for two whole semesters my daily quest for prata in the law school cafeteria has been frequently thwarted by the impossibly mercurial ways of the management:
me (10am): hello, can i order a prata please?imagine then, gentle reader, my gratification, when i returned after the summer to find the cafeteria was under new management, and spick new menu boards now hang on the walls, a homeric catalogue of all the new and delightful dishes you can now enjoy, with two pricings separating the fee to be extracted from the idle public visitor from the small consideration expected of the virtuous and very ravenous student.
cashier auntie: no prata in the morning. prata after 11.30am.
me (1pm): can i order a prata please?
auntie: no prata during lunch.
me (3pm): it’s not lunch time now. can i order a prata?
auntie: no, we don’t have prata in the afternoon. come before noon.
me: but yesterday the other auntie said no prata in the morning!
me: (4pm): can i order a prata?
auntie: the prata guy is not here, come back later.
me (6pm): can i order a prata?
auntie: oh, the prata guy went home.
on one such board i found, clear and bold, this printed promise: “prata: 7am-11am, 2.30pm-7pm.”
a unified prata policy, at last! o reader, i could barely suppress my emotion.
me: hello auntie, can i order some prata?on the whole, i preferred it when it was a prata lottery than when it’s waiting for godot with flatbread.auntie: no prata now. prata only after 3pm.
me: but your sign says: prata from 2.30pm-7pm.
auntie: the sign is wrong.
me: but the signboard was just changed this semester!
auntie: it’s not 2.30pm yet. we don’t serve prata during lunch time.
me: but there’s no lunch queue at all now and it’s already 2.20pm. can’t the prata guy make me a prata anyway if he’s free?
auntie: dunno lah. talk to the prata guy yourself.
me: hello, your sign says prata from 2.30pm. i know it’s only 2.20pm but is it okay if you make me a prata please, there’s no queue.
prata guy: we cannot make you a prata. the hot plate takes half an hour to heat up.
me: but if your sign says prata from 2.30pm and you know it takes half an hour to heat up, isn’t it almost hot by now? i don’t mind waiting a little while longer for the prata.
prata guy: it is not on yet. we only sell prata after 3pm
me: ok but you can turn it on now right? you’ll have to turn it on in ten minutes anyway no? what if i ordered the prata now and came back at 2.50pm to collect it?
him: no cannot.
me: why not?
him: cannot. prata after 3pm.
me: GRARRR.
Best of the Transparent Hummingbird