Matilda, Child of Fire

HMV: Accessions at Arendalsgata

9 HMV: Accessions at Arendalsgata

"Så hvis du vil...Bli med meg, eg vil vær' din venn/Når du feiler/Føler at du faller/Reis deg igjen"

Translation: "So if you want to ...Join me, I want to be your friend/When you fail/Feeling you are falling/Get up again"

–Stina Talling, song "BlimE (Mer Enn God Nok)"

Noon, Week 4, Tunco, Torggata 16, 0183, Oslo, Norway

Macy and Harry surveyed the modern, clean-cut exterior polished wooden walls of the food court's restaurant; various menu items were listed in white-colored font, followed by the pricing structure. According to a pamphlet Harry read (and from Jordan's recommendation earlier, before Harry and Macy left Vera Manor), every time one ate at Tunco, a meal was given to a child in need in the tiny village of Mikindani, Kenya, through the restaurant's partner organization, Star of Hope, so children there received two meals a day, keeping them enrolled in school and improving their attendance rates.

A most worthy cause, thought Harry to himself, as he and his wife examined the menu. There were so many items to choose from—Indonesian fusion satay, Vietnamese noodles, vegan five-spice tempeh rice noodles, Thai red curry, or the rather intriguing "Surprise Me" entrée. After a few minutes, Macy stepped forward and ordered "The Vegan," a tantalizing rice noodle meal with tofu, coriander, lime, and "Red Curry Wipeout sauce;" Harry went for the Indonesian "Mentawai" consisting of chicken, egg, rice noodles, peanuts, fresh coriander, and "Satays-faction" sauce, which amused his inner professor self greatly.

12:10 pm, Tunco, Torggata 16, 0183, Oslo, Norway

Their noodle dishes arrived in sleek brown carry-out containers, and they began slurping away. "Scrumptious," said Harry to Macy. "How's yours?" pointing to her own meal.

"A little...spicy," Macy responded, coughing as her cheeks began turning slightly red. "Can you grab me a cup of water?"

"Sure, love, will do—" Harry returned moments later with matching recyclable plastic cups nearly filled to the brim; Macy took one and drank. "Better?"

Macy nodded. "Intense," she said. "Before we got here, I used to think Oslo would be all about preserved lutefisk or whatever—I didn't expect the city to have such a variety of food, and for awesome causes too," she remarked, taking a bite of her snow peas.

Harry chuckled. "This city is certainly full of surprises." Indeed it was; they had just come from the most recent INTHE4113 "Medical Anthropology" session held at University of Oslo, covering a people-centric approach to health, medicine, society, and culture. Drs. Jakob and Sofie Henrik had invited them to sit in after Macy's lecture awhile earlier, and they had taken them up on the offer to see what it was like to attend graduate school in Norway, and perhaps learn a new thing or two about medical sociology. It was fascinating examining the social concept of disease and the body in the lenses of Africa, Asia, and Norway, and it was interesting learning more about the globalization of biomedical technologies.

The course itself could be taken by any of the university's students, though Harry noticed that students enrolled in the M. Phil masters of philosophy program received first priority; he wondered to himself how his own son Henry was doing, off at his very own writing retreat among the densely-wooded forests and trees of Vermont. He hoped his son was being productive in his studies, and not at all distracted by either of his sisters. Henry, like himself, often wished to be of assistance, offering advice whenever asked, though Harry found much to his own consternation that Henry tended to lose sight of his educational studies in the process, whether it was in the form of taking a teary call from Matilda at 4 am the morning before an Aristotelian exam, or proofreading Maya's modeling bio at 6 pm when he was supposed to be at study group instead.