I choose to believe what I was programmed to believe

The Impossible Decision, as it stands, is a four leaf clover. Despite its presumably very short life, a tiny cockroach might help me pick which cardinal clover leaf is best. I woke up with nothing to do (untrue, I woke up with nothing that I was actually going to do) until the afternoon, so I went by the coffeeshop bookstore in my best taike flipflops and shorts and bought a bento to take back to the rooftop. For the uninitiated, the bento box is a working class Japanese meal, consisting of a paper box that separates the white rice from the three vegetable sides that you've picked. You also get to pick a protein to put on the rice, then they wrap it with a rubber band, toss it in a plastic bag, and shove a plastic spoon and chopsticks in your hand and off you go. The bento is an institution here, and while quality and variety vary from place to place, you can usually be confident of a very filling meal for $2 USD, +/- $0.10. I never really get bored of them, because even if you rotate three new vegetables everyday, you can go about two weeks without any repeats, and then you have four or five different fish, three or so different chickens, ubiquitous fatty pork, pork chops, and usually some other odds and ends that I'm forgetting about and/or skipping over.

Back in my rooftop Garden of Eaten, the love birds were back, eating the grain I've been giving them. They aren't tamed yet, but they tolerate me. I watered all the plants, and dug into my bento. This time, I had bamboo, white cabbage, and curry potato, with a fried chicken leg. I got down to the last few bites of rice and noticed a millimeter long infant cockroach had been cooked into my food.

I'm not normally squeamish but this particular cockroach was off-putting. Maybe it was the contrast of his tiny black legs on the pure white rice. Maybe it was the thought of how others I've inadvertently consumed like this in Taiwan (before RMJ and IS and the others start in on food safety, I have to say I've never actually gotten ill from any cockroaches here). Maybe it was the thought that if I accept the job in Hai Phong, I'll probably be eating a lot more baby cockroaches. Maybe it was the thought that I've never once seen a cockroach in Japan. Whatever the trigger, I suddenly find that the Japanese clover leaf is suddenly my favorite one. Time to send off some resume's.