1. 子入大庙，每事问。或曰：“孰谓鄹人之子知礼乎？入大庙，每事问。”子闻之，曰：“是礼也。” -论语·八佾第三·太庙章

Wise Confucious said, "When one enters the temple, he must ask about everything. This is respectful behaviour."

2. "Hum" - Hokkien (a dialect from China) for cockles, or clams; a type of mollusks commonly used in south east asian cuisines and italian pastas. Like oysters, its shape often conjures the image of the female intimate parts. Hence, it is also a double entendre for Singapore street talk in reference to... you know... ;)

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Recently I picked up cooking, it has been a wonderful experience. To create something meaningful out of a stash of raw materials; to see the faces of the people who tasted your creations, be it a smile or a cringe.

It was a skill that I was interested to learn from a long time ago, but kept procrastinating. But when I was in Buenos Aires, the thing that I missed most, was incredibly, Singapore's food; so I made up my mind to learn some signature Singapore dishes before I would go back to BA again.

I asked my sister, who is an amazingly talented cook, to teach me how to cook. She said, "Cooking is easy, all you need is to put in your care and your love into the dish." (Interestingly I remember my chinese teacher in secondary school saying the same thing about writing, "When you have a good heart and character, your writing would be good... I guess love then is really all you need.)

Well that advice did help, but I still needed some concrete guidance. So armed with my 'Best Singapore Recipes' cookbook, I set upon a cooking mission. And the second major dish that I was going to learn was 'Char Kway Teow'; fried flat rice noodles. The first step was to get all the ingredients from the recipe.

For someone who had never cooked in his life other than eggs and instant noodles; my culinary memories are restricted to the days of my childhood, where my now deceased grandma would take me to the traditional wet market every weekend and try to inculcate the virtues of good fish, chicken and vegetable selection. I also remembered trying to help chop vegetables and strip onions then, with my small young hands. But those were distant memories.

You could imagine then, how disorientated I was when I entered the modern comtemporary of the wet market, the double storey NTUC fairprice at Toa Payoh, the chaos and mess of energy that greeted me. Not only did I have trouble finding pork lard (I was milling around in the baby products section), shrimp paste and the Kway Teow (flat rice noodles), I had difficulties trying to navigate my trolley amongst the scores of aunties battling and pushing their way trying to get their groceries done in the least amount of time.

Time, however was on my side, I had the luxury of taking in the chaos slowly. But I was not getting anywhere. It was then I remembered wise old Confucious. Like a stranger entering a big temple, I started asking every single thing, talking to the amused aunties who seemed more than ready to give a lost young boy directions. Not only did they point the way to the ingredients, some started to ask me what was I cooking and gave me tips to make my cooking better. A few of them accompanied me all the way to where the ingredients are found.

My highlight of the shopping trip came when I was trying to search for the clams, one of the essential ingredients in the decadent 'Char Kway Teow'. I looked around the three different seafood segments and could not find any. Well WWCD, 'What Would Confucious Do'?

So I went up to the nearest NTUC staff, a middle aged female talking animatedly to her male colleague, and asked her, "Hi excuse me, do you have 'hum'"? Immeadiately the guy she was talking to sniggered, "Auntie of course got 'hum' lah, just don't know is it still fresh or not, since this morning no one buy leh." The woman turned around and slapped the guy's arm and exclaimed, "Aiyoh! So dirty minded! Pui pui pui!" And then proceeded to burst out giggling.

Well I got my 'hum' in the end. A little too small and hairy for my taste but those would do. But it heartens me that this little candid banter could still be seen if you look around hard enough. The little spices in life.

My 'char kway teow' turned out a little too salty. Nevertheless, it had the taste of satisfaction, something that even the best cooks in the world would never be able to give you. Most importantly the moment where the person you cooked for takes in your food... the expression on her face. I could finally understand why my sis said what she said.