oddlight

Spife-ification of a nation

[yes i know there is no spife in this picture]

Now, it's fair to say that I've eaten my fair share of Malaysian meals.
And, as I've mentioned I'm sure, I love the food here, and with your permission, I will continue eating here.

But there is one question that I keep coming back to when dining here.. and that question is:

Why do Malaysian eateries never have knives?

It's driving me spare.

I'm pretty sure that almost every meal I've eaten here has involved the options of a fork, a spoon or chopsticks... but no knife.

Now that's fine if the meal consists of small, dainty morsels, tastefully arranged, but it seems that the most often used kitchen utensil here is a cleaver.





Now a cleaver is a fairly un-subtle instrument... its main purpose is to create medium sized chunks of things, a job it does very well. If a large part of your daily job is involved creating medium sized chunks of something from an even larger chunk, then relax, I am not trying to steal your livelihood.
In the world of IT, the world of the cleaver is the backend, the server room, the kitchen, the no-nonsense nerve-centre of all thing culinary.

It is in the front-end, the end-user experience that I am proposing is the problem.

If we take these afore-mentioned medium sized chunks of things and serve them to a patron who only has a fork, spoon and chopsticks to eat it with... doesn't it seem likely that this patron may have some issue eating it? To my simple western mind, it does. Alas, I am a stranger in a strange land here.... I simply have way too much trouble trying to break apart large parts of any meal here... i end up throwing food all over the place, well, honestly, all over myself.

Now I believe that it's important for a nation to be proud of its distinctions from other nations.. a national dress, song, dish, that's fine... but human beings have been using knives since the stone age, & it's an amazingly handy tool that neither a fork, or a spoon or chopsticks (or all combined) can overcome. I'm glad that Malaysia is branching out in distinction from the surrounding nations, but please Malaysia, eradication of the knife is not the way to do this.

Please, Malaysia... welcome back the knife into your eatery arsenal. It is a handy, handy thing...

Or at least, can I suggest a widespread uptake of the spife?


A spife is a combination spoon and knife, just as a Spork is a combination spoon and fork.
A Knork, for the uninitiated, is a combination knife and fork, a Splade, of course, being a combination spoon and blade (knife)


Does anyone know a good spife, knork or splade importer?




...Is this issue something that is common to most Asian nations? Who makes a decision like this? Is it a result of fears that the general populous will erupt into a fierce melee of cutlery wielding maniacs?
Are there Government departments working feverishly into the night on such hot topics of national security?

I remember reading something the quote that mankind is only two hot meals from barbarity, but i have never heard it suggested that the barbarity might arise from those same two hot meals...

Please join me, lets begin the spife-ification of Malaysia!