Canto Bite: Rice-induced Sleepiness

I think everyone probably knows the 2:00 feeling. It's warm, your stomach is pleasantly full, you feel like you're being enveloped by a comfortable, sluggish haze. You stare at your computer screen (or book or watch or class full of nodding heads, as the case may be) and feel your eyelids begin to slide downward.

One of my old coworkers would get a bad case of the afternoon eyelids almost every day. I would stop hearing clicks from his typewriter, and sure enough, his eyes would be closed and he'd be slumping forward. I was always tempted to throw my wooden duck at him, but I'm not quite that mean so I'd settle for either poking him with the duck until he awoke or seeing how many objects I could move onto his desk before his eyes opened. 

He never learned to see the humor in it, but for me, it was a joke that never died. Laughter is almost as good as coffee for keeping you awake in the early afternoon. Now that my coworker has moved on, I have started doing jumping jacks as a replacement. Healthier but not as much fun. 

Today, right after filling my belly with pork and tofu rice, I was starting to feel a bit sleepy. I was informed by a coworker that in Cantonese they actually have a word for this familiar yet unnamed feeling. 飯氣攻心 Faan6 hei3 gung1 sam1. 

It's one of those annoying things where Canto has a word for this thing but English doesn't (although there could be a colony of English-speakers somewhere that has a word for it; probably in the American South). So now you can all just learn this word and use it whenever necessary!

I know I'll be using it tomorrow. Probably around 2:00.  飯氣攻心 time!