It's the eve of Children's Day. My parents have come home from their Journey To The West, bearing their buys from Chinese Turkestan: mutton buns, pomegranates and wind-dried raisins for their greedy grown-up children; and child-size sheepskin clothing for other people's children, like the lovable little terror next door.
My father, the man who gave me my obsessive gene, asks: "Did you cook your brown rice?"
Me: "Yes."
Pa: "Every day?"
Me: "Yes. Day one, I burnt the rice. Day two, I burnt the rice. But you learn after two nights spent scrubbing pots."
Pa: "Aiiiyaaa."
(The Cantonese aiiiyaaa is not to be confused with the Singlish aiya. Aiya implies impatience. Usage: Aiya, I don't have time for your rubbish. But aiiiyaaa, said in a dramatic drawl, connotes concern and is as close as some Cantonese men will ever come to saying, "Poor baby.")
"What did you eat your rice with?"
Me: "Mad cow."
(Translation: The Laughing Cow.)
Pa: "You ate your rice with cheese?"
Me: "Gwai lo fu yu yer ma."
(Translation: It's white men's fermented beancurd what.)
My father falls silent. Maybe it is because he is married to the woman who went to the Silk Road with a jar of fu yu in her handbag so she could eat her rice with fermented beancurd every day.
Friday, September 30, 2005
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
BROWN RICE DIARIES | Chapter Three
Believe me when I say I'm a slow learner. It's taken me three days to learn that to boil brown rice - as opposed to burning it - you simply set the stove at minimal heat.
Today's rice turned out so right, so beautiful, I ate it with cheese in celebration. A portion of cheese spread by La Vache Qui Rit or The Laughing Cow or as we call it in our house, Chio Goo or Seow Goo. (What to do? Bourgeois is as bourgeois does.)
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
BROWN RICE DIARIES | Chapter Two
I'm wondering: Did Cinderella get a magic manicure from the fairy godmother before going to the ball? I'm wondering because my nails are a discoloured dark grey now; because I've had to scrub a sooty pot twice in two days; because - yes - I burnt more brown rice today.
Today, remembering the golden rice-cooking ratio, I did one cup of rice to two bowls of water. But at 20 minutes, things started smelling suspicious and I lifted the lid to find that, fuck, the water had evaporated and the rice was blackening. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
If it was my mother, when the food was burnt but still saveable, she would first ground the pot i.e. lift it off the hot stove and lower it to the cold ground, then transfer the unburnt food to a fresh pot for further cooking. Somehow - maybe by an old wives' spell - her food would be free of the bitter burnt taste.
Not being my mother, I did it my half-arsed way. I did the grounding but not the transferring. (Would you want to wash two pots if you were in my shoes?) So I added much more water and keeping my fingers crossed metaphorically and half-watching the boiling pot non-metaphorically, I began to practise yoga poses. But at 40 minutes, when the pot did the rattling thing, I had to come out of the corpse pose at record speed and rush to the stove.
So today's rice was more like burnt porridge, as opposed to yesterday's rice, which was charred, not cooked through - more like burnt pebbles. In other words, I'm improving! I hope the pot holds up. Already, it's scarred for life from all the scrubbing.
PS. Thanks for the tip, dark orpheus. Tomorrow's rice is being soaked now.
Today, remembering the golden rice-cooking ratio, I did one cup of rice to two bowls of water. But at 20 minutes, things started smelling suspicious and I lifted the lid to find that, fuck, the water had evaporated and the rice was blackening. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
If it was my mother, when the food was burnt but still saveable, she would first ground the pot i.e. lift it off the hot stove and lower it to the cold ground, then transfer the unburnt food to a fresh pot for further cooking. Somehow - maybe by an old wives' spell - her food would be free of the bitter burnt taste.
Not being my mother, I did it my half-arsed way. I did the grounding but not the transferring. (Would you want to wash two pots if you were in my shoes?) So I added much more water and keeping my fingers crossed metaphorically and half-watching the boiling pot non-metaphorically, I began to practise yoga poses. But at 40 minutes, when the pot did the rattling thing, I had to come out of the corpse pose at record speed and rush to the stove.
So today's rice was more like burnt porridge, as opposed to yesterday's rice, which was charred, not cooked through - more like burnt pebbles. In other words, I'm improving! I hope the pot holds up. Already, it's scarred for life from all the scrubbing.
PS. Thanks for the tip, dark orpheus. Tomorrow's rice is being soaked now.
Monday, September 19, 2005
BROWN RICE DIARIES | Chapter One
I've been deeply, crazily, compulsively committed to brown rice for a few months now; I have it for breakfast, lunch and dinner; when I go to work, I take it with me in a lunchbox so I won't have to ingest any evil white rice (save when it is served in sushi). My commitment to brown rice was severely tested today, however.
My mother, the one who wakes up an hour before me to cook me brown rice every morning, has taken off to the Silk Road for two weeks. So poor little pampered me had to make myself get out of bed at 6.30am today to cook the rice with what I thought was an idiotproof AMC stainless steel pot. Put rice in the pot, add a bowl of water, put the pot on the stove for 40 minutes: How hard could it be, right? Wrong. Now I'm no good with boiling pots when steam starts to lift their lids a little and makes them rattle. It makes me nervous. This morning, there was no more rattling after 20 minutes. The silence, if I was less of an idiot, should have set off all sorts of alarm bells: Has the pot run out of steam? Of water? Do I add another bowl of water? Instead, I said, "Good, let me read the paper in peace."
By the time I smelled what could have been burnt coffee beans, it was too late. I've since chipped three nails trying to clean the pot, which is still covered with crisps and craters.
My mother, the one who wakes up an hour before me to cook me brown rice every morning, has taken off to the Silk Road for two weeks. So poor little pampered me had to make myself get out of bed at 6.30am today to cook the rice with what I thought was an idiotproof AMC stainless steel pot. Put rice in the pot, add a bowl of water, put the pot on the stove for 40 minutes: How hard could it be, right? Wrong. Now I'm no good with boiling pots when steam starts to lift their lids a little and makes them rattle. It makes me nervous. This morning, there was no more rattling after 20 minutes. The silence, if I was less of an idiot, should have set off all sorts of alarm bells: Has the pot run out of steam? Of water? Do I add another bowl of water? Instead, I said, "Good, let me read the paper in peace."
By the time I smelled what could have been burnt coffee beans, it was too late. I've since chipped three nails trying to clean the pot, which is still covered with crisps and craters.
Saturday, September 10, 2005
The taxi, the jetty and the marriage boat
True love's the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven:
It is not fantasy's hot fire,
Whose wishes soon as granted fly;
It liveth not in fierce desire,
With dead desire it doth not die;
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart and mind to mind
In body and in soul can bind - Walter Scott
A little after 9am, the adorable Ms C, in a lovely lilac dress, came out of her house into her yard to marry her Mr K. I watched the wedding from the gate, where I was waiting for a cab that wouldn't materialise.
Yes I had to be at a church for the next wedding at 9.30am - because yes Ms C, a close office comrade, and Ms Ong, my favourite friend, were both doing the marriage thing on the same morning and I wanted to be at both weddings. I had to. (Am a I wedding whore? Maybe.) Never mind that (a) I live on the western end, (b) Ms C lives on the northern end, (c) Ms Ong lives on the eastern end, (d) I don't drive, and (e) many cabbies don't get out of bed before noon on weekends, to be true to their nature of never ever being there for you when you need them.
So, where was I? Yes, at the gate.
On one hand, it was good that the cab that I had called was so late, I didn't have to miss a moment of Ms C's ceremony. Not one "I will", not one "I do", not one joke by her jolly justice of peace ("don't hold your cert, hold your wife"). On the other hand, it was bad for the cabbie and bad for my karma. He finally found his way to Ms C's house at 9.20am; I wasn't good enough to spare him a scolding. But he's a great old Hokkien guy who ignored my scolding, talked to his friend on his walkie-talkie, and still sped me to the church in time for me to scoot up the stairs, steal in through what turned out to be the back door and see... Ms Ong's bridesmaid and matron of honour marching towards me?
And here's Ms Ong now, all bridal and aglow. And there's her father. And there's the man who will be her husband, Mr Lan. And as she walks towards him - and towards me, because I'm standing somewhere behind him - I try to wave to them to tell them, "I made it! I was this close to killing the taxi man and he was this close to getting me killed with his speeding and my hair is messy but I made it!" I might have been waving like a drowning man but no one seems to see me - and it's fine. It's like when your friends are about to begin a very important journey - that's not yours to take with them and really, with regard to marriage, you're more of the armchair travel type - and the next best thing that you can do is just to be at the jetty as they're setting sail. I'm very, very glad to have got to the jetty - twice - today.
To man alone beneath the heaven:
It is not fantasy's hot fire,
Whose wishes soon as granted fly;
It liveth not in fierce desire,
With dead desire it doth not die;
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart and mind to mind
In body and in soul can bind - Walter Scott
A little after 9am, the adorable Ms C, in a lovely lilac dress, came out of her house into her yard to marry her Mr K. I watched the wedding from the gate, where I was waiting for a cab that wouldn't materialise.
Yes I had to be at a church for the next wedding at 9.30am - because yes Ms C, a close office comrade, and Ms Ong, my favourite friend, were both doing the marriage thing on the same morning and I wanted to be at both weddings. I had to. (Am a I wedding whore? Maybe.) Never mind that (a) I live on the western end, (b) Ms C lives on the northern end, (c) Ms Ong lives on the eastern end, (d) I don't drive, and (e) many cabbies don't get out of bed before noon on weekends, to be true to their nature of never ever being there for you when you need them.
So, where was I? Yes, at the gate.
On one hand, it was good that the cab that I had called was so late, I didn't have to miss a moment of Ms C's ceremony. Not one "I will", not one "I do", not one joke by her jolly justice of peace ("don't hold your cert, hold your wife"). On the other hand, it was bad for the cabbie and bad for my karma. He finally found his way to Ms C's house at 9.20am; I wasn't good enough to spare him a scolding. But he's a great old Hokkien guy who ignored my scolding, talked to his friend on his walkie-talkie, and still sped me to the church in time for me to scoot up the stairs, steal in through what turned out to be the back door and see... Ms Ong's bridesmaid and matron of honour marching towards me?
And here's Ms Ong now, all bridal and aglow. And there's her father. And there's the man who will be her husband, Mr Lan. And as she walks towards him - and towards me, because I'm standing somewhere behind him - I try to wave to them to tell them, "I made it! I was this close to killing the taxi man and he was this close to getting me killed with his speeding and my hair is messy but I made it!" I might have been waving like a drowning man but no one seems to see me - and it's fine. It's like when your friends are about to begin a very important journey - that's not yours to take with them and really, with regard to marriage, you're more of the armchair travel type - and the next best thing that you can do is just to be at the jetty as they're setting sail. I'm very, very glad to have got to the jetty - twice - today.
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