The Man Who Ate His Boots

The Man Who Ate His Boots

I believe I am quite disciplined when it comes to eating. I do enjoy eating but I try not to over-indulge. It is a tough thing to do, especially when one lives in Jakarta where there is a wide choice of mouth-watering food available from the various cities and provinces in Indonesia--soto Betawi, pempek Palembang, nasi Padang, siomay Bandung, Coto Makassar, soto Ambengan, nasi gudeg Jogja, bubur ayam Cianjur, bakso Malang--going to the food court itself is a lesson in Indonesian geography.

Despite living in a gastronomic paradise, I eat the equivalent of only two meals a day. I believe in moderation and I whole-heartedly subscribe to Dr M's advice that one should stop eating when the food starts to taste good (advice which he himself got from his mother).

The other thing that gives me the willpower and inspiration to not over-indulge in food are stories of endurance and suffering of explorers that I've read. One of those books that I've enjoyed is Barrow's Boys by Fergus Fleming. It details a series of expeditions to various uncharted corners of the globe by British explorers in the 19th century. Most of the explorers had to suffer harsh weather conditions, hostile natives, sickness and most of all hunger.

One of the most remarkable tale is that of Sir John Franklin, explorer of the North Canadian coastlines and also of the Arctic. On one of his expeditions to the cold north, he ran out of food rations and had to boil scraps of leather from his boots for food! Henceforth he was known as The Man Who Ate His Boots. He survived that expedition.

Reading that I was also reminded of a cartoon I read when I was a kid by Malaysian cartoonist Lat (collected in Lots of Lat), where a teacher is shown issuing a challenge to his student, telling him that if he passes his exams, he (the teacher) will eat his own shoes. Obviously, the student proves his teacher wrong and the next box shows the student holding a bottle of ketchup to his shivering teacher: "Do you want some tomato sauce to go with your shoes sir?"

All this talk about food is making me hungry. Now, if your appetite is still intact, care to join me for lunch?