“What’s your favourite food?”

“My favourite food. Let’s see… uhmmm…”

Pregnant pause.

Dang. This is supposed to be an easy question, a question that people, normal people, can answer as easily as… as…

“Yeah? Your favourite food?”

“Well…”

What’s wrong with me? I don’t even know what my favourite food is?

“Ermm… I don’t have a favourite food.”

“What? How can you not have a favourite food?”

Exactly. How can I not have a favourite food? I love to eat; people sometimes associate me with food; I sometimes associate closely with food… surely I have a favourite food.

“Well I like all kinds of food.”

Hopefully that copout answer buys me a bit more time.

“Come on, surely you can tell me something you really like!”

Okay let me think. What do I like to eat. Oh I like fried kway teow.

“I like…”

But it’s been a year since I’ve eaten it? How can I claim that it’s my favourite food when I haven’t been eating it?

She’s glaring at me impatiently.

“I like laksa!”

Phew. Off the hook. Actually I don’t like all kinds of laksa that much. But Katong laksa is good. Not all the Katong laksas are good - the Holland V one is OK, the Queensway one I had last year was quite good, but the real Katong one I had right beside the busy road around 5 years ago was best.

“So what else, other than laksa?”

What? She wants more? Oh I like nasi lemak.

“I like…”

But nobody says nasi lemak is their favourite food - it sounds so pathetic! And when I think of nasi lemak, I picture one of those dingy little food stalls at some seedy shopping mall with no customers and a few packs of stale-looking nasi lemak displayed in the plexiglass shelf.

“Come on!”

“I like anything with high cholesterol!”

If you can’t give a concrete answer, go abstract. Fried kway teow, laksa, nasi lemak - their common denominator is the high cholesterol.

Thankfully she gave up after that answer.

But I was left wondering - why do I have such a hard time answering that question?

Then it hit me. I wasn’t the one at fault - it was the question’s fault. Or more precisely, it was the fault of what people expected the answer to be like. Which would then make it my fault since I was limiting myself to people’s expectation of the answer.

For example, when that “what’s your favourite food” question is asked, people expect you to give the name of the dish or food, like “chicken rice” or “satay”.

Unfortunately, that wouldn’t make sense. I may love the pizza at Pontini at Grand Copthorne Hotel, but I don’t care for the pizza from Pizza Hut. I may love the siew mai at that dim sum place in Sunshine Plaza, but I don’t care for the siew mai at my office cafeteria.

Next time someone asks me my favourite food, I’ll say something like this:

“That’s a tough question, but one that just came to mind is the lamb rack from Basil Alcove at Fortune Centre cooked by the chef Xander when he’s on form. That’s definitely one of my favourites.”

Or just don’t ask me a simple question. It’s never that simple.