2023-06-19

It rained heavily today, and I didn’t even feel hungry enough in the evening to go out and eat. Remembering I still had a box of Indomie instant noodles from last year, I cooked two packs.

…I didn’t expect that even after a year, I’d still have a bit of an adverse reaction to the taste. Not because it’s bad—objectively speaking, these noodles taste pretty good.

But during last year’s lockdown, I ate at least two and a half cases—two and a half cases means 75 packs.

At first, I still had supplies to make decent food: galangal chicken, beef brisket stew with tomato, beef soup, beef curry, and then fried rice with leftovers the next day.

Later, the only ingredients my poor cooking skills could handle were onions, potatoes, and carrots.

So I made curry, then fried the leftover rice the next day—rinse and repeat. As time went on, I got lazier and lazier, even too lazy to make curry. Except for the occasional group-buy KFC pizza, I just ate Indomie instant noodles—two packs a meal, four packs a day.

Back then, I lived on the first floor, which had a small yard, so I went skipping rope every day. Apart from growing lazier, my mental state was actually fine.

But one problem with the first floor was the endless stream of tiny insect visitors.

Slugs crawled in through the hole where the air conditioner pipe passed through the wall. I later put some salt and a garlic clove there, and never saw them inside again. But the scene in the yard was still spectacular. After the rain stopped, at least a hundred dried-up slugs gathered at the back door like pilgrims.

Then came the cockroaches. In that room, I saw a southern cockroach for the first time. At 1 a.m., it sat on the wall for an hour, and I stood frozen staring at it for an hour. Then it started running. I was terrified, flinched so hard my glasses fell off and I even stepped on them. Then it disappeared. I felt gross and couldn’t fall asleep until after 3 a.m. (I called in sick the next day).

The cockroaches showed up about once a week—either whole, or half or quarter pieces left after my cat Grape mutilated them. Grape became my savior. Every time I saw a live cockroach, I’d coax Grape with treats to deal with it.

And finally, the June beetles. They sounded like fighter jets when they flew, buzzing loudly in my head. But they visited less often, and I never hurt them. I’d usually catch them and release them outside—though I was still trembling.

I feel like that lockdown turned me into a total homebody.

• 🧀A Slice of Life