The days go by, and I've watched the 4th and 5th seasons of sex and teh city at an average of 2 episodes per night. I'll be doen with the show by the time I'm out of here at Brookhaven in about 10 days.
People that know me well know that I have issues with food. There are many things that I will refuse to eat for various reasons, but every once a while a tradition has to break.
I had never eaten Moussaka in my whole life: I just don't like the taste. Then, on one Sunday about 9 months ago, Stavros called me personally for the first time to invite me to a Moussaka dinner he was preparing.
I barely knew Stavros at the time; we've just been playing basketball together, but that's it. However he seemed like a nice guy and I wanted to get to know him better. So I decided not to refuse his invitation and go to his place and eat moussaka. Despite all this time not having tasted moussaka, I decided to turn my mouth into stone and eat it. I did eat; eventually me and Stavros made good friends and we went to New York and to Miami and Bahamas together; not ot mention that he hang out every once a while now. I lost my moussaka tradition, but I made a new friend.
Last Saturday Vitaly, the director of the facility we work on, had invited me and Patrick (the visitors for that experiment) at his house for dinner. This is pretty important meeting, because we have never been invited at his place in the past 2 years that we work with them.
As we sat down I noticed him putting the fire on the BBQ grill. "Nice", I thought, "We'll probably have some steaks and meats!". When the fire was ready, he came out with 2 pieces of wrapped meat. I soon realized though that it wasn't beef; it was salmon.
I have never eaten any kind of fish for over 13 years of my life. I just stopped eating at some point because I developed some kind of allergy that caused a pain in my chest when I was a kid. Everyone that has eaten with me a few times will tell you that this is my single most powerful unbroken tradition. Especially salmon... I mean, it is so bad with me that my girlfriend once had offered me a blowjob if I ate a single bite of salmon, and I refused!
So what to do? If there were 10 people on the table, I could have escaped by eating only salads and bread and water; however we were only 4, so I had to eat. I thought of telling them I didn't eat fish, but then this would be the rudest thing ever to do in a formal dinner with your boss.
I soon realized that my great tradition would have to be broken. I couldn't find a way to get away with it for free. So I sat my ass down, and thought of the salmon as as steak. I wanted to throw up in the first bite; I wanted to throw up in the second bite; I wanted to throw up a little bit less in the third bite; but eventually I ate it.
That was some turning point in my life; when I told my mother she couldn't believe it; she started laughing out hard and shouting to the neighbours!
The next day I went to a date with New York City. I thought so far I had seen it all, but the city once again surprised me. More soon...
