KIMCHEE VS. DURIANS

20 January 2007, Saturday, 3pm, at my rented apartment.

If you are a first-time eater of kimchee, you’d probably complain that it smells like smelly socks. What’s worse is that after you’ve eaten kimchee, you smell like smelly socks; the combination of cabbage and pungent spices like garlic and chili peppers makes the smell ooze out of your pores long after you’ve eaten it.

But as a native Korean, let me tell you this: kimchee is our national staple, and we have it everyday for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We can't live without our daily fix of this fermented vegetables.

Yes, you can’t appreciate kimchee. Neither do we know how to appreciate your smelly durians. To me, durians smell like shit. But no matter how much I dislike this thorny green, so-called “king of fruits”, I wouldn’t deprive others from eating it.

Take my Malaysian roommate Kenny, for example. He simply can’t stand the smell of kimchee.

Today, I was about to take out my box of kimchee - which my gomo (고모, paternal aunt) prepared for me in Korea – from the fridge and eat it together with the lunch I’d prepared. When I got to the fridge, it was gone. This is how my dialogue with Kenny went:

ME: Kenny, you see my kimchee in the refrigerator?

KENNY: No... Why leh?

ME: My auntie prepared for me before I came to Singapore from Korea.

KENNY: Orh, you mean those rotten vegetables ah? It smells like I don't know what, man! So I threw it away oredi.

ME: WHAT? YOU THROW AWAY MY KIMCHEE? MY KIMCHEE!!!

KENNY: Aiyor, sorry lah! Okay lah, come, lemme treat you to some of my Sarawak durians.

ME: (looking with utter disbelief) @%#%!@!!!?#$@#!!!