Double standards: 05 (London / Somerset)

 

An English friend had polio when he was 16, which left him with problems in the legs (he walked with a Zimmer frame) and hands.

    Because of this, it wasn’t convenient for him to dine out, so I’d go and cook a Chinese meal in his flat.  

    This was in the second half of the 70s when ingredients for Chinese cooking were not so readily available outside Chinatown, so I’d go all the way to Chinatown for them (e.g., bean sauce/paste in a jar, ginger, bean sprouts) and to local shops for others (e.g., fresh fish for steamed fish, Chinese-style).  

    Each time, I’d lug everything to his flat, including my wok (shipped out from Singapore), and back to my own place after the meal.

    This friend had a brother living out in Somerset, S.W. England, in a thatched cottage.  He was invited out there one day to stay for a week, and asked me along as well, reminding me to pack my (manual) typewriter — to type up his scripts for the plays he regularly submitted to radio and/or television stations.

    Day Three into the stay, I received a phone call from an ex-boss (American), saying he was coming to London (all the way from LA), staying only for two days.  (I’d given my contact number in Somerset in a letter to the ex-boss after he’d written earlier to say he’d be coming over from LA but not with precise dates.  Those were the days when things had to be pre-planned / pre-arranged via snail mail.)

    I said to the English friend I had to cut short my Somerset stay to get back to London, as I wanted to see this ex-boss who’d been kind to me when I was working for him in Singapore in 1977 while waiting for my UK visa.  When this ex-boss went to work for Hughes Tool Company in LA and was asked to start his own department at one point, he asked me to go and be his secretary.  That was how well we’d got on.

    The English friend was most unhappy about this:  “I’ve given you the opportunity of getting away from the crowded and stressful environment in London, to have a relaxing break in the countryside, yet here you are, wanting to charge off back to London just to see this ex-boss.”

    He said he wanted to give me the opportunity of having a relaxing break in the countryside, yet he made sure to ask me to pack my typewriter to type up his scripts…

(London and Somerset, 1979)

The hidden message in Chinese food 06: consuming vinegar (Taiwan)

Another Conoco Taiwan local staff lunch outing was to a dumpling restaurant.  I was absolutely amazed at how many dumplings my colleagues could each eat.  Even the women could eat something like 25 of them at one sitting.

The simplest dip for dumplings is soya sauce and vinegar (醋 cù).  One can also add one or all of the following: chilli oil, sesame oil, garlic paste, ginger, chopped spring onion, coriander.  Anything that one fancies really, I guess.

My youngest colleague, Mary Fu 傅曼麗, then only 21 (three weeks younger than I), had her saucer filled with something like one part soya sauce and four parts vinegar.  

Accountant Cray Chang 張城隆, as usual, immediately remarked, “哇，你很会吃醋！wa, nǐ hěn huì chī cù / Wow, you very much know how to eat vinegar.”  

This was an obvious pun, because 吃醋 chī cù / “eat vinegar” in Chinese means “to get jealous”, so Cray was saying to Mary, “You get jealous easily (You’re very good at eating vinegar).”

Mary’s instant response was, 我只会吃湿醋，不会吃干醋 / wǒ zhǐ huì chī shī cù, bù huì chī gān cù / “I only know how to eat wet vinegar, not dry vinegar”.

(Taiwan, 1975)