fried eggs, no ham

for reasons i have mentioned at least three times on this blog since i came to beijing, i try not to eat ham, or cured meat in any form, on a regular basis. it's not that it tastes that bad, or that i don't trust that it's pork or chicken or whatever it claims to be. i just don't like the colour, and the few times i've steeled myself to look past the ghastly pink and nibble a little at it, it has been unbelievably salty.

rachel once told me that when you study overseas eggs will become your best friends. that hasn't quite turned out true for me, but the smell of fried eggs in an enclosed space with nowhere to go does bring back fond memories: aunty lena's house in sydney, the time we first visited, when i was eight; scrambled eggs and fresh, fat white mushrooms, added in slices, made by my mother one breakfast time when we first visited london. i was twelve, and it was winter and dreadfully cold.

i think it has to be cold for the fried egg smell to bring back these memories.

i've never been much of a late-riser, and i'm thankful for it now. my favourite part of everyday is waking up before everyone else in the house, wrapping myself in my quilt, looking out of the window and daydreaming for a bit, then reading my bible.

some wounds do heal

sometime in the year i turned thirteen, tanya and i were skating around the neighbourhood in our new roller-blades when we decided to try our hand (legs?) at skating down the steep hill behind her house.

she ended up on her bum. i was less fortunate, falling on my hands and knees and skidding some distance on the rough, stony road.

i fell about six more times that year, and each time, like the first, i landed more heavily on my left knee than my right. one of the more memorable times was during a skit in english class, where i played a bear begging a hunter to spare my life and i had to fall on my knees as i did so.

inevitably, a keloid formed. it stood out on my left knee, angry and red, and i used to tell my mother mournfully as we sat in front of the tv year after year laughing at the contestants on miss singapore universe, that i would never get past the qualifying rounds. not that i actually wanted to, you understand. i was just attracted by the pretty clothes and prize money for doing what seemed like nothing.

what's more, i fell on average about once every year, and the keloid would invariably split open and form afresh, a squishy bulge which began to harden after some time as the number of times i fell a year lessened.

i thought it would never disappear, and was quite prepared to live with it - except for the time i found some silicone ointment in the medicine cupboard and applied it faithfully for a while, with no results.

this morning while i was stretching i idly looked down at my knees and realised that the keloid was practically gone. the skin on my left knee looks almost normal - there's a slight protrusion, skin-coloured, but it looks like it's going to become less obvious, given a bit more time.

remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. behold, i am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? i will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert - isaiah 43:18-19

keeping the dream alive
after hurling abuse at shangren for daring to suggest that i descend to his and paul's level by ordering 外卖 (wai4 mai4, take-away) for lunch, i succumbed: for dinner, i ordered a very nice pork cutlet with japanese curry from the cosy little restaurant about a 15 minute walk from our apartment. because i think i'll have to eat porridge almost every day next week - it's cheap, and easy to make and clean-up after, and i don't have to keep transferring food out of our only pot like i'll have to do with pasta. but i've already bought a pack of pasta so i'll have to cook it next week before weevils get to it, if there are even weevils here.

as it's started being Rather Cold again. i'm not very sure about the habits of weevils.

i'll keep you posted once i make something other than porridge.

and i don't think i've quite descended to paul and shangren's level yet, because they even order take-away from subway which is less than five minutes' walk from our apartment complex.

diplomatic relations

a few weeks ago one of our university friends took me back to look at her apartment on the back of her bicycle, and i asked her if i could be the one cycling and she be the one sitting at the back when we went back to school.

she refused at first, but she finally let me try to cycle myself around, while she stood by and kept laughing and telling me that she didn't think i'd be able to make it.

i told her to stop laughing and get on - she did, and i moved off, but then i realised that she was running alongside me and still laughing. however, when she saw the look i gave her she hurriedly tried to put on a straight face and said, pleadingly, 不要宰了我，这对新加坡和中国的外交关系不好 (bu4 yao4 zai3 le4 wo3, zhe4 dui4 xin1 jia1 po1 he1 zhong1 guo2 de4 wai4 jiao1 guan1 xi4 bu4 hao3) please don't strangle me, this will not be good for diplomatic relations between china and singapore.

ah well, she was a lot bigger sized than me anyway. i couldn't stop laughing when she said that, and i let her take me back to school again.

this morning i was running for the bus because i didn't want to be late for church, and i overtook a man on a bicyle - i could feel his surprised gaze as i went past, and heard him start to pedal more furiously. because men are just like that, i think.

but all the bicycles here seem to be able to move only at one speed, which is slow. which isn't a bad thing, really. that way the chances of people getting hurt are much less.

so of course he couldn't catch up.

i was almost at the bus stop and was speeding up to get to the bus when i heard the tinkle of metal striking the pavement. looking back, i saw that my house key had fallen out from my bag and i heard the man on the bicycle say, in a rather pleased tone (maybe it was my imagination), 你的锁匙掉了! (ni3 de4 suo3 shi2 diao4 le4) you've dropped your key!

he finally managed to cycle past me.

one more thing about church services here - at the very end, the choir will sing peter lutkin's the Lord bless you and keep you in chinese, and if you're sitting in the overflow hall, while they're singing it, an extremely garish and highly-coloured picture of Jesus, complete with a flickering animated candle, will be displayed on a huge screen.

you can even pick out the pixels.