Robben Island in Cape Town, South Africa, is primarily known as the island prison where Nelson Mandela, the former president of South Africa, was imprisoned for 18 out of his 27 years behind bars. For most people at least remotely interested in history, when visiting Cape Town, this is one of the sites on their list, and we made sure to book this tour as early in our stay as possible to make sure there were no issues with weather, as bad winds can cause the boats to stop going to the island and all tours of the day to be cancelled.

Although I knew that former prisoners were the primary walking guides for the tours, it didn’t hit me exactly how powerful it would be until Parks, our guide, revealed that he was a former political prisoner at Robben Island for seven years in the 1980s. Their cells had glass-less windows, which meant that any time of the year, especially during winter, they were fully exposed to the elements (today, they have enclosed them in glass). They were not allowed to wear proper shoes or socks; all manual labor was done without proper footwear, even in the winter time. For the slightest infractions, they were beaten repeatedly until they were bruised and bloody. They were not allowed to speak to each other. Their meals were small, especially if they were black, and if black, their only “lunch” was puzamandla – a white liquid made from a mysterious white powder that was mixed with water. They were told this was a protein drink; in fact, it was actually a drink to make them infertile because the prison wanted all black prisoners to leave and be unable to ever bear children. They had a different menu for “coloureds/Asiatics” vs. “Bantus” – blacks.

I asked Parks why he decided to come back to work and share the story of his time at Robben Island. In my own mind, I cannot even fathom going through a fraction of what he’d been through, but if I had, the last thing I’d want to do was to go back to that putrid place of imprisonment and relive those terrors every single day as my line of work. He said he originally went to college and hoped to do something else for a living, but it was hard to find work, and when they asked him to come back and share his stories to visitors, he agreed. It was painful at first as we’d imagine, he said, but he realized how important it was for people to know what really happened there. It’s part of his country’s history. And he’s learned to forgive the prison guards who beat him and tried to make him infertile; he actually gets along with them now as they all work side by side in the prison, now not as a place of imprisonment, but as a World Heritage Site to educate the world. He calls some of them his friends today.

It’s difficult to understand the amount of forgiveness in his heart to get to the point of actually considering these people his friends. But to that, I deeply admire and respect him and all the other prisoners who have chosen willingly to come back and work to share their stories. It’s always deeper and more meaningful when the stories of our past are shared not in textbooks, but in real life circumstances that we can relate to. And this is one of them. The entire experience is so humbling because I don’t think I could ever be that lenient in the same circumstances.

In the U.S., we are way too used to the consumption of domesticated animals. People complain when their lamb tastes too “gamey,” they get upset when they find out how their chickens and cows are slaughtered, but still continue eating the meat, and the elitist liberals try to avoid grain-fed cows and chickens… until they realize that the USDA has little to no forced regulation over how strict “grain-fed” vs. “grass-fed” is.

So it’s funny coming to a country like South Africa where game meat is the meat that people eat and wondering how the average American deals with it. People here are used to the “gamey” taste of animals… because guess what, that’s how animals are supposed to taste in the wild. They’re not supposed to be corn-fed, they’re not supposed to be injected with growth hormones and antibiotics, and they’re certainly not supposed to be stuck in cages with only inches of “personal” space for themselves to wander around.

Tonight, we shared a springbok shank and marveled over how tender and juicy it was… it fell off the phone and was clearly game meat; there was no hiding it. Other meats we hope to try include ostrich, snoek (game fish), impala, kudu, and blesbok.

Being a life partner to Chris also means learning about his heritage… or at least, the culinary heritage that comes with being Indian with parents who have roots in India and who have also lived in Malaysia and Australia. To me, the easiest way to learn and get acquainted with a culture with which you are not familiar is to eat their food and learn about its nuances; so much about one’s culture, religion, and tall tale stories can be found from the different types of food that is part of a people.

I’m not one of those traditional wives who thinks that just because my husband is of a certain background that I absolutely need to cook the food he grew up eating; in fact, I resent that type of expectation. I only know and cook Indian food because I really love the process, and I love how many of these dishes came to be. A lot of it is laborious and requires a slightly insane number of spices, but now I have a varied enough spice collection where when I want to make something Indian, all I really need to do is buy some form of protein and some extra onions or tomatoes from the market.

Hoppers, or appam, is one of those dishes that Chris loves that I have also come to love since his mom first introduced it to me in 2012. It’s traditionally a breakfast food in southern India, and it’s made from fermented rice and freshly grated coconut, and then cooked in a rounded pancake-like pan. It’s then served with different chutneys and a curry stew of some sort. We went to a place called Hoppers today for lunch with Chris’s cousin, who also loves eating appam. Appams are called “hoppers” in Sri Lanka, and when we were eating there, I loved every single thing that came to the table. So that made me realize how ignorant I was about Sri Lankan cuisine, so I started researching that.

Sri Lankan cuisine has a lot in common with southern India, or the area where coconut-based curries and dosas/appams come from. Their curries are heavy on the coconut, but supposedly their usage of spice is supposed to be more pronounced. Cinnamon (real cinnamon, not the cassia that stands in as “cinnamon” in the U.S.) is featured heavily and curries, and caramelized onion chutney is frequently found on Sri Lankan dinner tables. Curry and pandan leaves are used; I was used to using curry leaves, but the pandan leaf usage is definitely different than what I have heard of in Indian cuisine.

And to get me even more excited, I just found out that a decent Sri Lankan population lives in Staten Island, which also means that I can find more Sri Lankan restaurants there than anywhere else in New York City. I’m definitely planning to go out there once the weather gets warmer and have Chris come with me.

After having the good fortune of visiting Christmas markets in Berlin, Hamburg, Basel, Vienna, and Budapest, I was excited to learn that London has its own Christmas markets. Mulled wine, German style miniature Christmas houses and villages, and European Christmas stalls are things I have loved and enjoyed the last few years, and initially discovered during a trip to Chicago in November 2009, when I first learned about the Christmas market culture that exists all over Germany. So I was a bit disappointed to find out that London’s version of Christmas markets is really just a fair-type setting with children’s rides, arcade games, sprinkled with mulled wine stalls and artificial lit-up Christmas trees. The biggest one at Hyde Park called Winter Wonderland even charges admission, which would never happen in a place like Germany and Austria, but it’s mainly because this place has real roller coaster type rides. Well, at least now I know what to expect if I ever come back to London during the Christmas season.

In Tokyo, there are “up” arrows denoting to walk up the stairs in the subway, and “down” arrows denoting to walk down the stairs. Everyone (except Chris and me) follows this while in Japan, even if it means queuing up in a single file line. There is no crowding in the stairwells, just neat lines. The same is the case with boarding the trains on the platform; everyone lines up. No one crowds around the door.

In New York City in subway stations, people crowd around subway doors. But the order that I never quite appreciated before was that people always walk in the way that in the U.S., you are expected to walk: keep right, keep right, keep right. You walk to the right, and to your left, are people walking to their right. Occasionally you will see people in a rush interrupting this, but they are the exception, not the rule.

Well, here in London, as I’ve observed in the last two days, there’s no order at all. People crowd around train doors, and when walking on the street, sidewalks, or underground, no one keeps left or right; everyone just walks right into each other or gets close enough to move out of the way just at the very last second before running into each other. I figured… okay, I’m here in the UK, and people are technically supposed to keep left. I tried to keep left, but it made no freaking difference. People were constantly walking into me and getting into my personal space, and I still just don’t get it. Does it add a little extra drama or interest to the day? Is there not enough stress already in life as is that they feel the need to add this to their walking commute?

Ever since I found out that chicken tikka masala was supposedly the national dish of the UK, I knew I had to explore Indian food in London more. While doing restaurant research for this trip, I became a bit obsessive and actually made five restaurant reservations, including three Michelin-star-rated restaurants and one famous afternoon tea spot that won the 2017 award for best afternoon tea in London, and is also a spot where Princess Diana, Winston Churchill, and Oscar Wilde used to frequent.

The first spot we ate at is The Quilon, a modern South Indian restaurant named after the city where Chris’s dad was born. The decor was chic and refined, and the presentation of the food was much different than what I am accustomed to in Indian restaurants back in New York. Everything is much more formal, artfully presented, and at this specific restaurant, vibrantly fresh. Even the little pappadams came with their own assortment of chutneys, including the true standout, a freshly grated coconut chutney that had a texture I’d never enjoyed before. The Kerala fish curry was so good with different nuanced flavors that I wish we could have packed just the curry gravy to take back with us. And the paratha that they gave us was so flaky and fresh, with each layer of dough distinct from one another.

Chris makes fun of me when I say this, but I think the level of innovation in Indian and Chinese restaurants in London far surpasses that of New York City or San Francisco. In London, they seem to be playing on traditional flavors but making the presentation and techniques a lot more modern, and that’s what has been so fun about reading about the London dining scene… even if it isn’t traditional British pub/white people cuisine. They’re not trying too hard like some places (ahem, Mission Chinese), but trying just enough to be interesting and different.

My manager originally scheduled a 1:1 video meeting with me at at time when I’d be in transit to the airport tonight, so instead, I agreed to chat with her over video at 8:30pm ET. I usually never take any calls that late, but I figured.. she really wanted to sync before I left the country, and I’d feel better leaving the country knowing she wasn’t obsessing over my accounts while I was gone.

So I joined my Zoom meeting with her tonight from the American Airlines First Class lounge at JFK. She asked me where I was, and I told her I was in the AA airport lounge.

“Wow! I never fly a class high enough to get lounge access” she exclaimed.

“Well…” I began with a smile on my face. “It’s not the class of your ticket that matters as much as it does your airline status with American. I have access because I have executive platinum status with AA.”

She had a stunned look on her face, probably not sure how to react to what I just told her and how I kind of schooled her. It’s so awkward for me having these conversations with much older people at work because they’re probably all wondering how I got all these miles given that my work trips definitely don’t amount to over 100,000 miles flown per year… and then they’re also probably wondering how I have more status and miles flown than they do.