10-25-2020, Sunday.
Recently, I read a news story saying that eggs could boost immunization against COVID-19.
This morning, I placed a hard boiled egg on the counter of my kitchen to let it cool. Then I suddenly heard the special cracking sound of an egg shell hitting the floor while I was reading in the living room. I turned around and saw that princess Kara quickly jumped off the counter in the kitchen.
I picked up the egg and put it back on the counter, then went back to living room to continue reading. A few minutes later, I heard the soft cracking sound again.
It seemed like princess Kara was really bored today, because she kept bullying the egg for fun. I laughed at her. Then I remembered a story about hard boiled eggs that I never told before.
Back in January 2018, I went to visit my daughter. I took a flight from San Francisco to Munich which had a stopover in Iceland. Because I knew there was no free meals on the plane, I brought a few hard boiled eggs with me for the trip.
The airplane that I took was not very full. The passengers sitting around me looked like Western Europeans, and their ages varied from babies, kids, young adults, middle aged people, to seniors.
Because there was no free meal; at lunch time, after ordering drinks from the flight attendant, many passengers took out their own food to eat on the plane. I curiously looked around and noticed that many were eating various chocolate bars. Except me, no one was eating hard boiled eggs. At that moment I felt that the difference in food culture is very apparent in these small details.
I used to bring hard boiled eggs with me whenever I went on a long trip away from home. I learnt this when I was an elementary school pupil.
In the 1970’s, I was in elementary school. Our school arranged a few long-distance trips, mimicking the famous civil wars that happened in China back in 1940’s, such as the Liaoxi-Shenyang Campaign and Beiping-Tianjin Campaign. The teachers and pupils of all grades assembled in school in the morning, then all marched to a broad hill that was very far, by foot. After arriving to the destination, pupils played war drills: crawling forward on the field and fencing with red-tasseled spears. After that, we sat on the ground and ate our out-door snacks.
At that time, Zigong didn’t sell bread, and I remember that oil fried pancakes were sold only at train stations and only people with train tickets could enter the train stations. Yeyi, my nanny, always made hard boiled eggs along with a few tangerines as our out-door snacks. This was how I learnt that hard boiled eggs are a good out-door snack, because I grew up using them as out-door snacks. By the way, my hard boiled eggs are plain without adding any flavor.
Two years ago on the plane to Europe, I realized that eating hard boiled eggs as snacks is a bit unique now.
A Few Episodes
The egg broken by princess Kara
The bored princess Kara
January 2018, overseeing San Francisco in the sky.
