Q

In Singapore our relationships with people seem to be couched in meals.

I go home this weekend and my grandma loves me with the most nourishing: bird’s nest, dang sheng double-boiled soup with tons of wolfberries for goodness, home brewed chrysanthemum tea, sliced peaches.

Over steamy bak kut broth we drink in eagerly each other’s lives in concentrated doses; in tau huey and grass jelly we relive old times and anticipate new ones.

We fall into the familiar rhythm of after-meal dessert, sink our spoons into sugary goodness and for awhile find no reason to speak. I have a theory that we fall in love with the person we eat ice-cream with most often, because of learned association between ice-cream happiness and person we now love.