The Mysterious Curry Chicken

I am an average middle aged engineer. Nothing about me is special, except that I am an immigrant from Taiwan. I bet the experience I had finding the mysterious curry chicken is not unique to me. I believe some of my friends may have encountered or will, sooner or later, encounter a similar experience.

I believe at least 80% of the Taiwanese immigrant families in America share my situation: I work as a software engineer; I have two grown children. I depend on my wife on everything that keep me alive and to have clean shirts to wear. I am a totally useless ignorant in day-to-day life without my wife. Sometimes my wife took an extended trip back to Taiwan to see her family. When she does, she would always leave me enough food, well prepared ahead of time, in the refrigerator. Just so I won’t starve or eat McDonald 3 meals a day everyday. If we don’t get to talk on the phone we would exchange e-mails everyday.

In March of 2007, my wife went back to Taiwan to see her family for one whole month. As usual, she left me tons of goodies in the refrigerator. I enjoyed all of them, except for the curry chicken.
What’s so special about the curry chicken? If you would read the e-mail I sent to my wife, you’ll know. Here’s the e-mail, dated sometime in April of 2007:

My Dear Wife:

Let me tell you a little tale of how I found the curry chicken after nearly a month's search.
I tried to find it in the freezer, but failed. I tried to find it in the non-freezer part of the fridge; could not find it either.

Therefore, I did what any engineer or scientist worth his salt would do in this situation: I sat down, and did some thinking. I came up with the following:
• Fact: Our refrigerator is not a huge one and you told me there was curry chicken in it.
• Conclusion: The darn chicken must be in there.
• Action: I called you and asked where it could be.
After we talked on the phone, I got one more clue: It's in a round container. When I looked for it before, I was expecting a square-ish container. So, this is a piece of really useful new information. It practically weeded out half of the possibilities in the fridge. You did not mention whether the container was metal or ceramic, but I assumed it be a plastic one. With this new insight, I started another search. I would do it methodically.

I took out everything in the freezer and put them back one at a time--the ones that I would least likely eat went to the back and bottom. I did not find the chicken. No sweat. Progress had been made--I had just ruled out the possibility of finding it in the freezer. I was half way to the whereabouts of the chicken. Then, I repeated the process on the non-freezer part of the fridge; shelf by shelf. Still no luck.

At this time, I had to assume that my wife had a memory relapse. It's not likely, but you cannot argue with facts, especially the facts were uncovered via meticulous scientific process. After all, saints made mistakes too--even Peter, Jesus' star disciple, made mistakes and he is the one guarding the gate to Heaven. Logic dictates that I give up the search of the mysterious curry chicken.

The fridge was almost empty today--one yogurt left. Even the fruits were all gone--one apple left. Since I am a healthy eater, I went to Safeway after work and bought some bananas, 3 oranges, and 2 apples. I saw yogurt was on sale; for $10 you could bring home 10 small cans of yogurt. It's a no brainer; I bought $10 worth of yogurt.
Remember I said I was a healthy eater? I did not buy Sweet & Sour Pork,
nor did I buy Peking Orange Chicken at the China Express counter. The total cost of the goodies would have cost me $13.50. But, I remembered Susan told me to tell them "My wife has a Safeway card. I have our phone number." That's a $2.50 saving right there. Am I good or what!

(Are you still listening? Hang in there. The story is almost over.)

As any good man would do, as soon as I came home, I put all the yogurts in the fridge. Now that I had 10 yogurts and that lonely yogurt had been sitting in the fridge for more than a month, I thought I could afford to dump it. So, I dumped it in the sink and planned to wash it down the garbage disposer. But, wait! It looked like chicken and it smelled like curry. It's the mysterious curry chicken!

Lesson Learned: When scientific process fails, dumb luck will kick in. That's how Fleming discovered penicillin, wasn't it.

It's only 6 more days left. Miss you.
Ralph

P.S. Did I tell you I pulled the knob off the washer? I tried to do the laundry last night. The instruction said to pull the knob to start. It broke when I pulled it. It still works; I can use a screw driver to lift the knob. No need to worry yet, but we may have to start saving some money to buy a new washer.