It’s 2 weeks from RealAcad at Stanford now and my mind went back to my first camp in Stanford in August 2007. The camp was due to start on Monday, the 6th of August. And on Sunday, a bunch of us ‘students’ got together to socialize prior to the camp.
We walked into a Japanese place. Now, we were a group of 5 – 1 Belgian, 1 Haitian studying in the US, 1 Kyrghstani studying in the US, 1 American and 1 Indian studying in Singapore (yours truly, of course). Food was soon served – there was just 1 problem. There were no forks and spoons, only chopsticks.
And I looked around clueless. The others who had begun digging in realized the issue and 1 of them offered to teach me.
‘You’re from Singapore, right?’ – asked another while I was going through Chopsticks 101 and I could feel my ears go red. I managed to get through the meal and thankfully, we didn’t do any ‘only chopstick’ meals in the camp.
I remember getting back to the office and making sure I ate every ‘Maggi’ Noodle meal in the next 2 months with chopsticks (We were a startup and we had plenty of maggi stocked) till I became very comfortable. I even remember going back home to India and eating rice at one of the Chinese joints with chopsticks!
And, I sure am glad I learnt that lesson early that it happened then and not at a Chinese meal with the consulting team on my 1st project or a Japanese meal with my boss. Many of us aim to ‘get into’ places. But, it’s often little things (not necessarily chopsticks mind..) can mean us being shown the door.
The other big lesson I learnt is that 1 year in Singapore had meant very little in terms of cultural openness in the food sense. And that changed for the better. It’s a beautiful world out there, after all.
Thank you chopsticks.
A Learning a Day 