Advice Served On Rice

•February 3, 2010 • 1 Comment

Dinnertime when I was a kid used to always conclude with this odd line from my parents: “Eat up every grain of rice if you want your wife to be pretty.” The story behind it is that each rice grain left behind in the bowl represents a mole or pockmark on my future wife’s face. Of course, I ate that story right up then because I was a kid and kids believe anything. Upon hearing that reminder, I would pick up my chopsticks again and make sure the entire rice bowl is spotless. In retrospect, it was kind of funny that I had actually taken the story seriously since I was at that age when girls were still icky to me. Anyway, like I said, I was a kid – making sense was not very high on the priority list.

When I grew old enough to realize that this was just another one of those let’s-see-how-long-we-can-fool-our-kids ruses that parents frequently like to employ, I also began to understand their true intent. Okay, their true intent really was just to get me to eat every grain of rice in my bowl. But the importance of the matter lies in the why.

Rice is the main staple in the Chinese diet, as is the case with most other Asian diets. Ever since its crops were first domesticated thousands of years ago in the Yangtze River valley, rice has become such a crucial element of our daily sustenance that instead of greeting one another in the evening with, “Hi…have you eaten dinner yet?”, we ask, “Hi…have you eaten rice yet?” In short, “rice” is practically synonymous to “meal” and in the poorer regions of China, it is the meal.

What makes rice so precious is not only its high concentration of nutrients, but also the difficulty in which it is cultivated and harvested. Rice plants have very fragile roots, which means that the soil has to be tilled over and over again until it is loose and soft enough for the roots to firmly take hold. Often times, this is done with only a water buffalo-drawn plow. Fertilizer will then have to be spread evenly across the field to ensure a balanced nutrient intake and smoothed over by dragging a log across the soil. Once the field is deemed to be ready, it is flooded ankle-deep with water in preparation for plantation.

Meanwhile, the rice seedlings are being nourished in separate seeding beds. Thirty to fifty days later, once they have sprouted shoots, they are ready to be planted in the flooded field. This process is usually carried out by hand and it involves heavy concentration as the sprouts have to be evenly spaced in precise rows. If they are too close together, they will block out one another’s nutrients and sunlight. However, if they are too far apart, maximum yield would not be achieved. Only experience and a steady hand can success in the delicate task be achieved.

It takes several months before the rice plants mature and during this period, the water level has to be carefully maintained via a complex irrigation system. When the plants are at the cusp of maturity, the field can finally be drained of water, the process of which spurs the plants on to maturity. Harvesting the mature plants is another grueling task. The rice grains first have to be threshed so that they are loosened from their hulls. In order to isolate the rice grains from the hull fragments, they are tossed up with a light breeze in the air so that the breeze will carry the lighter hull fragments away while the the heavier rice grains will fall back down on a sheet laid over the ground.

Only after all the above steps are painstakingly followed can the rice grains be packed and transported to the market. Of course, many of the steps are now mechanized, but it still does not minimize the amount of work involved in rice cultivation. My grandparents had been farmers and they made every effort to instill this view of rice in my parents, who then passed it on to me: every grain of rice is precious.

There is nothing truer than that statement. Think about the daunting number of steps required to produce a single grain of rice – now imagine that multiplied by a hundred-fold just to fill up a rice bowl.

To this day, I ensure that every grain of rice that touches my bowl is not wasted – no longer because I believe in a childhood myth, but because I value the hardship endured so that I may have a bowl of rice in my meal. If we take it further and apply this view to our daily lives, we will be that much closer to learning to appreciate the small things in Life.

Rice Bowl

Every grain of rice is precious

(Photo courtesy of: Sweet Mandarin Cookery School)

Tradition Preservation

•January 31, 2010 • Leave a Comment

I watched one of our new lawyers get sworn in on Friday. It was a very informal ceremony – none of the usual Supreme Court pomp and circumstance, which was great because it meant we got to the most interesting part a lot quicker: namely, signing in the registry of all the lawyers ever called to the Bar in the territory.

What is so interesting about the registry is the length of time it has been preserved. It dates all the way back to the 1890’s! The signatures of the very first lawyer then to the most recent lawyer now are all logged in the same book. It is nothing short of amazing. The book is so old that it cannot be handled unless a pair of white gloves are donned – this is to prevent the acid on anyone’s fingers from disintegrating the pages.

When it came time for the new lawyer to sign the registry, we all naturally crowded behind her to get a glimpse of the long list of signatures, proudly and prominently displayed on the age-worn pages that have been written on by the hands of lawyers in the past and present. You could practically smell the history emanating from the ancient volume. It is definitely a well-kept tradition and it is this very moment that I sometimes almost fancy becoming a lawyer myself.

I think we all crave tradition. It gives us a sense of belonging that allows us to dip into the collective consciousness of our peers and embrace the community it represents. After all, we humans thrive best when we genuinely feel that we are part of a greater whole and traditions play an extremely important role in conveying that feeling.

Night-Write 6

•January 26, 2010 • Leave a Comment

You know that scene in Spiderman where Peter Parker wakes up, puts on his glasses, and takes them off when he suddenly realizes his eyesight is worse with them on for some weird reason? That’s what happened to me today. It’s frickin’ bizarre. As we speak, my glasses are folded-up next to the laptop, looking rather lonely and out-of-place. That’s not to say that I have amazing eyesight right now – I still have to squint. But it’d definitely be worse if I tried to put my glasses out of their misery and put them on. Maybe this means my eyes are miraculously getting better. Or maybe I’m turning into Spiderman.

If I were to travel back in time and transform into a dinosaur, I’d probably be a pterodactyl. When a pterodactyl is in its element, soaring upon thermal updrafts in the air, it feels wholly comfortable and can even dare say it is graceful. But when it is forced to come back down to earth out of necessity, it is awkward beyond hope – madly scrabbling along the ground with its oddly folded wings yearning to be unfurled. When its ground business is done at last, such a soothing serenity spreads to its very wingtips that even its strange hop-skip-run to launch itself back into the air somehow seems a little less clumsy. Still rather ungainly, mind you – but only until the moment it finally gets the chance to extend to its fullest wingspan. It fits me.

There are some people who have this strange notion rattling around in their thick skulls that the best way to receive good customer service is to ream the staff out. What a fantastic idea! Hey lady, allow me to go out of my way to treat you like royalty while you pierce my eardrums with your banshee shriek. What’s that? You don’t care about our staff – the foundation of our entire company? Hmm. Well, maybe that means I shouldn’t have to care about your needs, eh? Yeah. ‘Kay, thanks bye.

I finally got around to getting a Bluetooth earpiece. I never liked wearing them because if people don’t make the effort to crane their necks to see if there’s one in my ear, it looks like I’m talking to myself. And we don’t want that – the scary men in white coats will come after me with their big needles. But since the authorities are cracking down harder on driving under the influence of cell phone chattiness, I thought it’d be a good idea to get one. I probably look like a douchebag wearing one though. “There goes that guy, ready to take his gazillion calls ’cause he’s so goddamn busy.” Yeah, not really…although I do sometimes like to play that illusion up for the heck of it. But seriously, I just don’t need any more demerits to call my driver’s license home – my insurance bills are high enough already. And anyway, I only wear it when I’m driving. So I’ll only look like a douchebag at a stop light or a school zone.

My jacket locked me out of my car last week. Yeah see, my jacket has this A.I. chip implanted to give it a mind of its own. And it’s a really powerful one too because it has telepathic abilities. Okay, so this is what went down: I parked my car and after turning the engine off, I automatically put the keys in my jacket pocket. That’s normal so far. I then looked out the window and decided that it’s really not that cold – it was only -6 °C. This was when my jacket took over. It telepathically inserted a thought in my mind to suggest taking off the jacket since it’s not that cold outside anyway. My mind was helpless under its influence and without a second thought, immediately obliged. So I took my jacket off, opened the door, pushed the “Lock” button, and slammed the door shut behind me before realizing what’s happening. I swear I heard my jacket cackling inside. And that’s that. It totally was not me being an idiot at all – it was my jacket being this horrible, evil…thing.

Someone asked me yesterday what a “seductive smile” is supposed to look like. I cast about for some descriptive words, but came up with nothing. I tried to imagine what it’d look like. Just when I almost had it, it twisted into a lecherous sneer in my mind and I lost it again. Not wanting to give off a wrong impression of lewdness, I decided against demonstrating it to her. Then I realized she was still looking expectantly at me, but she had such pretty eyes that my brain naturally shut down completely. In the end, I just shrugged. Now that was definitely me being an idiot.

G’night!