Thursday, July 31, 2008
Gas balls
Image from http://www.xoospace.com/index.php?go=graphics&img_id=20735&ctgy_id=1074&sub_id=1030&p=1&order=views+DESC
Of all the beverages that I've consumed, milk ranks pretty high up my list of favourites. Ever since I was a kid and milk came dessicated in yellow/red Nespray tins, I'd always loved the taste of milk. It's creamy, creamy and...well, creamy. Smells nice. It's also smooth when it slips down your throat, and it tastes great both hot and cold (the same, unfortunately, cannot be said for Coke. Nor 100 plus. Eww that's kinda gross).
And which other drink lends itself so easily to bubble-blowing competitions? My second sister and I used to stick those curly psychedelic-coloured straws that 7-Eleven gave away with their Slurpees into the cups of milk my grandma prepared, take in really deep breaths, and blow as hard as possible to see who could create the thickest 'milk foam' layer before our mum would hear the bblp-blpp-blpp sounds coming fast and furious from the dining table and yell at us to stop being so disgusting don't play with your food and just drink it down. On hindsight, I would probably have had great potential as a milk steamer on a coffee machine, except for the saliva bit (think about it, though. It's exactly the same principle. Water jets mixed with air sprayed into milk= milk foam. Voila). I would definitely have been cuter than an overheated steel pipe by a light year.
And I've probably just entered your list of weird people to avoid from today onwards.
Anyway, I really love it. There's nothing better on a hot day than to kick back with a tall glass of ice-cold milk. And since Singapore is infernally hot most of the year, you can imagine how often I crave it.
Which really sucks because I'm lactose-intolerant.
I suppose I should think of it as cosmic karma for putting bubbles in unnatural places, or for stealing from the babies of the world's greatest flatulence generators, but every time I drink milk these days, I end up producing loads of gas. I'm serious, it's loads. Enough for Powergas to tap into and reduce dependency on foreign imported LPG. And if you think it's just gas production, you're wrong. Not only does my stomach make the most embarrassing rumbles as it merrily attempts the impossible (that is, to digest the 9% lactose), I can assure you that the feeling of bubbles rising up in the stomach is terribly uncomfortable. You know that old butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling? It's something like that. Just that it feels like an entire butterfly park got transplanted in there. A butterfly park during metamorphosis season. It's disgustingly ticklish.
And you know how milk just doesn't go with chilli? Well, today I made the big mistake of drinking a whole carton of milk. And then eating rendang for lunch.
Oo-er. Any moment now, I'm going to balloon up and float off haplessly into the sunset. And then explode when the volatile gases in my stomach ignite.