sure win!

making faces (変脸)
a giant BBQ chick wing? It's a whole BBQ pig! - photo by J

Our friend demonstrates yet again why his name is Wings.

(this exchange is in mandarin)
Wings:: Long time no see.
J: Hey, where have you been the past few weeks? We came by, but your stall was either shut or there were no chicken wings.
Wings: Ohr [he glances at his parents by the satay pit], they two old ones went for eye operations mah.
J: Eh, [lowering his voice to a conspiratorial level] I tell you, we went to that chicken wing place and tried their wings...you know, that old-style hawker centre you said you thought about joining last time, the one with the high rent...now it's behind the "durians", you know... [J refers to the "Makansutra Glutton's Bay"]
Wings: Ohr, that one! [he pauses, then drawls, knowingly.] Hoowww? Niicce?
J: Not nice lah!
Wings: See, I told you!
J: They're not very tasty.
Wings: I told you. I ate there once. Went there to try. Not nice!
J:...
Wings: Very crispy, right? But the taste is a little sour? [He pauses, but not enough for a reply] I told you! They add vinegar. It's all just vinegar! The vinegar makes the chicken wings dry, so it BBQs faster, crispier - but there's no taste, sour sour only right? The skin is crispy crispy only lah -
J: Yah yah, your chicken wings are still the best...
Wings: Hng...I know. [he smiles, shows his broken teeth and walks away].

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

miracle man

Image
I can never quite tell if Ma J is asleep or just pretending The old lady in the bed next to Ma J's is in hospital because of a second stroke. When we were visiting Ma J this afternoon, the old lady's middle-aged son was also there. He was in his usual round-neck tee tucked into a pair of blue jeans with a belt made of buffalo hide. His limbs are slim, but his belly is round. His bald head, too, is round and abnormally large for his small frame. Let's call him Ah Biao , or if you prefer an English name, you can think of him as Bill (after his buffalo hide belt). When J and I walked out of the ward, Ah Biao or Bill followed us. Three of us stood around the counter by the nurses' work area. J and I were quiet, enjoying the break. Then Ah Biao wanted to show us something special. "Eh, I show you something." Ah Biao unzipped his black waist pouch and took out a small yellow cloth pouch. He untied the colourful string that secured the opening of the pouch. He weigh
Read the rest of this post

on a Hou Hsiao Hsien movie set

Image
By the tracks of the Jiji Station, the oldest train station in Taiwan OK, not quite. We did not even manage to go all the way south to Hou Hsiao Hsien's KaoShiung or even Tainan, but we did venture out from Taipei for 3 days to Taichung. But the real takeaway was actually this supposed feature of Hou Hsiao Hsien's films - trains! Trains are about the best thing about traveling. Unlike cars and taxis, trains are a social mode of transport. Train stations allow for reunions and departures, points to assess and affirm relationships. I admit that all this fades away when you are tired or in a great hurry (or both). But seriously, cars (oh, 4-wheelers!) have only brought about pollution and wasteful consumption, traffic jams, asphalt, mindless obsession with speed and countless quarrels in the stressful, enclosed interiors of cars. Friends, take it slow. Take the train. Read a book. Hold your partner's hand. Be there with the people around you. With Taiwan's highspeed rail
Read the rest of this post

fear not history

Image
Fiction on this island has never quite flourished. Perhaps because we've never quite made peace with our histories. But two genres of fiction hold special place in Singapore as a result. Ghost stories - the art of unresolved pasts. And that even stranger fruit of fact-as-fiction/fiction-as-history. Part speculative history. Part documentary fiction. A romance of obscurity. The Lan Fang Chronicles , Choy Ka Fai's work supported by the Arts Council's Arts Creation Fund and commissioned for this year's Arts Festival, is maybe of this latter genre. Choy Ka Fai chances upon the Lan Fang Republic, supposedly the first democratic republic in SEAsia, set up by the Hakka Chinese in West Borneo. His research in West Borneo, China and Holland takes him through archival material, abandoned sites, photocopied photographs, a supposed descendent of Luo Fang Bo (founder of Lan Fang) and accounts of Dutch missionaries and colonists. These materials allow him to re-construct a sk
Read the rest of this post