For a sweetheart

I’m alone and the restaurant staff catches me staring off into the distance. As he clears my plate, he is concerned and asks, “Is the food not to your taste?” His question jolts me out of my reverie and it’s a while before I utter these syllabuses, “Yar-dar-shee-day.” He isn’t able to conceal his surprise that I replied in Burmese. We smile simultaneously; our smiles, sincere and awkward.

Then I’m left alone again. It’s a white formica topped table that my laptop is perched on. Surrounding the table are the perennial beech wood-backed chairs with spindly stainless steel legs. This place is chillier than your average shopping mall foodcourt. F4’s Meteor Garden theme is pumping in the background. The first rendition is in Mandarin.

And now, Burmese.

You would like these songs on the playlist today. You would break into a smile at hearing them while turning your face away from mine. Not wanting to bear the tease of my knowing eyes and good natured smirk. You might even state the obvious, “I like this song,” while you refrain from nodding to the chorus and my laughing rejoinder will be “I know!”

Bon Jovi hasn’t heard the Burmese cover of their ‘Thank You’. I’m listening to it right now and it is quite an effort to will back the sniffles.

Thank you for treating me as sweetly as you did during our Burmese days too long ago.

Project: the Apple that Eva Bit

I’m embarking on another of slightly crackpotty attempts to reach my version of nirbana again by eating veggies, chicken eggs & dairy products. I hope quails eggs are unfertilised too.

what inspired this? Being vegetarian on parts of my burma trip and running into a good no of vegetarians throughout my trip could have been the inspiration. But on returning to Singapore, I was devouring chicken rice, succulent cream coloured chicen breat, chicken liver and loh bak and too much Popeye’s fried chicken.

A catalyst, perhaps? After feasting on Popeye’s chicken and taiwanese chicken chop at our T3(I had an immense chicken craving when reaching SG), I tumbled home in the early rainy morning on 4 July and saw a lizard on the bathroom wall.

The Lizard. Suspended on my wall. It was heading towards to floor. Its tail curved as a sickle. Black beady eyes. Gleaming. I gasped, jerked my arms and insisted, “Shoo, shoo!” The bugger stayed perfectly still. It was a XL-sized lizard. Could have hugged a stiletto heel and a little more with its entire span. Popeye’s chicken was churning at the back of my throat. “Shhhooooo?!Hmpf!”It didn’t even twitched. I pretended to be brave and eyeballed it. Black beady eyes, a little glazed over. It did not flinched. Did not moved. Could not moved. One of it hind limbs was twisted awkwardly. The plasticky brown body seemed resigned. My sprained thumb was throbbing. I grabbed my toothbrush and turned away.

It was a huge lizard that outran its course of life. Somehow, the little bugger made me connect to the logic that my some of my food just as alive as it was, as I am.

After, it was the Apple that Eve bit.

So I’ve been relatively vegetarian for the past 2 weeks. Trying to fit into this new eating habit. Chomping on bits of meats – not entirely by choice. and working out my own brand of rock and roll vegetarianism.

Let’s go veg with me, leave the cow to be!