I wish this was a happy one. It’s not. This is a dark one.
Recently a colleague and friend has passed away after a long struggle with illness. When I was a young man, I heard older colleagues say as you age, you’ll progress from receiving invitations to weddings to funerals. It’s been years since I have received a wedding invitation and this week alone I’ve seen two posts on Facebook of people who are in our circle of friends who have passed away. With my 43rd birthday coming up, I’m in the latter half. Not only that there were two gruesome murders in Shanghai this month which I’ll spare the details.
Besides being hit with debilitating feeling of doom thinking about my own mortality, When I hear about doom and gloom I am reminded of a part period of my life when I was a child. A period when I was without my both parents. My dad a fugitive from Taiwanese law and my mother detained. My grandpa from my mom’s side took care of us during the weekdays and on the weekends we would spent at my uncle and aunt’s. Food at that period was the worst in my life. Tasteless. Men in Taiwan at that time did not cook. My grandfather, bless his soul could not cook for shit. He would drench shredded pork in potato starch and boil it and that was dinner. We looked forward to the weekends.
My Aunt, whom we called a-tsim ma, was a kind and loving woman. At first she knew I couldn’t get used to her cooking except for one dish which I kept eating with rice and it was 瓜子肉 (Steamed pork with pickles). Then every week she would ask what I wanted to eat and I would always say 瓜子肉。 Now that she’s gone, everytime I feel sad I think about that dish. I will never try to make the dish myself because I know how it would make me feel. Recently I bought some online and the taste was decent. I had some today to those we’ve lost recently.
This is a terrible picture, I know, but I’m on this competition to lose weight so no carbs today.
