I made sure that I set my alarm the night before as I had to meet Ana at 9am in the morning. This Brazilian friend of mine, her full name is Ana Paula Couto something silvah. But I just call her Ana. We met outside her residence building and went together to collect our letters. Eventually we found the courier service and there was a fat lady in charge of hundreds of letter. We pointed to her our names which were on a list pasted on the wall. The lady looked for Ana’s letters first and found them. One of them was the notification letter from the prefecture. She then began looking for mine but couldn’t find any! That was strange because Ana and I both had our resident card done on the same day. No reason that she got it while I didn’t. The lady said there was a new arrival of letters (still in packages and unopened and unsorted) and I could come back in the afternoon to get it. Feeling disappointed, we left the building and walked to work.
On the way we chatted a bit and when we were halfway to IRISA, we heard someone horning us from behind. We turned around and saw a green van drove up the pavement. A lady stepped out and waved at us. It was that fat lady from the courier service! we ran back to her and she said she found my letter. Apparently the letter had my name written as TAN Chee without my Hian. We were so grateful to her and Ana wanted to say to the fat lady that she was so kind but she got stuck with her French language. I noticed she doesn’t speak French very fluently but still much much better than me. At least it is comprehensible. For me, I was utterly touched by the action of the fat lady but all I could do was to say ‘merci beaucoup” and use my watery sparkling eyes to tell her how grateful I was. Ana said that it is unsual for French to do that, esp. the admin. Driving all the way to chase us and pass the letter to us. The fat lady must have found me cute.
Ana came with me to my office to do my experiment. She had to fill up a questionnaire and from it I found out that she is 27 years old. Wah my ideal age. But while doing the experiment (she took much longer time than normal people), I was observing her and realised that she actually looked quite old. I wondered did she fake her age. Laurent entered the room and was quite surprised to see a lady so early in the morning. Being an attention seeker (according to the famous “Attention Theory” of a renowned philosopher by the name of Hui Kit Hua), he exclaimed and said to me, “look, the sun is up today!” “Yeah, finally!” I replied, reciprocating his zeal. But actually I wanted to say this, “yah, whatever.” Dear Ana doesn’t seem to get the idea of the experiment and I had to keep explaining to her. And it wasn’t easy because her native language is Portuguese. And now she is learning French and is used to speaking French. But to me she has to switch to English. Still in the end, with my good communication skill, she finally got the idea and carried on with the experiment. As I mentioned, she used more time than other people and it was very boring for me. That was when I realised that she got a little tyre around her waist! I know it is bad to scrutinize the body of a woman but then it is man’s nature to do so. I used to have that tummy too but am just glad that it is gone now. Hope it remains gone forever (although I began to feel it accumulating recently at night but disappear again when I wake up in the morning).
After 54 min, she finally completed the experiment. Normal people took 25 to 30 min. I was quite paiseh to hold up her time because I know she is quite busy lately as she told me a bit about her problem at work. Hence I invited her to the cafeteria to treat her some café as a sign of my gratitude(excuses). At the door of the cafeteria, there was a little notice saying it was someone’s birthday today. I was at the counter and asked Ana how to ask “who’s birthday is it?” in French. She said she wasn’t sure and gave it a try. The lady at the counter somehow caught what she said and told us it was the lady boss’s birthday. Ana and I congratulated her. This lady boss is really a very kind and friendly woman who would occasionally test my French. And she would always smile regardless whether I failed or passed her test. At the table, we chatted about the places that we had been to in Brittany. They were almost the same. But she had been to a place very far away from Rennes. Toulouse. Southwest of France and she took 7 hrs of train ride there. Siao giah. 7 hrs. I wanted to chat more with her but she said she has to go back to work. She should, because I had taken up almost her entire morning. We agreed to meet on Friday morning to go down to the prefecture and get our resident card. Final visit to the prefecture, I hope.
After spending the morning bua-yaing Ana, I did a bit of work and went for lunch. We drove out again and this time we ate at a restaurant. However, I didn’t have to pay because again IRISA has some kind of contract with the restaurant and thus we could use our food ticket. The only thing to take note was the total sum must not exceed 7.25 euros. Along the way while choosing our food, Mr. Giant guided me through because there were some tricky parts. Some food items although had the same price, were not covered by the ticket. Hence, at every station he would remind me what to take and what not to take. For the main dish, I had turkey meat with fries and vege. Mr. Giant was in front of me and when it was my turn, I wanted to say “exactement” which meant the same as his. But then Mr. Giant chose long beans for vege which is yucky for me. I hated peas and beans. Even red bean soup I would refuse to eat the beans and just drink the soup. Hence I chose another vege which looked like cubes of carrot. But when the chef used the ladle and scooped up the vege, oh my God. It was carrot cubes no doubt. But beneath them were many many ugly soyabeans! Wah Lau. I should have just taken the long beans. In the end, I spent some time separating the beans from the carrots.
Actually this restaurant was no different from the student restaurant. We got bread, dessert (better ones though. I had apple pie), a side dish and the main dish. But the environment was totally different. Facing in front of us was a beautiful lake. While having our lunch, we could admire the scenery outside. However, there was this joker sitting beside us. He was an old man who had 3 bottles of red wine on his table. And apparently he was quite drunk and started to talk nonsense. Mr. Giant and Nico ignored him but were controlling hard not to laugh. Laurent being the nice guai giah, smiled at him and responded. For me, I couldn’t understand a single word and ate my lunch. After we left the table, I asked Mr. Giant what was that all about. He said the old man said he worked in Citroen the car manufacturer and he used to fly robots around. Kao! He thinks he is pilot of Gundam or Macross meh? That explained why they found it funny. But I must say Laurent is really a good guy. He actually answered the old man and listened to him. Maybe they have the same frequency.
On the way back, I told them about the incident of collecting my letter this morning. All of them were shocked by what the fat lady had done. Mr. Giant said probably because I am in Brittany. In Paris, he guarantees that no one would chase after you to pass you your letter. You better come back and get it yourself, even if it is the admin’s mistake. And he said sometimes the people here are too nice that it makes you guilty and start thinking what have you done to deserve such kindness. This I agree. There are always people whose life mission is to help others and make people happy everyday. Genuine helping hand without a slightest thought of getting something in return. These people are gems. One in a million perhaps. Occasionally I do genuinely help people but sometimes I thought maybe I would be repaid in some ways. Those gems I talked about helped sincerely all the time. Anyway, this is just a little opinion of mine. Perhaps everyone is sincere in helping but just that I am being cynical.
Back in the office, I had 2 more participants passing my experiment. Anatole came and watched and we went outside to the corridor to discuss some works. In another room, some aunties were having a discussion and it was really noisy. Those san gu liu po from the admin branch were having a meeting. Anatole frowned, went over and closed their door. He came back with a stern face and a reprimanding tone saying, “it is so noisy.” He said the participant must not be disturbed. It was my fault because I was a bit too casual sometimes, esp. when that participant was my friend. After the experiments, I went and discussed with Anatole the results. We had clean and nice results so far (except for Ana) and he said great, carry on. I had 8 participants ready to pass the exp within these 2 weeks. I needed 2 more to complete everything. In fact I already had that 2 more but they are only available in mid May. Looks like a lot of people are taking leaves next week and that includes Anatole. He said he wouldn’t be around whole of next week. Hence, for the dinner, it would be on a weekday in the following week. He also noted down my birthdate on his organizer.
With the experiment sort of settled, I went on to type my final report. I also chatted with hui and he was stressed by the new and complex scope given to him. Esp. with so little time left. I feel that from another point of view, he would have gain max. benefit from this IA because he had learnt a lot. Much more than me. My work requires only programming. No new language, software learnt. And also requires good social skills like playing soccer with the guys, coffee breaks, patronizing my participants (or customers I called them) etc. All the misery that I had in the beginning seems insignificant now as I looked back on them. I have great working relationship with my colleagues. Got to travel. Well paid. Manageable work. There is nothing to complain about actually. But I feel that for hui, he definitely has gained a lot from this IA, as far as computer knowledge is concerned. But in order to think this way, I think he must first get rid of the unnecessary stress. Does whatever is needed and required to be done and everything will be fine. Lay out all the possible routes to take. Choose one and Just Do It. Simple and works all the time. At least for me. At the end of the day, I sent Ana an email asking if she has got any program for this weekend. The thought of not traveling this Saturday and staying back in Rennes really puts me off.
On the way we chatted a bit and when we were halfway to IRISA, we heard someone horning us from behind. We turned around and saw a green van drove up the pavement. A lady stepped out and waved at us. It was that fat lady from the courier service! we ran back to her and she said she found my letter. Apparently the letter had my name written as TAN Chee without my Hian. We were so grateful to her and Ana wanted to say to the fat lady that she was so kind but she got stuck with her French language. I noticed she doesn’t speak French very fluently but still much much better than me. At least it is comprehensible. For me, I was utterly touched by the action of the fat lady but all I could do was to say ‘merci beaucoup” and use my watery sparkling eyes to tell her how grateful I was. Ana said that it is unsual for French to do that, esp. the admin. Driving all the way to chase us and pass the letter to us. The fat lady must have found me cute.
Ana came with me to my office to do my experiment. She had to fill up a questionnaire and from it I found out that she is 27 years old. Wah my ideal age. But while doing the experiment (she took much longer time than normal people), I was observing her and realised that she actually looked quite old. I wondered did she fake her age. Laurent entered the room and was quite surprised to see a lady so early in the morning. Being an attention seeker (according to the famous “Attention Theory” of a renowned philosopher by the name of Hui Kit Hua), he exclaimed and said to me, “look, the sun is up today!” “Yeah, finally!” I replied, reciprocating his zeal. But actually I wanted to say this, “yah, whatever.” Dear Ana doesn’t seem to get the idea of the experiment and I had to keep explaining to her. And it wasn’t easy because her native language is Portuguese. And now she is learning French and is used to speaking French. But to me she has to switch to English. Still in the end, with my good communication skill, she finally got the idea and carried on with the experiment. As I mentioned, she used more time than other people and it was very boring for me. That was when I realised that she got a little tyre around her waist! I know it is bad to scrutinize the body of a woman but then it is man’s nature to do so. I used to have that tummy too but am just glad that it is gone now. Hope it remains gone forever (although I began to feel it accumulating recently at night but disappear again when I wake up in the morning).
After 54 min, she finally completed the experiment. Normal people took 25 to 30 min. I was quite paiseh to hold up her time because I know she is quite busy lately as she told me a bit about her problem at work. Hence I invited her to the cafeteria to treat her some café as a sign of my gratitude(excuses). At the door of the cafeteria, there was a little notice saying it was someone’s birthday today. I was at the counter and asked Ana how to ask “who’s birthday is it?” in French. She said she wasn’t sure and gave it a try. The lady at the counter somehow caught what she said and told us it was the lady boss’s birthday. Ana and I congratulated her. This lady boss is really a very kind and friendly woman who would occasionally test my French. And she would always smile regardless whether I failed or passed her test. At the table, we chatted about the places that we had been to in Brittany. They were almost the same. But she had been to a place very far away from Rennes. Toulouse. Southwest of France and she took 7 hrs of train ride there. Siao giah. 7 hrs. I wanted to chat more with her but she said she has to go back to work. She should, because I had taken up almost her entire morning. We agreed to meet on Friday morning to go down to the prefecture and get our resident card. Final visit to the prefecture, I hope.
After spending the morning bua-yaing Ana, I did a bit of work and went for lunch. We drove out again and this time we ate at a restaurant. However, I didn’t have to pay because again IRISA has some kind of contract with the restaurant and thus we could use our food ticket. The only thing to take note was the total sum must not exceed 7.25 euros. Along the way while choosing our food, Mr. Giant guided me through because there were some tricky parts. Some food items although had the same price, were not covered by the ticket. Hence, at every station he would remind me what to take and what not to take. For the main dish, I had turkey meat with fries and vege. Mr. Giant was in front of me and when it was my turn, I wanted to say “exactement” which meant the same as his. But then Mr. Giant chose long beans for vege which is yucky for me. I hated peas and beans. Even red bean soup I would refuse to eat the beans and just drink the soup. Hence I chose another vege which looked like cubes of carrot. But when the chef used the ladle and scooped up the vege, oh my God. It was carrot cubes no doubt. But beneath them were many many ugly soyabeans! Wah Lau. I should have just taken the long beans. In the end, I spent some time separating the beans from the carrots.
Actually this restaurant was no different from the student restaurant. We got bread, dessert (better ones though. I had apple pie), a side dish and the main dish. But the environment was totally different. Facing in front of us was a beautiful lake. While having our lunch, we could admire the scenery outside. However, there was this joker sitting beside us. He was an old man who had 3 bottles of red wine on his table. And apparently he was quite drunk and started to talk nonsense. Mr. Giant and Nico ignored him but were controlling hard not to laugh. Laurent being the nice guai giah, smiled at him and responded. For me, I couldn’t understand a single word and ate my lunch. After we left the table, I asked Mr. Giant what was that all about. He said the old man said he worked in Citroen the car manufacturer and he used to fly robots around. Kao! He thinks he is pilot of Gundam or Macross meh? That explained why they found it funny. But I must say Laurent is really a good guy. He actually answered the old man and listened to him. Maybe they have the same frequency.
On the way back, I told them about the incident of collecting my letter this morning. All of them were shocked by what the fat lady had done. Mr. Giant said probably because I am in Brittany. In Paris, he guarantees that no one would chase after you to pass you your letter. You better come back and get it yourself, even if it is the admin’s mistake. And he said sometimes the people here are too nice that it makes you guilty and start thinking what have you done to deserve such kindness. This I agree. There are always people whose life mission is to help others and make people happy everyday. Genuine helping hand without a slightest thought of getting something in return. These people are gems. One in a million perhaps. Occasionally I do genuinely help people but sometimes I thought maybe I would be repaid in some ways. Those gems I talked about helped sincerely all the time. Anyway, this is just a little opinion of mine. Perhaps everyone is sincere in helping but just that I am being cynical.
Back in the office, I had 2 more participants passing my experiment. Anatole came and watched and we went outside to the corridor to discuss some works. In another room, some aunties were having a discussion and it was really noisy. Those san gu liu po from the admin branch were having a meeting. Anatole frowned, went over and closed their door. He came back with a stern face and a reprimanding tone saying, “it is so noisy.” He said the participant must not be disturbed. It was my fault because I was a bit too casual sometimes, esp. when that participant was my friend. After the experiments, I went and discussed with Anatole the results. We had clean and nice results so far (except for Ana) and he said great, carry on. I had 8 participants ready to pass the exp within these 2 weeks. I needed 2 more to complete everything. In fact I already had that 2 more but they are only available in mid May. Looks like a lot of people are taking leaves next week and that includes Anatole. He said he wouldn’t be around whole of next week. Hence, for the dinner, it would be on a weekday in the following week. He also noted down my birthdate on his organizer.
With the experiment sort of settled, I went on to type my final report. I also chatted with hui and he was stressed by the new and complex scope given to him. Esp. with so little time left. I feel that from another point of view, he would have gain max. benefit from this IA because he had learnt a lot. Much more than me. My work requires only programming. No new language, software learnt. And also requires good social skills like playing soccer with the guys, coffee breaks, patronizing my participants (or customers I called them) etc. All the misery that I had in the beginning seems insignificant now as I looked back on them. I have great working relationship with my colleagues. Got to travel. Well paid. Manageable work. There is nothing to complain about actually. But I feel that for hui, he definitely has gained a lot from this IA, as far as computer knowledge is concerned. But in order to think this way, I think he must first get rid of the unnecessary stress. Does whatever is needed and required to be done and everything will be fine. Lay out all the possible routes to take. Choose one and Just Do It. Simple and works all the time. At least for me. At the end of the day, I sent Ana an email asking if she has got any program for this weekend. The thought of not traveling this Saturday and staying back in Rennes really puts me off.
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