The Cho Cha !!!

For all those people who either actually know me, or have actually read my blog in the past (Hugs!!!), there is one thing that might, just might, be a teensy weensy bit apparent by now.

I’m interested in food. Like… it does hold a bit of importance in my life. Like…my life might just revolve around it, you know…just a teensy weensy lil bit.

So the food I have does tend to alter and determine my moods, my actions, and sometimes life altering decisions. 

 

So there happen to be a few rules, a few theories revolving around different food items in my life. The Chop suey Theory is one very important one among them. Now I can’t go into details about it…its really top secret, and I am still waiting for the patent to come in…but it has held true these past twenty one years,( soon to be) and deserves due respect. And recently, to pay my respects, I have embarked upon a Chop suey Challenge.

The challenge is simple.

Singapore.

Random tiny Chinese restaurants.

One American Chopsuey.

And so it began.

Location: Authentic Chinese Restaurant

Order: Pepper Chicken, American Chopsuey, Pepsi

Time Taken: Torturous

 

And I kid you not. I thought my watch had stopped. All time and matter stood still, not even a slight ruffle in the chicken’s feathers as it faced its last few moments in a kitchen somewhere. That’s how long it took. But there was a very valid explanation for it, as I will soon let you know.

 

The place was nice, the way a Chinese restaurant should be. Because in my experience, the best Chinese is not the Bercos, Golden Dragons and Five Spices of the world…even though I love all those as well. There’s something about sitting in a small, brightly lit chinki* family run restaurant, with one Chinese fan adorned on the wall to make it look more authentic and a little stained menu with at least two price revisions scratched out with a pen…it just makes the experience…well…an experience. And the food’s usually good.

 

So I placed my order, and waited with bated breath.  And waited. And waited some more. Just when all the oxygen of my before mentioned bated breath had run out and stars were popping before my eyes, I spotted the reason for the delay. Some ten packets of home delivery.

Hmph.

Oh well, the food came.

 

I tasted the chop suey. The crunchy sweet orangy chop suey. I opened my mouth to comment on the taste, but the conversation on the next table proved to be rather distracting.

Two women with extremely painted and botoxed faces (I swear they couldn’t smile even if they wanted to) walked in and were greeted rather warmly by the waiter.

“Ok, show us the photos.”

 

The waiter eagerly bowed, ran in and came back with his fancy phone. He then showed them some photos in a rather conspiratory manner. They nodded at each other and smiled (or at least I think that’s what the frozen face muscles were trying to do).

“Oh, they’re cute!”

More nods.

“They have been with me since they were babies. I have taken really good care of them.”

Awww…his little adopted chinki kids.

“They’ll adjust to our home well.”

Huh? Suddenly my full attention was with them. Lil cute chinki slave traders.

“So once we take them, do we need to give them cooked food? Or just raw food would do?”

Huh??

“No no…don’t bother cooking. Just make sure you give them enough water throughout the day. That’s enough for them.”

Wtf…inhuman ^%&$*!!

“So your final price is 8000? Nothing less?”

Nods. Looks exchanged. Handshake.

The price of a lil cute chinki kid = Rs. 8000 wonly. ( are they going to make them massage their frozen muscles ??!!! )

“Don’t worry…they’re very well trained. They won’t take flight.”

Hmph.

“Yes…I really love pets…and I think birds are perfect.”

Ok…so you knew what that conversation was about right from the beginning. But believe you me, when you’re sitting in that tiny restaurant, starved by the wait, hogging away on crunchy chopsuey, your mind does take you in weird random directions.

Oh…the chop suey!!

It was…perfect.

Well, it did come late. And for some weird reason there was no egg on it. But it was perfect.

It was just the right amount of crispy.

It was just the right amount of sweetness.

It adhered to the right gravy to noodles ratio.

And the noodles were broken just the right size.

It was really worth the wait.

21 years. ( well ... soon to be .. )

P.S. It might be important to mention here that the birdie negotiations were being handled by the waiter…erm…the sole waiter. So for half an hour, all orders, all payments and all requests of each and every person in that restaurant came to a standstill.

P.P.S. 8000 bucks for birds? Really??? You know the amount I can shop in that much?!?

*I hate the word ‘chinki’.  I know its racist. But I’m hoping I’ll be excused here on the pretext of creative liberties.

The midnight mission

After twisting and turning in bed for what it seemed like ages last night, I got up and decided to clean my wallet ! (I'll get to the significance of my wallet in a minute).Of course there were other better ways of wasting time in the middle of the night, but I decided to do something I had not done in maybe a year. So there I was, wide awake, at 3'o clock in the morning with the sole intention of giving my wallet a decent look. The task was simple: to pick out everything one by one, decide which ones deserve a place in my wallet and throw away the rest. However, it turned out to be not as simple a task as I had thought it would be.

Okay, so what's so special about my wallet ? Absolutely nothing, except from the fact that it's huge. It's really huge. Friends, who have seen it, always ask me "what do you have in there?" I always tell them that women like big wallets so that they can carry their worlds in them. But that is just a lame explanation, because all my other female friends here have small and thin wallets. Ofcourse they have big hand bags and/or side bags where they carry their worlds in, but that's not the point here. So honestly, I don't even know why I need to carry such a huge wallet, because I hardly have cash in there.

Apart from that, it's all apparently useless stuff: some old and torn movie tickets , some Café Coffee Day napkins, a few Indian coins, quite many old receipts of restaurants and coffee shops, a few bus tickets and a small piece of paper which has a list of things I need to buy for the ongoing week (and this one gets replaced every week or so). I really wonder how these 'few' things make my wallet look so big and heavy!

 So last night, I started off by taking everything out of the wallet and putting only the selected ones back in. I put the cards, some cash and the to-buy list first back into the wallet. Now, about the rest. Most of the tickets and receipts were damaged and hazy. I couldn't even read the small letters, so there was no way of knowing what we had ordered at the restaurants or which movie we had gone to see. I could just make out the names of the shops or the theaters.I smiled to myself and put them back in. Memories.

 I hardly remembered where I was going and why I had kept them for so long. I could just remember those indefinite hours spent in the buses, reading books; the verbal fights between the bus conductors and some fellow passengers and those regular arguments over the ‘Ladies’ seats. I put them back in too. . Then those few Indian coins which I had purposefully retained before coming here. They’ll stay, I said to myself and put them back again.

  Now the job was almost done, except for the few napkins and small coins. A friend of mine and I had this habit of writing things down on the napkin whenever we were at the Café Coffee Day. We wrote mostly about each other, what we like and dislike about each other and stuff. Sometimes when we were bored, we just made smileys or funny faces on the tissue papers and then I used to take them with me as memoirs. Going through these napkins took most of my time last night. Ofcourse I couldn’t remember which Café we had gone to. The only things I remembered were the time I spent with the few people I now consider family, the things we did and discussed, FOOD and so much more. I smiled to myself because I knew what I was going to do with those napkins - put them back in !

 Bottom-line: I spent a couple of hours dissecting my wallet, and now my wallet looks and weighs exactly the same (both from inside and outside) as it did before I went on this mission. Agreed, I could have thrown out some of the coins.Maybe I'll throw them away the next time I try cleaning my wallet. And I don’t remember when I went to bed finally last night :)