Oh sweet fish balls

I suppose it's time I resurrect this thing considering that the last time it has seen action was almost a year ago. I, unfortunately, am not here because I finally decided to share the contents of my brain cells online but because I haven't got a choice since the compulsory language course I'm taking, Styles of English for Engineers II requires that we write a blog entry at least once a week, which I guess is a good thing since my rusty writing skills need to be brought back to working order. So we're given a list of very vague things we're allowed to write about, though we've been told to be nice about whatever it is we're putting down which would be rather hard for me since I've chosen to write a complaint, reason being the time-honored tradition of complaining is one of the things we as human beings do best. I've chosen to complain about the food situation on campus, simply because I can't stand it much longer.

I'll be frank and say that I've gotten sick of the food here. No, really, it's so bad that even when my stomach's completely empty, I don't feel like eating. At all. Now I know some of you may have some strange, weird friends who don't eat much or/and don't feel like eating even though they haven't had anything all day, but I shall tell you know that I'm the sort of person capable of eating four Big Macs in a row with room to spare for a Double Cheeseburger, and I can't go for more than four hours before I feel the need to replenish my tummy, so you can see how this situation feels quite wrong for someone as metabolically endowed as myself, very wrong indeed.

I know that there are 4 main eateries on campus, 3 of which have very generous menus and the depressing fact that I've gotten tired of eating from all of them pretty much speaks for the degree of my predicament. Now the canteen that I have elected to have most of my meals is called LG5, because apparently it's five floors underground. This particular eating facility has a menu that occupies half the wall it's mounted on, and that has made me take twenty minutes to decide what to have for the first and half of the second semester (to the exasperation of my roommate), after which I never wanted to look at it anymore. I also found out the hard way that they have a horrible misinterpretation of the term 'Thai food'. The same applied for the LG7 below, though I only eat there about once or twice a week because it smelled funny. There's a coffee shop/cafe upstairs but I don't like eating there because it's mostly expensive western food. As for LG 1, which is where I have breakfast, if I was up early enough that is, I was getting sick of having lunch there too. This was simply because one of the best things there was the barbecued pork rice, aka charsiewfan, and there was a point of time where I had it every time I was there for lunch because I was sick of the mixed rice where what was supposedly sweet and sour pork was merely sauce-covered flour. The thing that I find completely intolerable, at least by Malaysian standards, is the fact that they use WHITE rice instead of the oily rice without which charsiewfan isn't charsiewfan. Really, white rice?

Now the main reason I can't stand eating here any more even though the food quality is actually quite decent is because as a Malaysian I've come to expect and observe a certain standard of eating, and as such I desire a certain quota of Malaysian grub every now and then. Also, try eating around the same menus every day for four months. I shall now tell you that I'm used to having either fishball noodle soup, proper Malaysian charsiewfan and wantanmee, or, if I'm feeling particularly spicy, curry mee or nasi lemak, every day, for breakfast and/or lunch. Now imagine not being able to have any of that for four bloody months, and you might just get a hint of where I'm coming from. Really, it's one of the most tormenting things I've had to withstand living here.

However, the single most unforgivable atrocity in UST's catering services is that the three main cafeterias close at nine, or sometimes even earlier if their feeling lazy, and McDonald's only opens until ten. There's another canteen near the halls that only opens at night until two in the morning, but that's rubbish so we're going to leave it out here. The people who run this university should know better than anyone else is that most students have a habit of staying up till the wee hours in the morning, either to study or to other non-academic (and usually unmentionable) things. So I think, and surely you would have to agree with me, that it's preposterous for them not to have an eating facility that's not open twenty four hours a day.

It is because of this that I've actually gotten sick of McDonald's, and I never thought a day would ever come where I would get sick of indulging myself in America's pride and joy. The reason for this is simple, really. McDonald's is the only main restaurant that's fully functional till ten, and because everything else closes at nine, I usually end up eating junk food a few times a week. Worst of all, there was a really low point in my life here when I almost got sick of instant noodles, the wonderful things that I've cherished since my mother lost the ability to keep me away from them. Since it's only normal to get hungry at the most inappropriate times in the morning, I've been regularly having them, sometimes everyday, and besides the horrifying possibility of my not wanting to ever have them again, this situation also has a funny side effect of being bad for my health. Now I know why so many of the locals my age are suffering from acute hair loss.