My Comrades, the Taste Buds

The other day in chemistry, we talked about seawater, which is just 1% salt, yet still enough to kill you due to its relatively high concentration of isoelectrons.  A sense of betrayal twitched in my esophagus -- salt, my reliable friend, has always had the potential to make me into a shriveled-up cadaver.  Lovely.

Nevertheless, I really like salt.  Saltiness is probably the most glorious taste, followed closely by the refreshing chill of watermelon cubes and the bursting sweetness of plump Korean clementines.  Without salt, Hot Cheetos would be all pain and no pleasure.  Kimchi would just be peppery, fermented cabbages and radishes.  Mapo tofu and other soft tofu dishes would become spicy mush.  Eggs would be tasteless flabs of potential chickens.  And Gloria would be sad.

So there's salt, and eggs, and I'm pretty sure I could live a considerable amount of time simply relying on a skillet and those two ingredients.  But I assure you that I do have a wide range of taste.  I like sticking anchovies into tangerines.  I used to have an obsession with raw brussel sprouts from my neighbor's garden.  My friend recently asked the social media world for "the most delicious meal in the world," and I came up with an eclectic blend of raw oysters, watermelon...and three different egg dishes.

Aside from salty entrees, I have my particulars for sweets. I love oranges and grapes, but I hate orange- and grape-flavored candy. Tylenol and cough syrup are vomit-inducingly sweet, but I delight in devouring fruity cough drops throughout the year, sick or not. And then there’s limes. Even before my infatuation with lime green began, I had a strong bias for all things lemon/lime-flavored -- Sprite, yellow and green Skittles, yellow and green Sour Patch Kids, yellow and green M&M’s, etc (the last one was a lie; my taste buds aren’t acute enough to detect the differences in candy dyes). I don’t often eat actual limes, but no bowl of pho is complete without a subliminal squirt of citrus.

I was recently disillusioned at one of those amazing soda machines of wonder (see: Noodles, Meatheads). The brilliant artificial coloring of their Lime Fanta cajoled me to fill my cup to the brim, but I was speedily broken out of my citrus reverie by the actual taste. Please, if you ever have a strong desire to judge the quality of limes, do not base it upon this sorry excuse for a soda, unless it is heavily diluted by the more appetizing flavors of Strawberry and Raspberry Fanta.

Moral of the story: Even the holiest of foods can disappoint.  But at the core of it all, salt and limes rule the earth.

Chaos and Crashes (of the best sort)

I spend my Saturday afternoons washing beds with intoxicatingly wonderful sanitizing wipes and folding sheets that have the occasional brown mark or two. 

I also spend them longing to be part of the many conversations going on around the emergency room.  I've only once been bold enough to ask for a piece of chocolate on someone's desk, and I otherwise spend my downtime chugging down water and crunching artfully-shaped hospital ice.  Occasionally I "go to the bathroom" to record the latest out-of-context quotes from random voices in the vicinity.  

"I wanted to have a beer," I heard from the nurse's station.  In glee, I made sure to store that one safely away, just another speck of phlegm on the growing spitball I was developing against my worst enemy.  After being rudely dismissed by her two weeks in a row, I lost all hope for maintaining a good relationship, and instead resorted to staring insolently at the back of her head, and recording her every misstep in my mental book of hatred.  When I heard her talk about her dad slapping her in the face, I grew jealous of that father, and when she mentioned alcohol, I imagined her in all of her hoity-toity extravagance.  I hold terrible grudges.

"Where is the man in the little red hat?" demanded a patient.  I stifled my laughter as security calmly informed him that there was, in fact, no man with a little red hat.  The patient insisted that there was, and I hoped for him that the man was running around somewhere.  He continued his winning streak by asking for a sex change operation, and was finally granted exit from the hospital.  I think I saw him on the drive back home.

"I feel like a gecko," cried out one woman.  The man in the adjacent room screamed at her to shut up every other minute.  I felt quite forlorn when the dynamic duo didn't return the next week, because together they always had something interesting to say to spice things up.  Plus, I've always wanted a gecko (or a lizard, or a seahorse, or any other exotic pet wish that was never fulfilled).

"So say hello to falsetto in 3, 2, swag," I rapped down the tiled floors.  There was an hour and a half left in my three-hour time slot, and I was incredibly bored.  Having recently made a CD of my current favorite Korean hits mingled with masterpieces such as "Boyfriend" and "What Makes You Beautiful," I proceeded to sing through the 15 song playlist one by one.  I stretched out each song for at least five minutes in order to make the time pass quicker, and upped the volume when I was in a room by myself.  I smiled apologetically at anyone who caught me in my world of Bollywood and Bieber, and the clock seemed to fly at the evidence of my muttered musical prowess.  Swaggie.

"You should check the hospital for a fatigue disease," said my mom once I awoke from my 14-hour slumber this morning.  The combined effect of a sugar overload on Friday and inhaling sanitizing wipe goodness on Saturday did me in, and I had a relaxing "nap" from 7PM to 9AM.  I had an intensely vivid dream about being back in Korea, in a huge stationary store, and shoveling in the pencils, pens, and stuffed animals like there was no tomorrow.

Three day weekends are glorious.