Ramen and life
I feel most people rarely sit down and think about why they are the way they are. Life just happens. Perhaps occasionally when you get into a conversation with a friend about why "Barack Obama is destroying America" you get a glimpse into their thought process (or lack thereof, in some cases), but for the most part we just absorb things into our belief system unconsciously, and that makes it hard to imagine why others might think otherwise. This will be an ongoing series in which I pick out random things I believe (well, probably not so random), figuring out what in my life experience caused me to take this stance, and whether or not that still makes sense now that I've thought about it some more. I highly encourage everyone to try this out - it can be quite fascinating, or terrifying.
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1. Ramen
OK, so I won't be starting with anything particularly deep or thought provoking. I basically made a list of random things I could talk about, and some things were there due to interest (no doubt I shall talk about StarCraft again), but others to challenge myself to think of something witty to say about any given topic.
I was a pretty sheltered kid growing up. In the States I lived in suburbs with pools and green lawns. Like almost every single middle-class ABC, I learned to play the violin (starting when I was 4 years old). I also got to play team soccer and hockey, go to YMCA and music camps, and other fun things.
In the midst of all this though, I never learned how to do the laundry. I don't mean using a washboard and scrubbing away with soap, I mean I didn't even know how to run a washing machine or dryer. I also never learned how to cook. I could make PB&Js, and I knew to add the cereal *before* milk, otherwise it would get soggy too quickly.
In other words, I was somewhat imbalanced. I could draw, I could swim, I could play music, I could sing... but I had no basic life skills. This seems to be the case for many kids in modern Taiwan as well. The emphasis on good test scores above all else compels many parents to set their kids up in an ideal study environment. Don't worry about doing the dishes, just go study. Don't waste time learning to cook, you'll figure it out later, just go study. Don't waste time hanging out with friends and learning how to socialize, just go study. Of course, parents mean well - and to a certain extent, I do believe that education can indeed be a great equalizer. And yet, it seems profoundly ironic. What is the point of getting a good education? Aside from this doing it for the joy of intellectual pursuits (a definite minority), most people go to school for fairly practical reasons. A college degree, while worth less than it was a few decades ago, is still nice to have, at least compared to someone who "only" has a high school diploma. This provides you with better job prospects which means more money which means a better life. In theory.
And yet, having "life skills" arguably contributes to better quality of life too. I think it's safe to say that for most people, being able to cook your own food instead of being forced to eat out at restaurants all the time is more important than being able to do trigonometry and calculus. I'd rather know what to say in an awkward situation than know a bunch of chemical compounds. This isn't a slam on "impractical" skills per se - I'd be the first to admit that being good at StarCraft in of itself isn't worth anything unless you're a progamer, but there are intangibles I got from it that made it at least somewhat worthwhile. But in terms of preparing your child for life as an adult, I think that some societies are doing it wrong, with Taiwan being a key offender. (of course, many sheltered kids in the States have similar experiences, but class differences in the United States are large enough that it's a bit harder to generalize)
At any rate, you're probably figuring out how all this connects to ramen. A lot of college students lacking in life skills eat unreasonable amounts of ramen not necessarily because it's tasty and fast, but because they don't actually know how to cook anything else. It's not really about time - cooking a simple dish really doesn't take that long once you get the hang of it - but it does take time and effort, and it's an investment that most people choose to forego.
I went to boarding school when I was 14. Our school would climb a mountain (>3K meters) every fall, and it was quite an awesome tradition that opened my eyes to many things, the first of which being how useless I was in some regards. The entire school (roughly 80 students and teachers) was split into 10 teams, and we each had a "food group". Basically, for multi-day trips food is one of the heavier items, and it's obviously easier to split it between several people. I didn't even know how to boil water at the time, by which I mean knowing how long it would take to boil noodles. I couldn't properly clean vegetables, and didn't know the proper order to add ingredients, so everything would be finished at the same time.
Of course, this changed afterwards, as I loved mountain climbing, and so learned how to cook some really simple, quick foods... but that's also when I cooked normally too. And of course, that was a problem. You see, you can go without proper amounts of vegetables and other nutritious foods for a few days when climbing, because it's a special situation. But you can't just load up on pure carbs in everyday life. But that was the extent of my cooking skills. Noodles + tomato sauce. Noodles + soy sauce. Noodles + New England Clam Chowder. I got by, since I really didn't have to cook that often at the time, and didn't have to my first two years of college, since I lived in a dorm.
An interesting side effect of my shitty cooking was that I found dorm food delicious, because I wasn't comparing it to home-cooked excellence like most kids, but rather my own subsistence-mountaintop-survival-style-minimalist cooking. I just couldn't understand the constant complaints. In Michigan, all the dorm cafeterias actually have pretty much the same food (well, the new Hill Dining Center was an exception). They use the same frozen vegetables, potatoes, egg powder, etc. It's just that each dorm has its own "specialty". I know I'm going off on a tangent at this point, but I've got this little grin on my face as I reminisce about the good ol' college days.
East Quad was almost universally hated. It housed the Residential College - basically a small liberal arts college within the larger University - and thus provided more vegetarian and vegan options. I wasn't a vegetarian at the time, but personally I didn't think it was that bad. Plus, I actually liked eating in East Quad, because it had a smaller dining space, and that meant that the cookies were always fresh and warm, when compared to the larger cafeterias. Always look on the bright side of life.
South Quad housed both the athletes and the honor students. I'm not sure how that happened. At any rate, it was known for having pizza every day. Besides that, it was pretty much your typical Michigan cafeteria food. Powdered eggs. Beef drowned in soy sauce = Asian beef. That always cracked me up.
West Quad had a burrito bar. It was also really close to the Union, which housed a Magic Wok, Subways, Wendy's, Pizza Hut Express, and other culinary monstrosities. As such, if you wanted to guarantee yourself a table, you ate at West Quad. It seemed half-empty (an optimist would say half full) most of the time.
Markley was where they stuffed all the freshmen, and it was crowded.
Bursley was where they stuffed all the engineering, music, and art freshmen. It was known for several things - being huge (meaning the cookies were never deliciously gooey and warm), and its design. I always said that you knew what students lived and ate there - the engineering students built that conveyor belt for your finished lunch trays, the art students designed the pretty wooden mini-pagodas, and the music students didn't do shit because the acoustics of the place were terrible (glass on 3 sides), and you had to shout to hear yourself think.
At any rate, after moving out of the dorms, I ate a lot more ramen than was good for me. Now, it's important to note that not all ramen is created equal. All college students should know that. I greatly preferred the type that required a stove to cook, because that meant thicker and chewier noodles, which really separates bad ramen from good ramen. The soup and sauce is all flavoring and MSG anyway. Thin ramen noodles cook faster and are ideal for those who only have water heaters and no stove, but the noodles also have the consistency of soggy graham flakes. The Korean spicy seafood noodles were my absolute favorite, and I'm sure that after I die, my inner organs will be perfectly preserved for the amusement of future generations marveling at late 20th century mummification techniques. I would add vegetables to it to delude myself into thinking that it was remotely healthy, and I'd add an egg right after shutting the flame off so it would be half-cooked, allowing me to stir the yolk into the soup. Delicious!
I haven't eaten instant ramen in almost 2 years now. It's been ten years since I first learned to boil water and make ramen, and now, while I still have a long way to go, I can cook a wide variety of healthy dishes that most people can stomach without throwing up. You'll notice that a lot of my blogs are about growing up, and this blog is no exception. Part of it is realizing that I wouldn't be young forever, that my body wouldn't be able to continue cleansing itself of toxins and preservatives as it got older, and that I'd have to change these habits sooner than later before it became a habit too heavily ingrained. I've also lost my taste for heavily flavored foods - I think eating a primarily organic vegetarian diet over the past year has something to do with that. Organic foods really taste different, and I've grown to appreciate the taste of a food itself, rather than the food + ridiculous amounts of sauce and flavoring. And lastly, I decided that ramen was a symbol of a life that I wanted to slowly transition away from.
To put it simply, consider treating yourself as you would your own child. Now some people might feed their kids donuts for breakfast, but they at least have the excuse of not knowing better. I remember one night in college, when I was munching away on some gummy worms, that I suddenly stopped, and realized that I'd be a terrible father. "Hey, Daddy's too lazy to cook today, so let's just have chip and salsa plus gummy bears for dinner today." My parents certainly never did that to me, even if they were tired and might have been tempted to just order a pizza and get it over with for the night. They took the time and effort (well, my Mom really since she's the one that cooks in our family) to make sure we got the nutrients we needed. I guess it's about the kind of person I want to grow up to be.
So I guess you could say ramen has been a symbol of one aspect of my maturation. One might say that quitting it means more than you might think. Or, I'm just reading too much into it. However, I like to think that all this is to say that there are stories behind nearly everything in life, so long as you're willing to think about it. Try it, you might be surprised at what you learn about yourself.
1. Ramen
OK, so I won't be starting with anything particularly deep or thought provoking. I basically made a list of random things I could talk about, and some things were there due to interest (no doubt I shall talk about StarCraft again), but others to challenge myself to think of something witty to say about any given topic.
I was a pretty sheltered kid growing up. In the States I lived in suburbs with pools and green lawns. Like almost every single middle-class ABC, I learned to play the violin (starting when I was 4 years old). I also got to play team soccer and hockey, go to YMCA and music camps, and other fun things.
In the midst of all this though, I never learned how to do the laundry. I don't mean using a washboard and scrubbing away with soap, I mean I didn't even know how to run a washing machine or dryer. I also never learned how to cook. I could make PB&Js, and I knew to add the cereal *before* milk, otherwise it would get soggy too quickly.
In other words, I was somewhat imbalanced. I could draw, I could swim, I could play music, I could sing... but I had no basic life skills. This seems to be the case for many kids in modern Taiwan as well. The emphasis on good test scores above all else compels many parents to set their kids up in an ideal study environment. Don't worry about doing the dishes, just go study. Don't waste time learning to cook, you'll figure it out later, just go study. Don't waste time hanging out with friends and learning how to socialize, just go study. Of course, parents mean well - and to a certain extent, I do believe that education can indeed be a great equalizer. And yet, it seems profoundly ironic. What is the point of getting a good education? Aside from this doing it for the joy of intellectual pursuits (a definite minority), most people go to school for fairly practical reasons. A college degree, while worth less than it was a few decades ago, is still nice to have, at least compared to someone who "only" has a high school diploma. This provides you with better job prospects which means more money which means a better life. In theory.
And yet, having "life skills" arguably contributes to better quality of life too. I think it's safe to say that for most people, being able to cook your own food instead of being forced to eat out at restaurants all the time is more important than being able to do trigonometry and calculus. I'd rather know what to say in an awkward situation than know a bunch of chemical compounds. This isn't a slam on "impractical" skills per se - I'd be the first to admit that being good at StarCraft in of itself isn't worth anything unless you're a progamer, but there are intangibles I got from it that made it at least somewhat worthwhile. But in terms of preparing your child for life as an adult, I think that some societies are doing it wrong, with Taiwan being a key offender. (of course, many sheltered kids in the States have similar experiences, but class differences in the United States are large enough that it's a bit harder to generalize)
At any rate, you're probably figuring out how all this connects to ramen. A lot of college students lacking in life skills eat unreasonable amounts of ramen not necessarily because it's tasty and fast, but because they don't actually know how to cook anything else. It's not really about time - cooking a simple dish really doesn't take that long once you get the hang of it - but it does take time and effort, and it's an investment that most people choose to forego.
I went to boarding school when I was 14. Our school would climb a mountain (>3K meters) every fall, and it was quite an awesome tradition that opened my eyes to many things, the first of which being how useless I was in some regards. The entire school (roughly 80 students and teachers) was split into 10 teams, and we each had a "food group". Basically, for multi-day trips food is one of the heavier items, and it's obviously easier to split it between several people. I didn't even know how to boil water at the time, by which I mean knowing how long it would take to boil noodles. I couldn't properly clean vegetables, and didn't know the proper order to add ingredients, so everything would be finished at the same time.
Of course, this changed afterwards, as I loved mountain climbing, and so learned how to cook some really simple, quick foods... but that's also when I cooked normally too. And of course, that was a problem. You see, you can go without proper amounts of vegetables and other nutritious foods for a few days when climbing, because it's a special situation. But you can't just load up on pure carbs in everyday life. But that was the extent of my cooking skills. Noodles + tomato sauce. Noodles + soy sauce. Noodles + New England Clam Chowder. I got by, since I really didn't have to cook that often at the time, and didn't have to my first two years of college, since I lived in a dorm.
An interesting side effect of my shitty cooking was that I found dorm food delicious, because I wasn't comparing it to home-cooked excellence like most kids, but rather my own subsistence-mountaintop-survival-style-minimalist cooking. I just couldn't understand the constant complaints. In Michigan, all the dorm cafeterias actually have pretty much the same food (well, the new Hill Dining Center was an exception). They use the same frozen vegetables, potatoes, egg powder, etc. It's just that each dorm has its own "specialty". I know I'm going off on a tangent at this point, but I've got this little grin on my face as I reminisce about the good ol' college days.
East Quad was almost universally hated. It housed the Residential College - basically a small liberal arts college within the larger University - and thus provided more vegetarian and vegan options. I wasn't a vegetarian at the time, but personally I didn't think it was that bad. Plus, I actually liked eating in East Quad, because it had a smaller dining space, and that meant that the cookies were always fresh and warm, when compared to the larger cafeterias. Always look on the bright side of life.
South Quad housed both the athletes and the honor students. I'm not sure how that happened. At any rate, it was known for having pizza every day. Besides that, it was pretty much your typical Michigan cafeteria food. Powdered eggs. Beef drowned in soy sauce = Asian beef. That always cracked me up.
West Quad had a burrito bar. It was also really close to the Union, which housed a Magic Wok, Subways, Wendy's, Pizza Hut Express, and other culinary monstrosities. As such, if you wanted to guarantee yourself a table, you ate at West Quad. It seemed half-empty (an optimist would say half full) most of the time.
Markley was where they stuffed all the freshmen, and it was crowded.
Bursley was where they stuffed all the engineering, music, and art freshmen. It was known for several things - being huge (meaning the cookies were never deliciously gooey and warm), and its design. I always said that you knew what students lived and ate there - the engineering students built that conveyor belt for your finished lunch trays, the art students designed the pretty wooden mini-pagodas, and the music students didn't do shit because the acoustics of the place were terrible (glass on 3 sides), and you had to shout to hear yourself think.
At any rate, after moving out of the dorms, I ate a lot more ramen than was good for me. Now, it's important to note that not all ramen is created equal. All college students should know that. I greatly preferred the type that required a stove to cook, because that meant thicker and chewier noodles, which really separates bad ramen from good ramen. The soup and sauce is all flavoring and MSG anyway. Thin ramen noodles cook faster and are ideal for those who only have water heaters and no stove, but the noodles also have the consistency of soggy graham flakes. The Korean spicy seafood noodles were my absolute favorite, and I'm sure that after I die, my inner organs will be perfectly preserved for the amusement of future generations marveling at late 20th century mummification techniques. I would add vegetables to it to delude myself into thinking that it was remotely healthy, and I'd add an egg right after shutting the flame off so it would be half-cooked, allowing me to stir the yolk into the soup. Delicious!
I haven't eaten instant ramen in almost 2 years now. It's been ten years since I first learned to boil water and make ramen, and now, while I still have a long way to go, I can cook a wide variety of healthy dishes that most people can stomach without throwing up. You'll notice that a lot of my blogs are about growing up, and this blog is no exception. Part of it is realizing that I wouldn't be young forever, that my body wouldn't be able to continue cleansing itself of toxins and preservatives as it got older, and that I'd have to change these habits sooner than later before it became a habit too heavily ingrained. I've also lost my taste for heavily flavored foods - I think eating a primarily organic vegetarian diet over the past year has something to do with that. Organic foods really taste different, and I've grown to appreciate the taste of a food itself, rather than the food + ridiculous amounts of sauce and flavoring. And lastly, I decided that ramen was a symbol of a life that I wanted to slowly transition away from.
To put it simply, consider treating yourself as you would your own child. Now some people might feed their kids donuts for breakfast, but they at least have the excuse of not knowing better. I remember one night in college, when I was munching away on some gummy worms, that I suddenly stopped, and realized that I'd be a terrible father. "Hey, Daddy's too lazy to cook today, so let's just have chip and salsa plus gummy bears for dinner today." My parents certainly never did that to me, even if they were tired and might have been tempted to just order a pizza and get it over with for the night. They took the time and effort (well, my Mom really since she's the one that cooks in our family) to make sure we got the nutrients we needed. I guess it's about the kind of person I want to grow up to be.
So I guess you could say ramen has been a symbol of one aspect of my maturation. One might say that quitting it means more than you might think. Or, I'm just reading too much into it. However, I like to think that all this is to say that there are stories behind nearly everything in life, so long as you're willing to think about it. Try it, you might be surprised at what you learn about yourself.
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