Saturday, June 30, 2012

Asian fruit cornucopia

It's been a couple of years already that I've sworn off durians due to them being a contributing factor to my asthmatic symptoms. Note that it was never a formal diagnosis, pending further confirmation. Since then, I've not had a relapse in a long time. 

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been pushing my limits little by little. The big test arrived today in the form of the big durian party organized by the neighbourhood residents' committee. For $8 per head, each of us was entitled to four whole stinky fruit ("bad ones can exchange!"). That's quite a leap of faith for me as previously I was restricting myself to about four individual seeds per sitting.

Apart from the main attraction, each table bore an additional load of fresh tropical fruit. Do I have to name them all for you? Fine: mangosteen, longan, rambutan and what we colloquially call 'baluku' or langsat.

While I suffered no relapse, eight whole durians between the wife and me were simply too much to stomach in one go. Fortunately, she had foresight enough to bring containers for 'afters'.

This is one lucky recipient of our doggie bag. Both Pebbles and Q-tip are big durian fans. If we ever want to buy durians, we should bring Pebbles. He can tell which are the good ones and will miao to indicate his preference. Those that don't interest him invariably turn out to be lousy.

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