Bowl Licking and Drinking oil
April 25th 2010 21:00
Photo by Effib. Used in accordance with the terms of Wikimedia Commons’ GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.
Years ago when my sister worked at a Chinese takeaway to earn some extra cash, I would meet her at the eatery at the end of her shift. I would notice people eating what looked liked a bowl of noodles in a rich, yellow soup. Intrigued, I asked my sister what it was.
“It’s laksa,” my sister said, pulling a face. “It looks yucky.”
I was intrigued. I later sampled some laksa at another eatery and enjoyed it. That began my lifelong relationship with laksa.
What I could never figure out was why no one ever drank the soup the noodles came in. Being a soup person, that was my favourite part of the whole meal.
“It’s because it’s oil,” said one of my colleagues when he saw me eating laksa at my desk.
“No, it’s not,” I said. “It’s soup.”
“Yes, it’s a soup but it has lots of oil,” insisted my colleague. “Drinking oil is not good which is why people don’t drink the soup.”
I continued eating. My other colleague was working away, not really paying attention to what I was doing. I picked up the bowl and proceeded to drink the soup. By the time my second colleague had turned back to look at me, I had finished.
“You did not just drink that,” he said, horrified.
“Yes, I did,” I said.
“But it’s oil.”
“What about your diet?” asked a third colleague. My doctor had told me to lose weight and I was trying to follow her advice. The third colleague loves to remind me whenever I was going off the rails.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Having laksa once in a blue moon isn’t going to hurt.”
This led to a discussion about how disgusting drinking oil was. I told them that my old man would heat up flat pressed duck – a Chinese delicacy – in a small bowl. Once the duck was heated, the lard inside the duck would liquefy. My old man would then eat the duck and then drink the lard straight from the bowl. My colleagues were horrified.
Another time I horrified people was when I was invited to a dinner with a friend and the same colleague who told me the soup in the laksa was actually oil. We had dinner at a Thai restaurant. I ordered red curry chicken. To my delight, it came in a bowl and there was so much curry it looked liked a soup. Again, once I had eaten the chicken and vegetables, I picked up the bowl and started licking the rim of it. My friend and colleague started laughing in horror – exactly the reaction I was hoping to get. I then drank the curry. Again, my colleague told me drinking curry was not good for me.
Of course, any cat could relate to this. When I see a cat lapping away at the water bowl/milk saucer, I know they appreciate food as much as I do.
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