write the screenplay of the Chinese version of The Office

So we’re sitting there at the lunch table. Today the buffet has some very tasty looking noodles, which everyone has piled a plate with. We all tuck in. The tiny Chinese woman sitting with us has the largest pile of noodles I’ve ever seen. The Great Wall of Noodles. Just try and attack her lunch, Mongolians.

I look up five seconds later and the ends of a whole plate of noodles are disappearing inot this tiny woman’s face. She DRANK a plate of noodles. There was no chewing, no spooning them in. She put the end of noodle number one into her mouth and sucked, and they all went straight down her neck whole.

I have done no work in two days. I have been paid for eighteen hours of messing around on a computer, eating lunch, and writing my novel.
I felt slightly guilty, and so asked my boss.

“Is there anything in particular you would like me to do?”
“Um, no.” She doesn’t look up from the computer.
“Ok, so I’ll just…” I pause, having no idea what I’ll do.
“You’ve done a lot recently, you can go to lunch.”
“Ok,” I look at the clock, it’s 11am.
“I’ll speak to you this afternoon or tomorrow.”

So, back to reading ‘Overheard in New York’ and entering their headline contest, I guess.

two hours to live. Walking talking disease man answered the phone, told me it was for me, then sneezed all over it. All I could do was hold it as far from my face as possible. I have SARS.

I had lunch with someone I don’t normally have lunch with. We were talking, she was telling me how she studied in Beijing.

“Oh,” I asked, “What did you study?”
“My major was…” she thought a second “A cunt.”
“Sorry?”
“I was study… a cunt. But never use. Now I do sales.”
“Your major was what?” I tried again.
“A cunt! Ahhh cunt!”
“Oh, accounting!”
“Yes, I study a cunting.

I felt like I was in some kind of John Cleese skit, except it wasn’t with Germans.

My wonderful singing colleague has learnt another tune since I’ve been on holiday. Just the tune, mind you. No words. However, he does not hum this tune, he sings it. Using words:

“Duh dada dee buhda duh dee ba da…”

Over. And over. It leaves me longing for a bit of R Kelly. At least that had a few real words in it. (I do not long for ‘Come and get your love’ and never will)

is making these terribly disease-ridden noises all day long.

“Ackkhhhah. Snivel”

I can’t tell if they are sneezes or coughs. They are too sudden to be coughs, but too deep to be sneezes. Sometimes he makes a little noise like an impatient horse too.

“Bwwwwhhah! Bwwah!”

I’ve never been a clean freak, but i bought a little tube of hand sanitizer and everytime he threatens to infect me I load up on it, making the office smell of tea tree and alcohol.

Would it be offensive to come in tomorrow wearing one of those white hygene masks?

My wonderful singing colleague has found a new song. One with more than five words to it. Unfortunately, he does not know these words.

“I believe I can fly
I believe I can suh suh sky
Suh-suh suh suh suh-suh suhhhh suhsuh
Suhsuh suh suh suhhsuh suh
I believe I can fly…”

It makes me wish I had connections to a record label to make his dreams come true. That, or connections to an ear plug manufacturer.

Lunch is a buffet. A buffet and an adventure. An adventure and, often, a horrible surprise.
Take today. There are eight dishes stewing over the little burners to keep them warm. One is sausages (oh, my first love) in an interesting sauce which turns out to be ketchup. Not tomato sauce, watery ketchup. One dish is roast potatoes. No complaints. One dish is asparagus in a clear jelly that I scrape off. One dish is beef-on-the-bone which I’ve discovered in the past is simply bone with a little skin. And then there is the bright orange tarantula dish. Bright orange, like it would glow in the dark. With twenty legs coming off it.
I like to be brave. I normally end up eating a lunch solely of potato, but I try the weird stuff. So I hack off a little orange morsel and put it in the far corner of my plate so it doesn’t attack the real food. I try it. It has very sharp bones in it and simply tastes like crispy Fanta. So I ask Sally.
“Sally, what am I eating?”
“You know, lives in the sea.”
“A fish?”
“Yes.”
“But it has legs.”
“It is a floor fish.”
Isn’t that the loveliest way of saying crab: a floor fish. Unfortunately I couldn’t stomach it’s legs. And shell, which the chef had kindly left on.

Mr. Pink shirt has managed to download this song onto his mobile phone. So it is playing All. The. Time. How often can this guy’s phone ring, you ask. Well, every ten minutes or so. And if he needs a fix in between, he plays it without even getting a call! It is welded to my brain, so anytime I try to think, the song plays on repeat. Come and get your love…

is the song that the guy at the desk opposite mine is listening to. Doesn’t sound too bad? How about when I tell you that ‘come and get your love’ is the entirity of the lyrics. The chorus is ‘aa wooh! aa wooh hoo!’ This is a respectable man in a suit and tie, (I admit, it is a pink shirt, but its a nice one) typing on his computer. He is singing along to the ‘aa woohs’ and whenever I look up at him to ask, with my eyes, ‘seriously?’ he grins and does a little head dance. The divider between his desk and mine is glass so I don’t even have anything to hide behind to crack up.