2nd week into the 2nd semester, and it's finally dawning upon the NUS
student community that happy days are almost over - from a pessimist
point of view that is ;) Tutorial classes officially start next week,
marking an official end to the relaxed pace of life which lingered
since the end of last semester.
The 1st week of the semester was fraught with rain - mind you, not the
kind of soak-you-ups but rain here in Singapore ravages and drowns(only
now do I understand the importance of all the "banjaran" or mountain
ranges that we've studied in Geography classes in high school).
Naturally, to the non-lover of rain, this spate of wet and cold weather
provides a rather irritating distraction to my everyday life. Thoughts
of my umbrella filling up every corner of my mind, making me more
absent-minded as ever. Lets see, I forgot to do things like helping
chin seong bring his gym shoes to gym, attend my physics lab session..
etc.. YEAH, you are probably right. I'm just making lame excuses for
myself -- those things could've happened anyway regardless of the
weather. That's me alright^^.
Anyway.. it might be the weather, or it could be some significant
alignment of the celestial and astral bodies, but I am convinced that
the past week is some sort of bad-mood day in Singapore, or NUS at
least. Somehow I feel that people are extra touchy these few days. Lets
see, I somehow get the feeling that I've offended some of my dragonboat
teammates with some of my regular jokes - something that has never
happened before. Canteen stall owners are especially disgruntled
in serving me on a few occasions this week.
The economic rice stall uncle gave me record little amount of food last
weekend and even grumpily hurried me while i was ordering, when there
wasn't even anyone queueing up behind me waiting to order. That was ok,
since he was usually not in such a good mood.
The usually very friendly owner of the Western Food Stall at the
business faculty canteen lost his temper at me for asking for a change
of side dishes when it was his own mistake at serving me a wrong order
of side dishes. "..you could've stopped me when i gave u the
wrong stuff.. but NO, you were too engrossed in your conversation
with your friend to bother.. your conversation was MUCH more
important.."
WTH! I was so outraged by the incident that I couldn't think straight
throughout lunch and the hour after! Firstly, I asked him clearly
whether it would be all right to have my pick of side dishes other than
the conventional on the menu, and he said okay. Then I pointed out that
the side dishes that I wanted and he acknowledged and signaled to his
helper in the kitchen to prepare the dish. I admit that occasionally if
one wanted to, one would be able to catch a glimpse of what was going
on in the kitchen. And it is true that I was chatting with Chin Seong
at that time, but 3 things about the whole things really made me fume.
First of all, COME ON, who would've known that chicken chop with the
wrong side dishes was for me?! There was a long long queue of people
behind me for crying out loud.
Secondly, that stall has been in business for almost 12 years now. Who
would've expected you as the owner to make such an unprofessional
mistake?! You are the expert here, and you acknowledged my order, and
yet you blame me when you messed up my order. Somehow I find the stream
of logic hard to flow here. >.>
Thirdly, even knowing that I am in the right, seeing him as an elder
person and the owner of Chin Seong's food stall, I chose to try and be
more respectful and humbly apologise in front of the whole queue of
people behind me instead of humiliating him, and what did he do? He
raised his voice at me, reprimanded me in front of all the people in
the queue -- humiliation at it's best. I shall not even dwell on the
fact that he charged me extra for that particular meal. I should've
just refused to pay up! *feels great need for profanities here*
The day I decided to spend more than two times the normal amount of
cash on lunch was spoilt all because of him. My 1st time in this
semester at his stall, my last ever in my 4 years at NUS.
Bad mood week huh? =) Well, I reckon it should be over by now. Rainny
weather is slowly residing. Lovely and warm sunshine is back. Jeff
thinks that i'm cute(dun comment, lol), lihui realised that i'm more
than just a blur person, hahaha and Sara was kind enough to show me how
powerful my trusty calculator is(no more solving 3 simultaneous eqns by
hand!! muahahahaha) My horoscope says that my love life is hopeless
this year. I still suck at long runs with the team and i'm going rowing
extra early tomorrow.
and now, off to dinner here's a photo of the dreaded "chin-up bar of death" at
the Sports and Recreational Center. 10 more to 20 good ones!! jiayou
jiayou!
