In the Meantime...

He Feels Bad - Helmet

Resuming normal(ish) service. Although Facebook refuses to import my blog. Heh. So I copy and paste.

Now I'm one of those people who pretends to have a theory or a philosophy or an idea surrounding everything. It's methodological even if I may favour spontaneity and randomness; a facade. It's all about the facade. Or something.

At the time of writing it's 6.20pm. Due to the abstinence of food for the entire day, any and every topic of conversation around this time will usually surround food. So I'm chatting with Rose, and it's nasi lemak. Then nasi kerabu. And suddenly curry puffs pop into the conversation.

The curry puff, karipap, or epok-epok down south where I'm from, is a beautiful Malaysian thing of bountifully edible awesomeness. I've wittingly or unwittingly managed to eschew commercial curry puffs like the ones sold at Old Chang Kee or Ikea even; this may not altogether be a bright idea because it's never good to disregard food on the basis of commercial hegemony = degradation of quality but oh look, I'm digressing. Some of the best food is obviously found out on the streets, those weird little mobile stalls littered all over the nation on random streets or in pasar malams.

Having said that though, with curry puffs it's tricky. When one stalks the rows of shops in a bazaar, the safest way to identify a good curry puff (in the event that you're fasting and still ineligible to eat) amongst the myriad vendors is to obviously look for the one stall that sells only curry puffs. After poking it to test the pastry, the best thing one can do after that is to pray that it doesn't taste like death with potatoes. Some curry puffs have a tendency to taste astonishingly bad; it's not a safe dish in the sense where an average quality of taste is assured.

So yesterday my family and I, because I'm also part of said family, decided to head out to Kampung Penchala to check out the bazaar there. Aside from having this quaint, sleepy kampung feel, we stumbled on this one place that sold curry puffs that looked semi decent. Now as a unit we have very high standards of curry puffs, collectively preferring the sweet potato kind epitomised in a little puff of pastry awesomeness sold far away in Ampang. That magical pastry has since moved on to greater pastures. So my mum being my mum/punjabi, decided to buy 6 curry puffs, one for each member of the family. Thus if it sucked, it wouldn't be wasted.

So we get home and a shower later and it's buka puasa time. There lie the 6 curry puffs, delicately placed on a plate in the middle of the table, outshining the fruits that my Fit For Life parents seem to have an insatiable desire for. A customary glass of water and I'm curry puff bound. I realise now that as I write this it may be leading up to a description of the most apocalyptic curry puff the world has ever seen but in actuality it was merely a decent one. What this translates into is that the curry puff didn't suck, and if it doesn't suck it can be consumed for hours on end.

We all proceeded to take our respective shares while eying the others hungrily. My parents, being awesome and understanding the nature of four hungry kids forgo theirs. Us in the family, we're weird. We're a strange ass bunch who don't understand what it's like to have a normal dinner conversation; if anyone out there has ever had a meal with my family they'll know what I'm talking about. So when it comes down to the last two curry puffs and who should get them, a silent war breaks out amongst the four of us. Everyone wants a full piece but inevitably we'll have to divide and conquer. Thus the spoils are shared, unfortunately.

So I should have mentioned that this theory has no conclusion. What I merely wanted to demonstrate was the delicate balance between buying many curry puffs from a new seller and risking them tasting terrible thus wasting food, or buy a modest, almost frugal amount and risk sibling rivalry/genocide. We get along well enough but when it comes to food, we go apeshit. I forgive my brother for breaking my telescope, my racing car, my Buzz Lightyear, My Playstation, for throwing my RHCP album onto the gravel, for losing the PS3 controllers but not for finishing an entire pot of kheer before I even got a spoon. AN ENTIRE POT.

The cycle began again today. Earlier I came home from the bazaar again with curry puffs from a new vendor. Everyone eyed each other nervously.