A page from that ASV Yearbook summoned a random childhood memory: We used to drink Cokes out of plastic bags. I thought nothing of it at the time but in retrospect it is something you probably do not see in America. Your Coke was served in a plastic bag if you did not want to pay for the bottle. Some folks would bring their own bottles to stores that sold Coca-Cola or other beverages. If you had no bottle but did not want to pay for one nor be bothered to carry it around then you’d get your Coke in a plastic bag. You might also be forced to get your Coke in a bag if bottles were scarce — some vendors had no bottles at all.

A cursory web search find that this is common in the Phillipines, and apropos to nothing (though this is the real reason I wrote this) I find it impossible to get this sentence out of my mind:

As to whether it is hygienic or not, most people don’t care as long as their thirst gets quenched with the cold softdrink.

That sentence enchants me. In my day-to-day use of English I think "quenched" is not commonly used — nor for that matter is "thirst" — and "softdrink" is usually 2 words, not one. The intent of the above sentence was to be helpful but somehow it sounds like a sales pitch — in the way explanations of cultural idiosyncracies sometimes sound like sales jobs.