08 April - Goodbye Jaroslav (Day 80)

I was compiling my data in the morning when my sup stepped in and checked on my progress. Glad that he came at the right time because normally I would be surfing the net at that time. But he did see me chatting with hui a few times before and asked if I were busy. Every time I would say no. Today I had the longest and most boring lunch ever. The 2 comedians, Jean-Marie and Sebastien were in some sort of debate about their work. The atmosphere seemed quite bad at times because I saw Nicolas turned his face away and Mr. Giant playing his cutlery just to distance themselves from the 2. I thought it would end up as a heated argument but of course it didn’t. Just when I thought they were finishing, Julien came and sat with us. So since we had to wait for him, the 2 started debating again. In the end, Mr. Giant had enough and stood up. We all followed and put the conversation to an abrupt end. That lunch was more than an hour. I asked Mr. Giant were the 2 of them talking about work and he said don’t worry, he and Nicolas understood as much as I did. Good sense of humour.

Probably because of the 2 jokers, we had a longer lunch and were caught in the hail (I guess it wasn’t really a hail but frozen rain instead). It was quite painful to have small ice cubes falling on us and I couldn’t stand it anymore and ran for shelter. Laurent followed so. Copycat. When I was finally under shelter, I had ice cubes stuck in my hair. But the good thing was I wasn’t wet at all. Hailing at this time of the year was really abnormal. Back in the office, Laurent said he had to pay 100 euros through the internet. I asked him for what and he said to buy an air ticket to Hungary. He then said he will be going to see the love of his life but she doesn’t know he is the love of her life.

In the afternoon, one participant came and I really pitied him. I told him that the experiment would last 20 min or so when I met him in the cafeteria last week. In the end he took 45 min to do it. I didn’t lie to him. He was just slow but he was a good subject and did every single test seriously. Then my sup came and told me about the soccer tournament in May which I had also received the email. They need 20 people; 4 teams of 5. And only 4 places are allowed for people outside the lab. I agreed to play for them but just don’t let me be the keeper. Then my sup moved on to talk about work. We talked about the results and he now wanted to do another experiment. Experiment 5! This will be a bit different from all the previous exp and hence I had to do some programming. He said sorry that he kept asking me to do more and more exp. I said that’s ok. What else can I say? He told me he would see me again on Tues for the codes. Normally he would be rushing to Paris on Fri and stayed there until Monday. It was already over 5pm but I decided to start doing the coding until 7pm. Then I surfed a bit of net and went to Jaro’s farewell dinner.

The restaurant was pretty easy to find and at 8pm, it was still bright and sunny. The name of the restaurant was “Ramon et Pedro”. It was actually a bar restaurant. Some of the guys were already there and I went straight to Jaro to greet him. Then I joined the guys. Fabrice asked if I wanted a drink and initially I said no. But in the end, I asked him to help me order a mug of Heineken. For most of the time I was talking to Fabrice whom I had not spoken to before. He is from Siames also and works in the same room as Mr. Giant. Then Julien came and I chatted a lot with him because he is the best English speaking French in the team. We were talking about Singapore history and some stuffs like that and he was asking if we are still reclaiming land. He then told me that he is teaching in INSA specifically to foreigners because he speaks English. So he would go to his class to ask if there are any Singaporeans or if he could help me link up with some of the Asians there. Hope he would remember that. Then Kadi, the old man of the team came. He was surprised that I came too because it was quite rare for someone so new in the team to be invited. Moreover, I couldn’t speak French. He is kind of like a teacher in the team and he would see if my French had improved. Again I could only speak those few lines but he said that’s alright. Then he said that my pronunciation was very good and he had met with other Asians like Chinese, Japs, and Koreans who pronounce inaccurately. I told him perhaps because I know English, but I still couldn’t pronounce “r” the French way. He said it is a pity I couldn’t have free French lessons here but he said you will have the chance when you come back for your PhD. I told him I am not even a Masters student. Julien said he might be able to ask for me French lessons for free in INSA. Again hope he would remember.

We were just drinking and chatting before the dinner starts. The guys were playing darts and Sebastien asked me to throw for him. He needed 19, 17 or 16. In the end I got 16 and they asked if I played often. I told them I only played once in NTU. And I lost to a girl who checked in at her first throw. Then Mr. Giant asked did I manage to check in before she ends the game. Good humour again. At 9pm, we went up stairs to have our dinner. There were about 20 of us; around 10 were from IRISA and the rest were Jaro’s friends. Then I realised that this was actually a Spanish restaurant and the boss was a Spanish. And lady boss was a French. The chef was the boss’s father and he served us his “Na Shou Hao Cai”, Paerhal (forgot how to spell, sounded like PyRa). It was yellow rice with minced meat and some seafood. The seafood was mussels, prawns, sotong and prawns with pincers. Kadi said the dish is very famous in Spain and it was served to poor people in the past; without the seafood. Now it had become a high-class meal. He then asked me what that prawn with pincer is called in English and I said small lobster. I really had no idea and I told him that was the first time I saw the creature. He then asked one of Jaro’s friends whose father is an English. He too didn’t know the answer. There is a word in French for that creature but we all didn’t know the English word for it. Anyway, as long as it tastes good I don’t care what it is called. Before we began eating, we raised up our glass of red wine and said “a Jaro”, which meant “to Jaro”.

Kadi began talking with me about Singapore. He said that there were a lot of pirates along that particular channel and asked me what the name is. I said Malacca Straits and it has almost a third of the world’s cargo shipments passing through. Hope I didn’t make a mistake. Then he talked about SARS and asked me what it stands for. I said Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and he said correct. Basket, I got a feeling I was participating in “Bai Wan Da Ying Jia”. Then he talked about the tsunami and said luckily we were shielded by Sumatra. Walao. This old man is very knowledgeable and is the first guy that I knew here that knows so much about Singapore. Then he asked how Singapore went under the British rule, when was that, etc. Luckily I didn’t forget my history but it was rather unrelaxing for me. He said that he had been to Hongkong and surprisingly the people there couldn’t speak English well. This was contrary to what I thought because my impression is that they speak Cantonese all the time but can speak English if they want to. It was just a matter of choice for them. But he said no and said maybe he hadn’t been there long enough and had made a mistake.

At some point I was left completely alone playing with the shrimps and prawns. Julien who was smoking beside me throughout the night talked to me again. I asked him if it is cheaper to roll your own cigarette and he said yes. A packet of tobacco leaves costs only 5 euros and he can roll 50 cigarettes with that; every single one fully filled. But a normal packet of cigarettes cost 5 euros. And he said the handmade cigarette tastes differently but it definitely isn’t healthier. Later we indulged in a very serious conversation which was so out of the world that other people couldn’t join in. First we were talking about English and the various accents. He said he picked up some Irish accent when he spent quite a long period of time in Ireland when he was young. Then he spent 6 months in the States and picked up some of their accents. But what he loved most is the British accent which coincidental was what I like too. He said he likes the way they ended the sentence with a higher intonation. Whereas the Americans brought the tone down. I told him Singaporean English is kind of flat. And he asked me to perform the flatness to him because here I purposely change the way I speak. So again I had to demonstrate the Singlish that I had always been very proud of. The reason why I don’t use Singlish here is simply for better communication and also because I just can’t do it with an Angmoh. I also found out from him that Kadi is an Algerian.

After the language conversation, we moved on to a super serious topic: How do the French feel about the Americans? He said he loves the Americans because when he was there he was treated like an honored guest. He just hates Bush and the government. He said they tried to brainwash everyone to have the idea that if you are rich you will be the elite and you will be happy and powerful. He said that is Bush-Shit. I told him that is capitalism. He said to him, it is a subtle kind of fascism which is very dangerous and he hopes he is wrong because it would be very detrimental to the Americans. He said that France realised that mistake when they invaded America 400 hundred years ago, killing the Red Indians. I think the English, the Spanish and the Dutch were there too but really wasn’t sure. I had no knowledge of America history at all. He said what they did was wrong and America is doing that again by invading Iraq, claiming that they are fighting for freedom. Then the topic went back to capitalism and I gave him my analogy of the situation. It is actually my situation. I am not sure if I had mentioned this before but I shall just say again. Everyone is following this queue which seemingly will lead to success. However, no one dares to jump out of the queue to explore other areas because they are afraid that they might not be able to join back the queue and have to go all the way to the back. I told him I am not that interested in computer actually but I am just not daring enough to try arts and humanities. So I followed the norm and did computer engineering which apparently would make me rich if I can get a good grade in the end.

Julien then said that the queue analogy is right. We have all been brainwashed and we were just following the person in front. But we don’t even know if he knows where he is going. We are just like sheep following the shepherd (he pronounced sheep as sheeps here, which is wrong, no plural, haha). And we are probably laughing at those who are wandering around outside the queue. But he disagreed with the thing I said about not daring to try out humanities and arts. He said we are all animals and instinct tells us we have to find a job and so we have to study. He said he likes psychology and history and to him, computer is just a tool; nothing more. Besides facing the computer, he would read and do other things that would make him happy. We were so engrossed in our conversation that one of Jaro’s friends had to say “stopped!” to interrupt us. 2 ideologists in conversation. That friend wanted to ask me do the Chinese wear white for funerals. I said yes. Then another guy came and asked do we wear red for wedding. I said if you are traditional you will do that. My cousins did that. As more and more of his friends started to come, one by one they would come and asked me about Singapore. And one of them asked me in which part of China is Singapore in? He was asking in French and both Julien and I were shocked! I had to explain to that guy and he said Jaro told him that. Basket! Stupid Jaro! And Julien and I were shouting for Jaro to come over because we really wanted to lecture him.

Occasionally the lights would be turned off and it would be complete darkness. Then the lights would return. I thought it was some power faults until Julien said it was just some stupid French jokes. By then I already had 2 glasses of red wine and they wanted me to have more. I said I can’t take anymore and I seldom drink in SG. They said, “come on, you are in France! You have to drink more red wine!” So in the end, I had my 3rd glass and I counted on the table there were already 10 bottles of red wine by then. Jaro was definitely the star under the spotlight that night but some of the lights fell on me too. Why was there a SG here in a group of French? And they just started asking funny questions one by one. One Polish girl, a girlfriend of one of his friends sat next to me and started asking me about SG. She asked things like my native language, what kind of drink do I take for festivals (I wanted to say Pepsi which is my favourite soft drink), how far is SG from China (China again?), etc. At 12 midnight I told Julien I had to go. He said there are buses until 4am so I don’t have to leave so early. 4am? Siao. Even in SG I seldom stay up that late. I told him I had a train to catch tomorrow at 9am so I needed to rest. I gave him 20 euros before I left for the dinner. He said it would probably cost 10 euros only and the beer I had should be around 2 euros. I told him to return me the excess on Monday then.

Before I left, I went to find Jaro of course and we chatted for another 15 min. Finally we had a picture together and he said he probably wouldn’t see me again after tonight. Even though I had known him for just 2 weeks, it was a rather sad moment when we bid each other goodbye. I said maybe I would see him in some future (I wanted to say near future but thought it would be quite impossible). So with a last handshake, I left the bar. I was slightly tipsy while on the way to the bus stop and was afraid that people on the bus might notice that I was a bit drunk. But when I boarded the bus, it seemed like everyone onboard was drunk. Half-open eyes, yawning constantly, droopy face, heads dropped. I reached INSA at 1am and still managed to briefly brush my teeth before I dropped dead on the bed. Then I suddenly jumped up and set my alarm and charged my batteries for the camera. Got an excursion to go tomorrow and I had already booked the tickets. Therefore cannot be late.