Porridge

I didn’t realise how much I missed the smugness of being local until I fell sick in Shanghai, and couldn’t find porridge that lasted past midnight.

At 130am, almost all the roadside hawkers had dispersed. The only one that remained gave me options: fried rice with beef, or fried rice with pork. I chose one.

Back in the room, I was tempted to boil water and throw it into the Styrofoam box, but I fought the insanity, and shoveled it in with a pair of disposable chopsticks.

I will be lying if I said my tears made the rice so watered it might as well be porridge, because when you’re alone in a foreign land, the last thing you want to do is weep. There’s no one to listen.

Earlier today, I had porridge at Xin Wang again. It was piping hot, tasty, well-garnished. All the decoration, all the reminders that I had to pay, it wasn’t made for me alone, Mummy wasn’t beside me to helplessly tell me porridge was good for colds.

The GoogleMap I have in my heart is useless in this terrain. My extensive list of supper haunts back home cannot save me here. What I wouldn’t give for some sloppy gruel with self-service, the clanging of ceramic bowls and spoons, soy sauce and pepper on standby.