Slow Sundays
My epiphany for last Thursday: waterballs are, without a doubt, excellent icebreakers. The popular ones are drenched and, depending on the sort of person they (and you) are, you either smile fondly at the madness and continue, or secretly rejoice because that annoying girl was wearing a white shirt and is now embarrassed beyond belief. In my case it was quite certainly the former, because I managed to make even better friends with some people whom I'd just spoken to briefly before this (that camping trip definitely helped!) And even while I wasn't part of the waterballing, being an innocent casualty at least got a laugh.
Despite the preponderance of people named something-starting-with-J (honestly, there are other alphabets in the language - does this point to a lack of imagination to parents with students in engineering? Do white middle class engineering parents unerringly fall back on Biblical/mythological names?) I managed to fix a few of them in my head. And then a few of us went out to get ice cream, and then of course that was even better. But at the end of it one of them - let's call her J, of course - and I decided to meet up in the weekend to do something fun. So we went to Whole Foods.
J is a cooking nut, she loves food, so it was sort of a natural choice. Whole Foods is, to be accurate, a sort of organic-fresh-produce-seriously-healthy place, but essentially it's a grocery store. What I still find great is that the both of us wandered around a grocery store, talking and laughing and oohing and aahing over the colours and smells and omgbread!, for practically two hours. Some of that we actually spent up on the roof (bad choice, sun grilled us quietly and thoroughly) eating melting chocolate cake and strawberry shortcake, talking about our lives and things like that.
Besides the fact that I Made A Friend (not just any old friend - either you're close to me, or I really don't care (there is a third category, but it's a depressing one)), swapping stories about how we got into Engineering (and they were remarkably similar stories, too), we talked a lot about Europe in general. This incredibly lucky girl got to tour Europe with her best friend, shooting off to Germany at the drop of her hat (she was bunking in a town near Luxembourg I think), and got to sample some of the best cuisine in the world. We spoke a lot about that as well, the food she'd had at Europe and what she remembered about it.
There were a couple of interesting things that we discussed, actually. When she saw a ciabatta with rosemary and garlic she stopped for a second to comment on the fact that this was rather out of character; usually you got pepper (I think) or garlic separately, but not this abundance of ingredients on one bread. we were talking about how when you import one country's culture, there's a strong urge to sort of concentrate it, to make it more like what it is, than it really is. I saw it all the time in cooking shows, really, when Jamie Oliver or Nigella Lawson added simply tons of turmeric to something, or loads of curry powder. My mum and I had fun with those episodes.
Then we talked about proverbs, and what they might reveal about a culture (I think J really should've been in Plan II). She was telling me about the French phrase for "everyone", which literally translates into "all the world". We laughed over the Tamil colloquial "seruppu pinjudum", which literally means "my slipper will tear" (because you'll be hitting the offender with it!).
Apparently that French meal of bread (which she's addicted to), cheese, and wine honestly is that amazing; the trains and their connectivity in Europe are fabulous; and there are all these French words which need to be pronounced with a "chkhhr" sound that really reminds me of how they pronounce "kh" up in North India sometimes. We had fun trying that out, mildly disturbing the people sitting next to us.
All in all, a highly satisfactory Saturday. I really need to go back there some time when I'm free after work ends, just to wander around or something. Perhaps even to buy some bread. And some cheese. Oooh yes :D
Despite the preponderance of people named something-starting-with-J (honestly, there are other alphabets in the language - does this point to a lack of imagination to parents with students in engineering? Do white middle class engineering parents unerringly fall back on Biblical/mythological names?) I managed to fix a few of them in my head. And then a few of us went out to get ice cream, and then of course that was even better. But at the end of it one of them - let's call her J, of course - and I decided to meet up in the weekend to do something fun. So we went to Whole Foods.
J is a cooking nut, she loves food, so it was sort of a natural choice. Whole Foods is, to be accurate, a sort of organic-fresh-produce-seriously-healthy place, but essentially it's a grocery store. What I still find great is that the both of us wandered around a grocery store, talking and laughing and oohing and aahing over the colours and smells and omgbread!, for practically two hours. Some of that we actually spent up on the roof (bad choice, sun grilled us quietly and thoroughly) eating melting chocolate cake and strawberry shortcake, talking about our lives and things like that.
Besides the fact that I Made A Friend (not just any old friend - either you're close to me, or I really don't care (there is a third category, but it's a depressing one)), swapping stories about how we got into Engineering (and they were remarkably similar stories, too), we talked a lot about Europe in general. This incredibly lucky girl got to tour Europe with her best friend, shooting off to Germany at the drop of her hat (she was bunking in a town near Luxembourg I think), and got to sample some of the best cuisine in the world. We spoke a lot about that as well, the food she'd had at Europe and what she remembered about it.
There were a couple of interesting things that we discussed, actually. When she saw a ciabatta with rosemary and garlic she stopped for a second to comment on the fact that this was rather out of character; usually you got pepper (I think) or garlic separately, but not this abundance of ingredients on one bread. we were talking about how when you import one country's culture, there's a strong urge to sort of concentrate it, to make it more like what it is, than it really is. I saw it all the time in cooking shows, really, when Jamie Oliver or Nigella Lawson added simply tons of turmeric to something, or loads of curry powder. My mum and I had fun with those episodes.
Then we talked about proverbs, and what they might reveal about a culture (I think J really should've been in Plan II). She was telling me about the French phrase for "everyone", which literally translates into "all the world". We laughed over the Tamil colloquial "seruppu pinjudum", which literally means "my slipper will tear" (because you'll be hitting the offender with it!).
Apparently that French meal of bread (which she's addicted to), cheese, and wine honestly is that amazing; the trains and their connectivity in Europe are fabulous; and there are all these French words which need to be pronounced with a "chkhhr" sound that really reminds me of how they pronounce "kh" up in North India sometimes. We had fun trying that out, mildly disturbing the people sitting next to us.
All in all, a highly satisfactory Saturday. I really need to go back there some time when I'm free after work ends, just to wander around or something. Perhaps even to buy some bread. And some cheese. Oooh yes :D