[The Joy of Cooking, Marcail 'the Caretaker' Parker and the Dragon Lady]
by YBLalat

There was a leakage in one of the gas pipelines, located outside in the hallway, just out front of the apartment today. On the scale Minnegasco used to check gas leaks, this one was not that bad, it was around two point something or so, barely flammable. Not nearly as dangerous as the one coming from our stove few weeks back, when the kitchen was a wrecking mess and we had to put in extra cash in our rents for being careless with the management’s properties. It was detected rather early by, as usual, Ms Sword who lives next door to us. Marcel the caretaker did the temporary patching up of the darn hole, but he said it will not be long till the company fixes it for good. I think he said they will come Monday evening.

At the time the leak was detected, or a few hours after that, the whole apartment was hitting the bunker. I thought it was rather normal since it was a raining Sunday afternoon and all. It turned out that we had been breathing down gas all afternoon. Everybody was knocked cold by it. Mamat was snoring on the couch, in front of an NBA match between the Sixers and the Raptors while Pyan laid on his belly, clutching his Pokemon headrest. He repeatedly told me that he was really, really lonely. His sweetheart went on a trip with somebody else, a road trip I recall, and it was an all-girl holiday thing, he added. I know that he felt left out. He tried reading a book to suppress that feeling but ended up dozing off to her name. I had the worst case, snuggled up tight and warm under the blanket like a small princess.

Marcel expressed his heaviest of concern regarding the gas leaks and us, being so ignorant about it all. I told him, we have got no prior experience with such things, dealing with gas or cleaning up the stoves or bathroom tiles. However, he cannot blame us for being us. We are new to the idea of taking care of ourselves. “Malaysian sucks, man”, he joked. “Can’t you smell it, the gas coming out of there?” He just could not stomach the fact that we did not sense the pungent odor of the leak. “Dude, we slept like pieces of log”. It was true, for around 2 hours, nobody was able to answer the door or do anything. We were just not in this conscious world. Odd enough, nobody had any symptoms of gas poisoning, like feeling nausea or attacked by an acute headache. We woke up to the season finale of the Simpsons like nothing had happened. Marcel urged us to see a doctor about it, “Go, and check your head while you are at it too”. He is so gay like that.

I cooked one of my pasta specialties for dinner, the tuna-salad combo. I mockingly refer to it as ‘pasta with tuna and salad’, although nobody knew what it is actually called. I conjured the recipe up out of thin air during the time I was left alone last December. One of my roommates asked whether I would still be this good at cooking if it were not for this bachelor life we are living in and I said “Yeah, sure”. Even before this, I always make sure I know what I am eating, the names, the ingredients, and their preparations, of the dishes Mom served at the dining table. Most of the time, it would be just me and her at the kitchen. I may not be the one stirring or pouring or grinding, but I had my chances before. I found out that you eat a lot less when you cook your own meal. Maybe it is because you want others to taste (and compliment) your dish, or simply that you miscalculated the amount of chicken or potatoes for a certain meal, that you had to sacrifice your part of the food. No wonders there are any really fat chefs out there.

I still have not finished my supply of drugs from Boynton. The middle ear infection I had before gradually became tamer and the hearing loss stuff was gone for good. No more smelly, yellow puss dripped out of my ear lately and taking a shower is possible once again. The ruptured eardrum is still not healing itself well enough, every time I blow my nose a bit too hard, I feel a rather weak gust of air rushing out of my left ear at the same time. The doctor said seldom would there be the need to surgically seal the eardrum once the pressure behind the Eustachian tube is equalized, unless of course it is severely damaged. In that case, it would be called ‘otitis media with perforation’ rather than just ‘otitis media’. I described the illness to Norris when we were roaming about the Mall, looking for material for her photo scrapbook. Looking at the reaction from her face, I do not think that she fully understood what it was or even how painful it is. I guess I was being too technical in telling her the details. Her eyelids were flicking furiously when I uttered the word ‘Eustachian’ and she even smiled (?) when I told her about the mixture of blood and puss forcing its way out of my bulging left eardrum. “I could hear the ‘pop’ sound coming from my left eardrum at night, with my healthy right eardrum, Norris” and she followed with a huge, disturbing grin.

She was a good company all along, but I was too quiet for her type I think. Anyway, it was a beneficial trip to the Mall, I would say. I bought myself 2 new cool t-shirts. One with a Transformer logo and another with a word ‘Freak’ printed out in a red Superman’s font. We talked a lot and I am really grateful to her for being so kind in sharing gossips and secrets with me on the bus. If it were not for her, I would have not known the fact that kids my age are really getting themselves way too deep with this ‘love’ stuff. No thank you, people. I still need more time to adapt to the notion that the majority of my high school seniors in the US are already married.