Friday 11 April 2008

prison break
the plates and bowls used in the school canteen are of the aluminium variety, and every so often (about once a month) during lunch, one of us will make a comment about how we feel, rather, that we're eating in jail. i also feel the food's become more oily since we came, or maybe it was always so but i was too set on eating in school to save money to mind much, then. because we hadn't gotten our water dispenser up and fridge properly cleaned when i first came, remember? so cooking at home wasn't too convenient.

everytime i eat rice with dishes in school, now, various bits of food which i leave behind seem to be wading in a pool of oil, albeit a shallow one. one of the worst dishes must be the celery fried with slices of sausage and smoked ham which are a lurid pink. though i must say that it looks rather appetising, because the celery is all shiny green and complements the pinkiness of the sausage, which also has white flecks in it, and the smoked ham, rather well.

i've been eating a lot of noodles in school - over here all the different types of noodles are hand-made, and we pay so much for those in singapore - but unfortunately i think i'm going to exhaust the different toppings soon.

the hotel we stayed in at taiyuan was very clean and quite prettily decorated (there the word pretty goes again) with a window seat and a vase filled with tasteful orangey-yellow fake tulips. but we went for the free breakfast on the first morning we were there and were greeted by a sullen, sleepy 阿姨 who handed us each an aluminium tray with compartments, and gave us each a single hard-boiled egg.

which turned out to be the only thing we ate for breakfast that day, because over here they seem to like to fry things and leave them to go cold before eating them. especially for breakfast. 凉菜, they're called. though we get some of the coldest temperatures during the mornings, so i don't know why people don't like to eat hot food.

No comments: