We had a rare dinner party last night. Correctly speaking it was our flatmates who had the party and made all the arrangements, we just showed up. The guests were a Taiwanese couple who was known through work. He was a teacher, quiet and a bit inarticulate, and she was the precise opposite: an entrepreneur who dominated the conversation and it was interesting to watch as he tried to tell an anecdote and she told it for him. Later, though, there seemed to be a slight rebalancing as he doggedly insisted on a certain point in the face of her vociferous objections. She also slipped in, repeatedly through the conversation, the American university where she had done her undergraduate study, one known for its black squirrels, and was clearly thrown when, at the end of the evening, someone mentioned my more prestigious university. One of the few moments of satisfaction from that affiliation.
Nevertheless, I quite liked her, and she told some excellent stories, including of her frustration at being a student in America and when telling others she was from Taiwan, being told ‘I love Thai food!’ The Woodland Creature, who had made a Finnish dinner, did some excellent imitations of Finnish social mannerisms, which he described and enacted as being rather ent-like.
Earlier in the day we received an unexpected delivery, a large box from Japan which turned out to be full of snacks from our travel companion a few weeks ago. One has to admire her dedication to what makes life worth living. The snacks were excellent: several varieties of matcha-based biscuits and chocolates, and a large bag of Singaporean salted egg yolk fish skin. The latter addressed one of my great regrets from my time in Malaysia: someone had given us a bag but as I’m not much of a snacker, I never opened it and would never think of it when anyone visited. Then we left without ever trying this curiosity. I do wonder why salted egg yolk does not seem to make it out of SE and east Asia, it’s such a tasty thing, even if not applied to fish skin.