Telephone-Dinner-Night

Wednesday.

I finally got hold of a telephone in my room. But it couldn’t have turned out better. I went up to the Accommodation Office to make a complaint as the fact that I still couldn’t get hold of ntl. At the counter, she lady listened to me, and mentioned that she could not help me. What the heck, the highest office tells me they can’t do it? So I told her I wanted to speak to someone higher up who could be able to help me. She asked a rather well-dressed gentleman and he invited me to a room inside for a discussion. He took some details from me and filled in a form. Of very friendly disposition, he apologized for the inconvenience and said that it had nothing to do with ntl (the phone service provider). He was the first person in an official capacity to admit that Nixon Court was accountable to me and not ntl, as they have told me on every occasion. He also said that it was unacceptable that my room was not provided with a phone and that he would get me one “by today, or tomorrow”. He even gave me a meal voucher worth 5 pounds for Café Piazza (Charles Wilson building, downstairs) as a form of compensation (somewhat expected). Then I asked him for his name. Tim Wragg. I had just spoken to the Director of the Accommodation Office! When I returned to my room that evening, the telephone was sitting snugly on my bed.
Then yesterday the porter came round and handed me a new phone. Wow, this one even has an LCD screen, and records the time as well as the duration of my call. Advanced, and a job well done! He deserves to be Director.

Then I went to Snappers for lunch. And guess what? They even have Chinese translation (one dish only) and chopsticks! The dish is “Beef in black bean sauce with rice”…. Translated on the menu: “牛肉在黑豆调味汁里用米”. What the…..? Hmm, so the beef is languishing in that black bean taste-enhancing sauce and having some uncooked rice?? I used to laugh (and still do) at all the powder-ful English translations found on most chinese/taiwanese products, but this is a nice role reversal.

I had to work on my programming so I chose not to join the entire bunch of Hongkongers at a newly-opened restaurant for a buffet dinner. Instead, I invited Zhang Yi and Jingyi over to mine for some dinner and then I had to start work. Well this was the first time I formally cooked this academic year. And they seemed to go away impressed. That pork with vegetable dish is really quite solid… hmm.. but self praise isn’t worth much…
Jingyi turned out to be staying in the same corridor as Nazimah and Arfah! And my cds went out for a spin.. JY took my Jap cd wallet while ZY took the Chinese cds…
Later on I went over to Opal to hand Joanne stuff and that was to spell the end of my programming work for the night. Very nice of her to be so hospitable =) … and breakfast was my most filling in days. I had Milo too!*
I also learned how to use “balia”… PS you can’t find its meaning by doing a Yahoo! search, not even on the Yahoo! Malaysia site.

Thursday.

Was in town for some shopping and walking around. Lunched at Wetherspoons’, which was a nice experience. I had Spaghetti Bolognese. And I tried gin & tonic for the first time in my life. I guess I will be going back there again soon as their drinks (shots + free mixer) are quite cheap.
Invited Gloria over for dinner and we had garlic & butter chicken that I’d bought from the city. Then I left Ho-Fung and her to chat as Shen Li had arrived to help me with the bloody difficult-to-crack programming for Embedded Systems. My SOS had been answered! Most of the stuff was done in an hour, but I still had to touch up the code and then start on the other programming assignment (C++) due today.

Dammit. I think I found a rather serious bug in the code. Not enough time for me to try to edit and re-compile everything. Just hope they don't see it..

*a close-to-impossible-to-find drink over here in the Anglo territories. Unless you have supplies or friends from certain asian countries.