Face Stuffing
April 16th, 2005 by boon
I just got back from dinner, and it was a 3 hour ordeal. Thankfully, not all of it was eating. If there’s one national pastime that makes our call to fame, it’s overeating. Maybe I should survey outside the Klang Valley to make sure my statement is consistent.
I shall try to name thy temptations:
malay nasi lemak, nasi padang, and its variations
malay thai food
chinese tai chow style dishes
chinese dining (family style dinners around the table)
chinese hawker food
dim sum
bak kut teh
southern indian (nasi kandar, fried mee, fried nisin noodles (maggi mee), etc.)
northern indian
chicken rice (almost indigenous now)
penang hawker food (somehow has to be considered a separate category from chinese hawker food)
peranakan nonya food
Add to this list the growing number of western and european restaurants (American fast food and italian being the most popular), japanese and other east asian gourmets (mostly from hong kong or taiwan), and you have a country that is saturated in food culture.
Last month’s 21 days of fasting and prayer have now gone into “extended mode”, as we responded to God’s call to continue seeking for a revival to take place in our nation. And I realize now that fasting doesn’t just take you away from food. It takes you away from the people you love sometimes, because a lot of activity takes place around the dinner table. That’s the part that bugs me the most, I think.
I don’t operate in religious fasting (and neither does my church condone it), where we put on a mask of spiritual superiority to exclaim devoutness of our ‘faiths’. Fasting is about seeking God earnestly. It’s about getting on your knees and crying out to Him, in search for a clear answer, a manifestation of His power, a miracle to happen, and for warring against evil. So, although physically it’s denial of food, spiritually it’s much more than that (if your heart is in the right place).
Anyway, I’m not really taking part in the extended fasting period, because I like to eat too much (which is bad). But now that I am finding myself eating more than I should, it worries me where it previously had not (which is good).
No, I shouldn’t even think of the gym as an excuse for overeating. So, I guess it’s all a matter of timing. I think I would enjoy less elaborate meals that take up so much more time (especially in preparation), and more time doing other non-food activities. Now if I could just convince everyone else of the same thing.
When I was in midwest Kansas, there was a lot of baking and boiling… most of which did not take up a lot of effort. I admit that I do miss the soups and casseroles that you just couldn’t find in restaurants. It’s just plain ol’ midwestern home cooked lovin’. I hope to re-live that experience a bit when we get our own apartment and a new oven and stove. Otherwise it’s gonna be crockpot madness for the first few months until we cave in and buy a stove.
Oh well, for now… I’m just going to try to think of better ways of using my time instead of eating so much.