I decided to meet three of my secondary school chums in Geylang for durians yesterday night. DURIANS okay. DURIANS. So we met at Aljunied MRT, and proceeded to prowl the streets of Geylang. And we found quite a few durians, going for $12 per kg, $15 per kg, because we only wanted the best, the Mao Shan Wang durian, the king of kings. D24 is passe.
Naturally, we settled for $12/kg. And soon, we reached an impasse, because we were having a problem deciding who should go up to the Ah Beng and ask for the durians. It is incredible the kind of decision making skills four guys in a group can have, but in the end they decided to send me because they said I was a journalist and Geylang was my hometown. I do not see how these two go together, but I can handle durians and Ah Bengs.
So I went up to the Ah Beng. It turned out that the Ah Beng had this very irritating habit of punctuating every sentence of his with a loud "WHOOOTT" sound. If he ever tried to pick up an Ah Lian with that, I swear the Ah Lian will bitchslap him.
So this was the conversation.
"We want 3 durians, Mao Shan Wang."
"Why don't you take 5, there are 4 of you. WHOOOTTT!"
"We only want 3."
"I give you 5 at $10/kg, WHOOOTTT!"
(At this point I wanted to slap his face but he had a knife in one hand and a durian in another. Both of which are lethal weapons. And he's an Ah Beng, which is also a type of lethal weapon. That's three up on me. So no.)
"Okay, 5 durians."
"WHOOOTTT!"
At this point, I really thought I was getting 5 durians. After all, it was a bit much, but manageable. Then the Ah Beng threw in a sixth for free. You know, normally you'd be very happy at such a deal, then you realise this one thing. You HAVE to finish ALL 6 durians.
Because you can't TABAO the damn durians. No bus, MRT or taxi will take you, and I didn't drive. I wouldn't have wanted durian in my car anyway.
So it began. At first, it went quite okay. The first durian was quite a big one, and somehow it seemed to keep having more and more chambers the more we split it. In the end, it had like 15 seeds. Wow, value for money.
Then my friend piped up.
"That's potentially 15 times 6 seeds right? Like, 90?"
Yeah. At this moment, I swear I saw one of my friends' faces turn green. But we soldiered on.
The 2nd one was fine too, but I could see that two of my friends were starting to expire. So I was like come on, why are you guys so sucky!
The reply? "We had dinner man. Like a lot of it."
At this point, I was like who the fuck comes to durian supper after a heavy dinner? And we have 4 more durians!
And so we continued, but by durian four, my two expired friends came up with this excuse. "Um, we're going to be just tasting the last two ok, like one seed each. I don't think we can eat anymore."
And so, by durian five, at which point I must have eaten almost 30 seeds by myself, I really felt the heat coming on. Like I literally felt like I was going to nosebleed. And I don't nosebleed, even when SNSD was dancing on stage. That's 9 superhot Korean superstars on stage with perfect legs. So you know you're not the nosebleed type. And yet I felt like it. Then my friends started talking about how eating so much durian might make you fat.
Like seriously, thanks guys. Way to rub it into the guy who's already too far gone down that road.
And at this point, I could see the other guy who was matching me durian seed for durian seed was also starting to expire. Not a good sign, because the remaining durian was starting to loom really huge. You know, if mr WHOOOTTT hadn't thrown in that last one, we'd be home free. But now, we were looking at this spiky monster trying to will it to go away.
And so, we worked on the last durian, and failed terribly. Nobody wanted to even eat it. Well, I managed one seed. And one guy suddenly mentioned that he was attending a grassroots event tomorrow, and there was free Old Chang Kee being handed out.
Now, this is the incredible thing about guys. Bursting at the seams as it was for all of us, we could still talk about Old Chang Kee and how awesome it was that it was free, and how we were going to try to find some way to crash that event and eat all the Old Chang Kee we could. And actually imagine what the currypuffs would have tasted like, or the fried squid. You would think we'd be sick of food. But thinking of Old Chang Kee actually made me hungry. Ever felt hungry when you were ridiculously full? It's one of those weird feelings words cannot describe.
Then one guy asked if we should just throw the last durian away.
The answer was unanimous - No. Even though the durian was free, we would not give any quarter. The reason being that the last durian represented a cost saving on the initial five durians. For a simple economics concept, we were not willing to throw away a durian we couldn't finish, or tabao, even if it was worth virtually nothing because it was free in the first place. No, because we got 6 durians for the price of 5, which meant we had a 20% discount on top of the original 20% discount on $12/kg.
This is why hanging out with cheapskate intellectuals sometimes can seriously drive you crazy.
So now we had to tabao it, and we agreed that the guy who stayed the closest would bring it home somehow. I decided to blatantly kope the styrofoam box and plastic bag. I didn't want to ask the Ah Beng and hear the "WHOOOTT" again. I would have tried to kill the guy even if he was three up on me.