Life may be a box full of chocolates, in that you never know what you’re going get; mine is an omelet. It might go back to the whole vacuum cleaner incident and a need for revenge, or it might have just been a spontaneous idea for fun at the foreigner’s expense, whatever the case, Pocky and Ma Song called me to dinner the other night and I sat down to an egg omelet that looked quite appetizing. It had scallions and little white beans I assumed to be some Thai ingredient that I was unfamiliar with. I pretty much subscribe to the ‘bite first, ask questions later’ school of culinary appreciation. So I dug in. The omelet yielded a mediocre taste that neither disgusted nor delighted. It was then that I was informed that the bean was in fact mot, ants. To be more precise, it was ant larvae, little white eggs, though some of them had started the metamorphosis from lice-like thing to full blown picnic predator, which is to say you could see their little ant eyes forming out of little ant heads. Put aside the whole visual and it wasn’t terrible, but it didn’t taste anywhere near good enough for me to forgive the sickening spectacle. I finished my meal, but not the omelet. Thing is, I was going to eat some of the locusts they sell at the local market as a kind of self-imposed dare, but no need for that now - plus, the bloke from Manchester, England I work with claims there are a lot of pesticides in the locusts. Guess ant larvae is the way to go for the protein deficient.