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
