Weight Update

Earlier this year I wrote that my weight, for the first time in my life, had crept north of 60 kg, and that I was trying to get it back down. I then neglected to post any updates, no doubt keeping my readers on tenterhooks.

Well, long story short, I got it down to the 59 kg range, then went on a long holiday to Malaysia where I ate out a lot (they have amazing food), and ended up at over 61 kg.

Now it's back under 60 kg, and I plan to keep it that way.

It seems that for me, the most reliable way to reduce weight is to cut down on rice. Just a few days of eating bread, chicken soup and boiled veg for lunch, instead of my usual generous portion of rice, helped me lose around 2 kg. Unfortunately, humans just need rice – or at least, I do.

But that's if I'm trying to lose weight. If I'm just trying to maintain my current weight, it seems I can keep eating rice, as long as I do some light exercise – which I should be doing anyway.

I like sports, but I've never been one for going to a gym or working out for the sake of it. Lately, to help me stick to a light daily exercise routine, habit stacking has been a very useful strategy.

My electric toothbrush has a two-minute cycle with short pauses after every 30 seconds, which is super helpful as an exercise timer. While brushing, I do squats for the first minute, and calf raises for the next minute. This way I'm doing some lower-body exercise at least twice a day.

I shower twice a day, and before each shower, I try to do ten pushups. While boiling water for my coffee, I do some toe-touches. While watching movies or YouTube videos on my computer, I do a few minutes of skipping or light jogging on the spot. And before going to sleep, I do some reclining hip stretches, though I haven't settled on a specific routine yet.

A pretty light regimen, all things considered – but it's better than nothing!

Humans Just Need Rice

"Humans just need rice, don’t they? Basically," says Reiko, the protagonist's best friend in Butter – a novel by Asako Yuzuki.

I don't know about all humans, but I certainly do, and many of my Asian friends are the same.

In The Solitary Gourmet (2024), the protagonist, who is Japanese, goes to a restaurant in Paris. He orders onion soup and beef bourguignon, which comes with bread and roasted vegetables. "This is traditional French food," he says, as he eats with relish. "Amazing."

But moments later:

Goro-san, I know exactly how you feel.

I also like this t-shirt from the same movie: "All of sudden [sic], I feel hungry."

I know exactly how he feels too.

My Favourite Dishes in Singapore

When I lived in London, I used to look forward to TimeOut magazine's annual 100 best dishes list. It made me realise that I prefer Best Dishes lists over the more common Best Restaurants lists. The latter often include criteria like ambience, service and so on, which are generally less important to me. I also like going to a place with a specific dish in mind that I want to try. Some restaurants have one or two standout dishes, but the rest of the menu may not rise to the same level. For example, I go to Dishoom mainly for their famous black dal, slow-cooked over 24 hours. Their other dishes are okay, but with the possible exception of their brunch menu, they wouldn't keep me coming back.

In that vein, and before I forget, I thought I'd list my favourite dishes in Singapore. It's a relatively low-effort list – no reviews; just the basic info, and in some cases, photos. But a post like this is anyway more for my records. If it benefits anyone else, that's a bonus.

Many of the dishes on my list are under SGD 10, and the most expensive (tenchirashi soba) is around SGD 20. I've eaten at fancier places too, but I'm partial to hawker-centre and food-court recommendations. So in no particular order:

1. Xiao long bao at Zhong Guo La Mian, Chinatown Complex

2. Char siew bao at Tanjong Rhu Pau, Balestier (they also have other outlets, which I haven't tried)

3. Barbecue stingray at Rong Guang BBQ Seafood, Makansutra Gluttons Bay (permanently closed). I liked this place, although Newton Food Centre is more famous for BBQ stingray and seafood in general.

4. Chicken satay at Satay, Sembawang Hills Food Centre

5. Garlic prawn at A Kitchen, Novena (they also have other outlets, which I haven't tried). This dish doesn't actually appear on the menu. But they have garlic crawfish, and we ask them to make the same dish but with prawn (imo tastier, and significantly cheaper).

6. Whampoa Food Centre has good food, such as black carrot cake at Tanglin Halt A1 Carrot Cake, and beancurd with enoki mushroom at Xiong Sheng Kitchen. The Thai stall next to Xiong Sheng does a solid Thai basil pork with rice.

7. Classic Yangnyeom burger at Phat Fingers. This was a chain, but a lot of their outlets have closed down. From a quick look, it seems the Changi outlet might be the last one standing.

8. Spicy chicken mentai don at Mentai-Ya, Toa Payoh (permanently closed). I would sometimes eat here on my way back from Toa Payoh Public Library.

9. Beef pepper rice at Pepper Kitchen (various locations, usually in mall food courts, e.g. 313 Somerset). I would eat here after visiting the late lamented Orchard Library.

10. Salted egg chicken rice, at Yuan Wei Xiao Pin Mini Wok, Funan mall

11. Teriyaki chicken rice hot plate, at Sun You Japanese & Korean Food, Eunos Crescent Food Centre. Similar dishes are available at many hawker centres and kopitiams, but the Eunos one is better and cheaper than others that I've tried.

12. There are three nasi lemak places that I'm a fan of.
Husk, Bugis Cube for their sous vide beef rendang set
Yoshi's Kitchen, Toa Payoh for orange chicken karaage (first image below)
Madness Nasi Lemak, Fortune Centre (second image) for the ayam berempah set

13. Oyako donburi at Kemuri BBQ, Balestier Plaza

14. DBJ chicken at Liu Lang Mian Noodle Bar, Alexandra

15. Tenchirashi soba at Shimbashi Soba, Paragon

16. Green chilli ramen at Liu Kou Shui, Bukit Canberra Hawker Centre. They have another outlet in Woodleigh, which I haven't tried.

17. Pandan cheese minirolls by Dorisgoz, a home baker who offers free pickup at Redhill, as well as islandwide delivery for a fee

2025 New Things List

Last year I wrote a post about a few first-time experiences and new things that I tried in 2024. This year I thought I'll do the same, but whether this will become an annual tradition remains to be seen. Some of the categories are repeats from last year (food, sports, videography) while others are new.

Black chicken

I had seen black chicken on sale in wet markets, but I hadn't tried it until my friend made this stew for me. Silkie chickens, as they are called, have white feathers, but their flesh and even their bones are black. They taste like regular chicken, just a bit gamier because they are usually free-range.

60 kg (132 lbs)

One time at a house party, my friend, who was a few drinks down, was describing the ideal body type that she aspires to. Legs like X, boobs like Y, and so forth (all celebrities, though I don't remember their names). After running through the list, she paused and added one more: "And Sroyon's metabolism."

All my life, I've been lucky enough to be able eat whatever I wanted and still be a healthy weight. I was underweight in college, but for the last ten years, I've been in the 57–59 kg range. But I always told myself that if I ever hit 60 kg, I'll do something about it.

In the last two months of 2025, I was socialising and therefore eating out a lot, and not playing sports as regularly as I did before. And sure enough, in December, I clocked in at 60.4 kg.

It's not concerning by any means – I did a body composition analysis recently, which said my recommended weight is around 63 kg – but if I do gain weight, it should ideally be muscle and not fat. So now I stopped taking sugar with coffee, eating fruit for breakfast, and exercising more. Nothing drastic, but this is the first time in my life that I am actively trying to lose weight. My metabolism is still fast, but alas, not what it used to be.

Badminton coaching

As kids, many of us went to classes for music, painting, etc., but it's less common for adults – at least the adults I grew up around. But the cool thing about being a grown-up, if you are fortunate enough to have some disposable income, is that if you want to learn a skill, you can just pay someone to teach you.

I generally like to learn stuff on my own – I'm doggedly sticking to self-study for Spanish, though I know I'd make faster progress if I had a teacher – but with badminton, which I play recreationally, I realised last year that I had hit a plateau.

My friend recommended a badminton coach, and after a few sessions with Anthony, my game has improved a lot. I have more to say about it, but maybe that's a topic for another day, and a standalone post.

I like the different flavours of shuttlecock motion-blur that you can see in the sequence below: an instant of stillness at the apex, slightly blurry as it drops, and a streak as it leaves my racquet.

MRT station video advert

I've had photos displayed in public spaces, but not video. Until last year, when my friend Emiri spotted – and reacted quickly enough to record – this advert at an MRT (subway) station. It features a clip from a video which I made for Sigma Contemporary Dance. Blink and you'll miss it!

Malaysia

I went to Malaysia for the first time last year, to play pickleball in the border town of Johor Bahru. In the older parts of town I saw some interesting signage and typography. Maybe I'll compile them in another post, but meanwhile I wanted to share this one which I particularly liked – a random metal plaque outside a Commissioner for Oaths office. The Chinese text, apparently, says the same thing.

The Lambs Multiply on Balestier

Grassy patch in front of a restaurant in my neighbourhood (Chuan Yang Ji, specialising in lamb).

It appears that the lambs, previously featured on Dangerous Sheep and The Lamb Lies Down on Balestier, have multiplied. Three sheep and three lambs, where previously there were two and one respectively.

The Number of Hours We Have Together

The other day my friend Muzi and I were going to a mall for dinner. Her place is on my bus route to the mall, and we were trying to coordinate so she could get on the same bus.

The mall is about four stops from her place, so all this frantic coordination was for an 8-minute bus ride (as opposed to simply meeting at the mall). We should have known it was bound to fail, given Muzi's lack of yuanfen with the 145 bus.

I have another friend, Juliet, with whom I play pickleball at various venues around town. She has a car, and often suggests I go to a bus-stop near her place from where she can give me a ride. In some cases it would have been just as easy for me to go to the court directly, but if she gives me a ride, we get a bit more time together, which is nice. Maybe I'm growing sappy with age, but I find it rather touching – these little things people do to spend a few extra minutes together.

All this reminds me of these lines from For M by Mikko Harvey:

The number
of hours
we have
together is
actually not
so large.
Please linger
near the
door uncomfortably
instead of
just leaving.
Please forget
your scarf
in my
life and
come back
later for
it.

* * *

From anything by Adrianne Lenker: "Carol has a little if we need some / Joa has a ride if we wanna come."

The first line is probably a drug reference, but it makes me think of close-knit groups where you freely borrow and share and exchange stuff.

The other day Juliet messaged me at 7:30am, asking if I want to join a game at 8:30. I got out of bed, quickly showered and left the house. When I got there she handed me chocolate milk and a banana, saying "I figured you didn't have time for breakfast."

* * *

There are a couple of companies which send me photography gear to test and review. My contact at one of these companies made a passing reference to "other influencers", which tickled me because it implies that I'm an influencer too.

I told a few people about it, and they all said something along the lines of "Face it, you are an influencer." But Abbi had a different take:

Abbi:	Look at you moving up in the world Actually, I think this would be a downgrade
me:	😳 Downgrade from what?
Abbi:	Who you are and what you do

It's another example of seeing the best in me.

Butter

A few months ago I read Butter by Asako Yuzuki, which is advertised as "the cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer, and the journalist intent on cracking her case".

I heard about it from my friend, who picked it up in a bookshop. She said the bookshop lady described it as "unhinged" – a description which naturally intrigued my friend, and in turn, me.

I was also intrigued by a quote which appears on the back cover. The (alleged) serial killer Manako Kajii tells the journalist, Rika:

there are two things that I simply cannot tolerate: feminists and margarine.

I'm okay with feminists – I'd say I'm one myself – but as long-time readers of this blog may recall, I don't like margarine either.

Butter has some excellent descriptions of food, including, as you would expect, butter. Kajii sings the praises of Échiré, an expensive French brand, and Rika decides to buy it. ("In the Échiré butter shop, which looked like a fancy boutique, she bought a pat of butter that cost almost 1,000 yen for just 100 grams. Never before had Rika spent that kind of money on ingredients.")

I don't recall trying Échiré before, so I bought it too, all the while wondering how many other readers have done the same. The Échiré was almost three times the price of the supermarket's own-brand butter (pictured below).

The photo is from a blind test which my friend and I conducted. We were both able to identify the Échiré with no difficulty whatsoever: it's a more complex and pleasing taste. But we also concluded that it's too expensive for regular use. Now we both use Président, another French brand which is priced somewhere in between. Perhaps not as good as Échiré, but it's good enough.

2024 New Things List

I've never done a year-end wrap type of post, but I was thinking back on first-time experiences and new things that I tried in 2024. I wrote about some of them already, like mechanical keyboards, dengue and kombucha (surely the first time that these three things have featured on the same list), but here are five more.

Eating durian by the roadside

I've eaten durian many times before, but not freshly-cut-open durian by the roadside. Since moving to Singapore, I'd sometimes see people eating durian at roadside stalls, usually at night, and it always seemed like a Cool Thing to Do. In 2024 I tried it not once but twice – first with my friend Muzi, at Wonderful Durian in Geylang:

...and later with three other friends at a stall in my own neighbourhood. It's every bit as fun as it looks. They give you plastic gloves because durian has a very strong smell (famously, it's not allowed on Singapore buses).

The durian experience with Muzi was right after we watched a fire-dragon dance at a Taoist temple (where I took this photo). It was also my first time watching a fire-dragon dance.

Crying in English

This one's a bit more sombre than eating durian.

Last summer, one of my close friends was diagnosed with stage IV cancer (she is still doing okay, and I'm an optimist – we both are – so we will see).

The day after her diagnosis, I was doing a publicity shoot for a contemporary dance company run by my friends Chiok and Guofeng. I'm friends with the other dancers too, and photoshoots are always lively and fun. But that day, during a break, I was sitting quietly on my own. Chiok asked me what happened. I told her, and she gave me a dramatic hug.

I think this is the first (and so far only) time that I cried in English. I don't cry much in general, and when I do, it's often on my own. I've occasionally cried with other people, but they happened to be Bengali, so I would be talking (and crying) in Bengali too.

Anyway the photos turned out well, and Sigma (the dance company) used them for their ongoing production, Streams Where Deer Drink.

Videography

It was also thanks to Sigma that I got into videography. It's a long (and somewhat amusing) story which I won't get into here, but in the space of one week, I went from someone who used his camera exclusively for stills and knew next to nothing about video, to shooting the dance trailer for Streams Where Deer Drink. And using a gimbal, which was also a first for me.

I then went on to shoot the trailer and some rehearsal footage (screenshot below) for another Sigma show, and I have some more video projects lined up in the next couple of months. Fun times.

Mini PC

I had a desktop computer in college. Laptops were expensive back then (or seemed that way), and I only bought mine after I got a proper job. Since then, I only used laptops.

My current laptop, an Asus Zenbook, is over nine years old. It's still fine for work (which is document-based), emails and browsing, but it struggles with photo editing, and video is virtually impossible.

I was initially thinking about getting a replacement laptop. Desktop computers, in my head, were either big and clunky, or petite but relatively expensive like the Mac Mini. But then I discovered the world of Windows mini PCs – a development which I was completely oblivious to. You tune out of the PC world for ten years, and look what they come up with. I feel like Rip Van Winkle awakening to a new world order.

I immediately went down a rabbit-hole of research, as one does, and emerged with a Beelink Series 5 Max.

I already had all the peripherals, but in my home setup, I used to plug them into my laptop. The Beelink, which sits under my riser, takes up even less space, and is more than enough computer for my needs. I can edit videos in DaVinci Resolve or large multi-layer images in Affinity Photo, all while listening to Spotify and with multiple browser tabs open. Ryzen 5 processor, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, pre-installed Windows 11 – all this in a device the size of four CD cases stacked on top of each other. The future is here.

Pickleball

Finally, 2024 was the year I got into pickleball.

My friend Li Ling, pictured above, introduced me to a group which plays every day (though we go about once a week). I've never played sports in a group that has so much age diversity – we have people of all ages, from teenagers to retirees, and they are a fun, warm and welcoming bunch. We played with a guy in his twenties who used to be on the national badminton team, and a woman who is 74 but has a fearsome forehand smash. I might also start playing with another group in a different part of town.

Blog note: Last year I wrote that 24 blogposts a year is a good number to aim for. This year I wrote 44, which is the most since 2012! Still I will keep my targets modest. Once again, I would be happy with 24 posts in 2025. Happy new year!

Near-Perfect Contentment

There's a Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin says "Happiness isn't good enough for me! I demand euphoria!" I like happiness and euphoria too (who doesn't) but perhaps what I aspire to even more is contentment.

In my final year of college, I experienced a moment of near-perfect contentment.

I was standing on the balcony of our hostel (dorm), looking out. I had a job offer (frankly, a very desirable job offer – although I quit a few years later, but that's a different story), I felt part of a community (my college friends who I hung out with almost every day), and my days were full and fun. At the same time, I was aware that this period of my life was about to end, and the community that I loved so much would soon disperse. But perhaps this sense of transience – mono no aware – is also a necessary part of near-perfect contentment.

Anyhow, I resolved to try and remember that moment. Since then, I have had three or four such moments – I mean, moments when I experience near-perfect contentment, and consciously try to remember it.

One such moment was when I was living and working in Tokyo. It was a weekend or a public holiday. I was having breakfast (I had a serviced apartment with a complimentary breakfast buffet – that was the life), reading a very good book (Underground by Murakami), and looking forward to a day of exploring Tokyo.

Another was more recently, in Singapore. I was in a mall – Lucky Plaza, which is one of the older malls (I have a soft spot for older malls, and Lucky Plaza is a cute name) – and I was waiting for two friends whom I was meeting for lunch. From where I stood, I was overlooking Orchard Road, a prime spot for people-watching. I had headphones on – I even remember the song I was listening to: Tantra Practice by Emily Lind (it has the line "Twenty bucks for lucky weed," which now always reminds me of Lucky Plaza). I was looking forward to the lunch – Filipino food, and the friends I was meeting are two of my favourite people in the world – and also to a contemporary dance performance which I was going for afterwards. I enjoyed the dance show too.

In my last post I was reflecting on final thoughts: "whether I'll want to be fully present in the moment, or perhaps, drift off as I relive a happy memory." I still don't know the answer, but if I were to relive a happy memory, one of these near-perfect contentment moments would be a good option. However, I think I have an even better candidate.

Since I graduated from college, I have mostly lived in other countries. When I go back home to Kolkata, I often have afternoon tea with my parents – milky tea with biscuits (Britannia Marie Gold or cream crackers). I haven't consciously "recorded" a moment of near-perfect contentment during teatime with my parents – they kind of blur into one – but in the moment, I feel happy, grounded and loved. Winter-afternoon light filtering through the windows, my mum telling us about some bird she saw that morning, and biscuits dipped in chai.

Thanksgiving

My friend Abbi's 3-year-old nephew made this Thanksgiving Turkey – or rather his mom filled it in for him, but he told her what to write.

It says water bottle, my guitar pick, snacks, new baby sister, Aunt Lisa, zoo, Daddy, Mama, Aunt Abbi, Uncle Nate.

I asked Abbi about the guitar pick and she said, "My mom found one and gave it to him (he loves music and has a little pretend guitar). But he lost it 😂"

Anyway, I love guitar pick and water bottle – that he is thankful for objects – and cheap, everyday objects at that. It got me thinking about cheap, everyday objects that I am thankful for.

I recently got these plastic drawers which were only S$5 each (you can see them on the shelf below the typewriter).

I used to keep my art supplies in my storeroom, but now that I have them in my study, in neatly organised drawers, I use them more.

I'm likewise thankful for my cotton bedsheet, a pair of sneakers that I got for a steal (secondhand but unused), and a mint-blue retro-style toaster which I found abandoned in our recycling bay.

In my previous post, there's a photo of Chiok (who made the pomelo kombucha) and our mutual friend Emiri. Emiri is Japanese, and said itadakimasu before drinking. Chiok's partner Guofeng asked her what it means, and Emiri said it's a way of saying thanks.

Guofeng:	Like thanks to Chiok, for making the kombucha?
Emiri:	To everyone. To Chiok, to the farmer who grew the pomelo, the people you bought ingredients from, and also to the pomelo.

Purple Kombucha and Other Developments

In last month's post I talked at length about homebrewed kombucha, but I forgot to say – and I will just put it out there without false modesty – it's really good. Or as the kids say, my kombucha slaps. A few people have independently told me that it's the best kombucha they ever tasted.

I continue to experiment with different flavours. The bottle on the right is plain kombucha, but the one on the left has blue-pea tea (my neighbour got dried blue-pea flowers from an organic farm in Thailand, and gave me some to try).

My blue-pea kombucha is purple because anthocyanin, the pigment in blue-pea flowers, is a pH indicator. It's blue in water, but if you add an acid – like lemon juice or kombucha – it turns purple.

I still do kombucha-tastings with Chiok and Guofeng, who, like me, got their SCOBY from my friend Violet. Pictured below is Chiok's grapefruit and pomelo kombucha, which also slaps.

I also started making water kefir (below left) which is another fermented drink. Also tasty, and easier than kombucha – shorter fermentation time, and only needs sugar (not tea). But to me, it's not as delicious and complex as good kombucha.

The jar on the right is kombucha-pickled cherries, flavoured with cinnamon and star anise. These turned out okay – nothing special. But you ideally want fresh cherries, and I could only find frozen ones here in Singapore. If I find fresh cherries, I might try it again, because the recipe looks promising.

New Hobby: Kombucha

For my birthday which was a couple of months ago, my friend Violet (who has Many Hobbies) gave me a layer from her SCOBY and thus initiated me into a new hobby: brewing kombucha.

There are lots of online resources, but if you're not familiar with the process – which I wasn't, until recently – here's a quick summary of how to make this funky fermented tea.

The SCOBY is a living thing, short for symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast ("yum," said my friend Abbi, when I told her what it stands for). It has the texture of a rubber mat, and typically floats on the surface of the brewing vessel.

Well, I say "typically floats", but when I started my second batch of fermentation, my SCOBY sank partially, ending up suspended halfway down the jar. I looked online to see if it's a bad sign, and found reassuring comments like "Nothing wrong with the scoby sinking!" and my favourite: "Scoby does whatever it wants to do."

Anyhow, now it floats again.

For the first fermentation (F1), you put the SCOBY, water, tea and cane sugar in a jar, cover the mouth with cloth, and let the microorganisms do their thing. I use loose-leaf oolong tea from Fujian province, purchased from NTUC. Here you see the tea being steeped in hot water, before I strain out the leaves and use the liquor for F1.

After about a week of F1, it's technically kombucha, and ready to drink. However, most people do another fermentation step (F2), which is when the drink is flavoured and carbonated.

F2 takes 2–3 days. You simply pour off the kombucha – leaving the SCOBY and a bit of extra liquid in the jar for the next round of fermentation – into a sealable container like a flip-top bottle. Then you add whatever you want to flavour it with, such as fruit juice, purée, herbs or spices, and seal the bottle. These are two bottles from my most recent batch: strawberry and mint (left) and pomegranate (right):

If the flavouring agent has some sugar content – like puréed fruit, which is a popular choice – then that should be enough to carbonate the brew. Otherwise, e.g. if you're just adding herbs or spices, you can add cane sugar for carbonation.

For my first batch, I made two bottles: dragonfruit and grape. Violet said her kombucha is not very fizzy, so I figured mine would be similar. Most people recommend F2 for 2-3 days. I gave it 3 days, to ensure adequate more carbonation. This is what happened when I opened the bottles:

The video on the left (dragonfruit) is playing at regular speed, but the one on the right (grape) is at 3x (I sped it up to fit). I suspect the grape kombucha was less fizzy because after 3 days of F2, I kept it overnight in the fridge, which slows down the fermentation process and also makes the gas more soluble.

I'm lucky the bottles didn't explode – thanks Ikea. Since then, I've reduced F2 to two days, which seems about right. My kombucha is fizzy but not excessively so.

Healthy SCOBY grows thicker with time, forming more layers – so you can peel off a layer and give it to a friend. Violet bought her SCOBY online, but then she gave some to me, and also to our mutual friends Chiok and Guofeng. So now we all make kombucha, experiment with different flavours, and compare notes. I took this pic at a recent tasting session at Chiok and Guofeng's place.

Since then, three more people have asked me for SCOBY. Soon this SCOBY will colonise Singapore, with only the wild boar for competition.

Bengali Ghee

Food preferences are inherently subjective – shaped by culture, what we eat in our formative years, and individual taste. Having said that, can we all agree that Bengali ghee is objectively superior.

Compared to ghee from the rest of India (let's call this "non-Bengali ghee"), Bengali ghee is cooked longer and at a higher temperature, which makes it more caramelised, grainier in texture, darker, and slightly sweeter. The two are so different that they almost shouldn't be called by the same name.

Non-Bengali ghee is basically a cooking medium. Bengali ghee can be used that way too, but it also tastes amazing in its pure form. In fact, the simpler the dish, the more it shines. Bengali ghee with steaming basmati rice and a pinch of salt is pure perfection.

When I visit Kolkata, ghee is one of the things I always bring back with me. Because for whatever reason, it's difficult if not impossible to find outside Bengal, let alone in other countries.

When my friend Bronwen came to visit us in Copenhagen, we fed her Bengali ghee with rice and begun bhaja. The ghee, as you would expect, blew her mind.

Bronwen lives in a village in Wales which has no Indian stores, so she said the next time her dad went to Cardiff, she would ask him to get some ghee for her. I warned her that this would almost certainly be non-Bengali ghee, but she said, "Oh it's fine, I probably can't even tell the difference."

A few weeks later she texted me saying, "My dad brought me some ghee, and what the fuck, this is completely different, nowhere near as nice!" I said I told you so.

Mustafa, a giant supermarket in Singapore which specialises in South Asian products, has two whole aisles of ghee, but no Bengali ghee.

In a way, it's annoying, not being able to find Bengali ghee in various countries that I have lived in. But a part of me is perversely pleased that Bengali ghee is such a hidden gem; a closely-guarded secret, accessible only to us. It's a complicated feeling – not easy to express, but I've tried my best:

Night Picnic

On Chinese New Year's Eve, I had a picnic with two Chinese friends at the Singapore Botanic Gardens. It was truly impromptu – my friend texted me when I was about to cook dinner, and we met at the park an hour later.

We hung out till after midnight, and it was a memorable evening for me. One of those times when everything comes together perfectly – a core memory, as my GenZ friends say. The only downside was that despite dousing ourselves with herbal bug-spray and my friend burning white sage ("It clears bad vibes, not sure about insects"), we were being eaten alive by mosquitoes.

CNY Eve, as you would expect, is traditionally celebrated with Chinese food. But I got Indian food as requested, and my friends brought pizza and grilled chicken. I remarked it was funny how none of us got Chinese food, to which my friend said, "At least the mosquitoes are getting authentic Chinese blood."

My friends were teaching me random Chinese phrases, among which was luchabiao or green-tea bitch – a woman who is calculating, but pretends to be innocent and pure, usually to attract men. Obviously it's a problematic term and not one we would use, but for my cultural edification, they gave me various examples of luchabiao behaviour.

A short while later, I was trying to open a bottle of ice tea with a very tight lid. I tried for a bit (unsuccessfully), then passed it to my friend, asking her if she wanted to have a go.

"Now this is green-tea bitch behaviour," she said, "except the gender roles are reversed."

Caterpillar Rescue on the DHR

Fourteen years ago, I travelled by train from Siliguri (120 metres above sea level) to Darjeeling (2,045 m) – a seven-hour journey on the magnificent Darjeeling Himalayan Railway.

Last week, I took the DHR from Darjeeling down to Siliguri. (A separate trip. Don't worry, I haven't been stuck in Darjeeling all this while.)

The train, as you can see from this photo, passes alarmingly close to houses and shops.

Much of the route is forested, and the train also passes alarmingly close to trees, frequently brushing against leaves and branches.

One such branch had five caterpillars who were scooped onto the windowpane. We were worried that they would fall onto the road and get crushed by vehicles, so when the train stopped midway as it sometimes does, we decided to try and rescue them.

My friend picked them up with a boarding pass. I got off the train and ferried the caterpillars, one by one, to the trees on the other side of the road that runs alongside the tracks.

Another rescue-related anecdote, while we're at it. One of our university colleagues in Singapore is part of a food rescue initiative. Except sometimes, the food rescue team can't distribute all the food in time, so they request me and my friend T to help finish or distribute the food before it spoils.

T and I call ourselves: Team Food Rescue Rescue 😎

Dangerous Sheep

There's a restaurant on my street which specialises in lamb soup. It's an old-school place – the shop-sign is in Mandarin only, and the staff speak little or no English. Outside, they have these three sheep, like lawn ornaments.

I pass the sheep almost every day, and they never fail to amuse. I honestly didn't think the tableau could be improved upon. But there's some renovation work going on, and the other day, on the bus back, I saw this sign and safety mesh.

Quick grab-shot on my phone from the upper storey of a double-decker bus, but at least we have a record. When I went back with my camera, the sign and netting had been removed. "Shoot it now," says Jay Maisel. "When you come back, it will always be different."

Miquailangelo Eggs

I've been meaning to try making marbled eggs for a while now, and having found a good deal on quail eggs at my local wet market, I asked my friend if she wanted to attempt the experiment together. She was charmed by photos on this recipe site; they look, as she put it, "like they were chiselled out of marble by Michelangelo."

"You mean Miquailangelo," I said.

So now we call them Miquailangelo eggs.

We boiled the eggs, gently cracked them with a teaspoon, then steeped them in black tea for two hours to get the marbled pattern.

 

Here is one such egg, in a salad with roasted sweet potatoes, cherry tomatoes and feta cheese.

Quail eggs – at least the ones I bought – require extreme delicacy in peeling, because the marbling is imprinted on the membrane, not on the albumen itself. And it's hard to peel the shell without damaging the membrane.

My friend could do it, but I couldn't – especially not when hangry. Don't peel eggs in hanger, she said.

I expanded on it (too hangry to peel eggs, but not too hangry to write parodies):

Slip inside

A finger in the shell—

No need to do it well,

Just crack the damn thing wide.

Conversations with Chinese Friends

Years ago I posted about a lawyer friend referring to Kyoto as "the protocol place". It happened again yesterday with my Chinese friend, who is an assistant professor of environmental law. This was just after she told me that she went to Japan on holiday.

Me: Oh, where did you go?

Friend: Tokyo and... what do you call that place? Jīngdū?*

Me: ...

Friend: You know, where we had the protocol!

* Jīngdū (京都), as I found out, is the Chinese name for Kyoto.

* * *

Another conversation with a Chinese friend who speaks very little English (but that's all we have, since I speak no Chinese at all):

Friend: In my province, the main... I can't remember that word. For example, Christmas is an important ___?

Me: Festival?

Friend: Yes, festival! So we can use English to learn English.

It's a form of what programmers call bootstrapping. In Bengali, we have a great phrase for it: মাছের তেলে মাছ ভাজা (literally: frying fish in fish fat). When you lightly heat a piece of fish, the fat starts to melt, and thereafter you can fry it in its own fat. I guess it works for bacon too, but Bengalis eat a lot of fish, so we have several excellent proverbs and idioms about them.

The Seven Precepts for Drinking Tea

Sen no Rikyū was a Japanese poet, philosopher and ikebana artist. He is most famous, however, as a tea master – perhaps the most influential figure in the history of chanoyu, the Japanese way of tea.

Recently, in a book about Zen Buddhism, I came across his seven precepts for drinking tea:

•	Make a satisfying bowl of tea.
•	Lay the charcoal so that the water boils efficiently.
•	Evoke a sense of coolness in the summer and warmth in the winter.
•	Arrange the flowers as though they were in the field.
•	Be ready ahead of time.
•	Be prepared in case it should rain.
•	Act with utmost consideration toward your guests.

I like the sentiments, and of course the economy of expression. "Be prepared in case it should rain," for example, is not just about rain, but unexpected events in general.

A tea ceremony I attended at Hama-Rikyū Gardens in Tokyo

Rikyū is associated with wabi-cha, a school of chanoyu which emphasises simplicity. Evidently, he walked the talk. In Kyoto, he designed one of the smallest tea rooms ever built – a mere 2 jō (3.6 square metres) in size. The unit jō is based on the area of a tatami mat – one for the host, and one for the guest.

Rikyū also said, "All you need to know about chanoyu is this: boil the water, make the tea and drink it."

* * *

Speaking of small architecture, last week I met a Japanese environmental law professor. When I heard that she's from Sapporo, I brought up the clock tower, specifically, its status as one of Japan's sandai gakkari (top 3 disappointments). This was news to her. "Why?" she asked, "Because it's small?"

I said yes, apparently that's one major reason.

She said "Nooooo. It's pretty because it's small."

Protip: Translated Recipes

Finding authentic recipes online is not always easy, especially for dishes originating outside of Western Europe and North America. If you do a Google search for, say, <hummus recipe> or <chimichurri recipe>, chances are that the first few recipes will be by (a) a celebrity chef, or (b) a lifestyle blogger who encountered this dish on their travels, came back to their flat in London or Brooklyn and recreated the recipe but with added kale.

Anyway, the purpose of this post is not to make snide comments on culinary appropriation and search engine optimisation. Rather, I am here to present a simple and – if I may say so myself – elegant solution to the aforementioned problem. The solution exploits the fact that Google Translate is now advanced enough that, with a bit of common sense (or cross-checking against other recipes if needed), most recipes can be followed in translation.

Here's an example. I read somewhere about Vietnamese egg coffee, and wanted to try it at home. Now rather than search for <Vietnamese egg coffee recipe>, what I did was:

• Go to Google Translate.
• Translate "egg coffee recipe" to Vietnamese, which gives me công thức cà phê trứng.
• Do a Google Search for <công thức cà phê trứng>.
• Click on a search result.
• Right click the page (in Chrome) and translate to English.

And here's the egg coffee we made, using this recipe. It was delicious.