‘Filipino Time’ — The Missing Ingredient
Unpacking the ‘Lazy’ Narrative. Hurry up and read it.
Modern Time = 3 years ago
I now have deep appreciation for past Luisa! These days I'm giving her a pat on the back. The past Luisa bought this book called The Missing Ingredient: The Curious Role of Time in Food and Flavour by Jenny Linford.
Jenny Linford is right: "time is an ingredient, THE universal, invisible ingredient." Some of the most delicious food we've ever tasted stood the test of time. I mean, think about it? The best adobo is actually the leftover adobo because time tamed the sharpness of the vinegar. Lechon roasted for many hours in slow heat to achieve that crackly skin. Linford's book weaves through a series of encounters with ingredients, producers, cooks, shopkeepers, and chefs, exploring how time is indeed the missing ingredient that no one takes into account. Basically, what I took from this is TIME = DELICIOUS.
Just so you know, this train of thought didn't happen in one day. I think I needed to live life first before I could write this essay ha ha ha. I bought this book maybe 3 years ago and I'm only putting things in context now.
In between, there were many days researching pre-colonial Philippines, going back to stories about who were the first people to migrate. So you come across two major migration theories like 'Out of Sundaland' (where people moved from Malaysia, Indonesia, and Borneo—lands that were once one big mass and easier to move across) and 'Out of Taiwan' (the more mainstream theory where people moved from south of China to northern Philippines, proven through the movement of Austronesians).
Pre-colonial Philippines
Backtrack to 5,000 years ago, pre-colonial Philippines—the Austronesians—the OG time travellers. They are one of the greatest seafaring civilisations in human history, the ancestors of modern-day Filipinos, Indonesians, Malaysians, Polynesians, Micronesians, and even the people of Madagascar.
Now what makes them so important? Because they figured out ocean travel thousands of years before anyone else. They built advanced boats (balangays, outrigger canoes, catamarans) that let them travel massive distances across the Pacific and Indian Oceans. They were farmers and traders. They brought rice, bananas, coconuts, taro, and sugarcane everywhere they went. They shaped the culture of an entire region. From the Philippines to Hawaii, from Indonesia to Madagascar, their influence is everywhere.
What does this mean for us? Well, they weren't just island dwellers—they were part of the greatest seafaring migration in history. We carry deep inside us the legacy of travellers, navigators, and world-shapers.
Long before the invention of linear time (we’ll get to this later, because this alone is fascinating), our OG explorers tracked time through the body and the world:
The sun rising and setting
The moon changing face each night
The rhythm of tides, seasons, hunger, sleep, and rain
They experienced time as fluid, as a cycle. They had the instinct to use stars, wind, waves, and weather to navigate the oceans without clocks or compasses. For them, time was relational rather than numerical.
Austronesians were already navigating the seas by 1500 BCE or earlier. They are the OGs of pattern recognition and intuition.
For 5,000 years before the Spanish arrived in the Philippines, this was the rhythm of life.
Colonial Time
The Spaniards Came—And Everything Changed
The Spanish imposed forced labour, where Filipinos were taken from their homes and made to work unpaid, often brutal, physical labour for colonial projects.
Land was taken from natives and given to Spanish landlords, forcing Filipinos to work the land they no longer owned.
They were stripped of autonomy, freedom, and dignity.
A side tangent: I read a while back that Filipinos actually outnumbered Spanish people—why the heck did they not fight back? Ok, so clearly there was resistance, rebellions, etc. One of the major takeaways was that pre-colonial Philippines did not have centralised kingdoms and operated in smaller barangays. They operated in kinship over world domination, and that is why the Spanish used this against the Filipinos. They turned some barangays against each other. Filipinos didn't have the structures to fight a war the way kingdoms did.
Current Time
Current-time Luisa came across this essay Jose Rizal on Filipino Time by Pauline Lacanilao. This essay explored the reasons why 'Filipino Time' is a thing. She explained that the term is Filipinos’ way of being 'obscenely tardy'. I then thought of this growing up, where they were teaching us about the saying 'Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today' by Benjamin Franklin, which directly correlates to Juan Tamad, e.g. laziness.
It went on to say what Jose Rizal had to say about Filipino Time...
Rizal learned that "pre-conquest inhabitants of the Philippines burned with a passion for work" (189). However, three centuries of colonial policies that systematically restrained freedoms and caused "deprivation of the Filipinos’ self-respect" eventually created a culture lacking "moral stamina" (189).
Rizal was careful to add that this seeming laziness was "not something with which [Filipinos] were born but rather the result of…colonial rule which stifled their will to work" (189).
The Filipino tendency for tardiness was inherited through oppression.
I thought wow, this made so much sense, and you can trace this back to what Doreen Fernandez said about Filipinos' quiet rebellion through food: "We accept your ingredients but we will cook this our way."
So now this essay is also saying that Jose Rizal learned that pre-colonial Filipinos were hardworking people, and because they lost their self-respect, they lacked the moral stamina. Not something they were born with, but rather a result of colonial rule. And then I translated this as, ohhhh—a form of resistance.
I shared this with Datu Kidlat because his opinion on pre-colonial Philippines is something I respect, and he said to me, "...it could be a result of colonialism but I'm not entirely convinced, especially since Southeast Asian culture at large is very time fluid."
After another question, he went on to say:
"It honestly could be a sign of resistance but I also know that time-strict cultures are usually like Western/East Asian things. I'm not saying their take is wrong but I feel like it's not taking into account how tropical Asia is just historically not a place where being 'on time' was a thing."
THEN THE FREAKING AHA-MOMENT!
Holy freaking moly! Datu Kidlat's words about time fluidity really stuck—and the eureka moment! OF COURSE! Because pre-colonial Austronesians’ meaning of time is cyclical; they see it as a loop. They think in seasons—summer, autumn, winter, spring; morning, noon, and night—and not dictated by time, which Westerners are known for.
It got me curious—ok, WHO BLOODY INVENTED TIME? Quick Google pointed to
You freaking wouldn't guess!
The European monks because they needed rigid time for prayers. According to UCatholic, it was Catholic monastics who created the first mechanical clocks to regulate their prayer routines. Scientific American traces this shift too: from sun and stars to bell towers and pendulums—time moving from rhythm to control. Anyway, the concept of time was then developed as control. While our ancestors thought of time as intuitive, the others were thinking of time as control.
Which brings us back to: the Western way of thinking that time is linear because TIME = CONTROL. Colonialism turned time into a weapon. The Spanish (and later Americans) introduced church bells, factory whistles, military schedules. Suddenly, labour was measured in hours, not in natural rhythms. Lateness became a shameful behaviour rather than a different way of moving.
Pre-colonial times: Filipino time was natural
Under Spanish rule: Filipino time became defiant
Under American rule: Filipino time became seen as 'lazy'
So being inherently late under colonisation, we started associating 'being on time' with bowing to oppression. So when people say 'Filipino Time' today, it's not about Austronesian time fluidity—it's 400 years of resistance.
So Datu Kidlat is right, but also Jose Rizal was right.
But my reply was, "...and they used time to control Filipinos and coined it 'lazy'—MGA PUTANG INA! ha ha ha"
When colonisers didn't understand cyclical time, they did what they do best: Misinterpret + Mislabel + Demean.
'Lazy' was the colonial word for:
“Your way of relating to time doesn’t serve our machine.”
“You move with rhythm; we move with a stopwatch.”
“You rest because the tide rests. We work until the bell rings.”
AND WHAT DID THEY DO?
They made our time look wrong.
They made our rhythm look defective.
They made our DNA look like disobedience.
NO.
We weren’t lazy. We weren’t late. We weren’t behind. We were Austronesian. Cyclical. Fluid. Rooted.
So it proves the point that it's not a form of resistance, it's in our DNA.
YOU WIN Datu Kidlat—fluidity wins.
And while Jenny Linford's book defined time as delicious, time isn’t just a culinary tool—it’s our silent partner, shaping flavours, memories, and even resistance. Filipino time wasn’t missing an ingredient—it simply had a different rhythm, one the colonisers could never taste.
So maybe this whole essay has been my way of wasting time again—pulling it apart, seasoning it, and letting it sit. Because time isn’t one thing. It shapeshifts. It cooks us, carries us, and sometimes controls us.
And now that I’ve lived it, read it, questioned it, and circled back—I think it looks a little something like this:
Modern: Time = DELICIOUS
Pre-Colonial: Time = RHYTHM
Colonial: Time = CONTROL
Me: Time = CONTRAST
PS. No, you can't use this as an excuse for being late. No reclaiming ‘Filipino Time’.
It’s 2025. Be on time.
Further Reading / Sources:
Jenny Linford, The Missing Ingredient: The Curious Role of Time in Food and Flavour
Pauline Lacanilao, Jose Rizal on Filipino Time
Doreen Fernandez, various essays on food and identity
UCatholic, The Pope and the Pendulum
Scientific American, A Chronicle of Timekeeping
Conversations with Datu Kidlat (quoted with permission)
Really thought-provoking post on the concept of time. It reminded me of something a disabled friend once shared with me: “The concept of time is ableist.” They explained how Western culture builds rigidity into time—meetings, concerts, parties all start at a set time, and if you can’t make it, you miss out.
We joked about “Filipino time” and how, in the Philippines, events like weddings, funerals even simple get-togethers stretch over hours with people coming and going. There's no pressure to arrive at a specific time, or be judged for lateness. The fluidity of time allows for so much more diversity - parents, children, elderly, disabled folks of all different needs are welcome for whatever time period they have.
My friend sighed and said they wished things were more like that here. For them—and many others—getting out of bed, dressed, and transported can take hours, and time blindness or access barriers often mean missing out entirely.
It really shifted how I see time—not just as a structure, but as something that can include or exclude. There’s real value in questioning how tightly we let it rule us.