It’s always fas­ci­nat­ing see­ing Michael using Ger­man in public.

Last night, we hap­pened to be din­ing at Pizza Hut (“The Amer­i­can Way of Pizza”, which is hilar­i­ous because we had two Ital­ians with us) so every other sen­tence of his was pep­pered with stuff like “All You Can Eat!” and “Eat It Crust First!” He had a fine time try­ing to explain the con­cept of clear bev­er­age to the wait­ress (“Es ist nicht so, what’s that word for trans­par­ent? Durch­sichtig? Yeah, nicht so durch­sichtig aber auch nicht so opaque”).

Even­tu­ally, the wait­ress, as any other would in the illu­mi­nat­ing pres­ence of Michael’s hybrid Deutsch-Englisch, quickly shifted gears to Eng­lish, with great relief I’d imag­ine. The fact that the rest of us were laugh­ing our asses off in that lan­guage (and believe me, there is a lin­guis­tic dif­fer­ence in butt-guffaws, sub­tle, but a dif­fer­ence nonethe­less) helped to make up her mind.

Poor girl. I mean, it was mostly self-service last night, but she defin­tely got tips from us, if mostly out of sheer humane pity.

Any­way, the con­ver­sa­tions and com­pany were pretty good, so much so I didn’t really taste much of the piz­zas, which was a good thing, in my opin­ion. I’ve been pretty off fast-food style piz­zas since last Sep­tem­ber when I was treated to the daily spec­ta­cle of Manuel buy­ing piz­zas from the Mensa and then star­ing at them and decid­ing every time not to eat them. Pasta and pizza’s never the same again after spend­ing qual­ity time with an Ital­ian or two.

A high­light was def­i­nitely Michael, pos­si­bly the most relent­less, per­sis­tent, per­sua­sive lit­tle bug­ger I know, try­ing to con­vince Hadi, pos­si­bly the one per­son in the world who can spit “No” like a bazooka (and that ain’t a sim­ile either), to lend him his bike. I put my bets on Hadi (metaphor­i­cally speak­ing, cos I, as every­body knows, would indulge in every earthly sin but gam­bling). I won (metaphor­i­cally speak­ing, cos I, as every­body knows, would not put any money where my mouth is, stu­pid arse that I am).

Some­where down the line I was crowned as the worst ambas­sador for my coun­try (I like to think of myself as hon­est, and honesty’s the best kind of love, I think, and I do love Malaysia very much, like a father who bris­tles with pride at his son’s achieve­ments, but wished he would start wear­ing clothes in pub­lic, some­thing like that) and was applauded for sell­ing porn at the ripe old age of eleven (I cre­ate erotic illus­tra­tions that I auc­tion off for token sums of money. I insist there is a difference).

We left the Hut pretty much sated and ser­e­naded. The two Mikes tried to get me to say “uni­ver­sity”, not know­ing I heard their devi­ous plot, and ended up being led on a wild goose chase (or what­ever you call some­thing where I know what you know, but you don’t know that I know what you know, etc.) before I finally acqui­esced. See, I pro­nounce it as “yuns-tee”, whereas they go “yu-ni-ver-si-tee”. They asked me how I would pro­nounce “uni­ver­sal”. I argued it’s the same case as med­i­cine/med­ical. They retorted that’s the way the rest of the world said it. I replied that the rest of the world can fol­low my lead or go and play fuck-themselves (Not really, but I wished I did say that last bit).

Then Michael enter­tained us with his impres­sion of “spawn­ing”. You had to be there. Let’s just say he’s pro­lly the first per­son to mime bad puns and leave it at that.

Last thing before I sign off: An old run­ning joke since Erich and Manuel started study­ing together is how Erich would enjoy mak­ing sweet love to Manuel. Last night was the first time Michael’s heard this and he’s like, “So you’re Erich’s bitch, huh?” (And trust me, Erich and his bitches is another story alto­gether, one that I will spare you for now)

Shy kid that he is (sup­pos­edly), Manuel sur­prised us by retal­i­at­ing, “No (Ital­ian no, which is, well, er, no), Erich’s my bitch.” (Won­der what Ele would say about that…) To which Michael quickly quips, “Well maybe Erich likes to sur­ren­der in the bedroom.”

Line of the night, ladies and gen­tle­men, line of the night.

N.B. Erich, if you ever get sober enough to get online and read this (and this ain’t so much catty as more out of con­cern, though cat­ti­ness is a sig­nif­i­cant part of it), don’t kill the mes­sen­ger, delighted as he is in report­ing it. That, and Marco and Hadi have first dips on my mis­er­able lit­tle life. Remem­ber, this is a pro­fes­sion­ally exe­cuted pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment, and not me tak­ing pot­shots at my friends. Really.