On Thursday I had sashimi for lunch.
I did not enjoy it, sadly. I haven’t eaten sashimi since an… incident… in 2004 that I am about to relate for you. Sadly, it seems I still cannot eat it, and hence perhaps this delicacy is lost to me forever.
How bad must an event be to cause such trauma? Read on.
In 2004 I presented a paper entitled The design, modeling and optimization of channel allocations for frequency hopping at the 4th IASTED international multi-conference on wireless and optical communications. Yes, really. A quick ProTip: don’t ever fly across seven timezones for five days, sleep fans. If you study my pics you’ll come away with the idea that Banff has no people in it — because most of them were taken at 5am as I wandered the streets, wide awake and totally jetlagged.
Early in my stay, I and some of my colleagues ate out at a rather good Japanese restaurant, which was the first time I’d eaten any Japanese food more authentic than a Boots meal deal (I was complemented on my pronunciation though, having learnt some Japanese a few years beforehand; like a true tourist rube this made me feel very special). We returned there on our last night. Heartened by the first night, I got a bit more adventurous with the menu, and ordered a lot of different sashimi. And a lot of sake.
I liked most of the food, though I wasn’t so keen on some bits; the eel wasn’t that nice, and I particularly didn’t care for cod roe. For those who have never eaten it, this is a glistening sack of mucous that initially tastes of nothing in the mouth until you burst it. Then your find the oils inside, which taste so strongly of fish that the flavour is all the way past fish and into some strange æthereal realm of its own. More sake. I ate quite a bit of the roe, trying to decide if I liked it or not.
And some more sake. You may think you see where this is going, but believe me, it’s worse than you think.
I was stinkingly drunk by now so, naturally, we went to a bar, where I drank some silly amount of excellent Canadian single malt whisky. When we came out from the bar, I was having trouble seeing; I can remember standing on the street corner outside the door but that is the only memory I have for hours before or after that point. My ever-sympathetic colleagues asked me “where is your hotel?” and I apparently pointed in vaguely the right direction; this was enough for them to send me on my way. Bastards. Somehow, I beat the odds and made it to bed.
Now with the preamble done and the scene set; my story can start in earnest.
I wake up with the cold sweats around 6am, still dressed, with the worst hangover I have ever had. I lie very very still, trying to calm my nausea… and I burp fish. I rush to the toilet and am violently sick. I spend an hour or so very, very slowly packing, being sick a few more times and trying to keep some water down. I check out of the hotel and walk halfway into the town before collapsing onto a kerb where I sit for three hours with my head on my knees. Half a dozen friendly Canadians ask, annoyingly chirpily, if I need medical attention.
Eventually I trek back to my hotel where my transport awaits. I pass the next three hours on a crowded shuttle bus slowly winding through the Rockies. All the way, I taste fish.
At Calgary airport, I wait for two hours, then get on a plane. Next to me is someone else from the conference, an incredibly enthusiastic grad student at Cambridge doing something interesting with MIMO aerials. I can taste fish. The flight is ten hours. I manage, somehow, to keep the vomit down and some semblance of conversation with the guy. We talk about his life in Africa before he came to Cambridge on a student grant. I can taste fish.
Somewhere over Iceland, they serve a soggy, greasy airline croissant with cheese and bacon in it. It’s the first thing in 20 hours that hasn’t tasted of vomit or fish. It’s also the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my life, a Platonic ideal of taste, a plateau of flavour I have sought in vain to replicate since.
I land, and spend the usual hour retriving my luggage. There then follows a three hour train ride with three changes, followed by a taxi, then bed; nearly 7000 miles with the worst hangover of my life, every inch tasting of fish.
And that is why, I can now confirm, sashimi is still dead to me five years later.
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