My glasses are fogging up over a bowl of plain white rice (with salt!) because it's pouring and because I'm allergic to everything else in the fridge. (My mom thinks it's fun to keep gifting me food guest starring peanut butter. It is not.)
Maybe this is my belated attempt to empathize with Liberians, who more or less live on rice. Maybe I'm paying my respects to the "hunger season" (June -September). Most likely, though, I'm just too embarrassingly lazy to go to one of the five (5) supermarkets within half a mile.
Lately, I have no real interest in food; this is worrisome given that, in San Francisco, I was up to two breakfasts before 11am. I chug hot acidic water almost exclusively. I have also taken to watching the DStv programming channel. (That's the channel that tells you all the shit you're missing out on because you don't actually have DStv.) I shoot daggers at Will as he rinses his toothbrush in half a bottle of spring water and I run mine under the tap; I choose $7 mystery detergent over $21 Tide and scratch my skin to shreds for the rest of the month.
Someone I know once moved very far away for three years of voluntary suffering (also known as law school); he referred to this experience as his hairshirt. I seem to be having my own fling with self-inflicted pain.
There's a unique shame in rolling up on a country and living better than just about everyone. It makes you do strange things. Once a month, I drive my mom to a proper supermarket where she spends $50 on food she'll actually eat and $150 on food she'll gradually give away. Don't be fooled: my mother isn't charitable. It's just makes the next month of relative extravagance palatable.
In an episode of a series I'll pretend I never watched, the main character reflects on the torture that is med school. "Why do I keep hitting myself with a hammer? Because it feels so good when I stop."
Happy Eid to one and all.
Maybe this is my belated attempt to empathize with Liberians, who more or less live on rice. Maybe I'm paying my respects to the "hunger season" (June -September). Most likely, though, I'm just too embarrassingly lazy to go to one of the five (5) supermarkets within half a mile.
Lately, I have no real interest in food; this is worrisome given that, in San Francisco, I was up to two breakfasts before 11am. I chug hot acidic water almost exclusively. I have also taken to watching the DStv programming channel. (That's the channel that tells you all the shit you're missing out on because you don't actually have DStv.) I shoot daggers at Will as he rinses his toothbrush in half a bottle of spring water and I run mine under the tap; I choose $7 mystery detergent over $21 Tide and scratch my skin to shreds for the rest of the month.
Someone I know once moved very far away for three years of voluntary suffering (also known as law school); he referred to this experience as his hairshirt. I seem to be having my own fling with self-inflicted pain.
There's a unique shame in rolling up on a country and living better than just about everyone. It makes you do strange things. Once a month, I drive my mom to a proper supermarket where she spends $50 on food she'll actually eat and $150 on food she'll gradually give away. Don't be fooled: my mother isn't charitable. It's just makes the next month of relative extravagance palatable.
In an episode of a series I'll pretend I never watched, the main character reflects on the torture that is med school. "Why do I keep hitting myself with a hammer? Because it feels so good when I stop."
Happy Eid to one and all.
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