NTU humour

I've realised that NTU is a rather humourous place. We have humourous people, people who are the subjects of other's humour, not so humourous people, Xiao Ming, and Amos.

If you're wondering why I'm using the name Xiao Ming here, I'm actually using it because Xiao Ming is a universal hero to all primary 1 to secondary 4 kids who take chinese. Why do I say so? Who is the protagonist of all your chinese stories? Yes! The humble XIAO MING!

If you believe the stories written about Xiao Ming, he has seen countless windy and sunny mornings, (feng he ri li de zao shang) and been through all sorts of adventures that mostly depend on how proficient your chinese is. In other words, the better your chinese, the more fun Xiao Ming has.

It also happens to be the name of a certain lecturer. That, I assure you, is a mere coincidence. Ok that had totally no relation to my topic whatsoever. I just had to put it in.

As for why Amos is separate, I believe he'll tell you any day that he really is a unique person who can joke quite well. I second that. He recently increased his score from 1 to a 4. That makes him 300% more humourous! Unfortunately 300% of 1 is not a lot. Especially since its out of 10. Still fail. Try harder next time Amos. Lol. Nice hair anyway. And Happy 21st Birthday.

However I've also realised something about the humour in NTU. Its predominantly cold. Its not the kind that makes you laugh your head off. Its rather the kind that hits you as totally not funny, then you start laughing. But even when you do, its sounds like the kind of laughter when you realise that the female protagonist in your chinese story is called Xiao Ming.

Not very funny at all indeed.

Why didn't I notice this before?

I suddenly feel a wave of dumbness that I never realised that there is actually a title field for posts to differentiate titles from the main text. However this is good because it reminds me I have a lot to learn about computers, as much as I believe otherwise.

Anyway I'm blogging about bad service today, at the request of Chang. I actually didn't want to talk about this experience because it was so bad it was basically best forgotten.

About two weeks back me and my secondary school chums were having a night's out at Harry's bar at the Esplanade. I'm sure some of you will know where that is, yeah basement of the Esplanade.

And we were in pretty high spirits because we hadn't seen in other in ages, due to the fact that we study in different places, the 3 local unis and some foreign ones. Yeah, basically we were like chilling out.

So we decided to have a round of drinks. The waitress came out, and she had like a black face on, but we just attributed it to PMS. Yeah, typical of guys huh. Everytime a girl is pissed its PMS. Blame it on what you don't know.

And so my friends made their orders. One of my friends, who doesn't drink, asked the waitress what a Virgin Mary was. Her reply? "Its a mocktail", in a mocking voice.

Oh thanks I'm sure I couldn't tell. It was printed under the "mocktail" section. I think he was asking for what was in it maybe? How very serviceable of you. I think you are in need of some servicing in the brain area if that's how you do your job.

My friend was actually quite taken aback by her reply, but he ordered a mocktail anyway. The rest of us, being not too happy, naturally started bitching about the bitch. "What's her problem, its not like we did something to piss her off right?" and other comments to that extent.

But the problem didn't end there. Later, as she came out with the drinks, another friend of mine asked if he could change his 2 dollar note into coins as he wanted some spare change. Her reply?
"Sorry we're too busy". I looked at the counter. It was empty. I looked at the other waiters. They were standing around. Busy?

I have to make clear that at this point we were still very cordial and polite to the waitress. We did not in any way give her attitude. So no matter what justification she had for acting the way she did, it wasn't us.

After about half and hour, we decided that we wanted to eat some mixed nuts. So we called for service, and guess who came? Yes, the mocking bitch. But we were unfallingly polite. We asked whether we could have a serving of nuts. (the snack, not the waitress.)

Guess what she said?

"No you can't. You have to order drinks first."

What the? Do you see our two rounds of empty glasses in front of you? We already spent like a freaking total of 50 or so bucks on your bar and you won't give us some nuts? What do you have like a personal vendetta against us or something? People get more nuts for much less! I can buy like 10 packets of Camel nuts with 50 bucks!

So we had to order a 3rd round of drinks, and when she came she chucked the nuts on our table. Like just threw it there.

At this point some of my friends were actually so pissed they wanted to talk to the manager. Its not hard to see why. But as I'm a pacifistic person, I persuaded them to let it go. Hoho. Self-serving bias. It wasn't only me but yeah you get the point.

A classic example of how bad service spoils a beautiful evening. Pity.

Is seeing really believing?

Today, Dr Hao gave a rather interesting lecture. He gave us quite a few optical illusions, then he asked us if we really thought seeing was believing.

I found it very ironic later that he thought we were passing a biscuit tin around. It was actually full of sweets. Seeing is believing huh?

Just over the weekend, I saw Man Utd lose to Man City. Then I realised that optical illusions really existed. I'm not a Man Utd fan, but I generally expect Man Utd to beat Man City. I look at the tables now, and I see Man City at the top, and Man Utd in the relegation zone. Should I believe my eyes?

Another case in point. Can you people actually connect the writer of this blog to the person in real life? Probably not huh. How can someone so quiet have so much crap inside? Lol. I flatter myself.

So is seeing really believing? I'll let you decide.