Do sharks cry?

When you get a space on the internet to fill with your words and thoughts, you’re conferred the status of author, and I think you get an unnatural sense of entitlement to rant.

My dad bought a shark yesterday. It was about 3feet long.  I touched it, the skin felt wet carpet tape. There were holes above its eyes that looked like open wounds.  I looked at it and thought “I’ll bet the crusties back in college will go into organized, marijuana fuelled rage about something like this”. Further to that, in the afternoon I chatted with a friend who lives in Copenhagen now. He told me about a hippie commune who lives in a certain quarter of town. When I think of crusties or hippies, I think of dreadlocked crazies who never wear shoes (no offense R!), never shower, smoke a lot of pot and protest against every animal being reared and killed for humans. It’s the classic left. On the food..no wait, sorry I meant animal front, we have the usual mascots: foie gras, machine-reared chickens, turtles, whales and of course, sharks.

I’m not going to lie and say I didn’t eat the shark because I know every year sharks are in danger since they are harvested from the sea in the thousands to make sharks fin soup for roughly 1.3 billion (chinese) people. [see http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/archive/2003/01/20/urbananimal.DTL] I did eat Mr Shark you see. My dad cut him up, stir-fried him in some black bean sauce, kun cai and some garlic and it was delicious. Minus marijuana (or not), crazies share with liberal beliefs today, a sort of life-centred ethic, thought to be universal and true. The idea is that all life is precious and if one cannot justify taking it, one must not. But what would be the mark of life? A self-named vegetarian I met in America once told me “I don’t eat meat but I eat seafood. Cows cry but shrimp don’t, if you can prove the shrimp feels emotion, I’ll stop eating shrimp”. So herein lies the caveat that no hippie vegan wants to admit: the definition of cruelty relies on a humancentric definition of life. If spinach can sing and dance (in English), bleed or shed a tear, U2 would take down Hyde Park with a concert deriding the evils of Popeye cartoons.

According to the WildAid lady in the article, sharks are an important source of protein in certain parts of the world. The act that shark campaigners take issue with, is finning, the removing of the fin from the shark and leaving the poor animal to bleed to death. BUT, it is more okay if you want to execute it for your protein shake – because everyone knows protein is good for you. It is not okay to have a shark bleed slowly to death because many of us knows a papercut stings. But anti-finning activists know this is a weak case for the Chinese because everyone knows Chinese people aren’t exactly jumping on that “global” ethical bandwagon because the people who get angry or become tree-huggers are usually people educated and motivated by tenets such as Rights, Truth, Love, etc; the Chinese family will ask “Can you eat these things?”

Since then, shark activists seem to be going for another tack: telling you that shark fin has dangerously high levels of mercury. Speculation on the effects of mercury range from impotence, infertility to death. And also, by the time you dry it, process it, the end product – gelatinous strands – has no taste in itself. So according to Peter Knights, the director of WildAid, “The remaining taste is the only ingredient. The flavour of sharkfin soup is purely a fashion – image and face” [http://www.thailandlife.com/sharkfinsoup.html], insinuating that makes a case against eating the dish. Come on, really? no shit. Start with cigarettes and work your way down. This is precisely the sort of double hypocrisy that makes the Chinese or the Japanese ignore organizations like WildAid, introducing on their menu whale or shark as “FOOD OF THE MONTH”. It’s a slap in Insert-animal-organization-here’s face and they wanna make sure it stings. Knights clearly does not have a clue, of course it is about image, although I wouldn’t call it fashion. Send up a stack of science and math to tell you that shark kills (ha ha) you and your sperms, and that eating something just because it’s fashionable is a bad idea? Image and face is everything, except maybe the shark fins soup lovers’ idea of face or image aren’t built using the same cultural or historical references as WildAid. Life and love lived isn’t quite the same as the ones slogan-ed to make the shark finner, fisherman, lover of sharks fin soup look like barbaric, impersonal, downright stupid and unreasonable people. It does seem sometimes that newspapers want to tell us that Japanese people are bloodthirsty freaks dragging bleeding whales down the high streets for a bit of uber fresh sashimi.

No doubt good food is a great thing. Quality and taste and all the things in it that make your skin glow and your spirits high. But nutritionists and animal activists neglect to address the fact that quality is a cold IDEA. It is not the only thing that food lovers thrive on. When my dad bought the shark, it was alive. Like most seafood you get at hawker food stalls, freshness means keeping it alive til you want to eat it. This is a real special treat because he is really pleased to have me home after two years. While we ate it, he was telling me about his favorite places to have shark, different ways you can cook it, and we discussed our fondness for frog porridge. Maybe I’ll head down with the family on Sunday. In my world, food is meant to be shared. You don’t whip up something delicious and huddle in a selfish corner.

What campaigners do not seem to understand is proportionality. When you charge under the flag of absolutes (a Reasoned absolute is still an absolute), the only result is war. And perhaps this is a war they want. What is portrayed as some kind of cultural barbarism or ethical ignorance achieves its potency in the simplicity of tales of good and evil. A good story, like any good soldier, does not need to know about the King’s bedfellows. Sharks or whales are never the only stakes in this game of high risk trading of popular conscience.

Chicken Rice

4pm on Sunday, I looked at Blk 40A and felt happy. The double storey hawker centre looks and smells the same. It wasn’t as busy as I remembered it but I guess that was why we – A, F, H, C and AC – scheduled to meet for chicken rice at 4pm. The chickens do go so very fast. Steven, the owner of the famed chicken rice stall, looks like he hadn’t aged a day. He rarely does much except perch in front of the trestles where the condiments and takeaways are packed. Steven looks my way for a second, I smile. He does not recognize me anymore. None of them do. The stall is run by a sprawling team of experts. This old woman who plucks and sorts the sprouts springs to attention the second you glance at her. She has a ready smile and steady gaze, “what would you like?” The rest of the team’s ears prick, you can almost feel it. They like to be efficient, Chinese run businesses like a factory, everyone has a specific role to play and the turnaround time must be short. I hesitated for just a second, sorting my head pace out – London has slowed me down a little – and placed my order.

AC and F are big eaters. They get enthusiastic when they are hungry. We always have the fried pork dumplings as a side dish whenever we have chicken rice. They’re really nice though not my favorite type of dumpling. They went and ordered nearly 60 of these. And yet, I think F is exercising some degree of restraint. He tells me to order 1.5 chickens, not 2. There were nearly 9 of us because F brought his work colleagues – girls, who claimed they don’t eat very much. H and C arrive. My attention feels scattered, but the energy is high. Everyone is talking at the same time and I just about keep up. We make small talk. As usual, A is beside me looking somewhat nonplussed and has a cryptic look about her. I think she goes into introspective gear when the world is shouting for no reason. It is the first time I meet C since he married H and I am very pleased. He’s very much the man I know through H, very funny, attentive and sharp. I chatted with AC for a while, he just got promoted by the bank which is great. Very soon he will be the boss of the world. We swop notes on what to do on F’s birthday this thursday. The food arrives.

It goes swiftly. Each person knows what bit of the chicken they want. AC loves breast meat or boneless meat. A likes the bit near the leg. I ordered an extra side of chicken feet. C ordered a plate of kidney and liver. Pints of green apple juice from the neighbouring stall washes all of it down a treat. I make a mental note to take my folks here before I return to London. F comes over from the other table with his place to trade up meat on the bone with breast meat. Somehow he joins us and continue to eat. He never seems to stop. It’s great. He says he might consider learning a craft abroad, we think it’s a great idea. I hear about the last time my friends were here. I miss some of them on this trip, those in Philly, Shanghai, Copenhagen and New York.

The chicken rice stall is over 30 years old and counting. My late grandmother used to live closeby. My dad told me the folks who sell the dumplings used to live in the same block when my family lived in Marymount. They tell me I have been when I was about 3 or 4, but I don’t remember. Steven’s dad used to run the stall in the 80s. I wonder if my grandmother bought chicken from Steven’s dad, and if she did, what parts of the chicken did she order?

Newton Circus

I discovered something I never knew about where I live. There is apparently the only turtle/tortoise museum in the world in the Chinese Garden. It sits precisely just under that pagoda. Over a thousand species housed and there is even an alligator-chomping turtle from Madagascar who is about 48 years old. I bet that one won’t get a role in Finding Nemo 2. It is, however, in the Guiness World of Records, which is a pretty outstanding achievement for a museum that I thought, is technically a turtle zoo no?

I didn’t have time take a proper look inside the museum because I was on way to Newton Circus. I got the train on a Friday evening to meet A, F, J and H, for a meal. They are pretty nonplussed about the turtle museum and are even more so when they learnt that there is no turtle soup involved in my story. Ahh..how I miss being around people who see animals as food than as well..animals; who like me, often go “that looks like it might taste good” rather than “aww, thats so cute”. It is good to be home.

When it comes to BBQ seafood, Newton Circus is ground zero. Technically, it hasn’t been the best place to have BBQ seafood since the early 90s. It’s too famous to rank as personal favorite amongst most Singaporeans but we’d still go there because it’s the most central place to meet and have pretty fail-safe, bog standard grilled seafood.

My favorite vegetable dish ever is sambal kangkong. I don’t know why they call it morning glory in Thailand. I’m pretty sure it is not actually from the plant of the morning glory flower. You get the Thai version in London, it’s usually stir-fried with garlic and fresh chilli. The local one is greasier because it uses a sambal chilli paste. I like to think of that chilli paste as one of the great mysteries of life. I don’t know any parent or grandmother who can replicate it. No one REALLY knows what goes into it or how it comes into being. Even my dad, whom I regard an expert in the art of chilli paste, shakes his head whenever I ask if he can whip it up so I can cart them in truckloads to London. It’s a bit like ketchup: it’s there, everywhere, everyone knows what it tastes like and what it’s good for but it’s never homemade.

The stingray is a favorite too. Flesh is soft, succulent and chunky in the way that sea fish always is. I like it with lots of lime juice drizzled all over it and every mouthful should be gunked with a fair portion of shrimp paste and chilli paste. Good stingray is one that is well barbequeued. I guess apart from produce, like all good cooking, that’s a skilful combination of timing and heat. So what you get in a mouthful should be a burst of spicy, limey flavoured stingray meat, that’s soft but not without texture, and that carries enough of that lovely smokey BBQ aroma to show the taste of the condiments who’s boss.

Finish with a hearty swig of ice-cold sugar cane juice.

The effects of jet lag

People always tell you to write what you know, so here goes.

I had some food on a german airline recently, while watching re-cut-for-flight films and documentaries about chimpanzees on the Island of Gombe, which is otherwise known as “Chimp Eden”. The TV chimpanzist went on about squashing my homosapian “arrogance” by showing me chimps that laugh, use tools and develop complex mother-daughter relationships. I didn’t mind it so much but in no world am I arrogant of my ability to laugh, use a fork and having to explain to mum why having babies is not really on my to-dos at the moment.

Anyway as usual, the meal was lukewarm and geometrically pleasing. For lunch, I had the fish option and it came cooked in some sort of cloudy, starchy mushroom sauce that wasn’t too dribbly. Bits of spring onion as garnish. Now I know rice, and I have to say my rehydrated rice was almost fluffy. I suppose since the flight was bound for Singapore, they included an asian-ish option in the menu. Except they did not tell those Thai or Filipino fidgety tourists on a travel package the fish was the asian option. Mainly because for the barely English-speaking ladies in gold and jade, german-accented English might as well be Hindi. I felt oddly smug when the heavily made-up orange lady in front of me peered over her head rest to peek at my food. Later she shared with her friend, what I guess to be perplexity and grudge against the beef stew (goulash?), rehydrated mash and carrots in front of her.

However, instead of stir-fried pak choi or spring rolls, the sides in my asian-ish fish option remained stubbornly on the bored side of continental. A roll of rye bread with an immense slice of camambert cheese. I ate the cheese. The bread required teeth I simply did not have. The strawberry cheesecake on a soft sponge I left alone too. It had a funny smell.

I thought I was going to get boiled saukernaut and schnitzels, the same way I thought I was going to get sushi and unagi don when I flew a Japanese airline a few years ago. No such luck. Culturally-specific flight food is clearly too much to ask at 6000ft above ground. And it’s not because I was flying economy either. I googled the airline’s name and “business class food” and what I got isn’t very much better: