Kimchi Convert

There are just things that I hate, smells that I abhor and tastes that I would never like. Cheza – that icky yellow fruit – it tops this list. Also papaya, labanos (radish), and kimchi. Just the sight and slightest smell of these makes me want to puke my guts out.

Let me tell you how deep my hatred for kimchi is. Everytime I pass by the cold section in the supermarket and see a bottle of kimchi, I feel nauseated and sick. Everytime I eat at Greenhouse, a restaurant in Quezon City frequented by Koreans, I always fish out my cologne from my bag, ready to spray cologne everywhere. I hate how kimchi smells. I hate everything about it!

But tonight, I’ve become a convert – a kimchi convert! Working in a development-oriented organization means meeting people from different countries. Yesterday, one of our Korean partners left boxes of kimchi at the office. My pinoy housemates love kimchi, and Marjo decided to bring home some for tonight’s dinner.

She was coaxing me to try her kimchi in exchange for Purefoods corned beef (a very valuable delicacy for OFWs). So I braced my tastebuds and smell glands for a very traumatic experience. Surprisingly, after smelling the reddish concoction, I didn’t feel like I wanted to throw up. So I took the next step, got a small piece, and bravely placed it in my mouth. What do you know, I didn’t hate it! It actually tastes good – a bit sour, spicy hot and tangy.

So I enjoyed the rest of the meal with kimchi, Purefoods corned beef and Lorin’s alamang bagoong (another precious delicacy). The meal was perfect, almost heavenly.

Marjo and I decided that my hatred for kimchi was just because I had bad, low quality kimchi the first time. And as with any other experience, the first time is the most memorable.

So now, I am a self confessed convert. I am glad that I ended this more-than-a-decade-long hatred for kimchi. Tonight will go down in history, as the night that I re-discovered kimchi.

(It’s just ironic that after having kimchi for dinner, the Korean student who massacred students was on tv. How could one country be related to something as gastronomically pleasurable as kimchi, and to someone as psychologically disturbed and destructive as this Korean student? But then, this boy lived most of his life in the US, not in Korea. Maybe they served bad kimchi in the US. Stop it, Norly. Sorry, bad joke.)


18 April 2007
Wednesday
9:03 pm
Penang