THINGS THAT ARE HOU HOU SIK: BOB'S YOUR UNCLE

One of the few vloggers I pay any attention to is a gentleman from Hong Kong who talks mostly about food, and explains what he's doing while preparing it. Bob叔，who goes by the English handle '煮家男人 Bob's Your Uncle' on youtube.

He's recently spent several months in England, and has been featured on both Arm Channel TV as well as Hongkonger Station.

好好食

Cantonese speaker talking passionately about food? Okay, you've got me hooked. Despite the occasional foray into scoring girls (past tense, he's happily married now) or British soccer (meh, not my bag). Or mentioning real estate, office life, and boarding school.

For the record, I do not own real estate, haven't worked in an office since the toy company went north eight years ago, and never experienced boarding school.

In fact, the only points of overlap are food and Cantonese. The last time I did anything soccer related I ended up sore all over for three days (my Latin-American coworkers at a computer company talked me into a friendly match that lasted all afternoon), and I haven't had anything even approaching a love life in the last decade, largely because I find it hard to talk to women about anything other than food, and I live with a Cantonese person whose sense of privacy and security about her living quarters I respect, my own digs are a mess, and let's face it, I am not prime real estate myself. So while I can intellectually appreciate the concept of having another person, of the female persuasion, in my life, the reality is that that is extremely unlikely.

Food, on the other hand ...

Did I mention that my apartment mate is Cantonese?

Food is a Cantonese obsession. We discuss food every day. She says that I am too scrawny and should eat more (which is why there is often bacon or a porkchop in the refrigerator). Sometimes we eat at the same time, though cooking our dinners separately. I doubt that she'd find Bob talking about food nearly as interesting as I do, and she'd probably either critique his dishes or go off into the kitchen to fry up a bite halfway through, besides which she can barely understand city Cantonese having grown up with Toisanese instead -- the difference between those languages is nearly as great as between Dutch and German -- and his segueing into soccer or girls would probably bore her to tears and ruin her appetite.

Sometimes I tune into Bob叔 while fussing with pipes, either ream & cleaning them or just sharpening the rim edges with microfibre pads. It's a good timing strategy for the exact things I'm doing to a piece of briar, and has benefitted a number of old war horses.

One thing I learned is when you are in London, you should avoid Slough and Thamesmead. Both of those districts are horrible and crime-ridden, rife with violence and anti-social behaviours. We've got that here too. Needn't go abroad for it.

Another thing he mentioned is that mainlanders at a buffet resemble locusts.
Which is something I've seen here in San Francisco.
Like fire ants on a cadaver.


豬扒？豬扒！


PORKCHOPS, SOCCER, AND A SLICE OF REALITY
 

[Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGikcx5FLOg.]

Porkchops? Got that. Not Kumamoto (熊本 'hung pun') pork, but it's okay lah. Don't have breadcrumbs (麵包糠 'min baau hong'), but can make 'em. Might do this for dinner.

多謝，Bob叔。



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