Ahmedabad, India, Personal Musings, Travel

Flies, my secret lover and the laundry man

8 Feb , 2007  

FLIES
We just went running today, a healthy start to a bright new day! And a few million flies died on us, a not-so-healthy start to a bright new day.

Having not exercised for soooo long, we decided to go running today (since we had no classes and no money). We wanted to wake up at 830 so that we could jog at 845 but surprise surprise, we couldn’t wake up (didn’t hear Jo’s alarm. Either we slept through it or it didn’t ring) and it was only when Kenneth knocked a few times on our door that we finally woke up. Oops!

We finally started running at 920, which felt great cuz we hadn’t perspired for a long time. I felt like G.I Jane, all up and ready to be a lean, mean muscle machine. We barely started for 5 mins when flies just started dying on us. I’m not kidding man. It’s like when you’re running into the sun, sometimes u can see dust particles in the air cuz light is cast on them? Well for us, we saw thousands of small flies (ok, maybe not thousands but hundreds lah ok) in the air. And they’re very very stupid flies which didn’t siam from us when we ran.

The darn flies just happily smacked themselves against our bodies and died. As if my desktop table isn’t enough as a burial ground, now they have my body too. Such stupid flies! I mean I always thought flies and mosquitoes are damn irritating and clever cuz they’d just fly away so fast when you try to smack them. Now they’re just as irritating but a stupid version of irritating cuz you’ve got to wipe away their dead bodies thereafter. It is like dull black glitter being dusted off your shirt unoe? Ken and Jo were wearing white tee-shirts and it is DAMN GROSS cuz their shirts looked like dart boards, dotted with dead flies. Eww gross.

Who the hell runs with their hands flailing about in front of them, trying to swat off flies? I felt like one of those Japanese Ninjas trying out some fancy moves, totally uncool. And remember those emails where they say that in one lifetime, you eat like 8 spiders or something? I used to think, “How can it be?” Now i understand. India eats my share of flies ( I think i sucked in a few flies while breathing. I had to remind myself to shut my mouth in case i sucked in flies through my mouth which is EVEN grosser) and now, I’m eating someone else’s share of flies. The only good thing is that they’re supposed to be high in protein and technically, is another source of meat?

CRAFTING CREATIVE COMMUNICATION CLASSES
Gross. Anyway, attended some CCC classes yesterday and they weren’t all that exciting. I think that’s because the normal CCC tutor wasn’t around. We did this exercise that was supposed to stretch our creativity through collaboration and cooperation. An interesting point that the professor made was that creativity is always thought of as a solitary activity, but creativity can be explored to greater heights when one collaborates and cooperates with another person.

He then gave us this activity called treasure hunt, where we are supposed to partner another person and go scouting for items which we felt represent words like “pairs, contrast, hierarchy” etc.  It was a creative exercise and it’s interesting to see people come up with ideas on how to take the mundane out of the ordinary. Like for hierarchy, Kenneth and his partner Aldoot came up with books stacked up on one another, and their titles were visible to everyone. So at the bottom of the books was one titled consumer, the one above it, Steve Jobs, then some company structure, then the word Economics. So it’s like we see the micro to the macro, a progression in a hierarchical system. Nice.

However, I was pretty bored at some parts. As in, although it is true that creativity can be heightened when people collaborate, I felt that this activity was not a very appropriate activity for collaboration. It asked for interpretation of ideas on a solitary word, which wasn’t something that can be done through collaboration. It is more like, “Ok, this is what I think can represent ‘Pairs’; a pair of chopsticks, forks and spoons etc'” and then, go out to get the items or click pictures of them. In my opinion, not much brainstorming is required for such activities and it is a matter of two solitary thought processes added up together, and not one idea borne out of two minds bouncing off each other.

What can alleviate creativity in my point of view would be more like looking at a case study or smth, where everyone has different interpretations of an object or item and looks at and understand things in a different perspective and go “Ohhhhhhhh I see, then we could do this too…” That is when creativity is borne out of collaboration.

The CCC classes are having some entrepreneurship classes today too and i think I shall attend that! They’re doing presentation on some business proposition! Exciting! hahah… I have so much to learn abt the business aspect! And yay, today there is fruit custard for dinner (Yummy!) and pasta for lunch (yahoo!)

MY SECRET LOVER
And did i tell you the cook loves me? Hahahah… I think he really really really loves us! Cuz whenever we go for meals at the canteen, we’re always the first ones there! And when we eat dinners on Wednesday and Sundays, we ALWAYS go for second helpings and tell the cook that the food is swadith(delicious)! This is probably in stark contrast to what the rest of the MICANs say about the school food, (eeyuck, it sucks) when they don’t like the food. And when they do like the food, I guess they don’t really express it to the cook! haha. Our eyes GLEAM when there’s meat so i guess that makes the cook really happy!

He even made lassi specially for me during dinner once (Joanne and I came too early. This is starting to become the norm where we just park ourselves in the middle of an empty canteen, waiting for dinner to start). And yesterday we had ice-cream for dinner. The rest of the school had vanilla ice-cream but the cook gave us raspberry ice-cream with nuts in it. OH MY GOD. Talk about biasness can! And when I told him that I like to eat this fish called surmai (it has only one big bone. The fish they serve for dinners has many many bones, which kills the joy of eating it) , the cook said that he’ll cook it for us next Wednesday or Sunday for lunch! And get this, only for the three of us! I love the cook to bits can. I call him my 亲爱的 now hahah. Not in front of him lah, but when it’s just the three of us hahah. But next week’s surmai fish for lunch has to be at 230 (when lunchtime is over for the masses) cuz it is only for the 3 of us! Yippee! I love secret rendezvous like this esp when it involves GOOD FOOD!

LAUNDRY MAN
Hmm nth else to blog about already. Life is not very exciting when ure stuck in the school and have no money to do anything. The next highlight of my day would be to demand my clothes from the laundry man, and pay him money (which will only make me poorer than my current state).

Speaking of the laundry man, he stinks at washing clothes. I gave him one of my purple cardigans and he popped two buttons out. How to wear it now when one of the missing buttons is from a strategic position like ard my chest? Sian diao loh. Totally dont trust him. But that would mean that i have to wash alot more of my own clothes. Hahha, and becuz the whole school gives him clothes, he will write on the clothes (like the label) which room you stay in so as to differentiate. So for Silveroak hostel, room 10, he’ll write S10. Some of my friends had the unfortunate luck of him writing their hostel rooms right smack in the middle of a tee-shirt can. OH MY GOD. Imagine it lah! Totally ruins a good t-shirt when ur freaking hostel room no is plastered right in the middle of it. hahah damn funny. The woes of washing clothes – to give or not to give, that is the question mes amies

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3 Responses

  1. xinjie says:

    hey u lucky girl! i wish e cook here loves me too! hahaaa..

  2. CM says:

    hmm…. dont think the cook here in china are that friendly~

  3. jasmine says:

    hahah funny… hmm xinjie, even if the cook doesnt love you, a least the food gotta be better than here… same goes for you chrong! lol

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