May 11, 2011

My dearest,

We have been cooped up at home all weekend, quite nearly. The heat is overwhelming. Whether Malaysia is considered tropical or equatorial, our friends from other shores often assume it’s paradise on earth to live in a land of eternal summer, all year long, year after year. But there is summer and there is summer and then there is summer. Heatwaves, rolling over us like a steamroller. We sweat over our sweat from mere moments before. The beads continue to come even after the third cold shower or the fourth. Air conditioning is useless. We’d call the repairman to see if he could make it blast any colder than the highest setting but we are far too lethargic to even hit the speed dial on our cellphones, much less search for his number under the letter P.

We can’t bear to tell ourselves this but we are melting in here, baby.

Doesn’t help that the haze has returned yet again, that perennial menace. Some blame our neighbouring nations, others on the end of the world, but fact remains, when it’s hot, it hazes too.

We can barely breathe as we whisper to one another, we gotta abandon ship, we gotta get out of here. Let’s escape before we expire. One day we shall return to our home sweet home, when it’s not so humid that the covers peel back from our books printed in two languages, divided by our Billy bookshelves and our separate histories.

You help me onto my own two feet, from my langourous near-demise on the sofa, the black leather sticking to my flesh like a second skin. That peels too, slick and warm, until you have me in your grasp and we’re vertical again, staring into each other’s eyes. You call to me softly, “You lazy ass. You drive.”

Once we’re done with our fifth cold shower (possibly our sixth), we head down to the carpark using the elevator. (No stairs for us, not in this weather. Well, not even if it’s cool. We wouldn’t want to accidentally perform any amount of physical exercise, not if we can help it. Isn’t Sloth and Inertia two of the Seven Heavenly Virtues or something?)

I drive us to a shopping mall. We are Malaysians, after all. That’s what we do when we can’t think of anything else better, which is usually the case. The downside to this is that everyone else, being typical Malaysians also, have got the same idea in their very Malaysian heads and so, we join the swarms, the masses, intent not on shopping but simply fleeing the oppressive heat by surrounding themselves with free indoor air conditioning.

We can never decide on what to do, so we go for the easy way out and decide on an early dinner. Eating is akin to breathing for us, being Malaysians and all. (And since breathing sucks in this heat and humidity, eating is a nice distraction.)

We can never decide on what to eat, so we are surprised when we go the unusual route and pick a new place to eat. A tonkatsu restaurant, innovatively named Tonkatsu, just in case would-be patrons get confused about what dishes they were offering. Snarkiness aside, we are delighted by a very limited and sparse menu, for – let’s say this all together now, boys and girls! – we can’t decide on anything. The fewer choices, the better.

We end up ordering nearly everything on the menu – all manner of pork cutlets made from the fillet (hire katsu) or the loin (rosu katsu) to pan-sauteed pork belly with ginger sauce and double-boiled pork belly soup. We cheer when the iced green tea and redoubtable can of Coca-Cola arrived. We pretend to be food bloggers and take photographs of everything in sight, chattering away loudly just in case the refined and rather fine Japanese couple at the table next to ours didn’t already notice.

I have so much fun grinding lightly roasted sesame seeds in my little bowl and pestle I quite forget I am supposed to be ranting and bitching about the heat. For there isn’t any heat any more, not the awful weather or our whining. Just the glow from our smiles of glee, the lost punchlines of my lame puns and your long-suffering groans, the background noise of an adorable screaming baby (there’s always one; perhaps delayed karma, reminding us we were probably screaming babies once too, possibly less adorable and locked away at home, far from the frenzied nerves of other diners trying to enjoy a quiet meal with their wonderful and witty partners) and the crunch of us biting into our tonkatsu.

Tastes like. Tastes like. Oh. Tastes like every meal to come shared with you, heat or haze be damned. It’s a good life, when you have someone to lift you from your stupor and feed you bits of their supper. Tastes damn good, this meal, this life, is what it tastes like.

Yours, ever and always.