Saturday, August 7, 2010

Got Melk?

I've run into a problem. Every time I try to speak Norwegian to someone, they can immediately tell that my level is akin to a 3 year old child. Hence they switch into perfect, slightly accented, English. Which is no good for my Norwegian.

So I've come up with a plan. I look Asian, right? And Asians not speak-er English, right? So next time they switch into English, I'll just give them a blank stare and pretend that I don't understand. I'll pretend that my English is SOO bad that they're better off speaking Norwegian to me. And if it all gets too difficult, or it's actually something really important like reporting to the police after getting robbed or bashed, then I'll just miraculously speak English again. That should work, right?

I also had my first face-palm moment in Oslo. Being the lactose intolerant person I am, I went hunting for some Lactose Free milk. Except I'm in Norway, kingdom of those whose ancestors frolicked on farms in the Sound of Music and drank plenty of cow's milk. Lactase deficiency?? What is this lactase deficiency? [scratches head]. Maybe I didn't understand the labels, but none of the milk cartons appeared to have the word lactose or a derivative thereof printed. So my next best option was Soy milk. Ding ding. Found it. See picture below:

Surely that's soy milk? It even has the word Sol in the title. Sol, Soy, same thing... And there's a photo of white liquid, along with an image of a flexible gymnast-type chick contorting her lower limbs (it's on the other side). And we all know soy is a chick's drink, right? It's like the special K ads with those long legged girls prancing around in leotards with tampon ad music in the background and butterflies and kittens and rainbows. This is totally soy milk...

This is what it turned out to be:
I don't think the lighting does justice to exactly how disgusting it actually looks. It's like a light cream/pale green coloured runny liquid that resembles a cross between cat vomit (bilious) and other bodily fluids... I asked my Norwegian housemate what it actually says (apparently it's in Swedish), and it's supposed to be used for cooking. I think it's like milk substitute for people who have allergies, coz it's milk free, soy free, everything else free. I don't even know what is in this product. So it was dry cereal for me yesterday.


PS: Later in the day, I discovered what was wrong. I was supposed to shake it before use. So basically there was this sludge down the bottom that looked like cement, and I was drinking the greenish/wheatish water on top that had separated from the cement precipitation. When shaken, it doesn't taste half-bad. So I didn't pour it away as planned.

2 comments:

  1. Hehe nice one. It's always fun to experiment with foods that you are not quite sure what to do with or what they are :P

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  2. It tasted quite good in the end. I was quite sad when the carton finished :-(. Although perhaps I might stick with the Rice Milk for now. It was quite shameful, actually, being Asian and never having tried Rice milk before.

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