My Turn Towards Food Culture / Book Club Discussion of Gone Girl

A Newfound Hobby of Grocery Shopping

This was a slow weekend, and I spent most of Saturday loafing around at Dean’s. We went to Fairway and bought a humongous spread of food, like pastrami gravlax, fresh mozzarella, fresh-baked ciabatta, and heavy cream to make homemade butter with this little butter-making gadget I got him for Christmas. I used to hate going grocery shopping when I was younger, and when I first moved to New York I exclusively shopped at Trader Joe’s and tolerated the long line and bought the cheapest things, but now I really enjoy going through nice grocery stores. Part of it was acquiring this habit from Kawin, as this was his only hobby before, but also when I started traveling for work, instead of trying to track down good local restaurants, I’d drive to a Whole Foods at whatever random town I was in and browse for snacks to munch on in my hotel. For some reason, I reserved this ritual only for my traveling projects, but after I rolled off my last project in consulting, I started hitting up Whole Foods, West Side Market, and some other more enjoyable grocery stores. There was something comforting in the bright lights, colorful wares, and neatly organized aisles. West Side Market in East Village, especially, was an OCD’s dream. I got pulled in by the rows and rows of brightly colored produce outside, and found the inside to be just as pleasant. No swarms of college students struggling for the last box of strawberries.

For a long time, I failed to appreciate the joy that can come from a restaurant experience, or even more intrinsically, appreciate the value of quality food. I ate to live, hardly vice versa, and was generally close-minded about the depths of cuisine. It’s a little ironic, since I think Asian cultures have a very strong food culture that is deeply embedded within the fabric of their society, but it was a culture I rarely encountered until I was dropped into New York. (Philly has a wonderful food scene as well, but as a college student, it was easier to miss unless one actually tried to explore it.) I’ve slowly been exploring that bit by bit, prompted by my changing lifestyle, increasing discretionary income, changing attitudes towards personal finance, social pressures for a food community, and also the trial & error that comes with exploring something and changing your opinion entirely.

I’m not on the path to becoming a fierce foodie or restaurant critic, and I still suspect that I may have a subpar amount of tastebuds, or at least, unrefined ones. But I do enjoy going to the grocery store now, picking out something fun to try or figuring out what raw ingredients can be combined together. I’m really excited to work on my cooking, another sort of delayed onset interest that is only affecting me 2.5 years after graduating college.

Saturday Night Bookclub Discussion

The Grassea book club group of mostly Hunter kids (and recently, Jing!) discussed Gone Girl, at Luke’s suggestion. I really hated the book, even though it seems like the rest of society loved it. I think the reason I hated it boiled down to the author’s very Chuck Palahniuk-esque provocation of the reader. I also went in having been spoiled about the plot, so I wasn’t able to be taken for the entire ride of suspense and was focusing purely on how much vitriol there was in the book and how decrepit the characters were, so to be fair, I didn’t get a chance to absorb most of the book’s redeeming factors. I hated feeling like I was being toyed with and strung along. My opinion of the characters and the situation changed with each new bit of information revealed, much like the public audience in the book swayed from side to side regarding Nick’s case whenever new information was revealed. Even though I knew that I as the reader was only privy to a slice of the events with no way to ascertain what was fully true,  I was still left with so much doubt. The passages about gender roles, women’s stereotypes, and reactions to how various women are portrayed in the book were so horrible and incendiary that it confused me for a long time – was the female author misogynistic? I thought about it for nearly a week after I finished and discussed it with a lot of people who liked the book, and now I’m convinced that Gillian Flynn wrote this as a female Palahniuk, commenting not on general societal malaise but on the flimsy nature of interpersonal communication and relationships. She stripped away cultural constructs of honor and trustworthiness and no matter how much you think you know someone, you are merely being told one sliver of the story. But then, just when I think I have peace with the idea, the passages and stereotypes of the horrendous women Nick encountered in the book pop up in my head again and set me off. Nick is a pretty shitty person, but the story is constructed so that he encounters such a string of shitty oppositional characters (in this case, all women) that the reader is almost forced to sympathize. I don’t like being coerced into sympathy, so I’m reduced to this mess of being mildly impressed by the book’s psychological sway, and driven totally batshit crazy by the affect of the content. Don’t make me read this or talk about it every again, please.

Saturday Photo: We went to Totto Ramen after. I didn’t eat anything since I had made spinach dip earlier in an attempt to use up my ricotta cheese. I think I’m firmly a fan of Hide-chan over Totto.

Sunday passed by in the blink of an eye

I spent it loafing around at home, struggling with plumbing, picking up more groceries from Hong Kong Supermarket, spending like 30 minutes at the gym, and eating some nasty soybean paste based dish at Cho Dang Col (Kimchee Biji – don’t get it). It felt like I was eating the leftover beans made from the soymilk creating process. So. Many. Beans.

And then, just like that, the weekend was over. I start work tomorrow!!! I feel like the diplomat’s kid who has to switch schools 3 times a year. I shouldn’t be nervous but the anticipation is there regardless.

Sunday Photo: This is technically Sunday, since we took it after midnight. Luke went to a circus and had a clown nose for some reason. 

I noticed that my 365 photos this year are super boring. When I’ve got my bearings, I’ll try to be more proactive in creative vision. Lazy art is deleterious…

_________________

One of my resolutions was to read 20 books in 2015. So far I’ve got/am working on:

1. Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud
2. The Clash of Civilizations? The Debate, Foreign Affairs
3. The Lotus Eaters, Tatjana Soli (I’m really not a fan of this book right now)
4. Proust was a Neuroscientist, Jonah Lehrer
5. You Are Now Less Dumb, David McRaney
6. A Place of Greater Safety, Hilary Mantel

I’ve finished 1, am in the middle of 2-4, and have 5 and 6 teed up.