"National language processing?": A Talk to Muckefuck™ Story

I only left for lunch about ten minutes earlier than usual yesterday, but it made all the difference. Every table was taken at Mumbai Grill. Good for them, I thought and scanned the room for someone who looked like he might not mind company. I thought I'd located him in a furfaced gentleman filling out a crossword who I'd seen there before when the maitre-d' waved me over to a four-top which I thought he'd been clearing off for some skinny college kid. He had been. "You don't mind sharing?" No, I didn't. But what about the kid?

We sat down at opposite corners and I reflexively pulled out my phone. "I'm Mike," he said, extended his hand. After we shook, he noticed my phone and--whether in response or not--pulled out his own. I didn't have any messages and, as is my habit there, hadn't brought anything to read, so I just sat quietly watching the activity in the back half of the dining room. But pretty soon he finished up his texting and asked, "So what do you do?"

And we were off! He's a graduating senior; I commiserated. He actually had follow-up questions about my job and before long we were talking about mass digitalisation, intellectual property issues, and science-fictiony Google projects. (I was immediately reminded of the "gargoyles" in Snow Crash, so I asked him, "Are you familiar with the author Neal Stephenson?" and he said, "The guy who wrote Cryptonomicon?)

Our food was taking a while but I wasn't aware of it until suddenly the maitre-d' was at my elbow saying, "He would like to join you." I recognised a colleague who I occasionally run into at Mumbai. "This is Mike. We're talking about natural language processing." "National language processing?" he asked. Yeah, that's Mike's area of interest. He's actually been interning a firm that is working on computer-generated news stories. "It's about half journalists working there and half us computer guys." The journalists create the templates, which puts them in the funny position of knowing that they're writing themselves out of a job.

By a happy coincidence, my colleague knew the nuts-and-bolts of the Google mass-digitalisation project, so he was able to contribute by answering the questions I had to handwave. Eventually, our fresh-faced senior had to head off, so we wished him well. Then my coworker (who I'll call Albert) and I, being the overanalytic nerds we are, began to talk about the dynamics of being seated with strangers. "I knew you didn't know each other because you weren't sitting directly across from each other."

I went on about my self-consciousness regarding not being "creepy". It's why I deliberately hadn't been the one to initiate the conversation. In my mental image of myself, I'm still recently out of college and can talk freely with anyone of any age, so I have to keep reminding myself that I'm now visibly middle-aged and not as universally approachable as I once was.

How green was my Thursday?

I'm pleased enough with how the soup turned out that I think I'll serve it to our guests on Sunday. I picked all the sorrel and spicy greens that I thought looked eating size and it only weighed in at 2 ounces, so I used boughten watercress and baby spinach to make up the difference. monshu liked the mixed of flavours and the colour was a good deal more vibrant than what you can get with sorrel alone. (It has a tendency to turn the soup a rather brackish olive colour.) Sadly I couldn't find any decent vegetable stock, so I went with a cup of chicken broth in a quart of water to avoid a saltsplosion. That was a wise decision.

Since for once I wasn't the one having to pick up after dinner, I relaxed with a homemade woodruff soda. I'm definitely going to have to make all the syrup I can before the stuff blooms--which it's threatening to do right now. The recipe I have calls for 100 grammes, which turns out is my whole patch several times over, so I made one-tenth a batch as an experiment and I like the results. It's a good deal thicker than simple syrup, but powerful enough you could easily thin it down to that strength. Now to think up some cocktails! By a stroke of serendipity, while picking up the watercress and butter for the roux I came across an Easter egg dyeing kit abandoned in one of the aisles--just the kind of cheesy thing I was hoping to have on hand for this Saturday night It promises "neon colours", so eat your heart out, Martha!