By Dora Cheok

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I’ve been editing a story about a writer’s love affair with instant noodles for our October issue and I have discovered something – Reader’s Digest is the perfect size magazine to put on top a cup noodle to ensure the cup is sealed while your noodles are cooking. I just love RD!!!!!

Something else I love – instant noodles. This story I’m editing goes all the way back to my university days. You know, the 2 o’clock in the morning I’m crashing to finish my 5000-word essay on the application of existentialism in 21st century society due in 7 hours and I’m only on page two cursing Nietzsche for causing my slow and torturous death by starvation because I’ve missed both lunch and dinner taking copious notes in the library and trying to fashion them into a cohesive narrative. And then, I see the light.

In response to my loud wails of hunger and intellectual despair, my next-door dorm roomie Christina has come over with a cup noodle and a pair of disposable chopsticks. Ahhhhhhhhhh sweet relief. And that’s when it happens, the comment: “Someone should write a story about instant noodles!”

And so here I am, years later, editing a story on the guilty pleasures of instant noodles. Yes, I know that they don’t have much nutritious value. And yes, I’m aware of the sodium content and yes, I realise that there’s wax in the cup (it’s edible wax). But, and here it comes. I Don’t Care.

Let me repeat that. I Do Not Care. I love my instant noodles and no matter how good broccoli is for me, it is in no way as satisfying as Myojo Mee. Or an Old Chang Kee. So, I will do the exercise, drink lots of water and go for all my pilates classes, just don’t lecture me on the evils of instant noodles. You do that and you’ll get a tongue lashing on your addiction to oh say Korean drama serials (you’re killing your brain cells!!!), smoking (what are you doing to your lungs?), drinking (seriously, how much alcohol do you intend to pour into your system?) and your predilection to motorcycles and comic books (they’re called donorcycles for a reason!)

While I’m writing this, my colleagues are violently protesting my use of the magazine as a pot cover. “It’s disrespectful!” David, the design director says.

Oh you people just don’t understand. I’m taking two things that I passionately love and putting them to good use to produce 1) my lunch and 2) a really good story for October. Grab that issue when it hits the newsstands.

In the meantime, I’m off to finish my instant mee.

If you like instant noodles, tell us about it!

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