THERE are many things I'm bad at and cooking is one of them.
It's because kitchens bore me.
Whenever I walk into one, I get the same feeling as when I have to follow a friend to a Home-Fix D.I.Y. Shop to buy car shampoo.
My brain shifts into neutral gear. Time slows to a crawl. I'm surrounded by things - gadgets, ugly bottles of condiments, plastic bags filled with stinking, icky things like fish with scales and lumps of raw red meat - I have zero interest in. I feel claustrophobic and can't wait to walk out.
And so my cooking skills are non-existent, or almost so.
I can make sandwiches, waffles and pancakes. I can create a salad if I have to. I can even turn instant noodles into a not-bad version of char siew mee if I'm desperate.
And whenever my dog goes on a hunger strike and I need to coax him to eat, I whip up my delicious DeeDee's Salmon Porridge (boil a quarter bowl of rice with a bowl of water, add strips of salmon with skin, throw in a dash of salt, cook for eight minutes and toss in chopped-up broccoli and French beans. Cool, then serve). It always works.
I even believe I possess an innate ability to cook (how hard is it to follow a recipe?) - if only I want to take it up.
But I don't. And it's not just cooking I shun but other forms of domestic duties - I don't sew, I don't knit, I dislike shopping for homeware, I don't dream of having a nicer bathroom and I have no interest in things like kitchen towels, baking tins and scented candles.
The idea of doing crafts horrifies me, I don't keep a scrapbook and I see absolutely no reason to change the curtains in my house every year, or even every decade for that matter.
So if the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, I'd rather be single than to have to slave over a stove to cook him a meal every day.
My idea of entertaining is to buy food and serve it stylishly. And what a choice of takeaways there is out there. You can drop by Da Paolo Gastronomia and cart home a full meal - starters, salads, main courses, desserts - in five minutes flat. No stress, no fuss, hardly any washing up to do, the food tastes good and you don't end up with smelly onion-scented fingers, too.
At most I'll add a sprig of garnish to the food to make it look a bit more homely.
My lack of traditional feminine preoccupations hit me during a dinner with some friends last weekend.
Four of the six people there were domesticated folks who, bless them, were very cute as they debated the pros and cons of silicone pot holders versus ordinary cloth mitts.
They very earnestly discussed why it's worth it investing in quality saucepans, the different ways to test if chicken has been cooked and the myriad methods to dry salad vegetables. (There's apparently a machine that spin-dries the veggies for you; or you could place the leaves in a clean pillow case and swing it around. Goodness.)
One friend revealed that she marinates meat before setting off for work then cooks it when she gets home. 'You cannot imagine how wonderful the flavour is,' she declared. This is a woman who washes her curtains every month.
Another, who lives alone, said she doesn't mind spending hours after work making pork chops for her own dinner. She reads recipe books for pleasure.
A friend and I - the two outsiders - looked at each other and rolled our eyes. We are both domestically disabled.
She's someone who doesn't mind eating sandwiches from a sandwich vending machine and whose culinary adventures comprise emptying a San Remo pasta meal into a saucepan.
Cooking tops her hate list because it's messy, tiring and involves too much cleaning up, she said. As a busy single working woman, it makes more sense having her meals outside.
She shuns other domestic activities like washing, cleaning and ironing, also because of a lack of time.
'If I weigh the opportunity cost of getting a part-time cleaner to clean my apartment at $10 an hour versus my doing it myself, it makes more sense for me to pay the money and use the time I would have spent housecleaning to do other things - like go to the gym or spend time with my family,' she said.
Hear, hear.
DOMESTICITY doesn't sit easily with me, so does this make me less of a woman? Has my value proposition as a female diminished?
Truth be told, I've always been perversely proud of my incompetence in the kitchen.
It's emancipating. Domesticity has been a feminine ideal - and necessity and drudgery - for too long.
I feel so lucky living in an era when women don't have to stay home but can go out to the workforce and kick ass, just like the men do. And when you're so busy in the corporate world, who has time to indulge in the culinary arts our mothers excelled in? Who wants to be like our mothers?
And isn't it even rather charming to be a damsel in distress in the kitchen? Isn't it kind of cute when a confident, competent woman becomes a little ditzy when she's in the kitchen? I think so, anyway.
I do realise, though, that I can afford to be a klutz on the domestic front because I am single and live at home.
I don't have to cook but I will always have delicious food waiting for me from my mother. I don't have to make my bed in the morning but I go home to fresh sheets.
Most other women - especially if they are married with picky husband and fussy children and who don't have a maid - aren't so lucky.
For them, domestic chores must be fulfilled not because they want to live out some Nigella Lawson or Martha Stewart domestic goddess fantasy, but because, hell, someone's just got to do the work, and it's them.
No matter what strides women have made in the workplace, there's still gender inequality at home. Women who work are still expected to put in the second shift when they come home because they - not the men - are still expected to be responsible for the home. Women - even if they are earning more than their husbands - are still expected to shoulder the lioness' share of the housework.
A recent study found that single women in Britain spend an average of 10 hours a week on housework and single men seven hours. But when they form a union, women tend to spend more time - an average of 15 hours a week - while men's share falls to five hours.
Marriage is the real killer.
Another study involving 17,600 men and women in 28 countries found that married men report doing even less housework than men who are live-in boyfriends.
Apparently, when couples just cohabit, they see themselves in more of a 'you do your part and I'll do mine' roommate relationship.
But once the institution of marriage kicks in, the division of labour changes. Even for couples with an egalitarian view on gender - seeing men and women as equal - husbands still report doing less housework than their wives.
Centuries-old standards of what a wife's 'duty' is just aren't so easy to change.
Thankfully, it's not a problem I have to deal with as a single.
What I do worry about, though, is what I'll do for dinner when my mother passes on.
Much as I like takeaways, there's only so much outside food one can stomach. But I can't cook, don't cook and won't cook.
My solution? Start compiling all her recipes. And then get a domestic helper who can not only do all the chores - but who is also a really, really good cook.
