it's been raining all day. at this moment i am sitting in the kitchen with a bowl of rice, some grilled eel and sliced cucumber. earlier in the day i was sitting at this very same place, looking out on the street through the window, and having cha-soba. it's so dreary cooking for one you're reduced to one-pot dishes and . i wish i liked sandwiches - i know von is always making sandwiches - but i don't really like breads at all, and the other staple for students is pasta - but i never seem to quite know how to cook those things. home food should be real food - with courses - and with real cooking. i want whole steamed fish and double-boiled herbal duck and doumiao with mushrooms and oyster sauce and chilli crab although i haven't the least idea how to kill a clean a crab i am not a cindy. i want to live with someone who turned out elaborate meals thrice a day. if you've ever seen the movie eat drink man woman, that's the kind of eating i'm talking about. or else live in singapore, where a person never has to cook if they don't want to, because there are kopitiams and hawker centres. i've never appreciated my mother so much.