What ‘sisig’ taught me about inflation

There is a carinderia in the Mendiola area that, over time, became something I count on.

It sits along a narrow stretch of Abreu Street, where students from the university belt and office workers nearby cross paths at noon, each one looking for the same thing: a meal that makes sense for the day. By lunchtime, the place fills up. There, you’ll learn to move with the line and make a decision on what to eat while you are still a few steps away from the counter.

People go there for the sisig, and you will understand why the moment it is served. Their version starts with lechon kawali chopped into small, uneven pieces, each one carrying that deep, golden crisp that cracks slightly when your spoon presses through. I swear, it is the kind of dish that does not need convincing. You smell it before it reaches the table, and by the time it does, you already know you will finish it.

When I first started eating there around mid-year of 2025, it cost P90 with rice. But as months went by, the price increased to P100; it became P110, then P120; and now, it is at P125.

At first, I accepted each increase without much thought because P5 or P10 did not seem to matter that much. But at some point, I caught myself pausing. I would look at the tray, glance at the other dishes to explore cheaper options, and take a second longer before deciding. That second of reconsidering my choice was new.

My salary had not changed during that period. What changed was what it could reach.

The difference revealed itself in small, ordinary ways. I began choosing something else on some days. I brought food from home more often. I skipped extra orders I used to add without thinking. Each adjustment felt minor, yet they pointed in the same direction.

I saw the same pattern during grocery runs.

There was a time when I could walk into a supermarket, pick up onions, garlic, cooking oil, a few cuts of meat, and other basic kitchen needs, and expect the total to stay within P5,000.

Now I stand at the counter with a similar basket and watch the total move past P5,000. Nothing in the cart looks excessive. It is the same list, sometimes even less. Yet onions cost more than I remember, cooking oil takes up a larger portion of the bill, and everything seems to add up faster than before.

The carinderia and the grocery aisle began to connect in my mind.

I started to think about the sisig. Pork has become more expensive and oil has gone up. Deliveries reflect higher fuel prices. Even cooking now costs more. The P125 sisig is not pulled from nowhere, but is built from everything that came before it.

At the same time, my income stays the same. The more I paid attention, the more I realized that this did not begin in Mendiola. It passed through it.

Fuel prices rise because supply is disrupted, while conflicts reshape trade routes and energy flows. Countries secure what they need first and shipping becomes more expensive. By the time all of that reaches us, it has already been translated into higher transport costs, more expensive ingredients, and grocery totals that no longer behave the way they used to.

We respond in our own ways, and I have come to see that each response carries its own burden. From where I sit in government work, I understand why support must be weighed against what the system can sustain. From where I stand at the carinderia, I see the owner make decisions that cannot wait, raising prices or adjusting portions because the next day depends on it. And from where I live my own day, I feel the space in between, where I begin to read numbers before I order, stretch what I have, and accept that what used to be routine now asks for thought. It is in that space, moving between policy, business, and personal habit, that the full weight of these changes becomes clear.

What began as a familiar plate of sisig has become a way of understanding the times we are living in. It has become a marker, a measure of how far money reaches, how systems respond, and how individuals adjust.

And so the lesson follows me to lunch, to the grocery, to the arithmetic of everyday life, where the economy is no longer something observed from a distance, but something lived, one decision at a time.

Somewhere between P90 and P125, the sisig stayed the same. It is everything around it that changed.

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Arjay Ivan R. Gorospe, 27, is taking up his master’s degree in public management at the Ateneo School of Government and is employed in the public sector.