Cute presentation, no? This serving of fried rice was set down in front of a lunch companion yesterday at Chai Restaurant, and I couldn’t resist taking a quick cellphone picture.

I think it’s obvious that the two cucumbers with plum tomatoes, accompanied by wedge of lime, represents a face. That wasn’t apparent to a third lunchmate, who thought the arrangement looked like “boobies”, with no accounting for the lime.

Said lunchmate obviously is swimming against the tide of cognitive human visual language, which allows us to see two dots and a half-moon and interpret the visual representation of a face.

On the other hand, I kinda envy the ability to conjure up images of female breasts. Maybe a cultural re-education is in order — to the extent that our desensitized society hasn’t already done the job.