For years I’ve spend in Indonesia, there’s only one “cultural-shock” that still bothers me until now.
It’s nothing important and in fact is a trivial thing.
But it turns out, it is a source of problems with people in traditional families.
Day has relatives living in the area of Central Java and last weekend we visited there.
We had lunch a couple times when we stay.
We are not eating on the table (like I used to do).
We are eating on the floor, where all side dishes are served before us, on the floor.
The main problem is, I’m not used to eating by hand. I used fork and spoon.
For whole my life, I always eat using at least a spoon.
And I can eat almost anything with chopstick.
I’m pretty sure my parents teach me about table manners since as long as I can remember.
But that day, we’re eating by hand. HAND.
Without spoon, or fork, or anything.
It literally by hand.
And, to make it WORSE, we are eating beef stew and kale vegetables.
First, everything looks fine.
But then, I look around and can’t find spoon.
It was then that I began to panic.
Day seems pretty fun enjoying that moment and it can’t be helped since the conversation with a little laugh here and there started.
First, her uncle scooped up a spoonful of beef stews and the broth onto my plate.
Next, her aunt give me a large scoop of rice.
It’s wet, black, and I had no spoon on my hand.
I wonder how can they eat rice which is soaked in stew with bare hand.
I can say it’s hard because I’ve tried to do it too.
And I just can’t.
Every bite of rice I lifted from the plate must have disappeared before it reached my mouth.
And that doesn’t only happen once.
It happened many times throughout the lunch time.
In the end, I couldn’t eat anything.
Broken ∞ Infinity 