Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Yesterday was Tuesday, and despite my busy schedule amidst the tests and deadlines, I just had to go and watch a movie. Reason? It was the last day of the $5 movie offer. So I finished my work early and made time to watch "Be Cool" starring John Travolta and Uma Thurman, with a whole truckload of other stars in it as well. It's basically quite a good comedy, but you will need to understand a lot of American culture and jargon to catch the subtle jokes, and the downside to this movie is that there are a lot of it, as well as a lot of talking.

The Rock also stars in it as a gay bodyguard, and I think his performance helped made the show funnier by a large margin. 3 and a half popcorns out of 5. Without The Rock it would probably be a 3. I would say watch it just for The Rock, where else can you see him act gay. Hilarious man.

Anyway if you noticed the title of this blog, you would be anticipating a Mr Paki story already. I didn't want to blog today as tomorrow is a busy day, but what happened today was just so funny I had to come and commit it to writing before I forgot about it and lose the legacy of Paki. No funny stories for future generations to carry on.

Ok so as you all know, I was transferred out of Mr Paki's class as he couldn't teach at all, and at that time he had only 3 students including me, leaving him 2 now. Now I do not remember if I neglected to mention this or not but here it is anyway. When I tried to transfer out of his class, I was told that there no other time slots available. However there was another class at the same time under a different tutor in another room nearby so I jumped at it. Today in the middle of my class, we could suddenly hear Mr Paki in the corridor asking passing students if they belonged to his class. After a few minutes we heard an animated (and rather loud) conversation between Mr Paki and another tutor about his missing students. I remembered feeling happy that my comrades managed to bail out in time too, but anyway Mr Paki soon took to pacing the corridor in search of his lost children. After walking by our room for like 6 times, he finally stuck his head into our room and told my tutor, "All my students are missing." Of course he said that in Paki English which is very hard to remember but I'm just trying to give you a general idea here. Ok so my tutor just shrugs and looks the other way to refrain from smiling, it seems that the whole faculty knows about his inability to teach. He glances around the room, and looks directly at me. I prayed hard that he will not recognise me. After a brief moment, he seemed unable to place my face and just excused himself.

The next instant, he stuck his head in again and said to me in Paki English, "Aren't you supposed to be in my class?" I was petrified. I felt like I was going to be sold into slavery, but I told him that I had been transferred to this class by the subject head in my best Paki English anyway. He asked my tutor if he can speak to her for a moment, and thereafter ensued a rather hilarious 1 minute.

We couldn't really hear the conversation, and only managed to catch snippets of it, but we could make out that he wanted me back in his class (but I got no class now), while she was adamant that I stayed (he's been transferred here since last week and he stays here). All the while my classmates were having a good laugh while I sweated my socks off imagining a one on one session with Mr Paki. I swear I would have dropped my studies and came back to Singapore. My classmates seemed to find it very funny and told me that I am so popular that tutors are fighting over who gets to teach me. Haha... But it didn't seem so funny then.

After 1 minute, the evil... I mean the Paki... no sorry Mr Paki gave up. My tutor came back into the room barely able to control her laughter. My heroine... I love Gemma Camby!!!

So that's the first instalment in the chronicles of Mr Paki. Hopefully there's no other further episodes involving me.