Monday, 21st January 2018

Met Jet at Tottenham Court Road station today at 11AM. Jet is Dutch and we previously did a lovely shoot together last November. We had a great connection and it was such a nice feeling doing a shoot with someone from the Netherlands while I was here!

We went for brunch at Le Pain Quotidien along Goodge Street before going to FOYLES bookstore – that I promised to show her before. The 5th Level cafe in the bookstore (the best part about the place) was where we went to with some books in hand. We were having a conversation about age (if I remembered correctly), to which Jet said, as a response to our topic: “I don’t mean it in a negative way.”

At this point, we were politely interrupted by a man sitting diagonally across us who apparently overheard our conversation. It went something like this:

“Sorry to interrupt, but I just overheard your conversation and what she just said; I have to correct you – your friend, that there is no such thing as a negative. There is only a reduction.”

At this point we were quite intrigued at this unexpected guest and was curious to know what he was thinking.

“– when we say something is negative, we actually mean it as a reduction, since we can only ‘reduce’ something. However, if you see it from a mathematical perspective, what do you get with you multiply a negative with another negative?”

“A positive.”

“Exactly.”

It was a rather peculiar exchange to happen in the middle of the day, which honestly made hardly any sense to us, but yet it does to some extent.

It did get me thinking.