This morning my “qing di” Jeremy was not in the room. Yesterday there was some problem with his PC and Alain, Beckker and Jean-Marie came to check it out. So I was quite afraid that he might be shifted to another room. At around 1130am, luckily he came and “salut” me. Then he went straight to report to his boss. As expected, he had forgotten about asking Chinese community in INSA for me. And worse, he left for lunch with his boss so I was to go alone again. The thing about here is, people don’t bother about you. No one bothers about Jeremy or Ahad except whom they were working with. As for me, only Anatole would come looking for me but that was very seldom also. So I went to lunch.
Today the restaurant wasn’t as crowded as other days probably because it was Friday. I had rice and stingray and also ordered a food which I don’t know what it was. It was covered with yellow slim and had green oval-shaped objects inside. So at first I thought I was getting oysters or cockles. Then I realized that green object was some kind of vege, like brinjal cut in oval-shaped. And the yellow slim was cheese. For the stingray, it wasn’t baked like those we had in the hawker centre back in Singapore (Hang Hur). It was steamed. For most of my other lunches, I had fries and lots of fries. Before I came, my friends (like xiong) asked me to bring back some local delicacies for them and I would always say I would bring French fries back jokingly. Now I am really having lots of them. I had French loaf also, and there are amazingly a number of ways you can eat it. Currently I am doing what Jeremy does; slicing the loaf into half from the side with the knife; then spreading it with a kind of sauce (which I can’t find in the place I take my food which is different from where Jeremy took his because he is a student and I am a staff. So I just spread with butter).
It is amazing to see the AngMoh use the knife. They use it for everything; cutting the meat, slicing the bread; peeling the orange; slicing the apple. And I remembered on my first day, I ate the rice with the spoon which was for the yogurt actually. I am supposed to eat with the fork. Now of course I don’t eat with the spoon because I don’t want people to laugh at me. But I think it is much convenient to use the spoon.
I had an awful hell of a time eating that stingray because of the bones. I wanted to make sure I had every pieces of flesh scraped clean from it. So I was damn slow. I joined an old man who was eating half way. He finished and left and I was still eating. Then 3 people joined me and they finished and left and I was still eating. Here I ate the slowest. I guessed the reason was because I chewed while they gobbled. (My neighbour but don’t know from upstairs or beside is singing “a whole new world” now but I think it is in French.) In the restaurant on the wall, there is a French poem which I tried to memorise one line each day (starting from today). It reads: “Les mots s’equivalents, leur rencontre des coloure…” which I guessed means “these words equal their meeting of colors…” and the rest of the poem, well see if I could remember some more tomorrow. It is pretty long in fact. And also there are writings on the walls which Anatole told me weren’t in French. He said that those words are native tongue of people of Rennes. In fact they were Celtic language and there are still people in Rennes speaking them. Rennes is the capital of Bretagne (Brittainy in English) and is located at the northwest of France. So it has close heritage with the Celtics including England (Grand Bretagne in French), Scotland and Ireland. It is pretty interesting to know about European history.
(Correction, my neighbour is in fact singing in English.) Quite often I hear English songs being played here. When I was at Paris airport, I heard Alicia Keys’ “If I ain’t got you”. Then I heard that in the supermart here, then in the bus also. And in the office, Mr. Giant (one of my colleagues whom I had forgotten his name but he confirmed got 2 metres tall) often played English songs. But too bad the people do not speak English as often as they listen to the songs. Anyway after lunch I went back and surf net for quite a long while because my work was making good progress so now I can slack a bit. And then I began to think about the tour again and asked Hua where would he be in Italy in June and he said Turin. I checked the map and gosh, it was very near Grenoble. So maybe if I end my IA on 18 June, perhaps I could go down to Grenoble to visit hui then cross the border into Italy to see hua. But if I had to end on the 30th, then I would just go Paris and London. And maybe to Belgium because by train it would be fast and quite cheap.
When it neared 4pm, I had a big problem with my code but decided to F (oops can’t use the F word here for I think my student might read my blog, which meant if there are any juicy stories like about Mathilde, I can’t describe in detail. But that was just me fantasizing. Where got juicy stories when I am alone?). Anyway I decided to HACK IT and left the office. On my way back, someone approached me and asked where the bibliotheque (library) is, in French. Wow! To think there would be people asking me for direction here. I wanted to reply in French but was too panicky and said in English and pointed the direction to him. I am really not a very confident guy, although I tried to be seen like one. Back to the hostel, I had my clothes sent to the laundry and this time I paid the right amount without being cheated. The first time I paid 1.5 euros more and I swore never ever going to make that mistake again. Sometimes I guessed I just gave myself too much pressure when I make a mistake, even for such small things like using the laundry service. I was bending so hard not to make the same mistake twice that sometimes the pressure makes me repeat the mistake. I should really take things easy.
Anyway, hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow and a good weather because I am going to see the most beautiful market in Rennes! I remembered watching Jacelyn Tay’s “Xiu Chu Zhen Wo” (a travel show on Channel 8) and she was at Marseilles or Nice and was visiting the market. Although I hated crowd, but it would be nice to be there in person to experience the atmosphere.
Today the restaurant wasn’t as crowded as other days probably because it was Friday. I had rice and stingray and also ordered a food which I don’t know what it was. It was covered with yellow slim and had green oval-shaped objects inside. So at first I thought I was getting oysters or cockles. Then I realized that green object was some kind of vege, like brinjal cut in oval-shaped. And the yellow slim was cheese. For the stingray, it wasn’t baked like those we had in the hawker centre back in Singapore (Hang Hur). It was steamed. For most of my other lunches, I had fries and lots of fries. Before I came, my friends (like xiong) asked me to bring back some local delicacies for them and I would always say I would bring French fries back jokingly. Now I am really having lots of them. I had French loaf also, and there are amazingly a number of ways you can eat it. Currently I am doing what Jeremy does; slicing the loaf into half from the side with the knife; then spreading it with a kind of sauce (which I can’t find in the place I take my food which is different from where Jeremy took his because he is a student and I am a staff. So I just spread with butter).
It is amazing to see the AngMoh use the knife. They use it for everything; cutting the meat, slicing the bread; peeling the orange; slicing the apple. And I remembered on my first day, I ate the rice with the spoon which was for the yogurt actually. I am supposed to eat with the fork. Now of course I don’t eat with the spoon because I don’t want people to laugh at me. But I think it is much convenient to use the spoon.
I had an awful hell of a time eating that stingray because of the bones. I wanted to make sure I had every pieces of flesh scraped clean from it. So I was damn slow. I joined an old man who was eating half way. He finished and left and I was still eating. Then 3 people joined me and they finished and left and I was still eating. Here I ate the slowest. I guessed the reason was because I chewed while they gobbled. (My neighbour but don’t know from upstairs or beside is singing “a whole new world” now but I think it is in French.) In the restaurant on the wall, there is a French poem which I tried to memorise one line each day (starting from today). It reads: “Les mots s’equivalents, leur rencontre des coloure…” which I guessed means “these words equal their meeting of colors…” and the rest of the poem, well see if I could remember some more tomorrow. It is pretty long in fact. And also there are writings on the walls which Anatole told me weren’t in French. He said that those words are native tongue of people of Rennes. In fact they were Celtic language and there are still people in Rennes speaking them. Rennes is the capital of Bretagne (Brittainy in English) and is located at the northwest of France. So it has close heritage with the Celtics including England (Grand Bretagne in French), Scotland and Ireland. It is pretty interesting to know about European history.
(Correction, my neighbour is in fact singing in English.) Quite often I hear English songs being played here. When I was at Paris airport, I heard Alicia Keys’ “If I ain’t got you”. Then I heard that in the supermart here, then in the bus also. And in the office, Mr. Giant (one of my colleagues whom I had forgotten his name but he confirmed got 2 metres tall) often played English songs. But too bad the people do not speak English as often as they listen to the songs. Anyway after lunch I went back and surf net for quite a long while because my work was making good progress so now I can slack a bit. And then I began to think about the tour again and asked Hua where would he be in Italy in June and he said Turin. I checked the map and gosh, it was very near Grenoble. So maybe if I end my IA on 18 June, perhaps I could go down to Grenoble to visit hui then cross the border into Italy to see hua. But if I had to end on the 30th, then I would just go Paris and London. And maybe to Belgium because by train it would be fast and quite cheap.
When it neared 4pm, I had a big problem with my code but decided to F (oops can’t use the F word here for I think my student might read my blog, which meant if there are any juicy stories like about Mathilde, I can’t describe in detail. But that was just me fantasizing. Where got juicy stories when I am alone?). Anyway I decided to HACK IT and left the office. On my way back, someone approached me and asked where the bibliotheque (library) is, in French. Wow! To think there would be people asking me for direction here. I wanted to reply in French but was too panicky and said in English and pointed the direction to him. I am really not a very confident guy, although I tried to be seen like one. Back to the hostel, I had my clothes sent to the laundry and this time I paid the right amount without being cheated. The first time I paid 1.5 euros more and I swore never ever going to make that mistake again. Sometimes I guessed I just gave myself too much pressure when I make a mistake, even for such small things like using the laundry service. I was bending so hard not to make the same mistake twice that sometimes the pressure makes me repeat the mistake. I should really take things easy.
Anyway, hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow and a good weather because I am going to see the most beautiful market in Rennes! I remembered watching Jacelyn Tay’s “Xiu Chu Zhen Wo” (a travel show on Channel 8) and she was at Marseilles or Nice and was visiting the market. Although I hated crowd, but it would be nice to be there in person to experience the atmosphere.
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