Food: It never fails to bring people and cultures together

Those who know me knows that I love to cook. I have been brought up in a family that believes in feeding people. My father was a man of few words, but he did share fondly of the fragrant sweetness in freshly plucked lychees from the family's fruit vines. He also told us about my grandfather's generosity in China before the post-war communist government took away almost all the family's lands, that he would not hesitate to provide for poor neighbours at dinner time. That spirit of generosity was carried over to Singapore when the family left China. I guess in an immigrant society, new immigrants knew the need for community support and have learned to be unselfish despite not having much.

In terms of food preparation, my grandmother and mother were creative and excellent cooks. Despite having small a household budget, they could whip up the most tasty dishes from cheap ingredients. As a kid, I would watch them prepare meals, and many times helped in the process, albeit clumsily.

Cooking for family and friends, for church and work potluck parties is my way of 'decompressing' from work pressure. I love to go supermarket and grocers to look at produce and ingredients. As I browse the aisles of fresh produce, I would start conceptualising the dishes I could cook using them.

Food never fails to bring people together. Since arriving in the US, I miss cooking. The first two days of moving into the Varsity Apartments, meals have been provided by the UMD-Fulbright team. The provided meals were pretty substantial, yet I could tell how much some of the Fulbrighters miss home cooked meals. William (from ELIS, Singapore) sorely misses his sambal and kopi, although I am unable to help until I find a good Chinese grocery shop.

So when I got the chance to cook the first meal at the Varsity Apartments, I invited a few Fulbrighters in the next apartment to join me for dinner. There were just two simple vegetarian dishes as I had not found quality meats. The strange part was that I cooked an Italian tomato dish instead of Chinese food! Incidentally, my Fulbright neighbours are vegetarian and that was just perfect. We do not even have a dining table but that did not spoil our enjoyment of the meal. Revathy, one of my 'invited guests' brought a jar of spicy pickled tomato relish from India and that was like icing on the cake!

I have also discovered that there is a farmer's market every Wednesday, located outside the Benjamin Building, home of the Education Faculty! Today was my first visit to the stalls and got some very pretty kale and berries, even good cuts of beef.

Food is a form of concrete representation of cultures, and it never fails to bring people of diverse backgrounds together. This will be one of the many platforms for cultural exchanges amongst the Fulbrighters from five countries here in USA.

Of course, they are many platforms for exchanges. The Singapore Fulbrighters can value add to this community in various ways. William is in charge of conceptualising the cultural item from Singapore, Ivin is now the ICT trouble-shoot master, while I will share Singapore culture through cooking.
(Today I shared a piece of our special colloquial vocabulary with Dr Letitia Williams, the assistant director of the Office of International Initiatives at UMD. I explained to her what 'longkang chui' (or gutter water) means. She was amused and agreed that bad coffees are nothing but bad.

Meanwhile......
Bon Appetite! Tuck in! Hyvää ruokahalua (Finnish)! Jemput Makan (Malay)! 请慢用 (Chinese)！Buen provecho (Spanish)! بالصحة (Arabic, Moroccan), आप का खाना स्वादिष्ट हो (Hindi),  மகிழ்ந்து உண்ணுங்கள்  (Tamil)*
*Well, please pardon me if I get the respective languages wrong as I relied on internet translation =)