Condemned Milk – Chien Swee-Teng

Condemned Milk – Chien Swee-Teng
Having a bao for afternoon tea, I thought maybe I should tell some of my friends that bao is my favourite food. But today, I will have it with tea with milk instead. Usually I prefer tea with a bit of sugar. But Mr Lee says, that the doctors say, tea is diuretic, he drinks only warm water now. In the kitchen, as I was scooping the sticky condensed milk into the cup, I thought about honey, caramel and other malty, sweet sticky stuff, the single drip that always stain the outside of the cup, the best evident of a cup not washed properly. I thought about those who pour fresh milk into their tea, about the time when I asked for condensed milk in a café, here not somewhere in Europe or your favourite country, Australia, and the look on your face, as if you were disgusted or disgraced by my request. I thought about those kids who grew up drinking condensed milk, around the fifties or forties, I vaguely recall an episode in a drama series where a young mother procuring a few canned of condensed milk for her baby, during the pre or post war years, is the script of an adventure, of one woman condemned to an adventure she did not volunteer for. The bad guy with a gunnysack filled with cans and cans of condensed milk for her. He once betrayed some Reds hiding in the jungle. But he is not turning into Santa Claus for her, he wants to rape her, his fingers turned into claws though, scratching her skin, he rips off the top buttons of her shirt, fully exposing her neck, her fair collar bones, and part of her chest. Anyway, it was an episode so long ago, about a time even further back than the drama series. I thought about your favourite author, Haruki Murakami and his list of international cuisine, about the hamburger steak his protagonist was having, about how to cook pasta. I thought about mushrooms, our conversation about mushrooms. Off guard, I mentioned the Narcissus mushrooms, the canned mushrooms, and it was another chance for you to show me another contorted facial expression, to remind me how refined taste for good quality food defines you. Yes, I know it is from China, and who knows what kind of liquid the evenly brown synthetic mushrooms were drowned in. Then I remember you told me you know quite a bit about art, and your favourite is Warhol’s Campbell soup cans. Food related art, food related metaphors, analogies and anecdotes… But we are still friends because we can always talk about food, actually only about food. Like most people in this country, I am also guilty of always talking about food. It is nice to talk only or mostly about food, because to eat is not to think.

"You are what you eat" - Feuerbach