Just food, etc.

A lot of people say fasting is a time to empathize with those less fortunate. That's dumb, because everyone fasts during Ramadan. If we're empathizing with the less fortunate, then who are the less fortunate empathizing with? For me, Ramadan is a time when I experience the shock of realizing how habit-driven we creatures are. Rich, poor, educated, non-educated, whatever, we all have our addictions to food, drink and drugs of various kinds. It's not so much a time for empathizing with what's alien to us, but for recognizing the things that are habitual to us all. On the most basic level, humanity is alike.

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Tonight I brought Liz with me to Barnard to listen to a talk about just food. "Just" as in justice. It was a really good talk, and we got to sample some totally local carrot cake. The rest of the food was gone by the time we got there, so the carrot cake was all we had. Anyway, I wouldn't have been able to eat if we'd arrived on time because buka time was at 7:01, and the event started at 6:30, so it wouldn't have mattered to me either way. Liz lost out, though. We were late because Liz wore heels and it would have been uncomfortable for her to walk all the way to Times Square to catch the 1 and 9 up to Morningside Heights, so we caught a bus to Times Square from our office. Our journey was a straight line, but even though a straight line is the quickest way between two points it took ages because traffic was heavy due to it being peak time.

I had Liz with me, so if I had gotten sick, at least I would have had a friend to lean on. But it turned out I was fine. We ate at Amir's and I polished off a platter of moujjadara and half a can of Sprite with no problems. Liz got a falafel sandwich and a bottled drink that she realized later was all organic, which was a coincidence and not intentional.

The talk was great. I'm too tired to discuss it now, but I took notes so I'll be able to reconstruct what I learned later. I wrote everything down in my purple PERMATA notebook that I got from some guys I met in Malaysia, and I used a green e-Learning pen that I got from the same guys. If people give me stuff, I really do use it.