Who Moved My Cheese?

Hello peeps! As you can see, I've been too stressed out/busy having fun/lazy (take your pick!) to blog lately. I've got that mental constipation thingy again that comes from not blogging for an obscene amount of time. So many things to blog about - I think my friends must have gotten tired of hearing me say, "Ooooh, I must blog about this!" just to see my outdated Chinese New Year grin staring back at them every time they load this page. My apologies, dear readers. You guys still love me, right?

With that in mind, let me blog about something that has been at the back of my mind for the longest time. Yes, it has something to do with cheese.

When I came back from my holidays in Tassie last year, one of the most precious things I brought home was a cube of 2-month old cheese. My friends and I acquired it in some dairy farm and carefully sliced into four small portions. As an aside, during the cheese tasting session at the dairy farm, I found that 2-week old cheese tasted like the normal Kraft's cheddar slices and 2-year old ones were so dry that they are rather crumby. The best of them all was the 2-month old cheese - full of flavour and yet still retaining the slight gooeyness that makes cheese so... cheesey.

Ok, back to my cheese. While the others gobbled theirs in Tasmania, I was determined to make mine last for as long as it could. After all, goodness knows when I'll ever visit Tassie again. And besides, good things are meant to be savored, not devoured in one bite. So that morsel survived the plane ride home and was reverently placed in the fridge at home. Every day, I would scrape a tiny bit of it to put on my crackers and bread for breakfast and tea. Although it was so minute compared to the cracker, it made a world of difference to my snack. That cheese had the power to transport me to ecstatic culinary heights. I figured at the careful rate that I was going, that cheese was good to go for another month at least.

Until one day when I opened the fridge to pay my daily homage to it and discovered that it was missing.

Oh the shock, the horror. That awful sinking feeling in my stomach. Don't even let me start on the plethora of emotions and thoughts that came crashing to the very depths of my soul.

I closed the fridge door slowly and turned to face the suspects.

"Who moved my cheese?" I said in a deceptively quiet voice.

My mother had the grace to look guilty. My dad did not.

"Well..." my mom began. "Your dad was hungry just now, he saw your cheese and..."

"Popped the small thing into my mouth," dad said cheerfully. "That darn cheese was lying there for the longest time, I thought you've forgotten all about it!"

"He thought he was doing you a favor by finishing it," mom said helpfully. "I did try to tell him that you treasure it but... it was too late."

I sighed and tried to think of the whole sad situation in a positive light. At least the cheese did end up in someone's stomach and not the trash can. Perhaps this can be my dad's foray to the world of cheese appreciation.

"So, did you like it?" I asked him.

"Like it? Heck, no! That thing tasted like salty sawdust. Kraft's cheddar is so much better!" he grinned and took off.

Oh, my poor poor cheese! To meet its demise so early before its time in the stomach of someone who didn't know how to appreciate it.

Sometimes, life can be so ironic.

Sigh.