Aquiring Taste
How many times have you said - “Well, it’s an acquired taste”? And how many times have actually taken the effort to acquire it? Did you squirm your nose and forget about it? Or did you dig in repeatedly until you fell in love?
It happened while I was having lunch with some friends. As a person who had been living in Indonesia for two years, the relative newcomers always asked me for recommendations on what to eat. I told my vegetarian friend to get some Gado-Gado (a dish I really like). He ordered it, but left it after the very first bite and went off to get some Indian food.
The same thing had happened before. Another vegetarian friend had acted similarly. Neither of the two had liked the taste. Now that wasn’t surprising. Even I had disliked it when I first had it. But what surprised me was that they were unwilling to try and see the dish through. They quit the moment they began! The poor dish would never have a second chance.
Why are people sometimes so final in their rejection of anything unfamiliar? And more importantly, was I actually much different? I wasn’t too open minded either before I landed here and allowed Indonesia to change me forever! Would I be willing to invest the time and effort to acquire the zillions of different tastes out there on the trip that I have been dreaming about for so long?
