I belong to a chat group comprising high school classmates of our Form Five Class of ’72. The conversation there is pretty much ho-hum, run-of-the-mill stuff.

This morning, however, it perked up after one guy posted a video of an anxious porcupine scurrying through a residential  neighborhood in the night. 

Apparently there’d been talk of porcupine-sightings in the neighborhood but it was the first time the animal had been caught on film. 

It seemed to know it – it began scurrying faster and looking around for threats. You could almost hear it thinking: I needle little time to figure this out. 

But back to said chat group. Being Malaysia, the conversation inevitably shifted to what it might taste like. Zainal said he’d had its soup when he was in Penang although these points had to be tasted surreptitiously as the species was protected by law. 

Dollah claimed to have his grandma cook it for him  back in the  day. Said it tasted like chicken, only it was “more delicious.” 

Everything, apparently, tastes like chicken. The phrase comes from Christopher Columbus. Looking for fresh food in the US, his men came upon “a serpent” which they killed and devoured. Columbus noted that “its meat was white and tasted like chicken.” 

Whether it’s snake, iguana or crocodile, they all taste like chicken, apparently.  And it isn’t anecdotal. It’s true: most of these species evolved from the same forebears ergo the taste similarity. 

Incidentally, the snake and crocodile testimony comes from my daughter, Raisa, who is courageous when it comes to new food.

She charted what I considered a new low when she tried balut  in The Philippines. Balut, the  street food of the Manila barrios, is a fertilized, developing egg embryo that’s steamed or boiled and eaten from the shell. She balked, however, when she felt its feathers. 

Maybe I should not be too surprised –  in Peru, she consumed alpaca and guinea pig. 

Even so, I know she does not get it from me because I’m a wimp in matters of food. I think it stemmed from the time when my father urged me to eat liver. Its intense gaminess and weird texture made me nauseous and I’ve been wary of new meat ever since. 

I’m in a minority in my house though: both my wife and daughter think that liver is the best thing since sourdough bread.

Worldwide though, I’m in good company. Most people would rather give it a miss although the Danish, to a man, consider it a treat. 

Aside for the country-curious reader, except for Hannibal Lecter, most Americans think liver is “gross.” 

Then there are those foods centered around snob appeal. A friend and his wife took us to a 2-Michelin place in Singapore that had rave reviews in the Singapore press.

The prices on the menu made me feel  grateful that we were guests. 

The dishes included mini-thosai tacos (with mutton filing) and oysters with a rasam granita encrustation. 

A granita is like a semi-frozen dessert while rasam is, of course, the sour and spicy South Indian soup that was once touted as a Covid cure and, failing that, can be reliably depended on to clear your sinuses. 

I wasn’t very impressed with the food but was with the beer. 

Story of my life. 

ENDS

The problem with retirement is that you often wake up without the foggiest about the time, the day, or the date. 

The year, you ask? C’mon. I’m not that spaced out. Anyone will tell you it’s 2024. 

So I asked Siri and it obliged modestly, as is its wont.  “It’s Friday, February the 14^th,” it replied, careful not to sound too triumphant. It really was a modest creature. 

That was all I needed. That razor-sharp, A-list marvel of high-octane intelligence that is my brain registered its own recognition modestly, and that goes without saying of course: It was Valentine’s Day.  

It’s a strange day to celebrate, to be sure. I mean, for people like us Malaysians who’d never heard of it growing up.   

I certainly don’t remember thinking, or hearing, about it when I was young. I’m not even sure I remember it when I was in university. Or perhaps it was my penurious state that  prevented me from knowing. It seems to me that the extent of one’s dalliance with VD –  unfortunate nomenclature to be sure – is directly proportional to one’s bank balance. 

I really got to grips with The Day when I began working for Malaysian Business, a bimonthly business magazine that had its staff-desks right next to two women’s magazines that thought The Day had to be extolled as much as, say, nasi lemak, P Ramlee, or penicillin.

The origins of The Day go back to Saint Valentine who was martyred by the Romans around 8 BC: they took a dim view of his preaching of Christ’s teachings in England.

It took a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer to add the romantic element to the day despite the fact that the poem came out 700 years after the martyrdom of said Valentine. Even so, it was, is and remains a made-in-England tradition. 

Trust the Brits to market The Day through their American cousins. Today, there is a movie called Valentine’s Day and Hollywood has made the occasion so desperately relevant that any partner, boyfriend or husband is made to feel like a leper if they forget any of these three things: the day, the chocolate/flowers or the  booking of  their favourite restaurant. 

The day makes you realise what the guy who said “living is like licking honey off a thorn” meant. Buying flowers and splurging for a dinner usually ends in a pleasurable outcome but it can set you back some ways. Now you know what the poet Ogden Nash intimated when he had this to say about seduction: “Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker.”  

Is there a moral to this tale? 

You betcha. 

This Valentine’s Day business is nothing more than poppycock, balderdash, and bunkum. We might add bollocks and humbug with a “bah” prefix to the mix for good measure.  

It’s nothing more than a British colonial caper aided and abetted by America’s military-industrial complex to lure the unwary to splurge on flowers, chocolates and expensive dinners for no other reason than an overweening desire to demonstrate a global superiority in marketing. 

And what do I plan to do tonight?

I thought I might have dinner with Rebecca at this Italian place. It has a good selection of  white wines and pasta to die for. 

ENDS