nice people with not so nice dumplings

I have just finished the assignment which costs merely 1% of my total grade but which I felt obligated to do. Still, the sense of relief that comes with finishing it is good. Returning home from the library found me, for lack of a proper vocabulary, *&$%#@#ing the cold. Actually I didn’t do that, but I was feeling sorry for myself that I had to brave the cold, both in terms of the weather and in terms of the people 😡  “Did you create this cold?!” I asked God, and immediately, the inner voice said, “No I created the sun.” Oh, right, oops.

So anyway I was moody as I ate my dinner alone in the floor’s common room when…a guy walked in. I was surprised because my floor is an all girls floor. Usually, if you see a guy on my floor,

1) he is the boyfriend of the girl living on my floor, and yes there are some girls who practically live with their boyfriends here. The boyfriends are seriously wasting their parents’ money on a room they don’t sleep in. Usually, the boyfriends hide in the rooms so I don’t really care. I care though, when I’m in the co-ed washroom at night thinking I have the whole washroom to myself ladeedum and they appear with their sheepish smile.

2) and if he’s dressed in yellow, he’s working for campus security

Now this guy wasn’t dressed in yellow. But there was something about him that told me he was too decent to share a room with a girl although I must mention he was way more good-looking than the boyfriends I’ve seen lurking around. Maybe holding an electric kettle and washing it did do some good for his image.

After a few moments of silence, him washing the kettle and I eating, 2 girls walked in, one with a packet of dumplings and the other with containers. One girl kindly asked if I wanted some but I declined. They had some kind of a discussion which my chinese was too pathetic to follow, filled the kettle with water, threw the dumplings inside, then boiled the water. While it was boiling, the guy was chiding the girls for ruining his dumplings. I was so amused at his chiding I was smiling as I ate my sandwich.

When I finished the sandwich, I went over to look. Now, I was amused by the dumplings themselves. I could see little pieces of flour paper (what do u call the thing to wrap dumplings?) whirling around in the kettle. I couldn’t help but laugh and when they started laughing too, it felt like I had found something familiar, in this weird unfamiliar place.

🙂

I thank God for leading me to the common room to eat my dinner alone, considering it was not something I have done since I came here. I was cheered up…and further cheered up when I returned to my room and curled up with a book, thus avoiding any laughing at them as they attempted to eat the dumplings.