The pantry world of our own

A recent photograph tagged in facebook invited one inquisitve question of why new T-chirs have their tables in the pantry. To this, the 三脚猫 replied that contrary to what she thinks, the pantry in my schoooooo is actually the place to be if you want your working life to be imbued with laughter and good-natured jokes.

At least this has been the case for the past 4 weeks for me since being posted to do my T-ching. Today, my colleagues (all N*E, relief, practic^m and contract) decided to go for our nights out despite having done so the day before. Mr Y who had left his relief on Monday to do his reservist in the police force managed to find time to join us to catch up the happenings of the week. It transpired that just two days ago, some students have spotted him in his "Mr Policeman" uniform, and Mr Y had wished a hole would open to swallow him up.

Mr O and I had been irritating Miss M with our mock Malaysian accent. We managed to perfect some simple sentences, particularly putting the accent on the word "到". Seizing every opportunities, sentences that begin with "累到.......", "气到......", "饿到.....", 坏到....." dotted our conversations. Miss M was clearly unimpressed. So was her partner in crime, Miss C. (Incidentally Miss C teaches Chinese).

I am not the only 猫 family around. Once Mr O remarked to Miss M in their usual banter session, "老虎不发威, 当我是病猫啊". Aiyah.. but with his perpetual 唏唏哈哈 demeanour, we have always treated Mr O as a 病猫, and a really 病猫 at that........ until.... wah...

One day, in the canteen, we were having our lunch together, we heard an explosion with some reverberations that ripped through the air. Patently, it was not the sound of an inflated drink packet that was stomped on. Curiosity killed Mr O (the 病猫), the 三脚猫, and all the other lunch kakis. Miss M was quite concerned that the boys over at the corner was endangering others' life and urged us to go over and check things out. We were on two minds when...

a rabbit came.. or rather, this lanky boy walked past. Mr O called him out and made a motion for him to come over. With that simple smile plastered on his face, he advanced. Who would have known that the next few seconds the 三脚猫, Miss M, Mr Y and Miss N were to miss a heartbeat when Mr O transformed into a 老虎 and with an enveloping voice that has a surround system effect, he roared "Eh! You tell me what's happening over there". If the air had just been a little more moist, an electrical discharge would have jumped.

The roar brought the hapless boy swiftly to his knees, to which he stammered "I.... I..'m from sec 3A, and these boys over there.... they sec four one... take some dry ice and put in bottle then explode..." Clearly dissociating himself from those gangs of sec 4, the rabbit appeared just so small, so dimunitive.

"Ok, you can go", commandered Mr O, the ex-army officer.

Stunned.

"Wah... Mr O, never see you turn into a 老虎 leh".... and those past few weeks of boisterous kids who had been stretching you and you still believed never in raising voice.. First time leh.... Around the table, the disconcerted ones acquiesced almost immediately.

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We must be getting extra high today when we decided to go to the city for dinner. Mr O (the-saintly病猫-who-refused-an-MC), and I, shared two $1 durians before leaving, and our blood was charged with glucose. Of course, Miss M grabbed this opportunity to say our mouths stank with methane. Mr O bore the greater brunt of the impact since he had been rubbing the wrong way up with Miss M most of the time, while the 三脚猫 has been completely snowed under work most of the time.

Anyway, we settled for a simple meal after a plea by Mr O to watch the budget and the body. Truth is he's more concerned about the former. Nicely ensconced in our seats, we began our confession sessions about our impressions of one another, peppered with banters and recounting of wonderful incidents. Turned out I am the most judgemental! Hahaha.... But they got their way when they had been relating me to Kim Jong Il, an MP aide, a "celebrity", and many others. To them, the three-legged cat has a common face just like items on a pasar malam!

Miss N brought her Taiwanese bf to join us later, and poor boy, he was completely clueless as we launched into our own world of jokes since the jokes were all very contextual. The classic ones are: Mr O's elaborated analogy of riding a roller coaster to the apex when the teachers croned "是你!! 是你!! 梦见的就是你!" in 甜蜜蜜; Miss M's in-your-face remarks (particularly the spelling of curiosity where she left no mercy in persecuting brutally all those who had wronged her) with her accompanying drama mama histrionics; Mr Y's tales of the light and dark as a teacher of a normal acad class and subsequently as a ma2 da2 who had to jargar some quarelling ah sohs and emo kids; Mr C's insinuation of the vertically challenged nature of Mr Ong; Miss N's quiet but fiercely determined nature of not letting the sisterhood down when Miss C and Miss M combined powers to put down the ma2 da2, the saint-who-never-MC, and the 三脚猫.
But it was a great night. Pity that tomorrow Mr O and Miss M are going to leave the school to start their NIE course. Left only Miss N, Miss C and the 三脚猫. Sighhhhh.......