Over a Dinner

general

Week 42

Sunset view from a window

This Saturday evening, I celebrated Diwali over a dinner with random strangers. I recommend dinners with random strangers. Food has this thing of momentarily bringing people together. You can learn a lot about someone over food. You can learn about culture and history but also about them. There is the question of taste—what type of food they like, what they order (or cook). There is the question of history—what they grew up eating, what they stopped eating, what they started eating. You can consider how they react to the food. Are they curious, overwhelmed, joyous, disappointed, surprised, or spiced? That’s all well and good. Then there is still the stuff beyond the food. Consider what they choose to talk about, or how they describe themselves. Do they fiddle with their cutlery when they’re talking? Do they adjust the position of the tissue around? There is no hiding or maintaing an image when you’re furiously slurping noodles into your mouth amidst a frantic dance of chopsticks. Food tells you a lot about people, and good food tends to bring people together, as it did this weekend. It’s incredible how different cultures all tend to have similar struggles, and how going through those struggles opens us up to our own strengths and shortcomings. So many great perspectives on community and struggles and complaints and joy and perspectives and so much to think about over life and moving countries and staying in countries and looking for community and looking for friends and looking for even more than friends. And then, on Sunday, I got off at Slussen and walked my mind off through Söder until Skanstull and around. Quite literally, I walked out all the thoughts in my head for 2 hours followed by cleaning out the corridor by donating out the 30 odd moving boxes I had taking up space. So it goes.

🥘 Food
📚 Reading
💿 Listening

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