The Egg Project

File: 51-Food-UTT

Sec: Food

SubSec: Under the table

P/Q: I wondered if I would’ve been a more responsible person if I had to support an egg in my early life

It all started when a delivery man placed a parcel on my desk. “Be careful, it’s an egg,” he said in whispered tones. What is it… sleeping, I thought as I carefully opened the package. Inside a brown egg slept in a soft plastic tube. Who would send me an egg? I turn the plastic casing around and saw it was from La Maison du Chocolat.

I didn’t go to school in Hong Kong, but my girlfriends who had told me a story of how when they were little, their school teachers made them each take care of an egg to show them responsibility and to sustain them from pre-marital sex. One by one their eggs would break and the school children learned the efforts of raising a child. I was never privy to this experiment, and wondered if I would’ve been a more responsible person if I had supported an egg in my early life.

By some holy marketing miracle, an egg had arrived on my desk. This was not going to be a missed opportunity. I brought my egg to dinner at Miso that night and placed it on the table. “Are we going to eat it?” asked one of my friends (we were sitting near the teppenyaki grills). I moved the egg onto my lap for protection then turned to my boyfriend, “Honey, what are we going to name it?” His amusement turned into fear. After a beat he said “Cyril” to play along, probably wondering if he was witnessing the first signs of baby pangs. “Cyril is the hardest name for Cantonese people to pronounce,” I said, then agreed to it.

After dinner, I hand-carry Cyril to the Ok Go concert at Grappas. It was our first party together. In the tight crowd I held him close so no one would smush him. I lifted him in the air when the masses closed in. By the end of the concert, I was surprised he survived. Fully intact, I lifted the lid of his plastic carriage and I saw he had pooped. This was when I realised Cyril was filled with chocolate.

My chocolate baby and I went everywhere together, to meetings, to lunches, to parties, to work, I even took him to a chocolate tasting at a competitor’s brand. Though Cyril was quite boring, he sat around and observed. His charms were fast wearing off on me.

At a rooftop party at Cepage, he sat silent next to half-drunken glasses on the table. I’ve had him about one week now, and I was getting tired of thinking about his wellbeing all the time. “He doesn’t die,” I said to my girlfriends. “How long am I supposed to carry this thing?”

“Forever, that’s the point,” one said.

Later that night at Sie Jie, I get a phone call from Cepage. “You left your egg here.”

Oh geez, I totally forgot about Cyril. I felt so guilty throughout the meal for being such an irresponsible twat that I couldn’t enjoy the burn of Sie Jie’s mouth-numbing delights. I had to get up and collect my egg. And I dragged my boyfriend with me, guilting him to take on some responsibility, By now, I’m positive he had written me off as a nutter.

I shamefully collect my egg (yes, I’m a bad mother) and call it an early Friday night. On Saturday , I was exhausted from my week of responsibility. On Sunday, I spent the day in bed.

James mentioned taking Cyril to Drop one night, and I thought about how he would not be a bad father. Though a death at Drop would give a grand finale to this tale.

Cyril was the egg that wouldn’t die. I have to give him credit for that. It’s been two weeks, and he had kept up with my hectic schedule, and gleefully accompanying me in my goings. He was a good egg. Someone at work suggested I get a baby buggy (I have no idea what this is).

Serendipitously, I met the person who brought the La Maison du Chocolat brand to Hong Kong. I did not bring up Cyril as I had left him at home that day. We spoke about scheduling a lunch to try Alvin Leung’s sicko invention, Sex on the Beach (a “condom” made of ham, filled with honey, and then flung onto a bed of mushroom sand) at Bo Innovation.

At Bo Innovation, I brought Cyril to meet his maker. I wanted to tell the man behind La Maison Du Chocolat how his gift had changed my life. I now realised I am not a good mommy, and I’m not a responsible person. I’ve been caring for this egg for four weeks, and now I’d like to give it back. But before I could say any of this to him, the Demon Chef, Alvin Leung, grabbed Cyril and offered to cook him. I resisted. No way would he make a good godfather. But I wanted this episode of my life to end. I said goodbye to Cyril and handed him over to Alvin. I promised Cyril conjugal visits. But we both knew he wouldn’t survive a night in Alvin’s kitchen.

Men in waiting

File: 50-food-utt

Sec: Food

Subsec: Under the table

Hed:

P/Q: There’s a generation of unmotivated, unemployed men who happily coast through life and have no apologies doing it.

I realised recently I’m the only person in my family that has a full time job. Both my parents are enjoying the glees of retirement and my two youngest siblings are in school. But my middle brother, of prime working age (28), hasn’t held a job in six years.

My parents asked me to have a motivational chat with him. “You know they are going to kick you out of the house soon,” I said over a stupidly expensive dim sum lunch. “How are you planning on stretching your life of leisure?” “I was thinking of applying for business school, that should give me another year, year and a half. An MBA takes another two years,” he said casually. “Are you ever planning to work again?” I asked already knowing his answer. “Nope, not if I can avoid it.”

And there you have it. I pick on my brother, well, because big sisters do that kind of thing, and because he is a slice from a generation of unmotivated, unemployed men who happily coast through life and have no apologies doing it.

In my brother’s case, and my ex’s (Homeless Guy), and many others spanning from Hong Kong to Japan to the European Union, their reasons are valid. They are educated, and they feel entitled to have a dream job that is ethical, powerful and fulfilling while earning a $100k starting salary with ample holiday time. ‘Why settle for a lifetime of grunts and ulcers?’ is the common motto. Life is for travelling, absorbing books, resting the fork in-between bites, and enriching the mind with television, they preach. Office life is so unnatural.

I love their no-worry attitude, but here’s what I discovered months after dating Homeless Guy. He was a bum. A wasted being. An intelligent man with no ambition, like a bird without wings. Worse, he sponged off me.

At a bitchfest feast with my girlfriends, one bought up the topic of divorce –a heavy word for lunch. She no longer sleeps with her husband (surprise there) because she resented him. She complained she paid for the rent, his hobbies, and his lunch. “If he actually worked, then maybe we could afford to buy a place rather than living in a rented box,” she ranted, waving her knife and fork. “I even have to pay for his graduate school. It’s like he left parents, married me so he can be my dependent. I’m with a loser!”

Funny thing is, I’m friends with her husband, mainly because he’s personable and philosophises about dumb things. I found him in a chatroom while writing this. He is there most days.

Me: “What do you do all day long?”

Him: “The day surprising goes by fast.” He explains he works out for two hours (which includes sauna time and reading time at the juice bar); there are episodes of Extras to watch; he is currently reading The 4-hour work week; on the days he’s not at school, he smokes pot and cleans his motorcycle. He shaves right before he picks up his wife in Central for dinner. He feels bad she always pays, but has come to expect it.

Him: “Don’t judge. I see tai tais doing the same thing.”

Me: “What do you plan to do with your English degree?”

Him: “Maybe [wife] will buy me a beach house and I can write a novella.”

Arg. Like my brother, he speaks three languages, he’s the eldest boy in his family and was raised to succeed his father. The pressure of knowing he’ll have to take care of the family when he is old enough was all too much. So he delays growing up, maybe forever. He turns down jobs because he thinks the positions are beneath him. In his prime, age 25-35, he has lived down expectations by dropping out of the work environment. The Japanese have a word for extreme cases of social withdrawal, Hikikomori. The most widely reported cases of hikikomori are from middle and upper middle class families whose sons, are typically the eldest.

Women have been social engineered to think men who don't work or earn a living are worthless. I’m factoring in decades of girls being told to get an education and take care of themselves as men are not always reliable. But what messages have the boys been receiving all this time?

At a bon voyage dinner with my middle brother, who was en route to Beijing for a year of language school, he said he realised work doesn’t have to be eight hours behind a desk. He rhapsodised about the brighter side of working such as having an outlet to meet friends, carry business cards, impress girls, and get the parents off his back. He was too proud to ask for help, but he said he had been out of work for so long that it was impossible to get back in. “They kicked you out of the house yeah?” I said. “Yup,” he added, without skipping a beat.