friday evenings

there's something about fridays. the nakedlawyers first celebrated fridays with our friday night lonely hearts club back in freshman year. freshman year's a year i'm always nostalgic about because it was such a blast. not that the subsequent years have been bad (far from!) but there's a certain heady charm about the liberation of freshman year. bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, we were up for any adventure and adventure we did! and in the quick span of a year, we aged beyond recognition and as we grew more refined, clinking glasses till they cracked was no longer socially acceptable (ok, maybe it never was), and we mellowed some.

so having at least some basis of comparison, friday evenings here are so different. i did my laundry yesterday and as i was walking home from the laundry room, i passed the ground floor rooms of my building. strolling past the open windows and surreptitiously peeking into my neighbours' rooms was like sampling slices of other people's lives. there was the girl in the corner room leaning out of her window with a cigarette, trying not to set-off the smoke detector in her room. there was a couple mid-argument in the next room, an asian boy on his electric guitar in the third. then i passed the kitchen, someone was making dinner, someone else was eating dinner and yet another someone was taking out the trash. it felt like both a cross-section and microcosm of life at the same time.

back on my floor, it seemed like nobody had friday night plans. which translated to everyone and their mother in the kitchen. and we all cook according to our colour and country. the french boy made a vegetable stir fry with zuchinni and tomatoes, the indian gents had curry and rice, the japanese girl was making miso soup, the chinese boy had the most delectable looking three-layer pork in dark sauce, the other french boy was eating pilaf and i made stir-fried pork in oyster sauce with onions and garlic. everyone's away from home but cooking the food we'd grown up on. and it's nice, really, to feel so disconnected and connected at the same time. it's at times like this that i realise the human condition is homogenous. and it was a friday night! so we sat around our tiny dining table, guffawing at the simpsons and family guy. maybe banal american humour transcends all race and language barriers. that's a true sign of globalisation and american cultural hegemony, don't you think?

oh and i'm some kind of oddity here because of my mini crock pot and habitual overnight marination. A-san, my japanese corridormate asked, "you is prepare second dinner, no?" when she saw me chopping the chicken and massaging the meat in the ziplock bag after eating my humongous dinner. and then, possibly thinking that i was still hungry, she gave me some miso soup :)

life is good.