By JOSEPH G. LARIOSA

(© 2011 Journal Group Link International)

(First of a Series) 

S AN JOSE, California (jGLi) – Last week, was my third visit to Santa Clara County in Northern California during the last 20-something years. But it was my first time to set foot on Milpitas City, a neighbor of San Jose, to have a rendezvous with some old friends, one of them coming from the Philippines visiting a sickly brother.

To add pizza to my travel, I cooked up an itinerary to visit a tourist spot in San Francisco and secure an interview with a Filipino American semi-conductor mogul in the heart of the Silicon Valley.

But my gracious hosts for my three-day visit made my trip even more interesting.

On the night of my arrival, my long-time friend, Ronnie M. Estrada in San Jose, passed up the chance to join us he was feeling ill. He seemed to be having some butterflies in his stomach, probably caused by an anxiety that he might not measure up to his plans to entertain us.

Leaving Osmundo “Jun” Dizon, my visiting friend from the Philippines, and his ailing brother, Andy Dizon, a resident of Milpitas, and Andy’s wife, Carme, without someone to drive them around.

So, my “instant” host, Dan B. Andres, a Fil Am general building contractor of 600 block of Azara Place in Sunnyvale, who was introduced to me for the first time by a mutual friend, Bong Monsod of Los Angeles, at my arrival at the San Francisco International Airport, invited us to a birthday party of a daughter (Kristine) of his friend, Oscar Balangatan on the 1600 block of Myrtle Drive, also on Sunnyvale. There, I met a Filipino lawyer, June Fabillaran, who immigrated to California and is now working at a county government, and another guest, Herbert Jarrel.

 

TYPICAL FIL AM BIRTHDAY PARTY

 

Like any typical party, it had copious provisions of Filipino food such as the mechado (beef stew), menudo (pork liver stew), kinilaw na kambing (an Ilocano delicacy made up of goat’s skin and some liver), pancit (noodles,), fried chicken, lechon (roast suckling pig), etc.

Sodas, beers and hard drinks were flowing while songs and background music emanating from karaoke flatscreen TV melted with the soulful sound from the organ being played by versatile handyman, Dan Andres, who even danced when his fingers were off the keyboard.

As the night wore on, a local Filipino American community leader, George M. Pahed, president and CEO of Installers Group, Inc. in nearby Fairfield, was whispering to Dan that we retire to some Vietnamese coffee shops after the party.

I really thought having coffee after a party was an excellent idea to sober us up. But I thought going out of our way to have some coffee in San Jose was going to be a stretch when it was more convenient for us to have it on our way to Dan's apartment in Sunnyvale.

The following day, Sunday, we got up early, heading to Embarcadero in San Francisco, to board a ferry boat to Angel Island, the “Ellis Island” of the West Coast that became the early processing stop for arriving immigrants, mostly from Asia for more than 30 years. But this would be another topic of my travelogue.

On Monday, Dan Andres’ wife, Josie L. Andres, chairperson of Ms. Cabugao International Reunion 2012, discussed with me the plan of the Cabugao Association of Northern California headed by Dr. George G. Solanzo to hold the Cabugao International Grand Reunion from July 21-22, 2012 that will be held at the Santa Clara Convention Center at 5001 Great America Parkway in Santa Clara.

Afterwards, Dan told me that we were heading to some coffee shops en route to San Jose, where Ronnie Estrada was waiting for us hosting a barbecue party in his gazebo. I told myself what’s the big deal with the coffee shops in San Jose, when we could just have stopped by any Starbucks Coffee shop. I was expecting Pep Vasquez of Daly City and columnist of Philippines Today and Jorge Castro of nearby Richmond, my journalism classmate at Lyceum University of the the Philippines and a former staff member of Tempo, who immigrated to California a few years ago, to join us. But Pep and Jorge did not make it and must have lost their way to San Jose, I guess.

 

THIS “EMPEROR” HAS SKIMPY CLOTHES

 

I would have loved to go to the Winchester Mystery House or the Roscrucian Egyptian Museum to orient myself about San Jose, in particular, or the county, in general.

It was about 2 p.m. when Dan drove us to some dimly-lighted coffee shop with an undecipherable Vietnamese name, Quyen, which loosely means “Emperor” or the “best” in English. It was located in the middle of an L-shaped shopping mall at the corner of Tully and King Roads in San Jose.

Inside, we saw three rows of chairs occupied by about 20 people distributed around a rectangular room. Two of the customers were busy surfing their laptops as if they were doing some serious school or work assignments. WiFi is free. While some were watching flastscreen TV’s (there are five), showing news and sports updates, the others were focused on two beautiful young ladies in their early 20’s, who were wearing nothing but pasties, mini-mini bras and thongs.

One of the ladies in skimpy attires approached us to take our order. She was obviously Hispanic as Dan was communicating to her in Spanish. Except for a tiny starry-shaped tattoos in her back near, her equally tiny thong that left nothing to imagination and her very smallish bra, the lady was almost naked.

The other lady, obviously, a Vietnamese, had a larger bra but had pasty in her bottom.

The Hispanic lady gave each one of us an ice coffee. I barely remembered the taste of the coffee as my attention was in full focus on the state of the dress or undress of the two waitresses.

I learned all drinks are $4 each – Ice Coffee, Lemonade and Avocado Smoothie. $1 is tip for each order. Ice tea is free and free refills. And cameras or webcams are not allowed.

After a while, the Hispanic lady pulled a chair midway beside a mirrored wall and climbed on top of it and started dancing and grinding away.  I did not even remember the title of the music but I thought her dance number lasted for three minutes.

While she was dancing, customers were putting in two dollars each in a small bin in front of her feet as tips like some entertainers on the sidewalks or railway stations. Because there were four of us, Dan chipped in $8.

 

VIETNAMESE RULE

 

After the dancing, the lady collected her tips and put them in her purse.

We headed to the door as we were in a hurry to attend the barbecue party at Ronnie Estrada.

We were all inside the car and Dan was about to pull away from the parking lot when one of my companions, Bong Monsod, spotted a topless lady about 30 meters away in front of what turned out to be another Vietnamese coffee shop, Cheo Leo Café, waiting on some customers in what appeared to be a deadend of a public sidewalk.

Instinctively, I was able to get hold of my camera and I started clicking away.

My shots look like the coffee waitress was topless from behind but a closer look of some of my shots showed that her left nipple was covered with pasty.

Dan drove us around the area dotted with other Vietnamese cafes that now define as San Jose’s major come-on for visiting tourists, like myself, Jun Dizon and Bong Monsod.

The prevalence of Vietnamese cafes and other business establishments just goes to show that the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose triangle is a testament that it has the second highest concentration of Vietanamese in the U.S. after the Los Angeles-Orange County, which I learned also has ubiquitous coffee shops but not the Starbucks kind.

Now, any tourists, who get lost in the area may no longer be asking, “Do you know the way to San Jose”? # # #

Editor’s Note: To contact the author, please e-mail him at: (lariosa_jos@sbcglobal.net)