Subject: Midterm Relaxation

From: "[Z. Zhang ~{VqHK~}" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 1994 18:39:04 CDT

O well, you folks are well in buried in the mid of the midterm.
Something for your relaxation, and on which Salon-goers may teach
me a good lesson later.

Feedbacks are welcome. Best luck for all.

-bamboo

----------

        [ How to Meet People ]

Sure enough, there are millions of ways of meeting people,
and by the way of Declaration of Human Independence, you are
insured to have your own 10 versions. But the scene I run
into this noon has been puzzling me for a couple of hours.

So there I was: sit in the Beckman Cafeteria for my lunch.
My dish, by the way, is the expensive UofI fish -- a special
treatment to myself to celebrate my freeman status. In front
of me are two nice old gentlemen, having all their UofI fishes
cleaned up, sit talking warmly to each other. As always, I duck
my nose deep into the tray and start the feeding process right
away, while pondering real important problems that I have to get around:

Okay, 1 is 1, therefore 1 + 1 has to be....

        "....My daughter went to the crazy LA last week...."

Your daugher? Does she know anything of "1+1"? And for all I know
of, LA has only One-on-One business, for God sake. Anyway, 1+1 may be
too hard, let me try 1-1 then...

        "....the kidney..."

Kidney? Interesting. But the matter is what the damn-1 stands for after all?

        "...."

At one point I lookeded up, found that the two are about to leave, shaking
hands violently with each other, and the one with bold head is saying:

"Nice talking to you, Sir. O by the way, my name is James Bond the
Greatest, I work in New York"

"Pleased to meet you, and I am Professor Micheal Jackson the Damnit..."

What?? That SUCKS. I went down to reach my dropped knife and fork while
thinking: My goooooodness, how the hell can this sort of things happening
on earth? The two have been sitting here for half an hour side by side,
consumed a good pair of UofI fishes altogether, exchanged opinions
about LA (and possibly me as well), blahblah over whoever's daugher without
(how come?!) introducing each other at the first place, huh? And, better yet,
whose Kidney is it then? huh??

Look, we Chinese never do things like that, we always do identify ourselves
at the first eyechange, albeit how vague it may be. And then, just to
make it roll a bit smoother, squeeze out any possible way to hook it up.
A good example may look like this:

        Mr.X: Hi there, how are you? I'm X and I'm in the Murder business.
        Mr.Y: Fantastic! Nice to meet you sir. I'm Y and I happen to be a Cop.
        ....

        (after a wonderful conversation the two are hugging for a farewell)
        Mr.X: I will call you, I promise!
        Mr.Y: Yap, remember not to drop the weapon....

That, as I always believed in, is _the_ RIGHT way of meeting people. Not
the other way around. I have done so since my IQ barely reached double
digits; that's what all my friends are, and will be doing, that's....

HEY WAIT, MADAM WAIT PLEASE! DON'T TAKE AWAY MY TRAY, I'M NOT DONE WITH IT
YET, PLEASE!! O BY THE WAY, I'M BAMBOOMAN AND I USED TO BE A DELIVER BOY
BACK IN TEXAS, AND I LOST MY KIDNEY THIS MORNING WHILE TAKING THE SHOWER....

##
                Fall/1994, Champaign-Urbana

                - From BambooMan ZZ's Short Story Series #10
============================================================================
    \\\\\///    | "All these parables set out to say merely is that
    | \ c |     |  incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that
   {| @-@ |e    |  already. But the cares we have to struggle with everyday:
    |  "  |     |  that is a different matter."  - F.Kafka "On Parables"
    |  .  |     |+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    \     /     | Zheng Zhang (The Bamboo-Boy)  CSRL 427, MC-264, ECE Dept.
     |'''|      | Center for Supercomputing Research and Development
     |   |      | University of Ill-Noise at Banana-Shampoo
  |         |   | 3-4297(O), 344-7652(H), [email-masked]
============================================================================