Maxwell's pressed lenses during an Indonesian lunch event

Hi everyone!

I would like to share an interesting experience I had yesterday afternoon. I was invited to an Indonesian lunch event Apparently it's a monthly venue for Indonesians in the Pioneer Valley area to socialize and get together. During the few hours I was there, I experienced both gender and ethnic chasms that reminded me of aliens and Maxwell's pressed glasses.

When I arrived, I found some women doing last minute preparations for the meal. The men were asked to come at 12.30. It was 1PM. I assisted with the setting up and preparations. The organizer commented that it's the job of us women to cook and prepare, for the men to come and eat, and for the women again to clean up and make sure that everyone goes home with packed leftovers (it was a delivered in a joking manner, but nevertheless, that's what we did). When the men finally arrived, we proceeded to the buffet table (with the women insisting that the men go first, but at this point I didn't care so I just joined in on the line because I was hungry). Each of us then brought our plate to designated seating areas: again, the men sat on the living room couch, and then women stayed in the kitchen area. I drifted between the two areas, both as a conscious effort to bridge the chasm between the 2 apparently gendered spaces, as well as to have closer access to the food (yeah I wrote the first reason to justify why I'm posting this story on the blog in the first place:))

To add to what I now consider as uncomfortable and divisive gender roles was my ethnic Chinese background, which is a tender issue due to historical and institutionalized hostilities between us and the so-called "native" Indonesians. When I introduced myself to one of the gentlemen who came late and was ready to fill himself with a delicious home-made meal, he asked me where I'm from. Although the imaginary bubble in my head had these words in it: "Indonesia you idiot, why else would I be here??", my gracious (read: hypocritical:)) social-self answered politely that I'm from Jakarta.

Peters, in this week's reading, said something about how our attempts to communicate with the so-called non-humans; machines, animals, and aliens, functions to cover up the fact that we are alien to ourselves, that we seek to bridge the communication failure amongst one another through efforts to reach out to these other beings. Attending the lunch yesterday reminded me not only of our inability our to bridge ours self-created chasms of gender and ethnicity, but also of Maxwell's pressed lenses and how no matter how hard he tried to make the lenses meet, there's still a gap between them. In a setting where the rules of the game I'm supposed to be most familiar with, written in an unspoken language that I'm most familiar with, I felt the unbridgeable chasm, and went home feeling like a well-fed alien.