chicken, in chapters

I grew up calling it “Singaporean white chicken”.

My dad must have picked up the recipe during his travels with my mom around Southeast Asia in their heyday.

It is a simple dish – a whole chicken, first boiled and then dunked in ice and served at room temperature. The broth from the chicken serves as the soup for the meal later, infused with extra flavor from its own innards, pandan leaves and green onion. Some of the broth it set aside to make the “chicken rice”, also flavored with pandan and chicken skin.

It is a most economical meal – every thing is used: the chicken, the innards, the broth, the skin. The most laborious part of the preparation is in the chopping of ginger and garlic which will serve as the foundation for the sauce used to top the white meat. Add soy sauce and sesame oil, and the sauce is ready to be served.

————————————-

This was my favorite meal as a child. I loved lifting up the cover of the rice bowl and letting the steam fill my nostrils – the slightest hint of chicken flavor permeating the air and entering my system.

It was the only time I really enjoyed eating ginger. I would top off the piece of chicken leg on my plate with the diced up bits of ginger swimming in sesame oil. Soon my plate would be brimming with broth, each and every morsel of rice flooded with flavor, every grain immersed in the salty soup. And I would consume my meal, or in my words, “clean up my plate”, all the way to the very last morsel, indeed.

And I always had a bigger share than everyone else. My brother’s palate, somehow, strangely, not finding the same pleasurable sensation as did mine. And so, I just ate up his share, with no regard for leaving leftovers. The meal had become my meal. It was a treat reserved, solely, for me.

—————————————–

I hardly knew where I was or where I was headed.

I hardly remember anything from my little adventure. Only that I got on the train, and then I walked for what felt like hours around what appeared to be  a deserted town in Singapore, searching desperately for chicken.

It was the summer of 2007 (or was it 2006?) and I joined my parents for a week-long trip to Singapore for reunion concert the were having with their former bandmates. Apparently, they still had a loyal fan-base in this little country, decades after they had performed now-classic 70′s tunes for Singapore’s yuppie audience hungry for any kind of western pop music.

Still somewhat fresh off a trip back to Manila wherein I spent my summer literally ‘slumming’ with young teens trying to turn their lives around and get skills and education, suffice it to say, I wasn’t particularly interested in experiencing anything glitzy or glamorous in this highly cosmopolitan, Southeast Asian neighbor of the Philippines.

There were few things I had explicitly wanted on the trip. But I knew the one thing I needed – an authentic taste of my favorite childhood meal.

So, there was a train ride. A lot of walking. A lot of nothing, to be frank. Shops were closed due to a national holiday. It might’ve been Hari Raya Puasa. No one, with the exception of a few other tourists like myself, was roaming the streets.

I tried distracting myself by shooting photographs. But it didn’t take long before having no people around to picture, eroded my picture-taking interest. I was getting bored, and I was getting hungry. It was overcast, but it was hot.

As if divinely-appointed, I found an open restaurant. There may have been roasted ducks hanging by the window. I may have been their only customer. But I was exhausted and lacking in options. This would be the place.

I opened up the menu and made sure that it was available. True enough, my adventure had reached its climax. It had come to its final stage. This would be the highlight I’d come back telling my parents about.

To simply say, that I had “Singaporean white chicken”, in Singapore.

I would learn that it was actually, Hainanese.

————————————–

Every time I have it, it tastes exactly the same. The mixture of the ginger and the garlic. The oiliness of the sauce. The fresh, though nearly bland taste of chicken breast meat. The subtle nuances of flavor in the rice.

It was the same as a child. The same in Singapore. And the same now.

The comfort I receive is consistent. There are no surprises with this meal, and I like it, that this is so. I want nothing about it to be different. I want it just as I’ve always had it, and it fails to disappoint.

It is second-nature to her – the making of this meal, and I am lucky. It is a recipe written in her roots, a staple meal in Malaysia so easy to make, and yet so satisfying.

She commands the kitchen, calm and fully in control. Only the faintest signs of stress are visible to me, and they come only from a cook who knows her craft. Who knows the nuances of her recipe too well to ignore the slightest, imperfect details.

A slight and passing comment about the mixture of ginger and garlic in the sauce. And only because I ask. A bit miffed at the redness of the exposed marrow from the chicken bones – the slightest traces of blood still leaking. A bit bothered by the chicken skin coming undone, a small tear from the tongs I used to pick up the whole chicken and dump it haphazardly in the bucket of ice water. I apologize.

She says it isn’t my fault.

She is still in control.

Watching her swiftly move about in her kitchen is like watching an artist fixated at creating the perfect piece, embellishing accordingly, complaining to herself quietly, as she knows she is being watched.

She remains her biggest critic, and rightfully so. For this meal, this creation, I expect no less.

I frustratedly peel a cucumber, internally incensed by how ugly it looks when I’m through with it. Gently she takes the cucumber and slices it into small pieces, and shows me how the design I had attempted to make still turned out beautiful in the end. She has a way of doing these things.

Everything is presented in a gourmet-fashion. The simple meal turned into a classier affair for a handful of our friends to enjoy. The cucumber and cherry tomato platter is absolutely vibrant – the plump red spheres surrounded by the faint green and white of the cucumber slices. Even the chicken I witnessed her ferociously hack into pieces just minutes before, with a little help from some cilantro leaves, transformed into an appetizing platter garnished minimally, but delicately.

Before we serve the meal to our friends, I remind her once again, “Shuli, did you know that this was my favorite meal as a kid?”

She retorts, “I thought it was Sinigang?”

“Well, they’re like one and two. They’re both my favorites.”

“See, this is why we’re meant to be together.”

She’s right.

fingers

My dad once told me I have fingers fit for a pianist.

They are long and slender, and from thumb to pinky I feel like I can cover the span of 10 keys, which to me, translates as a favorable advantage for piano-playing.

Except I have no idea how to play the piano; I never learned.

I wonder if my father said what he had said in the hopes of dropping the clear hint that that was precisely what he would have wanted me to do – to put away my toys and learn how to play.

Oh how I regret this now. The plethora of songs I’d feel freer to sing had I simply learned how to accompany myself on the keys. How entertaining it would have been (to myself, mostly) to do my best Stevie Wonder impression, complete with involuntary head bobbing and unreachable notes and impeccable riffs complemented by the signature melodic grooves that could only come from his particular genius.

I would have done good, I really would have.

Music has this magical, unexplainable effect on me, sometimes transporting me a million miles in as many directions; somehow I feel both centered and all over the place. It makes little sense writing about it. But I feel it all.

Where would I have gone, had I learned how to play? Would I have understood the “bim bom bim” of the Bossa Nova way? Could I have colored heartache with my own melancholic renditions of classic Porter or Gershwin tunes that captured it better than my generation ever could?

Oh, the places I’d go…

lawn

It isn’t the lawn you imagine in your American dream.

No, it is not verdant and perfectly-mowed. It is not surrounded by a pristine, white picket fence.

It is patchy like a balding man’s scalp, with handfuls of hair that comb from one side to the other, desperately trying to cover all the empty spaces.

Its color ranges only between dirt brown and yellowish green. Even when the rain comes, any brightness gets cajoled only because the drab grey of the clouds demands some color to contrast with. And so, it obliges.

The plants surrounding this lawn’s perimeter are aching for attention, bending and twisting as if to plead with its owners for some water, some care. They are parched and dry but resilient, refusing to wilt under the scorching summer sun that plagues the valleys of Southern California.

Gravel is spread out unevenly, the bits of which get caught and crushed underneath the rusty old lawnmower; there’s simply no getting around all the rocks. Concrete slabs cut through the lawn, signaling the end of grass and the beginnings of driveway, with some stubborn leaves still jutting through the crevices, reminding us that once, there was a lawn that extended far beyond the small, squarish space it has since been relegated to.

Once there was a lawn that was very much alive and well.

Perhaps that lawn was the lawn of our American dreams. And then, we woke up.

unknown, again

So, the good news is that he has a plan.

The news that I don’t know what to make of just yet, is that the plan he had originally, he’s scrapped for this new one. And I don’t know if this new one is any better.

Weeks ago I got to know a kid at the shelter I work at and I was incredibly excited at the prospect of him going to school at a university in the Fall.

He had already gotten in and was just waiting for the semester to start.

I do not know what really happened afterward. Not sure how the story took another turn. There may have been some complications and now, the kid is military-bound.

(Not that it is an entirely bad alternative. I’ll reserve my judgment, along with my fear)

But I’m left once again, just wondering what really happened…

This happens to me, too many times. One kid I pegged as a “success story” left the program entirely, only to return high several times somehow trying to make his case to come back. He’s still somewhere out there.  Another kid was on the up and up and I wrote about him too. He relapsed. He’s out there somewhere, too.

I never learn the full story. I’m left only to put together the pieces myself. Sometimes I ask around fishing for answers from the rest of the staff, hoping to make sense of what happened with these kids.

Some days I think these “kids” here actually have it pretty good. They have shelter, they get their meals for free, and they finally have adults around them who actually care about their welfare. At 18, 19, 20, I believe it’s an unrealistic expectation to have them be fully capable of taking care of themselves. Regardless of whether or not they are homeless.

Without actually telling any of them, under my breath I’m whispering to them that they don’t blow it.

It isn’t too late, but it’s now. Now is your time.

He made his choice. He isn’t going to school in the Fall. But who’s to say he isn’t pursuing his dreams? Certainly not me. I hardly know him, and I still can hardly get him to say much to me, other than “hey”. I’ll read into his expressions as much as I can, for as long as we share space in this shelter.

Without saying it at all, I hope he just knows not to blow it.

cool

Folks, there’s no way for me to get around it…

Reluctantly, I must admit that, yes, I am incredibly cool.

It’s just, a no-brainer. One look at my “Lost in the Library” frames from Paul Frank and you’re telling yourself, “That guy is incredibly cool.”

People, let me tell you, it’s a tough gig. It takes effort being this cool. My cabbie hat needs to be tilted in just the right angle. That’s precision. My sleeves have to be rolled up with the proper balance of disheveled and neat. And that’s just guidelines for when I go to work…

Trust me, you don’t want this burden. Cool comes at a cost.

Thousands of friends on Facebook are just too hard to manage. You know you’re at a special level with me when you’ve made it on my Google Plus circle. It probably means you’re decently cool, yourself.

———————————

I’m kidding…mostly.

But seriously (really, seriously…), how ridiculous is “being cool”? Don’t even get me started with “hip”. “Hip”, just as a term, was already outdated, then recycled, and now, acceptable again. Maybe even “cool”. Unbelievable.

I’m protesting wildly on the inside but my face might actually contort and cringe a little so as to give my true feelings away about this whole “cool” thing. (I’m getting tired of employing these “__”)

Can one even successfully reject cool? I think this is only possible if the person being regarded as cool, hates most people. If that person hates most people, and yet is still so praised and lauded and emulated by so many despite being a despicable, unloving person – yea, that person is sure to be cool. That person comes the closest to genuinely not caring (for being cool, or for people), and has to be, inherently, cool.

Why? Because people want to be affirmed. No one might want to admit it, and certainly it’s hard to ask for it, but we want it. And if you come across that guy or girl who has no care about affirming anything about you, and yet somehow you still want to be just like that person…well, that person has either secretly crafted an incredible formula that convinced people that he or she is not only cool, but worth becoming, or that person is so absolutely out of touch with cultural norms and aloof about whatever is socially accepted or approved that, forsaking friends, has somehow gained a multitude of “followers” as a consolation.

I’ve officially ranted…

I think it really is easier, not being “cool” at all.

posture

This morning I read a post put up by Scott Bessenecker, the man that helped develop and launch the Global Urban Trek program that began ten years ago, which I participated in during the summer of 2006.

It was an honest account of its lasting impact on the lives of students that had participated in this trip. Some felt compelled to leave their lives in the U.S. and live incarnationally in the slum communities of the developing world and amidst the poor. Other had felt convicted to live simply, but struggle with holding on to the kind of theology that seemingly contradicts the material, individualistic pursuits approved and perhaps encouraged by the culture in which we live in, here. And still others have become disillusioned entirely, disappointed with this world, with God, even, and have left whatever faith they had, behind.

2006 would be the year that would seal the kind of life I’d willingly choose to live. I didn’t come back from Manila feeling particularly called to a ministry, or enlightened by a vocational path I would immediately pursue. The “kind of life” I came back with was really a posture, more than anything else.

It would take years before I remember actually adopting this word to describe what it was, exactly, that I needed to embark on, from here on in.

“Posture”.

Some time in Boston or in New York City, I can’t even remember, I had this hours-long conversation with a good friend, Chuck. We talked about too many things. Love. Music. Faith. He kept repeating to me this idea about what it meant to have a particular posture toward the world. It clicked.

Literally, I still have bad posture. My shoulders hunch over terribly, as if burdened and bent by some invisible boulder sitting on my back and neck. My father even once offered to buy me a back brace for my birthday – in middle school.

But while it might take a longer time to fix my physical posture, my soul has struggled and yet has stayed the course. My internal posture remains targeted toward a life that demands I give my all for the good of others.

It isn’t out of pity. I’ve since learned that the faceless mass we’ve easily identified as “the poor” are more than capable of helping themselves, and even, helping the rest of us.

It isn’t that. It doesn’t sit comfortably with me, the idea that I can provide a limitless supply of charity, giving hand-outs to the “have-nots”. What I have is hardly limitless at all. In fact, I’m more aware of my limits now, than ever before.

The “posture” is simply the desire to care, always. And that desire, my hope, stems from a place rooted deeply within myself that compels me, no matter how irrational or reckless, to love others.

This, is merely the kind of life I hope to live.

When I manage tear down all my drawn up images of how “successful” my future humanitarian plans will be, or quit imagining myself as this incredibly  innovative social entrepreneur some day, stripped down to my bear essentials, naked I hope, lies my soul, still in the same posture as it had taken back in 2006.

Still wanting to do good, but more so, to love, without abandon. Because this is the only way I’ve been taught to care.

quit

I lasted all of 20 minutes.

I lay down on my yoga mat drenched in my own sweat, with the heavier blanket of shame starting to tuck me in. I just couldn’t finish the full hour. The beads of perspiration started trickling down my face and neck, prematurely signaling my own defeat. It was over.

I started thinking how I could possibly spread this out throughout the course of the week, justifying my failure to finish by instead deciding on fulfilling the hour-long plyometrics exercise without actually having to finish the exercise within a single hour.

Why not do it in…3 days. Yes, that sounds about right. 1 hour of exercise, spread out for 3 days. That’s it.

My sweat was blinding me. My lungs were about to explode as if had run around Lake Merritt while being chased by a dog. Or worse, a duck.

I wanted this work-out to be over before it really began. It was about to begin, about 20 minutes in. And I stopped. I quit.

That felt worse than my body did. The feeling that I couldn’t do it. Or rather, that I chose to stop. Granted, my body was protesting mightily at this “mild” punishment, but it was as if my mind had thrown in the towel first. The moment my actual blue towel went to wipe the sweat off of my face, that registered in my mind as a slap to my cheek and the reality check set in nicely.

It just wouldn’t have any of it. And so, it didn’t. 20 minutes was enough.

I have 2 more days. 2 days before I can proudly claim that I worked out the total of an hour, for the week.

Whatever it takes to feel less like a failure. Whatever it takes.

fear, less

It isn’t self-deprecation, for it’s own sake, you know..

It isn’t out of some twisted desire to disparage myself, to self-flagellate at the risk of appearing both mad and martyr.

Not quite, anyway.

It isn’t that I subscribe to the lies that have made a home in my mind , the ones that remind me that I’m no artist, no storyteller, without purpose or place.

It isn’t that I no longer have belief. In myself, or in the way things work, or in how things ought to better. Or in how there is something, far, far greater, than this.

Not fully, anyway.

But, neither should I really bother convincing you, that how it seems with me, isn’t quite what you think. It actually matters little about how you perceive my beliefs to mean. Of myself and of this world. Or of God, even.

It shouldn’t, anyway.

I’m not asking for any saving, nor am I making a declaration of how far I’ve gone from any rescuing. I mean only to show the state of progress. And I’m far from both beginning, and end.

I’m suspended in the “getting there”. That wonderfully messy place of no real return.  It is the place where the “not yet” and the “not now” have the rule of the day. It is the ride none of us wait in line for, and yet somehow, at some point, while we are young, we’re in.

Often I’ve said I’d rather fast forward through it all, this puzzling place of the mid-twenties, where uncertainty is the only norm, (and I’m still convinced that most of us are only pretending to know what we’re doing)

Better off that we don’t, I say. I’m not pretending with you, certainly trying hard not to.

But it isn’t so simple as, “it is what it is”. Not at all, in fact. I hate how ultimate and absolute that sounds, anyway.

Better if we say, perhaps, that “it is what it is, for now.”And for as much as I’m waiting for whatever is actually better, and praying it comes soon…

I’m coming to terms with this crazy idea that there is something refreshingly beautiful and honest about the revealing and unraveling of ourselves in the now, and most of all, in the broken.

And as unsettling and vulnerable as it often appears, I’d rather you know it now. That you know me, in this way.

I have much fear still, and doubt, and guilt, and worse, shame.

But what I no longer fear, is that you know.

ella

At that moment, as I settled myself on the couch, the couch, a fixture in the cozy reading room that was once the shed, the shed which was once an empty, neglected garage space opened only for extra storage use..

I was transported to another time and place, another era wherein jazz had ruled the radio and the mainstream then, is the classic now, the standard, still, of musical excellence and artistry.

All thanks to a portable, perfectly-cased record player, and Ella Fitzgerald.

Oh, Ella, you are missed. You will never, ever be replaced.

The moment her rendition of Misty came on, a mysterious peace came over me, as if a magical spell was cast at the utterance of her first line. This was treasure to my soul.

My body sagged deeper into the couch, like I needed to lodge myself further into its crevices so as never to leave, never to be banished from this haven induced by the spell of her song.

This fine record player was a portal to another world, to hers, the artist, enchantress. She had me at every word, at every nuanced note that only she could deliver. But every crackle and skip the record made gave me the subtle reminder that I was in the midst of two worlds in fact – and the one I’m in would regard those little blips as imperfections, remedying them with technological advancements that claim to “digitally re-master” these works.

If only this world knew of the glaring irony in its bold proclamation.

To me, the “mastering” of the work, had already, long been done. It was, she was, perfect, as is.

unknown

For him, I hope the worst has already happened. Whatever seemingly insurmountable hurdle, conquered. Or at least, endured.

I cannot tell if he is afraid, or indifferent. Perhaps he doesn’t know what to feel, or how.

I hardly know anything about him, I can hardly read anything from the blank expression regularly written on his face.

Maybe by now, he only knows to be numb – to failure as well as to success. It is safer. There’s less expectation, less disappointment to brace for, and the occurrence of anything good will be but a welcome surprise, not anticipated, only acknowledged.

It isn’t to say he is not grateful. It isn’t to say anything, at all, really. I only wish to know, what he’s thinking.

Is he, in the least bit, excited? Grateful at the mere chance for a higher education, a career path ahead, a new life? A better one. Maybe I’m putting myself too much in his shoes. Maybe I shouldn’t.

I will never know. I will never know to what lengths his “shoes” had to take him, before he got here. Or how they even got him this far, at all.

Why a homeless shelter? Why so young? What could have have possibly happened to him, for him to even be here…

A month from now he won’t be with us. He won’t have to eat the same cold cut lunch sandwiches like the rest of the youth do. He won’t have endless supplies of donated toiletries at his disposal. He won’t have curfew.

He won’t have any of these things, and I don’t imagine he’ll miss a thing.

I only wish that when he starts in the Fall, for him, he’ll finally know, it’s all his, for the taking. And I hope he loves every moment of it.