they had me at noodle.

but first, a little disclosure: i’m probably one of those people who gets pretty anal when it comes to event names and such. for example, if i’m invited to a filipino street food festival, of course i’d get a nervous breakdown upset if the occasion doesn’t follow through with its promise of endless stalls of delicious filo dishes capable of making me question why i even left home in the first place when it seems as if all i ever yearn for now is the food, aside from the precious family and friends i could be eating them with.

to be fair, it’s not the organizers’ fault that i have a hyperactive imagination with a somewhat exaggerated understanding of the definition of the word festival. as far as i’m concerned, festival = galore. totally interchangeable.

i can also get quite literal. say, if an event is something called melbourne night noodle market, immediately i’d be thinking about noodle soup and salivating at the thought of it almost by reflex. doesn’t even have to be soup per se. anything that has noodles in it and i’m down, panting like a fucking dingo at the prospect of a warm meal on a cold night.

but then again, i’m also kind of a hypocrite.

because i’m just the type who’d title my blog post with the name of an event and you can bet your kidneys i’d be talking about something completely off-topic.

so, anyway, there i was in the midst of the bustling crowd waiting for the pedestrian light to turn green, admiring the ochre-ness of flinders street station, oblivious of my missing big ass earring. fantasizing about that hot steaming bowl of noodle soup i was mindlessly talking about. so close to where the event was held i could almost taste the burn the soup was gonna leave on my tongue.

except that i did not see any food stall offering any soup. or noodles, for that matter. something i would’ve gladly given up in exchange for a non-noodle item if only the lines weren’t so long and the prospect of eating while standing while simultaneously shivering weren’t so unappealing.

so don’t ask me how the melbourne night noodle market went. because i had my steaming bowl of pho somewhere else. (at this restuarant in elizabeth street where not only was it warm, but they also had tables and chairs.)

p.s. i think my own kid thinks i’m weird, judging by the ‘wtf’ looks she gives me sometimes. can’t blame her, though. i mean, if i were in her shoes and i saw me as my mom for the first time, i’d probably go, “you have got to be kidding me!” lol.

*raven at 6 months old