Today I am sick. I haven’t been sick in a while, and I don’t get sick very often (if I told you recently that I couldn’t do something because I was sick, the cat’s out of the bag — I was more than likely lying). Right now I’m stuck in that half-way sick phase where I’m ill enough to feel rubbish and tired, but not so ill that I can go to bed and not get up until I’m better. The brighter side of this is that I’m sick enough to sit on the couch and watch Battlestar Galactica all day long with a big tub of very bold ice cream (orange with chocolate biscuit, plain biscuit, fudge and marshmallows).
Anyway, I haven’t updated in a while, which is more to do with the fact that I’ve been busy enjoying myself. Trips to the park, cupcake picnics, pony rides, weekends away, joining a gym. It’s all been fun and games for me! Still, something happened on Monday that I felt like bragging about. While out to dinner with my boyfriend and his parents, I managed to eat an entire meal with chopsticks and my hand didn’t cramp up once!!!
This is a huge step for me. I’m no stranger to Chinese food, but I am not familiar with Chinese restaurants that don’t give forks to the white people. My first ‘Oh shit’ moment with chopsticks was at a fast food place called Thai Express in Toronto last summer. I had literally just stepped off the plane and was super tired and super hungry. The food was excellent, but the eating utensils were clearly designed for cave people and impeded progress like nothing else. I eventually gave up because my hand got tired and eating one noodle at a time was getting frustrating.
About a week or so later, I was taken to a family dinner. Nothing formal, just a hundred or so aunts, uncles and cousins, with a couple of grandparents who spoke only Chinese. The usual, you know? Anyway, it’s kind of normal for the King of the Table to order all the food. I don’t understand how you get to be King of the Table, but I want to be it one day. You get to decide what everyone eats and no one can say anything! As Table King, I vow to order peanut butter sandwiches and milk for all!! Anyway, Table King didn’t really notice that I was white or thought there was no way I’d be so unworldly that I wouldn’t know how to use chopsticks.
Long story short, I didn’t get a fork and was too afraid to ask. I was very hungry throughout and at one point, as I was putting a piece of sticky, sweet and sour pork into my mouth, the chopsticks slipped and flicked the pork into the air in front of my face. Bizarrely, in a rare feat of hand-eye-coordination completely alien to me, I managed to grab it out of thin air — with my hand, not my chopsticks — but then I didn’t know what to do. If I’d thought it through, I would have been able to grab it and stuff it in my mouth in one swift motion, but I hadn’t planned beyond “Musn’t let it land in my lap/on the floor.” So instead I grabbed it and then balled up my fist and stuffed my hand into my lap. After about five minutes of trying to left-handed spoon my way through some kind of bean soup that was !!!!!!MASQUERADING AS DESSERT!!!!!! I dropped the pork on the floor and tried to wipe all the sauce off in my napkin without anyone noticing. No one did, but I had sticky hand for the rest of the night, and there was pork sauce under my nails that I couldn’t get out until I showered the next morning.
Since then I’ve been trying to learn how to use chopsticks properly so I wouldn’t a) go hungry and b) embarrass my boyfriend anymore. On Monday I was scarfing my way through deep fried pork dumplings like there was literally no other food on earth (healthy eating does that to a girl). Both of my boyfriends parents commented at the same time that I was a good chopsticker. And if I may say so, they are right. My next mission is to get good at left-handed chopsticking so I can eat twice as fast.
I will be a SNOWY QUEEN among the Asians. And then? PEANUTBUTTER SANDWICHES FOR EVERYONE!
Eww, that picture of a hand is what parents should show their children saying it’s what their hands will look like if they don’t stop biting their nails. I know I’m going to show this to Gwladys as soon as I see her :)
That peanut butter kid looks so happy :D
I wish you had the pork catching on film, sounds like something that would happen in one of those wedding rom coms :P How did you practice your chopsticking?
I tend to always eat my noodles with chopsticks so I’m quite good at using them, but I have belonged to a nerdy-asian-cartoon-watching society for five years now :P
Comment by izziepoptarts — September 10, 2010 @ 12:50 pm |