Cassava Philosophy

I hate cliché but this is indeed Terengganu winter. Cold breeze. Sea waves that are constantly lashing our beach roar like angry lion in the distance. Many times cats and dogs loomed from cumulonimbus that blotted daylight, followed by fine rain that filled the gap between the chases. Earth is cold, chilling the neighbourhood's underground pipelines, laziness goes down our spine.

Almost like an annual ritual, when monsoon struck our shore, we ate boiled tapioca with grated coconut sprinkled with salt and sugar to taste. Coffee now steams in its porcelain cup at north. At the east are my two cats munching their new starchy carbohydrate fortified diet. They like it as we do. This is our monsoon comfort meal.

The science behind tapioca farming revealed. The old lady who sold the tapiocas told us a reason why our home grown tapioca had a slight bitter aftertaste, the same phenomenon when eating wrongly chosen durian. It's because of the weeds, she told us. Bitter tapiocas were grown near weeds (Imperata cylindrinca). I remember two old Malay proverbs that circle around underground tubers (forgive me if I'm wrong, tapiocas, I believe, is also a tuber).

"Diam-diam ubi berisi." (silently, silently the tapioca/potato fills out).

"Jangan jadi seperti lalang yang melintuk sana sini mengikut haluan angin." (don't be like tall grass blades, whose direction parallel to the words of the wind).

Bitter tapiocas were grown near weeds.

I don't know how to use the word "irony", but for now, I can say those two proverbs correlate between in each other provided the subjects co-exist in a particular niche in which the mentioned symbiosis would reflect humans' social life. The italicised phrase is trying to convey something.