For the last however many years, I've always had a picnic to celebrate my birthday. I mean, what's the point of a summer birthday if it isn't to get sun-saturated and strawberry-satiated in the grass?!
Jeet had reminded me a couple of weeks before of the Cloisters, which have long been on my list of New York must-sees. So I cobbled together a list of ye regular cronies, and suggested we all make the trip up there. There is an automatic, albeit unintended, distrust of the outside that comes with living in Manhattan. 190th Street?! People reacted. Is that even still New York?! But despite initial rumblings, everyone pitched up sans further ado.
In a moment of impulsive generosity, I offered to take care of all the food. I shouldn't have trusted myself. I woke up early the morning of the picnic (despite the remnant spinning head from the night before) and rushed to the supermarket to pick up supplies. Bread, cold cuts, fruit, tomatoes, lettuce, disposable crockery and cutlery, I was Miss Efficiency. Rushed back home, chopped up all the tomatoes and lettuce, packed every thing neatly into tupperwares.
Grabbed Delta's hand, rushed out the door with the coolers, forgot all the neatly cut and tupperwared vegetables in the fridge. Typical. This means we had rather dry sandwiches at the picnic, devoid of lettuce and tomatoes. It also means that poor Delta has been living on a diet of tomatoes and lettuce since then, in a valiant effort to make some headway into the food containers filling up his fridge.
Speaking of coolers by the way, that's a new Americanism I learnt thanks to the picnic. Delta and I were at the supermarket, and I asked one of the workers there, "Excuse me, could you please tell us where you keep your picnic hampers?" I swear to you, I thought that's what they were called.
"Hampers?!" Delta was snickering, "isn't that where you keep your dirty laundry?!"
"Oh. Really? It's not what you take to a picnic?"
"Not here, silly! He's never going to understand what you mean," he said, referring to the employee standing in front of us.
Turned out the employee didn't understand English anyway, ha ha, that's what I love about New York. I could have called it anything in the world, ultimately it was the repeated box-shaped gestures I was doing with my hands that helped him realise what I was talking about.
Jeet had reminded me a couple of weeks before of the Cloisters, which have long been on my list of New York must-sees. So I cobbled together a list of ye regular cronies, and suggested we all make the trip up there. There is an automatic, albeit unintended, distrust of the outside that comes with living in Manhattan. 190th Street?! People reacted. Is that even still New York?! But despite initial rumblings, everyone pitched up sans further ado.
In a moment of impulsive generosity, I offered to take care of all the food. I shouldn't have trusted myself. I woke up early the morning of the picnic (despite the remnant spinning head from the night before) and rushed to the supermarket to pick up supplies. Bread, cold cuts, fruit, tomatoes, lettuce, disposable crockery and cutlery, I was Miss Efficiency. Rushed back home, chopped up all the tomatoes and lettuce, packed every thing neatly into tupperwares.
Grabbed Delta's hand, rushed out the door with the coolers, forgot all the neatly cut and tupperwared vegetables in the fridge. Typical. This means we had rather dry sandwiches at the picnic, devoid of lettuce and tomatoes. It also means that poor Delta has been living on a diet of tomatoes and lettuce since then, in a valiant effort to make some headway into the food containers filling up his fridge.
Speaking of coolers by the way, that's a new Americanism I learnt thanks to the picnic. Delta and I were at the supermarket, and I asked one of the workers there, "Excuse me, could you please tell us where you keep your picnic hampers?" I swear to you, I thought that's what they were called.
"Hampers?!" Delta was snickering, "isn't that where you keep your dirty laundry?!"
"Oh. Really? It's not what you take to a picnic?"
"Not here, silly! He's never going to understand what you mean," he said, referring to the employee standing in front of us.
Turned out the employee didn't understand English anyway, ha ha, that's what I love about New York. I could have called it anything in the world, ultimately it was the repeated box-shaped gestures I was doing with my hands that helped him realise what I was talking about.
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