Friday, October 17, 2008
it's me. again. there's just so many funny things that happened this week. Just had dinner at one of the dining restaurants (where dinner is buffet style) and they served baked fish with thai sweet chilli sauce. really nice. relatively. And it was the first time I've had fish in the past 2 weeks or so. It's really really really hard to find fish here. And my friends and I realised why finding fish here is like digging for gold and diamond. But anyways, I had 3 plates of fish!! And my friends and I were soo happy that we finally could have decent fish that we went up to the dining people preparing the fish to say a big 'thank you' and they were obviously surprised and happy to get words of thanks from us.
Here's the funny bit. We were enjoying our fish so much it surprised us to see how many people were turned off by the sight of fish. So we started observing them and guessing which ones will pick up the plate of fish.
First, 3 people appeared - 2 whites and 1 asian. The asian saw the fish and took the plate immediately. The 2 white americans stopped in front of the plates of fish, stared at the plates for at least 25 seconds, looked up at the sign indicating the menu for today for another 25 seconds, lowered their heads to stare at the plates again. And then, they walked away.
After them, some other people appeared. At least 90% of the Asians took the plate of fish immediately and some, like us, went back for second and third helpings. Almost every single white or black or hispanic americans did not take the plate of fish. Most had this look of disgust on their faces when they saw the fish. As a result, the place serving the fish had the shortest queue in the entire dining hall. Actually, there wasn't a queue at all. The only white americans who took up the plate of fish were mainly older people.
The funniest thing was that for every single non-Asian American who stared at the fish, they had to stare at it for at least 25 seconds, raise their heads to read the sign for another at least 25 seconds and then lower their heads and stare at the plate of fish again for at least another 25 seconds. It was soo funny observing them. Apparently some of them didn't know what a fish was. There was this guy who was curious enough to ask what type of chicken it was!!! my friends and i were like doubling up with laughter. it was just so so funny.
And to think they are so health 'conscious' such that it's so hard to find full-cream milk. I can find 4 types of milk here - half-and-half, skim milk, fat free and 2% fat milk. And guess where the longest queue for food is? American comfort food like burgers and fries.
And then, about 30 minutes after we happily took our first plate of fish, the menu was changed and the fish was replaced with, guess what, chicken. And then, a queue started forming and people whom we saw walk away with disgust when they saw the fish went up to take a plate of chicken.
Now we know why it's so hard to find fish here. No wonder when I went to take my third piece of fish and I commented the dining people for serving such delicious fish, they gave me an extra huge piece with lots of gravy. The fish phenomenon is thus solved.
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Shall include something else incredible this professor of mine said during class. He is a professor for money and banking and he was explaining the value of paper money. Then, he helpfully told us why he doesn't pay taxes until the very last minute - he's hoping that he will fortunately die the next day and then he won't have to pay tax!! goodness...the entire class laughed in disbelief..
anyway, the weekends are fast approaching (esp for all of you in Singapore)..enjoy the weekend! and take care!!
cheers,
kaixian
Labels: Fishy phenomenon
rmb to sign off! sang at 10:42 AM
Thursday, October 16, 2008
i soo have to share this hilarious thing I overheard this morning. I was queuing for my breakfast this morning with my friend and I overheard this Asian-American girl comment to her friend, 'oh my god, that banana is yellow.' And her friend said, 'if you want, you can ask if you can get a browner banana.' And I was thinking - er...isn't a ripe banana supposed to be yellow?? Anyways, I was trying really hard not to laugh. Totally made my day.
have a great day!!
cheers,
kx
rmb to sign off! sang at 10:28 AM
Monday, October 13, 2008
hey, it's the meanie again. good morning to everyone (it's still sunday late afternoon in LA). The temperature has dropped by quite a bit ever since I last wrote on the blog. In the mornings, the coldest so far was 12 degrees celsius.
Tml will be the start of week 3 for me! haha..i've just started school when the term is ending for most of you. I'm sure everyone is very busy now..hang in there and jiayou!! For me, things are starting to get busy. I'm probably the craziest person on the entire campus because I'm doing 6 modules when a normal student takes 3 modules. Was talking to one of my suite mates the other day and she was shocked to hear that I'm doing 6 because she said she is dying even from doing 3 only. But also partly because she is in the school sports team so she spends quite a bit of time training and working out with her teammates. I'm surviving and am enjoying going for classes. very insane. But I admit that I'm inherently crazy.
Lessons are quite good. Except for 2 modules, which are very strange. For this econs module that I'm doing on money and banking, the professor is quite eccentric. He seldom removes his sunglasses even in class. And once, he only brought a permanent marker and he just spat into the whiteboard duster to clean his writing on the board. yikes!! we couldn't believe ourselves when he did that. So far, he has entertained us during his lectures about his theories on the causes of the current financial meltdown (which is interesting until he repeats himself more than thrice) and he detailed the historical precedence to explain why he thinks Ben Bernanke (Fed Reserve Chairman)'s current monetary policy is the cause of the entire meltdown and that if he had not done what he did the crisis would not have been that extensive. it is actually quite interesting to listen to him and he is a character. But, we haven't touched on our course materials yet. AND, he says that the 2 schools of thought in economics - Keynesian and classical monetarists are garbage - the only difference is that the latter is more garbage than the former. He thinks his version is the real and most accurate version. And he is teaching us that. Seriously, I have no idea how useful his version is.
And because my professors are overwhelmingly males, they love to include economic theories into managing marriages. 2 of my professors said that the only way for a marriage to be maintained is for guys to tell their wives that their (wives) comparative advantage lies in cleaning and housework while the husband's comparative advantage lies in whatever is done in the bedroom and hence, the wife should be the one doing the cleaning while the husband drinks beer and watch tv and takes over later at night!! goodness...we need some gender equality. But apparently, female professors are still a rarity in the Econs department at UCLA..unfortunately.
Outside of class, there was something more 'exciting'. A few days ago, there was an incident of armed robbery and 2 attempted armed robberies just outside the main campus. And it occurred during the evening and the robber had a gun. So scary. It was a bit more comforting to see police cars patrolling even within the campus. One other NUS exchange student lives off campus and he was walking back to his residence once when he suddenly heard a gunshot and a police car immediately turned towards the source of the sound. Scary. Thankfully, the robber was alleged caught a few days later.
I now feel more settled here in LA but it still is different and not home. really miss everyone (still). I must say I am constantly impressed with how they manage to mutilate and recreate different non-American cuisines like broccoli with peanut sauce. But all thanks to them, the strange foods become source of jokes among us. And the peanut butter here tastes different, not as creamy and peanut butter-like. They probably removed most of the fat. They love like 2% fat milk or fat free milk and fat free cream cheese. Missing my whole cream milk. There was this time I took whole cream milk and people were staring at me. Funny how they consume so much fats by having burgers and fries for almost every meal each day and they cut down on their fat intake in things like milk. The american idiosyncracies.
And we were soo excited to hear that there's a sushi bar here only to find that their sushi bar serves only 2 types of sushi every day! bleah...we were so disappointed. Though the desserts here are really good. Tried the brownies here once and it's so warm and gooey and chocolatey. So good!!! The range of choices of desserts and the quality of desserts here are soo much larger and higher than the main courses. No wonder at least 60% of americans are overweight!
The funniest thing I've seen is how Americans dash to the lifts after a fire drill. My friend and I turned to each other and said ' apparently kiasuness isn't peculiar to Singaporeans only'. And, people here actually tear pages out of books because they don't have enough money in their cards to photocopy them!!! haha...
Anyways, enough from me. Going for dinner. Hope everyone is having a great day and a great week ahead!! take care!:)
cheers,
kx
rmb to sign off! sang at 7:29 AM
