Tara's thoughts

Country review: Taiwan

In this series, I will enlighten you with wisdom from my travelling past by reviewing – not just a hotel, not just a restaurant, oh no! I am more ambitious and foolhardy than that. I will review… an entire country!

Okay real quick before we go any further: if you are somebody who will feel the need to tell me that Taiwan “isn’t a country”, go away. You’re wrong, I don’t want to hear your opinion on this, this blog is not for you, just go away.

Now that we’ve gotten that over with, let me preface this by saying that this review isn’t really fair to all the other countries in the world because I lived in Taiwan for two and a half years and it was home. It’s the only country other than New Zealand that I would cheer for the sports team of or wear a scarf with the flag on it. But it’s an unusual tourist destination for the English-speaking world so I think I have some useful things to say even considering my bias. If you might consider travelling to Taiwan (if travelling is a thing we ever get to do again) and need somebody to make up your mind for you, read on!

OVERVIEW

Taiwan is a small (relatively speaking, I mean. I realise it’s a bit rich for a New Zealander to label other countries “small”) island off of the coast of China, plus a few even smaller islands dotted around. Despite all the arguments about who Taiwan actually belongs to (although the answer is, the people of Taiwan), the important thing to know from a traveller’s perspective is that it functions as an antonymous country. And that the status of Taiwan is a political subject and therefore tact is advised when discussing it with the locals. The main languages are Chinese (Mandarin) and Taiwanese. The currency is the New Taiwan Dollar. Population? I don’t know, I’m not Wikipedia. Look, what you need to know is that Taiwan is small and cheerful and packed. It’s a little different from anywhere else. It’s really good fun.

EASE OF TRAVEL: 6/10.

SAMSUNG — Forget Instagram, most of Taiwan actually looks like this. Please note that the Taiwanese do not believe in footpaths.

Taiwan is safe and affordable and has good public transport, with English language signs at train stations and comprehensive connections. Taxis are cheap. Despite this, Taiwan is hard to visit in some ways – there isn’t a lot of English language tourist information, for example, and there is a real language barrier. However I don’t think anybody even vaguely intrepid should avoid Taiwan. Sure, outside of the major centres you will struggle to find English speakers but if you find yourself needing help then people will usually try their best to help you anyway. If all else fails, Taiwan is so eager to promote tourism that they have a free multilingual 24/7 tourist helpline. How cool is that! I’ve called it before. They are very nice and they will translate for you. With this and google maps and a menu translator saved to your phone, you’ll be just fine.

I have a theory that there are two sides to Asia – the shiny side (think Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong island) and the gritty side (think Kowloon). Taiwan has some flash bits but is mostly on the gritty side. This isn’t a criticism! I love this about Taiwan. It’s very real. But it can be a bit…jarring…when you first set out to explore. It’s a land of noisy scooters (literally 15 million of them) and huge cockroaches and air pollution and you do not wear sandals if it’s raining. Gross. I tell you this not to scare you but because it’s best that you’re prepared. Before we arrived – and I moved there and was stuck with it – I’d only seen photos of the shiny side of Taiwan. The bits they show in Lonely Planet. It looked like Japan. I’d visited Japan and it was clean and I’d felt safe there. And then we arrived and it was… erm… not what I was expecting. It was nothing like Japan, for one thing. This was in the days before the high-speed train went all the way from the Airport to Taipei so my first impression of Taiwan was, instead of zipping comfortably through the countryside as I imagine you do nowadays, we were stuck on a bus crawling through the seediest bits of Taoyuan. We passed betel-nut girls (that link is NSFW) and grimy looking eateries with little fans going round and round to keep flies off the buffet and old men sitting around with their singlets rolled up to their armpits so their bellies hung out (lots of old dudes do this in Taiwan, I never found out why) and just like miles and miles of grubby urban dystopia. Now, that’s a particularly rough part of Taiwan and actually the cheap eateries have the best food but it took me a long time to get over the culture shock and start appreciating where I was. Consider yourself forewarned, and therefore forearmed. Bring close-toed footwear.

ATTRACTIONS / ACTIVITIES: 7/10

Real talk time. Taiwan is not, you know, Paris. You won’t be bored and it has cool stuff but not on the Louvre/Disneyland level. You need to think differently about how you spend your time while travelling. You don’t pay a lot of money and go to an attraction for a day (except Taroko Gorge). It’s more about fun atmospheres, little excursions, that kind of thing.

Architecture is not a strong point, for a start. Most of their buildings are covered in small white tiles, greying in the air pollution. I have never confessed this to a Taiwanese person but as a New Zealander this has the unfortunate effect of making all the cities look like a giant public toilet. I am so sorry but it’s true. If a building is covered in white tile in New Zealand, it’s a loo or a changing room at the beach. There are some lovely scenic spots in Taiwan but in general it’s not a place you go to for the beauty of it, is what I’m trying to say.

But who cares! There’s other great stuff!

Taiwan has some excellent museums – my favourite is the Taichung Science Museum with its poison dart frogs. The National Palace museum is famous for a reason and you don’t need me to tell you it’s well worth your time.
Taipei zoo is large and attractive and the animals are well cared for. You can see bears!
If you’re lucky enough to be in Taiwan when a festival is on, please go. They are energetic, fascinating, exciting and yet you feel completely safe.
Taiwan is blessed with abundant hot springs. Oh, there’s nothing like a proper Asian-style hot spring, we really don’t get it right in New Zealand. (I spend every winter here cursing this fact. Dammit, Taupo, get your shit together!)

And these aren’t even the best of Taiwan. The very best attractions are the colourful temples, the quirky little towns for day-tripping, and the wonderful night markets. In other words, places you can mingle with the cheerful throng and get a slice of Taiwanese culture.

By contrast, my favourite activity in Taiwan is finding comparative peace and quiet while enjoying the superlative hiking. Really, I come from New Zealand, which is hiking-central, and I loved the hiking in Taiwan. You’ll walk through alarmingly verdant forests and past huge waterfalls, cheeky squirrels, gargantuan spiders, you name it. It’s a vertical kind of place, and this has lead to some fun work-arounds on the tracks that you’d never get away with in New Zealand thanks to our boring health and safety laws.

Did you know that Taipei is the only capital city in the world which has a national park in the city limits? You can spend a wonderful few hours there hiking up Seven Stars Mountain. First you slog uphill through dense forest, then emerge, blinking, into a world of long swaying grass. As you make your way to the summit keep an eye out for butterflies, then take a rest at the top with the swarm of other hikers and try to make out a view through the smog. When you’re ready to go back down, descend the other side of the mountain where the trail leads you right past some exciting geothermic activity. And there’s the bus-stop right there so you can take a well-deserved break. Can you imagine a better way to spend an afternoon?

Surprisingly for an island, Taiwan is not a good beach destination, having very few sandy beaches and a populace deeply suspicious of the water. Don’t go there in the summer, anyway, it’s dreadful! Go in the autumn like a sane person. It might still be warm enough to enjoy the decent scuba-diving, especially on Green Island. If you do go in the summer (don’t) then Taiwan has excellent river tracing and I particularly recommend this, although please prioritise your safety and go with a guide.

SHOPPING: 7/10.

Some people like shopping? Taiwan has a lot of shopping. It’s good for cute and silly things – think bags, cell-phone cases, socks with crazy patterns. In hip areas you can find little boutiques with unique items by local designers. For souvenirs, I’d take peanut candy over pineapple cake any day of the year. I like ceramics and had a really lovely day wandering through Yingge, selecting a tea set from one of the dozens of pottery makers. Also the pottery museum there is fantastic, much cooler and more interesting than you would expect. Taiwan is not a good place for clothes shopping if you’re an average or above size for a westerner, ditto shoes.

FOOD: 10/10.

Hot pot – so good. Hope the ex-boyfriend doesn’t mind being on the blog. Hi, Nic! Hey, what’s that white stuff in the bottom right-hand corner? I have no memory of eating that.

Why isn’t Taiwanese food more famous? This is the hardest bit for me to review because honestly I like Taiwanese food so much and I think I lack the writing skills necessary to create any kind of impression on a reader. There is, after all, a limit to the amount of times you can read the word “delicious” before you get fed up and close the tab. But I will try. I am a cheap eats person. The linen napkin, the glass of wine, the array of silver cutlery, these are not for me, oh no. I am a firm convert to the way of the plastic table, the bad lighting, the disposable chopsticks. Taiwan is the cause of this. Taiwan is the king of cheap and cheerful food. There is also flash and expensive food obviously but who cares? The other stuff is so much more fun. Taiwanese cheap and cheerful cuisine is salty, savoury, warm, meaty and unfussy. It’s the food of busy people who work hard. There are too many highlights to capture them all so I’ll just touch on a few.

Anyone who’s seriously considering a trip to Taiwan has heard of beef noodle soup and even if you haven’t, Taiwan’s most famous dish isn’t a hard sell – it’s a big bowl of savoury meaty loveliness with a bunch of noodles, what’s not to like? But that’s not what I would eat for lunch if I had just one day to revisit Taiwan. No, I’d want a lunch box. I’m always up for visiting a lunch box shop, especially one that has stewed bamboo on offer. They are self-service so you don’t need to deal with a menu and astonishingly cheap. But if I could eat anything at all, I’d want a Fulong beach train station lunch box, with pressed tofu and a pork chop and a tea egg (You can throw the fish sausage away though. Bleugh!). Imagine getting off the crowded sweaty train that you’ve been stuck on all the way from Taipei and spilling out into the hot sun and getting into line for one of those treasures. What a way to start a day at the beach!

What about dinner? My two favourite options are hot pot or a night market. Hot pot is pretty self-explanatory but I would like to point out that if you go to a flash place then they often have self-service Haagen Dazs or Movenpick in the ice cream fridge. I’d always be way too excited about this and have to start my meal with a dessert course before I could pay attention to my meat and veg.

Time to talk about night markets. Taiwanese night markets and the culture of “small bites” are legendary. They are all different but I can make one generalisation – night markets are the best! Honestly they are among the funnest and tastiest ways to spend an evening that I have encountered in the entire world. Some would say to select your market carefully but I would encourage you to try a selection. I’ve been to most of the most popular tourist ones – Shulin, Raohe (I did not like this night market and expect most animal lovers to feel the same way), Taichung, etc, and I liked our local in Banqiao best – Nanya night market, it is called. It has a more relaxed atmosphere and fewer space-wasting oyster omelette stalls.

Barbecue stall is just waiting for you to choose

What culinary delights await you at Nanya night market! The blender place will whip you up a cold, fruity drink while you wait – pineapple juice for the beginners, watermelon juice or a papaya milkshake for night market veterans. The skewer place will baste your selection in barbecue sauce and roast it while you wander around looking at other things. I particularly like the spring onion wrapped in bacon. Hot Star Chicken is a Taiwanese institution. They bash a chicken fillet until it’s absolutely enormous and then deep-fry it to perfection. There is a sesame oil chicken place which is terrifying to order from if your Chinese is bad (mine was appalling) – they are immensely popular and always in a huge rush and there’s invariably a queue building up behind you by the time you’ve got their attention – but it’s worth facing that ordeal for the bowl of absolute perfection you eventually wind up with. I could go on and on but I think you get the point and anyway night markets are made for wandering and speculating so telling you the specific stalls I liked is actually doing you a disservice. It’s not just because my memory sucks, no. It’s for your sake. But I will leave you with two tips: 1) don’t worry about the horrid smell you will encounter from time to time when wandering a night market. It is not, as I believed for an embarrassingly long time, because night markets exist in areas with sewer problems. Taiwan is more sanitary than that. The smell is merely stinky tofu. I never learnt to enjoy this local delicacy but the ex-boyfriend was a fan. 2) whichever night market you visit, when in doubt, do as the Taiwanese do and join the end of the longest queue.

FRIENDLINESS: 1,000,000/10.

Taiwan has the best and nicest people in the entire world. They are incredibly proud of their little country and will show hospitality to travellers whenever they can. I was assisted by total strangers when I was struggling dozens of times. When we couldn’t find a loo at a festival, a local stall-holder let my mum use the one in her house. When I got hopelessly lost in a rural area trying to find a train station, I was given a lift. I had been hiking and was muddy, stinky, and exhausted and my rescuers, dressed up to the nines for a party, let me into their immaculate car without hesitation. This was during moon festival so the car was full of food and they spent the entire trip plying me with moon cakes and drunken chicken. A cup was somehow procured in a moving vehicle and I was poured a glass of Sprite. Taiwan is just that kind of place.

It can take a while to tune in to the kindness of the Taiwanese people. It is not a culture that is big on smiling at strangers. Also, people will stare at you. But once you get used to these things, I’m sure you’ll start to notice how lovely people are, and how cheerful. The Taiwanese are a people who are not beaten down because they’re too busy enjoying themselves. Really, the best thing about the whole country is the mood. “Cool culture” never infected Taiwan. It’s not cynical. Instead, there’s an infectious optimism, a buoyancy, that permeates the place. It’s such a fun place to be. I can’t tell you how much I miss it.

OVERALL: 10/10.

Need more convincing? Okay, imagine you are in Taipei. Here’s how to have a perfect day. Sleep in. Dawdle a bit. Go to a local breakfast place and have dan bing, taro cake and warm soy milk for breakfast. Catch the MRT to Xindian Station. It’ll take a while so make sure you pack a book. When you get to Xindian, catch the bus to Wulai. As you wander through the village you will pass dozens of hot spring resorts. Select and book the private hot spring that appeals the most for about an hour and a half from whenever “now” is. Splurge on a nice place with a river view. Now you’ve recovered from the bumpy bus trip have some pork skewers from a street vendor for lunch. Take a picture on the bridge. Wend your way out of the village and take the road to the waterfall. It’s an easy 25 minute stroll. Soak up some peace and quiet. Enjoy the view of the river and the forest. Breathe in a lot when you get to the waterfall. Apparently the negative ions are good for you. Don’t rush any of this but make sure you head back in time for your hot spring booking. Enjoy your soak. Luxuriate. It’ll probably be dark by the time your hour is up – the sun always sets early in Taiwan – so select one of the local aboriginal places for dinner. Feast on earthy wild pork, bamboo, ferns, mushrooms. Catch the bus back to town, or even better, don’t. Spend the night, dreaming of the hot spring that awaits you in the morning. When the day comes that you have to leave Taiwan, you’ll keep dreaming of it. I promise you that.

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How are you? Really?

I have this friend who, when we had met up after a while apart, as soon as pleasantries were over, would lean in close, look me fixedly in the eye and ask, “so…how are you, really?”

I was living a relatively untroubled life at the time so this always flustered me. I was fine…I think? No, I was. I was fine. Really! Totally fine. Anyway, it’s not a question that is designed for a positive answer, and I truly was fine. I wished he’d stop. These days I miss it. As you become a grown-up, the number of people who are willing to listen, really listen, when you need to get something off your chest becomes smaller every year. And when it’s a flu season and school holidays double-whammy, even I start to wish for more people around to chat to.

Parenting has its good weeks and its bad weeks. This week was rough. I’m a bit sick but not sick enough for Barns to take time off work. We are potty training one of the bubbies (attempt 3). She’s doing well with it this time but it’s spurred her into a sleep strike. We’re so tired. The kids are in a phase of intense sibling rivalry focused around my time and attention. I’m starting to feel like Dear Sugar’s decapitated head of a black-haired plastic princess. Barns is stressed about work, and, well, you get the picture.

Eventually things reach a crisis point. Last night I asked Barns to drain the soba noodles for dinner. He picked up the pot, took a look at the sink full of dirty dishes, and announced he was going to drain them in the garden. He returned some time later and set the empty pot down on the bench.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ll just make more.”

“What? What happened to them?”

“I lost them.”

“You… lost… them? Are you…are you okay?”

“I’m just hungry. I mean…it’s kind of funny, isn’t it? I’ll make some more. Let me fix it. ”

He looked at me with his big brown puppy-dog eyes. Poor tired bastard, I thought, and I did what any compassionate wife would have done and kicked him out of the kitchen. Later, fed, in bed, the children finally asleep, I asked him what had happened.

“Did you like, trip? And drop them? I still don’t get it.”

“No, I just got it wrong when I drained them. I made the gap too big. It was dark. When I looked in the pot, they were mostly gone. So I tried again and lost the rest of them.”

This is when I started to see the funny side. It was a while before I could talk again.

“It’s that mental image, you know. You standing there in the dark, calmly pouring the noodles on the ground. Twice!”

“On the path, actually. I was trying to kill weeds with the boiling water. I slipped on them later when I went to throw out that stock that went bad.”

I lost it again but eventually managed some sympathy.

“Oh, lovey. Are you really okay?”

“I think I would have done it even if I wasn’t this tired. You know how clumsy I am.”

I don’t even slightly believe that but I’ve decided to leave it there for now. I’ll also tackle Barnaby’s worrying belief that our garden can absorb any amount of kitchen waste on some other day.

And then last night was another bad night. Not as bad as some this week, but bad enough. We lay in bed next to each other this morning, as Nora’s whispering from her room became steadily more insistent, playing a familiar game of chicken. Whoever admits they are awake first on the weekends, by the unwritten laws of parenting, has to be the one to get up and deal with the shit show that is trying to make breakfast when the toddlers are tired.

I cracked first. “You know I was up in the night, right?!”

“You were up? You know I was up too?”

“I… did not know that.”

“So…we’re just lying here, each being cross with the other for not getting up now when we were the one who got up in the night?”

That about summed it up. In the end we both did breakfast. Then we made a phone call.

Some weeks, the bad ones, it’s only your love for your kids that gets you through, or other weeks it’s the support of your partner. Sometimes it’s just sheer tenacity, holding onto the knowledge that kids change in the blink of an eye and bad times don’t last. Today it’s our community. Thank god it’s Saturday! Barnaby’s brother’s family are babysitting while we sit in our favourite restaurant, ignoring each other and eating popcorn chicken. I’m writing this and Barns is lost in a book. When we pick our kids up later, nothing will be different except that we’ll be a bit lighter, which is all the difference in the world. We’ll finally be, well, fine. No, really.

Country Review: Japan

Well, the borders are still closed and it looks like they will be for a while yet but honestly this doesn’t make a lot of difference to my plans. I have two two-year-olds and no money, I wasn’t going anywhere anyway. So I’ve decided to travel…into my memories. In this series, I will enlighten you with wisdom from my travelling past by reviewing – wait for it – not just a hotel, not just a restaurant, oh no! – an entire country!

OVERVIEW

godzilla — Don’t go to Japan, Godzilla lives there!

Oh, I don’t know, it’s Japan, isn’t writing this kind of silly? You all know Japan. It’s a long island country in Asia, mountainous and forested, with enormous cities, intense weather, a huge population and a fascinating culture. People from the West are drawn to Japan, some obsessed with it, the image of the country occupying a certain space in the imagination where exoticism and coolness and nerdiness and wistfulness collide. In reality you find yourself somewhere less stuffy and less traditional but also less dazzlingly modern than you were expecting. Still, even occupied by normal people living their daily lives as it is, Japan impresses and excites.

EASE OF TRAVEL: 6/10

Helpful things: Safe. Comprehensive public transport, lots of tourist information around, signage often in English. Plastic models of food outside eateries are helpful. You can eat delicious Michelin-starred food for not very much money if you eat food that’s traditionally cheaper anyway, e.g. ramen or if you opt for a lunch set-menu special.

Frustrating things: Expensive. Crowded, clamorous cities. Some insanely huge and cavernous train stations that take half-a-fucking-hour to exit. Sprawling. Getting anywhere takes a million years, two different trains and a bus. Weather can be challenging. Don’t go in summer! The sun literally rises at 4:30 in the morning! It’s terrible! Terrible, I tell you!

ACTIVITIES AND ATTRACTIONS: 10/10

Tokyo Disneysea! Rajah! Ice block! 35 degrees and sunny! Ice block necessary!

Japan has so much cool stuff! First of all, they have anything you could desire for a “cultural” experience: museums and art galleries, open-air modern-art sculpture gardens, palaces and castles, historic districts in ancient cities. There’s wonderful scenery and tea-ceremonies and tradition. Japan is OLD and has been rich and powerful for a long time, accumulating all the trappings that come with that e.g. art and beautiful buildings. A lot of this has been meticulously preserved. Most wonderful are the temples and shrines, so different looking from anything at home (assuming of course that home is somewhere like New Zealand) and so beautiful. I’m not a spiritual person but I’ll never forget the eerie sense of power emanating from some of the temples. However, you can easily get “temple-fatigue” in Japan, it’s a thing people write about. It’s best to space out your days with a mix of things, and don’t worry, Japan has you covered!

Where Japan really gets interesting is in the mix of the old and the new. A bit tired of culture? Why don’t you go relax in an onsen? Perhaps you want to do something fun. It’s time to visit a cat cafe or the ramen museum or, best of all, what about a theme park? You could go to Tokyo Dome City, where Barnaby feared for his life on the roller coaster that sped down the side of a building, but that’s not for me. Let’s talk about the cream of the crop, the reason that we currently squirrel money away in a bank account in the hope of taking the kids overseas in five or six years: Tokyo Disney Resort.

SO I’M A DISNEY NERD and Japan has two Disney theme parks, Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo Disneysea. People in the know reckon they’re up there among the best in the world but I’ve never been to America and so, sadly, I can’t weigh in on this. What I can tell you is that Disneysea, at least, is mind-blowingly incredible. We spent a day there in 2015. I love Disney. I love theme parks. I was completely primed and ready to love Disneysea, and so I am perhaps not the best gauge of how entrancing it actually is. Take, then, Barnaby as an example. Barns is not a Disney fan. He vaguely likes some of their movies but he at least tries to resist the forces of capitalism and cultural imperialism that Disney epitomises. He planned our trip there as a gift for me. He bloody loved it. I once overheard him telling people it was the best day of his life six months after our wedding. All I can tell you is that it’s real, the magic I mean. It’s real.

I will add this caveat: The best attractions in Japan are scattered over the entire country so expect to spend a lot of time and money on public transport. Tokyo city proper is weirdly light on things of interest. Pack light and expect to move around a lot.

Japan isn’t heavy on activities of the water-sports variety, but the skiing is famous if you like that kind of thing. I’ve never been hiking there but I’d love to. It looks beautiful.

SHOPPING: 10/10

If you can’t find something you want to buy in Japan then you must be walking around with your eyes shut. Excellent things you can buy there include: snacks, handicrafts (I covet beautiful washi paper and furoshiki), electronics, nerdy paraphernalia, high end bean-to-bar chocolate, kitchen goods (Japanese knives are world famous), and Studio Ghibli merchandise. I love the Ghibli / Noritake collaborations. I mean, look:

img_20200619_122109 — So pretty! I will never use this mug, despite temptation – as well as being gorgeous, it’s well made and a decent size. I can’t tell if the other mugs are jealous or feel sorry for it.

And that’s just stuff that I personally am interested in shopping for. Obviously they also have clothing stores and shoes and, well, basically anything you could fancy. Oh hey, I read that they have wonderful fabric shops if you’re into sewing, and of course there’s sake and whiskey if you like drinking. There are model train shops, and specialist model air plane shops, huge crafting stores, dusty caverns that specialise in doujinshi, and the list goes on and on and on.

FOOD: 1,000,000/10

We went to a famous ramen shop, Tsuta, which received a Michelin star not long after our visit. OH GOD IT WAS GOOD.

Sorry, France! Apologies, Italy! Japan actually has the best food in the entire world. And this is coming from somebody who doesn’t eat sashimi or seafood (except for cooked fish, I do eat that. Does fish count as seafood? I’ve never been clear). I’m told that if you do, Japanese food is even better. This is hard to imagine.

But what is so amazing about Japanese food, you ask? Pull up a chair. This may take a minute. Well, first of all, Japanese people love dining out. The food scene in Japan is absolutely enormous. I’ve read that Japan has the highest concentration of restaurants per capita in the world (although I can’t seem to find anything to substantiate that) and if you put that together with one of the world’s largest populations, well, you get the idea. Now factor in that Japan, like most of Asia, takes eating very seriously. Not that there aren’t fun cafes and restaurants, there totally are, but the food industry in Japan is full of dedicated artists of the type who get up before dawn to scour markets for the finest ingredients and spend decades honing recipes both traditional and modern. For their part, the dining populace subject the full scope of food from high end kaiseki to humble bowls of ramen to the same level of scrutiny and the results speak for themselves.

Next, Japanese food has a tremendous range. There are lots of different dishes and cuisine types to experience. This is helped by strong regional and seasonal elements, which is very pleasing for the traveller in search of the new. It’s exciting to go to a different city and try whatever the speciality is there.

The third wonderful thing about Japanese food can be summed up with one word: umami. Oh, I just love it! That little pucker of the mouth, that tang! And the different ways this elusive flavour is explored, played with, in Japanese cooking, well, no other cuisine can compete. It’s all just so darn tasty.

There are delicious sweets too, don’t worry, although to be completely honest the appeal of jiggly Japanese cheesecake continues to elude me. And mochi. Yuck. But there are lots of nice sweets! I particularly like things filled with sticky red bean paste. It’s sort-of an old fashioned taste but in a good way.

The cherry on top is that Japan is the world-leader in the snack department. It’s impossible to leave a convenience store without an armload of mango flavoured popcorn and green tea pocky and consomme flavoured potato sticks and wasabi kit-kats or perhaps even more exciting and unusual treats. It’ll all be nice, too, with decent quality chocolate. It makes wonderful souvenirs if you can get it home without devouring it all on the plane.

FRIENDLINESS: 8/10

men's club — It’s just so hard to choose

Japanese people are famous for being polite and helpful for good reason. The customer service in Japan is generally excellent and people are mostly kind and tolerant. I remember taking restaurant employees outside with me so I could point at the plastic model of the food I wanted without anyone minding, I remember people asking me if I was lost in the train station, I recall a very busy and harried convenience store employee taking the time to help us buy our Disneysea tickets from the kiosk. People really tried to help us even though we were bumbling around their country and generally being inconvenient.

You may encounter some racism or sometimes people will be too shy and not want to deal with you. Don’t show that you’re cross – in Asia, the person who gets angry is automatically in the wrong. All you can do is to try not to take it personally. When I first visited Japan 17 years ago you’d still see the occasional NO FOREIGNERS sign on an otherwise appealing looking little shop, even though this was supposedly illegal. I tried to take the view that it was an opportunity for me to learn about my white privilege and what it might feel like to be a different race and maybe grow a bit as a person but truthfully it wasn’t a nice experience. We didn’t see any signs like that when we were last in Japan, which was 2015, and Barns never saw any while he lived there so hopefully it’s now a thing of the past entirely.

Japan is famous for having a lot of etiquette rules but it’s really not that complicated and you can learn them, easy. Promise. Anyway, in most situations it’s enough to try. Japanese people will be forgiving if you’re trying. I forgot myself and wore my shoes into my friend’s house which is massively rude and she just laughed, but like, she really laughed. I didn’t do it again!

OVERALL: 10/10

disneysea — Mediterranean Harbour, Disneysea. I’m hot, I’m sweaty, I have a migraine, I have jet lag, I’m exhausted, and I’m having *so much fun!*

Hmmm, turns out I like Japan the best out of all the counties I’ve visited. It’s officially the raddest. Go Japan!

Twin pregnancy / newborns shopping guide!

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So you are expecting twins? Congratulations! How are you doing? I hope you’re keeping well. I hope you’re here in a state of calmness. But it’s okay if you are not. Being pregnant with twins is scary. Are you perhaps worried, squinting at lists on the internet at four in the morning when you can’t sleep because the kids are fighting each other in your uterus and then your brain starts working and you need to do something to get ready because god knows you don’t know what you’re doing and you get googling and are led, perhaps, here, hoping for some sane suggestions? Suggestions that don’t involve shelling out over a hundred dollars for what looks like a normal backpack but is somehow better for babies because it has more pockets? Well, I hope I can help.

Spoiler alert: I don’t really get designer nappy bags. I just used a normal back-pack? It was fine? (Don’t even talk to me about handbag style nappy bags. I don’t have enough hands as it is) I am not an Instagram mum. I don’t need things to be flash. I mean, my house is literally full of holes. We also don’t have a lot of money and I need the things I buy to be worth it. So here’s what was truly worth it for us.

Complan

Or Vitaplan. Whichever you prefer. Chocolate, obviously. I used to have it when I felt peckish between my second afternoon tea and dinner. That’s not a joke. Trust me, you’ll get why you’re so hungry all the time once you see both kids… and the placentas… oh and also the umbilical cords. Do you know the amount of blood in your body has increased by up to 60%? You have to make all of that out of something.

I suppose you could make something similar to Complan out of chia seeds and nut butters and protein powders etc etc but you are pregnant and have earned the right to just like do things the easy way sometimes.

2. Chest freezer

This is is seriously up there with the best shopping decisions I’ve ever made. My parents treated us to one around the time I stopped working (couldn’t handle it anymore at 26 weeks but I did have a pretty physical job) and I spent the remainder of my pregnancy filling it. Once the kids were born we didn’t need to cook a dinner for the first four months of their lives! It was an absolute life-saver. Evenings with two newborns can be rough, ease the pressure wherever you can.

The best thing about getting a chest freezer is that if people hear that you are stocking up because you’re pregnant with twins then sometimes they will want to put things in it for you. I was totally unprepared for this and it was wonderful. What amazing kindness. It was the most unexpected people, too. Barnaby’s boss sent us lasagnes. My mum and dad’s downstairs neighbour made bolognaise, as did a good friend, while another friend who has kids of her own to worry about made us pasta bake. You may notice that there is definitely a theme to the kind of food that we were gifted but Barns and I are dedicated pasta fans so we couldn’t believe our luck.

3. One of those belt thing that holds your belly up

My husband has just informed me that these are called “maternity belts”. Oh, I suppose that does make sense.

Anyway, my auntie treated me to one of these and I wore it all. the. time. It’s basically wet-suit material and Velcro. It gave me a weird hump if I wore it under my clothes and looked like a kid’s imitation of a wrestling championship belt if I wore it on the outside but I still wore it everywhere. Why? It really helped with the feeling that my tummy was about to split open and all my guts were going to fall out at any second. And back aches and stuff, too, I guess.

4. Twin breastfeeding pillow

This was indeed useful for breastfeeding but even handier for bottle feeding and so I’d recommend it to anyone regardless of which manner you intend to feed your children. It’s one of those things that becomes a part of the furniture and then when it finally gets ripped after years of intensive usage you’re like? How? Are we supposed to cope without it??? It’s okay though, my mother-in-law sewed it up. We got a handmade one from a nice lady on Facebook.

5. Proper bottles

Our first tries with the bottle were all those round teat ones you get in the hospital or the supermarket, and frankly we were in despair. So much leakage! So much wind! How on earth were we going to survive months of this?! We’re melodramatic but it was seriously problematic. Then salvation came in the form of a family member suggesting we try Mam bottles. You can get them at Farmers, Baby City, etc. They were so much easier for our tiny wee bubbies and feeding became less of a dreadful chore for all of us. I hear good things about other bottles but we never needed to try a different brand.

It’s a good idea buy a few of these before the children are born. Leaving the hospital will seem a lot less scary if you’ve got bottles, formula, and a sterilising system (that you already understand) waiting for you at home. Some people do exclusively breastfeed twins, it’s true, and I wouldn’t want to put anybody off who’s really committed to trying but wow, that would be hard, and I would never expect it of anyone. I didn’t even slightly expect it of myself. There are good reasons it’s not very common.

6. A jug and a whisk for making formula

OH MY GOD, WHY DIDN’T WE GET THESE SOONER? We made up SO MUCH formula using the absolutely tedious and time-consuming method of gently swirling scoops in bottles. What a waste of life! I mean, I know you need to do this in the very early days when babies can’t handle the smallest amount of bacteria but we didn’t get the jug until they were seven months old. That is four entire months longer than we needed to wait. It made a huge difference to our life. Suddenly, boom! A whole day’s formula made up in less than five minutes, all sitting in the fridge ready to be chucked into bottles the second the kids got hungry.

You know what the very best thing was though? Even better than the convenience? Turns out the whisk incorporates less air into the formula than the in-bottle-swishing does and so overnight burping the kids became a thing of the past! Amazing!

You don’t need one of those special formula making jugs. A regular Sistema one or similar from the supermarket will do. Just make sure it seals shut, and that you take all the moving parts apart when you clean it so it’s properly hygenic. If you don’t have a whisk you could even use a fork.

If you are wondering, we heated it up a bit in the microwave. We didn’t make it super hot, just took the chill off a bit. I know you are not supposed to because apparently you can get “hot spots” but we tested it on ourselves first and our microwave didn’t seem to do that and like I said, we never made it warmer than room temperature anyway. Actually Barns quite often gave it to them cold out of the fridge, but he may be a sociopath so I’m not sure if you should follow his example.

7. Boon Grass

This is a flash drying rack for all your bottles, sippy cups, tiny spoons, etc, and what’s good about it is that it not only keeps all this nonsense hygienically upright, it keeps it out of the way so you can still fit your grown-up dishes in your normal dish rack.

8. Baby bouncers, play gyms

The thing about having two newborns is that if you are alone with them you always seem to be picking them up just to put them down again. The second your baby is calm and happy with a full belly and a clean bum, twinkling up at you all appealingly, you have to put her down because your other baby needs you and possibly has done for some time (If you aren’t squeaking “just a second darling I’m sorry I’m coming please just hold on a little longer” on repeat to a wailing infant who doesn’t understand while trying not to cry on your other baby as you change her out of the clean nappy you only just put her in that she has now pooed all over, do you even have multiples?). You need four hands and you don’t have them. It’s…I’m trying to keep the tone light-hearted here but it’s rough. If you have somewhere nice to put them, somewhere that makes them happy, it’s a tiny bit less rough.

A baby bouncer keeps your baby a bit upright supposedly so they can see you but we mostly had ours pointed out the ranch slider window because our newborns were totally obsessed with the tree out there. They definitely preferred watching it to looking at me all the time. It’s also handy if you’re not sure you’ve burped her properly and you don’t want her to puke.

Play gyms are wonderful! Babies love them. It’s just a soft mat with dangling toys above it. We had two but put the kids in the same one, head to head so they didn’t bother each other, and swapped to the other play gym every few days so they didn’t get bored.

Bouncer + play gym is an advanced level move for when they’ve just had a bottle or if their arms are still too short

These are pretty easy to find cheap at second hand shops or on trademe. If I were you, I wouldn’t bother with ones that vibrate or play music or rotate the toys or whatever. Babies are pretty easy to entertain (see above re tree) and you don’t need to be messing around with batteries all the time.

9. Moses baskets

If you spend any time on a multiples forum or facebook group, you’ll see some of the same questions come up over and over again. “What did your newborns sleep in?” is a real common one. There are people who advocate for pepe pods, there are frugal folk who suggest going straight into a cot. Personally, for first-time parents, I’d recommend flexibility. Every family is different. The nice thing about Moses baskets (or bassinets) is that they are portable so you have the freedom to experiment and find what works best for you. Want to try them both on your side of the bed? One next to you and one next to your partner? Both at the end of the bed? Take the Moses basket off the stand and try it in the bed? Try them in their own room? Take their beds into the living room with you during the day? You can easily do all of this.

The extra nice thing about Moses baskets is that they have handles and you can just pick them up with a baby inside them. Super useful if you’re trying to sneak the kids out of the room at 1 am without waking your partner. No awkwardly groping for the baby in the dark, clumsily supporting the neck whilst half asleep, then trying to find somewhere to put her in the lounge so you can go back for the other one. Just pick up both baskets and take them out quickly. Brilliant.

10. Car seats and a double pram

It’s kind of hilarious to me that these things get included on lists like these. I know I’m being rude, people are just trying to be helpful, but who doesn’t know they need a pram? You definitely need a double pram and you will literally not be allowed to leave the hospital with your children if you can’t prove you have car seats for them.

We didn’t buy these things – kind friends of family members gifted us ones that their kids had grown out of – obviously source them this way if you can! We’re very lucky and I know not everyone can. Also, I know they’re your precious infants but don’t fall into the trap of thinking they need everything to be new. Second-hand is better for your wallet and the planet and babies don’t care.

Our pram is a Baby Jogger City Mini double. It’s not a cool pram and it’s pretty clunky but I will say this for it: some of the cooler prams have a much smaller barrier between the kids and they can bother each other (I’ve seen it happen) but my two-and-a-half year olds still can’t reach each other with their arms. If only there was a wall between their legs as well…

BONUS CONTENT: Stuff to worry less about

Nappies

It seems like a good idea to stock up on nappies whenever they are on special at the supermarket if you know you’re about to have a couple of babies anyway, but don’t go overboard! Some brands might not work for you. All babies are different. You don’t want to wind up stuck with piles of the brand that gives the kids dreadful nappy rash (I’m looking at you, Huggies) or somehow isn’t quite the right shape for your kids and leaks every time you use them (hey there, Treasures).

2. Twingo

This really depends on the person but I was in pain for months after my c-section and carrying the kids in a front-pack never worked for me. I just took them everywhere in the pram and it mostly worked fine. There were a few doors we couldn’t get through, true, but only a few. My friend pushed her twins out her vagina and she used the twingo a fair bit though. YMMV.

3. Clothes

The kids obviously need clothes! But what I mean is that you might not need to spend hundreds getting everything first-hand. First spread the word a bit, a lot of mums have a box of baby stuff in their closet that they keep meaning to pass on. If that doesn’t turn anything up, I’d check in with your local multiples club. Most clubs have a stash of decent quality second-hand stuff for members.

I hope that has helped! Wherever you are on your twin journey, good luck, and know that even opening up a list like this, disagreeing with everything I say, closing the tab in disgust, and feeling more confused than ever, is making a start on getting organised!

Save

Paint

“There’s paint on the door” said Barns, but he looked happy about it. I knew what he was talking about, having put it there myself while carrying a load of messy paintbrushes into the house after the kids had been painting in the garden. I went past the door and – oops! – adorned it with a streak of brownish blue. But my hands were full and by the time I could do something about it, I had already forgotten and when I remembered, it was already dry. I wasn’t too fussed – like literally everything in the house, the door could do with a new coat of paint, anyway. So why was Barns, possibly the least aesthetically inclined person I’ve ever met, even mentioning it?

“Yeah?”

“I was worried for a moment and then I remembered that we’re not renting anymore! We don’t have to do anything about it. And it’s just a little streak of paint, who cares?”

He looked so happy, and with those words, I too released some tension that I’d forgotten I’d been carrying, perhaps because I’ve been lugging it around with me my whole life.

This is the first time I’ve ever lived in a house that wasn’t a rental. I’ve never painted a wall. I’ve never hung a picture. I’ve never dug in a garden. I’ve never invested in my living space. And I’ve never been allowed the freedom of making a mess. I have, of course, because that’s what humans do sometimes, and it’s always been horrible and scary to sort out, the moment where, for example, in a kitchen completely devoid of usable surfaces I set a pyrex dish hot out of the oven down on a stove top element that I didn’t realise was on, causing it to explode and scorch the kitchen lino, that moment becoming not just a momentary lapse in judgement but some kind of sin, to be endlessly apologised for. To be paid and paid and paid for. I don’t mind the paying with money. I was aware that that was part of the deal. But having paid with money, it was the other ways I was also forced to pay that I resented.

I remember terrible anxiety when the kids first started to eat for themselves. We always put a sheet down to catch mess but food still made its way onto the walls and floor. I scolded the kids for dropping food, and knew it wasn’t fair, that all one-year-olds do it, that it’s developmentally important, that they literally can’t control themselves, and hated myself for telling them off for it and did it anyway, my fear of the people with so much power over us bigger than my ability to be reasonable. I remember trying not to show the kids how stressed I was as I attempted in vain to scrub out the stains they had made, because who knows what landlords will try and get you for and we could not afford to replace carpet.

And suddenly, we own a house! I literally never thought this day would come. Yesterday Nora came inside with her gumboots on and tracked damp pink chalk all over the carpet. I’m not sure if it will stain but I’m not too worried if it does. Who gives a flying fuck about a few pink stains on some old carpet? What amazing freedom! What incredible privilege to be able to think like that. We don’t want to, you know, trash the house, I mean we have enough repair work to do on the poor old place as it is without adding to our problems, but at least we don’t have to panic when things get a bit grubby. I get heady with it sometimes, thinking about the house and all the things we could do, there’s so much potential here, forgetting of course that we have no time or money or DIY skill. But perhaps those things will come. In the meantime, I’ve bought myself a few prints that I’ve been wanting for years. I’m going to hang some pictures at last.

Multi-generational living part 1 – Why?

No, seriously, why?

I was the one who came up with the idea of my husband and I buying a house with my parents so I’ve only myself to blame. I first thought of it years ago but assumed it was a dreadful idea, so, intelligent person that I am, I said nothing and only mentioned it once I was heavily pregnant. Our culture – European-descent New Zealanders – is not kind to adults who live with their parents. Most of the examples I had were people from other cultures, cultures that have values like filial piety and social cohesion to help the situation along. My strongest cultural value is everybody leaving everyone else the heck alone, which doesn’t exactly lend itself to inviting more people into your living space. But life in 2020 being as it is (a capitalist hellscape), multi-generational living is becoming more common and once I looked around, I saw that I wasn’t being that weird after all. Friends and family are already doing this and making it work for them.

Astonishingly, once I finally said something, Barns and mum thought it was a brilliant suggestion (Dad was less gung-ho but he doesn’t get to make the decisions) and so we looked at a few property listings and talked to a mortgage broker but then the bubbies were born and a year and a half vanished before we had a minute to think about it again. But we eventually looked up from the mountain of nappies we’d vanished under and got serious about house-hunting.

Multi-generational living makes sense for us in a lot of ways. My mum and dad have reached their 60’s without ever being able to buy their own home, and as retirement approaches they are running out of options. Nobody really knew what they were going to do and I was frankly desperate to free myself from decades of worrying about what will happen to them as they age. I do, you know, love them and stuff. We wanted to sort something out for them both.

Meanwhile, Barns and I wanted to buy a house for all the usual reasons but mostly because renting feels even more ridiculously unsafe once you have kids. We couldn’t afford to buy on one income and there’s no financial benefit to me going back to work. I’ve never made enough to cover full time day-care for two kids. So, in case you thought I was being a bit too altruistic, it’s selfish, really – we needed a bit of extra cash to get us over the line. Also, I’d rather have my parents close by when the day comes that they need help from us. Much less driving. Not mention the free baby-sitting! I mean, that is a strong factor in this choice, I’m not going to lie.

Speaking of the kids, this is for their sake, too. This modern life, it’s weird, you know? All of us in our own little strongholds. We’re meant to be in communities. We’re designed for it. And this is me speaking as a dedicated introvert. You have babies and suddenly that tired old phrase about it “taking a village” becomes pertinent life advice. My parents and the bubbies absolutely adore each other. I am sure that for the kids, growing up with more people around all the time who love them, more people to read to them and cuddle them and listen to them, I am positive to the very core of my being that this will benefit them a hundred times more than it disadvantages them. They may never come home to a cold and empty house. Just imagine that.

As for what Barns gets out of it, I wasn’t sure either, but it turns out that he’s one of those bizarre people who really likes other humans and wants to look after them. (It’s an opposites attract kind of scenario.) He knows this is absolutely the best way to take care of all of us.

Now, I have a question for you, reader: Does this list of reasons sound memorised to you? Does it have the quality of something curated, something recited? Does it seem a bit mantra-like? Does it read, perhaps, like something Barns and I have discussed, repeated to each other, over and over again?

Well.

As soon as we started house-hunting, one thing became very clear: this was going to be annoying. Really annoying. My parents…well, getting this over the line required a truly Herculean amount of labour from Barns and I, let’s put it that way. It’s just that house-hunting when you’re trying to find something affordable that suits the needs and desires of four different grown-ups is not easy. And it didn’t help that every time we’d go to an open home, the children would tear themselves from my loving arms and fling themselves bodily onto my father, refusing to so much as look at me for the rest of the day. I’m not sure if my dad, off in lala-land with his grand kids, paid attention to a single one of the houses we viewed. I have a jealous streak, okay? I mean, it’s great that they love each other but jeez.

This is Staglands but you get the idea. Not pictured: me.

Add to grandparent woes the rejection and fatigue and sheer hard work of house hunting, the mountains of useless advice, and the endless palpitation-inducing conversations people like to have about the housing market, and all of this made the Reasons Why We Are Doing This so much more important. We’d go over them in the car on the way home after every single open home. We’d discuss them while we did the dishes. In bed at night. Over and over again. Picking ourselves up to carry on.

We have now bought a house…that my parents are refusing to move into. Just because it turns out that the house has some borer problems and so we don’t have a room for them that isn’t technically the dining room. Some people are so unreasonable. We’d move the table somewhere else, obviously. But that’s a story for another day. Clearly things will continue to be trying. And so here is my first piece of advice for anybody thinking of going down the same path: Know your reasons why! Because they need to be really good ones.

Love in the time of child-rearing

I don’t know why I thought having kids would be fine because I don’t cope very well with tiredness. The biological imperative to procreate has had millennia to find ways to override common sense, I suppose. Dinnertime can be particularly rough. The combination of a bad night’s sleep, a long physical day of looking after the kids and hunger can leave me in a zomboid state. And those aren’t the bad days. And so, since having kids, connecting with my spouse over dinner conversation can be a challenge.

Such things are hard on the old marriage, anyway. Dinnertime, I mean. I recall seeing memes years ago where worried internet-users panicked that “marriage is just eating Wednesday night dinner with the same person every week for fifty years”. Well, when you put it like that…no wonder people wind up just putting the telly on. And yet, this is what I have willingly signed up for.

One such night while we were still in the spoon-feeding days of yonder, we had a Wednesday night dinner. Or maybe a Tuesday. Who can remember? What I do recall is that once I had finally finished shoving food into the offspring and turned to my own meal, Barns smiled at me and asked: ‘Top three favourite movie villains?’

That wasn’t hard. Scar is number one, obviously. Then maybe Darth Vader. But can he really be called a villain when his redemption arc is one of the central plot points of the entire trilogy? And what about villains like Gaston? I just bloody hate Gaston. Are good villains enjoyable to spend time with, like Scar, or are they villains who you actually fear? Even with all the singing about eggs, Gaston is chilling.

So maybe that question was harder than I thought. At any rate, it wasn’t an unusual conversation so I didn’t think much of it, not even the next night when we discussed our favourite movie scores, or the day after, which was chase scenes. It took a few days to see the pattern. To see how excited he was to begin the debate. To notice the care with which he’d chosen questions that ,with our limited overlap in tastes and interests, we could both discuss. To enjoy the improved dinnertime mood. To see how kind he was being. To realise how thoughtfully I was being loved.

This is what true romance looks like. It’s not big gestures, which are easy, but big effort every day, which is hard. And this is, I think, what people mean when they say that marriage takes works. It’s not just that marriage takes patience and understanding, but also that you need to work at enjoying each other. It takes intentional connection. You have to ask yourself, can I improve this thing? Is there a little more I can give? I am incredibly lucky to have found someone who looks for new ways to say, yes.

I don’t know how Barns found the energy, I really don’t. In these days of better (but still patchy) sleep we have kept the game going, even though if we talk to each other too much the children get cross. Sorry bubbies, mummy and daddy love each other and it’s a wonderful way for us to connect. We both adore stories and will happily discuss our favourites for hours. He keeps coming up with new questions. I’ve never asked him about it but I like to picture him sitting on the train on the way home from work, staring out the window and pondering what to ask me that evening. I like to imagine him smiling when he does it.

I’ve joined in now, too, of course. But I’m competitive and I don’t like to make it easy on him. Tonight I’m going to ask him what fictional foods he’d most like to try. He’s not a fantasy guy. That’ll stump him!

Those People

Warning: poos.

The other day I was on the loo and the kids wandered into the bathroom to see what I was doing. I used to shut the bathroom door as a line-in-the-sand type move, figuring I was at the very least owed a few minutes of privacy. But these days they hit each other whenever I’m not around to stop them so now I’m one of those on-the-toilet-with-the-door-open parents. I was absolutely certain that I’d never do that. You always think you’ll never be one of those people, whoever “those people” are for you, and then your kids always prove you wrong.

So, I’m on the loo and the kids come in to the bathroom. They ask what I’m doing, of course. I tell them I’m doing a poo, because, well, I am.

‘I are doing a poo, too!’ announces June, happily. Then her small face turns serious. She gazes at me. This seems to be important to her, so I follow suit. We stare into each other’s eyes, without blinking or breaking eye contact, and we do our poos, me in the loo and she in her nappy. We poo together.

They are crowding the toilet to look at it before I’ve even pulled my pants up.

And that’s the whole thing about parenting. That absolute intimacy. Every aspect of your body, your life, your choices, every facet of your personality, all laid totally bare, exposed to the little people with whom you suddenly share your house. There is no hiding from your own children. I’ve always been shy and it is, frankly, terrifying. Truthfully, I’m jealous of “those people”, as I see them in my imagination. The mums and dads who would never have shut the toilet door in the first place. The easily intimate.

But kids, you know? The whole point is that they reshape you and make you better than you were the hard way. And for me that means that try as I might to ring off little corners and spaces for myself, to find some privacy amid all the madness, the better the kids get at smashing down those walls. Or at least banging on them and asking what I’m doing until I give in and open the door. At least two-year-olds are wonderfully non-judgemental. The kids watch me poo and see me do even more hideously shameful stuff like weep pathetically when I’m worried my tomato seedlings will die because I didn’t water them… and I’m seen but I’m just mummy and that’s what I’m like and somehow it is fine. It’s okay to just be me is a concept I still haven’t fully grasped but perhaps I’m not going to be given a choice.

Recipe: Chinese-style egg with tomato and also spousal disappointment

Coronavirus lockdown, day negative two: We walked to the church that organises our local fruit and vege co-op (and let me just say, I am an atheist, but I am still one hundred percent positive that providing mountains of affordable fruits and vegetables in a community as deprived as ours is doing the lord’s work) and picked up this week’s produce pack. They reassured Barnaby, the only member of the family allowed to go inside, that they would keep going once the lockdown started for real. What a relief. (Since writing this post, we’ve learnt that they will indeed have to shut doors, and we’re stuck with what they have at the local Countdown. Sigh.) And look: silverbeet!

I wanted to stir-fry the silverbeet and needed a second dish to go with that. I still had tomatoes left from last week’s pack so decided to make something I’ve wanted to try for a while – Chinese-style egg with tomato. This is a very common dish in the Chinese-speaking world. I encountered it many times in Taiwan. Apparently it’s a common quick meal, an easy week-night dinner, a dining-hall staple. In other words, a comfort food. Fluffy eggs with juicy tomatoes. Sweet, tangy, oily and tasty.

I did my best and was thrilled with the results. It tasted like Taiwan. Man, I miss Taiwan. I excitedly served it up for dinner. Barnaby is normally a very appreciative audience for my mediocre cooking and I was expecting rave reviews. He chewed it solemnly. Swallowed.

‘It’s okay I guess. I just don’t…get it?’

So deflated. In these lonely days, a bit of praise goes a long way. Then I remembered the first time I tried this dish. Grant from Star Hostel treated me to the lunch box, enthusiastically explaining the cultural significance of the tomato egg. I eyed it apprehensively, the unappetising contrast of gloopy tomatoes and solid yellow egg chunks not filling me with confidence. But I tried it and, well, it tasted okay, I guess. I just didn’t get it.

Ah, nostalgia. Smooths out all the old lumps and bumps. I could understand where Barnaby was coming from, after all.

Still, I enjoyed my tomato egg, and so here is the recipe in case you want to try it. It’s a great dish – easy, quick, cheap, filling and uses common ingredients. It is also, as you will see, pretty robust if you’re prone to cooking errors. The combination may be a bit strange at first but comfort food is a universal language.

tomato egg

RECIPE: CHINESE STYLE STIR-FRIED EGG WITH TOMATO

Ingredients PER PERSON:

1 egg

1 – 2 tomatoes

1/4 teaspoon salt (or to taste)

1/4 teaspoon sugar (or to taste)

A teaspoon-ish of cooking oil

A splash of cooking rice wine / sake, if you have it on hand and fancy it

Sliced green onions to garnish (these are traditional but we had none on hand so I omitted them)

Method

Step one: Slice up the tomatoes. I like to do them in eights, length wise. Put them in a bowl with the salt, sugar and sake.

Step two: (optional) If your kitchen has a couple of flies buzzing around, pop the bowl out of the way. I put mine in the microwave.

Step three: Start heating up your pan.

Step four: (optional) Put in an ear of corn in the microwave for your kids dinner, forgetting the tomatoes are in there, and zap that for four minutes.

Step five: Crack the eggs in a bowl and whisk them with a balloon whisk until you’ve incorporated quite a lot of air. You definitely want a layer of foam on the top.

Step six: Heat up the oil. The pan needs to be hot but not like, smoking or anything.

Step seven: (optional) When the microwave beeps, remember your tomatoes are in there. Remove them and stare at them sadly. They are shrivelled. Still, they’re the only tomatoes you have so they’ll just have to do.

Step eight: Tip the eggs into the pan. Flip them as soon as they are set enough to do so (this should only take a minute or two) and break them up into small pieces with your wooden spoon. Pop them on a plate as soon as you can.

Step nine: Put the tomatoes in the pan. If you have done the optional steps, you will be thrilled to see that juice is still being released. Hooray! As soon as it’s all hot, put the eggs back in. Cook it for just a few minutes and then it’s done. Yes, it really was that easy!

Garnish if you want and serve with rice. Enjoy!

A-holes

They look so sweet, too.

I never thought my kids would become a-holes so young. I mean, I know that a lot of people say that toddlers are a-holes but I thought that was kind of, you know, they are always needing and wanting things and they are really noisy about it, a-holes in that kind of way. But no, they can just be so mean. The kids have just gone two and their language is pretty good from what I can tell. They have this brand-new superpower but what do they do with it? They use it for evil.

When I was a kid, my parents used to sing me the rainbow song all the time. I started singing it to the kids a few months ago now they’re learning their colours. They love it! It’s so beautiful when that happens, when you get to pass along something that meant a lot to you. A song, perhaps, your parents sung to you when they were young parents themselves, sung it over and over again and hearing it still makes you remember the feeling of being cocooned in their affection. I got pretty misty-eyed the first time one of the bubbies (Juney, I think) sung it with me, let me tell you. They sing it quite often now. The other day we were driving to the beach and they started singing in the back seat.

SCENE: Family car trip to the beach

Nora (singing): red and yellow and pink and green

June (joins in ): purple and orange and blue

Nora and Juney: I can sing a rainbow! Sing a rainbow! Sing a rainbow too. Listen with your eyes, listen with your eyes, sing everything you see.

(Mummy joins in)

Nora, Juney and Mummy: You can sing a rainbow! Sing a –

Nora: (stops) No. Mummy no sing.

Me: What? Why can’t I sing too? I’m allowed to sing if I want to.

Nora (insistently): Mummy no sing!

Me (to barnaby): You know, the next line is “sing along with me”? That’s really rubbing salt in the wound, isn’t it?

Kids (resume singing): red and orange and pi –

(I join in and so does Barnaby, in what I charitably assume is a show of support for me and not just to stir the pot. Nora immediately stops)

Nora: Mummy and Daddy no sing!

Me: I can sing if I want to!

Nora (singing angrily): Nora and Juney can sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow! Nora and Juney can sing a rainbow, too!

I gave up after that.

So yeah they’re total a-holes already, but at least they make me laugh.