28 April - Poor Judgement (Day 100)

On my way to work, I met Ana. Wow. I wasn’t stalking her of course lah, just pure coincidence. She asked about my experiment and I said great because I have found 8 people to do it. I will be finishing it soon. She didn’t mention anything about my email yesterday regarding plans for this weekend. Maybe she doesn’t really enjoy my company after all. She was on her way to the bus stop to go for her French lessons. Feeling disappointed, I went on to work. My hope of spending a weekend with someone was gone. Although I had been traveling every weekend, it was done alone. Isn’t that boring? Of course. But bo bian.

In the office, I was using Jeremy’s PC again because today marked another rounds of experiments. He came and I explained to him why I needed to use his PC. It was because of the optical mouse. He asked why not just change the mouse. I said I tried before but the USB port wouldn’t work. Just then my first participant came. Hence I told Jeremy we could try to swap the mouse after this participant had passed the exp. After 30min, the participant left and Jeremy and I tried exchanging the mouse and it failed of course. I told you liao lah. He then suddenly asked me, “do you need people to do your exp? I can help if you like.” Wah! This was really surprising to me. In previous entries, I always wanted to write bad things about this Jeremy but I always forgot. I wanted to write he is rude and proud. He would always storm into the office without greeting anyone. But back in SG this is very very common. It is just that I have adjusted to the culture here. I enter a room, I “salut” or “bonjour” everyone in the room and shake their hands before sitting down to do my work. He didn’t. He just storm in. I would turn and say hello to him but he just fuck care me. At the end of the day, he would storm out of the room.

But today he opened his mouth and offered to help me! I thanked him and we carried out the exp. I told him I have to swap PC with him for a few days and he said as I wish. He is ok with anything. I have wronged him. He is a nice guy with a cold face that’s all. Another piece of good news came in the morning was that all the hostel bookings were alright. I have just one more booking to be confirmed which is the easyjet budget airline. It was lunchtime and we drove out to the La Comptoir Venetienne Restaurant again. It was crowded there as usual and we had to sit right inside the restaurant. But that was better because inside was the non smoking zone and so Sebastien couldn’t smoke. His girlfriend was with us too. This restaurant was really Venetienne because inside there were a lot of paintings and photos of Venice. And hanging on the wall were those phantom of the opera masks. Very aesthetic and classy. Everyone had a piece of 30cm pizza. I chose ham because I wanted to play safe this time. It was a wrong choice again because Mr. Giant had a sausage pizza which was what I wanted initially. It looked super delicious. The unique thing about the pizza was that in the centre there was “he bao dan” (egg) spread over. Following Mr. Giant, I poured chilli oil onto the pizza and it was hot and yummy. Great lunch.

I was constantly peeping at my watch because I had an experiment at 2pm. After the pizza, they were still chit chatting and seemed like they were going to order dessert. At 140pm, they were still undecided. I told Mr. Giant that I needed to go because of the exp. I could run back in 20 min I guess. He said then let’s all forgo the dessert and go back. I could see that Seb’s gf was a bit disappointed. I should have told them earlier actually. But then I didn’t know we would be delayed for so long either. Anyway it was still my fault and I apologized to everyone. Back in IRISA, I saw my customer waiting for me outside the corridor. Really paiseh man. Because this batch of participants was taken from previous exp. They had already done one for me and out of goodwill, came to do a second one. And yet I let him wait for me. But I wasn’t late. He was early.

After the experiment, I received another good news again. Ana replied my email. In my previous mail, I asked her if she has got any plans for this weekend and I also mentioned that it is very boring to stay in Rennes. Her reply was yes it is true. Then I said I do not know my residents well and asked if she goes out with her neighbours. She said she don’t know them at all and just like me, only “salut” or “bonjour” them. Lastly, I told her I enjoy her company and told her not to worry about her English or my poor French because I think we could communicate quite well. She said she knows her English is as bad as her French but she will manage that herself. She said she can only communicate well in Portuguese but unfortunately her mother tongue is only used in Brazil, Portugal and some African countries. Tomorrow I would go with her to the prefecture. Then I would ask what she wants to do over the weekend.

My last participant came at 4pm. She has the sharpest nose I have ever seen and that makes her very attractive. But she was obviously very tired as she kept blinking her eyes. But in the end she still managed to finish everything. I asked if she needed a coffee break but she said she had to get back to work. Ok, bye sharpy nose. At around 6pm, Anatole came and discuss the results with me. Here comes the bad bad bad news. He felt that the results from the 7 participants were no good. He then changed his mind and said we should not use experience people. Wah lao. Brother. No joke right. He asked me to find 9 more naïve people to pass the exp (plus Ana would be 10). Kao. After that, I had to do another exp with another 10 naïve people. Another exp? 10 more naïve? Where on earth are there so many naïve people? He asked in total how many people have I asked to pass all these exp. I said 35. 35 leh, Lao Da. Not 3 or 5, it is 35! He then asked me when is my last date of attachment. Wah, sounded like what happened to hui. I told him 18th. He said I have to find the 19 naïve people and pass the 2 exp by mid May. Then I have to write the paper till the end. He asked if I could get people from INSA or half-jokingly, go to the metro station and give out flyers. Hahaha. Bu Hao Xiao lor. That was when my saviour came but I shall pause here as I have to rush for soccer…

An angel’s voice said, “I can help.” It was from Laurent. He said he is staying in INSA too and can ask his neighbour. Anatole then asked if it is possible for him to paste some poster written in French along the corridor. Wah. That’s too much liao lah. Laurent said he will try. I really felt embarrassed. First of all I felt this is my responsibility and it is not nice to let other people do it for me. Second, Anatole might see that I am incompetent in my job although finding a total of over 50 strangers in a foreign country to do experiments is no small task either. Still even if I did that on my own, I don’t think he would be much impressed. After shooting his arrows, he said he would be back the week after next. I thanked Laurent for his ba dao xiang zhu. Really he is no longer a weird guy to me liao. He is my idol, my buddy, my brother, my best friend, my kawan, abang, etc. This in Teochew is called Jiat Ji Gua. Only praise someone when you get something good out of him. Anyway, I am really grateful to him for willing to help. I sat there and thought about this new challenge (or crisis). If I can complete all the exp during that one week in which Anatole is away, I think it would impress him. Hence, I decide to go all out. I sent and email to Ravi my Indian friend and asked him to get his neighbours for me. Tomorrow I would go find another student in IRISA who lives in my block to get his neighbours too. And I would ask Ana to get her colleagues from Project Armour. Lastly, and also hopefully when the school reopens next week, I will have the promised 5 or 6 students from University of Rennes 2.

I went back to my room still brooding over the matter. The more I think of it, the more I felt that I needed to do more to get people. As such, I think I would draw a poster to advertise about the experiment and paste it on my door. Wah lao. Desperado at work. But first I must buy some adhesive tape. My poster will be in English of course.

Salut!
I am a student from Singapore doing my training in IRISA.
Currently I am conducting an experiment on Virtual Reality
and I am looking for participants. If you are interested, pls:
Knock here [draw something]
Slit your particulars under the door [draw something]
Call this number xxxxx during office hour [draw something]
Merci, a bientot!
-Alex

This is the last resort. I would paste this poster over the weekend and on Monday when the students return, hopefully they would respond. Hai. Why must I do this boliao thing?!

Before the soccer game I told Nicolas the pizza was still in my stomach and I don’t think I can run much today. He then asked how many goals will that be this time? 4, 5 or 6? I said as long as no concede goals I will be happy liao. Just when I said I can’t run much tonight, I ran like hell; at least for the first 15 min. A joker was late and I was in the team with only 4 players. 4 against 5. I ran up and down and at the end of the game, my calf muscle was very strenuous. And zero goal. Nico and I agreed that tonight’s game was not very smooth. Quite boring and not many goals. Then we talked about music and movies and esp. LOTR. He said he prefers the book to the movie. I said me too because the movie just keeps feeding the audience with stimulus and all the audience can do is receive. But for the book, it is up to the audience’s imagination to create how Gollum is supposed to look like. Nico then said he is extremely puzzled that Arwen had so many scenes in the movie but in the book, she plays only a minor role. I told him because the actress is Liv Taylor. Hollywood wanted to exploit her name to sell the movie. Initially I felt that Nico and I can’t communicate well with each other. In fact when I first came, he gave me an impression of being aloof. But now then I realised that he is very friendly and jovial. Happy-go-lucky, bubbly guy. Once again I have made the wrong judgement of a person. Perhaps I should get to know more about that person first before making criticism or judgement on him. yah. Must change.