I hate frogs. I think frogs are disgusting. I know that I do and eat a lot of things deemed disgusting by other people. But I stop myself at frogs. I can’t stand frogs — whether they are alive and croaking in front of me, or stone-cold dead and served with ginger.

As a kid, I spent a lot of time in Sri Gading with my grandparents. By 9 p.m. or so, the kitchen lights would be switched off, everyone huddled in the living room to watch the 9 p.m. Chinese drama on Channel 8 (when it was still SBC). One night I had to dash off to the kitchen real quick. Then I stepped on something round, cold and slimy. Then I ran all the way back to the living room. To clearly remember these details and feelings of the heart-stopping moment when I stepped on the damn frog shows you just how bloody traumatised I was from the whole affair.

A few years later, I was at a restaurant with my family. My mom had ordered “tian ji”, literal translation is ‘field chicken’. I refused to eat it because it was unfamiliar food to me. My mom then cajoled me into eating one, telling me that it tastes just like chicken. Five minutes into eating one, I overheard someone saying that it was frogs’ legs. I felt sick to my stomach and refused to eat another bite.

About four years ago at the SS2 night market, I passed by a stall with a metal cage filled with live frogs. The lady stall owner took one out and proceeded to skin the frog alive. It was one of the most horrific things I’ve ever seen and I only saw about 10 seconds of it.

Last night, Reuben asked me what was bird’s nest. So I gave him the Wikipedia link. Then I remembered something that my mom used to prepare for us when we were kids. She called it ‘xue ge’; in Cantonese it’s known as ‘shuet kap’. She’d spend hours picking at the fluffy, jelly-ish substance (to clean it), then double boil it as a dessert (tong sui) for me. I didn’t know what it was but I hated it because I thought the texture was disgusting. I remember asking her what was it, and she offhandedly told me that it was ‘something from the sea’. At first it was ‘something from the sea that’s like seaweed or something’, then as I grew older, it became ‘something from the sea that’s like animal or something’.

Well, 10 days before my 27th birthday, I finally discovered the truth.

Do you want me to spell it out for you?

I think you can read these links instead: Link One and Link Two.