Archive for November 26th, 2009
Have Snack, Will Grovel
It’s 4:30pm on Thursday, and I am experiencing severe hunger pangs. Luckily, I planned ahead and brought with me a snack: lentils mixed with rice, courtesy of my Lebanese friends at Amir. I think I’ll go ahead and pat myself on the back for making such a healthy, yet delicious, snack choice. The secret to the tastiness is the fired onions that Amir likes to throw in.
Unluckily, I forgot to pack a utensil to eat this ethnic amuse bouche. After scavenging unsuccessfully for a plastic fork in my desk drawer (I do keep a lot of random junk in there), I have grown desperate, and have resorted to scanning my desktop for something that might, in a pinch, serve as a spoon or a fork. So far my choices are HB pencil (too skinny, eraser tastes bad), pink highlighter (too visible to my co-workers as a non-piece of cutlery), opened stapler (a bit unwieldy, but quite good for scooping), magic marker (same issues as highlighter), and a large-sized paper clip (discreet, but tiny surface area, even in x-large format, and hence not very functional).
Funnily enough, it seems my 1 gig USB thumb drive may be the best candidate – it’s cheap, probably worth only a couple of bucks and therefore fairly disposable, small enough to not be visible to my coworkers, and has a surprisingly broad surface for carrying lentils to my mouth.
If that doesn’t pan out, the “wildcard” would be to just hold the plastic container of lentils over my face and let the tasty chunks just drop in – though I don’t like the lack of professionalism that scene would convey to my coworkers.
I’ve just remembered: when I was 6 years old, I desperately wanted to have a long trunk, like an elephant’s. Good Lord, a trunk would be the perfect utensil indeed. It’s almost as if my 6-year-old self knew that, for all the potential ridicule an elephant’s trunk, grafted onto a human face, would have posed, it would’ve paid off so wonderfully – so deliciously for that human, nearly a quarter century later. It makes me wonder what other prescient thoughts my 6-year-old self had. God, I’m hungry.
