I had talked previously about the flower sellers that prowl Northbridge, and woe be the man who’s put on the spot to buy an over-priced long stem rose which the woman does not necessarily want.
And won’t you know it, it happened to me last night. There I was in a karaoke room in Hits Studio with my friends and Girl B, who was sitting next to me. We were merrily drinking and having chit-chat and group singalongs when there was a knock on the door and in came one of them dreaded flower sellers.
I was paying him no attention when one of my friends pointed at me and yelled out,
Yeah Marcus wants to buy a flower!
Ok so now everyone is looking at me, what can I do? I picked a rose and awkwardly gave it to Girl B. When I saw the change in my hand after I’ve paid for it, I realised that it cost $20. I wasn’t spewing so much that I had to pay $20 but one long stem rose doesn’t cost $20 normally does it?
Though for the $20 I also got a little teddy bear and 2 condoms. Yup, condoms. This I thought was a clever accompaniment to the rose.
Anyways, soon after I gave her the flower I saw that she had difficulty putting the flower somewhere where it couldn’t be damaged. So I helped her tucked it away in one corner of the room. And during the course of the night, the flower was there all lonely and no one paid it any attention until we were leaving. Just like I knew it would happen.
Engrish is the sometimes hilarious, and possibly misleading direct translation of phrases and words, usually seen in Asia. And I saw a few in Guangzhou when I was there.
This first one is pretty straight-forward and it does make sense even if the phrasing is stilted.
The meaning to this second one can also be inferred. If this sign was in an English-speaking country, it would have probably read, “Please keep away from the lake shore”.
This one I thought was quite whimsical, both the Engrish and the original Chinese words. In a nutshell, it’s a sign asking you to stay away from the lawn. Presumably people would step onto the lawn to have a photo taken, hence – “Don’t hurt me for your pretty”.
As you might know I was summoned for jury duty about a month ago. Obviously I can’t talk about the case but I can tell you the experience so far.
Yesterday morning, I showed up around 8:15am at the District Court in Perth where I saw two long lines at the security checkpoints where the metal detectors and x-ray machines are set up like those at the airports. I passed that and then proceeded to wait in two long lines to take the lift upstairs to juror reception.
Once I was on the second level, I joined another queue where I was ushered to one of two lines where they issue you with your juror number – from then on, you are known only by your number. I walked into the big juror reception hall where they scanned my number and asked me to verify my name and address. Then I sat down with 400 or more other jurors in rows of cramp seats. This was by then 8:45pm.
There were 11 cases commencing that morning and we were told how it was going to work: 40 potential jurors will be randomly chosen for each case and then we’d be led up to the court room, where ultimately 14 will be chosen for each case.
They did the call up about once every 10 minutes. To kill time, some read books and magazines, some watched the TV and I played with my iPhone.
I was amongst the last group of people to be called – this was now 10:45pm. After we were introduced to the juror officer who will be our guide for the entire case, we were taken to the court room and then told to sit down in the back.
This was when we saw the accused, their lawyers, the crown prosecutors, other court officers and the judge. Our numbers were then randomly chosen once more by the courts clerk. As your number is called, you are supposed to walk to the juror’s bench and sit down. At this point in time, the defense lawyers and prosecutors may look you up and down and decide that they don’t want you as a juror. This was when they yelled “Challenge!” and you are basically dismissed. Then, another juror is randomly chosen again.
Even after there were 14 jurors available on the bench, as we were being sworned in, the lawyers can still challenge. I was slightly amused by the process (some people were stopped as they were walking to the bench or just as they were about to sit down) and I can sorta tell what the lawyers were wanting by seeing the kind of people that they were rejecting.
Anyways, in a nutshell, I didn’t get dismissed and so I’m now on a case that is scheduled to last 5 days. I can’t tell you much until the verdict has been given but I can tell you that it’s a sexual assault case.
So far, the experience has been interesting. The other jurors on the case are nice and friendly, and it’s quite fun during our group discussions even though the whole idea of deciding someone’s fate is still kinda surreal for me.
Our days start at 10am and usually finish at 4pm as it has been this past 2 days. Once in the court building, we are pretty much like kindergarten children and we get told where to go, where to wait and what time to be where. The rooms are highly secured and we can only go in and out with our guide.
And man, are lawyers pedantic or what?! Hahah, but I guess it’s the crux of their profession. For good reason, the meaning of every work uttered or written has to be precise. Still, it can get kinda boring and repetitious when the lawyers grill the witnesses on their answers and how they phrase them.
And unlike what I had gleamed from US TV cop shows, the court is only in session on weekdays and the jurors get to go home at the end of every day. Yay! Which means I still get to go to Future Music Festival this Sunday even if it goes over 5 days. Also, CCTV videos cannot be enhanced infinitely.
Before I even thought about writing this, here’s a couple of things that happened that I would like to share with you:
Last night I updated my Facebook status thus, “Marcus went on a date and it was very nice – ’twas a most pleasant way to end a stressful week at work.” and Rob, my colleague in Melbourne commented, “i want to know if he will blog it”. I’m not that much of a chronic over-sharer am I?!
My mother had read my previous post about me wondering about Girl A or Girl B, and had said to me, “Why must you blog about that?” I was confused by her question since she’s such an avid reader of the blog and I would have thought that it’s expected for me to blog about almost anything that’s on my mind. Then I gathered her concern was that if either one or both of the girls end up reading the post, I would have shot my chances with both of them.
To that I say, well my closest friends know them both, and it’s probably inevitable that word will spread around already so really, me not writing about it won’t stop people from knowing about it.
Back to the topic at hand, so I went on a date with Girl B last night. Woohoo. And as some of you have surmised, she is indeed Japanese. Throughout the week, Thama who has lived and work in Japan for a few years gave me some pointers on the language and culture. Girl B is not the first Japanese girl whom I’ve dated but it was good to have a refresher lesson.
I had also browsed through a Japanese phrase book and a couple of Japanese-English dictionaries which I had bought previously for the purpose of dating Japanese girls.
We went to an izakaya/yakitori place in the city called Jun. Knowing that she would know the food better, I let her ordered which made her happy because she’s been missing food from Japan. According to her, the food was authentic which was excellent. The only downer was that the service was so-so: we had to wait long for our food (it was busy), the table next to us who came later got their food first, and the waitress left out an order.
Here’s one thing I notice about Japanese girls: no matter how modern, they still have a slight deference to the male but not in a way that’s demeaning. When the waitress was explaining to her in Japanese about the mixed-up order, she motioned for the waitress to apologise to me instead.
Oh and another thing was that Jun hasn’t got a liquor license so there was no beer which we were both looking forward to have with our meals. In similar places in Japan, there’d be big pints of cold beer on tap which one can order. Though the good thing with this was that it gave me an excuse to take her to The Deen. Yay!
I like a lot of things about women and one thing that I like is seeing a girl enjoy drinking beer from a pint glass. Plus she liked The Deen. Two pluses. We had about two drinks each, people watched, and continuing talking through the night – me in my broken Japanese, and her in her broken English. And we managed to have fun.
On our third night in Guangzhou, we visited a venerable tourist trap of a restaurant called “Hong Xing Seafood Restaurant”. And if you’ve heard that old saying that the Chinese eat anything that has its back facing the sun, this restaurant reinforces that stereotype all the way.
What greeted us as soon as we walked through the front doors was this poor little crocodile tied up waiting to be someone’s dinner. This is my uncle Chris next to it.
Though I have a feeling that it’s more for the tourists to go “ooh” and “ahh” over.
Nonetheless, the crocodile is paraded for a reason – these are some cuts of crocodile meat which you can order. The sign says “freshly slaughtered – grilled, stewed, stewed with spring onion”. Fresh perhaps, but I doubt it’s slaughtered on the spot – a crocodile ain’t a chicken.
And next to the crocodile meat were these gigantic sea slugs that look like fat penises.
The novelty of the place is that there’s no menu – a hostess follows you around, and you pick and choose from whatever is on display.
Apart from the live seafood, there are plastic displays of other foods cooked to order.
And to cap off the whole exotic-ness of the place, there’s also snake-infused liquor.
The food was only so-so (hence why I said “tourist trap”). But it goes without saying, the place was very interesting and you probably won’t see it anywhere else but Asia. Now if only the chefs cooked better.
I’ve mentioned about the girl whom I have been crushing on. Though I have been seeing her around, nothing new has happened with her yet. But now I’ve met another girl about a week ago. And she’s different to the first.
Girl A is from a similar cultural background as I am so we share a similar sense of humour and talking to her feels very easy and comfortable. There is a language barrier between Girl B and I. Athough, through the very little that we manage to communicate across, we still manage to have fun together.
My closest friends know about the situation with both. For now, because they know Girl A had said that “I’m not her type“, the majority of them are encouraging me to go for Girl B. Having seen us together, they seem to think that Girl B enjoys my company too. In fact, I didn’t even think about her that way until their prompting.
So right now, I’m thinking that I should not over-analyse things to death and should just go for it. I still harbour the thought of being with Girl A but it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t explore other possibilities that come my way. Even if this new possibility will take a bit more effort due to the language barrier, it could lead to something interesting which I wouldn’t have experienced otherwise.
I’ve talked about self-censorship and keeping my mouth shut before. But it remains a tricky proposition. Some friends are ok with it, some friends are so-so about it, and some don’t even know this blog exists which is good and bad in itself.
I’ve written about a friend recently who got freaked out by seeing their name online in a public forum. They requested that I either delete the post, or take their name out of it. I chose the latter because hey, I like the stuff that I write. I’m kinda narcissistic that way.
But I do respect people’s request to not be mentioned on this blog, at least not directly anyway. You only have to tell me once and as far as this blog is concerned, you will not exist anymore. Or as Thama likes to do from time to time, he preempts juicy stories by saying “off the record”. Damn you Thama!
Though what’s really privacy anyway? The tax office knows how much we earn and where we live. The banks and credit card companies know how much money we have and, how and where we spend it. The medical insurance people know how healthy we are and what’s been ailing us.
That leaves us with sex, love, embarrassing things and other grey areas of our lives. In the spirit of showing you all that I should walk the walk if I talk the talk, I’ve already written about most of those things. But there’s one skeleton left in my closet: I loved bubble-gum pop in the 90s.
Because why?
Because of You. I Do, Cherish You. I Want You Back. Tearing Up My Heart And I Want It That Way! Bye Bye Bye!
