Spanish Whispers

Can you actually call it a whisper if you can hear word by word of what is being said by a person 15 feet away from you? Well probably not in our vocabulary, but it sure is for most of the students in my university.

I hate generalizing people based on their origin (as much as I hate it when people judge me because of my religion), but I can't help but feel there is a need to change something here. These students....they whisper too loud and jump the queue all the time. And these are university students, supposedly educated people who are working their a** off to get a scroll in ensuring a better life ahead.

Well too bad for me as these people do not share the same perspective as I do.

1) they think whispering is equivalent to uttering something in a "non-real voice" where you can't really hear the true tone or phonation or resonance or whatever you call it (gosh my English is getting worse yet my Spanish is not getting any better). Although you can make out every single word that is being uttered but yep, they still consider it as a so-called whisper

2) they also seem to think that joining a friend who is already in a queue is NOT equivalent to jumping a queue. i get it all the time while queuing in the cafeteria for food or simply when queuing up to use the microwave

Excuse myself people, for all the rambling. Truth is I am now sitting in the library, pissed off with all the "whispers" around me!!

When Words Can't Do Justice

Similarity vs. Diversity

Last weekend I went to visit a flat in the hope of securing a room. It had been difficult finding one due to my failure in the Castellano language department, and the fact that these people do not speak English doesn’t make it any better either. I was somehow lucky enough to stumble across this advertisement where the lady was able to communicate in English and we made an appointment to see each other. The very first minute we met I sensed the lady was feeling a lil' unease and my intuition turned out to be true…

1) As I was telling her about myself and how long I would be staying, she interrupted and told me that she was looking for someone who is willing to stay much longer (of course, something she never mentioned during our earlier communication)
2) After a quick tour of the house, she quoted me the price of the room which by the way, was 70 Euros MORE expensive than what I was told earlier

I somehow thanked her for showing me around (and for wasting my time) and as I was about to leave she started errr...'pouring her heart out'...
“Oh I don’t know if you would feel comfortable living with me…”
“I don’t know if we would be compatible together…”
“I don’t know your culture and you don’t know mine…”
“I wear shoes in the house…” (Simply because I asked her earlier whether it was ok to go into the house with my shoes on, duh. Maybe someone should tell this lady that in some part of the world people practice more hygiene and please, do not expect everyone to be exactly like you are because we are all different in our own special kind of way)

Alahai, rasa cam tgh go thru the 'Its-not-you-its-me' breaking up routine jek! Well silly me for not noticing earlier. I finally realized that the minute she saw me at the train station, she decided straight away that she didn’t want to live with me just because I was DIFFERENT.

The incident reminded me of my stay in Greece some time ago. Back then I had stayed with this precious 50+ year old Greek lady who couldn’t speak a word of English. On the first day that I met her, she told me to make use of the house as if it was my own; she even offered to cook for me everyday. As I was with a Greek friend at the moment, I asked this dear friend to explain to her about my limitations on food (it was difficult for me to explain about the Halal thingy as he spoke very little English, I decided to tell him I was some sort of vegetarian). I also told her that I would be buying my own utensils for cooking; quietly hoping the old lady wouldn’t be offended by my wishes. Not only that she gave me her new shining pot for my usage and told me not to waste any money on buying a new one, she even stopped eating meat altogether and became a vegetarian for three whole months! Till the end of the stay, I couldn’t really figure out what she did for a living due to our communication barrier, but from her modest way of living I figured she hadn't had much chance to travel across Europe, let alone in other parts of the world and meet people of all kinds. Yet this lady understood well what diversity was all about and treated me as if I was one of her kind despite of our differences. What a gem she was.

So my point is, instead of associating diversity with being different or bad or weird, or whatever negativity that some people have in their mind, aren’t we all plain human beings and isn’t that a good enough reason for us to respect and accept each other?

Ci Ci Ci....

A dear friend said once it is easy to determine whether Miss Cikitita is being productive or just simply 'dynamic' behind her laptop without even taking a peek at what she's doing.

When she’s productive (read: working on her research project) you will hear a continuous yakking which usually consists of…

“Shitty!”
“Die la wanna finish this one document!!”
“I hate this…I hate this!!!”

……every 20 minutes.

But when she’s ‘dynamic’, she'll be so quite and will look so darn serious as if she’s planning to save the world (save the cheerleader, save the world...errr...?)

p/s: Btw, Miss Cikitita’s definition of being dynamic consists of blog hopping, e-mailing, youtubing, torrent-ing, YM-ing /Skype-ing. Sometimes to make herself feel better, Miss Cikitita would perform the act of ‘knowledge gathering’ from Wikipedia i.e finding out the life history of al-gore (hoi life history menteri sendirik tak pnah lak nk amik tau!). But of course that usually doesn’t last for long…she would eventually cut to the chase and go straight to the gossip column i.e finding out whether Kevin from Brothers & Sisters is really gay.

Sigh.

When will she be satisfied?

Miss Cikitita gets bored easily especially when it comes to working on her research project. The only reason she flew down here was to see the world and take a break from her rat race life in her home country, and that's just about it. Though deep down she knows that she should be grateful with what life is offering her right now she can't help but yawn every now and then. Sometimes it is hard to believe that slightly a year ago Miss Cikitita was dragging her feet to go to her workplace and how she yearned for Friday to come so she can go dancing under the moonlight (read: lying on her bed reading a good book or going out for teh tarik session with good friends) No, no she was never the partying type of girl, not even now, but she had had her fair share of fun being around good friends. Miss Cikitita doesn't talk much except to people whom she is close to, which is not many, where she can go on and on yet with some she would slide the zipper on her mouth shut automatically.

The reason Miss Cikitita writes this blog is to keep her busy and keep in touch with friends all over. (Actually she is just finding excuses for not doing her research project, which is very, very bad)