The Wildly Inaccurate Instructions trick

An incendiary apple puff mystery; the literary festival becomes a love-fest; and grumbles over a world poetry prize

Good morning. Today we are going to talk about Western food.

A host of exciting Western delicacies are being imported to Asia, exciting our palates and destroying our kitchens.

Perhaps the most remarkable of these is the apple puff. This is some sort of innocent-looking pastry item that recently appeared in the frozen section of my supermarket. Actually, the air-conditioning is so high, the entire supermarket is now the frozen section. I'm convinced this is a trick to make us buy more. Unless I spend each visit sprinting along the aisles with a massively over-loaded shopping trolley, I risk death by hypothermia.

I arrived breathless at the cashier's counter to discover that I had snatched up a pack of 12 mini apple puffs, imported from Australia. The instructions said: "Using high energy setting on microwave, heat frozen pastries for five minutes."

I slipped a couple into the machine, and while waiting for them to warm, I recalled the previous western delicacy I had tried: a Scottish dish called porridge.

The instructions for that dish told me to place the rolled oats in hot water and heat for three to five minutes on the stove. I did that. Five minutes later, I ended up with a pile of rolled oats at the bottom of a pan of hot water.

I phoned a European friend. "What is porridge supposed to look like?" I said.

"Like a human brain on a dish," she said.

"That sounds yummy," I lied. But it was not what I had in front of me. She lived nearby, so came over to investigate. She told me my oats were still raw. She said the instructions on the packet were wildly inaccurate. She halved the water and quadrupled the cooking time and soon produced something that looked remarkably like a bowl of sticky mucus.

But it didn’t taste as bad as it looked. It tasted much, much worse. "Are you sure one is supposed to eat this?" I asked, my heart sinking. "It's not a type of glue?"

This reverie was interrupted by the realization that the newly purchased apple puffs were also turning into an interesting experiment.

After one minute they started throbbing. At two minutes they collapsed. At three minutes they turned brown. At four minutes they turned black. At four and half minutes they burst into flame. At five minutes the fire alarm went off, the kitchen filled with smoke, and everyone ran away screaming.

I phoned my Western friend. "What do apple puffs look like when they're cooked?" I said.

"The same as when they are raw, only golden and crispy."

"Oh. Not like lumps of coal?" I asked. "And what about the flames?"

"What flames?" she replied. I realized that I had once more been hit by the “Wildly Inaccurate Instructions” trick.

Now I realize that if I lived in America, I could sue the vendor of both these items, the Parknshop supermarket chain, for almost burning down my kitchen. If this was America, I could sue the store for humiliation. Indeed, if this was America, I could sue Scotland and Australia for inventing inedible foodstuffs.

But this is Asia, where the Silly Lawsuit, a sign of a sophisticated modern society, does not yet exist. Thank God.

I had rice for dinner.

*
I have spent much of this week communing with children. It's been glorious. My daily audiences,organized by P3 publishing, have been 500-plus.

The current organizers of the Hong Kong International Literary Festival are doing a great job of steering it out of a recent dark period during which bizarre, nasty politics took over and this columnist was banned from participation.

A tear came to my hardnosed eye (oops, sorry for the mixed metaphor) during the opening ceremony when new chairman David Parker stage pointed to me in the audience as one of the founders and everyone both on stage and off applauded. It may not seem like much, but after two years of being excluded from something I started and worked on for many years, it meant a lot to me.

On Tuesday I went to see Louise Ho, a poet, talking about her work. I learned that she was born of Chinese parents, but raised in Mauritius, and now lives in Australia. It seems to prove my contention that the most successful creators of culture are those who span more than one community.

The main events of the festival take place on the coming weekend. If you are reading this in Hong Kong, please come and join the fun. Click here for details. Top recommendation: Janice YK Lee's fabulous novel The Piano Teacher.

*
Bafflement and horror came from several sources after an announcement about a new global poetry prize, sponsored by Hong Kong University. Normally, any sort of writer will always welcome any sort of prize -- after all, if organizations want to throw money at poverty-stricken artists of any kind, that's always a plus.

But delight turned to dismay when poets read the small print and found that the prize was only HK$2500, which is about US$300, and is awarded only every two years.

In comparison, the Griffin is worth US$64,000 and is awarded every year.

It's interesting to watch poets get cross. They are normally rather gentle people. Their brows wrinkle and they mutter at each other over their drinks.

HKU, please fix.

Comments

[Poet01]

I'm glad someone has gently put HKU straight on this new poetry prize. The shocking thing is not just how little the prize is for, but how much it costs to enter. To enter you have to send in a book of poems and pay $250. But the prize is just $2,500. A global poetry prize normally gets several thousand entries. You do the math. Prizes are menat to be be gifts to the community. This looks like it is set up to be a profit-making machine.
Please do not share my ip address with anyone as I may still enter!

[Nury]

Don't worry, Poet01, your anonimity is safe. We delete IP addresses.
But I share your puzzlement. The entry fee and the prize simply don't sit happily together. One's too high and one's too low.
One does get one's work published, so I suppose that's also part of the prize.

[Poet01]

I'm surprised at you for getting the basic principles of publishing mixed up. How long have you been a writer?
Writers write books and publishers pay them. If the book is good, the publisher makes money, too.
That's how it works.
If I write the finest book of poetry since The Birthday Letters (a bestseller), then I am giving a wonderful gift to the publisher who publisher who gets to print it.
The publisher is not giving me anything.
Thhink about it.

[worried mom]

sorry to move the discussion away from high literary matters to mundane ones, but i want to know, is the article about the apple puffs above true? if so, should not the parknshop immediately do a recall of the product that sets your kitchen aflame? i seem to remember one of those intellectual management games where the scenario is "you have just printed a recipe in your newspaper which you realize will set people's kitchens ablaze. What do you do?"
But this is real life. assuming the article is true.

[Nury]

Poet01, you're right. In principle, the poet is giving the author something, not the other way round.

Mike, I laughed out loud at your story about throwing about the burger and keeping the wrapper. I do that all the time.

On the plus side, it is much better for your health.

[Chamin]

HKU is good at creating businesses in economically hard times :-p.

[tammy]

Happy to know poetry gets some more attention in HK.

[Poetess]

Nuri, you've set up prizes before, can you kindly set up a proper poetry prize? I'm sure you can do one with a decent prize. (Man Asian Poetry Prize?) The entry fee for the bridport prize, if I am not mistaken, is 6 pounds sterling, and the prize is 5000 euros. That's what, 40,000 HKD? These are not big figures for businesses. Can you find a sponsor and do this. I'm also very disappointed withthe HKU prize. thanx

[Poetess]

Nuri, you've set up prizes before, can you kindly set up a proper poetry prize? I'm sure you can do one with a decent prize. (Man Asian Poetry Prize?) The entry fee for the bridport prize, if I am not mistaken, is 6 pounds sterling, and the prize is 5000 euros. That's what, 40,000 HKD? These are not big figures for businesses. Can you find a sponsor and do this. I'm also very disappointed withthe HKU prize. thanx

[yuu]

This reminds me of the time I bought frozen fish sticks in Austria. I naturally followed the instructions as accurately as possible, but all I got was a plate of soggy fish sticks that were anything but edible.

I could've done a bit of sueing action back then, but I was starving so I went to buy a chocolate croissant instead.

[Jason]

Nury, this reminds me of a colleague of mine some years ago... the instructions on the pack.. "put frozen quiche in microwave on high for 5 minutes"... he put a defrosted 1/8th of a quiche in the microwave on high for 5 minutes....

He had the same results as yourself... quiche had burst into flames, burnt fiercely enough to have put it self out by the end of 5 minutes. Office kitchen was *rank* (burnt egg), and the whole office was full of black smoke. Needless to say, the fire alarm had also gone off, fortunately though, an old building, and so not enough heat to set off the sprinklers.

[Nury]

Worried mom, yes, it's true. Jason, do you think I should contact the supermarket, get them to recall the product? It would seem a shame if thousands of people died from their homes burning down from this sort of thing.

Or even worse, if thousands of people were put off porridge by it.

[Poet3]

I agree with Poet01. Publishing a writer's book is not a prize in itself. If the book is a success, it is a deal which will enrich the publisher and the writer, but usually mainly the publisher (since the writer gets 10-12% only). For example, if TS Eliot or his modern equivalent won this award, would the publisher say to him, "Mr Eliot, lucky you, I get the publishing rights to your book." No, the publisher is the one getting the prize. From the publisher, the writer merely gets nothing or possibly loses the right to publish with bigger publishers.

So, other than the glory, the prize is really just the cash, and the cash is small, the entry fee is high. My advice to poets is to stick to Bridport. It's a low entry fee, much higher prize, it's got a long history, and it's got lots of famous names associated with it.

[Nury]

Actually, you're right, Poet3. I remember when we were dicussing the mechanics of setting up the Man Asian Literary Prize, at first we wanted to drum up good writers to publish in our magazine, the Asia Literary Review. But then we realized that this was a novel prize, so we should offer to actually publish in full the winning novel.

But we went through the same through process as you did above. Some winners may really like having their book published by a small press in Hong Kong. Others might be able to go for a bigger publisher.

In the event, the inaugural prize went to a guy who had loads of deals with international publishers and it was simply unnecessary for us to publish his book.

On the other hand, poetry is a different ball game entirely. I wouldn't want to pour cold water on anyone's dreams, but you don't get big international auctions for a book of poetry very often.

Getting your book published by a press like HKU Press would actually be a good and useful thing for most poets in Hong Kong. However, I'm not sure it would be hugely valuable to a poet in, say, Venezuela. And even Hong Kong poets may aspire to major global publishers. It's a tricky question and one which would have to be answered on a case-by-case basis.

[fardel]

In a microwave , frozen bread would reach high temperature in 15 seconds,but would not exceed 70 °C while apple sauce would stay cold for 5 minutes , then reach a temperature in excess of 100°c in 8 minutes.
Cheese or any ingredient containing fat or sugar would warm up in the first 5 minutes, then become really hot in less than 3 minutes with temperatures in excess of 120-140°C
( for reference one can put his finger in a 45° C liquid , but not in a 60° C liquid.)
Nothing is bad like an egg in a microwave. It explodes.
The writers of cooking instructions should be more careful , since the warming time depends of a combination of
- the power of the microwave
- the contents of the food being warmed / burned
- the quantity being warmed up

Unless forced to do it ,no engineers would inform the public of the risks produced by electronic waves :Microwave oven; cell phones, computer screens.

There was an accident this morning when an Asian chocolate bunny became so hot in the presence of a computer screen, that a reader on the other side of the planet , connected on the same website,exploded in laughter, breaking a rib when falling off his chair.
Who is liable?

[zÆRo]

Just face it, HK poeple are renowned for their scabby kulture, which they disguise as 'kapitalism' and 'fwee market'. It also explains why they sell microwave charcoals marketed as food.

[Myumi]

funny you should be talking about burning food. the hot new item at seven eleven just now is a thing called Charcoal Cake. It's jet black and looks like it has been burned to a cinder. I think someone should try it and report back.

[Angela]

Clearly the culprit here is the website. Not blaming the technology but the website should come with a clear warning sign to forewarn unwitting readers of the inherent dangers of reading between the lines whatever is posted here. Signs like - "Caution. Slippery when wet" or "Public Posting. Interpret at your own risk"

[Angela]

Mr. Fardel, What is the extent of damage? anything irreparable? Needs surgery or long term intensive care? requiring medical services that are not available there? Our tiny island nation here is an emerging medical hub with sophisticated facilities and world class medical professionals, etc.. something that may interest you provided you survive the swim down north atlantic ocean, past the pirates in the gulf of aden, cross over the indian ocean and make friends with the head hunters of Borneo, borrow a sampan and sail to the lil red dot island inhabited by many chocbuns :)