Mean Bean Challenge Day 3

The Tearfund Mean Bean Challenge is 5 days of eating what many people in the throws of food poverty eat daily - rice and beans, to stand in solidarity with the hungry and say 'You are not forgotten', as well as to raise money for Tearfunds efforts to relieve food poverty.


On the third day one feels sick - Hunger, Jean Rhys

I've got a pain in my lower ribs, but it's probably from eating while propped in Alex's bed watching 'Much Ado About Nothing' (the second half) and laughing. I introduced her to Tilikum by Benjamin Francis Leftwich, and she introduced me to Honey and the Moon by James Arthur which is on her playlist of melty songs. Playlists remind me of Luk Ching, whose playlist for when I left has stuck with me even now.

Before that we'd walked down into town, after I'd handed in my essay and picked up my new hard drive (hooray!), and bought bananas for when the Mean Bean Challenge is over. Because it is half over, I've been thinking all day how finite this challenge is, and how thankful I am that it is. We walked into a shop that smelled of patchouli, and sold prayer flags and little figurines of Buddha and Ganesh and finger puppets and singing bowls. Singing bowls remind me of the shop that Emily and I would go to after ballet when it was still in Bukit Timah Plaza that sold little waterfalls, which was owned by a nice man and woman who first taught me about singing bowls. In the shop today there were two lovely coats that had paisley and birds and flowers printed on, which we both covet but are too poor to buy.

Today I've felt less hungry than yesterday or the day before that. Perhaps my body is adjusting to hunger. I also couldn't taste hunger, which sounds strange but it's true. Hunger has a taste. It's thick and sour and even though I'm drinking a lot more water than usual, it settles on my tongue and the roof of my mouth like a fog. It was especially present yesterday and Monday but today it wasn't noticeably there.


In my essay I wrote 'cacao phonic' rather than 'cacophonic'. I do miss chocolate, and all sweet stuff. I did some avid googling of recipes to voyeuristically experience the joy of creating food, and now have a cinnamon roll recipe tucked up my sleeve to be wielded mercilessly when the opportunity arises.

Odd but true observation: The charming adage 'Beans, beans, good for the heart, the more you eat, the more you...' is actually not true, at least when you're eating beans all day!