Transcending Borders

Woke up late again today, missing a Maths lecture on limits, which I've never learnt before. Even better, there's a test next week on you guess it, limits. It's 10% of my overall marks too. Great. That's not what this post is about though.

A little preamble before the main story. Today was the first day of the Festival of Nations, where a section of the university was set aside for various clubs to set up stalls to sell food. However, it ended up more like Festival of Asia. There were practically 3 to 4 stalls selling Malaysian and Indonesian food, with another stall by the Thailand Student's Club. The only non-Asian club that was present was
the French Club, which was selling nice-tasting crepes. Apparently,that is. Since I was a subcommittee in the International Engineering Students Society, I was helping out with the stall. We were selling Beef Rendang, Goreng Pisang (which the Aussies call Banana Fritters),and Fried Chicken. And I can tell you that handing out fliers to hundreds of people is NOT fun.

It's funny how you finally take pity on those poor souls who stood beside the escalator at a shopping mall, giving it out fliers with utter indifference. It's just so hard to smile and welcome everyone so
wholeheartedly when they :-
-Ignore you completely
-Shove the paper off
-Surprisingly decline with politeness
-Take the flier and throw it in the dustbin nearby
-Take the flier and walk to the wrong stall
-Lie that they've received one
-Generally treat you like you're a déclassé (which I confess was how I perceived them before I actually did it myself)

I now have a newfound respect for anyone who has the guts (or desperation) to give out fliers to everyone and take rejection in the face!

But of course, that's not the main story! I believe I haven't introduced you guys to my friend, Sven?

Possibly one of the worst pictures of Sven, ;P

In summary, he is a 6-feet something dude from Germany who likes girls with dark hair. He studies Politics and Economics, and is 22 or 21 I think. He recently broke up with his Indian girlfriend before coming to Australia, but not before giving her a farewell 'visit' in New Delhi on the way here. :)

Anyways, I felt kind of bad for missing his birthday party, as I was off with my sister in Phillips Island. She came over just under 2 weeks ago, but has since gone back. That's a story for another day. So we met up today for dinner at some generic Japanese-Chinese restaurant and caught up with current issues.

It turned out that he was present at the Festival of Nations, butsomehow we didn't see each other. With him being 6-feet and all it was quite a feat, but nonetheless totally useless information to inform anyone about. He then mentioned this girl he met, who was in the Malay Club (Yes, there's one, and it was just next to my club's stall), who was trying to get him to buy some food at her stall.

From some twist of twisted fate, she actually offers him free satay,and tells him that he could pay if he wanted to. He being his 'shy' self just smiles politely and starts eating the satay. She then walks back to her stall. Feeling guilty for being a scrooge, he goes after her and offers to pay for it, upon which she politely declines and makes a joke about it. Sven being his 'shy' self then says that he has to go and walks away. A few seconds after that, he looks back to see her disappear.

And that would be Sven's predicament of the day. According to him, she is a 8 out of 10 on the Beauty scale, and is quite smitten by her. I've actually seen her around before, as she has this conspicuous mole that he noticed as well, and I have to say she is quite the deal. Quite. She kinda looks like Ella when Ella was younger and in her prime.

It's still not over for dear Sven though! The Festival of Nations concludes on Wednesday, so he still has at least a day to talk to this girl and somehow find a way to get her to go out with him for coffee or dinner or whatever he's planning on asking her. Through a sudden burst of breathtaking intelligence, I somehow came up with this brilliant plan of teaching Sven Bahasa. He took to this idea immediately and took out his notebook quite earnestly (I'm not making this thing up!).

With that I started with the basic words and lines that he would need. First there's 'apa khabar'. Then there was 'Nama saya Sven'. It went on to more complex lines like 'kamu sangat cantik' or 'kamu sungguh menawan' depending on the situation.

When Sven got farely fluent with the essentials we went on to the crunch question. Knowing how atrocious my Bahasa is I struggled to construct a proper sentence to ask her out. I ended up with 'Andaikah kamu lapang malam ini?' I really do hope that my sentence was right.. Lol.. For all he knows I could have asked him to say "Would you let me spank your bottom?" or something to that extent (it was his words!)

Here's practice session number 1. (Stupid me forgot that I can't rotate videos like pictures can)

Of course, I couldn't stop there. Somehow 'kamu sungguh menawan' just doesn't cut it. I then proceeded to modify the sentence. It ended up like this..



'Kamu sungguh menawan, bagi bidadari dari syurga.' Haha! I know it's extremely corny. But then again, when uttered by a
towering German, who knows what could happen? So, with that sure-get-date line in place, we took another practice session, this time with some facial expressions and casual body signs.

Well, that's all Daniel the guru Bahasa Malaysia can do for his mate here. All the best to him tomorrow! Hopefully I'll be able to get it on video too! Haha..




Oh, food was good. :)