skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Being brought up in Hong Kong in both Chinese and international contexts, I learned very early on that consuming things like duck's liver, bird's nest, shark's fin, and turtle shell jelly (pictured above), was pretty weird to some people - specifically those that weren't local Chinese. But to me, my beloved grandmother, and the rest of my Chinese-side family, it was perfectly normal. (And yes, I've tried and love all of those things.)
Recently, I've been listening to a lot of people give China crap about eating things like dog, because they're a creature that the Western world has domesticated. Or things like scorpion or tarantula, because they sting and they're poisonous and they look too different from us humans. Give China a break, man, it's a big country, with the largest population in the world. I'd be surprised if all 1.3 billion of us were only eating cow, chicken and pig, animals we're 'supposed to eat'.
What, like the French don't eat steak tartare, escargot, or frog legs? The Spanish eat bull testicles. And the Texans deep-fry rattlesnake. Australians eat kangaroo, crocodile eggs and ostrich. The Americans use cod liver oil as a vitamin A supplement. And the English feast on pig's blood every morning in the form of black pudding.
The Americans invented chewing gum - I mean, if you really think about it, that's a pretty weird idea for someone to come up with.
Foreign food should not be looked at in disgust. I respect whatever your personal preferences are, or what you feel about certain animals - I really do. I mean, some things I find weird, too. For example, I find it weird that Ukrainians eat bear, Filipinos eat chicken fetus, Alaskans eat raw fat from whales, and Icelandic people eat puffin. I'm weirded out by it, but I would never feel disgusted by any of these things because it's just what different people in different parts of the world have become adapted to eating. If you're an animal rights activist, well, good for you for trying to conserve different species. If you hate spiders, that's fine as well.
But I'm not pressuring you to like these things. Just accept that others eat these things, just respect that others may even love eating these things. Nobody's trying to force-feed any of these 'disgusting' foods down your throat, so we shouldn't have to swallow our feelings of embarassment when you say that they're disgusting.
1. The biggest export of the Phillipines is rice.
2. China consumes and produces more rice than India and Indonesia combined.
3. I am Filipino-Chinese.
I have probably eaten more grains of rice than there are people in the world. I don't understand what there is not to like. It's a staple food, just as potatoes are to the Irish, just as yams are to the Central Africans. Apparently, this peculiar disfavor may be due to the granularity of it. Small particulates bother people because they don't feel wholesome, they remind one of tiny insects or bacterium. Lots of tiny little things going into one's mouth... IS disturbing...
Some people also say that rice and couscous and similar foods make them choke easily. Yeah, that doesn't make you sound stupid at all. Others say they never know how long to cook it for. That doesn't sound cretinous either.
Another reason people tried to justify their dislike of rice was that it was difficult to finish it all, in that they couldn't possibly get every grain of rice off the plate. They're using spoons and forks, and are apparently people of modern civilized origin, so it amazes me that they are unable to clear the plate with the silver cutlery they are so accustomed to, solely because the foodstuffs are small. They guffaw as some rice is still leftover on their china and say, 'Imagine if I was using chopsticks instead!'
Ha. Ha. Ha.
---------------------------------------
I have three other blogs, you know. Please, if you have the time, visit Holy Holism!, uTube & iShare, and "If you're going through Hell, keep going." And follow me on Twitter and Facebook if you haven't already!
(From www.damninteresting.com) "In the scientific and medical communities, the technical name for using one's finger to extract boogers is rhinotillexis, and doing so compulsively is termed rhinotillexomania. The act of eating the resulting harvest is called mucophagy."
There was a Dr. Friedrich who professed that eating your boogers is a healthy venture. The premise behind this conclusion was the fact that boogers, chock full of germs, when consumed, would lead the body to develop more antibodies, and make it more resilient to bacterial disease, thus improving the overall immune system. This is definitely one of the most stupid, senseless, dim-witted, annoying, ridiculous, laughable and mindless things I've ever heard in my life.
If you want to prevent getting sick, you best avoid germs, by washing your hands a lot, cooking your food thoroughly, clearing the grime from under your fingernails, dispose of tissue papers properly after blowing your nose into them, and separating the cutlery you use for raw food from those for cooked food.
Also, it's best you not ingest dried bits of mucus infested with them. I don't know. Maybe a number of your readers need me to point that out to you.
It's also quite gross for other people to witness you doing it. I don't get sickened easily by sights of unsightly things - blood and gore, hardcore violence, explicit sex, death and illness, mental dysfunction, or claimed evidence of supernatural manifestations - but for some reason, even just picturing a booger going into someone's mouth gives me a sick feeling, a slight inclination to vomit out of disgust.
Please tell me you hate it too...
Here's the typical scenario: it's one of your friend's birthdays. The friend chooses a restaurant for everybody to eat in, and then everyone gorges on seventy-five percent of the menu. After desserts, coffees and teas are consumed by the end of the meal, the check comes, and gets passed around, until it lands on the table in front of you, because everyone else is apparently too busy chatting or laughing or picking their teeth to do the adding up. It's up to you to calculate how much each person (except the birthday person, of course) owes to the collective sum of money being charged on the bill.
When dividing by any number greater than four or five, you get difficult amounts of money owed, because the total at the bottom of the check is never a nice number that is easily divisible, or a number that, when divided, can be easily rounded up or down to a pecuniarily manageable figure. There will always be one or two people that do not contribute their part, due to the fact that they ate less than everyone else, or because they simply don't have enough money, and so you must go and seek out people that are generous enough to cover for them, or you just collect whatever money those cheapskates have, then divide the rest of the bill by the number of people left.
Then the birthday person makes a halfhearted attempt to pay, and everybody spends twenty minutes trying to convince him that it's alright, because for one, his birthday is everyone's treat, and second, he/she isn't even allowed to know how much the birthday celebration he/she is responsible for costs. You count the money seventeen times just to make sure it all adds up, only to have a nominated acquaintance count the money once more because she's known to be extremely responsible with her own pocket money. This is then followed by her boyfriend adding it up for a nineteenth time, because apparently, he took up an accounting class at school.
It never adds up, people have underpaid and overpaid and people want some change back. You have to listen to stories about how people have lost their wallets, how people have just signed up for a new debit card, their thoughts on the new design of the $10 bill, and countless other stories. You also have to deal with the asshole who wants to pay for one twenty-third of the bill using his credit card. After the check is settled after what feels like forever, you tiredly rub your forehead and temples with your palms, which to your mistake, leads to your overlooking the event in which two girls in the corner order an apple martini to share, which is then followed by the birthday person's best friend ordering a round of apple-flavored shooters...
Your job as treasurer isn't over yet, but at least there's alcohol on its way.
There are many times as I'm sitting in a fast-food restaurant, a pub, a bar, a club, or a high-end, fine dining establishment, when a catchy song comes up and plays as you're eating or drinking. You want to sing along, but you're half-hungry, as well. You want to mouth the words of the song, and see if your company is mouthing them, too, but you want to take a sip of your drink at the same time.
You end up doing a sort of half-chanting, half-consuming showcase, where you cut up your food while singing, but at the moment you would normally bring the fork to your mouth, you wait - you wait until one of your favorite lines go by, before you actually perform the act of ingestion.
Then you get tired of this routine. So you try and anticipate the breaks in the song, the intermissions, interludes and instrumental solos, and only guzzle up your food as fast as you can when there are no lyrics - only to find yourself struggling to swallow quick enough in order to make it for when the chorus of the tune comes up again. You want to sing, but food awkwardly dribbles out of your mouth, drinks go up your nose, you look weird, food is not being chewed, the food is ruined, the drink becomes ruined, and the song gets ruined.
It's even worse when you're dancing in a club. How are you meant to drink, and dance, and sing, all at the same time? The body is only capable of so much!
I absolutely hate it when this happens. It makes no sense for a restaurant to do that to its customers. Do you hate it too?
Hey guys! Today is my second-last week of school before my study leave begins. The exams start in May, so in less than a month, I'll be writing things down on pieces of paper that will determine my future. So excuse me if I'm not blogging as much. I'll try to make my posts longer in the months of April and May just to compensate, like this one for example. I have a lot of studying to do, but hopefully, I'll be back on Friday once more.
So, I hope everyone is enjoying Eastertime, 'cause I'm going to go indulge in a chocolate egg now. Toodles!
--------------------------------------------------------------
A couple years back, during one of Hong Kong's hot summer holidays, I rented what is known as a 'holiday house' for a couple of days. There are many holiday houses around Hong Kong, mainly located in more rural areas outside the city, and on the outlying islands of Hong Kong, near beaches, biking trails and hiking routes. These houses are typically furnished with several beds, a TV, a fridge, chairs, tables, a pot, a pan, some eating utensils, and a barbecue pit in front of, or behind the house. What these holiday houses are, are basically houses you can rent for a few days to escape the technology and the pressures of citydom, and to spend time with your family or friends actually having fun the way it was meant to be had (i.e., non-electronically).
Two years ago, thirteen of my friends came along with me to live for four days in a holiday house on 'Cheung Chau' Island. Together, the fourteen of us played Playstation, rode bikes, threw frisbees and balls at each other on the beach, and of course, drank a lot of vodka with cranberry juice and Red Bull. There was one night in which I even started up a barbecue fire and cooked everybody's dinner. It was heaploads of fun... heaploads.
On the last night, however, something really bugged me. They were arguing over who should wash the dishes. Now, for the whole four long days, and three long, sleepless nights, I didn't really care who was picking up for all of us, and cleaning up after us, so long as somebody was doing it. Of course, it was preferable if everybody chipped in to prevent the house from looking too untidy.
I really didn't care who swept the sand off the floor after we all came back with sand in our hair, clothes and shoes, who mopped the floor after we returned from the beach dripping in salty seawater. I didn't care who washed the pot and the pan and the plates after we had pasta on the first night, or who wiped the barbecue forks clean on the second night. I didn't care who went out in the morning to get everybody's breakfast, or who went out in the afternoon to shop for groceries, or who went to the supermarket after dinner to buy dessert, or who went after midnight to restock on junk food.
But the fact of the matter was, I did everything. For the enjoyment of everybody else, I really did everything. I made sure those who needed to leave early knew how to get home, and ensured the safe arrival of those who joined us later. I made sure the floors, the cooking and eating apparatuses, and the barbecue pit were all clean. I cooked dinner for everybody, I went out to buy groceries, to buy breakfast, to buy junk food, to buy drinks, and to buy dessert. I pointed out to people which way the beach was, where to get bikes, where the best place to sit and talk was, where the supermarket was, how to use the shower, and Hell, even where the damn Cheetos were stashed.
And most importantly, I had the key to the house. And that meant I had to follow everyone everywhere so that they had a way back into the house when they got tired.
On the last night, all thirteen of them decided to go out on a walk while I was just about to doze off curled up in my bed. I heard the door close, and I thought to myself, "If I'm the only one who has the key, and I'm asleep, do they all expect me to just wake up to open the door for them later on, after all the work that I did in the past few days for them?"
I had had enough of their slothfulness, so I ran out after them. At first, I was shouting angrily. Then I was shouting hysterically. Then I was crying about how sick and tired I was of cleaning up after them and catering them and letting them have fun. I was simply exhausted.
I have a very good friend with whom I talk to almost every night. It makes me smile when he sends me a message, "brb dishes", or "brb gotta take out the trash". It's admirable and quite a sweet quality for a guy if he's been brought up to do these sorts of things. He'd make a good husband one day.
I washed the dishes tonight after my mother and I had our first homemade meal together in over a year or so. I wash the dishes after every time I cook/bake stuff for myself to eat. I just do it 'cause it's logical... someone has to do it. It might as well be me, right? I mean, I don't see what's so disgusting about doing the dishes. And as for sweeping and mopping the floor, that's easy, and wiping the cabinets and stuff is not that difficult. Picking up the kids' toys doesn't take more than a minute, and doing the laundry is basically throwing clothes into a box and at the press of a button, voilà.
People... People: please do the dishes, even if it's not yours. Do your chores, they don't take long. I don't want to have an emotional breakdown in front of anybody again, and I don't want anyone to suffer from the same situation, because it's quite embarrassing to be crying over dirty dishes.
So, anyway, do you know anyone who hates doing the chores? Don't you hate them too?
Ever since my aunt, Ph.D in clinical therapy, moved back to Hong Kong, I have had almost nothing to eat in the kitchen. She specializes in geriatrics (the branch of medical science that deals with diseases and problems specific to old people) and nutrition most of all. Because I live with my grandparents, who have problems with their blood sugar and liver, our household has become very mindful about what we have in our kitchen and what we eat. I totally support a healthy diet for my grandparents. I don't want them to be diagnosed with diabetes. But I would like to go to the kitchen and find something that isn't healthful, and just tastes good.
Everything in my kitchen is either vegetarian, fresh, organic, unsalted, unprocessed, unflavored, low-fat, low sugar, low calorie, low cholesterol, non-alcoholic, decaffeinated, soy, skimmed, steamed, whole wheat, and/or high in protein, glycogen, antioxidants, fiber, vitamin A, B, C, D, E and K, and/or potassium, iron, calcium, sodium, phosphorus, magnesium and/or iodine.
Do you see something wrong with that?
The first thing in that list is what bugs me the most usually. No meat. No chicken wings, burgers, ribs, steaks, hot dogs, pork chops, bacon, minced meat to go with lasagna or spaghetti, luncheon/corned meat (like SPAM), pastrami, salami, or ham. It's meat. I want to come home and eat some meat! But there isn't any, and that's what makes me sad.
Everything is just too nutritious. I know it's for my grandparents...
But please add something to the grocery list for me.
Am I alone when I say I hate sporks?
I like the concept, it's quite clever. However, when I'm using it and thinking about it, I find myself hating how my fork is so curved, and how my spoon has thin slithers of plastic/metal missing from its smooth, beautiful concavity. I need the full set of utensils! I know my satisfaction with the meal is lowered by the sheer confusion roused by the evil spork!
I don't know if there's a handful of vegetarians out there that actually nibble on a chicken wing every now and then, but seriously, "So you don't eat any meat?" has to be one of the most idiotic questions to ask a vegetarian, or a human being.
Some would say I'm just jealous of the attention vegetarians get, but really, I mean, asking them when they last ate meat, what they think meat tastes like, why they chose to be a vegetarian, what do they do to get protein, what do their friends and family think of vegetarianism, what happens if they eat a hamburger, will they encourage their kids to be vegetarians, blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah... I don't think it's really that great a topic. I don't think it deserves that much focus by a pair or a group of individuals.
Come on!
Are you really that interested? ... Really?
Sigh, well, as they say, small things amuse small minds.
... I suggest you just shut up, and drink your soup.
One of the most repeated discussions I've ever been involved in is the discussion that concerns the difference between a vegetarian and a vegan. I get sick of people asking what the difference is, and I get even more tired of all the people that claim to know what the difference is, pretend to be a smartass, only to present an incorrect answer or an answer that is sort of correct, but not quite.
So here it is: Vegetarianism is the dietary practice that excludes meat, fish, seafood and poultry. Veganism is a form of vegetarianism which excludes all animal products, including meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, dairy products and honey. Vegans usually do this out of support for animal rights, and therefore, tend to disapprove of the use of fur, leather, wool and silk.
Please, I do not want to have this discussion again. Please, please, please, not again.
When I was seven years old, I spent my winter holidays in Toronto, Canada. I have two aunts there, and one of them once took me to the movies to see The Prince of Egypt.
On the car ride to the cinema, I was chewing gum, and my mouth was open, so my aunt could hear that horrible sticky snap every time my upper jaw and lower jaw moved away from each other.
When we reached a four-way junction, she stopped for a red light and turned around suddenly and screamed at me, and told me to stop chewing so loudly. She looked so angry, and I cried, and I never chewed gum with my mouth open again.
This goes for all food, in fact. I don't slurp my soup. I try not to make those horrible noises with my straw when I've nearly finished a beverage. I don't create nails-on-a-blackboard sounds when I'm using a knife to cut food on a plate. I don't make sucking noises when I'm trying to get all the meat off a chicken wing. I eat crackers, and potato chips, without crunching. I don't suck up long pieces of spaghetti. Even something as simple as gulping water has to be silent as well.
My best friend says that these noises make a meal more enjoyable. The noise adds an acoustically pleasant component to the dining experience.
I think that's a load of bullocks. Eating should be quiet.
A lot of things should be quiet for me. I hate the sound of high heels, and whistles, ruffling sheets of paper, dogs barking, people sniffing, everything.
My best friend jokes that in my ideal world, everyone would be ninjas.
And you know, that is precisely what I want. Don't you think that would be awesome if the world was all as stealthy as ninjas?
After a week of complaining about other people's misdeeds, I thought it would be interesting for all of my readers, followers and random pop-by visitors to learn more about some of my own bad habits. I said a week ago that everybody has dysfunctional behavioral tendencies and myself is included! To my good friends that know me outside the blogging world: you knew a self-dissing post was bound to be written some day. But instead of just one, I will be writing a full week's worth of posts demonstrating the hypocrisy in me. That's right. Seven entries about the things that I hate doing, and I hate the fact that I do them too. (I'm getting a little bit scared of where this might lead...)
As you've probably shrewdly figured out already, one of the annoying things that I do, but don't condone myself is being greedy when it comes to food. I remember an end-of-year party we had at school, where everybody in the class brought in candy, nachos, Lay's, Pringles, tortilla chips, soft drinks, Cheetos and pretzels to celebrate the fact that we had successfully completed another year of school. We moved the tables together to the middle of the room, and laid down all the food in the center. The teacher put on a movie and turned on the projector, and we sat down around the table of junk food and began to watch it.
Being the end of the year, we had no work to do, nothing to stress us out. Of course, the movie was nice, but we took this opportunity to chat as well before the summer holidays would separate us for two months. While everybody was chatting, I sneakily moved the food around so that I could sit right in the middle amongst all the food. Like an octopus, I reached in all directions, grabbing different potato chips and other snacks to keep my mouth interested and my stomach constantly at work. My classmates, one by one, began to see my dreadfulness, but they just let me be and in the end, I distinctly recall a Coca Cola chugging contest with one of my friends, although I don't remember exactly how that happened...
I can remember many times where I have asked the waiter to bring me more food than I actually needed (often, when the food is not going to be paid for by me). I will hog the popcorn at the movies, seize four-sixths of a whole pizza and take advantage of buffets by giving myself very generous portions. When I'm on a plane, I will press that button twenty to thirty times, thus summoning the air stewardess so that I can ask for peanuts and tomato juice for the entire flight's duration.
I hate seeing this greediness in other people, and looking back at my own gluttonous behavior, I hate seeing it in myself too. I'm surprised nobody has ever accused me of this before... I guess my friends and family are all being kind to me. I like spending time with others that love to eat as well. That way, I don't feel so guilty and I have someone else that can't control their appetite, however, when dining with people that can moderate their hunger, I find myself very unjust and self-indulgent.
It is a matter of self-control, self-control that I have never been able to find in myself, self-control that I have never needed to have because food is there for me whenever I want it. Even if people can have food whenever they want it, they still shouldn't eat more than their fair share, or eat more than they actually need to make them full.
What do you think, readers? Do you hate it too?
The main source of inspiration for this hate of mine is rooted in a particular dinner I had, at which my mother and I ate at Ruby Tuesday (mmm). If I remember correctly, we had salad, potato skins, spare ribs, beef lasagne, fries and garlic toast, which were all in great, big portions and in addition to that, I drank a lot of Coca Cola, since you know, you can ask for refills. As the night went on, I ingested more and more food, to the point where I felt full, to the point where I took off my belt and put it in my bag, to the point where I had to stand up and take deep breaths, and finally to the point where I just couldn't possibly eat anymore. I ate so much, I couldn't move and I was in a lot of discomfort. I had to take ten minutes just to stand up, to physiologically prepare myself for the journey home.
We stepped outside and my mother put her arm around my waist since I'm tall and that's what mothers do to their tall, teenage sons. I told her, "Don't press on to my stomach" lest I might vomit. Can you hazard as a guess as to what she did the very second she heard my warning?
...that's right.
My dinner went splash.
Why is it that people have this compulsion to do what is contrary to what other people have requested?
You start off an embarassing story with, "Don't laugh at me, but there was this one time..." and then they find it amusing and laugh anyway. You tell someone, "Oh, I don't want to talk about it" and they reply with, "No, tell me! Come on!". You ask for your friend to stop that incessant whistling and they take it as a sign of your appreciation for their music, prompting them to put their face closer to yours and whistle even louder. You ask someone, "Please don't feel sorry for me, it's not your fault" and however convincingly they reassure you that they aren't, they do.
Why do people do this? Does the message not get across to them? Do we need to punch them in the face, cry our heart out, or regurgitate our dinner in order for them to get the idea?
Who knows?
Posts
