Of tissue paper ownership and prawns

This is going to be an almost pictureless post - not because I did not have any picture worthy moments to capture - but because the latter moments happened to be too disgusting to be captured in print (more on that later).

Anyway, I started this morning by ripping my left contact lens into half. I cannot figure how it happened though. I had just removed it from the dish and was washing it with MPS lotion (a mandatory procedure before I insert the lens into my eye) only to discover midway that I was cleaning 2 transparent semicircles instead of a complete lens. On hindsight, the haze of a late night accompanied by a bizarre dream must have resulted in me subconsciously exerting more force on the soft optical tool. What a waste. I had to stumble back from the sink back to my room, half blind, in order to get a new one. Now how should I explain to my optician that I need to buy an odd number of lenses the next time I see him?

It was also one of those rare occasions today that I had post-church lunch with Jie and lilbro John and the latter's friend. Being students with student's pocket money, we walked past the likes of Superdog for the Kopitiam at VivoCity instead. Not that there was anything to gripe about, since I had a delicious ladle of Hokkien Mee to feast upon. In this age of rocketing food prices and plummeting economic levels, Hokkien Mee is one of the dishes I can order which miraculously has not shrunk in portions. So, I received a huge plate of hot fried noodles and 3 succulent prawns for only $4. A very good deal for a foodcourt in a prime shopping mall. I had intended to photograph the heap of noodles, but was immediately deterred by the prospect of having lilbro John's friend think he has weird siblings. Yes, I have received weird stares for photographing my meals. A perfect example being yesterday's lunch of a tomato with Italian dressing:

To which Eden JieJie when 'WHHHAAATTTT!' when i whipped our my trusty sony ericsson.

Anyway, lilbro John happened to order the same meal as me and walloped the noodles at a faster pace, only to leave the 3 succulent prawns behind. I had only worked my way through a quarter of the noodles at that moment, and after decapitating a prawn, began working on the body.

Now, I have a very strange way of consuming cooked unshelled prawns. Unlike home-cooked prawn dishes in which Eden JieJie removes the legs and slits the shells before frying, prawns bought from other eateries come with their legs, head and even feelers intact. Hence, unless they happen to be Cereal Prawns - which shells have been fried to the point of extreme crispiness and can be consumed like chips - eating a prawn calls for some amount of dexterity with chopsticks and a spoon.

So, what I did with the decapitated prawns was to place them on the spoon, hold them still with my chopsticks and siphon out the flesh from the shells by gently exerting pressure near the tail. The hardest part of this process is to exert the right amount of pressure such that the prawn flesh actually moves out of the shell without the shell caving in. At that juncture, I was oh so tempted to whip out my sony ericsson and photograph whatever was left of the prawns, but figured that the horrendous mess of shell + spittle was too grotesque for my blog.

After seeing me work my way through all 3 prawns, lilbro John recounted an incident where a missionary friend ate prawns and their shells, and decided to try doing that with his 3 prawns. After biting off a segment of the 1st prawn's body and quite a bit of careful chewing, lilbro John declared it the worst prawn-eating experience ever.

And that was when he took out a packet of tissue paper from his own bag. 'I don't usually bring it', he explained, 'it just so happened that it was in my bag'.

Now I am not against male hygiene practices or what, but I have always felt uncomfortable around guys whose attitude towards bringing tissue paper differs from my brother's. It is no harm, in fact, it is a good practice for a man to be able to fish some tissue out of his bag (no matter how crinkled it is) whenever the need arises but somehow the thought of a creature with XY paying as much attention to it as XX does just reeks of 'sissy' to me i.e. would not leave the house unless he has like 5 packets in his bag (with snoopy prints on them for the matter). Hence, I am always very willing to dispense tissue paper to the men around me (just ask my male friends), but conversely, I cringe whenever someone of the same gender as me regards me as a tissue box. Ladies, please, let's take pride in bringing tissue paper along.