Student - March 28, 2012

The right way to peel an egg

Derek Pan

One day, couching in the kitchen, I was enjoying my yummy lunch. When I started to tap a hard-boiled egg on the table, JD, my corridor mate, screamed out: 'Derek, what are you doing?'

'Anything wrong with what I'm doing?', I confusedly asked in return. 'Didn't you learn how to peel an egg?' Obviously my way of peeling an egg puzzled him. He immediately showed me how to peel an egg perfectly: 'My grandfather taught me: crack the egg into two near the smaller end of it with a table knife, and then scoop it out of the shell with a spoon.' Right after listening to his passionate demonstration, I raised the well-peeled egg and wound up the talk: 'the egg will go into my stomach anyway.'
This incident is just typical of my past 1.5 years in this corridor, and encounter between the typical Chinese and the typical Dutch. How to peel a mandarin? Make it into eight petals in the shape of a flower, or randomly strip it into pieces of mosaic? In my view, the smack of Zen is to the former as the Stream of Consciousness is to the latter. I usually opt for the former while my Dutch corridor mates prefer the latter. The same applies to the questions such as how to eat an orange or mango.
Although I always welcome this kind of culture clash, in this corridor I have hardly made any debate about it. The open-minded are so open-minded to foreign cultures while the stubborn are always stubborn to what they believe. No argument is necessary in both cases. Nevertheless, I appreciate the character owned by most of them: be yourself.
I still stick to my Chinese way to peel eggs. But in the light of the fire in my flat yesterday, and given my silly record of getting eggs burnt due to my forgetfulness, maybe it's the right way for me to embrace the advanced Western technology and buy a foolproof egg-boiler, with the function of auto-shut-off.

Vid of the Week: Maybe this is the best way to peel an egg

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