Why cook?

Q : Do You Cook?
A : No, I don't
Q: Why?
A : Read on to find out why...

Jin's mom gave us some "mui choi kao yok" (preserved veg with meat) and I figured that we better eat it up before all her kindness goes to waste. As usual, if I have to eat post-cooked food (now, doesn't that sound better than "leftovers"?), I try to make an occassion out of it. In this case, I offered to cook fried rice and have the meat dish as a supplement. Now, everyone always think that fried rice must be one of the easier dishes to concoct..but no one ever talks about the amount of work required to make it. Here's the breakdown (calculated in minutes spent) :
- Time spent to mentally list down all ingredients required to make yummy fried rice ( 10 min)
- Supermarket : choose brocolli, mushrooms and prawns (20 min + lining up at counter to pay)
- All over Ghim Moh market and supermarket near office : looking for the fried rice paste (40 min - and never found it!)
- At home the night before the big cookout : pulled out meat to defrost (1 min)
- At home on the cooking day (here's where the madness starts) : de-shell and clean prawns (7 min), cut brocolli, mushrooms and sausage (12 min - hey, it was a lot of cutting!), crack eggs (30 sec), chop garlic ( 2 min), bring out frying pan and wok, wash them (1.5 min), actual cooking time (20 minutes), take picture of food (2 min), cleanup and washing up (45 min and still cleaning)
Total time taken to cook yummy fried rice at home : approx 2 hours and 20 minutes
Time taken to take-away fried rice from nearby coffeeshop : 20 minutes

Q : so why don't you cook in Spore?
A : Go figure ;p