‘What’s ‘quadrophbia’ mean?’ my dad asked.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Quadrophobia,’ he repeated. ‘Q-U-A-D-R-O-phobia.’

‘Huh? Fear of the number four?’

‘That’s Cantonese people,’ mum exclaimed. ‘Cantonese people are scared of the number 4.’

‘Yes! Yes, you’re right!’ My dad and I immediately knew what she meant.

Cantonese people will do everything they can to avoid the number four in house numbers, number plates, phone number and birthdays. In places like Hong Kong, Box Hill and Richmond (mini Hong Kongs in Melbourne), you’ll find that flats go from 3 to 3a, then 5. Buildings don’t have floors 4 or 44. All this quadrophobia is because in Cantonese, the number four (shi) sounds like ‘death’.

‘I’m going to look it up,’ I said.

I found two definitions for quadrophobia. Urban Dictionary says that it’s an irrational fear of things that come in fours, then give an example of someone who didn’t want to see a band with four musicians. The Wall Street Journal says that companies are quadrophobic because the number 4 only appears 8.5% of the time in quarterly earnings figures, instead of the expected 10%. It turns out that companies are rounding 4s down.

No mention of the widespread quadrophobia of Cantonese people. I like mum’s explanation best.

And now we’ve coined a new term — Octophilia, also a widespread Cantonese condition.

Today, I took my bike out for the first time in two months. Despite the interval, I could still more or less expertly unfold it and launch onto the road.

However, I was terribly wobbly. I almost immediately veered into the queue cars and vans parked along the street. How could my riding have become so rusty in two months?

I hopped off the bike and lifted it to the curb. Ten seconds inspection revealed the problem. The front tyre was flat.

I wheeled my bike to the second-hand bike store where I had bought my lock and lights. A man with a Canadian accent and two centimetres of cigarette butt in his hand helped me attach the bike pump to the wheel nozzle thing.

‘Have you got a puncture?’ he said. ‘It’s really flat.’

‘I haven’t ridden it in a while,’ I said hopefully. I hoped it wasn’t a flat. I don’t know how to fix those yet (Damjan did buy me a book, I’m sure I can look it up).

‘How can you tell?’ I asked. ‘If there’s a puncture, I mean.’ For some reason, I had a mental image of putting the tyre in a bath tub of water. It just flashed into my mind and I didn’t have time to figure out what it meant.

He said, ‘If it’s flat again tomorrow, then you’ve got a puncture.’

I took this to mean that it’d be fine for me to ride today, and so I continued on my planned 20 km ride along Regent’s Canal and Victoria Park.

It was cloudy but dry, a good day for cycling except it became chilly by late afternoon. Also, my helmet was probably on too tight so my head hurt.

The expedition ended two hours later, with front tyre still firm. I felt proud. This was the first independent longish bike ride I’ve done on my new bike.

Tomorrow, I will squeeze the front tyre to see if it’s lost much air. In the mean time, I’ve been pondering the strange mental bath tub image. I now know what it means.

As kids, Jason and I had a number of blow up vinyl toys (didn’t everyone?). For example, we had blow up baseball bats, which we used to swat each other.

Once a few rounds of swatting had occurred, these inflatables would eventually start losing air. I remember dad taking various inflatable toys to the bathroom, putting them in a full bath tub of water, and squeezing them. We then followed the stream of bubbles back to the indistinguishable location of the leak.

The inflatable was then dried and patched with sticky tape. And thus, it lived to fight another day.

I have been eating ‘spicy eggplant stir fry’ all week. It’s a recipe from bowl food, which my ex-housemate Richard gave me for Christmas.

I had bought all the ingredients on the weekend and was talking to mum on the phone about the recipe.

‘Sounds nice,’ mum said. ‘But if you fry eggplant, it will soak up a lot of oil. It’s not very healthy. Why don’t you bake or steam the eggplant instead?’

Later, Damjan confirmed it. ‘Well, yes, eggplant probably will absorb a lot of oil. That’s what makes it taste nice!’

However, in the interest of health, I decided I would take mum’s advice and steam the eggplant before frying it in the wok. I don’t have a steamer but I do have a rice cooker and a flat bottomed round metal container sized such that it would sit snugly in the rice cooker. The combination is an ideal no mess double steamer.

The experiment was successful, very tasty. You can recreate it yourself.

• 1.5 tbsp mápó sauce (Sichuan chilli bean sauce, of mápó tofu and ants climbing up trees fame)
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp vinegar
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 500g eggplant (I used around two medium sized ones), cut into cubes
• 1 onion, cut into slices
• 1 red chilli, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1/2 cup fresh coriander

Mix together mápó sauce, soy sauce, vinegar and sugar.

Steam eggplant until soft (or fry in oil and use paper towels to absorb excess oil).

Then fry the sauce and eggplant together. When finished, mix in the coriander.

The coriander is very good. I think it made the dish taste nice. Serve with rice.

Update
I sent this recipe to my mum and she immediately tried it out. She wrote:

‘Joan, I have just cooked the eggplant stir fry recipe that you gave me. It’s very tasty. For the next party I go to, I will bring this dish. Have a look at this photo. Is it like yours?’

Eggplant stir fry by mum

Mum, I’m glad you liked the recipe! I cut my eggplant into smaller pieces. I think your eggplant dish is more beautiful because of the dash of fresh green coriander sprinkled on top and it’s in a pretty bowl.

A question from Jason, my brother.

from Jason
to Joan
date 23 March 2009 22:00
subject Hey

Hey Joan,

You know that short story we read ages ago?
It had to do with the evolution of God.
Starting off with humans wanting to calculate entropy (or something like that) – and they built a computer, and the computer couldn’t do it, so it built a successor. Computer after computer, until eventually the computer was smart enough to figure it out – but existed only as pure energy. Unfortunately by the time it figured it out, there were no humans to tell, so it said “Let there be light..” and the process started again.

That short story – remember that? I’m trying to find it, any clues?

Ta

[Then...]

from Joan
to Jason
date 23 March 2009 22:11
subject Re: Hey

Hi Jason,

I was thinking about this story a while ago and I couldn’t remember where it had come from. I think it was by a famous science fiction author.

…I think it’s this one!!! ‘The Last Question’ by Isaac Asimov, indeed a famous author. http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

Joan

One of the best science fiction short stories ever. Read it!

[Update...]

from Jason
to Joan
date 23 March 2009 22:21
subject Re: Hey

that’s it! good find. how’d you manage that while typing an email??

 

from Joan
to Jason
date 23 March 2009 22:24
subject Re: Hey

Heh. I’ve now blogged about it too — http://www.joanko.net. I’m so fast

I thought it might be by Arthur C Clarke or Isaac Asimov. I searched in Google and ‘arthur c clarke humans build computer that becomes god short story’ and ‘isaac asimov humans build computer that becomes god short story’. The second search got it!

I was enjoying yum cha at a Chinese restaurant in Bayswater, west London. Yap said to me, ‘Do you know that word?’ He pointed to this character.

‘Luàn,’ I read. I knew this word. My mum had always lamented at how luàn my bedroom was. ‘It means messy.’

‘Ah,’ Yap nodded. He smiled. ‘Are you sure?’ Yes, I was sure, but then Yap pointed to the small print underneath the character.

Oh. Perhaps my mum had been more distressed about the state of my room than I thought.

I am a tender hearted person, really. I blink back tears when reading sad stories, watching advertisements designed to tug at the heartstrings, and go to great lengths to avoid maybe possibly slightly hurting someone’s feelings.

On the phone, my mum was telling me about this show she had been watching. ‘Jamie’s Fowl Dinners‘ had arrived in Australia.

I don’t like watching or hearing about animals suffering on their journeys to become food. You might say that I am wilfully ignorant. But there was no way I could ignore it this time because it was my mum telling me.

She said, ‘Did you know that chickens only grow for 42 days before they’re killed to be eaten? They grow up in cages and there’s not enough room for them to stand up. Because they don’t stand, they never grown bones properly. Their bones can’t even carry their own weight!’

‘EEEE, stop it, waaah!’ Tears were practically flowing down my face as I imagined the poor chickens, too fat and weak to stand up in the crowd.

‘Isn’t that interesting?’ mum marvelled. ‘I never knew!’

‘I wish they could grow chickens without brains,’ I lamented. ‘Just chicken bits that aren’t connected to feelings.’ Perhaps for some people, a chicken-sized brain is small enough to not worry about the chicken’s feelings.

Chicken is my favourite meat but I could no longer plead ignorance. From now on, I will only buy free range chicken. I already buy free range eggs.

Last week, I was proud of myself because to make sauteed chicken breasts with olive and caper sauce, I went straight to the fridge cabinet with the free range chickens. I didn’t even glance at the standard chickens.

I am lucky that I like leg pieces (thigh and drumstick) more than chicken breast. Chicken breast is very, very expensive. The free range variety is around £10 for two pieces. I used to buy chicken around once a month. To manage the extra cost, I will probably continue buying at the same frequency but smaller amounts.

My parents wanted to know if there was anything I needed from home. Damjan is visiting Australia and he can bring to the UK whatever I needed. I couldn’t think of anything when they asked me.

On Friday, my glasses fell apart. I caught the tiny screw in time and managed to put my glasses back together. It made me realise how vulnerable I was to glasses disasters. I had only one pair in this country.

So on the weekend, I called mum and dad.

‘Dad, can you give Damjan my old glasses? I think they’re in a black case in a green tub under my desk.’

Dad said, ‘I’ll go and look for them now…(short pause)… I think I’ve found them.’

‘Are they black? And squarish?’

‘No, not really,’ Dad said. ‘They’re more yellowish.’

‘Oh! Are they big? Or squarish? I have a really old pair, which are gold and round and really big. I don’t want those ones. I want the black ones.’

‘Hmm, I don’t think these are black…’

‘Can you send me a photo, dad? Then I can tell you if they’re the right ones.’

This morning, I was able to confirm they were the right glasses because this photo was in my inbox.

According to mum, the glasses weren’t showing up in the photo very well because the frame were too dark — which is why they had to find a model.

When mum and dad flew to Europe to visit me this year, they flew with Vietnam Airlines.

‘I was worried,’ mum said, ‘because people told us that Vietnam Airlines always overbooks its flights. I kept thinking, “What if we get to the airport and there is no space for us?”‘

Dad said, ‘You didn’t need to worry!’

‘I know…’ mum agreed.

‘Because if there aren’t any spaces, they have to put us in business class or first class! We kept hoping that it would happen. Upgrade! Upgrade! Upgrade!’

‘But you didn’t get one,’ I said.

‘No, we did!’ mum and dad chimed.

‘What? You didn’t tell me!’

‘We didn’t know we were going to business class. They gave us the boarding pass and we went in the airplane and when we found our seats, it was before we went through the curtain, you know, the one between business class and economy. “Eh? We’re in business class?”‘

Mum waved her arms about. ‘Oh, there was so much space. You could lie all the way down.’

‘You know who gave us the upgrade?’ Dad said to me. ‘You were there!’

After four days in Paris, my parents and I split up at Charles de Gaulle airport. I flew back to London Stansted, and mum and dad went back to Melbourne via Hanoi.

‘Oh! The short man. The dwarf!’ I remembered the check-in person. Dad nodded. I cocked my head to the left, thinking. ‘Maybe he was sneaky and happy that he could give you this surprise present… This reminds me of a few weeks ago. I went to a shop and asked the lady for five little cookies. When I opened the bag, there were six cookies!’

‘Lucky! Maybe it was an accident,’ mum suggested.

‘No. I think it was a present,’ dad decided.

‘You must think I’m crazy,’ mum said. I was in the kitchen watching her prepare a roast chicken. ‘The fridge is full of food and we’re going out to eat tonight, but I am still cooking.’

‘That’s okay, mum. It’s your hobby,’ I reassured her. I love my mum’s cooking. Since coming back to Melbourne, I have had all my favourite meals.

My mum is famous for the ‘little’ meals she prepares for my friends.

‘Oh, no trouble!’ she would say when people unexpectedly dropped by. ‘I’ll just throw something together, nothing special,’ and out of the kitchen would come a banquet.

Here is the menu from my 21st birthday dinner a few years ago.

By the end of Set 1, my guests had already conceded defeat — the tastebuds were willing but the stomach was full.

Yesterday, mum and I were in a homewares shop. I couldn’t find the muffin trays I wanted so we headed to the exit.

‘Hello!’ called the shop attendant.

‘Good morning,’ mum said.

‘Have you seen this before?’ The shop person held up a bright blue rubber tube. It was about three inches long and an inch diameter. Politely, we shuffled back into the shop to look at the tube.

‘Watch this,’ the shop person said. She inserted a clove of garlic into the tube, rolled it back and forth on the counter top, then shook the clove out into her hand. The garlic peel had been loosened.

‘In-teres-ting,’ mum said noncommittally.

‘Only two dollars!’ The shop person offered the tube to mum but mum stepped back.

‘Sorry,’ mum said, shaking her head regretfully. ‘I don’t cook.’

I gaped after mum as she waved to the shop person and walked out of the store.

I live in a nice neighbourhood. The houses are big and gardens are tidy. However, if you visit now, it’s starting to look like a ghetto. There’s rubbish on all the lawns: old furniture, dead computers, carpets and cardboard boxes. You can feel it in the air — it’s Hard Rubbish Day!

The first piles of junk started appearing about two weeks ago. It began with just one or two items.

“What’s going on?” mum and dad asked. “Is Hard Rubbish Day coming? How come we didn’t get a notice about it?”

In the next week, piles of junk appeared in front of more houses.

“Do they know something we don’t know?” We were bewildered. Finally, we caved into social pressure and assembled our own pile in front of the house. Our pile has big branches, an old toilet and a broken cupboard.

You’ve got to keep up with the Joneses.