March 2, 2017

Hello March

Missing Asia is a romantic feeling.

I start the first day of March having a yakitori set lunch with my MacBook at a Japanese restaurant, where skewers are grilled perfectly like most Western restaurants here do, served with 3 sauces; teriyaki, creamy spring onion (most likely with mayonnaise) and Sriracha. The latter two don’t fit too well with me today, though they are considered ‘very Asian’ in German terms.

In Berlin or hopefully just Mitte, you can walk into a Singaporean restaurant expecting chilli crab, to find misspelled Indian, Indonesian and Vietnamese cuisines typed out in Times New Roman size 12 or 14. The food scene here has much to improve, but today I won’t complain.

It is an afternoon of making love to Asian food, regardless its origins. I order hot sakae to battle the outside cold by warming my body from within. What appear is a low-grade sour version with yellow undertones enough to piss off a dead Japanese sergeant from 1940s to murder Hitler. Unlike how they do it at more authentic places; where waiters respectfully immerse your sakae bottle in hot water and cover it with thick cloth, mine literally gets cold under 5 minutes. Sigh . . .

Old Chinese songs I grew up with (Ah Du’s “他一定很爱你”, lol much?) twinkle at the background, instrumental version. I’d rather they play none than reminding me of how faraway I am of home with massage parlour music and find comfort in the idea of blasting Jay Chou real loud when I get home. Then something arrives that makes me smile: a bowl of steamed rice.

I silently ridicule the knife and fork wrapped inside a white napkin and pick up a pair of black bent chopsticks. As the warm pearly white rice makes its way down my oesophagus, I instantly feel home. Needless to say, I finish the whole bowl of carbs together with the juicy tender meats and fusion of sauces. The teriyaki is great, by the way.

No, they don’t have the rich, powdered matcha green tea, so I settle for the mild sachet kind to clear my ex-sakae, before telling the waiter how I like it. When I return from the washroom, there it is . . . how it should have been done, forever and always.

Special days to keep you cinspired this month:

March

is International Ideas Month,

so I’ve signed up for Meetup to see if I can meet likeminded people, brainstorm on creative matters and spend words on more interesting topics instead of “hello, what do you do” at just another bar.

2nd March

is World Book Day

and I’m excited to start a new book, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. (Follow me on Goodreads!)

17th March

is St. Patricks Day.

Have you picked your green outfit? If not, it’s time to think about it.

18th March

is a Saturday and it’s World Sleep Day,

so SLEEP IN!!!

31st March

is World Backup Day,

so this the day to backup any files you think you need or don’t need because trust me, you might need them one day. Why not take this chance to spring clean your phone and hard disks too?