When A Loss Is Not A Loss

If you've been reading my blog regularly (or if you're a former GSS student), you can tell by the picture of today's lunch that this was a so-called "Family Meal."

As you can also see by the picture, family meals tend to be not very good.

Why would I want to eat a bowl (half-)full of beans? OK, yeah, sure, there's also some meat and veggies in there somewhere, but you practically need a microscope to find them.

About the only thing that bowl of "curry beans" was good for was to dip my bread in. That's why I gave it away as soon as I finished the bread.

The salad was actually really good (yes, I am complimenting the food!), since the kitchen staff wised up and replaced the usual ham with tuna. I'll take tuna over ham any day!

Since there wasn't much food today and I was hungry, I decided to get seconds of the salad. What's more, since there wasn't much food today and I was hungry, I decided to get thirds(!) of the salad! Yessiree Bob, thirds!

That might be the first time I have ever gotten thirds of anything here in the school cafeteria, but I can't swear to that. In any case, that's a really good sign, right?

As for the fruit, well, those two little things are loquats. (I had to look that up.) I have no idea if I had ever had a loquat before this meal. I ate one of the two and gave the other one away, since the one I did eat had almost no flavor. That was disappointing, since I expected the fruit to be sweet.

By the way, everyone (or almost everyone) pealed the skin off of their loquats before eating them (just as they do with grapes!). I didn't see the point of that, so I just bit right in. As I told one teacher who looked at me a bit funny upon seeing that: "It's not going to kill me." (A little roughage never hurt!)

This being a family meal, there was the usual game of "rock, paper, scissors" going on at many tables to determine who the lucky person (or persons) would be who got to take all of the trays with the plates, utensils, and garbage piled high, over to the return area.

(Too bad they have to deal with the extra plates for the bread and fruit, both of which we could have done without, as well as both spoons and chopsticks, when either would have sufficed!)

My family almost never plays, but since I had moved to another family's table after I was done with my meal, I ended up playing with them, just for the heck of it. Lucky for me, I eliminated myself from contention early on by going with "paper."

Losing isn't much fun, since you have a lot of work to do. Nevertheless, absolutely no one makes fun of you. In America or Europe, if you were the poor soul who was the obvious loser, I'm sure that could be pretty embarrassing, but not here.

That little fact is one of the nice things about this country!

Total points: 4 (thanks to the salad!)