The familiar whiff of herbs, pepper and home-made goodness laid in the form of bak kut teh soup, rice and stir-fry vegetables. My mouth watered, and so did my eyes. Four long years.

It then dawned upon me how much I missed home-cooked food, and how I long for a simple meal with white rice, steamed fish and vegetables and the ocassional bowl of clear soup. Chinese fare can be exceedingly simple, yet terribly comforting. Mum used to tease me, saying she could not imagine how I could eat the same thing everyday – but to me, it was goodness in the simplest form imaginable, simple in taste, low in calories, and full of comfort.

While I summoned every bit of control within me not to woffle the food down, I relished the joy of heaping rice onto a spoon I could never find elsewhere. Cutlery special only to the home, never to be found in fancy restaurants nor the cheap metalware symbolic of the foodcourts. I carefully scraped the last bit of meat against porcelain plates and bowls unique only to the home, unlike the common plastic plates and bowls that I am so used to in the foodcourt. For a moment, I forgot about the styrofoam and plastic boxes I am used to eating out from, for that moment I taste each grain of rice slowly without the feel of cheap plastic against my tongue.

There is no stove at home, only a heating pad which I can make instant noodles with.

There is an oven for the likes of bake and roast, but along with that oven comes a rule that I could never dirty the kitchen counter nor the floor. And tagged with that rule lies an invisible fine line between clean and oily – one that I could never feel but the mother would detect with her senses.

Rummaging through the kitchen drawers, I count more plastic disposable containers than plates. I find more plastic bags than individual chopsticks and cutlery combined.

I come to dread the Sundays of NTUC and food-court shopping. There is no satisfaction from hunching over a table in Kopitiam, tucking into a meal of MSG and bad cooking oil while an old lady carelessly cleans the table next to you with a murky cloth. You look down at the white plastic bowls…and you tell yourself to stop imagining the worst.

With the increasing number of families not cooking and taking their kids to the foodcourt, I look at these children whose memories will only be filled with white plastic bowls. My heart goes out towards them as they embrace their childhood of meaningless meals.

What I would give, to go home to a plate of steamed fish like of five years ago.