On Sticky Rice, Fruit Salad, and Potato Queens...
Closer Look at Interracial/Intercultural Relationships
By Frolic Tan Lopez
PUBLISHED: APRIL 2009

Damian W. recalls when, exactly, “I started appreciating lechon – and that’s saying a lot considering I’m a pescetarian.  During one of my visits to their place, they were celebrating the annual town fiesta.  Everybody was there, gathered around this huge table with all the Filipino food I could think of – and there in the middle was this lechon, all red and, well, greasy,” he says.  “I would have been, should have been squeamish – a giant pig was in the middle of the table.  But I wasn’t.  (Even if I pitied the fate of that pig, I) saw what it stood for.  Celebration.  Of family.  Of God’s blessings.  Of getting together.  We don’t do it in such a grand way in Australia.”

“You see things in different ways,” quips Lance D., adding that “on non-fiesta days, we don’t put a pig in the middle of the table,” he laughs.  “No, really, we adjust our habits – he eats what he wants, as I do mine.  Neither forces the other to convert.”

The “lechon awakening,” as Damian W. refers to it now, “is but one of the small examples of our adapting to each other’s differences, of course,” he says, citing Lance D’s “eating with spoon and fork not fork and knife, sending siblings to school, sending allowances home (and that’s even if his parents are still working on their own), et cetera.”  Lance D., on the other hand, notes Damian W.’s “lack of religiosity – if I wanted to have him to hear Mass with me, I’d have to drag him from wherever he’s doing whatever; he treats everyone as an equal – something I find somewhat disrespectful at times, since we’re used to addressing adults, for example, with respect, meaning with deference; he openly tells people what he thinks, which isn’t what Filipinos do; et cetera.”

“In the end, however, intercultural romantic relationships allow for certain possibilities of personal and relational growth that most other human relationships do not offer,” Docan says.  “Greater feelings of connectedness with others, positive intercultural communication skills, learning new languages, ideas, perceptions, and skills are just some of the benefits of intercultural romantic relationships.”

And these are what Lance D. says he and Damian W. want to focus on.

“We are different from each other, that’s for sure.  But didn’t we all grow up being fed (with the knowledge that) everyone is unique?” Lance D. says.  “So I don’t know what the fuss is about being different from each other.”

As for Damian W.: “Too different for it to work?  I don’t think so.  You will only be as different as you want to be.”

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