The first time I had Ovaltine was when I was about in fourth grade, give or take a couple of years.

Ovaltine is a chocolaty, dairy drink that has been around for over a hundred years. It was very popular in Hongkong where I grew up. (No, I am not that old, although I felt like it when I once asked my children if they ever had it.) I haven’t had a sip of it for a long time. As a matter of fact, I haven’t seen an advertisement for it or the actual product of it probably for the last forty years. That’s why I was surprised to see it the other day in a grocery store.

I was raised in a subsistent family. That is a nice way to say “in poverty.” It’s not that my parents didn’t want to provide the best nutrition for the children. There were too many of them to feed. So we didn’t have Ovaltine in the house.

One day, a friend of the family, LL, brought a can of Ovaltine to our house. I never tasted it before, but I loved it. So did everybody else in the family.

Over the last many years, I’ve always asked myself this lingering question: Why did LL give us that precious can of malty powder? He was a teenager working as a messenger in an office. He didn’t have much money. Did he buy two cans from his meager salary: one for his family and one for ours? LL, you are on my mailing list, why did you? Did you remember you did that? Is a thank-you from me after half a century too late?

The first time I had a sandwich was when I was in fifth grade, or some time around there.

One of my older brothers, SM, had graduated from high school and had started working in an American bank in Hongkong. They provided employees with lunch coupons which could be exchanged for sandwiches. My mom was an excellent, excellent cook of Chinese food and she did not cook or eat western food. So I knew about sandwiches in name and from pictures in magazines but I had never actually eaten one. Until that day, when SM brought home a box of them. I still remember it like yesterday: there were altogether maybe a dozen nicely cut, triangular shaped bread lunches with meat inside. I didn’t know any of the names yet, but I suppose there must be ham, sausage and all kinds of good stuff in them. I don’t remember which kind I had (because I hadn’t learned the name of it), but I still remember how gooood it was!

SM, how long were you on a diet to save up all those coupons for your younger brothers and sisters? Three months, six months?

The first time I had salmon was when I was about twenty years old, when I was in the first or second year of college.

My brother, SC and I went to the same college for a while. He was in graduate school and I was an undergraduate. We both befriended this older classmate of his. His name was RS and he was about fifteen years older than SC and me. He was already like a middle manager with a state agency when he decided to return to school to get an advanced degree. So we were schoolmates on the surface, but he took it upon himself to look after us, and a few foreigners in his classes as well, in an avuncular way. Well, part of being an uncle (and an aunt, on the part of his equally kind wife, MS) was to feed us periodically.

Of the many scrumptious meals SC and I ate at their house, the most memorable one to me was when she prepared salmon. That experience was worth staying in my brain for two reasons. One, I never had salmon before and that was the best fish I ever had in my life, bar none. Two, I had so much of it that night that I got sick afterward when I got home.

RS, his wife MS, and I drifted away over the years. I tried to search for him on Facebook to no avail. I don’t blame them. I just joined Facebook quite recently myself. It’s just hard for us fuddy-duddies to act young and hip.

Ovaltine, sandwiches, salmon … although these foods bring a lot of sweet nostalgia to me, I don’t like them much anymore. I probably haven’t had a cup of Ovaltine for forty years, if not more. That’s why I was surprised to see it for sale in a store in the United States. I would still have a sandwich once in a while, but I don’t really crave it unless it is served hot. As for salmon, just the smell of it cooking on a pan or a barbecue grill makes my stomach churn. And I don’t mean in a hungry way. I still like eating that fish sashimi style; I just can’t handle the pungent odor of its burned skin any longer.

Do appetites change with age? Do people change over time? Or am I just being overly sensitive?

*** The End ***

 

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