On 'this shit'

It comes with rage.

There comes a time in a person’s life when you realise you’re too old for this shit. When I say, ‘this shit,’ I mean having the energy to call people out on the dumb-fuck racist shit we have to put up with on a daily basis.

If you’re one of those people who enjoys telling me that racism doesn’t exist, once Trump declared the Rona the ‘China virus’, I had beer cans thrown at me from a moving car and was greased off for wearing a mask in Toorak before masks were even mandatory. When a certain PR called the office of a media company I was an editor for, they asked if I was Asian after being given my name, as if I couldn’t speak English. I am often asked for help in Asian grocers when I am shopping because apparently, every single Asian person in a grocer must work there. Still, to this day, I get told that I’m different from other Asians.

Instead of listening to people try to justify the racist and ignorant shit they do by using the line ‘I didn’t mean it that way’, I just file them away in my Mental Trash Folder because it is not my job to educate fuckwits. It is the responsibility of each individual to educate themselves in how to be a decent human being, because, you know, life.

For every white person who claims to have elevated another culture’s cuisine for having taken a ‘research trip’ (read: holiday) to said country, I roll my eyes. For every recipe claiming to make mooncakes approachable by replacing salted egg yolks with chocolate, I let out a long, exhaustive sigh. For every bowl of glorified, soy-spiked pot of broth with broccoli and the wrong noodles thrown in it being captioned as ‘homemade pho’ on Instagram, I die a little inside. For every salad that isn’t smothered in some creamy jizz being dubbed an Asian salad, the vein in my forehead pulses. For every bowl of congee with 500 ingredients dotted over the top of it, I can’t help but think that if white people made half the amount of effort that non-white people did to understand the other culture’s food, we wouldn’t be in this fucking mess.

We certainly wouldn’t be in such a mess that the fuckery that is Chopstraws would make it to the phase of production. For those of you who are too exhausted to click on the link, Chopstraws are hollow chopsticks, so they’re both a chopstick and a straw. Or, if you think about it, it’s just two reusable straws used as a goddamn pair of chopsticks. The big drawcard for them is that they’re reusable. I’m pretty sure that chopsticks, just like ‘regular’ cutlery, have always been reusable and only had disposable versions of them made for takeaway or fast-food purposes. This company is implying that if we can carry around reusable chopsticks (which I did anyway so I didn’t use disposable ones), that we should carry around knives and forks as well. Why don’t I just hollow out the middle of a knife so I suck down hot as fuck broth? Oh, that’s right, because spoons exist. Enjoy scalding the back of your throat, fools.

This is not clever. This is not inventive. This is not ingenious.

You know what is ingenious? My mates who have brought their portable gas burners and charcoal barbecues to the park to make hot pot, lemongrass chicken and pippies when they meet their friends for lockdown picnics. The only thing is, none of them are arrogant enough to say that they’ve elevated the picnic experience.

What I’m reading:
I feel like an idiot for not having picked up Viet Thanh Nguyen’s, The Sympathizer, sooner. If you haven’t read it, please do.

What I’m watching:
David Attenborough’s A Life on Our Planet is a gentle reminder that we are all trash and we need to change our ways. Why are we such garbage?

What I’m eating:
Pomelos from Kingfisher Citrus. Amongst all this anger, they spark joy.

Are you also sick of this shit? Why don’t you share the rage?

Have you missed the hate?