aka The Noodle Diaries

When my phone rang, I jumped out of bed. It was 4am and my colleague P was on the phone. ‘We’re downstairs’. ‘OK, I’ll be down soon’. I didn’t hear my alarm clock go of. Did it? Anyway, it was too late to process all that right now. I dived under the shower, brushing my teeth as I went along. In 3 minutes, or 5 I was ready to catch the shut-eye flight to London.

In the car my colleagues didn’t sense at all that my boast of the day before that I would be up, legs crossed, sipping a cup of tea and waiting for them…was just that, a boast. We’d all laughed at who would still be asleep when the taxi came – and it was me. We arrived at Schiphol and while waiting to check in, I walked past a Japanese food stand, whereupon I was confronted with my first ever bowl of ramen. As in the first bowl I ever really noticed, complete with the pink-centered fish slice. Though I didn’t get a taste on that morning two years ago, I took the three photos below. And never told my colleagues I overslept. Read more…