Returned to Tuna Ichiban yesterday evening after my 10 k walkabout. There was a breeze coming off the Chao Phraya river and it ran straight through Silom Road as I walked up towards Saladeng (from Saphan Taksin BridgeI) to my new favorite Bangkokian eatery.

I ordered a very tasty udon noodle soup – which, incidentally, reminded me of the one my buddy Michael served up a while back – with seaweed. I also got a batch of crispy shrimp tempura, crunchy soft shell crab salad and five solid slices of salmon sashimi. Yes, it was a small feast.

As I’m still on my Intermittent Fasting project, this was my only proper meal of the day. So all of my rudimentary senses (touch, taste, sound, smell and, sight) were singularly tuned in and colluded to enhance the dining experience. As you can imagine, everything tasted just fantastic. Normally, I would of had some saké and a bottle or two of beer. But in all honesty, I didn’t miss either.

As I was sitting there with my small plates, bowls and the small rectangular side dish with a teaspoon or so of wasabi in it, I started thinking of the enormous amount of wasabi Tuna Ichiban must go through in week’s time. The place has been packed during both of my visits, so we’re presumably talking about double-digit kilograms of wasabi. And that’s just in one relatively small eatery in city with possibly 250 Japanese restaurants!

The upscaling boggled my mind and by the time I’d finished thinking of how big the vats must be in what is likely a humungous wasabi factory in an smog covered, anonymous industrial city in China, the logistics that go into distributing the zesty, green paste to umpteen sushi restaurants in Bangkok – and how that all trickles down to the tiny dish I had in front of me, I actually wished I’d had a nice cold beer in front of me.

Being a modern day consumer means taking a lot of really complicated stuff for granted. We expect, presume and trust that the lightbulb will turn on when we flick the switch, that the toilet bowl will empty when we flush it and the supermarket will be stocked with our favorite foods and drinks. We blatantly anticipate that  everything that’s part of our daily lives will always continue to be just that. But we give little regard to how the heck it got there or how something works in order to meet our expectations. The story behind, I mean.

And when there’s the slightest glitch, hicup, delay or missed expectation, we whine, get annoyed or worse yet, demand an explanation! It’s as if we weren’t so friggin’ clueless as we really are. I mean, if only we had insight into what actually goes on behind the scenes when we flush the toilet, turn on the light and reach for our organic bananas, we might be a bit more humble and appreciative as to everything we take for granted.

I worked on a project for IKEA several years ago where they were doing their outmost to dig up information on the stories behind some of the company’s older products. Stuff that were still part of the current range. The idea was to spin each story from an environmental perspective. But as it turned out, in most cases, there wasn’t much to go on. Memories had faded and very little documentation existed.

As I was walking up busy Silom Road yesterday evening towards my little rectangular wasabi plate, I walked past the lady above. Since she was using an analogue phone, the sight of her talking on it caught my attention. Though I remember our very first phone number on Alfred Street in Los Angeles (213-651-4215), I can’t recall when it was we ditched our landline in Sweden. Eight years ago? Nine?

Today is a dedicated gallery day with a ton of inspiration abound.