew, that perfect bitterness.

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Sev D. Olid, 24, is a petroleum engineering graduate.