The amazing tale of the pen/pan!

[bagheera_san]

Flatshare life continues to be fun. Just now, at almost 10 pm, somebody knocked at our door and I answered it. A guy I'd never seen before was there, telling me that he's a former tenant, and looking for "His black pen, which he left in the kitchen." Naturally suspicious, I asked, "Can you prove that you're a former tenant?" and "Why would you even come back for a pen? How much is it worth?" He said, "10 pounds!" I remained dubious. Luckily at this moment one of the Chinese guys came out of his room, and with Chris at my back I felt more secure. So we let the guy in to search for his "pen" - as it turned out, he was actually looking for a pan, and quickly claimed one as his, boldly chucking away the food that was in it. But we said, "No, you can't take that, it's Nan-nans!" and called her. Nan-nan says that it's her pan. But lo - another, identical but newer pan turns up in our cupboard. The stranger demands to talk to Nan-nan on the phone. He does so, then hangs up, says, "The girl said I could take my pan," and leaves. Chris and I look at each other, he grabs the phone, and rings her again. Lengthy and excited talk in Chinese follows, which I take to mean than no, Nan-nan did not tell him to take the pan. The guy stole our pan! We are shocked at such insidiousness, and all for the same of a cheap and used pan. A moment later, Chris asks her whether she knows that there are two pans. She does not, so perhaps pan #2 really belonged to the stranger.

Extremely relieved to not have fallen prey to the amazing pan scam, we shared an orange and went back to our rooms.

Aside from that, today there was a fresher's fair where the societies introduced themselves, and the people at the Gaming, Sci-Fi&Fantasy and LARPING stalls respectively all gave me identical, blinking looks of surprise when I came to them to ask pertinent questions rather than say, "Omigosh, you really do that?!" or backing away with a politely horrified smile. (The two guys at the Sci-Fi&Fantasy stall in particular belonged to that now rare species of not-chic geeks, and thus immediately made me want to go there, because let's be reasonable: most of my friends are closely related to that species of geek, so I am much more likely to get along with them than, say, the Theatre club. On the same note, my two male flatmates definitely are geeks as well, as they spend most of their nights watching Chinese TV on their laptops. Yay!) To be fair, I had put on my girliest outfit just for that purpose. The two girls at the LGBT stall, on the other hand, handed me lollies, and I had the surreal experience of the German Society practically fawning over me - I'm not quite used to that reaction to my nationality. This whole concept of societies is awesome, and I wish we had such a wide variety at home. I wish I had enough time and energy to try all the funny ones like the woodcarving society and the grow-your-own-food-and-escape-society-society.

Comments

[aralias.livejournal.com]

socs are indeed great. i accidentally signed up to about my first year, eventually settling on a nice 3 in my third. the sci fi society were too geeky for me, though. it was terribly sad. they did a quiz early on - supposedly for fun, but i think it was probably more of a test, and since our team got less than 10% (all my geekiness is concentrated knowledge, and at that point i couldn't even name all the doctors would would have gotten me - then - eight points. tragic) we knew that we should go away and not come back. though they were impressed i knew the names of all the agents in the matrix...