The shark fin soup

So remember how I became the proud consumer of Guitar Hero? I guess I should have mentioned more specifically that I was the proud consumer of Guitar Hero II. However, I can now say that I am the proud consumer of Guitar Hero I, Guitar Hero II, Guitar Hero: Rocks the 80s, and Guitar Hero III. Obviously I was unsatisfied by simply having one Guitar Hero game to play, so I tracked down a friend from college and asked if he would download/burn/send the remaining games in the Guitar Hero series for my enjoyment. He obliged and now I can rock out to my heart’s content.

The other bit of boring geeky news I have that only interests me is that I won $150 this week. Remember how I spent $340 in order to join the local fantasy football league? Yeah, I got $150 of it back this week. I know that the majority of the people who read this actually don’t give a shit about fantasy football, but damnit I do so I’m going to explain more. The local league pays out the majority of its money in weekly installments to the top three point scorers that week. I’ve made a habit of consistently coming in fourth. My team had a nasty tendency of being consistently above-average, which is pretty much the worst kind of team to have in a league that essentially rewards for unusually large blow up weeks. Thus, after 14 weeks I had won precisely $12.50 (a third place tie) and had come in fourth like 8 times. However, this week my team unleashed 14 weeks of pent up fury and I decimated the entire league by setting some sort of scoring record. It was entirely too sweet.

In a moment of pure unadulterated Chineseness, I bought an electric bike. If you’re like me, you probably have little to no idea what exactly an electric bike is. After conducing some research, apparently these things have become all the rage in China (due to the already extant popularity of bikes) and are essentially bikes with battery-operated motors that either assist you while you pedal or transport you without requiring you to pedal. It seemed to make a lot of sense given that the highest elevation in this country is two feet and that gas costs $5 a gallon. Of course, nothing in the Marshall Islands is that easy. Apparently the auto-dealer somehow ordered or received the incorrect charger for the bikes, meaning everyone who purchased the bikes could not charge the bikes. As a result, I found myself ignominiously pedaling my electric bike home from work. It’s now sitting in the shop waiting for a correct charger.

Alright, time to get to the topic of this post. On Saturday, I was at a Chinese restaurant eating a bowl of noodles when the owner, whom I’ve gotten to know reasonably well over the past 2.5 years, tells me that I should drop by Sunday because she had some new stuff she wanted me to taste. Not one to pass up free Chinese food, I do. She and I sat down with some friends and restaurant staff (Sundays are slow) and eat some sashimi and assorted Chinese goodies, though nothing necessarily new. Finally, our friend comes up the stairs with a big pot of soup. Monica greets him and soon we all have huge bowls of soup in front of us. I don’t notice anything particularly unusual about the soup, except that it definitely tastes like there’s something from the sea in it and I don’t see anything it that looks like its from the sea.

After awhile, Monica begins to talk about a rival restaurant and how its “inner circle” of customers try to make themselves look like big shots by ordering $280 bowls of soup for four people. I was like, “WTF! $70 a bowl for soup?” Monica responds, “Yeah, and there aren’t even that many fish bones in it.” Now, I’ve had fish bone soup, Essentially you boil the fish bones for so long that they become soft and edible. And yeah, it’s good, but nowhere close to $70 a bowl. Then it came to me in like 3 separate connections. The Chinese word for “fish bone” is different than the word for “bone.” Moreover, it doesn’t necessarily have to refer to a fish’s bones, but can also refer to something with a similar size, texture, etc. (a sliver, for example). I noticed that my soup contained items which sort of resembled fish bones, but obviously were not. Moreover, I immediately thought about the only type of soup I knew of that could cost $70 a bowl. Finally, I thought of the various Chinese cooking shows and movies I’ve seen in which chefs prepare shark fins. I distinctly remembered that cooked shark fins do not retain their “fin” form. Rather, they sort of separate and splay out into extremely thin threads, similar to crystal/pancit/vermicelli noodles. I asked the dude who walked in with the pot what he put in the soup. Yup, I was eating shark fin soup.

I thought it was pretty cool. To Chinese (I think), shark fin soup is kind of like a holy grail food. It’s impossible (sometimes illegal) to obtain the ingredients, ridiculously difficult to prepare, and horrendously expensive. You only consume it at extra special high-class events… or if you live in the middle of the Pacific and are surrounded by sharks. Is it possible it was caught illegally? Yeah, sure. But whatever. The guy, who works on a fishing boat, said the shark was legally caught according to the “bycatch” regulations, meaning the boat was not specifically fishing for sharks but rather the shark was caught along with the other fish. Plus, he’s based here. He’s not constantly running back and forth between here and China, and it’s not like there’s a huge shark fin market in the Marshall Islands itself. Most importantly, the damn thing was already cooked into soup form and sitting in front of me. Of course I was going to eat it.

I excitedly told an American friend of mine and she criticized me for going to “environmental hell.” Pfpfpfpfpt. I have an electric bike. That gives me enough environmental credits to eat a shark.

Oh yeah, it was really good.